Jackie Hill Perry

Perry was a spoken-word poet and hip-hop artist in St. Louis, lived as a lesbian, and converted to Christianity at nineteen; she later married the rapper Preston Perry. Gay Girl, Good God is her telling of that, including the harm she suffered as a child and an absent father, and it sold heavily in American evangelical churches. Students at Harvard protested an appearance in 2018, saying she had called queer people broken and denied that anyone is born gay. She has answered that she does not support conversion therapy, calls the idea silly, and argues for celibacy instead, which does not settle the objection but is a different claim. She writes and teaches on the Bible as well.