What the Church Still Doesn’t Understand About LGBTQIA+ Inclusion
Guest Post from Cynthia Vacca Davis on the Cost of Being Seen
We are now over 100 days into an administration seemingly hellbent on chipping away at our personal freedoms along with democracy itself. It has been exhausting to witness the whirlwind of policies targeting queer people, women, immigrants, and people of color. Supporters of this regime assure us that the daily onslaught of reforms is designed to return America to traditional values—that the demonization of anything and anyone deemed “other” is a “win” to celebrate.
The tone and timbre of the celebration is not something I know second hand or in theory. It’s coming from voices I recognize, from people in a community that raised and shaped me: evangelical Christians. Not fire and brimstone televangelists, or Bible-belt zealots, but my Sunday school teachers, my youth leaders. Nice people who organized meal-trains and delivered piping hot casseroles when a birth or death hit the (church) family.
Of course, none of this is news. It’s been nearly a decade since I realized that the same people who prayed on Sundays for others to receive power also voted to keep it all to themselves. It’s been even longer since I knew that pro-life policies expire in delivery rooms; evangelicals will stop at nothing to be sure a baby is born, but heaven help them if they are gay. Or, God forbid, trans. Then? The church has nothing for you.
Thinking You’re a Queer Ally vs. Being a Queer Ally
For a long time, I thought I was different. I had LGBTQIA+ friends. I valued their time and company. But, even though the Christian schools I taught at and churches I attended touted compassion, I knew the rules. There were things I couldn’t say if I wanted to remain in front of those blackboards and in those pews.
Then I met Danny.
Danny is an intersex man raised as female in a conservative evangelical family. For years, he lived as someone he wasn’t because the cost of telling the truth—about his body, his identity, his faith—seemed too steep. When he finally realized his life depended on living as his true self, it nearly cost him everything. His story changed me. Not just because of what he’s been through, but because of what it revealed about me.
I realized I really wasn’t all that different from all the other evangelical pew-warmers. I had been complicit. I had been kind, but not courageous. I had been supportive, but only when it was safe.
Writing my book Intersexion with Danny was a wake-up call. It made me confront a painful truth: the evangelical church is not just passively misunderstanding LGBTQIA+ people. It is actively wounding them. And it’s not doing it in a vacuum. It’s doing it with the full backing of a political machine bent on erasing anything that doesn’t fit neatly into its binary worldview.
Right now, dozens of states are targeting trans people with legislation that limits medical care, bathroom access, and legal recognition. In many of those same bills, intersex people are caught in the crosshairs—denied autonomy over their bodies, forced to conform to binary standards that don’t reflect their reality. These aren’t just abstract policies. These are life-and-death decisions made by lawmakers who claim to follow Jesus.
The truth is, you don’t get to be neutral in this fight. You either believe in the dignity of all people or you don’t. You either stand with the marginalized or you stand with those doing the marginalizing.
The Cost of Being Seen
When Danny and I began sharing his story, I was offered a tenure-track job at a Christian university. It was the kind of offer that changes lives—especially for an adjunct professor with a car filled with ungraded papers and snack wrappers. But when the administration discovered I was writing about an intersex Christian, the offer vanished.
That moment clarified everything. This wasn’t about theology. It was about control. About fear. About the lengths institutions will go to protect their image (and their bottom line)—even if it means silencing stories that could save lives.
I wish I could say that moment was unusual. But it’s not. I’ve heard from students, faculty, pastors, and parents who’ve been pushed out of Christian communities for daring to question the party line. I’ve watched churches split over LGBTQIA+ inclusion—not just in leadership, but in the pews. I’ve also seen people who claim to be allies in name, but not in practice.
Performative allyship might look like rainbow flags in June, but business as usual in July. Or having dinner with a gay friend, but staying silent when a colleague makes an inaccurate or transphobic remark in the break room. It’s saying “all are welcome,” but really meaning all those like you.
Real allyship costs something. And if it hasn’t cost you yet, you’re probably not doing it right.
But here’s the thing: when it costs you, it transforms you.
That’s what happened to me. I lost a job. I gained a story that changed my life. I stopped measuring success by comfort and started gauging it by how freeing authenticity can feel.
Intersexion isn’t just Danny’s story. It’s mine, too. It’s the story of two people who were told in different ways to stay quiet. Who were given a script—about gender, faith, identity, and belonging—and finally decided to write their own.
It’s also a challenge to the church I grew up in, the one that taught me how to pray and sing and serve, but never taught me how to question. That church made me who I am. And it also taught me who I never want to be.
If you’re reading this and feeling unsettled, I count that as a good thing. Being uncomfortable means you know something isn’t right. The question is, what will you do about it?
Because we are at a crossroads—spiritually, politically, culturally. Evangelicals have aligned themselves with power and fear for so long that they’ve forgotten what real faith looks like. Real faith doesn’t silence. It doesn’t legislate people out of existence. Real faith pulls up a chair. It listens. It changes.
So here’s my invitation: Grab that chair. Listen to Danny’s story. Then ask yourself where you’ve been silent when you should have spoken. Where you’ve stayed safe instead of showing up.
The cost of being seen is real. But so is the joy. So is the freedom. So is the healing that happens when someone says, “I see you. And I’m not going anywhere.”
I saw Danny. And he saw me. That’s where everything started.
Where will it start for you?
Photo above by Alexander Grey
Cynthia Vacca Davis is Director of Journalism at Christopher Newport University. She holds an MFA in creative nonfiction, leads workshops, has written hundreds of regional feature stories, is a writer for Baptist News Global and her local NPR. Cynthia is the author of Intersexion: A Story of Faith, Identity, and Authenticity and has two independently published young adult novels, The Chrysalis and Drink the Rain. When she’s not home in coastal VA with her husband, pets, and students, she can often be found French Quarter of New Orleans in search of jazz and parades. Subscribe to her newsletter or follow her on social media at cynthiavaccadavis.com.
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