LGBTQ+ Indepth With… Johnny Schaefer

Exclusive Interview by Karen Beishuizen

Johnny Schaefer, age 62, is an award-winning Singer-Songwriter living in Pasadena, CA. While focusing most of his attention on swapping out the many hats indie artists must wear, he also loves hiking, gym, meditation and traveling with his husband Paco.

KB: Where were you born and how was it growing up?

I was born in a very small town in Texas. My father was a Lutheran minister right out of the seminary. My Mom was 19. I have a few memories of it, but my parents didn’t like it there and moved to Arizona when I was two. We lived there until I was seven and then to Orange County in Southern California for just a couple of years, My Dad then accepted a call to a church in Porterville, CA, and I consider that to be my hometown, as it is where I lived from fourth grade through high school and where I formed many of my lasting relationships and received the foundation of my music training. It’s a conservative town and it was the 70s, so the only gay TV character was Billy Crystal on Soap, which my family did not watch, and we had Anita Bryant crusading around the country stoking hatred of gay people. I felt very alone and confused. Junior High was hell. I was bullied by kids who picked up on the fact that I was gay, even though I had not ever said that I was.

The bullying stopped in high school. Music was a big deal there and I excelled in it. The “Cool” kids were actually in band and choir, and so I really hit my stride, even as I struggled internally with gay feelings I was suppressing. As luck would have it, both the band and choir director at Monache High School were members of Trinity Lutheran Church where my dad was pastor. Since I was the pastor’s kid, I was on their radar from a young age, having sung solos in church as often as I could. Music was the thing that kept me going despite overwhelming feelings of confusion and fear. I was in band, choir, vocal ensemble, stage band, and drama. It wasn’t a Performing Arts school, but it may as well have been for me. I loved it. My senior year I composed a piece for our concert band and wrote out every part. It was played in our Spring Concert before an audience of about 1,600 people and I got a standing ovation for several minutes. It was one of those moments I’ll never forget,

KB: How old were you when you realized you were gay and what made you think this?

I didn’t have an “aha” moment. It was something that I slowly and painfully (at first) realized over a long period of time, but the first distinct moments I remember having an idea that something was going on were when I was four or five. I remember having crushes on other boys, I really liked girls, but more as friends I could relate to because I never liked rough housing and aggressive behavior other boys my age engaged in. I was strongly attracted to boys and just wanted to feel as close as possible to them. I didn’t want to be a girl, but I related to their perspective more. And I secretly agreed when they talked about all the cute boys, which terrified me. I became clearly aware of my “problem” in high school, which is probably why I kept as busy as possible. I knew that I had these feelings and, despite many hours of praying about it, they weren’t going away. I wasn’t hearing any messages that it was OK, and I assumed that God wanted me dead. I prayed to die in a car accident or get cancer because I had been taught that suicide was the worst thing you could do to loved ones. I thought that I was so evil that I was exempted from the redemption brought by Jesus dying on the cross and resurrecting. I even wondered if I might be the antichrist! Years later a friend told me it was arrogant to think that I could do or think something that was more powerful than God’s love. I wish I had known that person much earlier in life.

I’ve never been diagnosed, but neurodivergence runs in my family and I have some ticks that manifest physically. I used to get this wave of intense anxiety that would wash over me and cause me to contort my limbs and face for a few seconds and then it would pass. People close to me got alarmed and it happened in the doctor’s office once. He immediately did an electro-encephalogram on me and it came back clear. He said it was anxiety. In college I had a doctor who wanted to put me on medication, but that felt to me like putting a band aid on a headache. It was clear that it was coming from my mind, and I wanted to understand and not mask it. This isn’t a knock on anyone who chooses or needs to medicate. I know it is extremely helpful to many people. We’re all different and I am talking about my own personal journey here.

KB: When did you come out as gay?

I fought my sexuality viscously all the way through college. I had girlfriends and have reconnected with some of them through social media all these years later to discover that some of them are queer and others say they knew I was gay. We were probably drawn to each other on a subliminal level. I went to counseling and remembered one religious organization that had a reputation for supposedly helping gay people turn straight. They demanded that I start having sex with my girlfriend even though we weren’t married and that this was necessary because the “demon” inside me was very strong. I remember feeling that this was off. Committing one “sin” to stop another made no sense to me. I got hold of an awful book by Christian author Tim LaHaye called “The Unhappy Gays” and it had a prayer in it where you exorcised the “demon of homosexuality”. I confided in a couple of my friends, and they said the prayer with me one night. I had some sort of emotional breakdown that scared all of us but did nothing to change my gay feelings at all. In retrospect I think it was just years of pent-up anguish being released. I continued to date girls in college and even gave a promise ring to one of them. When she finally broke up with me, she looked at me and said, “Do you think you might be gay?”. I finally found a former Lutheran minister who was a counselor through Lutheran Social Services. Dave was a powerful connection for me because of my dad being a minister. I asked him to help me stop being gay. He told me that, while that was an understandable goal, he thought it was more important to let things come up and then deal with them. He was a Jungian analyst and I read Alice Miller and Jung and Marie Louise von Franz. The notion of the Collective Unconscious and archetypes and dream analysis opened new worlds to me as a musician and as a person. The REO Speedwagon song “I Can’t Fight This Feeling Anymore” song became popular around 1984 and I remember thinking it was a sign. I was exhausted from trying to fight who I was and finally started coming out selectively to gauge reactions.

KB: How did your family and friends react?

As people showed me love and support it gradually became easier, but it still took me several more years to be completely out, even though most people confided that they already knew. My Dad died in 1983 and we had one conversation about it before he died that I am immensely grateful for. I had written a love letter to a guy I worked with and then chickened out about giving it to him, Dad found the letter and asked me about it. He said, “God loves you. I love you. It doesn’t make any difference; I just want you to be happy”. Still in the closet, I told him that I thought it was just a phase and he said, “You’ll figure it out. Just don’t try to hide anything from God. God is love.” While it would have saved me years of grief to have that conversation much earlier in my life, at least we had it. So many kids aren’t so lucky.

I remember a time when I was in my early teens and my mom and brother and I were riding in the car and my mom said, “The worst thing a son could ever do to his mother is tell her he is gay.” it was paralyzing, I can still remember how the sun was beating down on the dash of the car when she said it. When I finally came out to my brother he said, “Don’t tell mom. Remember what she said?” So, Mom was one of the last people I told, which really hurt her feelings. She asked why everyone seemed to know but her and I told her it was because of what she said that day. She literally scoffed and said. “Oh, I would never say something like that.” It’s amazing how such a moment can have an impact and mean nothing to the other person. I try to remember that when I say things in the heat of the moment. Our words matter.

KB: Did they know at your workplace / School / University you were gay?

I had a few jobs when I was in high school, and college and I was completely in the closet. Growing up I had always loved the Main Street Electrical Parade at Disneyland and dreamed of being in it. So, when I saw an ad in the LA Times for auditions the summer before I started college I decided to try out. When I got there, there were all these dancers in dance gear doing stretches and I thought, “Oh boy, this isn’t going to go well.” But I overheard someone saying, “Just act like you would rather be doing this than drinking milk” and that was perfect for me. I just put on a huge smile and, no matter how poorly I did in the routines they taught us I kept smiling enthusiastically. The first round, they divided the dancers from the non-dancers and then we sat there for a couple of hours while they cast all the dancing roles. But they had some roles for people who were carrying things and all of a sudden one of the choreographers pointed at me in the middle of the crowd. I made it! that Parade Captain as they were called later told me that she chose me because of my smile. I learned the routine for my dream role, the Small World Arch Pusher over the next month or so after becoming friends with one of the guys who did it and I became a substitute in that role. It was strange for me because most of the guys in the cast were gay, but I still claimed to be straight, I finally came out at the last cast party after four years of doing the parade, much to the exasperation of many of the guys I had lied to.
A few years ago, I went to my high school reunion and one of my teachers said, “Oh Johnny, we all knew:” My immediate reaction was, “Well I wish you someone would have said something to me!” I had felt like it was this dark secret and that I would be condemned and ruined if it got out. All that needless inner strife!

KB: Where did you meet your husband and when did you get married?

Well…Paco and I met on an AOL chat board in the 90s. I posted this long list of things I did not want in a relationship, “If you’re into drugs, move on. If you can’t see yourself in a committed relationship, move on,” etc. He initially responded indignantly because I came off as way too picky, but it started a conversation. He lived in Northern California at the time, and I was living in Burbank. I still remember the first time we talked on the phone. He is a Mexican immigrant and has this disarming accent. I was smitten right away. We talked for a while and then he came to LA to see me on his birthday. It wasn’t long after that that he moved down to be with me. We were together for a few years and then split up for a couple of years because he was dealing with the immense pressures of being an immigrant and not sure he wanted to stay in America. It never made sense to me, and I always believed we would get back together. I did a lot of spiritual work on letting go and got to a point where I truly wanted what was best for him. I wanted him to be happy, whatever that meant. He came to stay with me for a few weeks when I had a surgery and nursed me back to health. I had a spare room and he moved back in with me, first as friends. We were literally dating other people, both of whom stopped seeing us and told us we should get back together because it was obvious that we loved each other. About that time, Gov. Gregoire in Washington had facilitated gay marriage and Gavin Newsome and Kamala Harris were fighting for it in California.

When the Obergefell decision came down, we decided to get married. That was July 12, 2014. There’s a video of our ceremony on YouTube. It was like a mini concert with several of our loved ones singing, and I sang a song to Paco that I wrote. We were married in a Lutheran church in Olympia, WA and the pastor let me write the ceremony, which he said became a template for other same sex marriages in the area. In a beautiful moment we said our vows as our loved ones stood around us holding candles as we pledged our love. 10 years later we are stronger than ever. I really love him, and he loves me.

KB: What do you think of all the religions out there who still see being gay as a sin?

Sting has a lyric that says, “Men go crazy in congregations, they only get better one by one.” I know so many people who have been burned badly by organized religion, and you often hear people talk about being spiritual as opposed to religious. For me, that is a false choice, but I share in the anger and frustration that so many have. I became a student of A Course in Miracles more than 30 years ago. It says that “There are many paths, they all lead to God in the end.” For me, it undoes what 2,000 years of people have done to Jesus. Perhaps because of my dad being a minister, liturgy and tradition are ingrained in me. He used to say, “The devil loves churches” and he was treated horribly by a congregation to the point that I have family members who want nothing to do with organized religion because of it. I see all things on the earth plain as neutral, depending on what we do with them. Institutions like churches and governments are made up of people. People are messy. There is extraordinary goodness alongside dark shadows in all of us. We take many wild detours individually and collectively, but I believe that we are all one, and so the ultimate destination is a return to that oneness for all of us.

I have friends who are many different flavors of Christianity. I don’t recognize Jesus in some of them. In fact, I see them as anti-Christ because they do the exact opposite of what Christ taught: love one another, welcome strangers, feed the poor, heal the sick. Homosexuality was common in his day, yet he never mentioned it. There is a film out now called “1946, the Mistranslation that Shaped Culture” which details the manipulation of scripture through translations so a case could be made against homosexuality, the early church, gay saints. I have LGBTQ friends who are Muslim, Jewish, Sikh, Buddhist, Hindu, Mormon, Jehovah’s Witness, Catholic, protestant, atheist, agnostic, New Age, Wicca, and more. They are all wonderful, loving people. I love to talk to them about their spiritual paths. My experience is always that we are all saying the same things in different language. I simply see the different religious paths as different dialects talking about the same thing.

I like to use the analogy of the planets spinning around the sun, they are all circling the same sun. Most of those same friends also acknowledge the pain of feeling like outsiders in their own faith communities. The struggle is always about whether it is healthier to stay and be the presence of the alternative, or to leave for more loving circles. I don’t think there’s one right choice. We all need to follow our hearts. If we all leave the institutions, they will lose their way even more. I feel called to hold a mirror up to people who have forgotten about love with the understanding that I have areas where I need to be healed, too. I wasn’t to give others the space I need for myself. Can religion be saved from its heresies? Most of the ugly wars on this planet are fueled by religious intolerance. The beautiful things that happen on this planet are fueled by love. God is love and nothing else.

Galatians 3:38 says There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. We’re spiritual beings having a human experience. The notion that we can do anything to change our true nature as creations in the image of God is absurd.

KB: Did you ever have any anti-gay experiences or incidents?

Junior High, as I have discussed was the worst. I was bullied verbally, but never assaulted physically, though one boy came really close. But bodies heal. The emotional and mental expressions of hatred had a profound effect on me. We heal in layers, and I have come a long way, but there is still a level of PTSD. And every time I post about one of my LGBTQ-themed projects I lose followers, though I have started to gain new ones.

A few weeks ago, I received a message in response to “When It’s your Kid” from a guy I went to school with 50 years ago. “I remember I used to bully you in Junior High, so I’m sure you remember. I’m sorry, I was young and stupid. This is a good thing you are doing here. Keep it up. I downloaded your song.” On my website I allow people to set their own price to download my music. He paid $25 for the one track.

KB: Being gay is still a crime in many countries around the world. How do you feel about this?

It’s insane! Despite our progress, and partially because of it, people are dying for simply being their authentic selves. Let’s remember, too, that American companies like Chick-fil-A have enabled an oppression in countries like Uganda. And with Project 2025 and other movements here in America there are way too many people who openly express a wish for similar laws here. You either believe that everyone deserves the freedom to self-actualize and live unencumbered, or you don’t. I often think about how much is pre-determined for each of us before we are even born, depending on where it is, we come into the world with economic limitations or advantages, often with a specific religion imposed on us, with race, ethnicity, social standing, and the government we are born under dramatically affecting everything about our time here. We have a planet with the resources for everyone to thrive. But those resources have been confiscated and are sold to the highest bidder. Our personal lives become part of the power struggle. I am not free if any of my fellow humans is not.

KB: What would you like to say to all the anti-gay people out there?

Martin Luther King said, “You have very little morally persuasive power with people who can feel your underlying contempt’.” When I am confronted with something outside of me that upsets me, I try to see it as a mirror being held up for me to find where that thing is in me. My reaction pretends a need for healing. I need to stress that in these days of constant bombardment by sensational messaging primed to get reactions, I am far from where I want to be. I have buttons and they get pushed. But I want to get beyond it to the love in us all. That is where my song, “You Can’t Hide the Light” comes from. We need to see the light in others when they forget so we can help them remember. My song, “When It’s Your Kid” came from my desire to start a conversation with people about the fear inside them that results in actions that harm others. My aim was not to attack, but to ask honest questions. We must learn how to talk to each other and that has been shackled by texting and emails few people read and memes, most of us are talking at each other, but few are listening.

I mentioned that when I was young, I was bullied by kids who picked up on me being gay even though I had not said I was. And many people at various stages of my life have said they knew before I told them. The fact is that if I never have sex again, I will still be gay. It is the way I came into this world. It informs every aspect of my life. I am not just gay, and I have been told many times that emphasizing it hampers my ability to reach a larger audience. But authenticity is key to a meaningful life. What’s the point of faking anything, or of compromising? I and the people in my life have learned things about Love we would not have learned if I was not gay. In A Course in Miracles it says, “Teach only love, for that is what you are.”

Check out Johnny’s website: HERE

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