God Protected my Neurodivergent and LGBTQ+ Kids from MAGA

I am publishing this and also sending a copy to some former pastors and a few former Christian school administrators from my family’s past affiliations. Since I need to protect the privacy of my young adult kids, I must be somewhat unspecific. The article will be titled “God Protected my Neurodivergent and LGBTQ+ Kids from MAGA.”

After 31 years of a wonderful marriage to Grant, raising our children in conservative churches, sending them to Christian schools for a large part of their schooling, me teaching in their religious schools to pay for their schooling, and my rediscovery of progressive faith and spirituality during the Trump era, I can undoubtedly say that my family escaped not only some serious heartache but potentially serious harm and possibly a death from the rise of Trumpism/MAGA Christianity before it fully took power. In retrospect, the conservative American church would not have been able to swallow this toxic political cocktail without the foundational tendencies to embrace MAGA and Trump to begin with. Those tendencies are essentially rooted in what the late female pastor Rachel Held Evans identified as patriarchy, white supremacy, and Christian Nationalism.

In order to understand that I am not exaggerating by saying, “escaping some serious heartache but potentially serious harm and possibly a death or two,” my parenting and family life, career, graduate school, seminary training, and life experiences grew and evolved slowly over time after graduate school in 2009. Raising a child with Autism and two other great kids with my beloved husband Grant while battling Parkinson’s Disease required a very slow and steady approach to eventually becoming an Educational Therapist, a Vocational Rehabilitation specialist, and a certified lay minister into the private practice I have today which is not what I had originally planned.

Today as of 2025, the spectrum of neurodiverse diagnoses / identities and LGBTQ+ identities of our young adult children are now fully unveiled of who they have always been. LGBTQ+ young people don’t just wake up one day in their adult years and say “I’m gay,” or “I’m transgender.” There are typically signs which start in early childhood similarly to signs starting young with Autism. To protect the privacy of my young adult kids, I will not reveal specifics except the Autism diagnosis of Sam which I have been most open about since 2003. Let’s just say that my husband Grant is the only family member who is not neurodivergent, only one child isn’t LGBTQ+, and one child came out transgender in their mid-twenties. My children are now fully unveiled. Scientifically, it is 3 to 9 times more likely to have LGBTQ+ children when a sibling also has Autism. Due to these scientific realities and the love of our children mostly, my husband and I fully accept, affirm, and support our neurodivergent and LGBTQ+ children because the power of a parent’s love and support have been proven to plummet the rate and suicide and lasting psychological harm to these populations. Jesus says we know what is true by the fruit that it yields. Our children are thriving more than ever in their adult careers and personal lives post college. When we look at the consequences (bad fruit) of rejecting the neurodiverse and LBGTQ+ children, we find depression, anxiety, self-hatred, shame, self-harm, substance abuse and separation from God and family. But when we embrace and fully-accept neurodivergent and LGBTQ+ young people, they find peace, joy, wholeness, better overall health, and life.

Now I know why my family didn’t stay in one conservative church or religious school more than 6 years, why although I felt my family was growing and doing well in some ways which I was very thankful for, I instinctively felt there were fundamentally wrong, unsafe, and even dangerous aspects of the various conservative religious communities were a part of. A mother’s instincts typically don’t lie.

I have now learned that years of scientific research, secular practice, and ministerial practice have proven that harmful theology and harmful religious practices can cause serious damage and even death to neurodivergent and especially LGBTQ+ individuals. Recent studies have proven that the suicide rate for neurodivergent and LGBTQ+ individuals in the conservative church is twice as high as it is in secular and progressive religious spaces. You can read more about this in a peer-reviewed article I published for US Catholic in 2023. https://uscatholic.org/articles/202401/neurodiversity-and-lgbtq-identity-can-intersect-is-your-parish-supporting-us/
and also in my article here from Outreach LGBTQ+ Ministry. https://outreach.faith/2022/09/how-can-the-church-repair-its-relationship-with-neurodiverse-people-and-the-lgbtq-community/

When we start with at least some harmful theology some harmful religious and cultural practices and then we add toxic and dangerous political elements to that mixture, this equates to a potential dangerous explosion. This explosion started to bubble in 2016, the year Trump rose into power. Trumpism and MAGA Christian Nationalism didn’t happen out of nowhere or overnight. The political and religious right formed their alliance starting during the Reagan era and grew into the full-blown Christian Nationalist state we are experiencing today.

I consider my unique and somewhat vulnerable family as so very fortunate that we escaped the rise of Trump and MAGA Christian Nationalism in the conservative church during our kids’ adolescent years. Other families like mine have lost their children to suicide and other causes of death while many have been permanently harmed from toxic religion. When we add a dangerous political element to that mix, I am unable to imagine how dangerous this could have been for my family.

My unique family escaped something so incredibly dangerous before it took full hold in 2016, Trumpism and MAGA Christianity. I am forever thankful to God/Jesus that we didn’t lose a life, and my battered faith and health are still intact. I somewhat hold myself responsible for not fully acting upon my instincts, better-evaluating our settings, and leaving conservative Christianity sooner. Christians, there are much healthier progressive faith communities out there where you can find God and community. And God is not limited to religious spaces. He is everywhere and bears His image in other human beings.

The first and second greatest commandments are to love God and love our neighbor. In conclusion, the love of God/Jesus have always been much more present in the secular world and progressive religious spaces than God has ever been in the political conservative American Trumpist-leaning churches. The sacred can bloom in the secular where charity and community service are thriving.