Connect with us

Arts & Entertainment

Change of heart

Texas PFLAG mom shares journey of accepting her lesbian daughter

Published

on

Shari Johnson (left) with her daughter Cholene and husband James in Grenada for Cholene’s white coat ceremony at the start of her medical school program in January 2011. (Photo courtesy Johnson/Changing Lives Press)

Shari Johnson hasn’t thought much about Mother’s Day.

“I really haven’t thought that far ahead,” the long-time Odessa, Texas, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and conservative Evangelical Christian says by phone from her home. “[My children] pretty much call me if they’re available but I try not to put a whole lot of that unrealized expectation into things. They have their own lives and their own spouses so it’s about them and that’s how it should be and it works for us.”

Johnson might not be thinking much about being a mom this weekend but it’s a topic she’s thought about intently in recent years. Her first book “Above All Things,” published through her daughter Cholene Espinoza’s Changing Lives Press, comes out May 21 and tells of Johnson’s nearly decade-long journey from the time Cholene came out to her by phone as a lesbian in July 2002, to Johnson’s status now as a PFLAG mom (she started a chapter of the gay-affirming group in Odessa) who has retained her faith in the process (order the book here).

The book tells extensively of Johnson’s (a former dental hygienist) rocky early life, her born-again experience in 1971 after two failed marriages, the black-and-white world view that developed out of years of going to Evangelical churches and the painful journey that came from not only accepting her daughter being gay, but the extensive ramifications it had on every aspect of her life.

Though her prayer had initially been that Cholene — an overachiever pilot with years of Air Force and commercial flying under her belt who’s now in medical school — would “be delivered” from homosexuality, Johnson now sees the experience as a catalyst for a radical adjustment to her faith and overall world view. She credits God with her change of heart and writes several times in the book of experiences where she feels the Lord was speaking to her.

“I kept praying that God would change my daughter but I’m the one who ended up being changed,” Johnson writes. “Prior to this time, I thought I had all the answers. Now I’m not even sure that I understand the questions. I viewed life as being either black or white, there was no gray. I avoided anyone who didn’t think as I did. I was a ‘my-mind-is-made-up-don’t-confuse-me-with-the-facts’-type of person.”

But Johnson’s views began to evolve as she realized her daughter’s 2004 marriage to White House correspondent Ellen Ratner was bringing an unfairly different reaction than it would have had she been marrying a man, the hypocrisy she says Christians often exhibit when talking of the supposed sin of homosexuality compared to most other sins (of which Johnson says they often given themselves a “free pass”), and the realization that nobody (especially a Christian) would choose a gay orientation for themselves. These epiphanies had life-changing effects on her.

After years of study and thought, Johnson believes centuries of anti-gay preaching in Christian churches of most varieties comes down to mistakes in scriptural interpretation.

“If we believe that homosexuality is not a choice, then we have to either believe that God is cruel to have played this terrible trick on people and not the loving God we think he is (and that would be a God I could not serve),” she writes in the book. “Or there has to be a mistake in interpreting the scriptures. I chose to believe the latter.”

Though initially highly skeptical, Johnson feels the Lord brought her to a place where she was able to consider that she may have been wrong before.

“I always thought I had sought the will of God in my life before but I realize now what I had often been doing was going to him with my plan and then leaving before I got an answer,” she says. “If people are truly seeking, and all I’m asking people to do is consider that we could be wrong on the way some of these scriptures have been interpreted over the years, but when I finally got around to reading what some of these writers were saying — and I avoided even reading this stuff for the longest time — I realized I needed to start thinking for myself and not just keep blindly repeating what someone else had told me.”

Johnson credits the writings of Rev. Paula Jackson and her work “What Does the Bible Say About Being Gay? — Probably Not What You’ve Been Told,” with helping her expand her theological horizons. That Jackson didn’t write in a “histrionic, blasphemous, in-your-face” manner that “didn’t disregard my point of view,” resonated with Johnson.

“She just presented the facts and lets the reader come to his or her own conclusions,” Johnson writes. “The entire study boils down to this one question: What if we’re wrong?”

Espinoza, who eventually hopes to work as a doctor with Ratner in South Sudan, says it’s important for gay Christians to follow the example of Christ rather than get sidelined in what she and her mother now feel is misconstrued anti-gay theology.

“Christ did not have anything to say about homosexuality but he had a lot to say about love, honor and respect,” she wrote in an e-mail to the Blade. “If we are loving, honorable and respectful in our relationships, I think that reduces a lot of the guilt and self loathing in our heads. We need to separate those who condemn us from the message of love and reconciliation, the message that Christ has brought to us.”

Johnson has become a staunch advocate for LGBT acceptance within Christian churches in the Odessa area. It’s led to a thorny conundrum — she’s tried sharing her story, but often leaves Bible studies and church services feeling she’s been merely placated. She’s at a point now where she can’t stomach anti-gay teaching from the pulpit and has left several churches in frustration. She says gay-welcoming churches in her part of the state are pretty much non-existent.

Johnson has lots of interesting opinions on trends in the modern church, especially with the anti-gay teaching that abounds in the Bible Belt.

She concedes there is a time, whether it’s in the political or religious realm, where it’s OK to respectfully agree to disagree.

“This whole idea of, ‘You have to see things my way,’ that’s never worked in politics, religion or anything else,” she says. “It never worked and it never will. But God gave me a big wake-up call and I would love for other people to not have to go through what I went through. That’s really why I wrote the book.”

She says it’s possible that churches with anti-gay teaching that seem to be thriving — even those led by household-name preachers like Rick Warren and Joel Osteen — might not be as blest as it appears.

“You can’t always assume that God’s blessing a church just because of the numbers,” she says. “People go to church for all sorts of reasons. And when these men have been put on the spot on national television and asked about gay issues and the whole Christian community is sort of collectively holding its breath waiting to hear what they say, they give the accepted answer, but I doubt very seriously that’s what they’re preaching from the pulpit or what they really feel in their hearts.”

But could so many religious teachers have been so wrong for so many years on gay issues? Johnson says yes.

“It’s happened since creation,” she says. “Anytime man gets involved, he manages to screw things up … Anytime there’s been a religious movement that gets started, it’s basically that person’s idea of who God is and what sin is. We tend to think we have all this figured out but you know what the Bible says about our own righteousness — it’s like filthy rags to God.”

But how does someone — especially a gay teen struggling with suicidal thoughts growing up in an Evangelical household — know whom to listen to? Aren’t there well-meaning Christians who simply believe homosexuality isn’t part of God’s plan?

Johnson says that’s where her biggest concern lies — she wants LGBT teens and young adults to have a chance to consider the possibility that their being gay isn’t the sinful curse many churches make it out to be. It’s the main reason she started her PFLAG chapter.

“I don’t have an easy answer for this but we have to have a place for kids to go and hear a different message. They’re not exposed to it at home, they have no place to hear a positive message, they’re in trouble and it has nothing to do with who they really are.”

With so many voices out there claiming to be spokesmen for God or claiming to have heard from God directly, Johnson admits absolute truth is “not always easy to discern.” She says she knows it’s God speaking when she feels compelled to go out of her comfort zone for the greater good.

“I usually know that if it’s contrary to the way I think, it’s usually God,” she says with a self-deprecating tone she uses often in the book. “I tend to line up with the other guy more often in my own thinking. But I can tell if I’m doing something for selfish reasons or whatever, it’s not of God. He does not let up. If it’s something I feel I’m supposed to do … I’m usually thinking, ‘Don’t make me do this.’ You have to learn to set aside the voice of past teaching, past thinking. … For everyone it’s different, but I feel when it’s truly God speaking, it’s a different thing and you know it.”

 

Advertisement
FUND LGBTQ JOURNALISM
SIGN UP FOR E-BLAST

Television

ICYMI: ‘Overcompensating’ a surprisingly sweet queer treat

A sweet, savvy show about breaking free to embrace your true self

Published

on

Holmes, Benito Skinner and Wally Baram in ‘Overcompensating.’ (Photo courtesy of MGM Amazon)

Pride month 2025 is now behind us, and while it’s safe to say that this year’s celebrations had a darker edge than usual, it’s also true that they came with a particularly rich bounty of new queer movies and shows to entertain us – so many, in fact, that even if we are facing a lull until the fall another harvest of fresh content, there are still plenty of titles – which, for whatever reason, were off your radar – for you to catch up on in the meantime.

One of the most notable of these –  the bingeworthy series “Overcompensating” (now streaming on Amazon Prime) – will most definitely have been ON the radar for the plentiful fans of creator and star Benito Skinner, the actor/comedian who rose to viral fame through his content on platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. For anyone else, it might have easily slipped through the cracks.

Created and written by Skinner as a loosely autobiographical “college comedy,” it aims for the kind of raucous, explicitly sexed-up tone one expects from the genre as it centers on Benny (Skinner), newly arrived as a freshman at prestigious Yates University. A former football jock and “golden boy” at his midwestern high school, he’s the picture of idealized youthful masculinity; he’s also deep in the closet, struggling to keep his sexuality hidden and maintain his macho front under the intense scrutiny of the college’s social scene – and under the resentful eye of his older sister Grace (Mary Beth Barone), who has already secured her own place at the top of the pecking order.

In the first episode, Benny’s difficulties are eased when he meets Carmen (Wally Baram), another freshman trying to navigate the politics of college life; a gamer from a home marred by tragedy, she’s an outsider who feels like she’s putting on an act, too, and they click – giving him the convenient “cover” of female companionship while providing them both with much-needed support and encouragement. He’s also befriended by a handsome film major from England (Rish Shah), who has already caught his eye, stirring other kinds of feelings and possibly even reciprocating them. Meanwhile, he’s being courted by the school’s “exclusive secret society” – headed by his sister’s aggressively “alpha” boyfriend Pete (Adam DiMarco) – and trying to stay interested in his studies, despite a growing realization that a career in business doesn’t actually appeal to him all that much.

That’s a lot to juggle for anybody, even an overachiever like Benny – whose “lucky” life so far has largely been the result of playing a role he is finding harder and harder to maintain. As the series goes on through its eight-episode arc, it becomes clear that he’s not the only one who is “keeping up appearances,” and he, along with the other confused and damaged young people in his orbit, begins the painful (but often hilarious) process of evolution that is required in order to become truly oneself.

Directed toward appealing to a younger demographic, “Overcompensating” is the kind of show that requires a few episodes worth of invested time to make an impression that feels like substance. Full of the bawdy farcical antics that go hand in hand with stories about hormonally charged college kids, it’s not above leaning into the formulas and tropes that have always driven these kinds of comedies. At first, while its broadly comedic strokes and frequently explicit sexual hijinks might elicit plenty of chuckles, the show might easily feel tiresome for more mature audiences; there’s a nostalgic fun to it, made even more appealing, somehow, by the “political incorrectness” of its frequently sexist and homophobic humor, but for a while things may feel like an unnecessary attempt to reinvent “Animal House” for the Gen Z crowd.

By the time the season reaches its halfway point, however, things have started to get real. The antics of these horny almost-adults take on a more pointed absurdity, informed by the increasingly tangled web of defensive deceit they weave among themselves – and, as things draw toward a cliffhanger climax, the consequences of maintaining it – until it achieves a sense of empathy toward them all. There’s a wisdom that smacks of lived authenticity underlying the whole affair, transforming it from the “sexploitative” teen comedy of its surface into something deeper. To be sure, things stay expectedly wacky, and the soap-operatic melodrama of its twists and reversals continue to maintain the show’s “mature YA” appeal; but beneath those trappings, by the end of the season a truer identity has begun to emerge, just as its characters have begun to find their own levels of self-actualization for themselves.

As creator, primary writer, and star, it’s obviously Skinner who deserves much of the credit. While it might be tempting, early on, to dismiss the show as an “ego project,” the internet-spawned sensation proves his talents quickly enough to get past such judgy suspicions, delivering a pitch-perfect blend of sauciness and sensitivity that extends its appeal toward both ends of the taste spectrum; just as crucially, he brings the same aforementioned “lived authenticity” to his winning performance – after all, he’s essentially playing himself in a fictionalized version of his own life – while also making sure that equal time (and compassion) is afforded all the other characters around him, each of whom are pushing at the boundaries of their own respective “closets,” too. It’s unavoidable to notice that – like most of his co-stars – he’s plainly a decade too old to be playing a college student; but by the time we reach that crucial halfway turning point, we’ve become too engaged by him to care.

The show is full of excellent performances, in fact. Relative newcomers Baram and Barone offer layers of complex nuance, while the more familiar DiMarco (“White Lotus”) is close to heartbreaking as the toxic BMOC clinging to the illusion of power as his life begins unraveling around him. Other standouts include the mononymic actress Holmes as Carmen’s “wild child” roommate, solidly likable turns as Benny’s parents from mature veterans Connie Britten and Kyle MacLachlan (whose presence, along with stylish elements in several key scenes, hints at an homage-ish nod to the late David Lynch), and podcaster Owen Thiele as an openly gay fellow student who has Benny “clocked” from the moment they meet. Finally, Lukas Gage makes a deep impression as a former high school teammate at the heart of Benny’s most haunting memory.

There’s no official word yet on whether “Overcompensating” will be renewed for a second season, despite the multiple loose ends left dangling at the end of its first; it has proven to be popular, and Skinner’s large fanbase makes it likely that the story will continue. Even if it doesn’t, the place of uncertainty in which it has left its characters rings true enough to serve as a satisfying endpoint.

As for us, we hope that won’t happen. For all its sophomoric humor, generic plot twists, and purposefully gratuitous sexual titillation, it’s one of the sweetest, kindest, and most savvy shows we’ve seen about breaking free from conformity to embrace your true self – and that’s a message that applies whether you’re queer, straight, or anywhere in between.

Continue Reading

Photos

PHOTOS: Independence Day Weekend in Rehoboth

Wicked Green Pool Party, fireworks among festivities

Published

on

A fireworks show was held in Rehoboth Beach, Del. on Saturday, July 5. (Washington Blade photo by Daniel Truitt)

Vacationers and residents alike enjoyed Independence Day Weekend activities in Rehoboth Beach, Del. The Wicked Green Pool Party drew hundreds to the CAMP Rehoboth fundraiser on Saturday. That evening, revelers went to the rooftops to watch the fireworks display.

(Washington Blade photos by Daniel Truitt)

Continue Reading

Music & Concerts

Red, White, and Beyoncé: Queen Bey takes Cowboy Carter to D.C. for the Fourth of July

The legendary music icon performed on July 4 and 7 to a nearly sold-out Northwest Stadium.

Published

on

Beyoncé performs on July 7. (Washington Blade photo by Joe Reberkenny)

Just in time for Independence Day, Beyoncé lit up Landover’s Commanders Field (formerly FedEx Field) with fireworks and fiery patriotism, bringing her deeply moving and genre-defying “Cowboy Carter” tour to the Washington, D.C. area.

The tour, which takes the global icon across nine cities in support of her chart-topping and Grammy-winning country album Cowboy Carter,” landed in Prince George’s County, Maryland, over the Fourth of July weekend. From the moment Beyoncé stepped on stage, it was clear this was more than just a concert — it was a reclamation.

Drawing from classic Americana, sharp political commentary, and a reimagined vision of country music, the show served as a powerful reminder of how Black Americans — especially Black women — have long been overlooked in spaces they helped create. “Cowboy Carter” released in March 2024, is the second act in Beyoncé’s genre-traversing trilogy. With it, she became the first Black woman to win a Grammy for Best Country Album and also took home the coveted Album of the Year.

The record examines the Black American experience through the lens of country music, grappling with the tension between the mythology of the American Dream and the lived realities of those historically excluded from it. That theme comes alive in the show’s opening number, “American Requiem,” where Beyoncé sings:

“Said I wouldn’t saddle up, but
If that ain’t country, tell me, what is?
Plant my bare feet on solid ground for years
They don’t, don’t know how hard I had to fight for this
When I sing my song…”

Throughout the performance, Beyoncé incorporated arresting visuals: Black cowboys on horseback, vintage American iconography, and Fox News clips criticizing her genre shift — all woven together with voiceovers from country legends like Dolly Parton and Willie Nelson. The result was a multimedia masterclass in storytelling and subversion.

The “Cowboy Carter” tour has been a social media sensation for weeks, with fans scrambling for tickets, curating elaborate “cowboy couture” outfits, and tailgating under the summer sun. At Commanders Field, thousands waited in long lines for exclusive merch and even longer ones to enter the stadium — a pilgrimage that, for many, felt more like attending church than a concert.

One group out in full force for the concert was Black queer men — some rocking “denim on denim on denim on denim,” while others opted for more polished Cowboy Couture looks. The celebration of Black identity within Americana was ever-present, making the concert feel like the world’s biggest gay country-western club.

A standout moment of the night was the appearance of Beyoncé’s 13-year-old daughter, Blue Ivy Carter. Commanding the stage with poise and power, she matched the intensity and choreography of her mother and the professional dancers — a remarkable feat for someone her age and a clear sign that the Carter legacy continues to shine.

It’s been nearly two decades since Beyoncé and Destiny’s Child parted ways, and since then, she’s more than lived up to her title as the voice of a generation. With Cowboy Carter,” she’s not just making music — she’s rewriting history and reclaiming the space Black artists have always deserved in the country canon.

Continue Reading

Popular