Q Toon: Nothing Pearsonal

Nope, no bathrooms this week:

Trey Pearson, lead singer of the Christian rock band Everyday Sunday, came out to his fans as gay in a letter to his fans and an interview in the Columbus, Ohio, culture magazine (614) last week.

In an effort to suppress his homosexuality, Pearson married and fathered two children. His coming out is without a doubt going to be rough on his family. The record suggests it will also be hard on his career.

Ray Boltz, whose songs were staples in evangelical churches throughout the 1990s, came out as gay in 2004. Grammy-nominated Anthony Williams  became the first openly gay gospel artist in 2009. Jennifer Knapp, another Grammy-nominated Christian artist, acknowledged that she was a lesbian one year later. And in 2014, popular worship music artist Vicky Beeching told The Independent that she too was a lesbian.
These musicians paid a hefty price. Since Christian music fans tend to be conservative and believe that homosexual acts are sinful, you won’t hear these artists’ music played in most churches or on Christian radio these days.

If continuing under the weight of living a lie were a tolerable thing, going through the pain in one's family and professional life would hardly seem worthwhile. To understand why anyone would turn his/her life upside-down to get out from underneath that weight, here is how Pearson put it in another interview:

One thing [author and former pastor Rob Bell] told me was, “Just remember, the truth is the safest place in the universe.” And that’s definitely been my mentality in being to get through this whole thing and in the way that I want to represent it publicly.