Matthew Norquist

Matthew Norquist

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At a very young age, Matthew Norquist began to realize he had feelings that other boys didn’t. As he got older, he knew that his attraction to men—something he hadn’t chosen, and from which he aggressively tried to escape—was abhorrent to God. His religious convictions told him that his pull toward men was wrong on the deepest level. Through adolescence and adulthood, his shame-based dread grew and grew. His orientation was a cancer that God had apparently decided not to cure.

Regardless of his Faith in Jesus’ payment for his sins, and no matter how much he begged God for help, Matt did not experience any relief from his unending, constant struggles. There was no space in Matt’s thinking for the idea that his homosexual thoughts could be anything but immoral. Of course he could tell no one about this. He was afraid. He built a strong closet, and he hid.

Following God’s Expressed Will to not be gay, he married a woman; they raised two sons. He hung onto his Faith, believing that God would someday, somehow, purge him of his sinful thoughts. Yet Matt’s attractions didn’t change. Still, he remained Faithful; he kept praying, hoping for deliverance from his nightmare.

This memoir is about Matt’s journey; it’s about the things that were added to his “box.” The box we carry is a metaphor for the things we experience throughout our lives. The best thing Matt added to his box was the freeing realization that his shame had been based on an illusion. He removed this religion-based illusion of shame from his box. He rejected the false shame—shame that had been based solely on theology. It’s a beautiful thing to reject irrational shame.