Category Archives: Sexual Trauma

50 Shades of Grey and the Dangers of Soundbite Sexual Ethics

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A reflection by Sarah

This is a difficult post for me to write. It’s hard enough to talk about sexual violence and abusive relationships as a gay Christian, and sometimes I think it’s even harder as a celibate person. There’s no way out of controversy when there are people on one side telling you that you’re celibate because of your abuse history and people on the other side telling you that your abuse is what caused your sexual orientation. I’ve sat on this post for almost a week, but I’ve decided to write it because I believe we need to have more meaningful conversations about sexual ethics. The new 50 Shades of Grey movie has ignited conversation in diverse internet communities. Christians, feminists, survivors of sexual abuse, liberals, conservatives, and people at the intersections of different communities have used the movie’s release as a springboard for conversations about abusive relationships. While I’m grateful for everyone who is writing to raise awareness of any kind of abuse, I’m saddened that the resulting conversation in Christian circles does not include more critical discussions of pitfalls in both progressive and traditional sexual ethics.

I think this issue hits me in the heart because I was once in a relationship with a woman whose personality bore considerable resemblance to that of Christian Grey. This relationship was one of the many non-celibate relationships I was involved in before meeting Lindsey. I have neither been in an intentional BDSM relationship nor participated in the broader BDSM culture, but after reading 50 Shades of Grey I began to see frightening similarities between the titular character and this woman from my past. She was obsessively controlling, used manipulative tactics to fashion my “consent” around her own desires, focused entirely on meeting her needs in the relationship with very little mutuality, and viewed my role in the relationship as satisfying her sexual cravings. She was so charming with all of her friends, colleagues, and associates that no one would have suspected the depths of what was happening between us. This person knew how to manipulate my emotions such that my heart would play easily into her hand. At times I felt so drawn in that it was nearly impossible for me to see I was not being loved. She had a way of whittling down my emotional defenses to the point where she could convince me that I actually did consent to sexual activities that would terrify me. At times we would lie in bed talking, and the next thing I realized was that I was being blindfolded and having my wrists tied together with rope. Of course she told me that she would respect my limits. Of course she told me that we could stop at any time. Sometimes my fear would overtake me and I would begin to cry. She would respond with, “What the hell is wrong with you? Let go of your childish nonsense!” before asking me if I wanted to continue. Everything about how the question was asked told me that there was only one acceptable answer: yes, I want to continue. Yes, I give you my consent. If I tried to test alternative answers, the berating would continue until I gave in. She made it abundantly clear to me that the purpose of our sexual interactions was to meet her needs and I was not in the driver’s seat. That was the price I had to pay if I wanted to continue to be with her.

Time and again, she asserted that no one would ever want to be with someone like me and incorporated litanies of my real and perceived failings as a person. I was a total loser if I was unable to meet the goals that she had set for me. At every turn, she found ways to criticize me. I recall a time when I picked her up from the airport and she spent the entire drive yelling at me for being 15 minutes late and not finishing enough work during the days she had been away. There was constant critical commentary about my body size, my clothes, and what I did or did not eat. I distinctly remember her denouncing one of my favorite summer dress as being too childish and babydoll-like, especially on a body that had recently put on weight. One evening we were planning to go out to ice cream after eating dinner, and she declared that I didn’t deserve any ice cream until I could figure out how to make myself look like a “real adult with a real job” rather than a “fat child in a sundress.” If she discovered that I had a friendship or a meaningful relationship with any other person that she didn’t know every last detail about, she would accuse me of engaging in an emotional affair and shame me for desiring emotional intimacy with any person other than her. She was effective at isolating me from my friends despite her regular complaints about my never introducing her to them. On rare occasions when friends would express concern about my relationship with her and she found out about those conversations, she would bark, “You have no business saying a damn thing about our relationship to anyone!” Often at these times, she would offer me a monologue that I had practically memorized by the time our relationship ended: she was the one who had worked through all of the issues in her past, I was clearly full of red flags, she should have known better than to get involved with me, and I was lucky that she even wanted to look at me.

Rarely, I experienced moments of clarity about the abusiveness of this relationship. There was a time (actually, there were several) when I tried to reach out to clergy and other spiritual directors for some help with regard to this situation, and it always made matters far worse. On one occasion I sought the advice of a spiritual director I had been seeing temporarily after my previous spiritual director had moved away. This person’s counsel boiled down to, “Everything that has happened to you is evidence of the depravity of gayness and of same-sex relationships.” From his point of view, the situation I was in was my own fault because I had chosen to be a lesbian and I had chosen a way of life that “everybody knows” is totally hedonistic and abusive. There was no focus on connecting me with resources or help. The focus was on importance of seeing my sexual identity as “that of a woman” because in his mind I was confused about God’s plan for womanhood and was too hard-hearted to admit it. He refused to help me any further unless I would assure him that I would make every effort to stop being a lesbian. Knowing it would be impossible to change my sexual orientation and highly unlikely to find theologically sound advice on this problem from other potential spiritual directors I had access to at the time, I gave up on the notion that leaving the relationship was even possible. I left spiritual direction that day with a heavy heart, feeling like a wretched human being unworthy of love from God or another human being.

I chose to tell this story because ever since I first summoned the courage to read the book, it has been painfully obvious to me that in many ways, this past relationship of mine was only marginally different from the relationship dynamic between Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele. Yet, no one — not even the most traditional and theologically conservative of spiritual directors — would use this book to denounce the total depravity of heterosexual relationships as a broad category. One can find counter-examples aplenty of wholesome heterosexual relationships yet remain blissfully and willfully unaware of similar counter-examples in the LGBTQ community. For so many people on the Christian Right, any problem, any emotional unhealthiness, any instance of abuse in an LGBTQ relationship can be traced to the presence of homosexuality within that relationship. This is low-hanging fruit and ignores a host of relevant sexual ethics (and general Christian ethics) issues. I have yet to see a person who identifies strongly with the Christian Right address this hypocrisy. If my former temporary spiritual director’s attitude is any indication, I’m guessing that most would not find it important to engage in critical discussion about consent, psychologically healthy relationship dynamics, etc. in LGBTQ relationships. I hope I’m wrong about that. Please, take this as an invitation to prove me wrong about that.

Looking beyond LGBTQ-related topics that would be good for discussion in light of the 50 Shades of Grey movie release, several additional issues in sexual ethics also remain insufficiently explored in the Christian blogosphere. Some Christians discussing 50 Shades of Grey zoom in on the observation that the sex occurring in the book and movie happens outside of marriage, leaving the distressing question of “Would the sexual relationship between Christian and Anastasia be morally acceptable if they were married?” wide open. I wonder if those claiming that any kind of sexual activity is acceptable within the confines of marriage actually believe what they are saying. If “anything goes in marriage” is your sexual ethic, are you willing to give your stamp of approval to a relationship in which one spouse disrespects the other’s limits or fails to stop when asked? I also wonder about the acceptability of BDSM activities from the vantage point of “rightly ordered sexual activity is open to procreation.” If your sexual ethic can be summarized as “sex must be intercourse that is open to children and between a husband and wife only,” is that inclusive of married heterosexual couples who are part of the BDSM community? If a BDSM experience between a particular husband and wife always ends in intercourse that is open to life, is that couple practicing a traditional sexual ethic? Then there are all sorts of questions about  wisdom that has made its way into broader discussions about consent partly because BDSM exists. Concepts like limits and safe words are used in “vanilla” relationships as well as BDSM relationships. If your sexual ethic does not include space for BDSM practices, can it rightly include elements that have been heavily influenced by the BDSM subculture?

It’s critically important to discuss matters of sexual ethics beyond when sex is permissible. Sex can be a great gift. However, giving blanket moral approval to “sex within marriage” or “sex that is open to life” hides ways sex can be misused. People living in diverse situations are puzzling through questions of sexual ethics. When discussions of sexual ethics among Christians are entirely restricted to the importance of being married before having sex or the importance of sexual behaviors being open to the creation of new life, people are guaranteed to have unresolved questions. There’s also a huge risk for dismissing (or in some cases, justifying) abusive behavior inadvertently, especially in relationships that are easy for some people to write off as sinful and unworthy of discussion related to abuse. I’m left wondering: how can Christians create spaces for people to discuss sexual ethics holistically, receive support for dealing with abuse in relationships of all kinds, appreciate how sexuality manifests in diverse vocations, and acknowledge how major contributions to our collective thinking about sexual ethics have come from unexpected places?

Comment Policy: Please remember that we, and all others commenting on this blog, are people. Practice kindness. Practice generosity. Practice asking questions. Practice showing love. Practice being human. If your comment is rude, it will be deleted. If you are constantly negative, argumentative, or bullish, you will not be able to comment anymore. We are the sole moderators of the combox.

The Problem with “If” Questions

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A reflection by Sarah

Lindsey and I are always glad to receive questions from readers. We enjoy answering them to the best of our ability through email or directly on the blog. When we respond to a reader’s inquiry, we try to be as candid as possible even if that means the reader is unhappy because our response takes a different direction than was expected. Occasionally, we’ll hear from some disgruntled person who has asked us, “Do you think all LGBTQ people are called to celibacy?” and isn’t satisfied with our answer: “We can’t tell other people what their vocations are. We encourage people to find trusted spiritual directors within their own Christian traditions to help guide them through the discernment process.” Some people consider that a dishonest answer, but it’s the most authentic way I can possibly think of to respond. I’m no priest and don’t consider myself qualified to advise anyone, regardless of sexual orientation, on whether to pursue a married vocation or a celibate vocation. It is because I’m not a member of the clergy (thank God) that I can respond to that question so easily.

Rarely is it difficult to tell someone, “I’m not the person to ask about this. No, really.” It’s much more challenging to respond when a question is very personal and cannot be answered with a simple “yes” or “no.” There’s a certain kind of question that bothers me intensely. It’s the hypothetical, “If x were true, would y change?” Here are some examples that I get frequently both on and off the blog:

  • “If you hadn’t grown up in Eastern Kentucky, would visiting rural areas still give you so much anxiety?”
  • “If you had been raised in a wealthy family, would your political views be different?
  • “If you had not been raised Christian from birth, would you still have become interested in theology?”
  • “If you weren’t a lesbian, would you still sense a call to celibacy?”
  • “If you had not experienced sexual abuse as a preteen and teenager, would you still sense a call to celibacy?”

The first three are fairly innocuous; I can’t see anyone reacting harshly to any response I might offer. The last two…not so much. When most people ask these questions, they are looking for certain responses: Yes, I would still be called to celibacy because it’s a personal choice that has nothing to do with my sexual orientation. No, I wouldn’t because my church’s prohibition on gay marriage is the only reason I’m celibate. Yes, I would still be celibate because I had considered celibacy even before my abuse began. No, I wouldn’t because my abuse made me afraid of sexual intimacy. Most people who ask are looking for one of these “right” answers. My answer is always the wrong one, and it’s the same for all five on the list: I don’t know.

The problem with “if” questions where the asker anticipates a yes or no response is that more often than not, these questions can’t be answered authentically in one word. If I had been raised in a wealthy urban or suburban family with non-Christian parents, I have no idea how different my life would look. Certainly I’d have a different set of childhood and young adult experiences, but there’s no way of predicting exactly how different they would be. Maybe I would have developed a sense of anxiety in cities and a preference for life in the foothills of Appalachia. Maybe I’d be a hardcore Republican or Democrat. Maybe I would have decided to work in the corporate world, or abandon civilization and live in a treehouse just because. Maybe I would have experienced conversion to Christianity as a teenager or adult and had a more difficult time coming out as Christian than coming out as a lesbian. Or maybe not. None of these are part of my story, so I don’t know. That’s as authentic a response as I can give.

The same is true for the last two questions. If I weren’t a lesbian, I’d be a different person. God might be calling me to a different vocation, or to an entirely different set of smaller vocations within a broader construct of marriage or celibacy. I would probably interact with the world much differently. My experiences of beauty, friendship, and connectedness likely would not be the same as they are now. I’m sure that my spiritual needs would be different too. My life would also look incredibly different if I were not a survivor of sexual abuse. I might not be as independent or as compassionate as I am now. The ways I understand trust, safety, honesty, repentance, and so many other facets of life would have been formed through entirely different sets of circumstances. Though this has not always been the case historically, Christian vocations in the modern West are ways of life chosen by adults who are responding to callings. During the time of my abuse, I was an adolescent who did not have the spiritual or emotional maturity to make vocational decisions. My entire vocational discernment process has taken place during my adult life. Though I can tell you confidently that my celibacy is not a fear response or an aversion to sex after surviving the worst few years of my life, there is no way I could possibly know all the particulars of how my identity as a survivor has impacted my experience of vocation. I do not know whether I would have discerned a calling to celibacy if this part of my identity did not exist. I don’t think I can ever know in this lifetime.

About half of you are wincing as you read this. Those words have a tendency to make people uncomfortable, especially in conversations related to sexuality and Christianity. They cause discomfort because we want to have a yes or no answer. If we don’t, people who disagree with us can and will use our uncertainty against us. I don’t know means that a person is wishy-washy, straddling the fence, or afraid of making a firm declaration one way or the other. I don’t know means that a person’s voice doesn’t matter in real conversation, and it will not matter until that person makes up his or her mind. I don’t know is understood as a sort of holding tank that is unsustainable long-term. “Commit to a side in the fight against injustice!” people tell me. “If you’re not with us, you’re against us.”  Thanks for informing me that you care about my story only because it either confirms or contradicts your biases.

Why is it that I don’t know is an acceptable answer for the first three questions on my list, but not for the last two? I think it’s because we are told that we have to know, and that knowing is the only way to get any affirmation or validation from other people. It’s also because there’s comfort in knowing. If we know “the truth” about people, we can decide whether or not to give them our trust. A few of you want me to state outright that my decision to pursue celibacy is in no way connected to my sexual orientation. You want to know that if you support Lindsey and me in our blogging about celibacy, we’re not going to burn you someday by announcing that our secret mission is to convince all LGBTQ people to be celibate. A few more of you want me to state that my choice of a celibate vocation is influenced by something negative like sexual abuse so you can write me off as just another example of a broken person who has been hurt and now perpetuates the abuse cycle by using a personal story as a weapon against non-celibate LGBTQ people. Neither of these is going to happen, except maybe the writing off part: whether you take me seriously or not is entirely up to you. I spend most of my life in the grey area but have little tolerance for bullshit. When I tell you that I don’t know something, I mean that. I’m not like a politician who claims publicly to have an “evolving” opinion while holding my actual thoughts back from everyone else.

I have much admiration for people who don’t have black and white responses to everything because I struggle with the temptation to answer questions that way. It’s easier, and it ends difficult discussion much more swiftly. But some questions deserve more than “yes” or “no.” Some questions cannot be answered in this lifetime and it’s foolish to pretend that they can be. This is why I believe that conversations about faith and sexuality would be much more productive if we made space for I don’t know and stopped dismissing those three words as the mark of a weak, indecisive person whose voice is unimportant.

Comment Policy: Please remember that we, and all others commenting on this blog, are people. Practice kindness. Practice generosity. Practice asking questions. Practice showing love. Practice being human. If your comment is rude, it will be deleted. If you are constantly negative, argumentative, or bullish, you will not be able to comment anymore. We are the sole moderators of the combox.

I Am Not Asexual, and Why I Care What Others Call Me

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A reflection by Sarah

Last week, I wrote a post on some problems I see with defining LGBTQ terminology rigidly and attempting to qualify who is or is not LGBTQ. I’m thankful for all the stimulating discussions that post initiated with friends and readers, including some folks who were encountering our blog for the first time. One of my favorite aspects of blogging is witnessing how quickly a 1,500 word reflection can spark multiple conversations that take off on trajectories I never would have anticipated. In my post from last week, I had stated the following:

I am a lesbian. I experience attraction to women. Occasionally that attraction does include sexual thoughts. However, I experience sexual desire rather infrequently. I can’t even remember the last time I had a desire for sex. I am committed to sharing life with a partner whom I love, but to whom I am not sexually attracted, and who has trouble picking out which letters of the alphabet soup are the best fit.

I was surprised to see that a fair number of the resulting conversations, including one on that post’s comments section, involved suggestions that I must be asexual. Perhaps part of it was because in some of these conversations (particularly on Facebook and Twitter), I was using the example of an asexual lesbian to demonstrate that LGBTQ sexual identity doesn’t necessarily have to involve the desire for sex. But in most cases, even after I explained that I am not asexual, the assertions continued. Over the past week, I’ve been wondering what exactly has led so many readers to assume that I’m asexual, why I’m so quick to claim that I’m not, and whether the answers to these questions are even relevant to the conversations Lindsey and I are trying to initiate. After several days of reflection, I’ve come to see how important the topic of asexuality is to explorations of celibacy, so I’ve chosen to address it for the first time today.

Most of the time, I resist writing posts that delve deeply into topics that are only vaguely related to my own experience of life. I’m quick to call out straight Christians who make ignorant statements about gay/lesbian topics despite their lack of firsthand knowledge. I don’t want to do the same thing to asexuals, so let me make clear: everything I say in this post is from my own experience, and it should not be taken as a critique of the asexual community, or as evidence that all people currently embracing the term “asexual” will eventually realize that they are wrong.

My first reaction to seeing the aforementioned conversations about my blog post was, “Whoa…blast from the past!” Very early in my coming out process, I did experiment with the term “asexual” as a possible identity descriptor. There was a time, back in the earlier years of the Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN) message boards, when I interacted regularly with the asexual community and thought I might be one of them. While most of my now-closest friends were beginning their affiliations with the Gay Christian Network (GCN), I was spending much of my spare time chatting it up with the folks at AVEN. I met some great people during my time on the AVEN boards and got back in touch with a couple of them once Facebook became a more popular way of keeping up with friends, but in time I saw that the term “asexual” was not a good fit for me and it has been years since I’ve even thought much about asexuality.

AVEN currently defines the term “asexual” as, “Someone who does not experience sexual attraction.” There aren’t many other definitions available because asexuality is not widely recognized as a sexual orientation as of 2014. AVEN’s definitions page offers other terms as well such as “demisexual” (someone who can only experience sexual attraction after an emotional bond has been formed) and “gray asexual” or “gray-sexual” (someone who identifies with the area between asexuality and sexuality). As many readers have pointed out, my description of my own level of sexual desire could easily fit somewhere within the broad spectrum of asexual self-identification. One reader referred to me as gray-sexual and insisted that this was an appropriate label for me whether I like it or not. Generally, I believe it is a sign of respect to honor other people’s identities as they understand them. I can’t think of too many things that make me feel more disenfranchised than another person claiming to know better than I do what I am or am not, or what I believe or don’t believe. Could someone with the exact same level of sexual desire as I have rightly claim a term like “asexual” or “gray-sexual”? Sure. If a person sees nonexistent or limited sexual desire as a key component of his or her identity, who am I to say that is unimportant? But it doesn’t change the fact that I don’t identify with these terms.

So does my preferred terminology (lesbian) have any relevance if I’ve chosen a way of life that doesn’t include sexual activity? If Lindsey and I are intentionally celibate, why does it matter what I call myself? Yes, I think it does matter, and two reasons come to mind immediately.

First, identifying as “asexual” rather than “sexual” would change the meaning of my commitment to celibacy. I understand my celibacy within the context of vocation. All vocations involve giving of oneself and making sacrifices for the sake of the Kingdom. Lindsey and I believe that God has given both of us the gift of celibacy, which makes certain aspects of our daily living different from that of other LGBT people who have chosen celibacy purely out of obedience. But this doesn’t mean our celibacy comes without consequence. Sometimes, a way of life that one feels called to comes naturally and is easy, but at other times it is challenging and even feels painful. There are occasions when I begin to think that the grass might be greener on the other side of the fence. As I’ve mentioned before, I felt drawn to celibacy for several years before actually committing to it. I spent a few years second-guessing myself, shifting back and forth between liberal and conservative approaches to sexual ethics, and trying to determine if being obedient to my Christian tradition would necessitate squelching my attractions to other women. As I was dealing with all of this, I didn’t even question whether possibly spending the rest of my life without sexual activity would be a sacrifice — I knew it would be. I knew that in making the decision to live celibacy I would be giving up one very important way of connecting with others, and that would be hard. Especially since pursuing celibacy with Lindsey, I’ve only seen confirmation of this. I still experience sexual attraction to other women, even though it’s rare and even though I’m not sexually attracted to Lindsey. I’ve been in sexually active relationships before, and there’s no denying that these kinds of relationships are vastly different from what Lindsey and I share. Once in a blue moon, I’ll think back on those and miss that kind of connection. Thus, the idea of identifying with asexuality just doesn’t sit well with me.

Second, I have radically different emotional associations for the terms “lesbian” and “asexual,” and I see this as at least partially related to my experience as a survivor of sexual violence. It’s erroneous to suggest that a person who is LGBTQ (or a person who is asexual, for that matter) would necessarily have been heterosexual (or sexual at all) had it not been for a sexual trauma. It’s also incorrect to say that spending time in therapy to heal from sexual trauma will make a gay, lesbian, or bisexual person straight, a transgender person identify with his/her biological sex, or an asexual person sexual. I believe that my lesbian sexual orientation is completely unrelated to my sexual abuse, but I also believe that some people form their entire concept of sexual orientation around those kinds of experiences. If I’m totally honest with myself, I have to admit that’s exactly what I was doing in experimenting with the asexual label for a season of life. During that time, I knew deep down that I had a sexual orientation; I just didn’t want one. I was fearful of what it would mean to accept myself as a sexual person, and I knew that the rare sexual attractions I experienced were toward women. In my mind, adopting the term “asexual” was the easy way out of acknowledging my PTSD and having to struggle with questions of faith and sexuality. It would also save me from total rejection, I thought. I knew that sooner or later, I would have to tell people I wasn’t straight. All the assumptions and questions about why I didn’t have a boyfriend were weighing on me heavily. I was aware that whether I came out as lesbian or asexual, everyone who knew of my being a survivor would blame my abuse and tell me that I should seek counseling to become “normal.” But I thought, “At least if I tell people I’m asexual, they can’t say I’m doing anything wrong.” At the time, the asexual label seemed like the amoral option. I stopped identifying with “asexual” after realizing that use of the term was causing me a great deal of sexual frustration. Oddly enough, I’ve never experienced stronger and more frequent sexual desire than I did during my season of identifying as “asexual.” I consider that more than enough evidence that this label is not the most fitting for me. It’s interesting how coming to identify freely as “lesbian” was part of what opened the gift of celibacy up to me.

The problem with claiming to know another person’s sexual identity better than he or she does is that no two journeys through life are exactly the same. Two people who experience almost identical levels of sexual, emotional, and romantic attraction can have profoundly different senses of identity due to their histories and worldviews. Assigning a sexual identity label to a person other than oneself privileges one’s own self-understanding to an extent. It’s overly simplistic to assume that a one-sentence definition can convey accurately how every person who uses a particular term would describe its meaning. Regardless of whose definition for “asexual,” “gray-sexual,” or any other term a person might fit, his or her own internal sense of self should be honored and respected.

Comment Policy: Please remember that we, and all others commenting on this blog, are people. Practice kindness. Practice generosity. Practice asking questions. Practice showing love. Practice being human. If your comment is rude, it will be deleted. If you are constantly negative, argumentative, or bullish, you will not be able to comment anymore. We are the sole moderators of the combox.

Sexual Abuse, Security, and the Seal of Confession

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A reflection by Sarah

Over the past few days, a couple of news items have led me to reflect more on my experiences as a survivor of sexual abuse. Scrolling through my Facebook feed this week, I’ve encountered an array of discussions about whether a priest should ever be permitted to violate the seal of confession. On Sunday, I came across an article discussing the Anglican Church in Australia and its newly authorized amendment to a canon on the seal of confession. The decision, subject to acceptance by individual dioceses, authorizes priests to disclose the contents of confessions in cases of serious crimes. Then yesterday, I stumbled upon another article about a Roman Catholic priest, Father Jeff Bayhi in Louisiana who is being sued by a family. The family claimed in 2009 that their preteen daughter revealed to Fr. Bayhi in confession that she was being sexually abused, and he had instructed the girl not to report the abuse. The canon law of the Roman Catholic Church prevents priests from even disclosing whether a particular person has had a confession, so it is impossible to verify the family’s claim. The Louisiana Supreme Court ruled that Fr. Bayhi is required to testify about the confession, but he refuses to do so because of religious obligation. I have been following both of these stories and have seen a wide range of reactions. Some people praise the Anglican Church for becoming more transparent while accusing the Roman Catholic Church of doing nothing more than covering up abuses. On the flip side, many people are horrified by the Anglican Church’s decision while praising Fr. Bayhi and the Diocese of Baton Rouge for their commitment to upholding the seal of confession.

I belong to a Christian tradition where confession is offered, and it is encouraged that people make confessions as often as needed. Confession is, without a doubt, one of the most meaningful spiritual practices in my life. Every good confession makes me feel like a newly-illumined handmaiden all over again. Forgiveness is the most incredible of gifts. Each experience of this mystery leaves me feeling washed, renewed, restored, made whole, joyous, grateful, and empowered. At times, going to confession has brought me out of dark depressive episodes. It reminds me that I am a fallible human being, I am far from perfect, I cannot heal myself, and I need the prayers and support of the Church as I journey towards Christ. Sin, repentance, and forgiveness do not happen in a vacuum where it’s just me and Jesus. When I experience a good confession, I leave feeling refreshed by God’s grace and goodness, humbled by my human frailty, and overwhelmed by God’s willingness to share my humanity as much as Christ shares in the humanity of every person. Confession is a great equalizer among people. When we come in repentance, we all strive to humble ourselves to receive God’s grace as fully as possible. In confession, everyone is a sinner.

There are times when I can’t help but remember myself as a 12-year-old experiencing sexual abuse at the hands of a member of my childhood faith community. I did not reveal my abuse in the context of a sacramental confession. I remember that when I first told my parents about the abuse at age 14, they refused to believe that I might be telling the truth. Eventually, I learned that other people in my faith community knew this man was an abuser and likely even knew that I was among his victims. However, no one did or said anything to stop him or to make my parents aware that a very real danger was lurking in the pews. As a teenager, I spent many a night lying in bed, muffling the sound of my sobs because the two people I had told about the abuse didn’t believe me (until some time later) and no one else seemed willing to do anything to help. In those moments, I prayed continually that someone would eventually say something.

In my early twenties, I started dealing with the emotional aftermath of my abuse. Working through my trauma with therapists has been a critical part of my healing process. But unlike priests who are committed to upholding the seal of confession, therapists don’t hesitate to break confidentiality in certain circumstances. They are required by law to disclose if a person is a danger to himself/herself or others. Early on in my attempts at help-seeking, I struggled to find the boundary regarding what I could honestly share with a therapist that wouldn’t lead to a response of, “I’ll have to break confidentiality.” As I began to navigate the world of mental healthcare, I wondered, would it ever be safe to share if I was feeling slightly suicidal but with no real intent to act? What would happen if, in a burst of emotional processing, I were to blurt out, “I’m so angry that I could kill (a person)!”? I was also uncertain of what would happened if I would ever disclose more specifics about my abuse, making clear that it had occurred in childhood. Once, I had a therapist at an eating disorder treatment facility tell me that, as a mandated reporter, he had to report my abuse because it had not been reported previously. It didn’t seem to matter that I was 22 at the time I was seeing him, or that the abuse had happened years before and in a different state. I found out later that he had misinterpreted the law, but nonetheless his response to my disclosure removed any agency I might have had in deciding whether or not to report the abuse myself. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had been duped; I lost confidence in this person’s commitment to keeping any part of my story confidential despite the almost-total guarantee that what one says in therapy remains private.

I have always been glad that priests and therapists follow different standards. I find it tremendously reassuring that a priest must hold my sacramental confessions in complete confidence. Because of the seal of confession, I feel safe in ridding my closet of every possible skeleton, disclosing the worst of the worst, and opening myself completely for God to heal my brokenness. In confession, I experience an abiding freedom to admit all of the times I have murdered my parents in my heart because they failed to protect and believe me. I have reconnected with my humanity as I can admit to the terrible ways I have abused my own body through eating disorder behaviors, alcohol, and drugs. I have sought reconciliation after so many instances of harming others and myself. I have been able to confess to God parts of my past that are so dark I would never dream of sharing them publicly. Such is the nature of confession. The seal of confession has been a part of Christian traditions for more than a thousand years. It gives us all an equal opportunity to unburden our souls, receive forgiveness from God, benefit from the prayers of the Church, and walk in a new way of life. In confession, the worst criminal imaginable is my equal, even though I have never killed, stolen from, or abused anyone.

If a priest were to break the seal of confession, that equality would be no more. As it stands, Christ waits at the door of the Church shouting, “Come all who wish to repent! Encounter God in the depths of divine mercy!” However, if priests all of a sudden began employing the same standards as therapists, the message would change. Few penitents would come to confession after hearing consistently, “Come all who wish to repent, but do know that there’s a chance you might be waking up the next morning in a jail cell or a hospital bed.” As much as my preteen self was dying for someone–anyone–to know what was happening to me and offer support and help, even if I had disclosed the abuse to a priest in confession I cannot see how breaking the seal would have been in my best interest. Quite the contrary: it would have robbed me of my sense of security within the safest place I’ve ever known. I would have been grateful to know that a religious leader was watching out for me or taking other measures to assess my safety that would not have involved breaking the seal. But I hope that in all circumstances, no matter how severe, priests in my Christian tradition will always honor the seal of confession. Whether I like it or not, my abuser needs God’s mercy and forgiveness as much as I do, and if he seeks it, I say let him. Christ did not come to save only those who have “minor” struggles with sin. Christ does not pour out mercy in a differential manner; He lavishes mercy on all. When Christ himself was dying on the cross, he offered forgiveness to the repentant thief dying next to him. If that action were not incredible enough, he also called out to his Father saying, “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing,” inviting an extension of forgiveness to the very people who nailed him to the cross. Who am I to deny anyone, even my abuser, access to an opportunity to fall at the feet of Christ and ask forgiveness? As I see it, to advocate for a priest’s breaking the seal of confession is to risk denying someone an opportunity for forgiveness.

As I write this, I pray that people in all churches will become increasingly aware of child sexual abuse and other serious crimes, especially those that occur within the Church. I pray that Christian traditions will do everything they can to educate people about child sexual abuse and work diligently to prevent it from occurring. But when it comes to confession, if I had to face the possibility that my priest were on the lookout for the “worst” sins to determine whether to break the seal, I fear that I would never return to this mystery again. Christian traditions that offer sacramental confessions need priests who would face imprisonment, torture, or even death before the revealing the contents of any confession. One who fails to do so endangers the spiritual welfare of all who seek God’s forgiveness through this sacrament.

UPDATE: A friend kindly pointed out to me that if read in a certain way, this post could be taken as my advocating total inaction on the part of the priest when it comes to child sexual abuse being revealed within the context of sacramental confession. To clarify: that’s the last thing I’d ever want to see happen. In my opinion, any priest worth his salt would do everything possible to help the child in question without breaking the seal of confession. In the comments below, I’ve listed some things that my own priest friends have told me they would do if they were to find themselves in such a situation. As always, you can contact us with any questions, and respectful disagreement is welcome in the comment box.   -Sarah

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Speaking of Sexual Trauma

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A reflection by Sarah

It’s never easy to talk about sexual trauma. No matter how often a related story appears within national, international, and local media, no matter what we’ve learned from child protection trainings, no matter how regularly we’re exposed to it in a culture saturated with sexually-charged messages, this is a topic that makes almost everyone uncomfortable. And that’s because most people haven’t the foggiest clue how to talk about it. I’ve been broaching the subject for years within my own circle of friends, slowly challenging my comfort zone, including more people in the discussion, and I still don’t know the best way to talk about it…especially within the context of LGBT issues.

Where I grew up in Eastern Kentucky, people didn’t talk about sex. It wasn’t considered appropriate for polite conversation. I came into puberty knowing virtually nothing about sexuality, and most of my peers weren’t much better off. And I’d venture a guess that almost no one–not even our parents–had any idea how to recognize the signs of sexual abuse. I was taught that sex offenders are suspicious, shadowy figures who lie in wait for children who wander away from their parents, that “good” people–especially those who are active in the local community and church–can never be predators, and that old men can’t be held accountable for sexual touching because they might be senile so their actions don’t count as abuse. My parents brought me up to believe that once I entered puberty, it was my responsibility to watch out for men who weren’t able to keep their hands to themselves. I simply had to understand that most of these men weren’t raised properly and might not be able to handle seeing a pretty girl who was beginning to develop at a younger age than average. If a man was a close friend of my parents, he certainly didn’t fall into this group. Any suggestion that such a person might be unsafe was categorically unbelievable. And most of all, if anything ever happened to me, I was never to tell a soul other than my parents–who would be the sole determiners of whether I was telling the truth–for fear of making waves in the community and gaining a reputation as a loose young woman. I was 23 years old and nearly overcome by PTSD before learning that everything I thought I knew about sexual abuse was a falsehood.

Central Appalachia is not the only area where such things happen, and I am not the only woman who has had such an experience. More to the point of today’s post, I’m not the only lesbian or the only member of the LGBT community who has survived sexual trauma. Yet we can’t seem to talk about it. It’s uncomfortable. It doesn’t sound nice. It could be used to discredit LGBT people. The discussion could be used to discredit liberals, or conservatives, or feminists, or anti-feminists, or affirmers, or non-affirmers. So on rare occasions when we do discuss LGBT survivors of sexual trauma, we’re good at building agenda-driven walls around the ways people are permitted to share their stories.

Yesterday morning, I was rereading our review of The Third Way. Specifically, I was reflecting on the story of sexual abuse shared by Julie, one of the documentary’s interviewees. Julie claims that her lesbian sexual orientation is linked to the fact that she endured sexual trauma as a young girl. She makes clear that after being abused, she began to view men as perpetrators and wanted nothing more to do with them. In our review, Lindsey and I discussed Julie’s story as one example of the film’s ex-gay undertones, and we stand by our criticism that overall, The Third Way privileges an ex-gay narrative while ignoring the diversity of celibate LGBT experiences. But regardless of the documentary’s shortcomings in piecing together a more comprehensive metanarrative, as an individual, Julie has a right tell to her own story as she understands it. She has lived it, and it would be absolutely unjust for me to say that I know it better than she does. It would also be unjust for another person to force me, or any other survivor, into Julie’s framework for understanding possible intersections of sexual orientation and trauma.

Speaking of sexual trauma as an LGBT person requires walking on eggshells. Our stories have political capital, whether we want them to or not. In my experience, the broader LGBT community expects survivors to defend the idea that sexual abuse rarely, if ever, is a determining factor in one’s sexual orientation. On the other extreme, most of the conservative Christian community is convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that if an LGBT person was sexually abused at some point in life, surely that must be the cause of his or her sexual orientation.

A survivor with a story like Julie’s will inevitably face the criticism, “Your story is harmful to all other survivors in the LGBT community! Studies show that there are just as many straight women as lesbians who have histories of sexual trauma.” A survivor who is confident that his/her sexual trauma was not a causal factor for sexual orientation will face the opposite criticism: “You’re in denial. Prove that the abuse is unrelated to your orientation. Until there’s proof that sexual trauma never impacts sexual orientation, your story isn’t worth discussing.” Those of us who have chosen celibacy are accustomed to getting blasted equally from both sides, with conservative friends arguing that the trauma caused our gayness and liberal friends assuming that the trauma is our reason for being celibate. Not to mention that on top of these stigmas, we face all the same stereotypes and judgments (i.e. attention-seeking, it didn’t really happen if the perpetrator didn’t go to jail, we’re at fault) as do straight survivors.

Speaking of sexual trauma should not have to be re-traumatizing. Nor should it have to be like a multiple choice exam where you get 100% for bubbling in all the correct answers. I have no interest in being someone’s political pawn, whether inside or outside the Church. But I’m very interested in beginning a conversation about sexual trauma that invites all LGBT survivors to full participation. If you believe your sexual trauma is totally unrelated to your sexual orientation, if you see those two life experiences as completely intertwined, if you think the two might be related but you aren’t sure how and would like to explore further, or if you’ve never even considered the question before, we’d be honored if you felt safe to share more of your story with us.

It’s time for others to stop using narratives of sexual trauma in an effort to discredit LGBT survivors; it’s time for others to start listening to survivors telling their own stories. The last thing an LGBT survivor needs is to walk on more eggshells. The constant politicization of narratives regarding sexual abuse means that any LGBT survivor who opens up at all about his or her own story faces a loaded cannon of criticism. This post is our initial attempt at saying we’d like to change the tenor of the conversation. We’d like to foster a hospitable place here at A Queer Calling where survivors can know that all stories will be heard.

Comment Policy: Please remember that we, and all others commenting on this blog, are people. Practice kindness. Practice generosity. Practice asking questions. Practice showing love. Practice being human. If your comment is rude, it will be deleted. If you are constantly negative, argumentative, or bullish, you will not be able to comment anymore. We are the sole moderators of the combox.