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Chapter 1: What is the strange providence behind Sammy's story?
Okay, so today's story has a very strange providence. So imagine I'm minding my business. You know, I get a note from one of my heroes, Lulu Miller, co-host of Radiolab, author of books, all around cool person. And Lulu says that she has a story. She lays it out, and I'm thinking, this is going to be a very strange Radiolab piece. And she says, no, no, no, no. It's kind of more in the Snap lane.
What? Lulu, do you mean, are you suggesting, could it be a Radiolab Snap Judgment co-production situation? Yes. Snap Nation, today on Radio Snap, Snap Lab. We proudly present... And today's mashup episode begins with always curious Lulu Miller, the host of Radiolab. It's about her friend slash fellow nerd, Sammy Ramsey. Sammy's a rock star etymologist. I didn't choose the bug life.
The bug life chose me. Now a bug correspondent for Radiolab's kids show, Terrestrials.
Terrestrials, Terrestrials, we are not the worst, we are the...
Best Reels.
Best Reels.
Yeah. And one afternoon last year, Sammy took Lulu and her wife to his favorite tea house in Boulder, Colorado. And he ended up sharing a part of his scientific origin story.
And we just suddenly, like, found ourselves in this really deep and surprising and intimate story. And I'd never heard anything like it.
Sammy had never spoken about this in public. Later, Lulu asked him if he'd ever want to tell it again in a studio to share with the world.
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Chapter 2: How did Sammy's childhood influence his identity?
Sure did.
And it was in that living room where one hot Sunday morning, little Sammy witnessed his dad, Pastor Roosevelt Ramsey, do something that would change everything for him.
My dad would always say, all right, everybody, we're opening the doors of the church. And he'd extend his hands and my mom would sing and people would come down to the altar and they would pray and they would get prayed for.
And that morning?
This individual walks up and kind of with this look of reluctance isn't quite the word, nervousness. My dad puts his hand on the man's head, and he starts praying for him very loudly.
Sammy knew his dad to be pretty soft-spoken, but suddenly he heard this shift in his voice.
He starts speaking directly to the evil spirit. Whoa. He says, Sammy says he can't be sure, but he believes the man had been struggling with drug abuse. The man starts to shake and scream. And then, you know, the man is like crying, sobbing, kind of like yelling. There's no real words from him. And he even vomits, which was frightening, exactly. And my dad keeps praying.
And, you know, it seems like he is almost spurred on by the fact that this man starts to vomit. When you see something like that, it doesn't feel like it's something that you're imagining it. This person is vomiting in response to prayer.
Wow. And is what's going on there similar to my concept as an outsider of an exorcism?
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Chapter 3: What challenges did Sammy face during his coming out journey?
Yeah.
It's now years later. Sammy has landed at Cornell University. He joins the campus ministry, Crusade for Christ.
I loved that campus ministry. It was full of the most touchy-feely, emotionally vulnerable, sweet guys I've ever met in my life.
In his junior year, he is hanging out with one of those guys from his ministry in his dorm room playing video games.
And he was a looker. Just a tall, dashing gentleman with, like, the cutest amount of facial hair on his chin. And these eyes that had, like, three different colors in them. And there's, like, this orange-y-ness in there. It's just, it was just, look. Orange tie-dye eyes with a, like, little scruff? I can't. Okay.
So we're playing video games and he starts goofing around with the controller, like hitting buttons. And I was like, hey, you are not helping. So he grabs me and picks me up and puts me like between his legs. Uh-huh. So I was like still in a little bit of a sense of denial. I was like, okay, Sammy, don't panic. I'm sure this is something that straight guys do all the time.
And you just didn't hang out with enough straight guys in high school to know that, you know? To know they prefer playing video games like in each other's laps. Exactly. Precisely. That's totally a normal thing. I was like, you are no longer helping. And he said, well, maybe I want your attention to be on something else.
He leans forward, very forward gentleman, and just brings these lips together.
I was like, oh, hallelujah.
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Chapter 4: How did Sammy's father react to his revelation?
I'm like, oh, sir, you are several years too late. I've been through that. He wanted me to just try it like Sammy won't. Why won't you just try it, though? And what I had to keep explaining to him was I don't want to be any different than the way that I am now.
And with that, father and son went back to their separate corners.
In a lot of ways, I'd given up on the idea that we were ever going to be close, that I was going to have a close relationship with my father. I thought that's just how it was going to be. Now, at the time, I still wasn't sure what life looked like as a queer person. I wasn't sure whether I was going to date somebody. I didn't know what queer relationships looked like.
Families, babies, children, like any of that. When Sammy got to graduate school... I was 23. And so this was a graduate school in Maryland. I joined an evangelical church in graduate school. I joined pretty quickly and became a part of a little bit of everything.
He sang in the choir. He led Bible study and worship. And the more comfortable he grew with the congregation, he came out to two or three people.
After a while, the group grew to, it was nine people who knew about me and they were just so supportive and caring. I loved that. They would just spend time with me talking about all of this. And I felt like I was ready to really talk with my pastor about it too.
Even if I wanted to squirm, even if I was scared for different reasons, honesty demanded that I let them know something that potentially would have precluded them allowing me to be in a position of leadership otherwise. So when I did tell my pastor, he thanked me for telling him. He said, Sammy, I know what you're afraid of.
I know that you're afraid that people are going to leave you or abandon you or excise you from Christian community. He's like, you don't have to worry about that with me or this church. He's like, you know, I love you. This church loves you and cares about you. And that's just clear. That's just evident.
I don't have any problem with you continuing to lead, you know, in the different ways that you're leading. which was really nice. And all of us celebrated. We're like, this is amazing. This is great.
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Chapter 5: What led to Sammy's excommunication from the church?
Yeah, how God loved us. And that's how we are supposed to love each other. Because you came out and said that you was a gay man and so on and so forth. There's no reason for me not to love you anymore. If anything, it's for me to love you even more.
This idea that it is about love, that man looks at the outward appearance, man looks at how these things appear, but God actually sees the heart of it. The fact that my dad and I were resonating on that same wavelength, it was really beautiful to me. Like, it hit me really hard.
Awesome. God don't operate like that. God is about love, you know?
He had told me that he was, I guess at this point you could call it coming around, but I feel like I've come around. I mean, it took me years to accept myself. And I gave my dad, what, a few months before I gave up on him? I sat there with my dad with my eyes welling up. And I said to my dad, I wasn't prepared for you coming around. And he said a set of words I will never forget.
With a son like you, how could I not? Mm-hmm. And I fell apart. I was done. And I mean, smash cut to a few months ago, you know, I've gotten onto the dating apps because everybody says this is how people find people now. And I'm like, this is weird. I don't know that I like this. Like Grindr, Scruff, all those? No, I can't. No, I don't know. Okay, what, like eHarmony Christian gay?
I don't know about that either. We've gone too far in either direction. Okay, okay. I'm sitting down with my family at dinner and start talking with them about it. And so they asked me about this guy that I was like, oh, well, you know, he seemed... Wait, they're looking at your Tinder app? You're like swiping?
Well, they asked me about this guy and I was like, well, and so I opened up Tinder and they, you know, there's this flurry of excitement as they start talking about like, oh, but this guy, I don't know about him. He seems a little... My mom says, he seems a little, I don't know, frisky.
My...
My sister was like, no, no, no, mom, thirsty. Thirsty is the word that we're using now. And then my dad chimes in and he was like, well, that one, you said that he's a schoolteacher. Now, you know, schoolteachers always broke. I don't know that you want to end up... With a school teacher. And my sister says, but mom's a school teacher. And she says, Ashley, Ashley, he's right. He is right.
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