Monthly Archives: July 2014

Saturday Symposium: Traditional Sexual Ethics and Mental Health/Wellbeing

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Happy Saturday once again! We’ve managed to clear about half our inbox this past week, so we’re making it through those responses to reader emails. Each week, we continue to feel honored by readers who have shared their own thoughts and personal stories with us. The level of vulnerability you have shown challenges us to be more vulnerable. In particular, Sarah’s personal reflection from this week has received many incredibly moving responses. Thank you for flooding our inbox with love and entrusting us with your own stories.

Now, let’s move on to today’s Saturday Symposium question:

How this works: It’s very simple. We ask a multi-part question related to a topic we’ve blogged about during the past week or are considering blogging about in the near future, and you, our readers, share your responses in the comments section. Feel free to be open, reflective, and vulnerable…and to challenge us. But as always, be mindful of the comment policy that ends each of our posts. Usually, we respond fairly quickly to each comment, but in order to give you time to think, come back, add more later if you want, and discuss with other readers, we will wait until after Monday to respond to comments on Saturday Symposium questions.

This week’s Saturday Symposium question: Our question for today comes from a reader email. This reader has written to us with many thoughtful questions and comments, but we found one particularly striking. After reading multiple blogs within the LGBT Christian blogosphere, she recognizes a sense of privilege as a straight person and wants to be compassionate to all LGBT people while holding a traditional sexual ethic. She wonders how it is possible to continue bearing witness to a traditional sexual ethic if so many LGBT people have experienced despair and have even turned to suicide because of the beliefs associated with this approach to sexual ethics. We will be responding to this reader within the next few days, but because the issue raised in her email is a very important one (or at least should be, in our opinion) for all involved in the LGBT Christian conversation, we wanted to pose it for all our readers. How can a person bear witness to a traditional sexual ethic, even if that person believes it aligns with the Gospel, if doing so leads others to despair? Do you think it’s true that a traditional sexual ethic necessarily leads at least some LGBT people to a decrease in mental health and wellbeing? Are there any ways of discussing a traditional sexual ethic that might be less likely to have such an impact? Is a progressive sexual ethic the answer, or is it possible that a progressive sexual ethic might also do harm in some way? If so, to whom?

We look forward to reading your responses. If you’re concerned about having your comment publicly associated with your name, please consider using the Contact Us page to submit your comment. We can post it under a pseudonym (i.e. John says, “your comment”) or summarize your comment in our own words (i.e. One person observed…). Participating in this kind of public dialogue can be risky, and we want to do what we can to protect you even if that means we preserve your anonymity. Have a wonderful weekend!

Blessings,

Sarah and Lindsey

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.

Learning to Recognize Workplaces Hostile to LGBT People

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A reflection by Lindsey

This post has been on my mind for months. It’s been a hard one to write. After all, I didn’t feel quite safe enough to talk about my previous hostile workplaces until I felt reasonably secure in a more supportive work environment.

As we’ve shared before, I have the good(?) fortune of being easily identifiable as a member of the LGBT community because of my appearance. I have always had a hard time figuring out why people generally assume I’m a member of the queer community. My sense of style has remained largely consistent since I was five and has never been about making a “statement.” Until a few weeks ago, I had never displayed anything rainbow on my person, and even then it was only a small ribbon worn by many professional conference attendees to show support for diversity in engineering. But I have found that absolutely nothing I do ensures that I will be treated fairly on the job if a particular employer is hesitant about employing LGBT people. It’s hard to say definitively that my LGBT status was what separated me from any past job, but I have strong suspicions that I have worked for at least two workplaces that, for whatever reason, did not want to employ any queer person. As I’m gearing up to start a new job, I’ve reflected on patterns that emerge when a workplace is trying to get rid of an LGBT employee.

I think it’s important to begin with some simple, factual statements. Employers rarely come right out and tell you that they think you’re LGBT. The more blatant the discrimination is, the more likely it is that the harassed person might seek legal help.  If you have any skills documenting the exact forms of harassment, you might be able to win a wrongful termination settlement on the basis of another federally protected category. Overt discrimination and harassment around LGBT status frequently involves sex, gender, and marital status, and I have no doubt that companies curtail the most flagrant kinds of LGBT discrimination. What company wants to be the poster child for that lawsuit? Instead, companies that would rather not employ an LGBT person frequently try to nudge the individual out the door in subtler ways. To convince a person to leave or gather grounds to terminate the individual, some employers will do everything in their power to create a hostile workplace.

It’s no secret that workplaces have a limited arsenal of strategies they can use to try and nudge a person out of a job, and many of them are just barely on the right side of the law. These can be used against any person an employer is trying to move out the door, LGBT or not. But my experience suggests that the workplace climate can change in nearly imperceptible ways when an employer starts to suspect that an employee is LGBT and decides that hiring a queer person was a mistake. It’s especially important for LGBT employees to be aware of these changes. Here are 3 things I’ve learned to look out for along with some of my thoughts on how to let a workplace know that you’re prepared to play hardball if it tries to make your life a living hell:

1. Evaporating support structures. I’ve been fortunate to work at companies that value retention. When I arrived at these companies, I was matched with mentors who would check in with me occasionally to see how I was doing. Mentees could generally expect to have weekly conversations with their mentors. As I have reflected on my past experiences in difficult workplaces, I cannot think of any meaningful interactions with my mentors after people started to think about whether I may be LGBT.

Here’s what I wish I would have done differently: I wish I would have settled into a pattern on Day 1, Week 1 of contacting my mentor regularly. I would have looked to the employee handbook for guidance, but I would have communicated with my mentor in writing about expectations for our relationship. Email is a particularly good medium because one has a written record of the conversations. If I had suspected an employer was starting to feel out my LGBT status, I would have spent the next several weeks tracking my interactions with my mentor to see if anything about our relationship had changed. If even the slightest aspect had seemed fishy, I would have discussed my mentorship concerns with my supervisor and/or human resources in writing. Additionally, I would have duplicated the relevant correspondence. For all intents and purposes, your employer owns the correspondence and does not need to give you access to your work email after you’ve been terminated. One particularly hostile work environment suspended my access to my email account less than an hour after letting me go.

2. Shifting responsibilities. Job descriptions tend to be written vaguely and broadly. Virtually every contract I’ve signed has included the line, “and other duties that may be assigned.” It does not take long in a work environment to figure out which duties are most and least desirable. When I have found myself in increasingly hostile workplaces, I’ve noticed a vacuum with regard to explicit responsibilities with clear due dates for deliverables. Simultaneously, I have observed other people receiving desirable duties, but no interest from my supervisors in assigning some of those to me. Additionally, my work duties began to change, and began to mirror those of people with far less experience and skill. Also, I was assigned tasks with such low priority that supervisors lost all interest in giving me any feedback on my work. With other people working on the important and urgent projects, my work became nearly invisible.

Here’s what I wish I would have done differently: Virtually every company wants employees who take initiative and are self-starters. Long-term projects can be a great way to prove oneself, but supervisors frequently fail to provide timely feedback. When I noticed that I was being assigned nearly exclusively to long-term projects, I wish I’d had the foresight to be firmer in asking for feedback on smaller parts of those projects from my supervisors. Additionally, I wish I had documented the time I had spent waiting for promised feedback from my supervisors. Because employers value team players, I would have documented the feedback I gave to other employees who were working on various short-term projects instead of giving my feedback orally and trusting that my supervisor would hear that I had offered it at all.

3. Increasing supervisory distance. As mentioned in the previous point, doing a good job when starting at a new company requires getting a lot of feedback on one’s performance. It’s really hard to get quality feedback, or any at all, when supervisors keep their distance. One change that I noticed in increasingly hostile workplaces was that my supervisors tended to frame their distance as being motived by the employee’s interest. After all, if an employee reports struggling to get to personal or family obligations in the evening, wouldn’t a compassionate employer explore possibilities of flex time? Giving the employee access to flex time makes the employer look compassionate and understanding. However, if a supervisor starts to use said flex time to be conspicuously absent at hours when the employee is working, I’d encourage the employee to consider looking for a different job.

Here’s what I wish I would have done differently: Workplaces have their rhythms. Through my experiences in hostile workplaces, I’ve learned that few workplaces are interested in modifying those rhythms. I wish I would have taken time to discern each workplace’s natural rhythm. Similarly, I wish I had thought to figure out where and how important decisions got made. People need to collaborate in order to create a workplace that is truly hostile, even if one person seems to be in charge of coordinating all of the puzzle pieces. Some of the more creative arrangements for promoting hostility can lead to supervision-via-documentation rather than supervision-via-relationship. As soon as I realized I was in a situation of supervision-via-documentation, I wish I would have known to start looking for a new job. It’s much easier to find fault with a written report than it is to identify weaknesses in a person one regards as a friend.

As I prepare to start a new job, I have tried to do my homework as much as possible. Even in my two most hostile workplaces, I managed to land on my feet after the fallout because I knew just enough about my rights to signal that my employers had their toes on the proverbial lines. I’d be willing to make a small bet that showing one’s ability to keep a detailed record of workplace climate issues might be the best strategy in cultivating more positive work environments.

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

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.

5 Thoughts on Shifting Conversation Away from the Culture Wars

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We know many people who are surprised that we chose to become part of a Christian tradition that takes a conservative approach to questions of sexual morality. We’ve shared in previous posts that to us, LGBT issues are not the most important theological considerations when compared to other points one might explore when deciding where to attend church. To our way of thinking, questions of LGBT rights don’t even come close when one views the broader range of traditional Christian tenets related to Christology, sacraments, scripture, ecclesiology, and so on. We do view moral formation as imperative for living into the fullness of our Christian tradition, but have never been ones to choose a church primarily because of where a particular tradition stands on questions such as whether same-sex couples can be married. However, we’ve observed that in both our current and previous Christian traditions, depending upon the parish there can sometimes be a tendency to focus conversations about the Christian life exclusively on culture war issues. We think this approach is enormously problematic because the Christian life is about so much more than a list of thou-shalt-nots. Some people fear that shifting conversation away from the culture wars means ignoring morality altogether and adopting a relativist mindset where all kinds of behavior are equally acceptable. We disagree strongly with this perspective and believe that moving beyond a culture wars framework of morality is essential for discussing moral issues within Christianity and sharing Christ with others.

We’ve found that in conversations with people who are interested in Christianity, emphasizing central concepts from the Gospel is especially important. The Gospel is good news and presenting it as anything less is harmful. We can mistakenly believe that the Gospel is easy to understand and live fully because it has been given for all people. But if we stop and think more deeply about the life of Christ, how could we reasonably infer that anything about his way of interacting with the world was easy? The Gospel invites us to orient our whole lives towards Christ, and doing so is a daily challenge for most. Shaping one’s life as Christo-centric necessitates giving over one’s whole being. This is the lifelong task of every Christian, and giving so much attention to culture war issues in conversations about Christianity reduces being a follower of Christ to obeying a list of do’s and don’ts’. Focusing on the good news of the Gospel does not mean sugarcoating its message or the difficult parts of following Christ. It does not mean hiding your Christian tradition’s teachings about LGBT issues or other controversial matters, or pretending that these teachings are unimportant.

We’ve learned that when engaging in conversation with people who disagree with us on one matter or another, it’s essential to maintain a welcoming posture and recognize that all people who seek Christ are encountering him in many different ways at different times in their lives. Everyone is on a journey, and none of us knows where other people have been or are headed. As Christians, our encouragement should help point other people towards Christ. Often, we are unaware of other people’s processes when making moral decisions, or what they may or may not be working on with their pastors, priests, or spiritual directors. When our bishop visited our parish a couple of years ago, one of our fellow parishioners asked him a question about Christians who are lax on moral issues. Our bishop responded by telling a story about a person with a complicated orthodontic problem who had changed doctors. The new orthodontist examined the patient and viewed his x-rays, but couldn’t understand why the previous orthodontist had approached the patient’s problem in a particular way. At the same time, he also recognized that without a full record, he had no idea what the previous orthodontist had to work with when first meeting this patient. It’s the same with Christians and their spiritual fathers, the bishop reminded us. None of us know other people’s circumstances fully because we cannot be completely aware of everything someone else is discussing with his or her own spiritual director. Therefore, it’s best to avoid making judgments about another person’s journey to Christ.

Experience has taught us that when moral issues do arise, conversation about morality is much more meaningful and productive if anchored in the Gospel. Sometimes when responding to the question, “How should Christians live?” we fail to teach new Christians and children anything more specific than, “Be nice, do the right thing, do what God asks us to do, and don’t do the things God asks us to avoid.” It can come off almost like a set of middle school civics lessons: these are the laws we have to obey because something bigger than us says doing so is necessary for the good of society. However, the Gospel suggests that there is much more to being a Christian than following rules. In most Christian traditions, moral expectations are understood as rooted in the message of the Gospel. If a person is curious about what your Christian tradition teaches on sexual morality, it might be helpful to anchor the conversation in the account of the wedding at Cana or Jesus’ response to the Sadducees about who will be married at the Resurrection. Through our own conversations with Christians across the ideological spectrum on culture war issues, we’ve come to see that civil dialogue is much less likely to happen if one defaults to, “God says that gay sex is a sin and marriage is between a man and a woman,” or “God loves everyone equally including LGBT people,” without a further explanation rooted deeply within the tradition.

Furthermore, we’ve found that it’s rarely helpful to focus solely on moral prohibitions and fail to discuss moral permissions. When most non-Christian people think of Christian morality, then tend to jump immediately to things Christians can’t do. As Sarah discussed once before, sometimes even lifelong Christians are inclined to define morality in the negative. If you were to ask a large group of people how they think conservative Christian traditions counsel LGBT members, most would probably answer, “They tell them that gay sex is a sin.” Upon pressing further into what those traditions say that LGBT Christians should do, the majority would likely say, “Avoid gay sex.” Eve Tushnet has described this as a “vocation of ‘no,'” and highlighted the damaging effects of such an approach. Regarding other behaviors that conservative Christian traditions consider sinful, rarely have we encountered such strong, “Don’t do that!” messages. Rather, we’ve heard many more conversations about what Christians should do. In the case of, “Thou shalt not kill,” Christians don’t wag fingers and beat people over the head with commands of, “Don’t kill! Don’t do it! Avoid killing because it’s a sin!” Instead, we hear homilies about love, and we help each other toward developing greater love for all humanity. We increase respect for the lives of other humans by learning to love, not by repeating the prohibition against killing over and over again. It’s important to emphasize the moral permissions of discerning vocation because the purpose of vocation is to call us toward Christ. Focusing on “Thou shalt not” implies that life in Christ goes no deeper than avoiding sin.

Lastly, one of the most significant lessons we’ve learned from living in the midst of the culture wars is that it’s dangerous to lose sight of one’s own journey to Christ by devoting all of one’s energies to telling others how far they are from Christ. Matthew 7:3 asks us, “Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye but do not notice the log in your own eye?” This verse is quoted out of context frequently by folks who wish to argue for a moral relativist position. As a result, some people dismiss this important piece of Christian teaching. It’s far too easy for any of us to see our brothers’ and sisters’ faults more readily than our own. This doesn’t mean that we can never rightly identify instances of sin in other people’s lives. The point is, it’s not our job to make assumptions about what may or may not be going on in another person’s life. It harms our own spiritual lives when we make such assumptions and allow ourselves to become self-righteous as a result. It’s spiritual poison to devote time to discovering whether another person is sinning so that we can tell ourselves, “I’m doing better than he or she is.” The Prayer of Saint Ephraim ends with the entreaty, “My Lord and King, grant me the grace to see my own sin and not to judge my brother.” While we might be tempted to tell someone else what he or she should be doing to live a holy life, we must remember that it requires a mighty divine work for us to conform our own lives to the pattern of Christ.

Living a Christian life requires that people give themselves wholly to the call. Christ calls us to follow him in hopes that we will one day be able to reflect his image and likeness fully. We do not pretend to understand everyone else’s unique situations, but we are always happy to pray for others that God will guide them towards the Truth that is Christ himself. Relative to our own formation, we know that we’re not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. We’d be curious to hear if you have other strategies from shifting conversations away from the culture wars, and we always welcome your feedback on our writings in the comment box.

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.

Saturday Symposium: Describing LGBT Christian Sexual Ethics

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Good morning, folks. Once again, hoping everyone’s weekend is off to a great start. If you’re one of our American readers, Happy 4th of July weekend. We’ve finally caught up on blog comments and are slowly responding to emails. As usual, thanks for your patience and for some very thoughtful comments this week.

We’re eager to hear your responses to today’s Saturday Symposium question:

How this works: It’s very simple. We ask a multi-part question related to a topic we’ve blogged about during the past week or are considering blogging about in the near future, and you, our readers, share your responses in the comments section. Feel free to be open, reflective, and vulnerable…and to challenge us. But as always, be mindful of the comment policy that ends each of our posts. Usually, we respond fairly quickly to each comment, but in order to give you time to think, come back, add more later if you want, and discuss with other readers, we will wait until after Monday to respond to comments on Saturday Symposium questions.

This week’s Saturday Symposium question: Because we don’t use the terms Side A and Side B here on the blog to describe our own sexual ethics, we’ve been wondering why some people place so much importance on these terms and others do not. As we were interacting with readers yesterday on Twitter, we decided to start a conversation about this.

We posed the question:

Almost immediately, we heard from folks who recognize that the terms have utility and are helpful for some people. For example:  

But others focused on how these terms can frame important conversations as a debate rather than a dialogue:

In the past, we’ve found these terms useful for exploring sexual ethics further. Even today, we still use them as shorthand in certain instances of conversation with friends. But if you’ve been reading our blog even for a short time, you’ve probably figured out that we believe there are other ways to discuss sexual ethics, and depending upon the conversation, trying a new approach to discussing LGBT issues in the Church might be necessary. Today, we are asking the same question we asked on Twitter yesterday: Are “Side A” and “Side B” the most accurate descriptors for all LGBT Christian sexual ethics? To put a bit more flesh on that question, if you were having coffee with someone who wanted a primer on this topic, would you feel it essential to first explain Side A and Side B, or would you take a different approach?

We look forward to reading your responses. If you’re concerned about having your comment publicly associated with your name, please consider using the Contact Us page to submit your comment. We can post it under a pseudonym (i.e. John says, “your comment”) or summarize your comment in our own words (i.e. One person observed…). Participating in this kind of public dialogue can be risky, and we want to do what we can to protect you even if that means we preserve your anonymity. Have a wonderful weekend!

Blessings,

Sarah and Lindsey

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.