Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

By Maggie Walker

I have never really been “out” in the workplace. There have been places where I have not actively tried to hide it, but I have never broadcasted my gender or sexuality, and 99% of the time, it does not come up.

My first job was as my church’s primary babysitter. I had a few jobs working as a barista, but I excelled at taking care of kids. I still do, and I still babysit for the families I have stayed in touch with. I applied to work at a daycare in the summer of 2020 after my first barista job fell through. The daycare was run through another church, so I knew some of the problems that could arise, but because my dad was a pastor, I knew how to navigate a Christian work environment.

I spent a lot of time in my dad’s office and church nurseries growing up. I know how Christian men communicate their “very important” ideas about God, joke about their wives and poke fun at every denomination’s little quirks without ever confronting anything meaningful about the ideology they are poking fun at.

I know how Christians talk when they want to sound like they are putting in a lot of work in their relationship with God (they start talking about the importance of their daily morning prayer).

I also know how Christian women take their daughters who can’t sit still in church to the nursery so they can entertain toddlers instead of having to sit through another boring sermon. I know how to sing songs about Israelites escaping from Egypt and teach kids about Noah’s Ark over the animal crackers we feed them at snack time. I know how to sound pious, I know what words to say to impress a Godly person, and sound connected to the Creator of the universe through the way I serve Him.

Several context clues told me that this workplace cared about the sexual ethics of the teachers, but a good indicator came from the gossip people shared on my first day. The gossip was that their coworker had just moved in with her boyfriend (the scandal).

I remember the day of the 2020 election, I went in early to cover a coworker’s shift in the infant room. I was greeted by my coworker’s Trump jersey first and foremost, and many of the others were decked out in American flags or Trump gear. I sat down to rock one of the babies, and the teachers began talking about voting.

“Trump! Trump! Trump!” my coworker in the jersey chants. One of the teachers comments that she does not like Biden, but she would not hate anyone for voting blue.

“We can disagree and still be friends,” she says. The coworker in the jersey says she was disappointed to find out one of the parents of her kids planned to vote for Biden.

“I don’t hate Biden on most issues; I just don’t like abortion. That’s the main reason I’m voting for Trump,” she explains. One of the other teachers stops by to talk about how her husband put a Trump sign in their yard and how he wanted “everyone to know who they were voting for.”

I felt isolated and unsure of what to say. No one asks me to confess any deep, dark political secrets, likely because no one suspects me or even remembers that I can vote in this election, as I am the youngest worker in the room by far.

I wonder, for a moment, what they would think if I said something. What would they think if I said I was voting for Biden? What would they think if I said I was much further left than him? What would they think if they knew I liked women?

I suspect they would treat me like an alien, a queer invader there to snatch up the children, even though I have been working with children for over half my life and long before I even knew what being gay meant. I have a feeling there would be a talk with the director, and she would gently explain to me that they still wanted me to succeed, but elsewhere, preferably away from childcare facilities. Or maybe she would scold me for talking about “what I do in the bedroom,” as if

I am not a product (victim) of purity culture, terrified to even insinuate the concept of sex.

I didn’t say anything. Maybe I should have, and maybe, in a different timeline, that would be the right decision. The right decision, in this timeline, was to use my lunch break to vote for my rights.