In this week’s episode of Hide Your Pride we speak with Eli Germanotta, a queer student who attended Liberty University from 2016 to 2018. We learn about Eli’s experience as an openly queer student at an evangelical university. They speak on topics from friendships to administration tactics to the LGBTQ+ lawsuit against the Board of Education.
TRANSCRIPTION:
(music open and voice over at :03)
HEATHER MACNEIL: Hi, welcome to Hide Your Pride where we speak to former Liberty University students about their experience being queer at a private evangelical university. I’m your host, Heather MacNeil. Today, we are going to speak with Eli Germanotta, a student who attended Liberty University who identifies as nonbinary. They attended Liberty University from 2016 to 2018 until transferring to the University of Lynchburg where they are working towards their degree in the arts. Today, we are going to speak to Eli about their experience as a queer student at an evangelical university.
HEATHER MACNEIL: Hi Eli, thanks so much for joining me today. Why don’t we start by talking about how you ended up at Liberty University.
ELI GERMANOTTA: Uhm, so I ended up going to Liberty University mostly because my immediate family was going to, ya know, financially help me with college after I graduated high school so, and they made it really abundantly clear that they would only help finance a religious institution. So, that’s kind of where Liberty started for me.
HEATHER MACNEIL: Is that common practice do you think? Do you think a lot of people end up there because their family wants them to?
ELI GERMANOTTA: Uhm, yeah. A lot of people will, I’ve seen like a wide variety of different things. I’ve seen people want to go there because they think maybe they can change the institution with their personal views. I’ve seen parents sort of finance it as like a form of straightening therapy/camp, however you want to put it. I mean I’ve also seen some people that have recognized that it’s okay to be yourself as long as you’re celebate and they’re trying to to like, uh, religiously convince themselves that they’re doing a good thing by punishing themselves with a christian university that’s gonna be extremely strict on them.
HEATHER MACNEIL: Did you experience any of that kinda like punishment tactic? What was kind of your experience in that or know anyone who was kind of…in that mind set?
ELI GERMANOTTA: Uhm, yeah actually the reason I kind of led with those generalizations is because I have met people from each of those categories or I know people where uhm, they openly went to Liberty University because they thought they could be like the person that changes how the institution works. I’ve met people that have, ya know, studied the bible to the best of their extent and have pursued Liberty University thinking it would help keep them straight or something along those lines. Uhm, so that would be kind of uh, yeah honestly from personal experience, I’ve met a lot of people like that. For me personally, I didn’t really have the critical thinking and emotional tools to make sense of my sexuality because I was homeschooled as a kid and, up from like, I want to say second grade ‘til high school? So, I knew what it was for a while but I didn’t know exactly how to put it into words so the whole fact of ya know, Liberty University being one of the biggest christian universities like, I mean, I just went there because it was something that I was familiar with. I didn’t really make sense of my sexuality until later down the road.
HEATHER MACNEIL: Definitely and I’m sure to an extent, being at that christian university kind of like you were saying, didn’t allow you to really explore that.
ELI GERMANOTTA: Yeah uhm, I, everyone always looks forward to graduating high school, leaving their hometown and picking a school or just getting out from under their parents roof and uhm, a bunch of different things along those lines. For me, uhm, I was very excited to leave because there was a lot of stuff that happened my senior year of high school where I was like, I don’t think I’m straight. I’m probably not straight but I don’t know exactly what that means so I’m just gonna, ya know, live life, see what happens and uhm, I found some friends at Lib University that I enjoyed hanging out with and kind of one by one they kind of slowly started ya know, fading away when, once, uhm, I started uh, I guess expressing myself a little more freely. Like I started experimenting with my hair, my clothes, makeup was a big thing for me. So, I started kind of experimenting with that and it gets to a point as someone assigned male at birth, who doesn’t identify as a man, when you start, ya know, pushing the gender norms, it’s one thing in the little town we call Lynchburg and especially Liberty, people will either assume you’re deeply deeply in the closet or best case scenario on campus, they think you’re trying to be hip or cool or a worship leader and there’s really not much of an inbetween.
HEATHER MACNEIL: Yeah and that sort of brings me to what I was going to get to next with the like, did you feel like you could express yourself at Liberty? Did you feel like you were welcome to be you there?
ELI GERMANOTTA: I think as long as it’s relatively a taboo topic then I think most people don’t really bat an eye at it. ‘Cause there’s like, even within Liberty before I really began to experience Lynchburg the city as a whole, uhm, I mean I always able to kind of express myself. I, not quite in the more feminine ways I wanted to but probably in like other ways, where like my clothing styles, as long as they looked quote stereotypically masculine, it really didn’t matter quite how much I expressed myself, it was more so after I had started dating my first boyfriend when, ya know, some people started seeing me hold hands with a guy or maybe a few things on my social media at one point. It was at that point where they were like oh shit, they’re serious, okay this is actually, ya know, not just them being in their rebellious stage. So at that point, kind of switched from being able to openly express myself to everyone staring at you, everyone staring at you, admin wanting to talk to you every other day, it got pretty intense.
HEATHER MACNEIL: Yeah so, we actually met at Lynchburg College now the University of Lynchburg and would you kind of talk through what made you leave Liberty? Was there kind of like a ya know I’ve had enough of this moment and brought you to Lynchburg College and did you feel as though maybe there was a safer environment there?
ELI GERMANOTTA: Yeah, uhm, so I towards the end of…I think I was at Liberty for two years, towards the end of those two years, when I started dating my then boyfriend and then the admin from Liberty University kind of started getting on my tail about it and all that other stuff, uhm, it kind of, sort of forced me out of the closet in some sense. The school didn’t really force me out of the closet, I finally chose to come out to my family and then at that point it didn’t really matter if I disappointed them or made them happy, they said they were going to stop like financially supporting me. So, at this point I didn’t really see the point in putting myself through the daily struggle of being a christian university that on a daily basis at that point, once they saw me, ya know, dating my then boyfriend made it apparent that I wasn’t welcome. Uhm, the admin wanted to talk to me almost constantly because of reports from the resident assistants that work for the school. Uhm, so I eventually just transferred to University of Lynchburg because some mutual friends that I knew from Liberty suggested it, and, that they were a little more welcoming and that’s basically what I found when I got to Liberty-or-to Lynchburg College that’s kind of where I found more of myself and while I wouldn’t say that school was like the most, ya know, very open and welcoming in a lot of other nuance senses, I would say that it feels more like a normal college setting where if something happens to you or there’s something you want to voice your opinion about it’s a little different than being at Liberty University where ya know, if you’re doing something that they see as morally detestable like, ya know, being gay for example, uhm, they’re just gonna act as if you don’t exist and you’re not gonna get anywhere.
HEATHER MACNEIL: Is that what you found, that like if you did something morally detestable that you didn’t exist? Or was it more of like a reprimand?
ELI GERMANOTTA: Little bit of both, uhm, a lot of people at Liberty University are definitely sheltered, come from really private schools or all these other things so on the administrative level, yes there were reprimands for a lot of different things. At one point, I posted a photo of me and my then boyfriend, I think we were kissing somewhere on campus? It wasn’t like, ya know, it was just something that a cis straight couple would probaby post at some point but because it was me and another guy, the administration wanted to talk to me and it got to the point where I know what they wanted to talk to me about so I was ignoring their phone calls, they’re emails and then at one point I got a phone call saying that if I didn’t respond to their requests for a meeting then they would simply drop me from classes so that I had time to meet with them. Not mark me as absent for a class period, take the class out of my school roster or what not, to make sure I had time. And then as far as like the other sense I think, where you’re talking about uhm, like, acting as though you don’t exist uhm, I went from having quite a few friends like pretty much everyone knew me around that campus before I came out and then it got to a point where everyone knew me as, as some people actually called me a faggot multiple times. It got to a point where just, they’d make eye contact with me, look at the floor, and then walk right past me as if I didn’t exist. I’ve had some really close friends before I came out of the closet that would, ya know, but in on conversations that I had with another friend and they would butt me out of the conversation as if I wasn’t there.
HEATHER MACNEIL: This seems like it’s not a, you know, you’re not the sole victim in this case. In fact, I’ve spoken with and done research on the lawsuit that’s going on with the LGBTQ students and the Board of Education. Have you heard anything about that?
ELI GERMANOTTA: Uhm, bits and pieces. I have a lot of connections still in that small town and I’ve heard like different stories and pieces. I know some people that have testified, I know some of the people that have been directly involved so uhm, honestly if I was, if you were asking me to give you like a rundown of what’s going on, I couldn’t tell you other than I’ve heard bits and pieces of what’s happening, unfortunately.
HEATHER MACNEIL: Yeah, I guess I’m just kind of wondering like, do you see this mistreatment of the LGBTQ at a lot of religious universities in general? Ya know, what are your thoughts behind this lawsuit? What are you kind of hoping for the universities moving forward? Or what have you heard that the people are looking for?
ELI GERMANOTTA: I know one of the biggest points, one of my friends that’s kind of been one of the core pieces of a lot of these lawsuits or the lawsuit with Liberty specifically is that they should not be getting government funding. That’s like one of the biggest takeaways and I completely agree. Uhm, I would say that was probably one of the biggest takeaways. I have heard some stories from some of the other religious institutions, mostly just from social media but nothing first hand.
HEATHER MACNEIL: So, to kind of wrap this up on a lighter note, have you seen any growth? I know there was like a protest for the LGBTQ at Liberty at one point. Have you seen any, ya know, hope or growth that these stories might become less frequent?
ELI GERMANOTTA: Honestly, I haven’t really paid much attention to Liberty much since I left lynchburg and graduated from University of Lynchburg. I mean, I do know that on a social level things are starting to be a little different, like I’ve spoken with some friends of mine that transferred or not transferred, started out at Liberty way later than I did. Like I started Liberty in 2016 and was there until about the end of 2017. Uhm, I know some of my friends online through mutual connections that have started in like 2018, 2019 for example, that have said they’ve like on a social level there’s a bit of a difference but as far as an administrative level I haven’t really seen much of a change.
HEATHER MACNEIL: Well hopefully the university can work in the right direction and we will follow that lawsuit. Thank you so much for joining me and giving me your insights on this. I, ya know, hope you all the best. Congratulations on graduating and yeah.
ELI GERMANOTTA: Thank you, yeah. Alright.
HEATHER MACNEIL: To find out more about the lawsuit and to see more stories like Eli’s go to http://www.insidehighered.com. Thanks for tuning in to episode 1 and come back next week for more.
SHOW NOTES:
Eli Germanotta, art student at Liberty University and the University of Lynchburg –Eagermanotta@gmail.com
LGBTQ+ lawsuit against Board of Education
Liberty University pride protest
More information on Liberty’s lawsuits and mishandling of assaults