5\/3\/2010 11:57:59 AM the Christianity Today interviewer\u2019s repeated attempts to describe her coming out as part of a larger \u201cstruggle with homosexuality.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt never occurred to me that I was in something that should be labeled as a \u2018struggle,\u2019\u201d Knapp said. \u201cThe struggle I\u2019ve had has been with the church acknowledging me as a human being.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Knapp\u2019s response echoed that of another gay Christian singer, the black gospel performer Ton\u00e9x, who came out in a television interview last fall. \u201cHave you struggled with homosexuality?\u201d the interviewer asks Ton\u00e9x. \u201cNot \u2018struggled,\u2019\u201d Ton\u00e9x replies. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t a struggle.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ton\u00e9x\u2019s and Knapp\u2019s stories stand out in the queer history of Christian music because they directly challenge this heterocentric vision of the misfit gay using the stage to sublimate his forbidden sexual proclivities. Openly gay and Christian, Ton\u00e9x and Knapp insist on the right to \u201ccome out from among them,\u201d as the apostle Paul put it in his letter to the early church at Corinth, and \u201cbe ye separate,\u201d in ways that are true to the totality of who they are. In this way they actively resist being inscribed into evangelicalism\u2019s punitive discourse of the self-embattled homosexual. <\/p>\n\n\n\n