Lesbian WNBA Player Layshia Clarendon Says Relationship with God Makes Her Feel 'Included and Welcome'

Layshia Clarendon of the WNBA’s Indiana Fever says her relationship with God is the only place where she always feels “safe and included and welcome.”

“It’s the place where I don’t have to carry the burden of being black in America,” Clarendon writes in an essay for The Players’ Tribune, a website for professional athletes to share their voices. “I don’t have to carry the burden of walking into a bathroom and being mistaken for male. I don’t have to carry the burden of wondering whether people are judging me morally for being gay or not.”

Clarendon is usually an outsider, she explains in the article, published Thursday. “I identify as black, gay, female, non-cisgender and Christian,” she writes. “I am an outsider even on the inside of every community to which I belong. My very existence challenges every racial, sexual, gender and religious barrier.”

She discusses coming out in her devoutly Christian family. Some members of her family, especially her father, were slow to be accepting; her older sister, who came out as gay before she did, had the same experience. She also tells of finding a spiritual home in a church called the Way, in Berkeley, Calif., while attending the University of California in that city.

At the Way, she says, she did not encounter the homophobia prevalent in some churches. “No one questioned my faith as an out person,” she writes. “I was accepted and shown love, as one should be.” Even though she initially questioned if she could be gay and Christian, she finally concluded, “Jesus didn’t just die for the straight people.” During the most recent off-season, she returned to the Way and led its first LGBT Bible study.

She further delves into some teammates’ objections to wearing Pride shirts for a game as well as the reluctance of pro sports in general to address LGBT concerns and other issues of diversity. She notes that Arian Foster, a running back with the NFL’s Houston Texans, recently came out as a nonbeliever and said he is uncomfortable with pregame prayer. Even though she is a Christian, she writes, she feels a kinship with him as a fellow outsider, and she urges respect and consideration for people with his views.

“We can shape the future and the conversations around these issues by asking tough questions, and giving a voice to the minority,” Clarendon writes.

For herself, she adds, faith is a guiding force, and she calls for greater inclusivity of LGBT people in the Christian faith. “The beauty of my whole story is that, for all of the tension between my social and racial identities, faith is what grounds me — even as I work to rectify all of these parts of myself,” she says. “I feel free of all the identities. … I feel freedom and love. That’s God.”

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