Episode #69: Coming Out in Evangelical Families, with Singer-Songwriter, Adaline, part 2 of 2
Pride month next month is going to be especially important.
Based on the threats from Project 2025 and the behavior of other religious nationalist groups, federal bills that prevent states from discriminating against queer folks are at risk.
Coming out, already a stress-inducing process, especially for folks in conservative areas, would have far greater anxiety connected with it under a second Trump administration.
We invite singer-songwriter Adaline, founder of the nonprofit Bad Believer, to help explore the anxieties that come with coming out. Adaline talks with us about:
Hymnal (4:50): Adaline discusses her new album: “Hymnal really is, to me, a response to Dear Illusion, my first album.Dear Illusion was written where I was processing who I am. I was going through a really hard time of reconciling the spiritual, religious part of me with my queerness, with my identity. And then of course when Bad Believer happened, and I was having hundreds of conversations with people, where themes would start to really emerge. So when it came time to make a new album, it would have really been impossible to not write about this, because it had consumed my life since 2020.”
No Hate Like Christian Love (7:30): Adaline says, “There are a lot of people that were coming in through Bad Believer that were either not yet out or had experiences of coming out that were really traumatic and hard. They experienced general themes of how frustrating it can be for God for the church to not be showing the kind of love that they preach.”
One Size Does Not Fit All (10:00): Adaline discusses: “I think because when I write about love, there's so many unique experiences of love. These experiences that a lot of us have gone through are so palpable and so universal in some sense that it is empowering and freeing to know that there were so many other people feeling the same way. You're going to find out tons of people are going to look back on that time in their life and realize that that was an imposed process of thinking coming from a place of power and shame and that the un-nuanced teaching of those kinds of things when it comes to human sexuality, the one size fits all method caused tremendous, problematic trauma”
Erasing Love (14:00): Adaline says, “So the idea of true love waits as we fade away was me trying to say, first of all, the audacity of us to even claim that the only kind of love that can exist is one that waited.that also erases a beautiful love stories from existence. If we're going to say that if you didn't make it all the way that that wasn't true love. So that also was frustrating for me.”
Rebecca St. James & Waiting (19:00): Julia discusses Wait For Me by Rebecca St. James: “Wait For Me is this really cringy artifact that advocates for purity culture through Rebecca St. James sitting in the back of a car or a cab in the rain singing to her future husband, pleading for him to wait for her. That's where it starts. The song shows Rebecca singing in the backseat of a car, which reinforces this idea that women are both passive participants to purity culture and also the gatekeepers. She is saying, wait for me, versus the other way around."
Not Being a Part of Your Own Story (21:00): Jeremiah shares, “In my own experiences in my former marriage, the role that passivity played, the role that avoidance played, this idea that you can tell your story, but also not be a part of your story.”
Christian Rap (24:00): Adaline raps, “So just wait for the mate that's straight from God and don't give it up till you tie the knot.” This line perfectly highlights purity culture, as Adaline used to perform this back in her EMPish days.
Myth (27:00): Julia highlights, “The music video and hearing your song and experiencing this deep, deep grief. And then watching the Rebecca St. James, wait for me. And the happiness of it was actually in some ways the most distressing part of rewatching it because it highlighted this infantilization of women and it. It painted this picture of a myth. It painted a picture of something that doesn't actually exist. Your music video and your song is the opposite of Rebecca St. James presentation of purity culture through an idealistic lens rooted in false promises and myths around sexuality and relationships that the field of sociology and sexual health have long ago debunked.”
Autonomy (29:00): Adaline says, “The difference is that it's having the autonomy and the agency to make those choices based on how it's sitting in your body. So if you're like I don't really feel comfortable to do this until I'm married, that's one thing, but it's another thing to be like constantly messing up and then down at the altar on Sundays and like in the secret hidden pain that no one wants to talk about and I went to Bible college and everyone was like super sexually frustrated.”
The Waiting Game (31:00): Adaline describes, “The fetishization of the waiting game that happens within relationships. That when you all of a sudden have permission to have sex, that it actually feels like not as exciting. It can lead to a very strange fantasy life.”
Choosing Yourself (35:00): Adaline shares, “I think it's a beautiful thing to be able to look at yourself and say, "I am brave." But really the central message of the song is, "Can I be this brave? Like, can I do this? In the midst of all of these circling questions, will they still love me? Will they see me as their child?" When you are able to do it, there's a sense of incredible pride of knowing, I looked that monster in the face and I did it. I chose myself. I chose my freedom and my life and my light.”
Love Songs (41:00): In discussing her song "What Love is All About", Adaline says, “This is definitely a love song to my mom and dad. It was one of those beautiful gifts in my life of experiencing unconditional love, which I don't think a lot of us really fully experience. For someone in Evangelical spaces to choose loving you is them overcoming an insane amount of programming, an insane amount of indoctrination, that you know that in that moment, them choosing you is like they went to war for you.”
Radical Acceptance (42:30): Adaline shares her experience coming out to her parents, “It was wild to me to see how quickly they chose me. I told them what I was feeling or I told them what was going on. My father said, "Today is a beautiful day for our family because now there are no more secrets." That was his instinct.
Jesus and Unconditional Love (45:00): Julia states, “[Jesus] loves me unconditionally and no matter what happens, I can go to Jesus and he will love me and I will be okay no matter what. That's what I learned. However, that wasn't what so many communities that I have experienced and that others have experienced actually witnessed"
Hymnal was released March 22. Download it today!
Let's heal together!