How the Christian homeschooling movement is hurting queer and trans youth
Among the millions of queer kids currently in school, many will be taught by parents who believe that being LGBTQIA+ is a sin. THIS ARTICLE FIRST APPEARED ON UNCLOSETED MEDIA A NEW INVESTIGATIVE LGBTQIA+ FOCUSSED NEWS PUBLICATION. At 11 years old, in a town just outside Seattle, Charles Mark Masoner remembers dressing up in a tube top and low-rise jeans, an outfit he describes as “so Y2K.” He was hanging out with his friends in a cul-de-sac in front of his home when his mother saw that he was wearing girl’s clothes. “She just starts crying, wailing, and calling the elders from church,” says Masoner, now 36 and living between New York and Fayetteville, North Carolina.
Later that week, he remembers being pulled from Sunday school at his Church in Marysville, Washington, where he was taken into a room with five elders, stripped of his polyester dress shirt, pants and belt and “whipped dozens of times.” Masoner remembers the elders demanding that he tell them everything and asking him questions like “Have you masturbated and to what kind of porn?” and “Have you touched boys?” The Church Masoner attended disbanded in 2010.
The two men whose names Masoner remembers today, 25 years later, did not respond for comment. Masoner’s mother did not respond to multiple phone calls and text message requests for an interview with Uncloseted Media.
His father died in 2019, but his widow, Chasity Masoner, says none of what Masoner told Uncloseted Media surprises her. “It actually hurts me,” she says.
