Deliverance

Summary

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Snap Judgment & Radiolab – “Deliverance” (June 18, 2026)

Episode Overview

This special Snap Judgment–Radiolab co-production, hosted by Glynn Washington and Radiolab's Lulu Miller, features the deeply personal and compelling story of Dr. Samuel Ramsey, a renowned entomologist. “Deliverance” weaves together themes of faith, family, identity, science, and love, charting Ramsey's journey from a devout preacher’s kid, wrestling with his sexuality, through rejection and self-discovery, to eventual reconciliation with his family—especially his father, Pastor Roosevelt Ramsey.

The episode fuses the raw musicality and immersive storytelling of Snap with Radiolab's sense of inquiry, making for a poignant and cinematic exploration of what it means to seek acceptance, both self and communal, in the face of religious and societal pressures.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Sammy’s Early Life and Faith

• Sammy, raised in a deeply religious household near Washington, D.C., was quirky from a young age, known for his love of insects and unique fashion (see: pet millipede necklace).

• Faith as Structure: Both his parents were preachers, and family life revolved around Biblical teachings, down to memorizing a scripture for each letter of the alphabet.

  • Quote:
    "We were literally like, A, all have sinned and fallen short...B, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ..." – Sammy Ramsey (04:31)

• Church was both comfort and challenge—an intimate community but also a place of potential judgment.

The Concept and Experience of Deliverance

• Sammy recounts, as a child, witnessing his father perform an exorcism-like ritual—known as "deliverance"—on a church member, which left a lasting impression about spiritual authority and the nature of internal struggle.
  • Quote:
    "That's my father standing there, who is also serving as this incredibly powerful spiritual leader who has the ability to drag demonic forces and out of a person kicking and screaming." – Sammy Ramsey (08:46)

Coming to Terms with Sexuality

• As a teen, Sammy realized he was attracted to men, first confronting it via his feelings for a martial arts video game character.
• Internalized religious teachings interpreted his feelings as possible demonic influence, leading him to seek deliverance—not from his father, but anonymously at a youth revival in another state.
  • Memorable Moment:
    Sammy describes the pain and humiliation of being prayed over publicly for being “struggling with homosexuality.”
    (13:48–14:31)

Struggle, Faith, and Identity in College

• At Cornell, Sammy throws himself into faith groups, still hoping to “change,” but the moment of his first kiss with a male friend is transformative.

  • Quote:
    "Maybe there wasn't actually something wrong with me. Maybe this wasn't actually a demon. Maybe this was something innate that couldn't be prayed out of me because it's a part of who I am." – Sammy Ramsey (16:31)

• Rather than reject faith, Sammy approaches scripture with a scientific lens, seeking to reconcile his Christianity with his sexuality, finding a theology grounded in God’s love and diversity.

  • Quote:
    "What I kept seeing throughout Scripture was the beauty of diversity... God himself exists as three beings in one, embodying diversity in the very character of God." – Sammy Ramsey (22:20–23:56)

Coming Out to Family

• Sammy comes out to his mother on New Year’s Eve 2011; telling his father nearly a year later. His father reacts with shock, initial denial, and suggestions to “fix” Sammy, including more deliverance or even being with a woman.
  (26:48–31:10)

• Relations with his father become strained and distant post–coming out, while Sammy begins to find limited acceptance at church and among friends.

Acceptance and Rejection in Religious Community

• While a graduate student in Maryland, Sammy joins an evangelical church, finds a warm circle, and cautiously comes out to a few members — and finally to the pastor, who initially reassures him of his value and place.
  • Turning Point:
    When a street preacher outs him to his pastor, the pastor pivots, asking Sammy to stop speaking about his sexuality or leave the church.
  • Sammy is eventually “hard excommunicated”—banned completely from the church and social circle, leading to isolation and depression.
    • Quote:
      "Overnight, that entire community of people stopped speaking to me. So I just didn't have social connection anymore." – Sammy Ramsey (39:53)

Science as Refuge

• In the wake of excommunication, Sammy pours himself into research, unlocking breakthroughs in understanding colony collapse disorder by determining that a parasite liquifies the bees’ livers.
  • The success of his research is bittersweet, as it is born out of loneliness and exile.
    • Quote:
      "That experience at church hurt me in such a way, where it caused me to do something that was really great. But I can't look at what I achieved there and not feel a little bit conflicted about it, because that project came out of a lot of hurt." – Sammy Ramsey (42:20)

Reconciliation with His Father

• Pastor Ramsey, seeing his son’s pain, undergoes his own period of introspection, turning to scripture and ultimately embracing a theology of love and acceptance.

  • Quote:
    “Because you came out and said that you was a gay man and so on and so forth, you know, there's no reason for me not to love you anymore. If anything, for me to love you even more.” – Pastor Roosevelt Ramsey (46:05)

• Sammy and his father find profound mutual understanding, culminating in a deeply emotional moment:

  • Quote:
    “I said to my dad, I... 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?’” – Sammy Ramsey (47:40)

Family Embraces Sammy’s Whole Self

• In a culminating scene, Sammy’s family discusses his dating life openly, playfully critiquing profiles on Tinder as they would for any family member.

  • Memorable Moment:
    Sammy realizes his family has fully embraced all of him, treating his love life as just another part of family life. (48:13–49:39)

• Sammy’s father even takes up beekeeping under his son’s guidance, reflecting both acceptance and shared purpose.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “I didn’t choose the bug life, the bug life chose me.”
  Sammy Ramsey, introducing himself (01:15)
• On Deliverance:
  “Deliverance is this quirky word that we use... Through the deliverance of God, you can change that pattern of behavior... It’s the idea of expunging a demon from a person.” – Sammy Ramsey (07:44)
• On Interpreting Scripture:
  “I scienced the scripture.” – Sammy Ramsey (21:34)
• On Diversity in Theology:
  “That’s diversity, baby... God himself exists as three beings in one, embodying diversity in the very character of God.” – Sammy Ramsey (23:50–23:56)
• On Hard Excommunication:
  “Oh, I got hard excommunication… that entire community of people stopped speaking to me.” – Sammy Ramsey (39:50–39:53)
• On Family Acceptance:
  “With a son like you, how could I not?” – Pastor Roosevelt Ramsey (47:40)
• On Full Circle:
  "We have a relationship like never before." – Pastor Roosevelt Ramsey, on beekeeping with Sammy (49:51–50:20)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:02–02:36 – Episode introduction; Lulu Miller and Glenn Washington set the stage
• 02:37–06:01 – Sammy’s childhood, religious upbringing, and family
• 06:01–09:02 – Deliverance/exorcism witnessed as a child
• 09:46–14:31 – Struggling with sexuality; seeking deliverance
• 14:46–16:31 – First romantic experience and self-acceptance
• 20:26–26:48 – Turning to scripture; theological reconciliation
• 26:48–31:10 – Coming out to family; father’s reactions
• 31:42–33:21 – Grad school, finding partial acceptance in church
• 34:17–39:53 – Street preacher confrontation; excommunication
• 40:31–42:20 – Breakthrough in research born from isolation
• 42:50–47:45 – Reconciliation with father
• 48:13–49:39 – Family’s playful acceptance of Sammy’s love life
• 49:51–50:20 – Father becomes a beekeeper; family unity

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Tone and Style

The episode skillfully blends humor, vulnerability, and thoughtfulness. Sammy narrates his path with wit and scientific curiosity, even in painful moments. Lulu Miller, as interviewer and narrator, brings warmth and genuine wonder, while moments with Pastor Ramsey anchor the narrative in familial love, spiritual questioning, and ultimate growth.

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For Listeners

"Deliverance" is not just the story of one man’s coming out within a religious family, but a nuanced, hopeful meditation on what it means to seek authenticity—and to find acceptance—in spaces that may seem unyielding. The episode is as much a love letter to diversity, science, and faith as it is to the messiness and resilience of family.

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Highly recommended for listeners interested in stories about identity, religion, science, resilience, and love.

Transcript

[Glenn Washington]

Snap studios. 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 gonna be a very strange Radio Lab piece. And she says, no, no, no, no. It's kinda more in the Snap lane. What Lulu, do you mean, Are you suggesting. Could it be a Radio Lab snap judgment co production situation? Yes. Snap Nation. Today on Radio Snapper, SNAPLab, we proudly present Deliverance. And today's mashup episode begins with the always curious Lulu Miller, the host of Radiolab. It's about her friend slash fellow nerd, Sammy Ramsey. Samzi is a rock star entomologist.

[Sammy Ramsey]

I didn't choose the bug life, the bug life chose me.

[Glenn Washington]

Now a bug correspondent for Radiolab's kids show. Terrestrials, Terrestrials, Terrestrials.

[Lulu Miller]

We are not the worst.

[Sammy Ramsey]

We are the worst. Best reals, best reels.

[Lulu Miller]

Yeah.

[Glenn Washington]

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.

[Lulu Miller]

And we just suddenly, like, found ourselves in this really deep and surprising and intimate story. And I had never heard anything like it.

[Glenn Washington]

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.

[Sammy Ramsey]

There was some level of nervousness about it because I'm like, how could this impact me, especially in the very polarized context that we exist in now?

[Glenn Washington]

So he thought about it and he

[Sammy Ramsey]

realized authenticity is very important for me not to lose myself and I just have to lean in.

[Glenn Washington]

So, yes, this is a sciency story. You'll get a little bit about beetles and bees and other cool sciencey things. But the heart of this, this is about love. Radio Snap.

[Sammy Ramsey]

Take it away.

[Glenn Washington]

Lulu Miller.

[Lulu Miller]

Sammy grew up outside of D.C. and one of his favorite fashion choices was to wear his pet millipede around his neck to school.

[Sammy Ramsey]

I've always been quirky, you know, just that little kid with his elbows on the ground and his fists on his chin, staring into different books about insects and superhero comics. And I just really enjoyed that in so many of these books, there was just a world out there that was so vibrant and full of adventure, and no matter what, people always accepted the strange, quirky people. In the end, they always found their

[Lulu Miller]

place, which wasn't exactly how things went for Sammy.

[Sammy Ramsey]

When he got to middle school, I immediately didn't fit. Day one. It was just very, very, very clear that something was really different about me. People treated me like I was this very odd thing.

[Lulu Miller]

But instead of shrinking away when people

[Sammy Ramsey]

would say things about me and to me that were rude, I would jump back in with the rebuttal. I would point out that they were being problematic, and rud it bothered them enough that they stopped doing it.

[Lulu Miller]

So this is what age this is like, 12. 12. Okay. That's such a hard age. Where did that strength. Like, where do you think you got that? Where'd that come from?

[Sammy Ramsey]

Faith.

[Lulu Miller]

See, Sebi's not just the son of a preacher. He's the son of two preachers.

[Sammy Ramsey]

Two preachers. Preach a man, preach a woman. I mean, when we were little kids just learning our Alphabet, my parents taught us a scripture for every letter of the Alphabet.

[Lulu Miller]

No way.

[Sammy Ramsey]

I'm so serious. Like, we were literally like, A, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Romans 3:23. B, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. C, like, all the way through to

[Lulu Miller]

Z, My God, do you still know it in your head?

[Sammy Ramsey]

D, do unto others as you would have them do to you. E, encourage one another and build each other up. F, for I know the plans that I have for you, and they are plans of good and not evil.

[Pastor Roosevelt Ramsey]

Wow.

[Lulu Miller]

Wow. And so you're saying that, like, that just scripture was as basic as, like,

[Sammy Ramsey]

refrigerator magnets for everyone else, and they also provide you with this scaffolding that feels so objective. Do things this way, do things that way. I could recall all these scriptures to mind that would make it very clear to me how to behave in any particular situation.

[Lulu Miller]

Like, say, should your classmates be teasing you for being different? There was a scripture for that.

[Sammy Ramsey]

Romans 12, 2. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove that which is good and acceptable and the perfect will of God. Church was a refuge, literally.

[Lulu Miller]

Sammy's parents held church services in their living room.

[Sammy Ramsey]

Sure did.

[Lulu Miller]

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.

[Sammy Ramsey]

My dad would always say, all right, everybody, we're opening the doors of the church. And he would extend his hands, and my mom would sing, and. 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.

[Lulu Miller]

Sammy knew his dad to be pretty soft spoken, but suddenly he heard this shift in his voice.

[Sammy Ramsey]

He starts speaking directly to the evil spirit.

[Lulu Miller]

Whoa.

[Sammy Ramsey]

He says, in the name of Jesus, you will loose your hold on this man. Loose your hold.

[Lulu Miller]

Sammy says he can't be sure, but he believes the man had been struggling with drug abuse.

[Sammy Ramsey]

The man starts to shake he. 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.

[Pastor Roosevelt Ramsey]

Wow.

[Lulu Miller]

And is what's going on there similar to my concept as an outsider of an exorcism?

[Sammy Ramsey]

Yeah, so. So it totally is. Deliverance is this quirky word that we use in the Christian vernacular of there is a problem going on in your life. Through the deliverance of go, you can change that pattern of behavior. And so, for all intents and purposes, it serves the same purpose and is the same thing. It's the idea of the expunging of a demon from a person. So I'm a little kid sitting here next to my older brother, my older sister. It's hot. We are sitting in these green folding chairs. It's clear that there is a struggle here, and my dad is winning. And so he says, in the name of Jesus, I bind your works and your tactics against this man's life. You have no place here, you wicked and evil spirit. I cast you to the pit.

[Pastor Roosevelt Ramsey]

Wow.

[Lulu Miller]

And Sammy felt proud.

[Sammy Ramsey]

That's my father standing there, who is also serving as this incredibly powerful spiritual leader who has the ability to drag demonic forces and out of a person kicking and screaming.

[Lulu Miller]

Now, what was happening on the inside to the person being delivered, that was always a little murkier.

[Sammy Ramsey]

People are pretty quiet about it. And you just. For people that you already know, most people in the church have an idea of what that person is going up there for. Nobody had an idea of what I would be going up there for.

[Pastor Roosevelt Ramsey]

Hmm.

[Lulu Miller]

Did you go up?

[Sammy Ramsey]

Not for my dad. No. No, no, no, no. That was not. That was not a conversation that I was going to have with my dad. Not in that context. No. I went up at another church. In another town so that my family would never hear about it. Huh.

[Lulu Miller]

But you did go up.

[Sammy Ramsey]

Oh, absolutely. A brother needed prayer.

[Lulu Miller]

Sammy first noticed something was up when he was playing one of his favorite video games. This one. Martial arts one.

[Sammy Ramsey]

Google. Hwarang. H W A O R A N

[Lulu Miller]

G H W A. Okay, I'm getting there. Okay, here we go. Hwarang.

[Sammy Ramsey]

Oh, okay.

[Lulu Miller]

Please describe for me this slice of pixelated meat.

[Sammy Ramsey]

Lulu, you're killing me. It's him and his taekwondo regalia. You know, he's got the taekwondo pants and just the tiniest little shirt thing. It covers nothing. And I just as a little like, I don't know, like 12 year old kid or whatever playing this game. I was very. I was very aware there is something about this gentleman and his costumes that I like this. I was terrified that I was being oppressed by an evil spirit. I was terrified that this wasn't just me being a quote unquote, late bloomer or any of the other things that I told myself.

[Lulu Miller]

But as terrifying as it was to consider that an evil spirit may have truly entered his mind, that in some

[Sammy Ramsey]

ways helped me not like, crumble and be overwhelmed by all of this. Because to my mind, if it was external, it could be fixed. And so, in quite a bit of desperation and desire to make sure that I could continue living in a way that was quote unquote, right, I decided to get delivered myself.

[Lulu Miller]

Wait, wait, wait, wait. Why not go to your dad? He's like the. He's your dad and he's the best. He's great at it.

[Sammy Ramsey]

Lou, like, first of all, it's your dad. Like, as much approval as I had from my family, I still didn't feel like I was what my dad wanted me to be. Somebody who watched football with him and fixed cars with him and so on. I mean, he had told me actually on multiple occasions that, you know, this is how a man behaves by juxtaposition with the way that I was behaving. So I went to a church that had a youth revival.

[Lulu Miller]

This was a big event at a megachurch in a different state with a different pastor. And best of all, his parents did not come. And after a bunch of music and friendly hellos, the pastor stood up and welcomed anyone who wanted to get prayed for to step forward. And that was when Sammy took a deep breath and stepped forward to get delivered. Like, what did that walk feel like?

[Sammy Ramsey]

It was a long walk. I just. I was so afraid. So afraid. And so I kept walking, even though I wanted to stop Even though I was scared that somebody might see me or recognize me or figure something out. And when I got up front and had the opportunity to actually speak to the pastor himself, I could only whisper it. And I hated the fact. Hated with a capital H, no all caps. Hated the fact that he told the other people around him who were praying for me what they were praying for me about. This young man is struggling with homosexuality. I'm like, no.

[Lulu Miller]

Then down came the pastor's hand,

[Pastor Roosevelt Ramsey]

the

[Sammy Ramsey]

giant hand on the forehead. And then other people like holding onto me or touching me and like my shoulders and stuff. Most of the individuals praying for me were women aside from the pastor. And it was just very, very, very loud. And I cried. I cried a lot. I broke down. I like, I fell to my knees and I just wanted so badly to believe that it had worked.

[Lulu Miller]

Did it?

[Sammy Ramsey]

So story time.

[Lulu Miller]

I can't wait. Bath of popcorn. It's now, years later, Sammy has landed at Cornell University. He joins the campus ministry, Crusade for Christ.

[Sammy Ramsey]

I loved that campus ministry. It was full of the most touchy feely, emotionally vulnerable, sweet guys that I've ever met in my life.

[Lulu Miller]

In his junior year, he is hanging out with one of those guys from his ministry in his dorm room playing video games.

[Sammy Ramsey]

And he was a looker, just a tall, dashing gentleman with like the cutest amount of facial hair on his chin. These eyes that had like three different colors in them and there's like this orange oranginess in there.

[Lulu Miller]

It's just, it was orange tie dye eyes with a like little scruffy. I can't. Okay.

[Sammy Ramsey]

So we're, you know, playing video games and he starts goofing around with the controller, like hitting buttons. And I was like, hey, you are not helping. Okay. So he grabs me and picks me up and puts me like between his legs.

[Lulu Miller]

Uh huh.

[Sammy Ramsey]

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

[Lulu Miller]

prefer playing video games like in each other's laps.

[Sammy Ramsey]

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. And I was like,

[Lulu Miller]

hallelujah.

[Sammy Ramsey]

So that whole experience forced me to consider something that I was not ready to consider. But maybe there wasn't actually something wrong with me. Maybe this wasn't actually a demon. Maybe this was something innate that couldn't be prayed out of me because it's a part of who I am.

[Glenn Washington]

For as long as you can remember, faith has been Sammy's guide for doing the right thing. But what does he do now? Stay tuned. You know, I often think about that younger me, the guy who would howl in front of the ATM at the treachery of having his paycheck devoured by withdrawal fees, banking fees, fees on fees. That poor guy could have used Chime because Chime is fee free banking that changes the way people bank fee free and you get savings that grow faster with a 3.75% APY, nine times higher than the national average. And did I mention Chime Spotme, which lets you overdraft up to $200 fee free. I could have so used that Chime is not just smarter banking. It's the most rewarding way to bank. Join the millions who are already banking fee free today. Head to chime.com snap that is chime.com snap it only takes a few minutes to sign up. Chime is a fintech, not a bank. Banking services for MyPay and Chime card provided by Chime Bank's partners. Optional products and services may have fees or charges, stated annual percentage yield and cash back for Chime prime only. No minimum balance required. Checking account ranking based on a J.D. power survey published 10-20-20. For more information on APY rates, MyPay, Spot Me and travel perks, go to Chime.com disclosures Once upon a time I had an idea for a podcast business. We'd tell stories with music. It'd be great. But making stories? That was just one small part of running a business. The setups, the filming, the logos, the staffing, the contracts, everything. And finding the right tool to simplify everything can be a game changer for millions of businesses. That right tool is Shopify. Get started with your own design studio. With hundreds of ready to use templates, Shopify helps you build a beautiful online store that matches your brand style. Get the word out like you have a crack marketing team behind you. Easily create email and social media campaigns wherever your customers are scrolling or strolling. But what if you get stuck? Shopify is always around to share advice with their award winning 24. 7 customer support. Start your business today with the industry's best business partner, Shopify and start hearing. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at shopify.com snap go to shopify.com snap. That's shopify.com snap. Welcome back to Lap Judgment. Terrified that an evil spirit was oppressing him, Sammy went to get himself delivered. Then in college, Sammy experienced his first kiss.

[Lulu Miller]

It's at this point in the story that many people might turn away from the church, from the institution that rejects this core part of who they are. But Sammy, he turned toward it.

[Sammy Ramsey]

My mom has this gigantic study Bible. It is an epic Bible that everybody, like, who knows her, like, they know about this giant Bible that she opens that has multiple translations of Scripture side by side. So it's like having four Bibles rolled into one. As big as the Bible normally is. I swiped that Bible. I took it back with me to school and just was constantly going through it, trying to figure all of this out.

[Lulu Miller]

Page after page, night after night, reading

[Sammy Ramsey]

the Bible, amassing things like commentaries and concordances to help me understand this at as deep a level as I possibly could.

[Lulu Miller]

Wow, God, you're just a nerd in your wiring.

[Sammy Ramsey]

Oh, my gosh. Such a nerd.

[Lulu Miller]

Okay.

[Sammy Ramsey]

Such a nerd. It was the most science.

[Lulu Miller]

Let me read all the textbooks. Yeah, okay, Got it. Scripture science. Okay. You science the scripture.

[Sammy Ramsey]

I scienced the scripture.

[Lulu Miller]

What are you searching for and what do you find?

[Sammy Ramsey]

I found so much beauty in the love letter that's written to humanity from God.

[Lulu Miller]

What do you mean?

[Sammy Ramsey]

Well, I went in looking for legal text to explain to me what I could and couldn't do as someone who is attracted to men and is a man. And instead, I found something very different. What I kept seeing throughout Scripture was the beauty of diversity. See? And stay with me on this one.

[Lulu Miller]

Okay, I'm here.

[Sammy Ramsey]

So I was already in training to be an entomologist at the time. I was getting my undergraduate degree in entomology. So I started looking at what we know about God from biology. And you see that God absolutely loves diversity.

[Lulu Miller]

How so?

[Sammy Ramsey]

There's literally nothing that exists that God made one. Kind of. And it's so interesting for me to think about this. Was it holding? Who is asked, what do you know about God from biology? And his response was that God has an inordinate fondness for beetles.

[Pastor Roosevelt Ramsey]

Huh.

[Lulu Miller]

Because there's so many species.

[Sammy Ramsey]

So many species. There are more species of beetles than there are birds, fish, and mammals combined together.

[Pastor Roosevelt Ramsey]

No.

[Sammy Ramsey]

Which is insane to think about because I'm not saying there's more insects than them. Just the beetles.

[Lulu Miller]

That's one category that is bonkers.

[Pastor Roosevelt Ramsey]

So.

[Sammy Ramsey]

So when you think about that bonkers ness, I want you to consider what it says about a God who would spend that kind of time caring about that level of diversity and then thinking about how important diversity is, that it would even be a core value with God, such that it's built into God's character himself. The Bible says that God exists as three beings in one. So even within the existence of God, there is diversity built in.

[Lulu Miller]

So you're saying, like, the Son, Father,

[Sammy Ramsey]

and the Holy Spirit. That's diversity, baby.

[Glenn Washington]

Wow.

[Pastor Roosevelt Ramsey]

Wow.

[Sammy Ramsey]

Yep.

[Lulu Miller]

I've never heard that take. That's a great take.

[Sammy Ramsey]

This one's a Sammy original. God himself exists as three beings in one, embodying diversity in the very character of God. And the Bible says very clearly that God is love. So what space do we have to even think for a moment that love itself would not be diverse?

[Lulu Miller]

And as Sammy kept reading the Bible and commentaries about familiar stories, he started finding all kinds of new interpretations.

[Sammy Ramsey]

You see David and Jonathan with a love deeper than the romantic love that he has felt for his more than one wife. And you also see something really beautiful in the story of Ruth and Naomi, where Ruth says, please don't ask me to leave you, because wherever you go, I will go. Wherever you sleep, I will always sleep. But when I was mulling over these ideas, I remember one of my friends, Justin, saying to me, well, maybe the Bible doesn't say anything in favor of what you're looking for, like a loving gay relationship. And it says a lot of things in favor of straight people. I was like, oh, okay, yeah, maybe you're right there. But that didn't really last for very long because as I read through Scripture, I did see myself represented.

[Lulu Miller]

Then he reread the book of Samuel.

[Sammy Ramsey]

It's in the book that is my namesake, the person that I'm named after. And God says to Samuel, man looks at the outward appearance, but I am God, and I look at the heart. And that moment of me recognizing, like, so much of that I've thought of myself as quirky and different. Those things don't actually matter. What about my heart? What about the core of who I am? What about my character and the seat of my character? And what drives the way that I behave and how I interact with other people? So what reason would I have theologically to distance myself from a context in which I can truly be authentic, in which I can truly express the beautiful, diverse love that's embodied in who God is? What reason do I have to push that away? Well, people's disapproval. And am I going to allow other people's disapproval to actually guide the way that I live my life. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove that which is good and acceptable and the perfect will of God. Romans 12:2. I was finally ready to tell my.

[Glenn Washington]

My mom.

[Lulu Miller]

He chose New Year's Eve 2011. The ball had dropped, and the rest of the family had gone to bed.

[Sammy Ramsey]

She was sitting next to me. I stared straight forward. I tried to manage all of my internal bodily functions because I was burping out of nervousness. I was like, okay, I have to say this. And she looked a bit. What's the word? Concerned. I was not even remotely surprised when she said, so you're gonna be the one to tell your father this? And I'm like, oh, I know, I know. And so think about this. It was New Year's Eve when I told my mom. It was November when I told my dad.

[Lulu Miller]

Almost a year.

[Sammy Ramsey]

Almost an entire year. When I told my dad. Everyone was worried. My sister was worried, and she was like, sammy, I don't think you should do this alone. I want to be there. And my mom was like, I want to be there too. My brother was like, guys, I think you need to let Sammy handle this one by himself. Like, this needs to be a man to man kind of thing. And I was like, look, I'll take all the help I can get. Come on, y'. All. So my sister and my mom and I piled into my parents bedroom. My dad was on the bed and

[Lulu Miller]

wait, is this sneak attack like he's about to go to bed?

[Sammy Ramsey]

Yep. You know, I.

[Lulu Miller]

He's like in his jammies and you

[Sammy Ramsey]

just are like, lulu, these were not the best choices. I knew. No, hey, no.

[Lulu Miller]

I'm just trying to get the scene.

[Sammy Ramsey]

I'm not judging, you know, dad looked like he was in a good enough mood, so I was like, hey, Dad, I have something to tell you. He looked at my mom, he looked at my sister, and he said, no. My mom shook her head like, yeah, Roosevelt, he's gay. This look overcame him of, like, shock and then embarrassment. And then he picked up a pillow and put it over. Whoa. He didn't have a lot to say that evening, and my dad didn't accept

[Lulu Miller]

that at all, which made things hard at home, where Sammy was still living at the time.

[Sammy Ramsey]

We weren't talking very much. And after I'd come out to him even less than that because he was so uncomfortable with me. He couldn't even look at me when we would talk. He would just kind of look down or look up or look away.

[Lulu Miller]

There was this stony silence to his father. Sammy said, although every so often he'd break out of it.

[Sammy Ramsey]

He tried to talk me out of it. He brought up Sodom and Gomorrah. He brought up a few other scriptures. And my mom shook her head like, ooh, don't try that one. I tried that one.

[Lulu Miller]

One time, he gave Sammy a book to read.

[Sammy Ramsey]

It was a very fiery evangelical book about the evils of homosexuality.

[Lulu Miller]

Another time, he popped into Sammy's room with an idea.

[Sammy Ramsey]

He said, sammy, do you think you might need to, you know, experience something with a woman first, and then, you know, that that'll fix things? I was like, are you suggesting that I find a house of ill repute and pay some money for this experience? He's suggesting that he would help me find a context. And I was like, okay, dad. And this is not one of his. This is a moment where he feels like he was very much acting outside of his character. But he was panicking because he thought that my immortal soul was in danger. And I was like, dad, wouldn't you consider that a sin? He said, yeah, but it's a smaller sin than if you go out here and you live a life of sin with another man. My sister hit the roof, so that didn't go well.

[Lulu Miller]

And finally, Sammy's dad begged him to try Deliverance.

[Sammy Ramsey]

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.

[Lulu Miller]

And with that, father and son went back to their separate corners.

[Sammy Ramsey]

In a lot of ways, I just. 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.

[Lulu Miller]

When Sammy got to graduate school, I

[Sammy Ramsey]

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.

[Lulu Miller]

And 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.

[Sammy Ramsey]

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 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.

[Lulu Miller]

And this is how it went for the next few months. If Sammy wasn't at the lab at school studying tiny honeybee parasites, he was at church with his friends.

[Sammy Ramsey]

And it literally wasn't until a fateful encounter with a street preacher that things went downhill.

[Glenn Washington]

After the break, Sammy faces off with a street preacher on campus. Stay tuned. Welcome back to a special Snap Judgment Radiolab Marriage the Deliverance episode. My name is Glenn Washington. When last we left, Sammy joined a church with a pastor who gave him the embrace that his father did not. But then he found himself in a moral face off with a street preacher.

[Lulu Miller]

Sammy was strolling through campus.

[Sammy Ramsey]

There was a street preacher who was heckling students who walked by and using the Bible to do so. If he saw somebody that didn't look like the straight laced version of a Christian that he thought someone should, he would single them out and start throwing scriptures at them and telling them that they need to repent. So I decided to stand next to him. And when he would throw out scriptures that were unloving and uncaring, I would counter with the scripture that affirmed God's love for them. He was not pleased. But then when he realized that I capped it up with the scripture at the end, he was like, well, I guess I can't push back against that.

[Lulu Miller]

But when the street preacher targeted someone passing by that he assumed to be Gay.

[Sammy Ramsey]

Then he turned to me and he was like, no, no, no, no, no, that one's gay. And I was like, gay people are loved by God too. And he was like, what are you talking about? Where do you go to church? Who would let you believe that gay people are loved by God as they are? They need to change. I was like, we do not need to change. I am gay and my pastors at church are aware of that. And he was like, who are your pastors? And I'm over here all big and bold and brazing them. He think he going to say something

[Glenn Washington]

me to my pastors that they don't know.

[Sammy Ramsey]

And he's like, I've got to call them. I've got to call them. I'll let the whole denomination know. So the next day I get a call from my pastor, and he simply tells me that he would like for me to come to his office that day if possible. And so I show up at the church. I walk in, I'm not worried, I'm not bothered. I mean, it's. It's church. This is my space. But when I walk into his office and see the look on his face, I realize there's a problem. And he said, I got this voicemail and I immediately think, this can't be about the street preacher, can it be? And then he tells me, sammy, this has been a problem for a while, and I just haven't wanted to say anything. I was like, what do you mean? He was like, I've had more than one conversation with people at this church. After I preached my sermon about homosexuality, more than one person came to me and said, well, in your sermon, you said that you can't be gay and be a Christian, but Sammy's gay and he very clearly loves Jesus. So it doesn't really seem like that's true. People know that you're sharper than me. You're getting your PhD. So when you say stuff, people listen to you. He said, how am I supposed to run a church if people are questioning whether I understand the Bible properly?

[Glenn Washington]

It's like,

[Sammy Ramsey]

So what would you.

[Pastor Roosevelt Ramsey]

How.

[Sammy Ramsey]

Where would we go from here? And he said, you need to stop talking about homosexuality and you need to stop telling people that you're a gay person, that you're same sex attracted. Like, this entire subject, I'm putting the kibosh to it. You're not talking about this anymore at our church. I was like, are you asking me to go back into the closet? I was like, you do know that that's an impossible decision Right. He's like, sammy, that or I'm going to need you to leave now. I wanted to tell people about what happened. I wanted to tell people so that they would understand what occurred.

[Lulu Miller]

But Sammy never got the chance to do that.

[Sammy Ramsey]

So he called all church meeting. And one of my friends, knowing what was about to occur, took me out of town so that I wouldn't be around when it happened.

[Lulu Miller]

But later, Sammy gets a text on his phone. It's a video of the pastor at this church meeting.

[Sammy Ramsey]

He told everybody that I was a danger to Christian community because I had been ensnared in sexual sin.

[Glenn Washington]

Wow.

[Sammy Ramsey]

And it was really, really tough to hear someone else take the liberty to tell my story because I was only out to a handful of people at the church at the time. To hear someone take that and declare it to an entire group of hundreds of people, and it really tore me up.

[Lulu Miller]

When. When do you tell your parents that you've been excommunicated?

[Sammy Ramsey]

Immediately. I went home and I cried. And my mom and dad, of course, wanted to understand why, because I was a grown man at what, 25, crying in their house, and. And I told them what happened. And they were upset.

[Lulu Miller]

His mom comforted him, clearly felt bad that her son was hurting. And his dad, he looked really angry, which Sammy figured was his quiet agreement with that pastor.

[Sammy Ramsey]

After that, no one from that church continued associating with me. And that's part of how excommunication tends to work. There's like soft excommunication where you can continue to at least show up, but you don't get to be officially a member at a church. And then there's hard excommunication where you can't even come to the church itself.

[Lulu Miller]

Wait, and which one? Which one?

[Sammy Ramsey]

Oh, I got hard excommunication.

[Lulu Miller]

Oh, my God.

[Pastor Roosevelt Ramsey]

Yeah.

[Sammy Ramsey]

Yeah. And so overnight, that entire community of people stopped speaking to me. So I just didn't have social connection anymore. Didn't know how I would reestablish social connection and just felt really sad and depressed. So I threw myself into my graduate school work. I was at the university all day, every day, sometimes doing 18 hour days where at the end of the day, like, there was nothing to do but sleep.

[Lulu Miller]

All this time, Sammy had been working on a theory for his doctorate thesis.

[Sammy Ramsey]

I was trying to figure out what was leading to these massive die offs in honeybee colonies.

[Lulu Miller]

Colony collapse disorder, maybe you remember this. It was a big mystery over a decade ago, and people had come up with all kinds of conspiracy theories about why bees were Dying off. Maybe it was secret government activity, activities or cell phones. But Sammy, along with many other scientists, believed that at least one of the culprits was a parasite, a little parasitic mite that was somehow infecting the bees.

[Sammy Ramsey]

In addition to that, in order to test that theory, I had to find a way to raise those parasites in the lab, which is something that people haven't been able to do. We had an old rickety incubator that sometimes would go down, and you had to be there in case it did to reset it or all of your mites would die. And it was something that took constant trial and error over and over and over of me trying different things and babysitting these mites, constantly being there.

[Lulu Miller]

And not only did he manage to keep these little critters alive, but I

[Sammy Ramsey]

was able to get them to reproduce in the lab. I was able to get them to survive in this context that I made of an in vitro rearing system for them.

[Lulu Miller]

This was a really big breakthrough. Sammy was actually one of the people to crack the case for why so many bees were dying.

[Sammy Ramsey]

It was my research on these parasites that showed that they're actually liquefying the bee's liver and sucking that out of their body. And I was able to achieve something.

[Lulu Miller]

You're like an unparalleled scientist and human and science communicator, and it's a rare career. And it's sort of like to picture some of that starting out of that loneliness and that exile is really hard.

[Sammy Ramsey]

It's a big chunk of the origin story. I look back on that constantly and think, man, that experience at church hurt me in such a way, where it caused me to do something that was really great. But I can't look at. At what I achieved there and not feel a little bit conflicted about it, because that project came out of a lot of hurt.

[Lulu Miller]

And somewhere along the way, as he was focusing on all these little bugs, his phone lights up with a text message from his dad saying, I need

[Sammy Ramsey]

to talk to you. My dad and I weren't having a lot of conversation. We weren't talking very much, so I wasn't expecting anything good. When he sent me that text message, he said, come on, let's go to the Olive Garden, which is his favorite restaurant in the world. We got to the Olive Garden, and he told me that he'd been doing some thinking and that he was really, really upset about what had happened to me at that church.

[Pastor Roosevelt Ramsey]

I was kind of, you know, feeling your pain, what you were going through, and so on forth. You know, you can feel that, you know, coming from another person if they're going through a certain ordeal or whatever in life.

[Lulu Miller]

This, of course, is Sammy's dad, Pastor Roosevelt Ramsey.

[Pastor Roosevelt Ramsey]

You have a tendency to feel a pain, and especially somebody. Someone close to you, like your son. I was hurt too, you know, that they would do things, this thing to you.

[Sammy Ramsey]

And he told me that he was really upset with my pastor for the ways that he had talked about me being a gay man.

[Pastor Roosevelt Ramsey]

Well, my thoughts about him is that time he just really didn't go to the Lord and, you know, asked God, what's going on here?

[Sammy Ramsey]

And I was kind of confused at this point. I was like, dad, this is. He used the exact same language that you use. When I did come out to you, you came in my room. You asked me to consider, you know, changing. You asked me to consider getting prayed for, getting delivered. You asked me to consider, like, all of these ways of not being gay. And it made me feel pretty distant from you at that time.

[Pastor Roosevelt Ramsey]

And point you. You know, my feelings, my emotions, all that stuff was all out there, you know, so when this hit me, man, it was like a meteor or something come out of space and boom, you know. But that's why I had to pray and ask God, you know, to help me in this situation. And what happened after that, you know, then I began to feel different about it. You know,

[Sammy Ramsey]

I think it just really, really got to him to see me so sad. And he explained that that forced him into introspection. It forced him to recognize the same way that that pastor was treating you. I've been treating you. And so I couldn't be mad at him without being mad at myself.

[Lulu Miller]

And then, unbeknownst to Sammy at the time, Pastor Ramsay did the same thing that Sammy had done. He went to the Bible searching for guidance.

[Pastor Roosevelt Ramsey]

The Bible.

[Sammy Ramsey]

If you look into the Bible, it's

[Pastor Roosevelt Ramsey]

all a great big love story.

[Sammy Ramsey]

Amen to that.

[Pastor Roosevelt Ramsey]

Yeah. How God loved us, and that's how we are supposed to love each other, you know, and it becomes. Because you came out and said that you was a gay man and so on and so forth, you know, there's no reason for me not to love you anymore. If anything, for me to love you even more.

[Sammy Ramsey]

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.

[Pastor Roosevelt Ramsey]

Awesome. God, don't operate. Don't operate like that. God is about love. You know,

[Sammy Ramsey]

He had told me that he was. I guess at this point, you could call it coming around. But I feel like. 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. I didn't. 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?

[Pastor Roosevelt Ramsey]

Mm.

[Sammy Ramsey]

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. This is how people find people now. And I'm like, this is weird. I don't know that I like this.

[Lulu Miller]

So, like, Grindr.

[Sammy Ramsey]

Although, no, I can't.

[Lulu Miller]

I don't know. Okay, what, like eharmony, Christian, gay?

[Sammy Ramsey]

I don't know about that either. We've gone too far in either direction.

[Pastor Roosevelt Ramsey]

Okay.

[Lulu Miller]

Okay.

[Sammy Ramsey]

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, yeah, he seemed.

[Lulu Miller]

Wait, they're looking at your Tinder. You're, like, swiping.

[Sammy Ramsey]

Well, they asked me about this guy, and I was like, well. And so I open up Tinder, and they. You know, there's this flurry of excitement. 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 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, school teachers always broke. I don't know that you want to end up being 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. We are broke all the time. We never have any money. And just that moment of realization that my entire family is comfortable enough with this subject, that they treated me the exact same way that they did with my older brother. Something about that was just incredible.

[Glenn Washington]

A very, very big thank you to Sammy Ramsey and Pastor Roosevelt Ramsey for sharing their story. And a fun fact is that Sammy turned his father onto bees.

[Pastor Roosevelt Ramsey]

Oh, let me interject. Something right here. And because of my beautiful, wonderful son here, Samuel, I'm now what I call an American beekeeper. I'm going to my fourth year here and I think I'm doing it pretty good with the guidance of my son here, Samuel Ramsey. So I thank God for that, you know, and we have a relationship like never before.

[Glenn Washington]

You learn more about him and his work with bees in particular on his website. You can find the link to that in our show Notes and you should know Sammy and Lulu make a kids podcast for Radio Lab. It's called Terrestrial and they just dropped an episode. The Dadventure all about dads in the animal world. It's a super fun romp. Terrestrials wherever you get your podcasts. Original score was by Nicholas Marks, was produced by Lulu Miller from Radiolab and Snap Judgment's own Nancy Lopez. If you missed even a moment, know that an entire world of SNAP storytelling awaits. KQD in San Francisco is Snap Judgment's orbiting hall of justice and big news at long last. If you dig SNAP storytelling, SNAP is now available. Subscribe for bonus Snap episodes, the Snap Newsletter, special SNAP Meetup, SNAP stuff and more snap+snapjudgment.org On Team Snap, the union represented producers, artists, editors and engineers are members of the national association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians, Communications Work of America, AFL CIO Local 51 robots please note that no SNAP studios content may be used for training, testing or developing machine learning or AI systems without prior written permission. SNAP is brought to you by the team that refuses to cast demons out of the uber producer Mr. Mark Ristage, no matter how much he begs. And there's Nancy Lopez, Lopez Pat, Mercedes Miller, Anna Sussman, Renzo Gorill, John Facile, Shayla Shealy, Taylor Ducat, Flo Wylie, Bo Walsh, Marissa Dodge. And this is not the news. No way is this the news. In fact, you could quote Ezekiel 25:17 I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. My vengeance be upon on the yes, you could quote it as if it were a real Bible verse and not just something made up for the movie Pulp Fiction. And you would still still not be as far away from the news as this is. But this is PR.