As RPDR enters its 17th season with 29 Emmys under its belt, Uncloseted spoke with Alaska and Shea Couleé, as well as academics and superfans, to investigate how the show has affected US culture.

THIS ARTICLE FIRST APPEARED ON UNCLOSETED MEDIA A NEW INVESTIGATIVE LGBTQIA+ FOCUSSED NEWS PUBLICATION.

WORDS SPENCER MACNAUGHTON AND SAM DONNDELINGER

ADDITIONAL REPORTING SOPHIE HOLLAND

COVER IMAGE: PHOTO WORLD OF WONDER

COVER IMAGE: DESIGN SAM DONNDELINGER

Editor’s note: This article includes mention of suicide. If you are having thoughts of suicide, or are concerned that someone you know may be, resources are available here.

At five years old, Justin Andrew Honard remembers discovering the treasures of his grandmother’s closet in Erie, Pennsylvania. He doused himself in her perfume, wrapped himself in her delicate furs, and twirled in her fancy skirts.

“I was very drawn to the clothes,” Honard, better known by his drag queen stage name Alaska Thunderfuck 5000, told Uncloseted Media. “They were more fun than what I was allowed to wear in my everyday life.”

But she says that sort of freedom of expression was short-lived. “I quickly realised I can’t be doing that because it’s not safe.”

“There was no representation [in Erie],” says Alaska, who is currently starring in Drag: The Musical. “Queer people were treated as other. You don’t have to be told explicitly that you are being othered and you need to be careful. I knew that. Getting called a f*ggot, well that was just part of walking through life.”

Alaska says she found her sense of belonging when she discovered drag in college. “It just made sense to me. I got to decide what kind of character I wanted to be and what kind of stories I wanted to tell.”

Three decades after playing with her grandmother’s clothes, Alaska catapulted to drag superstardom when she appeared on season five of RuPaul’s Drag Race and leveraged her initial popularity as a fan favourite to return and win season two of RuPaul’s Drag Race: All Stars.

Alaska is far from alone when it comes to finding superstardom on RPDR. After the Jan. 3 season 17 premiere, 224 queens will have appeared on the American reality competition show. The US version of Drag Race has won 29 Emmys, more than any other reality show ever. And the franchise has spawned 15 international installments featuring hundreds of additional queens from Canada, Thailand, Brazil, the UK, Belgium and beyond.

RPDR has not only moved the needle forward for representation on television; it has shattered the one-dimensional depiction of queer people that Americans had become accustomed to and has tackled tough LGBTQIA+ topics that had never been addressed on television. “We had Will & Grace, we had Ellen, but RuPaul took it to another level,” says Joe E. Jeffreys, a drag historian who teaches a course called “RuPaul’s Drag Race and Its Impact” at The New School.

The impact of queer representation on mental health

“It presents a cornucopia of identities for people they may never have seen,” Jeffreys told Uncloseted Media. “All sorts of queer people in front of us, all sorts of body types, all sorts of gender identities.”

“[The show] is about watching people live their authentic truth. It’s a story of people who have lived through pain or trauma and legislation telling them that they shouldn’t exist, expressing themselves joyfully and beautifully and hilariously. That is life-affirming for everybody,” says Alaska, noting that there are more than 500 anti-LGBTQ bills sweeping through state legislatures right now.

“It saved my life,” says 27-year-old Jani Aldinor, a trans man who started watching Drag Race at 11 years old when the show first premiered.

“The show gives me an outlet to see LGBTQIA+ people thriving not despite of but because of their queerness,” Aldinor, who grew up in the 6,900-person town of Willis, Texas, told Uncloseted Media. “It gives me so much joy. It was my comfort when I was going through my most depressive episodes and is a big contributor to how I deal with my depression.”

Last year, Aldinor’s depression was at its worst. “I just thought about taking my life a whole lot. But then I started thinking about all the things I loved. One of the things that would pull me out of it would be, ‘But if I die, I can’t go on Reddit and discuss the new season of RuPaul’s Drag Race.’”

It may seem hard to credit a reality show as a resource to help someone with their mental health, but a 2020 GLAAD study found that authentic representation affirms LGBTQIA+ individuals, while a lack of media representation perpetuates harmful stereotypes, lowers self-esteem, hinders access to support, and increases risks of mental health challenges.

These effects can be particularly meaningful for LGBTQIA+ youth in America, 41% of whom considered suicide in the last year – three times more than their heterosexual peers. “[Seeing representation] can have an uplifting and hopeful effect. Seeing people who have survived, that means that they can do it, too,” says Jeffreys.

“There’s so many things against me,” says Aldinor. “I’m trans, I’m Black, Haitian, poor, disabled, I was set up to fail. Sometimes I would think, ‘There’s no way I’m going to make it.’ Seeing people on the show rise above those inherent disadvantages creates a sense that there’s a chance that you’re going to be okay. It gives me an enormous amount of hope.”

Aldinor says he saw himself in Love Masisi, a Haitian queen who appeared on Drag Race Holland. “Seeing how she thrives as a drag queen opened my heart. Haitians don’t get positive press at all. So seeing Haitians thrive and then adding on the aspect of being queer, being gender nonconforming, that was just so joyful to me.”

“There are so many ways that the fans connect to the stories on the show,” says Shea Couleé, winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race: All Stars season five. “Intersectionality is about how we combine all our lived experiences to contribute to who we are,” Couleé, who is Black and non-binary, told Uncloseted Media.

“The show offers enormous progress for the queer community,” says Niall Brennan, media scholar and gender and sexuality researcher at Fairfield University. “Without RuPaul’s Drag Race, there would be a vacuum of voice and representation and identity and performance of queerness.”

Tackling tough topics

Beyond multiple representations of queerness in its cast members lies the themes that the show explores. In each episode, one queen typically talks about a trauma they went through or a hurdle they had to overcome. Memorable moments include Katya discussing her drug addiction and how she got clean; Trinity The Tuck talking about how she performed at Pulse Nightclub the week before the mass shooting that killed 49 people; and Shea Couleé discussing their struggle with body image.

“Sometimes people don’t understand that though we come across as these strong, beautiful creatures that sometimes we’re really struggling on the inside,” Couleé shared with their fellow contestants.

Perhaps the most memorable moment came on season one, when Ongina, a Filipino-American queen, opened up about being HIV-positive. “I didn’t wanna say it on national TV because my parents don’t know,” Ongina told the judges through tears. “You have to celebrate life. You keep going. And I keep going,”

RuPaul, known as MamaRu to the queens, responded by telling Ongina: “You are an inspiration. You are a survivor. And baby, you are still in the race. I love you sweetheart.”

The politicisation of the runway

Beyond these conversations, the show is intensely political. In 2021, shortly after the murder of George Floyd and in the midst of the Black Lives Matter movement, Symone, the season 13 winner, wore an all-white dress that constricted her body in a way she said “represent[ed] what it can sometimes feel like to be of colour in our country.” She designed red crystal-studded bullet holes across her back with the words “Say Their Names” painted in red to symbolise blood as she spoke the names of murdered Black Americans: “Breonna Taylor, George Floyd … Trayvon Martin, Tony McDade … and Monika Diamond.”

On season 12, Jackie Cox became the first queen to don an outfit referencing Islam when she wore a star-spangled hijab that nodded to her American and Muslim identity in what became known as one of the most politically powerful fashion moments in the show’s history.

One year later, Gottmik, the first trans man to compete on the show, walked the runway nearly naked, with only nipple pasties and a miniature black dress covering their private areas. This was in part to show his body after top surgery, saying he wanted to pay “homage to all of the trans women that have inspired me and showed me that drag is for everyone.” The performance stoked controversy in conservative circles, with Megyn Kelly posting Gottmik’s look on X and commenting: “This whole ideology is sick.”

Couleé, who was deeply inspired by Gottmik’s performance, says “everything” they do in drag is political. “Every time I put on my lashes. Being a Black, queer, gender nonconforming individual who has been on an international platform three times showcasing my identity is radical in and of itself,” they say.

“There are so many politicians and people who paint us out to be perpetrators of harm toward children and it’s simply not true. So the fact that I get to show my authentic self, that’s what feels radical to me because I am going up against the status quo every time I do drag.”

Couleé is one of the many queens who has called out President-elect Donald Trump and the GOP for spending over $215 million on anti-trans ads this election cycle and for spewing anti-trans rhetoric like saying we need to get rid of “transgender insanity.”

“Anyone who would not support me because I don’t like Donald Trump was not a fan to begin with and isn’t someone I would want in my stratosphere,” says Couleé. “I don’t give a flying f*ck, excuse my language, about some insidious, insecure man who has nothing but ill will toward the community. He’s a baby. He’s a man child.”

“RuPaul’s Drag Race” originally aired in 2009 on Logo TV, a niche LGBTQ broadcast channel. But as it exploded in popularity, it moved to VH1 in 2017, and eventually to MTV in 2023, where it now airs in primetime. According to Nielsen data, last season’s premiere was the top cable entertainment telecast of the day within the coveted 18-49 age demographic.

“It’s important to make the distinction between representation that happens within the community and that happens in mainstream media,” says Michael Bronski, professor of media and activism at Harvard University. “What’s amazing about RuPaul is that he brought representation of drag into the mainstream.”

Jeffreys says that a majority of the viewership is women, usually married and with kids. “It can give [people who are not in the LGBTQIA+ community] a way to understand.”

Studies show that when people are exposed to LGBTQIA+ characters authentically, they are more accepting than those not exposed to LGBTQIA+ media, leading to a deeper connection and comfort with queer people in their daily lives.

“RuPaul didn’t want this to just be another reality show,” says Alaska. “She wanted it to be something that touches on the uncomfortable parts of life and the difficult parts of people’s stories and I think she achieved that.”

“The show speaks to the dreamer,” Rupaul said in a 2019 CBS interview. “Our show helps young people navigate some tricky waters. These kids on our show, they have been through everything … There are dangerous things that come along with following your heart … We wanted to include the full experience of being an outsider.”

RPDR returns to American screens for its 17th season on Jan. 3, and millions of viewers will be tuning in. Queer bars will be packed with hundreds of LGBTQIA+ viewers (like the Superbowl, but make it queer) who will be watching the next generation of drag queens take to the stage for the first time.

Aldinor, who never misses an episode, fondly recalls finding the show at 11 years old in his mother’s bedroom in rural Texas.

“I’ll never forget when I sat down and watched with my mom,” he says. “I saw Ongina speaking and I thought the name Ongina was so funny, and she looked so fabulous and that just took me. I didn’t have anything LGBTQIA+ in my life, and the colours, the makeup, the clothes, the people, it was a whole new world for me.”

As millions of LGBTQIA+ kids across the country struggle with mental health and acceptance, RPDR has created a community of refuge for many of them trying to find identity. This includes one of the nearly one million members of the RuPaul’s Drag Race subreddit who wrote about how the show saved their life.

“Before coming to terms with my sexuality, I started watching Drag Race and I was in quite a dark place. I used to think, ‘I would rather be dead than gay.’ But hearing the stories from the queens and how they came to terms with things gave me the strength to acknowledge who I was and slowly, I found peace … Drag does truly save lives and for that, I will forever be thankful.”

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The post How ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ queens became the ambassadors of being yourself appeared first on GAY TIMES.

Six women share their immediate reactions to the election results and reflect on America, a country where a man has held the seat of president for 248 years since the nation was founded in 1776.

THIS ARTICLE FIRST APPEARED ON UNCLOSETED MEDIA A NEW INVESTIGATIVE LGBTQIA+ FOCUSSED NEWS PUBLICATION.

WORDS BY SPENCER MACNAUGHTON AND SAM DONNDELINGER

ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY ABBIE THOMPSON

On 5 November, the American public elected Donald Trump as the 47th US President. While 50.5% of Americans voted Trump in, queer women of colour overwhelmingly favoured Kamala Harris. A national exit poll of almost 23,000 people found that 86% of LGBTQIA+ voters backed Harris.

Among Black women, Harris was even more popular, capturing 91% of the vote and making the them the highest reported demographic to vote for her. Latina women voted 60% for Harris and Asian women voted 54% for Harris.

Many LGBTQIA+ women of colour were ready to see themselves represented in the White House. But perhaps more importantly, they were hoping the next president wouldn’t be Trump, who nominated conservative justices to the Supreme Court that overturned Roe v. Wade. In addition, at least 26 women have accused Trump of sexual misconduct and rape dating back to the 1970s, and he has been found liable in court for sexual abuse.

Since Trump’s Tuesday victory, women have reported a rise in online misogyny, pointing to examples of far-right figures who have made statements about women’s bodies.

This includes Nick Fuentes, who dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in 2022, and wrote on X on election day, “Your body, my choice. Forever.” The post has been liked more than 47,000 times.

Trump has also vowed to crackdown on what he calls “transgender insanity” and has been intrinsically linked to Project 2025, the 920-page document that suggests the US returns to the traditional definition of marriage and strip terms like sexual orientation and gender identity from “every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists.”

Uncloseted Media spoke with six LGBTQIA+ women of colour from different pockets of the US to get their immediate reactions to the election results and to learn about their hopes, fears and disappointments as they reflect on America – a country where a man has held the seat of president for 248 years since the nation was founded in 1776.

Mary Midgett, 88, San Francisco

“If they’re not going to let [Clinton] in, you know damn well they’re not going to let Kamala in. We have to look at history, honey.”

Midgett was born in 1936, and has faced racism throughout her life. “I remember one incident when I lived in New York City, and I went to apply for a job at an employment agency. The guy told me, ‘We don’t hire n***ers.’” She remembers being asked to eat at a separate table for people of colour in Alabama when she was serving in the army in 1956.

Before the last of the Jim Crow laws were overturned in 1965, Midgett remembers being told she must try on clothes in a different section of a department store that was reserved for “coloured people.”

“I’m sad because there’s a felon in office,” says Midgett, who is part of the 91% of Black women who voted for Harris.

“A whole lot of youngsters [of colour] are thrown in jail because they’re felons, but there’s this white politician, he’s a felon and he’s going to run the country.”

“I’m 88 years old. I’m not nervous about him,” says Midgett, who proudly teaches pre-school to kids at a local YMCA and loves watching PBS. “The man is going to do what he’s going to do. He’s going to take away everything that he’s going to take away. He’ll have another January 6th if he wants to.”

Midgett recognises that many queer people of colouur in younger generations are afraid because of Trump’s aggressive rhetoric towards trans and immigrant communities. Despite this, “They’re going to have to stick together to take a risk because it is going to be a risk,” she says.

“Blacks, whites, lesbians, trans [people]. How do they all get their needs met? Coming together. Marching together. Thinking together.”

Dorothy Ha, 18, New Haven, Connecticut 

“Politics is truly so personal to me,” says Ha, who’s majoring in art history. “They are inseparable from emotion and identity and being a woman of color, being the daughter of immigrants.”

Ha remembers in 2016 – when she was 10 years old – when a leaked tape revealed Trump bragging about grabbing women’s genitals.

One month later, Americans elected him as their president. “I remember staying up with my parents, watching it when I was 10. And it literally just feels so insane that I’m 18 now. I voted for the first time and he’s won again.”

In addition to Trump’s anti-LGBTQIA+ rhetoric and policies, Ha’s Chinese identity makes the election results especially hard. In 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic, Trump falsely labeled COVID-19 as “the Chinese Virus” and a 2021 study from the American Journal of Public Health found that Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric around COVID-19 helped spark anti-Asian Twitter content and “likely perpetuated racist attitudes.”

“Today, I have just been thinking a lot about an incident that happened to my family in 2020, when [someone] threw a rock through our window that had the word ch*nk written on it,” she says.

“My vision for my future feels insecure,” says Ha. “Part of my American dream as a queer woman involves growing up being able to get married. Part of my dream is being able to have children, whether that be through adoption or other methods. A lot of that was at stake this election,” she says, referencing Project 2025’s suggestions of returning to an ideology of the nuclear family.

“I have been thinking a lot today about my future and how feasible it will be to fully realise it in the way I want. I think that’s profoundly, profoundly sad,” she says. “And now that Trump has ultimately won, I feel that my personal American dream, and the dream of many, many other people of colour and queer folks is being directly targeted.”

Despite this, Ha says she’s ready to take the baton from Midgett and represent the next generation.

“I know that I’m not going to stand by. I don’t think anyone should be standing by right now.”

Ciora Thomas, 35, Pittsburgh

About 500 miles away from Ha, Ciora Thomas remembers falling asleep on Tuesday night before the election results had come in. “I woke up and I grabbed my remote and my anxiety was off the charts,” she told Uncloseted Media. “The first thing I saw was [that] Trump was elected president.

I got my cries out, and that was important for me to [be able to] make better informed decisions about where we need to go, because when we move on emotion it just doesn’t always work.”

Thomas, who founded SisTers PGH, a Black and trans-led nonprofit that helps trans people find housing and other resources, says now that Trump is president-elect her immediate goals involve ensuring trans-Pennsylvanians can continue to get the healthcare and support they need.

Thomas, who was one of the 97% of Black women (compared to 47% of white women) in Pennsylvania who voted for Harris, has concerns when it comes to the trans community and their access to healthcare. Trump has said he would block doctors who provide gender-affirming care from Medicare and Medicaid, forbid federal agencies from promoting “the concept of sex and gender transition at any age,” and task the Justice Department with investigating the medical industry to see if they “deliberately covered up horrific long-term side effects of sex transitions in order to get rich.”

Thomas is particularly worried about the mental health of queer youth. “Trans folks are feeling suicidal in this moment,” she says.

“I’ve had a few texts and conversations with trans young folks just this morning stating that they don’t believe they should live here and by live here, they mean being alive.”

June Raven Romero, 27, New York City

In the US, 41% of LGBTQ youth seriously considered suicide in the last year, and since the election, the Rainbow Youth Project has reported a fivefold increase in the number of calls to their hotline.

The Trevor Project, a leading LGBTQ youth suicide prevention organisation, has reported a 700% increase in calls, texts and chat messages this week compared to prior weeks.

Romero moved to New York City so she could access better trans-related healthcare. She now brings trans kids and their parents to the city from Florida – where it is harder for minors to access gender-affirming healthcare.

She believes Trump’s attack on the trans community was a key reason he won. “I think it can be said about any super minority in history. It’s not unlike Jewish people historically, not unlike Black folks,” she told Uncloseted Media. “You choose a minority of people that are misunderstood and largely unknown, [where there is] a lot of fascination and phobia. This accumulates and you can just pin the blame on them. So it’s not a surprise to me. It’s just really unsettling and it’s terrifying,” she says, pointing to the $65 million Republican candidates spent on anti-trans attack ads this election cycle.

While Romero acknowledges frustration around Harris’ indecision on issues such as the crisis in the Middle East, she says the record-breaking 46% of Latinos who voted for the 2024 Republican candidate “made the wrong decision.”

“I can understand the ways that they’ve arrived to this decision, but it’s the wrong one. It falls on each one of us and our singular responsibility that we’ve been neglecting for decades, likely hundreds of years now as Americans, which is the responsibility to be educated and civically engaged enough to not allow these kinds of things to happen.”

Natalie Farrior, 29, Durham, North Carolina

“I’m scared, especially as a trans woman of color,” says Farrior.

She remembers Trump defending white supremacists in a violent rally in her neighboring state in Charlottesville, Virginia, that left one person dead and more than 35 injured. There were “some very fine people on both sides,” said Trump.

Now that Trump is elected, she’s “rushing to get a gun” to feel safe.

She says her queer friend who was dressed in gender-non-conforming clothes and a Harris hat was followed the night of the election by a car that sported a Make America Great Again flag. She also pointed to dozens of Black people who reported being targeted with text messages this week with references to “slave catchers” and that said they’d been selected to pick cotton at the nearest plantation. It is unclear who’s behind the texts.

Farrior, who is nervous about continuing to access her HIV-related medications after House Republicans proposed steep cuts earlier this year, says she is not only scared, but “hurt” by the results. “That we as a nation decided not to chase that progressive step and make history and change the course. It’s a sexist thing because it’s something that a lot of men cannot see: a woman in power. So that aided in everything. The fact that she’s a Black woman aided it further,” she says, noting that 60% of white men voted for Trump.

Debra Palmer, 65, San Francisco

“It’s just disappointing that this is where we are after all these decades of fighting for equal rights.”

Palmer remembers when she was four years old and her mother participated in the 1963 March on Washington, the largest gathering for civil rights of its time, where Martin Luther King Jr. famously delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech in which he called for an end to racism and racial segregation.

“I think this is probably one of the biggest moments of disappointment for me throughout my 65 years,” she says. “It just feels like we take two steps forward and one and a half steps back.”

“This was an opportunity, and the opportunity is lost.”

Palmer, born in 1959, says this was the most hopeful she has ever felt about a woman becoming president.

“Looking at the divisive campaign that was run by the Republicans versus the Democrats, which was so joyful and enthusiastic, it just seemed there was light and there was dark,” she says. “The majority of the country chose darkness.”

Women have held the highest leadership positions in 62 countries since 1960.

Today, 29 countries are led by women, including Denmark, Greece, Barbados, Uganda and Mexico, which elected its first female president earlier this year

“I don’t know if this country will ever be ready for a female president, which is hard for me to say,” says Palmer. “I truly believe that this election was about gender and race and not the economy.”

Despite Palmer’s intense disappointment, she encourages young women and LGBTQIA+ people to remain hopeful and engaged.

“I’ve got, what, maybe 15, 20 more years on this earth?” she says. “These kids that are in their 20s, in their 30s, they’re going to have to live for the next 60 years. We have to continue to march.

We can’t just sit on our butts and do nothing. We have to make our voices heard.”

If objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation through our fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button and selecting “Uncloseted Media” from the dropdown:

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The post LGBTQIA+ women of colour reflect on Kamala Harris’ loss and Donald Trump’s win appeared first on GAY TIMES.

Among the millions of queer kids currently in school, many will be taught by parents who believe that being LGBTQIA+ is a sin.

THIS ARTICLE FIRST APPEARED ON UNCLOSETED MEDIA A NEW INVESTIGATIVE LGBTQIA+ FOCUSSED NEWS PUBLICATION.

WORDS BY SPENCER MACNAUGHTON AND SAM DONNDELINGER

Editors’ note: This article includes mention of suicide and contains details about those who have attempted to take their own lives. If you are having thoughts of suicide, or are concerned that someone you know may be, resources are available here.

At 11 years old, in a town just outside Seattle, Charles Mark Masoner remembers dressing up in a tube top and low-rise jeans, an outfit he describes as “so Y2K.” He was hanging out with his friends in a cul-de-sac in front of his home when his mother saw that he was wearing girl’s clothes.

“She just starts crying, wailing, and calling the elders from church,” says Masoner, now 36 and living between New York and Fayetteville, North Carolina.

Later that week, he remembers being pulled from Sunday school at his Church in Marysville, Washington, where he was taken into a room with five elders, stripped of his polyester dress shirt, pants and belt and “whipped dozens of times.”

Masoner remembers the elders demanding that he tell them everything and asking him questions like “Have you masturbated and to what kind of porn?” and “Have you touched boys?”

The Church Masoner attended disbanded in 2010. The two men whose names Masoner remembers today, 25 years later, did not respond for comment. Masoner’s mother did not respond to multiple phone calls and text message requests for an interview with Uncloseted Media. His father died in 2019, but his widow, Chasity Masoner, says none of what Masoner told Uncloseted Media surprises her. “It actually hurts me,” she says.

Masoner, who says he took a Xanax before his interview with Uncloseted to “soften the blow” of reliving this trauma, says “a lot more” happened in that room that he doesn’t feel comfortable discussing.

While many kids in America who have experienced abuse have found mentors or friends at school to turn to, that wasn’t the case for Masoner. As one of the growing number of LGBTQIA+ Americans who have been homeschooled in conservative Christian environments, Masoner says he felt isolated from mainstream society and subjected to an education that was homophobic and hostile when it came to anything LGBTQIA+ related. “I felt like I was the only one that ever felt like this,” he says, referencing his feelings of same-sex attraction. “I felt alone and like nobody would be my friend.”

This isolation and hostility has damaging mental health effects for LGBTQIA+ kids who are homeschooled in Christian environments. A 2019 study of 651 queer-identifying homeschooled students, published in the Journal of LGBT Youth, found that 87% of participants experienced mental illness, 72% reported suicidal thoughts, and 22% had attempted suicide.

Masoner says his mum and dad – like many other parents in the U.S. – learned how to teach their kids through Christian homeschooling organisations, some of which promote an ideology that encourages the maintenance of laws that permit abusive practices like spanking your children with objects and bruising.

Given the rise of anti-LGBTQIA+ laws in the U.S. aimed at children’s education, experts say that with affirming parents, homeschooling can in some cases offer a more inclusive and healthy option for queer kids. But Masoner is one of many queer people who was subjected to an abusive environment as a kid, which may explain why he and other LGBTQIA+ kids homeschooled in conservative Christian environments experience significantly higher rates of mental illness and suicide.

“Because there’s such little regulation it’s hard to do the research, but roughly 50 percent of homeschooling parents are conservative Christians, who have a range of hostile views to LGBTQIA+ status and issues,” says Elizabeth Bartholet, law professor and director of the Child Advocacy Program at Harvard Law School.

“And all they care about is making sure that there’s no regulation of parents, even in terms of abuse and neglect issues.”

Masoner, who was homeschooled between the ages of 6 and 11, says he was taught various curricula from Bob Jones University and Abeka. He says his lessons either omitted homosexuality or depicted being gay as “unnatural.”

According to Masoner, his mother taught him that “homosexuality was a sin and akin to pedophilia.”

He says when his mother was at a homeschooling fair she picked up “To Train Up A Child,” a book self-published in 1994 by independent Baptists Michael and Debbie Pearl. The book has been widely criticized for advocating corporal punishment. It has been linked to three deaths of homeschooled children of parents who owned the book. In the book, the Pearls – who did not respond to a request for comment – advocate for physical punishment to train children, including withholding food, hitting them with a rod to break their will, and leaving a child underwater until “panic set[s] in” but not long enough to require resuscitation.

Masoner remembers his mother spanking him until he “stopped crying and [his] will was broken,” and “whipping [him] with tree branches.”

“Her favourite thing to do was have us bend over wide legged and grab our ankles. I fell over a couple times, and she’d make me get right back into the position. She did that when I put on girl’s clothes for the first time,” says Masoner.

Rules governing homeschooling in the U.S. vary. In 11 states, including Texas – where 7.2 percent of kids are homeschooled – regulation is practically nonexistent. Texas parents are not required to notify the school if they are withdrawing their child and the state has no regulations related to homeschooling.

Even in states with stricter rules, like curriculum requirements and mandated reports, Bartholet says they don’t have much impact. “Nobody’s actually checking in on what’s being taught in the home anywhere in the nation,” she says. In many states “even when there are those requirements, if you’re a Christian, you can get a religious exemption.”

For Beck Proffer, who grew up in rural Beeville southeast of San Antonio, Texas, her homeschooling isolated her from mainstream society. She says she wasn’t allowed to watch Spongebob Squarepants because her mother believed that it was accepting of LGBTQIA+ people. When she saw two men kissing in a television commercial, her mother shut off the TV. “They’ve turned away from God,” she told her daughter.

In an email, Proffer’s mother told Uncloseted she can’t remember most of what her daughter told us, but it’s “certainly possible” she said these things. “I would have said that [homosexuality] was wrong, that it wasn’t part of God’s plan for us.” However, she says the idea that Proffer had been isolated from mainstream society is “just not true.” She said that Proffer had friends and “went everywhere I did.”

Proffer’s parents used a Mennonite curriculum known as Rod and Staff that promised “Your child will be reading biblical truth instead of ‘fun stuff.’” Proffer had to study the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, two cities excoriated in the Bible for their wickedness. Fundamentalists cite the story  as a warning against sinful behaviour. Proffer says her mother called it “a condemnation of homosexuality.”

Proffer told Uncloseted that she learned homosexuality was a sin when she was eight years old. In her early teens, she started experiencing same-sex attraction. She’d scour the Internet, Googling “cures for homosexuality” and searching for alternate Biblical interpretations of the passages she was forced to study.

The internalised homophobia Proffer experienced is one reason she grapples with anxiety and depression today. Because suicide was treated as “the absolute sin” in the Bible, Proffer didn’t allow herself to go there.

Charles Mark Masoner says his mother’s teachings about being gay were horrible for his mental health. “I had zero self-respect, and very poor hygiene,” he remembers.

He attempted suicide multiple times, including once with a rope he brought to the top of a barn where he planned to hang himself from the rafters. “I have no idea what pushed me to hang the rope back up,” he says.

At ten, he tried to drown himself in a lake before his dad rescued him. At the time, his only concept of homosexuality was from Sodom and Gomorrah.

Okrey Anderson says America’s homeschooling movement took off in the 1980s, spearheaded by a group of conservative Christian men. They say their family attended conferences held by The Homeschool Legal Defense Association, founded by Michael Farris. Okrey Anderson says they were taught “a whole worldview” that encouraged families to isolate themselves from mainstream society as much as possible.

Farris was President of Alliance Defending Freedom, an organization the Southern Poverty Law Center has designated an anti-LGBTQIA+ hate group. In a 1987 speech, he said that public schools were indoctrinating children with secular worldviews, including LGBTQIA+ affirming messaging. Farris’s organisation has defended parents’ right to spank their children, hit their children with objects, and opposed a Florida bill that would have added “excessive bruises or welts” to the state’s definition of “harm” in its child abuse and neglect code.

The HSLDA also opposes The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, that sets out rights for children, including the right to education and protection from harm. One hundred and ninety-five nations have agreed to these guidelines. The U.S. signed the treaty in 1995, but it is the only country that has never officially ratified it, meaning it isn’t fully committed to the treaty’s terms.

Farris argued that the treaty would limit “self-governance” and interfere with the culture of the family.

When contacted, Farris declined to comment to Uncloseted. The HSLDA declined an interview with Uncloseted and did not respond to a list of questions.

A 2014 study of child torture victims – which included physical abuse, neglect and psychological maltreatment – found that almost half of the children were homeschooled.

28-year-old Belwas homeschooled in rural Texas, and grew up isolated in a “Bible literalist” family which they describe as “cult-like.”

“I was convinced that the outside world was evil and out to get me because of the way my parents and the Church talked,” says Bel, who asked we only use their first name because they are not out to their parents.

Bel, who is non-binary, experienced abuse growing up because of their gender presentation. At eight, they were screamed at for playing with the pink Power Ranger instead of the red one. In their early teens, Bel says their dad wrestled them down and forced them to wear a dress to find out what being queer “really felt like.”

At 10 years old, Masoner remembers watching coverage of Princess Diana’s death, and asking his parents if he would become a princess if he married Prince William. “My mom [sic] was horrified. She slapped me across the face and said, ‘don’t you ever say that here and embarrass me like that. You will repent for this.’”

Jonah Stewart, research director at the Coalition for Responsible Home Education, says there aren’t any effective safeguards in place to ensure that homeschooled kids have access to an escape route from their families.

“When you think about identity-based abuse, one of the biggest indicators of resilience…is having an affirming community,” says Stewart.

Okrey Anderson’s research supports this. “Without the institutional support systems typically found in public schools, such as gay-straight alliances and supportive teachers, these youth often experience profound isolation and lack of support.”

Olivia Murray, associate professor of education at Portland State University and author of Queer Inclusion in Teacher Education, says additional research demonstrates the positive effect of LGBTQIA+ affirming adults in a kid’s life. “If you can just find one teacher in a homophobic and transphobic setting, it can help clear that fog,” she says. “But if the people that are providing you food and shelter and your education have those views, that is pretty scary.”

What can be done to change the current climate for queer kids in these abusive environments? Elizabeth Bartholet says more regulation is needed.

She thinks parents who want to homeschool should be required to request an exemption for their kids from school. They should also attend courses and extracurricular activities that ensure they are exposed to alternative values. “The goal of education is not to indoctrinate children in one ‘majority culture’ perspective, but to expose children to the wide range of views characteristic of our democracy,” says Bartholet.

When it comes to the safety of queer kids, Okrey Anderson argues that religious freedom laws allow parents to weaponise Christianity by spewing “homophobia and transphobia in forms of emotional, verbal and physical abuse against children.”

“As a whole, in this country, everything would be a lot better if we would stop giving special legal treatment to Christians,” Okrey Anderson says.

They recommend a hotline for kids to call if they are rejected at home. Being able to talk to safe adults would be a critical improvement.

“Children should have a right to education and if parents are refusing to educate them, the kids should have a space to say ‘I want something different for myself’” says Okrey Anderson.

Among the millions of queer kids currently in school, many will be taught by parents who believe that being LGBTQIA+ is a sin.

Charles Mark Masoner was eventually placed in the foster care system. He believes his biological parents “absolutely” put him there because he presented as gay. At 14, he was matched with affirming parents he says are his “real mom [sic] and dad.” From then on, his life changed for the better.

He remembers going dancing with his brother in Hell’s Kitchen (New York City) in his late teens, and having what he describes as his first consensual kiss. That night he had “the most peaceful sleep.”

Now more than 25 years removed from an abusive homeschooling environment, Masoner has a simple message for queer kids in a similar situation:

“Hold on, because you will get control of your life someday.”

If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts or mental health, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Hotline. Other support hotlines.

This article first appeared on Uncloseted Media, a new LGBTQIA+ focussed news publication. Donate to Uncloseted Media

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