This Woman Gets Real About Growing up Gay in a Family That Practices the Same Religion as the Duggars

Fans of the Duggars are well aware the famous family adheres to some pretty strict, religious practices. Although the Counting On reality stars follow several of the principles associated with the Quiverfull religion — a movement where followers refrain from using contraception and trust God in family planning — Michelle and Jim Bob have denied their association with that specific sect of Christianity in the past. Instead, they consider themselves to be Independent Baptists, a more exclusive form of Christianity. Despite the Duggars’ efforts to clarify, fans still associate their conservative, patriarchal viewpoints with the Quiverfull movement — and now a woman is speaking out about what it was like for her to grow up gay in a family who shares those same values.

A YouTube user named Luthian Diya detailed her coming out story in a 30-minute video, and shared what it was like to be exiled from her conservative family.

“I wanted to talk a little bit today about my childhood, mainly what it was like growing up in the culture I did knowing that I was gay,” she started out the video. Luthian explained that her parents were strict Christians, and her mother thought showing cleavage and wearing pants was the equivalent to “telling people to rape her.” She continued to share how growing up, her mother always made her wear long sleeves because she “wasn’t allowed to show that [she] had a shape whatsoever.”

“Showing curves was against my mom’s rules or a lot of jumpers, they had to be ankle-length, I had to wear knee-high socks at all times,” she added. Luthian then tells viewers that she “stumbled upon a video about the Quiverfull movement.” Although she never heard of it before, she said “every single thing that they said about it was exactly the way [her] mom was.”

Luthian said she learned the Duggars are the most famous example of a family who practices the religion. She drew some comparisons from her own life to the show, mainly that her mother “believed in having as many children as God would be willing to bless her with,” and not using birth control.

Later on in the clip, Luthian shared that she knew she was gay when she was just five years old. “When I was five, my best friend was four and I — for all intents and purposes — fell in love with her,” she recalled. “I didn’t really understand it, I hadn’t really developed a sense of what that was yet, but looking back at how I treated her and how I thought about her and my feelings toward her, that’s what it was.”

When Luthian first told her mom she wanted to marry another girl, her mom thought she was “just a kid being a kid.” But as Luthian got older, her parents became upset by her sexuality and said “there was a demon on her.”

Deal of the Day

Only $12! — (And No One Will Know They Aren’t Designer) View Deal

The rejection Luthian experienced from her family made her feel alone and isolated. She said that she felt like she constantly “had to cover up and hide,” and her mom taught her how to hide her emotions with a smile. “I figured I was weird, I knew that I wasn’t wrong for how I felt, I never thought that falling in love with women was wrong,” she said.

In the end, Luthian offered some advice to parents: “If you’re a parent of an LGBTQIA whatever, a non-cisgender or a non-binary or a different sexual orientation than what you believe is right, loving your child is so much more important.”

You can listen to Luthian share her full story in the clip above.