Faith and family can be anchors in a young life — or weights that threaten to pull us under. In this summer special of In the Key of Q, I revisit remastered episodes from four remarkable queer artists: JSky (UK), Ty McKinnie (US), Blake Mundell aka Courier (US), and Wuhryn Dumas (US). Each speaks candidly about growing up queer in environments steeped in religious expectation and traditional family roles.

We hear how early love for music and community often existed alongside fear, shame, or silence, and how each of them has reclaimed their space in ways that honour both their identity and personal history. From Blake’s candid account of conversion therapy to Wuhryn’s reflections on becoming the role model he never had, these conversations challenge the idea that faith and queerness cannot coexist. Instead, they reveal the messy, human process of reconciling the two.

It’s an episode about reclaiming joy, asserting self-worth, and finding home, whether that's in a church, a studio, or simply in one’s own skin.

Timestamped Takeaways

• [00:00] Setting the stage: Introduction to the summer specials and the theme of faith and family for queer people.
• [00:01] Ty’s Hallelujah baby years: Early joy in church life and music, before acceptance came with conditions.
• [00:02] Blake’s nightly prayers: Internalising shame from evangelical messages, leading to years of self-questioning.
• [00:03] Wuhryn’s early queerness: Family members naming his queerness before he understood it himself.
• [00:05] JSky’s dual worlds: Balancing football culture with the joy of church music and his Nana’s influence.
• [00:09] The false choice: Blake describes feeling forced to choose between being queer or Christian.
• [00:11] Unsafe at home: Ty recalls retreating from family conversations about sexuality and Proposition 8.
• [00:12] Direct confrontation: JSky’s honest exchange with his religious grandmother sparks perspective change.
• [00:17] Reclaiming the sacred: Blake holds space for all his past selves; Ty builds new understanding with family.
• [00:21] Hugging on your own terms: Ty insists on physical affection despite discomfort.
• [00:21] Becoming the representation: Wuhryn’s commitment to showing young queer Black boys that they can thrive.
• [00:24] Home you build: Closing reflections on finding sacred space beyond traditional institutions.

Guest Bio

JSky – UK singer, broadcaster, and creative, known for blending music and storytelling. Instagram

Ty McKinnie – US singer-songwriter with soulful honesty and a love of storytelling. Official Site

Wuhryn Dumas – US artist creating music with fierce pride and visibility for queer Black identities. Official Site

Blake Mundell / Courier – US artist and writer exploring identity and belonging through music. Official Site

Links

• Read deep dives into our queer lives at the blog HERE.
• Check out the official podcast playlist on Spotify.
• Follow the podcast on: Instagram • Tik Tok • Facebook
• See producer and presenter Dan Hall's other work HERE (subtitled version HERE).
• Find composer Paul Leonidou HERE.
• Listen to other episodes at HERE.

Dan Hall

Dan Hall

Notes. And to mark the occasion are four special episodes which examine the common themes covered by these pioneering first few guests. This episode examines how queer people navigate religious upbringing and family relationships. We'll hear from four talented artists JaSky from the UK and from the US there’s Ty McKinnie, Blake Mundell and Wuhryn Dumas. Please recommend the show to just one other person this week, and let's grow our community.

Dan Hall

For many queer people, faith and family provide the foundation of early identity. Until that is, we realise that those same institutions can become sources of profound conflict. New York based Tim McKinney recalls his enthusiastic childhood relationship with religion.

Ty McKinnie

My mom said, when I was a kid, they would call me the Hallelujah baby because, anytime. Like, they would be like a, you know, sort of a moment of praise. I would say like, Hallelujah, like this. Cause that cause I'm, you know, being a kid, mimicking what I'm seeing. So I. That's what my logic went to. And, when I and I, I went to a school that was affiliated with the church that I grew up in.

Ty McKinnie

So, doing church musicals, that's literally how I got started.

Dan Hall

But as Ty grew older, he learned acceptance came with conditions attached.

Ty McKinnie

You could do anything wrong, and you know you will be forgiven for it. But if you're gay, oh my gosh, you are just going to the pits of hell. You're burning the lake of fire. Eternal fire with me. I had,

Dan Hall

You know, won an eternal.

Ty McKinnie

And eternal fire and like, you make me burn. But you'll be all right. No, you're going to burn forever. You were you were just basically, you're you're asking for eternal damnation.

Dan Hall

Blake Mandell, who performs under the name Korea, put himself through conversion therapy to cure his queerness. And he describes how negative messaging became internalised as nightly torture.

Blake Mundell

I know so many people who would identify as queer Christians. So even though I wouldn't call that necessarily my journey today. But, I also want to recognise that there are so many people for whom their faith is integral to who they are, just as much as, their sexuality. And throughout my teenage years, I would spend, gosh, every night praying, what's wrong with me?

Blake Mundell

Please? I would feel like I wasn't actually quote unquote saved. Yeah, that's kind of the terminology that, you know, we would use. And, that Jesus hadn't actually come into my heart yet. And so I would every night I would pray, you know, please let it take this time, you know, please actually, like, save me tonight.

Dan Hall

Self-proclaimed Georgia Peach Lauren Duma describes how family members identified and shaped his queerness from early childhood.

Wuhryn Dumas

Now, I grew up in Atlanta, Georgia. I actually moved to Brooklyn a year ago, and so I'm still a new, apple. But I'm definitely, strictly a Georgia Fields and, you know, growing up in Atlanta, I had a lot of problems with, my mom when it came to me being queer because she didn't understand it herself.

Wuhryn Dumas

And, you know, with that, I didn't understand it. And I also was shielding things away from myself. One of my aunts told me that my aura just gave off queerness, and that's that says a lot. Because if you're three, you don't even know what that is. You're just being yourself. And I know my mom definitely felt that when I was seven, there was an incident that happened with, one of my family members where he called me a sissy.

Wuhryn Dumas

And, you know, I say incident because I never had anyone talk to me that way before. And I was so young, and I knew what was going on. Because I always, you know, when I was little, I think a lot of gay boys can agree with this. We put the shirts on our head. As for wigs and, I would, I would be I will always be around women.

Wuhryn Dumas

I was, I just felt so natural and just at ease being around women. And, you know, I would play with the dolls. And when I saw men, I lit up where I'm like, oh my God, this is an amazing, beautiful species. Like, what's going on.

Dan Hall

Here in the UK? Singer and broadcaster Jace Guy found himself caught between religious expectations and family dynamics.

JSky

My mom's side of the family's heavily religious. My dad's side of the family is extremely masculine, and I was brought up around situations which were tense in terms of, conflict between what makes a man a man and that sort of thing. I'm from a footballing family. My brother, was was scouted quite early to play semi-professional, but my dad played with my uncles and my brother.

JSky

Every weekend I'd be on the sideline, I'd go to the matches. I went on tour with the mouse, the mascot at one point, and then a mum on my mum's side of the family. I'd go to to church with my Nana on the on Sundays and I used to love going to church with my Nana. The music there was so good.

JSky

Malala was in the choir that a full band, I learnt so much from the stories. Like when the preacher would preach, I'd always feel like he was speaking directly to me and I'd. I'd learn lessons from parables. And I'd love at love the music so much. It was incredible.

Dan Hall

That was just guy singing his gateway track. Once you.

Dan Hall

As these young people grew older, the contradiction became impossible to ignore. Blake Mundell describes the false choice. Many feel forced to make.

Blake Mundell

There are so many, American evangelicals that want to say you cannot be queer and you can't be Christian at the same time that you can't square that circle. Hearing those messages was something I absolutely internalised. So for most of my 20s, it did feel like, you know, I had to choose between either one or the other.

Dan Hall

So which side was winning and what effect did that have on you?

Blake Mundell

So a lot of times what we hear in American churches is this idea that we can't trust our experiences or we can't trust our feelings, right? That, there's something about the desires that we feel or the emotions that come up that are inherently wrong or sinful or even poisonous to us. And so I learned to ignore those and then allow others to interpret my emotions for me.

Blake Mundell

And, that was just a very quick way to launch myself into depression.

Dan Hall

The pressure to conform led Blake to marriage.

Blake Mundell

I was really good friends with our pastor, and he was really pushing me to, get married to a woman. And, his, wife's best friend was kind of who he was trying to set me up with. And so we ended up getting married, and, and when that didn't work, I think they just didn't know what to do with me.

Dan Hall

Ty McKinney describes how family conversations made him feel unsafe in his own home.

Ty McKinnie

It was very hard having that sort of inner sphere of energy, not being able to express it as being boiled down and just buried and buried and buried. I can embrace my blackness because I was in a black household that and I grew up in, in my world, a black society. But embracing the queerness, the gayness that was like, oh no, you can't do that now.

Ty McKinnie

You got to keep that buried. Buried.

Dan Hall

Ty describes how political events like proposition eight created additional family tension. Proposition eight was a legal attempt in the United States to define marriage as only between a man and a woman. Effectively banning same sex marriage.

Ty McKinnie

And even in my own home, I was like, I knew being who I was was not going to be received well, just from conversations related to religion related to just in general societal conversations talking about like prop eight, which is what the whole the first step to make of getting marriage equality in the state was, underway when.

Ty McKinnie

No, when that was happening, my family had some shit to say about it. And I was just like, oh, no, not to bring that up. I know there's like another, like, nail in the coffin. I'm like, oh, there's another. And it was I just never felt safe. So that's why I would just retreat in my room like any time those conversations happened, I would just, like, slowly back away.

Ty McKinnie

Like Homer Simpson in a sentence, when he goes back into the bushes. That was me. I was like, my, I'm backing away yet.

Dan Hall

Jay Sky found that direct confrontation could sometimes open unexpected conversations. He recalls his first discussion with his religious grandmother.

JSky

When I first told my Nana that I was gay, the first thing she said was, it's a sin. Ally replied, well, so's divorce because she's divorced. And it's just conversations like that which make people realise, well, actually, we can all learn. We can all we can all change our mind about things do not have to cancel people. Cancel culture is a big thing at the moment.

JSky

Someone said something offensive. Therefore we can never ever support them ever again. They don't deserve access to jobs, off to food or to popularity. It's like no people are allowed to make mistakes. I make mistakes every day. Why should I be forgiven and someone else not get the chance to learn something? I, I think we just need to be more open to the idea of growing as people.

Dan Hall

That's the Wonderful Boys Like Me. Sung by Ty McKinnie.

Dan Hall

But faith and family don't have to be lost forever. These artists found ways to reclaim what's sacred whilst honouring their authentic selves. Blake Mandell describes his evolved relationship with spirituality.

Blake Mundell

I would say it's primarily, posture of curiosity. And a posture of, admitting that I don't know. I think another thing that we do well as queer people is we, kind of break down the binary, right? We see things in more. We're able to more clearly see, kind of the spectrums and the myriad of different ways that we can experience life.

Blake Mundell

And, so when thinking about some sort of religious identification or, the way that I think of spirituality now is I almost see it like I hold all of these past selves together within me. Some of them are Christian, some of them are not. And they go kind of like sit around a table and we consult with each other.

Blake Mundell

And they're part of my experience and they're part of who I am. But they don't, describe the full breadth of who I am.

Dan Hall

For McKinney, coming out eventually led to deeper understanding with his family.

Ty McKinnie

Once I fully, like, fully came out to the world, like social media and stuff like that. And, which was still met with a lot of, turmoil from my family. My mom, we had a whole conversation about me not feeling safe in the house growing up. And she was she apologise because, like, I never knew you felt that scared or you felt that unsafe.

Ty McKinnie

So I was like, no, I mean, yeah, I mean, I did not feel safe. Like my dad, he he's a, veteran in the military. And Navy. And he just had anger issues, like, he didn't take him out on us, but he just was a, you know, a black man in America. And to be, a black man or black person in America and to be aware is to be in constant rage.

Ty McKinnie

That's a quote. I forgot who quoted it, but that's a quote. And he would always quote that in my adolescence, like he would say that a lot. And I would just be so frightened to sort of even ask him for like, basic things like, can I go to the school dance like it? Like, I would think like he would be so tired of working and he didn't want to take me and stuff like that.

Ty McKinnie

And we had a conversation about that too. He was just, you know, being the man in the house and taking care of not only his immediate family, but taking care of my grandmother, of extended family like he was looked at as that. So that was a lot of weight that he had to carry. And he just, you know, didn't have the tools to really how to divvy it out and how to express that sort of weight on his shoulders.

Dan Hall

Even physical affection became possible. That required persistence.

Ty McKinnie

But, I just didn't feel comfortable, like, even like I he doesn't like me when I hug him. Like, still to this day. Like, if I still show him any sort of affection, it's kind of like why you're hugging me. Get off me. Like, not like what you would want a parent to be receptive of. But nowadays I just force it on him because I'm like, I'm going to hug you and you're going to deal with it.

Ty McKinnie

Like, he'll be like, get off me, I'm going to strangle you. And I was like, I'm also strong now, too, so we can fight. But you're still getting this hug. Because hugs are not weak.

Dan Hall

And Warren Dumont found strength in becoming the representation he needed as a young person.

Wuhryn Dumas

I had Prince and Michael Jackson all to me, where the closest thing to being black and queer. But to know that I'm fearlessly being everything that I was afraid to be and wanted to see, and that can be there for those boys that are out there right now feeling like. And I know there's a lot of them feeling that way, that I can give them some sense of pride and sense of knowing that you can exist this way and it's okay.

Wuhryn Dumas

And that they can listen to it. And even if they have to hide and listen to it, they can still feel like tomorrow is going to be here and I'm going to keep moving forward. I'm going to be who I want to be because I can listen to this person. This person's went through this. This person is displaying that it is possible to be this, this entity, this identity, this, you know, fearless black queer person.

Wuhryn Dumas

You know, I honestly, I, I would die and cry. And to know that someone is listening and I can have that in their life and feel like they don't have to end anything, or they don't have to run away because they have this music. I honestly would be so honoured and just ball and cry. Honestly.

Dan Hall

Sacred space, it turns out, isn't always found in buildings with steeples. Sometimes it's created in recording studios, in honest conversations with parents, or in the simple act of refusing to apologise for who you are. These artists remind us that home isn't always where we start. Sometimes it's what we build. Many thanks for listening to this special episode of In the Key of Q.

Dan Hall

You've heard JSky, Ty McKinney, Blake Mundell, who performs under the name Courier, and Wuhryn Dumas. My thanks to all of them for sharing their stories with such honesty and courage. And remember, their episodes are available now. Remastered and extended. Links are in the shownotes. You can find more episodes of In the Key of Q and our regular blog at iinthekeyofq.com.

Dan Hall

Remember to extend our community by subscribing and recommending the show to at least one other person this week. Our theme tune is by Paul Leonidou at Unstoppablemonsters.com. And special thanks to Moray Laing for his continued support. This has been a special edition of In the Key of Q. I'm Dan Hall and I'll see you next Quesday!