Can You Be A Christian And A Lesbian? Meet Vicky Beeching

Thursday afternoon we took a look at a very famous English closet case, pop star Cliff Richard, who was in the news not because he was coming out of the closet but because he was accused of molesting a 15 year old boy backstage at a Billy Graham Crusade, where he was a performer. Since the very public raid on one of Sir Richard's palaces, several other boys he has molested have come forward to offer testimony.

The Vicky Beeching public coming out yesterday is a very different-- and very inspirational-- story. The 35-year old British Christian rock singer spoke to The Independent about the fact she is a lesbian and why she's decided to come out now-- "a story of psychological torture, life-threatening illness and unimaginable loneliness, imposed all around from a supposedly Godly environment."

"I'm gay," she says, confirming what is written. She has never said this publicly before-- a handful of people in her private life know. She has only just told one her closest friends, Katherine, and Katherine's father, Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury.

The enormity of the political ramifications of this disclosure scarcely have a second to sink in – a theologian who spends holy days with the Archbishop, whose God-fearing lyrics are sung by millions in America's Bible Belt, coming out as a lesbian-- before I begin to reflect on the implications for her personally.

She will be liberated. She may well, through her commentating work, become a key figure in the liberalisation of Anglicanism. And she will be crucified. Boycotts of her music are already in place since Beeching decided to speak up for same-sex marriage over a year ago. Hatred has been flung at her online ever since: "You've been deceived by the devil," is a typical, charming comment.

Then, as we begin to talk over these implications, she slides her fringe to one side to reveal a wide, white scar running down the length of her forehead. It is also concealed by make-up. Beeching knows how to cover things up. A week later, she arrives at my flat in east London to tell the story of the scar. It is the story of her life.

As a little girl, Vicky Beeching soon became aware of the attitudes towards homosexuality surrounding her. She learnt of them in Sunday school. "It was in children's picture books about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah-- hailstones of fire raining down on these cities known for the 'abomination' of homosexuality. It was viewed as a terrible evil, the cause of the floods. I don't think that my parents brought it up-- it was just a given."

At 12, her feelings towards other girls at school began to deepen. "Realising that I was attracted to them was a horrible feeling," she says, looking down. "I was so embarrassed and ashamed. It became more and more of a struggle because I couldn't tell anyone." As adolescence emerged, with school and Church services several times a week, alienation set in.

"I increasingly began to feel like I was living behind an invisible wall. The inner secrecy of holding that inside was divorcing me from reality-- I was living in my own head. Anybody I was in a friendship with, or anything I was doing in the church, was accompanied by an internal mantra: 'What if they knew?' It felt like all of my relationships were built on this ice that would break if I stepped out on to it."

…I felt like there was something so wrong with me, according to the Church, that maybe I could make up for it by getting good grades." On several occasions, Beeching tried to force an attraction to boys, by letting those who asked her out walk her to school, but she felt nothing. Instead, all her energy went in to work: the grades took her to Oxford (where she lived in a Christian halls of residence); at 23, the songwriting took her to Nashville.

For the next six years, Beeching lived in the fire-and-brimstone heart of conservative America, recording albums and touring the country's vast churches. To avoid the desolation of her personal life, Beeching would perform endlessly, ensuring every birthday and public holiday was booked up.

Countless unrequited loves for straight female friends compounded the torment of her teenage years. "That was one of the hardest parts-- to have your heart crushed so many times you wonder whether it actually has any life left in it," she says, quietly. "It's incredibly painful. I just wanted a soul mate.

By 2008, aged 29, she decided to move to California, hoping that San Diego would provide a more liberal setting. But this was the year that Proposition 8-- the state law to ban same-sex marriage-- was to be voted on. The Christian lobby galvanized. And Beeching was being booked to perform at mega-churches throughout California.

"I would find myself at these events that were anti-equal-marriage rallies, but I was only booked to sing so there was no way I could say anything. If I had, I would have got kicked out." It didn't help that her contract with the Christian music branch of EMI had a "morality clause," in which "any behaviour deemed to be immoral" would be a breach of contract.

The secrecy, the loneliness, the unerring work at churches hell-bent on attacking her own, erupted the following year. Her body started attacking itself.

"I was blow-drying my hair and looked in the mirror and noticed this white line down my forehead." The scar grew and became "really noticeable-- inflamed and red." The day she handed in the master tapes for what was to be her last album, she went to the doctor's, expecting to be handed some E45 cream.

"They said, 'You need to sit down. This is really serious. It's an auto-immune disease called linear scleroderma morphea, and a form of the disease called coup de sabre.' It's a degenerative condition where soft tissue turns to scarring. At that point they didn't know if it was just localised or whether it would affect my whole body." In the worst cases, one's whole body can turn to scar tissue, including internal organs. It can cause epilepsy, blackouts, and can kill.

Beeching was told she would need extensive chemotherapy and to expect hair loss, weight gain and exhaustion. She went home to her apartment where she lived alone, and looked up pictures online of sufferers, many of whom lose parts of their face.

…Beeching had 18 months of gruelling chemotherapy. The exhaustion was so acute that she was forced not to work, and instead, to think, to feel, to gradually accept her sexuality. She has never had a relationship. She didn't meet an out gay person until she was 30. In recovery, Beeching went to visit Ruth Hunt, chief executive of Stonewall, who put her in touch with some out lesbians: the BBC newsreader Jane Hill, sports presenter Clare Balding and her wife, Alice Arnold, the former Radio 4 newsreader. "They said, 'Be yourself and everything will follow.'"

…At Easter this year, she came out to her parents. "I was terrified but they reacted really well. They said, 'We're so sorry that you had to go through this alone.'"

Beeching and her parents have agreed to disagree on the theology around homosexuality. "It's a picture of what is possible, even when you don't agree, that love can supersede everything." She hopes the Church of England can one day follow suit.

"What Jesus taught was a radical message of welcome and inclusion and love. I feel certain God loves me just the way I am, and I have a huge sense of calling to communicate that to young people. When I think of myself at 13, sobbing into that carpet, I just want to help anyone in that situation to not have to go through what I did, to show that instead, you can be yourself-- a person of integrity."

After what Beeching has suffered, why not discard the faith that considers her sinful and wrong?

"It is heartbreaking," she says, her eyes glimmering again. "The Church's teaching was the reason that I lived in so much shame and isolation and pain for all those years. But rather than abandon it and say it's broken, I want to be part of the change."

Very inspirational story. Perhaps some day Rick Perry, indicted yesterday on charges that could land him in prison for 99 years, will also come out and stop hiding in fear in the closet.