Photo courtesy of Roy Carey Ware
Written by Charlytte Morrone
“My girlfriends in school liked boys and I liked boys, too,” Roy Carey Ware told me in his downtown Savannah apartment. Ware, a third-year fashion design student from Newburgh, New York, opened up to District about his personal experience of being homosexual and at the same time having a pastor for a father.
Ware was adopted when he was 3 years old and grew up with his mother, Audrey L. Carey — the first female African American mayor in the state of New York. As a child he was heavily involved in church life; it played a huge part in his mother’s political ventures. He had to visit every church in the town, as well as those on the outskirts. But politics aside, Ware received a heavy church influence from his father as well: James Richmand Ware is the pastor of Welcome Baptist Church in LaGrange, Georgia.
When did you find out you were gay?
There was no “Oprah moment.” My girlfriends in school liked boys and I liked boys, too. It was a mutual feeling between all of us. At 2 or 3, a pastor in our town, Pastor Saul Williams, came to our house and my mom remembers my telling him, “If I was older, I would marry you.” It’s something I have always known and the people around me have, too. In all honesty everyone thought I would grow out of it, but it was nothing outright discussed with my father.
Was it hard to tell your father you were gay?
I didn’t tell my father until two years ago. My niece told him. His response was, “I wasn’t the first and I wouldn’t be the last.” Our lives don’t intertwine enough for me to go out of my way and talk to him about it. It has never been a deep relationship. I took the initiative to not reach out to him because of that terrible summer. We were far removed from each other. My association was cut off.
Explain “that terrible summer.”
In eighth grade my mom sent me away to stay with my father for the summer. My dad’s family had come over for a family reunion and they were not nice to me at all, especially the children. For a long time I held resentment towards my father because of how the kids picked at me. It was the worst summer of my entire life. My father’s daughter from Texas, Deborah, her husband Bob was terribly mean to me. He allowed his kids to taunt me. It was five or six nieces and nephews that tortured me that summer. They went through my things and read my diary and told the parents.
I was the kid that was hexed from the group and it was something that has left a scar on me. It was the only time I have felt ashamed at being gay. It was the first time I realized people were not OK with my being gay, to the point where people would make me feel uncomfortable about it. It was traumatizing because I was with people who I thought were my family. I lost a lot of faith in my father and his ability to protect me. After that summer, I didn’t talk to my father until 10th grade.
I had another terrible experience in 10th grade when I was cheering with Cheer Dynasty. I invited him to my cheer competition in Atlanta and it was about $15 to get in and he didn’t want to pay to get in to see me.
Roy attended Christian church camps where he was called “faggot” and accused of “touching a girl inappropriately” just for playing with her hair.
Did telling your dad make you shy away from church?
It did but I grew up in the church where people were forced to be nice to me because I was the “pastor’s son.” It made me shy away from Christianity and it made me gear toward philosophy and spirituality.
How do you feel about what the Bible says about being homosexual?
My idea of what a Christian should be is my mom; she loves everyone. I would never worship a God who would kill someone or dam them to Hell for loving. I look at my blessings and I know that there is a God and I know that he favors me. Someone who tries to take my God and tell me he damns me to Hell — I can’t believe it. It doesn’t reflect in my life.
Only through sin and darkness did the people in the Bible see the grace of God.
I love my boyfriend and even he is someone that comes from a Pentecostal background. I hear people when they say these things about the Bible, and I know my own life and my own heart and I know the light and the blessings God has shed on me. I can’t imagine he is this terrible, ugly person. When people throw the Bible at me I throw it back at them and I let them know what God has done for me.
My parents are people, too. I love my father but he is very stoic in regards to his own personal life. I don’t wish to push. If he knew better he would do better as far as reaching out. I can’t blame him.