Leslie Jordan Quotes

I had said to some pastor that I was having thoughts, and the church turned on me. They went to my mom and said, So sorry about your son.

Who will say with confidence that sexual abuse is more permanently damaging to children than threatening them with the eternal and unquenchable fires of hell?

I remember my uncle and my father telling me that my mother didn't want me because I was blind. She thought being blind was a disgrace and a punishment from God.

Unfortunately, some parents simply don't love their children. Probably they don't even love themselves. That may be the heart of their problem. Having parents like this is a terrible burden for any child and can shadow him all through life. It can even destroy him.

At one time in my life, from the time I was seven until I was about 13, I didn't speak. I only spoke to my brother. The reason I didn't speak: I had been molested, and I told the name of the molester to my brother who told it to the family.

I walked on eggshells a lot. I have a bad self-esteem problem, and my father probably facilitated it. He once looked at me very seriously when I was about 15 and had whipped cream smeared all over myself. He said, 'You'd do anything for a laugh, wouldn't you?'

You need to remember that being rejected by church is not the same as being rejected by God. God did not kick you out of church, honey. The church kicked God out of church.

I think that's one of the reasons women don't tell people when they've had a miscarriage - they think it's their fault.

I was traumatized by a lot of childhood stuff. I felt that I was bad somewhere, starting with my birth.

I always felt like the only messaging I was hearing around faith was, you need to be perfect or you can leave.

Growing up as a queer child in Mississippi, I got my Nintendo in 1985, and I've been lost in this world ever since. When I was scared because my church said people like me were going to burn in hell, 'Final Fantasy,' 'Dragon Warrior' and 'Super Mario' offered a lifeboat.

I remember specifically, for me, as a kid growing up or as a young teenager, if I ever cried or got upset in front of anybody, I would be so humiliated.

I feel betrayed by own mother.

What do we have to do to make God love us?' I always grew up with that. I always used to go around thinking that. 'God loved the white people better. He must've. That's why he made them white.'

My dad would do horrible things to me, but I was so desperate for his affection and his approval that I would keep coming back.

It's always going to have an effect when your father comes up and scolds you in front of a lot of people.

Kids will always find something to pick on, whether it's your color, your religion, the way you look, your size. You try and stand up for yourself, but it's really difficult when you've got 20 or 30 girls against you.

When I fell in love, all the shame and guilt I carried with me for years suddenly vanished.

There's a difference between, you know, God loves unconditionally in my feeling and religion loves conditionally. Religion spends an awful lot of time dictating who God can love and can't love.

If you grew up in a house where you weren't loved, you didn't know there was an alternative.

Parents create guilt. That is the greatest sin against humanity. To create guilt in a child is criminal because once the guilt is created, the child will never be free of it. Unless he is very intelligent it will be impossible for him to get rid of it; something of it will remain around him like a hangover.

It is the wit and policy of sin to hate those we have abused.

She crawled,” Ben said. There were tears in his voice. That was wrong. Ben barely even tolerated me on the best of days. “She crawled to the bathroom to clean herself again. If it weren’t for the two subs in the pack, I’d be on the bottom. And she wouldn’t stand up in my presence for guilt.

In contrast to how my father treated me, I won't hit him, I won't call him evil, I'll give him affection, and I'll pay attention to him.

Even without them touching me, I feel dirty about what I do. Alex does even filthier things but says it all washes off with soap. I don’t believe that. I think it all leaves stains. Indelible stains.