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Blessings and bonds
After years of trying to reconcile their love and their religion, lesbian couple find that faith has drawn them closer than ever
By MARY BISHOP
The Roanoke Times
If ever there was a girl who wanted to be straight, it was Jen DeSaegher.
She grew up in the Rev. Jerry Falwell's Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, where her parents were on the ministerial staff and where the sinfulness of homosexuality was preached to one and all. In the late 1980s, she seemed to be the typical heterosexual high-schooler, with boyfriends, hot-rollered hair and pretty dresses. What she was feeling inside, however, was a strong attraction to girls.
It will go away, she told herself. It's just the devil testing me.
Acting out her desires would tear her away from everything she cared about -- from her loving parents, her sisters, her Christian school, her church, her God.
At 15 and every night for years after, Jen DeSaegher lay on the flowered comforter of her bed, with her deep-blue King James Bible and her list of nightly Scripture readings on the night stand beside her.
She would stare at the ceiling and pray with all her might:
"God, just please take these feelings away. Don't let me be gay."
Being gay isn't easy for anyone. For born-again Christian Jen DeSaegher, it was an assault on her very soul.
She believed homosexuality was a sin. "I believed it the same way I believed that Christians didn't drink alcohol or go to movies."
So if she were gay, how could she be a Christian? And if she weren't a Christian, what kind of person was she?
She didn't know any openly gay people. She'd hear Falwell's pulpit denunciations of homosexuality and slink on home, feeling terrible about herself. She had no knowledge of Bible scholarship that was kinder to gay people.
Jen's father, Paul DeSaegher (pronounced de-SAY-ger), was minister of music at Thomas Road. Her mother, Jani DeSaegher, was director of children's ministries.
At 16, Jen DeSaegher began a relationship with a girl she'd met at basketball camp. The girl stayed overnight many times in Jen's bedroom. Jen lied and assured her mother it wasn't sexual.
"There I was," Jen says, "every day going to a Christian school, church three times a week, summer camp, Bible studies -- really wanting to please God but feeling as though I had to pick between living for God and repressing my feelings for women. . . . It was a horribly hard time in my life."
Toward the end of high school, she finally told her parents she was a lesbian. As much as they loved her -- they might say because they loved her -- they decided that letting her live at home while she dated girls was tacit approval of her lifestyle. With her grandmother's help, she rented an apartment and got a job at the post office.
She saw Christian counselors. She read passages in Romans 7 about overcoming sin, and every night she prayed she would wake up straight.
She went to see Falwell, who had been her pastor all her life and performed her two older sisters' weddings. He was kind, but she doesn't remember whether she told him she was gay. She doesn't remember much about that year. She was too depressed.
Jen had been an athlete at Lynchburg Christian Academy. She won a basketball scholarship to North Carolina's Brevard College.
On Thanksgiving break, she and some Lynchburg friends drove to gay-friendlier Roanoke for dinner and dancing. She heard there was a new girl in town, and when Wendy Maxey walked into Macado's, a downtown restaurant, that night, Jen DeSaegher said to her friends, "Oh, she's pretty."
Like Jen DeSaegher, Wendy Maxey was outwardly straight when she was growing up.
She had boyfriends, long hair, a Baptist church upbringing and loving parents.
At Cave Spring High, she was a good high-jumper and softball player. She was a cheerleader her sophomore year.
She was a sorority girl at Roanoke College, and she had boyfriends there.
But she preferred the company of girls. Around the age of 19, she had her first sexual encounter with a woman.
"Once it happened," she says, "it was like -- that's who I am!"
She had just graduated from college and was waitressing at Pargo's in Roanoke when one night she went out with friends. In the women's bathroom line at The Park, Roanoke's mostly gay dance club, she talked with Jen for the first time. Their conversation rolled on for four hours.
Jen knew right away that Wendy was her love. "I knew after five minutes. I knew this was forever."
They talked by phone almost nightly -- Jen in college, Wendy in Roanoke. They saw each other every chance they could.
But every few weeks, Jen would try to break up. She'd call to say, "I can't do this. I'm a Christian." Wendy wondered if she could stay with someone so uncertain.
Jen finally quit beating herself up and let herself love Wendy. When Jen transferred from two-year Brevard College to four-year Palm Beach Atlantic College, a Christian school in Florida, Wendy moved with her.
Wendy, very close to her parents and their only child, had trouble telling them she was a lesbian. "I was extremely afraid to reveal to them, for fear of breaking their hearts." A few months before she left for Florida, her mother read one of Jen's love letters to Wendy. That's how her parents found out.
The women's careers took off in Florida. Jen's studies in finance landed her an internship at a Merrill Lynch office. Wendy worked at local newspapers and eventually became a Web site editor.
After graduation, Jen became a financial analyst at the prestigious Goldman Sachs & Co., fulfilling a longtime dream of working on Wall Street. Wendy again moved with her, becoming a New York-based regional editor for Fox News.com. But Jen's hours were brutal and the rent was $1,800 a month for a tiny Chelsea apartment where the only interior door was to the bathroom.
They headed south once more. Jen grabbed an offer to work for a software company in cheaper, warmer South Florida, and Wendy won her current job as managing editor at a travel Web site based there.
Secularly, they were fine. But their spiritual lives were on hold.
They were hesitant about seeking God. "Maybe he doesn't love us," Wendy said. Maybe they would even decide God didn't want them to be together.
At a Florida bookstore, Jen found Mel White's autobiography, "Strangers at the Gate: To Be Gay and Christian in America." White, a former seminary professor and Bible scholar who once did ghostwriting for Falwell, wrote about facing his homosexuality in middle age.
It was like reading a male version of Jen's own life. She wrote White a long, soulful letter. He hand-wrote a tender letter back.
A year ago, Jen and Wendy were preparing to return to Southwest Virginia so Jen could pursue a master of business administration degree at Virginia Tech. They went to the beach to say goodbye to the ocean. The stars were out. They wrapped their arms around each other and prayed.
They vowed that night to rebuild their lives with God.
Since February, they've been attending Roanoke's mostly gay Metropolitan Community Church of the Blue Ridge. As pastor Catherine Houchins preached about how God does indeed love gay people, Jen and Wendy wept in relief after every service.
"It was like God wrapping his arms around us," Jen says.
"It was like. . . ."
Wendy finishes the thought: "Like home."
They're living in Blacksburg now. Jen is 26. Wendy's 28.
They still have long hair. They still wear eyeliner and mascara.
People keep asking about boyfriends and husbands. People just can't believe they're lesbians.
There's no question in Jen's and Wendy's minds.
"I'm queer to the heart, I guess," Wendy says.
Jen: "I'm as gay as they come."
Wendy's job sends them on Caribbean cruises and at the dinner table people will ask about the men in their lives. Jen will say, "Yes, I have a significant other. Her name is Wendy."
After Jen receives her MBA this year, they plan to settle down and raise children in Blacksburg or Roanoke. Wendy probably will bear a child first, maybe Jen will later. They're not sure yet how either will be inseminated.
The rekindling of their faith has drawn them closer than ever.
But they long for the affirmation that straight couples get all the time -- anniversary cards, supportive little jokes about the coupled life, eager questions about how they met.
They are thankful that Wendy's parents honor them as a couple. A few months ago, they displayed at their home a picture of Jen and Wendy together. On Jen and Wendy's sixth anniversary this fall, Wendy's mother baked them a chocolate cake.
Jen and Wendy say that Jen's parents, while embracing them individually and welcoming them into their home, still treat them like they're roommates or sisters.
When Jen's family took the annual family portrait for their Christmas card one year, everyone was arranged carefully -- Jen's parents, their three daughters, two sons-in-law, two grandchildren -- but Wendy wasn't invited to join in. Someone asked her instead to take the picture.
Jen took her mother aside and said she didn't want to be in the picture without Wendy, so Wendy was photographed with the family. But when Jen's parents sent out their cards, they chose a picture of themselves with their first grandchild, not the family portrait.
"I guess this was their way of compromise," Jen says. Her mother loves her, she says, but speaks often of her struggles with Jen and Wendy's relationship. "If she hangs pictures of us and includes us, she feels I may interpret that as acceptance."
For three years, Jen's parents have been members of Set Free, a national Christian group that ministers to gays, lesbians and their families. The organization cautions that homosexuality is a sin but urges parents to love their gay children unconditionally as they pray to set them straight.
Jen knows that, given her parents' religious convictions, they probably will never accept her homosexuality. She'll always be something of an outsider.
There have been a few disappointing times with Wendy's folks as well. Jen says that when she was alone once with Wendy's mom, Mrs. Maxey expressed her love for Jen and Wendy but asked that they not show physical affection in front of her and Wendy's dad -- something Jen said they would never do.
Now, when they watch a video with Wendy's parents, Jen's careful to not sit close to Wendy on the couch.
Jen and Wendy feel luckier than a lot of gays and lesbians. Nobody's called them names, nobody's attacked them. But still, Wendy says, "It's the little things that tear you down. The things that make you tuck your tail."
None of their parents agreed to be interviewed at length for this story.
"The one thing I could say," Jen's mother said by phone, "and I don't have to think about it, is we absolutely love our daughter. That will not change. No matter what."
Wendy said her parents, too, sent word that "they love and support me, no matter what." This Christmas, Wendy's mother hung a stocking for Jen right beside the one for Wendy.
Wendy says her parents are worried about this story. All their neighbors, co-workers and fellow church members will learn Wendy's sexual orientation.
More for her parents than for herself, Wendy says, "This is their outing."
During lunch at a Blacksburg restaurant, Jen and Wendy talk about the newspaper story. Wendy is sending a letter to everybody on her father's side of the family. She doesn't want the newspaper to be the way they learn she's a lesbian.
Her father has just told his brother about Wendy. Her mother has told her boss. Both conversations went well.
After their po' boy sandwich and Cajun shrimp salad are served, the talk turns to the children Jen and Wendy want to have.
"Now, we have to have four," Wendy says.
"Four!" Jen exclaims.
"Well," Wendy says, "I like all these names -- Jake, Nathan, Cameron, Christian." She hasn't even started on girls' names.
Jen's sure that when she's a very old lady, she's going to be rocking on a porch swing with Wendy.
"In my life," Jen says, "I want to walk down the street holding her hand and with a ring on my finger and with the same name as hers, and I want to be buried right next to her in the burial plot."
They hope that the people they know as they grow old will be heartened by the love they share.
"That our kids," Jen says, "can comfortably tell their friends, 'We have two moms.' "
"The way we are," Wendy says of her and Jen's open ways, "we'll be telling them for them. The good thing is, we won't be 60 years old and living in a closet."
"And when we're 60 years old," Jen interjects, "I hope it won't be a story."
Yes, Wendy says. "People will have stopped doing profiles on gay people. It'll be old news."
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