Book tells author’s tale of personal redemption, acceptance

Story by Chris Graham
freepress2@ntelos.net

I don’t know where to start with this story. I mean, the fact that Bruce Joffe was born and raised Jewish and is now a hardcore Christian is only about the fourth or fifth most interesting thing about him.
Put his brief career as a soap-opera writer and actor there somewhere. His two marriages, one to the woman who wouldn’t eat, the second to the fundamentalist with the wannabe cult-leader ex-husband, have to be mentioned prominently as well.
And then there’s this – in many ways, it was all a setup to the ultimate plot twist. Because Bruce Joffe was living a lie.

“When you’re hiding, when you’re cringing in the closet, when you’re afraid of being caught, when you’re afraid of coming out, it’s a horrible, horrible place to live. And since I have come out, it has been difficult. It’s been difficult talking to my son and explaining that two same-sex people who love each other can honor and be people you can look up to and people you can learn from – and it’s not a matter of the homosexual agenda or lifestyle or bedhopping or whatever it is,” said Joffe, an adjunct professor at Mary Baldwin College in Staunton and the author of Square Peg in a Round Hole, a memoir that traces his path to redemption and personal acceptance.

As Joffe recounts in Square Peg, he knew from an early age that his sexual identity was what it was. But he was also very well aware early on that it wasn’t something to be talked about.

“I’ve met more and more people, not so much from the younger generation, the young people in college today and in high school, it’s a different world for them, in which identity, sexual orientation and so forth is no big deal. It’s just for the most part, it’s accepted, it’s not an issue,” Joffe said in an interview for today’s “Augusta Free Press Show.”

“For those of us who are older, it’s a major issue, and I have met many, many, many people, especially through today’s technologies, online and so forth, people who are afraid to come to grips with who they are. And so they assume false identities, and other people get hurt in the process,” Joffe said.

“People who are different, and especially sexually different, before Stonewall and the whole civil-rights movement that embraced people from many different backgrounds and orientations, we simply weren’t allowed to. We were pariahs. We were to be shunned. We were embarrassed. We were made to feel, oh, my gosh, that we were just horrible, sick, reprehensible, disgusting people,” Joffe said.

“And so you run away from it. And you do what you can to try to make it go away. I mean, I married twice, I have a son. And believe me, I wouldn’t give that up. Both of those experiences, both wives and my relationship with my son, were extremely important to me. But I realized that I married not fully for the right reasons. It was like wearing that wedding ring would shield off the demons, shield off the evil ones. If I caught somebody looking at me, another guy looking at me, I would make sure that that wedding ring was glinting there so that, Hey, I’m married, stay away. Even though I’ve learned that these days, especially, a lot of people do get married – those days, too – and still fool around on the side,” Joffe said.

One thing you will learn from Square Peg is that Joffe is now almost brutally honest – with himself and with the world. That wasn’t always the case – the two marriages and other romantic dalliances with women being just a part of that. Joffe also struggled with his spiritual identity, and how his attempts to embrace his spiritual side clashed with his sexual identity.

“I struggled for many, many years with what I believed at the time. What I was told was, This is what the Bible says – you’re going to go to hell unless you change,” Joffe said.

“I struggled with it for a very long time. On the one hand, I was saying, This is who I am, but I can’t allow myself to be this way, because I’m going to go to hell, at least that’s what I’m told. And for me, it was a large and long struggle reconciling the two for me to ultimately come to that point to thine own self be true and realize that God does not make mistakes,” said Joffe, who has since come to a place in his spiritual and sexual lives where he feels at peace with both.

“There’s a bunch of what are called clobber verses. People can pick out six, eight verses in which the King James Version, which is obviously the language that God spoke, you know, King James – forget Aramaic, forget Hebrew, forget that these words were translated and transcribed by men using the language and lack thereof of the time, and lack of understanding. So there were things that have come down to us over the ages, and you can pick up the whole issue of Sodom and Gomorrah, where you will find fundamentalists focusing on the issue and saying, Aha, it is because of the sex between men that God condemned Sodom and Gomorrah and so forth,” Joffe said.

“When you really dig deeper, and you study what the Word says, and you look at that later on, about what Jesus said about Sodom and Gomorrah, and you study the Greek, and you study the Aramaic, you find out that it was really not a matter of sexuality or rape or whatever. It was a matter of inhospitality. And there again, I believe that the more you look, and the deeper you dig in terms of the Bible and some of these things, you’ll find that there’s more to it than what you’re hearing pulled out of context,” Joffe said.
“I truly believe that more often than not God is looking for tolerance, God wants us to worship Him in spirit and truth, God wants us to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. And I think God realizes that he’s created a beautiful panorama of people who are different – and we’re not the same, and if a church or a religion or sect or whatever is looking for unanmity or uniformity across the board, you have to believe every one of these things, I think they’re missing the point. I think they’re greatly missing the point. And I don’t think that’s what the Kingdom of God is all about,” Joffe said.

Joffe feels that the world is coming around, in a sense, to the point where he can offer a tongue-in-cheek commentary on the nickname of his adopted hometown.

“Staunton, I guess there’s a reason it’s called the Queen City,” he said in our interview, pausing to let the double entendre sink in, “but there’s a very, very large sexual-minority population in Staunton, and there’s a lot of support and a lot of understanding, both from these people themselves as well as allies and people who accept us for who and what we are.”

“There still, in terms of behavior, are limitations, especially in the South and especially in areas like where we live,” Joffe said. “I mean, two people of the same sex will not walk down the street hand in hand. Maybe on the Mary Baldwin campus, they will. It’s OK, it’s a protected environment. We don’t do that. I don’t know that we would do that anyway, although down in Key West, when we went on vacation, there were a few times I would put my arm around my partner, I would hold his hand or whatever. I mean, there are things that society still is not ready for.

“But I’m not one of those confrontational people that believes that you need to force it down their throats. I’m happy and content myself being who I am,” Joffe said.

Chris Graham is the executive editor of The Augusta Free Press.

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