Monthly Archives: January 2015

Celibacy Involves Family — Madonna House

Posted on by

As you may have noticed, we’ve gotten a little off our normal posting schedule this week. Our apologies! We’re eagerly counting down days to the Gay Christian Network conference in Portland. We hope to see many of you there. We thought this week would be a good opportunity to share a bit about the workshop we gave at the 2014 conference. Many people approached us after our workshop wanting to hear more about how we experienced living in a celibate partnership. We were totally caught off-guard but decided to experiment with blogging about our life together. At the 2014 conference, we presented a workshop called “Celibacy Involves Family” where we discussed how celibate people maintain and craft meaningful family ties. Our goal in this post is to share a bit of what we talked about in that workshop while simultaneously featuring Madonna House, a Catholic lay association of the faithful, as part of our celibate profiles series.

The purpose of our workshop was not to make an argument for celibacy, but to support people currently living, discerning, or interested in celibacy as a temporary or perpetual way of life. A secondary purpose was to show an example that counters the misconception that celibacy is marked by a life of loneliness and misery. People who attended our workshop had diverse perspectives, and some attendees were straight allies and non-celibate LGBT people interested in learning how to be more supportive of celibates.

We began the session by asking what words, images, and associations do we think of when we hear the word celibacy. We collected responses to this question on a large sheet of paper, and then repeated the process focusing on the word family. Words like unsupported, singleness, misunderstood, isolation, outsider, sexually frustrated, loneliness, and oppression filled the sheet dedicated to celibacy and words like children, commitment, intimacy, quality time, belonging, community, love, affection, and safety filled the sheet dedicated to family. It didn’t take long to see that people tended to have more negative associations with celibacy and more positive associations with family.

Workshop participants's association with celibacy

Workshop participants’s association with celibacy

...and with family

…and with family

We then suggested a four-part framework for thinking about family that included family of origin, family of choice, proximate family, and distant family. Family of origin means the family in which one is raised. Family of choice is compromised of the rich relationships one makes a conscious effort to maintain and often pulls on a person’s network of friends. Proximate family are the people you are physically close enough to share rhythms of daily life while distant family are the people who live much farther away. We used this framework to ask four organizing questions:

  • How do we strengthen ties with our families of origin?
  • How do we build our families of choice?
  • How do we cultivate a way of life with our proximate families?
  • How do we honor connections with our distant families?

After we asked those questions, we dove into discussing how the Madonna House Apostolate provides insights into living these questions out as celibate people.

Madonna House was founded in 1947 by Catherine de Hueck Doherty and her husband Eddie. The main house is located in Combermere, Ontario, Canada and has smaller branches in places around the world. The Madonna House is a lay association of the faithful recognized by the Catholic Church, which means that it is compromised primarily of lay members. Madonna House focuses on serving others through hospitality and charity. All members have made commitments to celibacy. The family of Madonna House has a diverse membership, including male and female lay apostles, male and female applicants, and priests — all hailing from many different countries. Additionally, there are associate bishops, priests, and deacons who do not live at Madonna House but are affiliated by their support of Madonna House’s mission. Year-round, male and female visiting volunteers and working guests stay at and engage in the work of Madonna House, although these people are not formal members of the Apostolate. Catherine Doherty once described Madonna House in the following manner: “Our spirit is that of a family, modeled on the Holy Family of Nazareth, which was a community of perfect charity and love.” At Madonna House, which Sarah has visited, one finds plentiful examples illustrative of a rich family life.

Though Madonna House lay apostles live in community year-round rather than with their families of origin, this celibate family encourages connection with members’ families of origin. Members visit their families a few times each year. Families of origin are invited to ceremonies and can participate in the community life as working guests. Additionally, families of origin assist in planning end-of-life care and funerals for their loved ones who have become Madonna House members. Remembering and honoring the origins of its members is an integral part of Madonna House life as well. The spiritual life of the community involves practices of both Eastern and Western Catholicism, and efforts are made to integrate important cultural customs associated with holidays and feasts.

Regarding building family of choice, Madonna House excels at creating ways to welcome new people into its family. Every person, even the newest guest, has a job for each day. Daily work performed by both members and guests benefits the entire Madonna House family and the surrounding local community. For guests who decide to explore a deeper commitment to Madonna House, spiritual direction and opportunities for prayer and discernment are available. All members of Madonna House participate in continuing spiritual, intellectual, and practical formation. When a person decides to become an applicant, he or she is welcomed to the family with a cake that symbolizes one’s continuing life with the Madonna House family. After one’s time as an applicant has come to an end, he or she may decide to be fully integrated as a member of Madonna House, making a 2-year commitment with promises of poverty, chastity, and obedience. This commitment can be renewed a second and a third time before a member is able to make final promises — a lifelong commitment to the Madonna House family.

The proximate family of Madonna House is not only members and guests, but also people in the local community who seek out Madonna House for prayer and assistance. There is a thrift bookshop and clothing store on site where people in the local community can come and find necessary items priced for pennies. As for cultivating a way of life amongst proximate Madonna House members, the community is organized by a shared spiritual life, practical daily work, and shared community time. Each of these facets creates opportunities for the family to bond. Members are expected to be able to give and receive brotherly correction. The community gathers several times a day for communal meals, daily recreation time, daily prayers, and Mass.

Madonna House has an extensive network of people in its distant family. Honoring connections with distant family members frequently means maintaining ties with families of origin. As mentioned previously, family members of lay apostles are frequently welcomed as working guests. During Sarah’s time visiting Madonna House, Sarah heard many stories from members about their past and present relationships with their parents, brothers, sisters, and cousins. Members living at the main house also honor other Madonna House members in different locations. In front of the house stands a direction post that lists all Madonna House field houses by having signs that point toward each.

After discussing the Madonna House example with workshop attendees, we asked them to consider again the four questions we asked at the beginning. We spent time in both small and large group discussion. We concluded by providing a list of reflection questions before asking people to share as they felt led.

For those readers who want to play along, we ended our workshop with the following questions geared towards exploring how people living celibacy might facilitate a rich family life:

  • With whom do you have meaningful relationships?
  • How do we discern what kinds of relationships we need given a particular season of life?
  • How can you find models for living a celibate life?
  • How does your faith inspire and encourage you in living a celibate life?
  • What pathways might be available to you for repairing and strengthening your relationships with your families of origin?
  • What might prevent you from building a family of choice?
  • What fears do you have about cultivating a way of life within your proximate family?

We hope that you’ve enjoyed seeing a bit about what we presented at the 2014 conference. This year, we’re presenting a workshop on Celibacy and the Church. As was true last year, we are not interested in making an argument for celibacy. We are interested in helping celibate Christians, people who are exploring the possibility of celibacy for themselves, and other Christians and churches who want to support people in celibate vocations. We’d love to see you!

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.

“They are suffering from Stockholm Syndrome”: an easy way out of a challenging conversation

Posted on by

Since the Washington Post article on celibate gay Christians from a few weeks ago, we have seen quite a range of responses from all kinds of perspectives. They have been so voluminous that at first, we had decided not to respond to any in particular. However, this evening a Facebook friend made us aware of a newly-published blog post that we had not yet seen. This piece by Kimberly Knight, titled, “Why this Christian will never celebrate gay celibacy,” is particularly problematic in its assumptions, and both of us felt that it warranted a response. This post will serve that function and will also point out some ways in which celebrating gay celibacy would benefit Christians and the Church as a whole.

We agree with a small handful of the claims that Knight presents in her post. For example, it is true that celibate gay Christians are not a new movement. We’ve been around for years, mainly in corners of the internet that most people found entirely uninteresting until very recently. And it’s likely that we’ve been around for generations. Knight is also correct in stating that not all people are sexual beings, and that there are some people who are called to celibacy. We also agree that it is manifestly inappropriate to weaponize the story of any celibate person to manipulate an LGBT person into living a celibate life. But we find every other point in her post problematic, and some of the post’s implications are demonstrably false.

First, Knight conflates celibate gay Christians with “the same old ignorant and homophobic expectation that LGBT Christians should hide their sexuality in the dark and try to change their created orientation in order to be in relationship with God and community.” In reality, we and other celibate gay Christians have written a number of articles and blog posts demonstrating that we desire neither to hide nor change our sexual orientations. We’ll not rehash the arguments that have already been made here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Knight claims to view “so called “Side B” gay Christians as misguided literal/factual readers of scripture that are yet unable to grasp that such reading is unbiblical and frankly unfaithful.” This is one of the most shortsighted assertions we have ever seen from an opponent of gay celibacy because of the simple fact that gay celibates (or Side B, or whatever term you prefer) come from a wide variety of Christian traditions, many of which do not teach biblical literalism. The idea that the entire Side B perspective is based upon a literal/factual interpretation of the Bible is particularly odd considering how many gay celibates are Catholic, Orthodox, and Anglican — traditions that discourage literalist approaches to scripture. These traditions were well established before literalist interpretations of the Bible — which are relatively new phenomena — became an issue. We do not typically use “Side A” and “Side B” language on this blog, but it’s reasonable to assume that Knight would include us in this category as we were featured in the news article she has critiqued. Speaking only for ourselves, we’ll clarify that the two of us are not literalists and literalism has never been the interpretational method for scripture in our Christian tradition.

Although Knight states in her post, “Yes, there are some people who are called to a life of celibacy for all sorts of reasons and I am not saying that celibacy is wrong for all people,” the title “Why this Christian will never celebrate gay celibacy” makes it impossible for Knight to affirm that people like us experience profound and lasting calls to celibacy. It seems that Knight regards celibacy as a deliberate disavowal of one’s sexuality where an otherwise sexual person should not be celibate. The idea that celibacy involves excising one’s sexuality is a rather common misconception about celibacy. The video below features many examples of people choosing celibacy for different reasons. While many people shared about temporarily embracing celibacy, the nun who shares about her vocation makes it clear that she does not view celibacy as renouncing her sexuality.

Knight also seems to believe that all celibate LGBT Christians are advocates for abusive celibacy mandates. We have robustly stated that we object to the celibacy mandate and that it is inappropriate to assign a person a vocation based on sexual orientation. Vocations are discovered, and the manner in which that happens differs from person to person. We have also noted that LGBTQ Christians are free to make many choices in response to how Christian traditions approach the intersection of faith, sexuality, and gender identity. All LGBTQ Christians discern the ways they answer these questions for themselves. From our read of Knight’s post, she seems to be under the impression that a gay Christian cannot choose celibacy as a way of life while still respecting (though sometimes disagreeing with) the decisions of others.

The most problematic assertion in Knight’s post is:

By choosing celibacy in an otherwise sexual body, the gay Christian has submitted to their abusers out of fear and self-preservation, appeased the abuser with vows of celibacy hoping that if they are just good enough the abuser will stop hurting them, sacrificed their personhood to maintain relationship with and love those who are abusing them and have chosen to conspire with their abuser to perpetuate the spiritually and psychologically devastating lie that gay sex is evil.

Knight’s wording conjures up an image of a gay Christian who has kelt before a leader (or tradition), begging for a particular kind of treatment to stop, and made vows of celibacy with the intention of preserving relationships with that leader (or tradition).

We both have experiences in ex-gay ministry, and Lindsey’s story is particularly illustrative of why Knight’s assertion is so problematic. In the past, Lindsey was a part of a Christian tradition that encouraged any gay person to undergo efforts to become straight. In this tradition, being gay was treated with absolute suspicion and a sign that a person was probably not a real Christian. In this framework, a Christian was obligated to do everything possible to become straight. Lindsey tried for a bit, recognizing that spiritual growth occurs over time. When it became increasingly evident to Lindsey that the spiritual exercises recommended by this ministry were harming Lindsey’s spiritual life, Lindsey started querying the limitations of the approach with the people in charge. Their answers were entirely unsatisfying and lacked substantive engagement with the Christian tradition that supposedly justified the ministry’s approach. Specifically, the ministry had superficial interpretations of key biblical texts and no space to affirm that some people might not be called to heterosexual marriage.

Lindsey ran and has had no further engagement with that particular ministry save reconnecting with other participants and critiquing its pastoral approach. Breaking ties so quickly with one ministry created a challenge within Lindsey’s church. This church expected that all members “struggling with same-sex attractions” actively sought help from ex-gay ministries. Lindsey began looking for alternate churches in the area. Over time, Lindsey found refuge at the Gay Christian Network and had space to ask previously forbidden questions about faith and sexuality. Lindsey found a new Christian tradition and has managed to make a clean break with the particularly problematic parts of Lindsey’s former Christian tradition.

We share Lindsey’s story because Lindsey was affiliated with a Christian tradition that actively promoted an expectation that LGBT people would make every effort to hide and denounce their sexuality. Leaving that tradition behind allowed Lindsey to begin the work of discerning Lindsey’s vocation. We’d never hesitate to describe Lindsey’s experience in ex-gay ministries as spiritual abuse; we’ve written elsewhere about healing from spiritual abuse. We don’t believe that it’s essential for LGBT Christians to align with a different Christian tradition full-stop, but Knight’s assertion that any celibate LGBT Christian is essentially bargaining with key teachers within their tradition is false.

We believe that gay celibacy can and should be celebrated. We know many celibate LGBTQ Christians. We’ve seen remarkable creativity as every person we know has discerned, with God’s help, a life-giving vocation. We’ve taken great joy in discerning our vocation as a community of two. We frequently remark that we feel like we’re building the plane while flying it. It’s been entirely empowering to define celibacy as we go along. We know other LGBTQ people thriving in celibate vocations and find it entirely appropriate to celebrate their discernment processes with them. Celebrating gay celibacy has lead to more churches being willing to talk about celibacy in general. Some Christians appear to be more willing to consider the diversity of celibate vocations after engaging in conversations with gay celibates. Far too many churches have relegated celibacy to the background, effectively making marriage the default vocation. Embracing the vocations of queer celibates makes space for more stories. Not all LGBTQ people see a same-sex marriage or a sexually active same-sex relationship as essential to their flourishing, and dialogue needs to move beyond the assumption that sex = liberating; celibacy = oppressive.

Stating that celibate LGBTQ Christians suffer from Stockholm Syndrome is the easy way out of engaging in a conversation about how LGBTQ Christians understand their celibacy, their reasons for choosing celibacy, and their experiences within their Christian traditions. Scholars have noted Stockholm Syndrome is not found in any international diagnostic system for psychiatric disorders, lacks clear diagnostic criteria, and appears to be a media phenomenon. It’s easy to suggest that a person has fallen in love with an abuser if that person has made a choice you wouldn’t make for yourself. Knight wrote about how she has used Stockholm Syndrome as a way to make sense of her decision to enter a mixed-orientation marriage, and we agree that many LGBTQ Christians find themselves in spiritually abusive circumstances. Unfortunately, Knight seems unwilling to consider how her own story could be weaponized to convince other people in vaguely similar circumstances that they should follow her path. Asserting that gay celibacy can only exist in an environment marked by biblical literalism and spiritual abuse hides the experiences of many LGBTQ celibates. Overall, Knight’s post reflects more of her own experience in entering and exiting a mixed-orientation marriage than thoughtful engagement on issues pertinent to celibacy and the LGBTQ Christian community.

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: Celibacy and the Church

Posted on by

Happy New Year readers! We’re eagerly counting down to the Gay Christian Network conference in Portland. This marks Lindsey’s 6th conference and Sarah’s 3rd. With the conference on track to nearly double in size from last year’s Chicago conference, we expect a lot of newcomers. If you’re going to be in Portland, we’d love a chance to meet you. If you can’t make it to Portland, consider checking out the live stream of the main sessions.

Now it’s time for our weekly 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: This year, we’re presenting a workshop on Celibacy and the Church at the conference. We’re interested in helping celibate Christians, people who are exploring the possibility of celibacy for themselves, and churches who want to support people in celibate vocations. We’d love to get your input for our workshop itself: Are there particular questions you’d like us to address? Is there anything you would want to make sure we talk about? Do you have stories (positive or negative) of the way you’ve been supported in your celibate vocation? Unfortunately, the live stream only applies for main sessions. We’re tossing around different ideas about how to let our more distant readers benefit this workshop. We’ve had mixed success with audio recordings because it’s a 90 minute workshop. Do you have other ideas about what we might do to help readers attend from afar? 

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.

Supporting Gender-Variant Kids, A Guide for Conservative Parents

Posted on by

A reflection by Lindsey

Like many people, I’ve been following news about the Alcorn family tragedy. Although this story has gone viral, I know that there are many similar stories that have never been told on a large scale. I’ve seen many journalists and bloggers taking up the story. In particular, I was struck by this tweet from Parker Molloy:

I have been navigating the “Can you be LGBT and Christian?” conversation for over 16 years. During that time, I have always held my faith as the principal informant of the choices I have made. There was even a season between 2003 and 2006 where I thought ex-gay ministries might be the best way forward to answer the question. I find ex-gay ministries to be exceptionally spiritually abusive and have written more about my experiences and my journey away from ex-gay ministries elsewhere on the blog. It’s been challenging and tricky for me to discern the “right” letter of the alphabet to describe myself. We constantly say LGBT people are first and foremost people. It’s a challenge to figure out how to be yourself amidst a lot of noise.

Navigating questions of gender identity can be challenging. Several months back, I wrote a post on affirming kids in a gendered world. Today, I’d like to reflect on some things I wish more conservative Christians would consider, especially if they find themselves parenting a gender-variant child.

Gender emerges naturally and organically as children express themselves. Kids love engaging with their world in their own ways. We don’t come out of the womb with an innate sense of “This is for a boy” and “That is for a girl.” We do have a sense of “I like this,” and “I enjoy that.” Not everything works for all people. I’d be hard-pressed to think of any kid I know with siblings where two of the siblings are exactly the same with their sense of understanding gender. Kids typically don’t behave in gender-variant ways because they are trying to send dismissive messages to their parents. Kids are simply being themselves and interacting with the world in a way that makes sense to them in a given moment. Go ahead and affirm your budding scientist, actor, reader, or artist. Deliver authentic praise when your children do something awesome. Wrap them up in hugs, tell them how much you love them, and let them know how glad you are that they are in your family. Telling a child to avoid something associated with the “wrong” gender is a kind of discipline. There’s a lot of that kind of discipline in society, which leads nicely into my next point.

Your family home should be the absolute safest place for your kids to be themselves. I understand that many conservative parents fear for their gender-variant child’s safety. Social gender norms exist. Being a person to push on those gender norms can invite all kinds of teasing, harassment, bullying, and abuse. How do you help your children if they are teased for being too short, having too many freckles, or being a big nerd? It’s okay to let your child experiment with self-presentation. I’ve learned that the envelope of what works socially is often far larger than adults think. Your child may just be the child who can totally rock a bow tie, a buzz cut, an eclectic dress-vest-boots combo, a ponytail, etc. It can be a good idea to help your child problem-solve various unwelcome attention from others. However, your kids shouldn’t have to problem-solve ways to be themselves to feel welcome in their own home. They might decide that certain clothes are for home-only or that it’s best to explore particular interests in specific ways. Sometimes, they might want to talk to a counselor or therapist to work through their questions in their own ways. That’s a good thing. It can be good for kids to talk with counselors and therapists about how they understand self-determination.

Becoming an adult means asking a whole bunch of questions about oneself. I’m a rare breed of adult who thinks teenagers are awesome. Teenagers are some of the coolest people on the face of the planet. They spend so much of their time trying to figure out how they want to relate to the world. They have a sense that they matter, they can contribute to the world at large, and they’re getting ready to try and do those things to make the world that much better. But, they are encountering so many possibilities at once that it’s hard to cut through the noise. Their bodies are working very hard to become adult bodies. Everything is changing. It takes a good bit for the dust to settle. I wish someone would have told me that between the ages of 10 and 25, I’d be juggling through different senses of myself and that juggling was perfectly normal. Sometimes, I think it would be better if more parents could affirm that their teenagers are asking perfectly normal questions while becoming adults. If a set of questions really freaks parents out, then perhaps it’s better for the parents to find a way to talk with other adults about how to approach the conversations in a way that can be respectful of their teens. Suffice it to say, parents don’t need to have the final word on the conversations all the time. Chances are excellent that the conversation will be on-going.

When gender-variant kids are asking difficult questions about gender, parents have a range of options to give their kids more space. Parents have so many ways to affirm their children as unique and special people created in the image of God. You cannot go wrong in telling your child, “I’m so glad God gave me you.” Sometimes it’s good to throw in “I love that you’re mine,” or “I love having you as my child.” You can affirm your relationship with your child without constantly referencing gender. Your child has so many interests that have nothing to do with gender and everything to do with providing a safe space to be real. Let your child participate in places where you see sparks behind your child’s eyes. If a child feels out of place in a single-sex environment, parents can often explore opportunities that don’t require gender segregation. And, coming back to the tweet that inspired this collection of thoughts, please consider giving gifts that don’t make a direct statement about what your child’s gender should be. One tradition I like is giving gift cards to favorite stores that have awesome Day After Christmas sales. Alternately, parents can always consider gifts like books, board games, theater or movie tickets, or any kind of amusement that would be appreciated by your child.

Gender is tricky, but you’ve honestly been figuring out your children since the moment they were born. Children are actively figuring themselves out along the way as well. Your child is a precious gift, given to you by God. Many children want to know that their parents love them unconditionally, see them as individuals, and know that they are entirely far too multi-faceted to be reduced to a single descriptor of “male” or “female.” Look for the spark behind your children’s eyes, and do what you can do so that their souls have space to dance.

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.