About David L
Rattigan
I
am a British-Canadian living in St Catharines, ON, with
roots in Vancouver,
BC, and Liverpool, England.
I have
been writing since I was a kid, when I would wake up in the
early hours of the morning and bang away at a manual
typewriter all day,
usually to write plays. I can proudly point to The Phantom
of the Opera as my first play, though it was somewhat
overshadowed by Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical, which he had
the audacity to produce in the same year that my fellow
9-year-olds and I presented my (definitive) version to the
rest of our class.
I was
brought up Christian, and had a "born again" experience at
the age of 12 that was to determine the next decade or so of
my life. I joined a
Pentecostal church, went to Bible
College,
and spent two years as an assistant pastor in my native
British Columbia.
Then
fundamentalism fell apart for me. Leaving
fundamentalism was a
painful journey, but it helped to be able to document the
process on a blog and
website, and eventually write about it in the book
Leaving Fundamentalism: Personal Stories (ed. G Elijah
Dann, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2008).
I am now
an agnostic Anglican, exploring the metaphors, symbols,
rites and rituals of the Christian religion, but with no
intellectual commitment to traditional theism.
A big
pay-off of leaving fundamentalism for me was finally - after
years of secrecy, shame and crippling fear - being able to
acknowledge my sexuality, both to myself and to others. I
write often about sexuality, particularly about the claims
of the "ex-gay" movement. I am a regular contributor to
Ex-Gay Watch, and
have explored the subject in a
feature article for the UK's Third Way magazine.
In 2003-4,
I supplemented my BA(Hons) with a Post-Graduate Certificate
of Education, specializing in secondary Religious Education
and Citizenship. In 2005, I decided teaching wasn't for me,
and have since been working freelance. Until 2009, I was
Assistant Director of the
Prescot Festival,
a pioneering, 10-day arts and music festival in the UK.
Working as a writer-researcher for the rather wonderful
63336 has given me the
flexibility to work on a swathe of other personal projects.
As I
embark on a new adventure in Ontario, I am hoping to
continue apace with my own projects, while earning a crust
in freelance writing, copywriting and arts admin.
