| For years, Kathy Lee, a professor at an evangelical university, kept her sexual identity a secret. Then she decided to come out.  Photograph by Margaret Albaugh for The New Yorker The correspondence with Kathy Lee began as what the writer Emma Green calls “one of those vaguely mysterious e-mails which journalists sometimes get.” Lee had reached out to introduce herself, explaining, “I am gay and teach at a member institution of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities.” The details were eye-catching: the C.C.C.U. is the country’s most prominent association of evangelical Protestant schools, where “the price of entry is a willingness to order your life according to the Bible.” In a moving and nuanced piece, Green follows Lee’s experience of coming out at Whitworth University, a school of about twenty-seven hundred students in Spokane, Washington. Lee’s journey sheds light on the emerging standoffs over L.G.B.T.Q. rights and acceptance at many Christian schools. But it is also a deeply personal story of one woman, who along the way comes to reëxamine other parts of her life, as well, including some of her ideas about Christian doctrine. As Lee once put it, “I’m not sure what would be more disturbing: my sexual identity, or the fact that I haven’t been in church regularly for eleven years.” —Ian Crouch, newsletter editor Support The New Yorker’s coverage of the intersection of religion and social justice. Subscribe today » | 
