In memory of Ben Whitehouse (1979-2025)

Content warning: death, homophobia

In late 2022, my friend Ben went with his theatre bestie Beccy to see a musical about the televangelist Tammy Faye who died of colon cancer. This prompted Ben to get a check-up, after which he was diagnosed with stage 4 anal cancer. The cancer eventually killed him on 25 March 2025 at the age of 46.

I first met Ben in the summer of 2004 after graduating from university. Hoping to find more gay friends, I joined the Young Lesbian and Gay Christian email group. Ben reached out and we quickly connected. A few months later, Ben set me up on a blind date with a friend of his, Adrian, who I’ve now been with as partner and husband for 21 years. Ben would joke that people who make three perfect matches get a special place in Jewish heaven, and so by putting Adrian and me together he was a third of the way there. Meeting Ben literally changed my life, and with his death I’ve lost one of my oldest and dearest friends.

Ben was cremated on 2 April 2025. The sadness of his death was intensified by the bewildering funeral arrangements organised by his family. The ‘service to celebrate Ben’s life’ was by invitation only, and many of Ben’s friends were not on the guest list. His friends weren’t involved in the cremation service. No friends were asked for their memories of Ben. Ben’s pastor, the person who brought him communion and blessed him with oil when he was in hospital, was not invited to take part. Instead, the service was led by the pastor of an Elim Pentecostal church attended by one of Ben’s siblings.

We barely recognised the Ben who was ‘celebrated’ during this service. The eulogy by his parents covered his complicated birth as a premature baby, his death from cancer, and a few details of his professional career in between. His parents spoke about Ben the plucky little missionary who smuggled Bibles into Siberia, an episode in his life I know he was intensely embarrassed about. This was a funeral by the family, for the family, about the Ben they knew as son, brother and uncle, his childhood teddy placed on the coffin lid. As one of Ben’s oldest friends, I felt I was watching the service from behind glass.

Most distressingly of all, the word ‘gay’ was absent from the service. Ben was euphemistically referred to as a ‘character,’ as ‘cheeky’ and ‘sassy’ and as someone involved in ‘diverse communities.’ This was not the Ben who loved men, who was deeply involved in Birmingham’s queer scene and LGBT+ activism. This Ben was a child or a sexless ‘eccentric bachelor.’ Ben was cremated in a closet, and this has left me deeply sad and angry. It was like a scene from the Russel T Davies drama ‘It’s a Sin’. Not only did his family put Ben back in the closet, they also pushed us, his queer family, into the closet too. In refusing to mention that Ben was gay, whether out of shame, disapproval or embarrassment, they made us unmentionable. The funeral of one of my dearest queer friends was an abusive act of queer erasure.

When Ben was alive no closet could contain him, and I won’t allow him to be put back there in death. I’m writing this alternative eulogy as an act of resurrection, to break the shaming silence imposed by his family and remember the gorgeous, glorious, gay Ben his many, many friends knew and loved.

If it wasn’t already obvious, Ben was gay. And when I say gay, I mean REALLY gay. Ben had a rainbow spirit that was unquenchable. His drag name was Benita Casablanca for goodness sakes! He was always fostering spiritual spaces for queers. As well as his involvement in the Young Lesbian and Gay email group, I worshipped with him at the Metropolitan Community Church in Birmingham, at Outer-Space, the queer inclusive space at the Greenbelt Festival, and at Inclusive Gathering Birmingham. He wanted to spend his time with fellow queers, preaching that they were lovely and lovable in their queerness, that being LGBT+ doesn’t have to be shameful but can be a source of profound joy and power. He experienced this queer empowerment for himself through Mobilise and the work of queer drag prophet Fatt Butcher. The pictures of Ben in the Mobilise Pride Parade, dressed up all in blue and chanting ‘Our joy is political!’ radiate the depth of happiness that comes from loving and accepting yourself, a joy that not enough queer people know.

In addition to Ben being gay, Ben loved sex. Gay sex. Man on man on man sex. He loved men, many, many men, and he wanted everyone to have good, safe sex. With his friends, Ben was an open book about his sex life. In the best way possible, he had no shame. His experience and honesty made him a great mentor for younger queer folk, especially those wrestling with their sexuality and Christian upbringing. He was perfectly placed to advise queer friends on how to be fulfilled both spiritually and sexually. In his final months he told us to make the most of our bodies and promised to bequeath me his stash of recreational Viagra. If his coffin were here now, alongside his childhood teddy I’d place his Manrammer, an eye-wateringly ambitious PVC dildo that he disposed of in the final months before his death, so his family wouldn’t come across it when clearing out his flat. Ben enjoyed his body while he could and would exhort us to do the same.

Ben was also a culture vulture. A voracious consumer of books, theatre, opera and musicals, he was an evangelist for good culture, forever enthusing about his latest discovery. Ben introduced me to the operas of John Adams and Philip Glass, the music of Sufjan Stevens, and the play Angels in America, particularly the divine TV adaption with Patrick Wilson in that Mormon underwear. We could have entire conversations composed entirely of Angels in America quotes, like ‘I wish I was an octopus, a fucking octopus. Eight loving arms and all those suckers’; or my particular favourite, ‘The stiffening of your penis is of no consequence,’ or perhaps most appropriately for a eulogy, ‘Trailing sequins and incense he came into the world, trailing sequins and incense he departed it.’

And Ben loved to laugh and laugh loudly. I have so many photos of him laughing, eyes and mouth wide, head thrown back. Some friends talk about Ben’s cackle. I think of him going ‘Bwa-ha!’ He loved to laugh at the silly and the filthy, the absurd and the smutty. He loved to shock and scandalise, and he loved to be the centre of attention.

But Ben wouldn’t laugh at jokes that weren’t funny. He wouldn’t laugh at misogyny or transphobia, at any joke that punched down, even if everyone else was in hysterics. He wasn’t afraid to speak uncomfortable truths. I remember being with him after church at a bar in Birmingham’s Gay Village. It was 6pm on a Sunday when a hen party descended with their pink sashes and penis straws. We collectively rolled our eyes. We just wanted a quiet drink in one of our few queer spaces. Then one hen decided to approach Ben to force a sash on him. To quote Indian Jones and the Last Crusade, they chose poorly. Ben didn’t hesitate to tell them we didn’t want them here, that this was a LGBT+ space and not a hetero playground. Ben didn’t put up with nonsense.

And Ben was also gracious. His struggles as a gay boy growing up in a homophobic church could have made him bitter and resentful, but instead he chose the path of spiritual maturity, tapping into that love that unendingly flows from the heart of God. He was Christlike in ways I’d struggle to be. He forgave his parents after they kicked him out the house for being gay, even after they sent him to conversion therapy. He forgave ex-partners that treated him so badly. His graciousness only increased as the cancer advanced. By the time of his death, he’d learned the important lessons about love. He had a wise heart.

The last time I saw Ben, about a month before he died, I prayed this prayer over him, which he said spoke deeply to where he was at that moment:

Gracious God, you give no guarantees of comfort or safety.
You only guarantee that you’ll be with us.
You are the God who was, who is, and who is to come.
Before we were, you were.
You are with us now.
And there is no path we can take that you have not walked.
Wherever we go, you will be there to meet us.
This is why we can praise you amidst our brokenness.

Ben is no longer with us in his warm, huggable flesh – oh for a Ben hug right now – but I believe he is with God. For many reasons, what lies beyond the veil of death is beyond our imaginings. But if Ben is cavorting in the glory of the Creator who formed his glorious gay self, chatting shit with other queer saints like James Baldwin and Derek Jarman, and maybe getting a massage from some really hot angels, then I ask him to pray for us.

Pray for us Ben, that we’ll find the strength to continue navigating and resisting this queerphobic world without you, that we’ll find moments of queer joy without you, that we’ll continue to build queer community without you.

I hope we can make you proud as we continue the Great Work of bringing more abundant, colourful life into this broken, grey world.

We love you. We miss you, darling man. I hope we meet again.

Goodbye.