My Boyfriend Founded Uncloseted Media. It’s What I Needed as a Kid

At 40 years old, I am still shedding an upbringing of religious trauma. But today, I feel free.

Photo courtesy of Sean.

A guest essay by Sean Robinson – Spencer’s boyfriend.

When I was around 10 years old, I remember horsing around in the grass with my oldest brother. I asked him the meaning of homosexuality, a word that I had heard from my parents and from the New Order Amish and Mennonite communities I was surrounded by growing up in upstate New York and rural Virginia.

Sean and his dad Upstate New York. Photo courtesy of Sean.

While I wasn’t certain what the word meant, I knew it was bad and I was pretty sure it was me. So when my brother responded to my question by saying that homosexuality is “demonic,” I pushed those thoughts down.

A few years later, my dad told me that once someone becomes a homosexual, they will “want more and more and more” and it will lead to a sexual desire for “children, then animals, then blood.”

Sean and his dad through the years. Photos courtesy of Sean.

Hearing these ideas persistently and consistently made me feel like there was this horrible thing inside of me that I just hated. I had learned that it was akin to being a pedophile, and that’s how I felt about myself.

These feelings created so much shame and fear but most of all a level of embarrassment that was so intense that I vowed to myself I would take my secret to the grave.

Sean and his parents. Photo courtesy of Sean.

But I didn’t. When I met just one gay person at Danville Community College, I felt a small but significant rumbling of hope. This encounter gave me the courage to leave. So at 17, I told my parents I was moving to New York City to pursue the performing arts.

While I was semi-interested in being on screen, I saw NYC as a symbol of a new life where I could be my authentic self. A few months after I moved, I came out to my mom over the phone, who later told me—through a puddle of tears—that I might as well have died in a car accident.

I had to dig to make a life for myself with few people in my corner. I utilized NYC social programs like SNAP benefits, free health care and low-income housing. These services gave me the bootstraps I needed to pull myself up.

The years of familial and community rejection and efforts to change me through conversion therapy took more than two decades of treatment, medication and supportive friendships to help me find a formula where today—at 40 years old—I can manage my depression, anxiety, tics (that were at one point debilitating), no-contact relationship with my parents and low self-esteem.

I am so grateful to the heroes who helped me through these years: Paul Warner, Jerry Meadors and countless others. You lifted me up, taught me the ropes, allowed me to couch surf and showered me with love.

Sean in his teens. Photo courtesy of Sean.

Fighting the demons of my past, including years of religious trauma and physical abuse disguised as “corporal punishment,” is something I’d wish on nobody. When I read Uncloseted stories that discuss how nearly 40% of LGBTQ kids seriously considered suicide in the last year, my heart breaks because I know that could have been me if my path had veered a degree in a different direction.

Sean with Spencer and his psychiatric service dog Carson. Photo by Phil O’Brien/W42ST.nyc

Flash forward 20 years and I’m sitting next to Spencer, who’s helping shine a spotlight on the very thing I tried to suppress in the darkness of my mind. I am now a video editor at MTV, working on RuPaul’s Drag Race, the groundbreaking television show that has helped so many queer kids across America feel seen and feel safe—something every child deserves.

I’ve always been resilient and tough.

But finally, I feel calm and free.

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Response from Sean’s Dad:

In a text message to Uncloseted Media, Sean’s dad, Chris Robinson, wrote that he remembers saying that “when the moral fabric of societies begin to decay it usually starts with the sin of not acknowledging Almighty God, the Giver and Sustainer of life. [If] that condition of man continues then more sin comes [including] adultery, fornication and general unfaithfulness. The next level is men allowing women and children to rule. This would have been the feminist movement of the 60’s. Next comes homosexuality then bestiality and finishing up with child and adult sacrifice and much shedding of blood. This progression is recorded in Genesis and through the Chronicles and Kings in the Bible.”

In response to Sean’s references to corporal punishment, his dad wrote that he remembers being “shocked at [Sean’s] fearless defiance to [his] authority … as being the one responsible for order in the home” and that he would punish him—after multiple verbal warnings for misbehavior—by giving him “4 or 5 good licks with the switch and [would then] give him a hug and prayer and hope he got the message.” His dad added that he and Sean had many good times too and that he “still shed[s] a tear at times in memory of [his] little Seany.”

Response from Sean’s Mom:

In a text message to Uncloseted Media, Sean’s mom, Michelle Robinson, does not remember telling Sean after he came out that he might as well have died in a car accident. “My mind is blank for anything specific,” she wrote.

In response to Sean’s reference to corporal punishment, his mom says that out of the hundred times where corporal punishment was administered correctly through biblical spanking done with love, there were “a handful of times when his father admits he acted more in anger as [an] immediate reaction because of Sean’s behavior and he realizes he should’ve done that differently [and that his dad] always immediately apologized and they always had special time together and they worked through that.”

“We believed in honoring God with our life. We were not perfect but our heart was to please God,” she wrote, adding that Sean was treated with love as a child and through adulthood.

Sean’s brother did not respond to Uncloseted Media’s request for comment.

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