Author Archives: Sarah and Lindsey

Saturday Symposium: Loving LGBT People Well

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Hello readers! It’s been great to see so many new faces in the comments this week. We’re glad you’re here. For those just finding your way to A Queer Calling, it’s Saturday where we host a Saturday Symposium question to encourage discussion between our readers. We invite everyone to participate!

Now it’s time for this week’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: We’ve been talking a lot about love this week. On Thursday, we started a conversation about how traditional churches can love LGBT people well. Today, we’d like to broaden that discussion by asking how have you seen churches show love to LGBT people. Where have you seen a church show extravagant love? Which stories stand out to you because they show that local churches can indeed love well? What stories give you strength to continue loving well? Where have you found unexpected fruit from trying to love LGBT people well?

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.

Has it really been a year already?

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This week has been an absolute whirlwind of activity in our house. We got back from the GCN conference in Portland and jumped straightaway back into our normal everyday lives. That does presuppose, of course, that our lives could ever be described as normal.

We published our first post on this blog exactly a year ago. We never thought that Vulnerability Opens the Door to Intimacy would create a space for hundreds of people to join us in conversations about being LGBT, being celibate, and being Christians. It was a little weird to go to GCN conference to meet our readers…. Since when did we become a big deal? And really, how could this space at A Queer Calling be worthy of a shoutout in a keynote address? We started the blog because a handful of people approached us after the “Celibacy Involves Family” workshop we presented in Chicago. They wanted to hear our story. Because Lindsey had recently lost a job, we had a lot of time and wanted something to do. So we wrote. And we wrote some more. And we wrote so much that some of you said, “Gah! You’re publishing too much too fast! Please slow down!” Writing this blog has been about saying things we think ought to be said, sharing our lives with our readers such that we’re real people, and finding balance points so as to have a different sort of conversation about LGBT people in the Church.

Along the way, we’ve come to realize it’s important to tell you more about who we are and what life looks like for us away from the cliff face of sexuality and faith. As much as we are celibate LGBT Christians, our vocation calls us to be more. We’re teachers, friends, confidants, and earnest advocates. We strive to be transparent, at least as much as we can. Transparency is hard. It’s not much fun to be vulnerable in an extremely public forum. But we’re so grateful for how all of our readers and commenters have been here for us along the way. It was a sacred gift to meet some of you in Portland.

In Portland, we took another series of first steps: Sarah exhibited and sold art. We were amazed by how people at the GCN conference received Art Coming Out the Ears. And a few of them told us that we should put Sarah’s work up on the internet. We’ve spent the last few nights hard at work to follow up. It’s a distinct pleasure to unveil Art Coming Out the Ears: Artistic Explorations of Faith, Identity, and Life with Ménière’s Disease. We’d encourage you to go have a look, and if you’re so inspired, we’d love to send you print or some greeting cards that features images of Sarah’s original art. If money’s an issue for you, please avail yourself of code AQCFAMILY at the Etsy store to save 10% on all purchases.

Thank you for our first year. We look forward to continuing this journey with you. May God shower you with abundant blessings.

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.

Loving LGBT People Well, 12 Suggestions for Traditional Churches

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Amid significant discussions about how churches relate to LGBT people, many people whether churches that teach traditional sexual ethics can love LGBT people well. Part of the question relates to how people understand the term traditional sexual ethics, but a bigger part of the question concerns the lived witness of churches towards their LGBT congregants.

For the sake of having a working definition, let’s say a traditional church is a community that teaches marriage as a fantastic, awesome, and inspiring union of a man and a woman focused on establishing a family.

Unfortunately, many traditional churches are best known for their political activities rather than their love and care for their community. Lindsey’s a notorious optimist and decided to make some suggestions for traditionally-minded Christians. After all, we were asked:

We’d like to take this question seriously, and we’d welcome continued dialogue with any traditionally-minded Christian who wants to take us up on our suggestions. So, without further ado, here are 12 suggestions for loving LGBT people well.

1. Commit to walking with people, not presuming that you have all of the answers. Listen far more than you speak, feeling the full weight of the power of words to destroy souls. So many pastoral challenges begin when pastors fail to appreciate that LGBT people are first and foremost people. Walking with a person involves sitting down together, establishing relationship, sharing vulnerably, and coming to places of trust. Realize that many LGBT people have been harassed and maligned by so many others, especially Christians. Watch what you say from the front of your congregation, especially during times and seasons where it seems absolutely fitting to teach about marriage and sexuality.

2. For the love of God, please don’t make saying the sentence “I’m gay” (or any other LGBTQ variant) the unforgivable sin in your congregation. Words are words, and they have the meaning we ascribe to them. Conservative Christian, please take time to ask what particular people mean when we describe ourselves as LGBTQ. Constantly demanding that queer folk censor our language at all times causes us to wonder if it’s possible to share our lives with you. Humble yourself and say, “I’m really not quite sure what you mean when you say that. Could you help me understand better?” Sure, some people navigating questions of sexual orientation and gender identity might not feel comfortable with using LGBTQ language, but don’t force others to make the same choice.

3. Investigate what your Christian tradition teaches about celibacy. Find positive, negative, and neutral views on celibate vocations. There’s a reason why this point comes third in our list of suggestions. We know so many traditional churches that have never had an honest discussion about celibate ways of life. Celibate vocation is not a shorthand for sexual abstinence; it’s a way of living. If you can’t comprehend what celibate vocations might look like, then you will likely try asking LGBTQ people to live into identically the same counsel as cisgender, heterosexual people when it comes to sexual morality. [Cisgender is a word that means not transgender. Cisgender people have a gender identity that aligns with their sex assigned at birth.] Without rigorously investigating your Christian tradition’s teachings on celibacy, you’re likely to assume that LGBTQ people just need to meet the right opposite-sex person to marry or do not need any support living into celibate vocations.

4. Seriously examine how your Christian tradition understands marriage. We’re admittedly coming at this question from an LGBTQ perspective, but sometimes it’s hard to see what makes marriage such a big deal in particular churches. So many heterosexuals seem to get married using designer services that say little about being called into a married way of life. It’s worth asking questions: Are there must-have and non-negotiable parts of a wedding service at your church? What do those essentials proclaim about the nature of marriage? Are those the right messages to send? For example, many Christian traditions regard “giving away the bride” as an essential part of a wedding service. However, this practice has questionable Christian pedigree because of how it’s been used to reinforce the idea that women are property.

5. Call on all parents to love their children unconditionally, making a point to specifically and explicitly discuss LGBT kids. This point is an absolute must. Too many Christians have advocated for “tough love” approaches where a child becomes expendable the instant he or she comes out as LGBT. Parents should be the ultimate safety net for their children. If parents cite something taught in your church as a basis for cutting off their relationship with their LGBT kids, then we hope you would get on with the work of public repentance stat. No parent should be forced to choose between their kid and their faith.

6. Get to know, and support the work of, community organizations working to serve LGBT kids when their parents fail to walk alongside of them. Any child who does not experience unconditional love from his or her parents is going to have a really hard time. Most kids whose parents cite Christian beliefs as the reason why they can no longer love their children are not going to come banging down the doors of a church asking for help. We’ve been impressed by organizations trying to do the heroic work of loving LGBT kids when parents refuse to do so. We’re grateful for organizations like the Trevor Project and the new Trans Lifeline. We’ve lost count of the number of people who found refuge at the Gay Christian Network. There are organizations like LoveBoldly trying to make a difference on a smaller scale. Many local LGBT centers serve as a great touchpoint for finding real-life organizations doing work in your community. Learn about what these organizations are doing, listen to people share their stories, and do what you can to extend tangible expressions of Christ’s love for all people.

7. Pray for yourself, other people in church leadership, and your congregation as a whole. Ask others to pray for you. If you’re still reading up to this point, congratulations. We know far too many traditionally-minded Christians who would give up after reading points 1 and 2, much less get all the way to point 7. Doing this work is hard, and trying to love others without counting the cost will change you. Entreat God to open up the storehouse of wisdom.

8. Ask God to reveal to you any way you have crushed the spirits of LGBT people… and expect to be surprised. No one expects to be the destroyer of souls. No one expects to have blood on their hands. But it happens. It happens all of the time. We’re Christians, but we all too often fail to love with the love of Christ. Repentance is part and parcel of any Christian’s journey. We don’t pretend to know what God will show you when you shine the light of Christ on this area of your witness. We simply want to invite you to pray with the Psalmist “Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way within me, and lead me in the way everlasting!”

9. Watch “Through My Eyes” and arrange periodic screenings at your church. This video resource is one of the most helpful resources we know of for promoting discussion of LGBT people in your church. It’s produced by the Gay Christian Network and features the stories of over 20 queer young adults. It differs from other resources in that it does not offer any kind of theological apologetic. We know many Christians who’ve found it to be a good way to approach the tough conversations from a place of empathy.

10. Read accounts of celibate LGBT Christians with traditional sexual ethics with an eye towards discerning their different pastoral needs along their journeys. Two of the best known are Washed and Waiting by Wesley Hill and Gay and Catholic by Eve Tushnet. Now, there’s a great temptation to weaponize the stories of celibate LGBT Christians and assert that somehow we’re the “good” gays who should be welcome in churches while “bad” (sexually active) gays should be shunned absolutely. Resist that temptation with everything in your being. We’ve walked this journey with many, many, many LGBT people. Shoving one of these books (for that matter, our blog) in the direction of an LGBT person and asserting that individual can live a celibate vocation is incredibly unfeeling and excuses pastors of their pastoral responsibilities. We recommend these specific books because they are part memoir where a discerning eye can pick out places where both Hill and Tushnet needed real pastoral support. Could they, and others like them, get that kind of support from your congregation?

11. Talk openly with your church about how you’ve found gaps in how you love LGBT people. Expect a lot of controversy and commit for the long haul. Many of these activities are necessarily public activities. They are activities that invite action. Leading with love requires being visible. We know that it’s not easy.

12. Risk coming out in vocal support for the dignity of LGBT people. One theological tenet guides every suggestion we’ve made: all people are created in the image of God and have a fundamental dignity as children of God. What are you willing to give to proclaim that LGBT people have dignity? How bold are you willing to be?

We consider these suggestions as only the tip of the iceberg. As we wrote this post, we could identify maybe three church communities that attempt to to any of this work. But we have to wonder if there are local churches willing to embrace the challenges and love LGBT people well. Heck, we know many progressive churches that fall short of doing the things we’ve suggested here. We’ve put this stake in the ground because we think the time has come to stop shying away from boldly declaring that LGBT people have dignity and must be treated with respect. We’d welcome any church from any Christian tradition who wants to take up this challenge to contact us directly. Any information submitted through our Contact Us page comes directly to us, and we promise to hold your information in absolute confidence. If you want to identify yourself publicly in the comments, please do so.

As always, we invite commentators from every perspective under the sun to join the conversation on this post. Before you comment, please be sure to remind yourself of our comment policy.

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.

Author’s note: this post has been edited to add a definition for cisgender. It’s important to have these difficult conversations in a way that is inclusive of both sexual orientation and gender identity.

The Church I long for

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A reflection by Lindsey

It is now the Wednesday after the Gay Christian Network Conference. I love this weekend when I gather with people so obviously different from me and so eerily similar to me at exactly the same time. Call it what you will, but I can’t help experiencing it as a feast of humanity that warrants its own octave of reflection.

Mostly I reflect because I’m angry and frustrated almost immediately after I get home. It doesn’t take long before leaving the protective bubble of GCN Conference before I get that cold cup of water to my face that puts me back squarely in reality. It doesn’t take long to remember that GCN Conference is a special place, simply because the GCN community has learned to say, “I’m so glad you’re with us,” to every single person who decides to come join us. I get frustrated and angry that few local congregations know how to extend that welcome.

Leaving conference is always hard for me because I catch a vision for what local churches could be… and what I think local churches should be. Don’t hear me wrong: the GCN conference community could be a complete farce; people could be on their best behavior for a weekend before returning home to say the things they wish they really could have said. I’ve come to believe otherwise though since I attended my first conference in 2008. The connections I’ve made through GCN have been shockingly supportive, loving, and amazing during some of my most trying times. GCN has been there for me as God has guided me along arguably one of the most counterintuitive spiritual journeys known to humankind. I wish that more local congregations encouraged people to be children of the Church where people could ask really hard questions within a community of faith. I wish churches were the kind of places where people could wonder aloud, learn how their Christian tradition approaches theological inquiry, and grow in wisdom and in strength. I mostly wish that more churches embodied Jeff Chu’s hopes and dreams for Christian community:

The table I long for—the church I hope for—is a place where we let others see where the spirit meets the bone and help heal the wounds. The table I long for—the church I hope for—has the grace of the Gospel as its magnificent centerpiece. The table I long for—the church I hope for—is where we care more about our companions than about winning our arguments with them, where we set aside the condescension that accompanies our notion that we need to bring them our truth. The table I long for—the church I hope for—has each of you sitting around it, struggling to hold the knowledge that you, vulnerable you and courageous you, are beloved by God, not just welcome but desperately, fiercely wanted.

It’s a bit odd for me to be writing this post because I belong to a closed-communion Christian tradition that I love incredibly. I strive every day to live into the fullness of what my Christian tradition teaches, however short I fall. Within my Christian tradition, I was able to find the space necessary to discern my own vocation. It’s certainly never been easy, but I’m so appreciative of the ways this tradition helps me look at God, Christ, myself, other people, and the world at large. And it’s hard for me to know that many people in my own tradition wouldn’t touch a space like GCN Conference with a 10-foot pole. Sometimes, I think that if my fellow parishioners spoke about GCN, their words would be dripping with contempt. That makes me sad because I wonder if people unintentionally close doors to others genuinely seeking Christ because they’re just different enough where it’s impossible for them to blend in with the woodwork.

Chu’s vision of the conversation table is marvelous, compelling, and inspiring in so many ways. But this vision only partially captures Christ’s radical welcome to the table. Consider what we read in Luke’s gospel:

When one of those who reclined at table with him heard these things, he said to him, “Blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!” But he said to him, “A man once gave a great banquet and invited many. And at the time for the banquet he sent his servant to say to those who had been invited, ‘Come, for everything is now ready.’ But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, ‘I have bought a field, and I must go out and see it. Please have me excused.’ And another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to examine them. Please have me excused.’ And another said, ‘I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.’ So the servant came and reported these things to his master. Then the master of the house became angry and said to his servant, ‘Go out quickly to the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in the poor and crippled and blind and lame.’ And the servant said, ‘Sir, what you commanded has been done, and still there is room.’ And the master said to the servant, ‘Go out to the highways and hedges and compel people to come in, that my house may be filled. For I tell you, none of those men who were invited shall taste my banquet.’”

This is one of those parables where I catch a glimpse of the radical welcome of Christ. I see Christ going out to the ends of the earth to bring every type of person who will permit themselves to be invited. I’m struck that Christ’s welcome goes far beyond the sea of humanity I see on any given Sunday, including the Sunday I spend attending the GCN Conference. I know that this parable also appears in Matthew’s gospel specifically as a wedding banquet, and I’m grateful for the way my Christian tradition has called my attention to the importance of a wedding garment. Nonetheless, the table I long for and the church I hope for is filled to the brim with the poor, the crippled, the blind, the lame, the near, and the far off. The table I long for and the Church I hope for constantly bursts at the seams because of the people already inside while simultaneously expands itself to add more seats at the banquet. The table I long for and the Church I hope for is full of people who consider themselves the luckiest people alive to be present at such a feast and so refrain from judging anyone else present.

And I can name that vision and ache because I can’t think of a single venue where we’ve managed to be this kind of community. I wonder if this kind of community can only exist at the end of time when Christ has come to restore all things. So many communities seem preoccupied with what people are wearing. In Matthew’s record, the king realized a man wasn’t wearing a wedding garment. The king exercised the judgment. Making decisions in the here and now about who can participate fully in the sacramental life is a fearsome task, and I pray daily for all those entrusted with this power to use it for spiritual good. I don’t want that job for an instant.

I find myself wondering how to live into how Christ has extravagantly welcomed me. I wonder if it’s right to view myself as still walking towards the feast, coming into the door, or sitting at the table. Perhaps I’m doing multiple things at once. I can’t help but wonder if it’s gratitude that compels banquet guests to throw on their wedding garments with glee. I can’t help but wonder if it’s gratitude that compels guests to squeeze just that much tighter to create room for more people. I can’t help but wonder if it’s gratitude that brings out the very best of human behavior.

How can we be a grateful and welcoming community? What needs to happen such that no surface-level qualification keeps people out of our local churches? How can we put on Christ who is Light, Love, and Truth? What can we do so that the Holy Spirit has room to guide, comfort, encourage, and convict us all as necessary? How do we create that much more room for others to join in the feast?

And so I continue to wonder…

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 Love Mandate

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A reflection by Sarah

Today is the Tuesday after GCN Conference 2015. After a weekend of joyous reunions with friends I haven’t seen since last year, beginnings of new friendships, and an overwhelming sense of safety and comfort despite the fact that Wesboro Baptist showed up, I’m back home. The new semester began this week, and I met my new students today. The first to introduce herself to me was a transgender student who arrived early to explain why the name on my roster would not match the name she would like to be called and to tell me that she might be late to class on occasion: she’s staying with a friend and commuting from two hours away because her parents kicked her out over winter break.

It is the Tuesday after GCN Conference, and I’m sad. Maybe it’s the annual post-conference blues. Maybe it’s that winter break wasn’t long enough and I’m not quite ready to put my professional face back on yet. Maybe it’s that maintaining the energy required for the conversations we have here is challenging. But whatever it is, it seems to be sticking around for the day.

This weekend, I experienced grace beyond measure. It was the first time I’ve attended conference without any interaction that I’d consider negative. I was met where I am rather than chastised for who I am not, I was challenged when I needed to be challenged, and I was loved even when I wasn’t feeling very charitable myself. Vicky Beeching, whom I had never heard of before GCN announced that she would be a conference speaker, turned my world upside down. I couldn’t hear on the day of her keynote and I’m not advanced enough in ASL to have understood the interpreters fully, so today I listened to the talk for a second time. Despite my theological training, I’m ashamed to admit that I’ve never understood Evangelical Protestantism because that is not my tradition. I didn’t know what a small group was until about two years ago, I’ve struggled to see how praise and worship music could be God-centered rather than human-centered, and the first time I heard the word “Hillsong” I wondered if it was a Broadway musical. In general, I’ve been skeptical of Evangelical traditions and judged them harshly. But as I listened to Vicky telling the story of her early experiences of God and continuing faith development as an adult, I realized that much of it resonated with me. Through her gentle and compassionate words, Vicky helped me to see that there can be much more depth in Evangelical traditions than I had originally thought. I did not get the opportunity to tell her this in person, but she left me with a heap of conviction about my less-than-charitable interactions with Evangelical friends. I’m as grateful for that as I am for her reminder of how much God loves us.

As I reflect, I see that my sadness today is, more than anything, related to love and all the ways we as the Church fail to show it – the ways I fail to show it. It’s easier to be harsh, judgmental, and dismissive than it is to be loving. Justin Lee’s talk on Sunday reminded me of how poorly I manage righteous anger. I would rather become livid about Twitter trolls and dismissive clergy in my Christian tradition than ask myself, “What am I doing to show Christ’s love to others today?” It’s difficult to clean my own side of the street when I can point to the piles of vitriolic garbage across the way, but cleaning up my own act is what I am called to do. It’s what all of us are called to do as Christians.

We’ve written a lot about celibacy mandates and our opposition to them. Invariably, this leaves both progressives and conservatives demanding that we state whether or not gay sex is a sin. I can’t think of a question that is shallower and less meaningful for discerning what fullness of life in Christ means for me as a gay Christian. Why is it that instead of walking alongside the faithful as they ask, “What does it mean to love, and how can I do that?” churches seem more interested in behaving like political movements? Why are we intentionally splitting the Body of Christ even further? Why do we respond to opinions different from our own with, “You are the enemy. You are an oppressor or colluding with the oppressor. Because you aren’t nodding in agreement with every bit of the party line on my side of this issue, you’re dangerous and I can’t learn anything from you”? We can do better. We are called to do better. And we can do so by living into the love mandate.

My Christian tradition teaches that love is the greatest of all virtues. We are meant to love one another because God loved us from the beginning. Absence of love is absence of God, so without love one cannot have spiritual life. When we do everything we can to treat others well and ensure that they are able to thrive, we are living into the kind of love known as agape. But what does that mean exactly? In the abstract sense, it is one aspect of how we help each other progress toward complete union with God. What it means in terms of lived experience is much debated.

If I empty my pockets and give all the contents to the homeless man I have seen every day on my morning commute for the past four years, am I treating him well? Am I doing everything I possibly can to attend to his wellbeing? I use this as an example each semester when we get to our morality unit in introductory theology. Though the majority of my students are Christians, there are about as many perspectives in the classroom as there are names on my roster. Of course you’re doing everything you can to treat him well. You’re giving him all the cash you have on hand. No, you’re doing him a disservice. What if he uses that money for drugs? That would run contrary to promoting his wellbeing. No, you’re both wrong. You haven’t done your Christian duty to this man until you’ve found him a place to stay or at least some way to get help… continuing on and on until every person in the classroom has offered a perspective and defended it using some principle of Christian morality.

The same sort of differences of opinion arise in discussions about how best to love people we believe are doing something that is harmful. What are we called to do in these situations as Christians? Are we to avoid saying anything because doing so might come across as shaming? Are we to preach at them about how wrong they are and how many people they are harming? I’m no wiser than you, but neither of these strikes me as an expression of love.

From where I sit — and I’m no priest, so take this as a lay person’s opinion — the love mandate calls us to see and affirm the image of God in others. It compels us to listen to people who are different from us and learn about what we do not understand. It requires humility, patience, and willingness to walk alongside the people God brings into our lives even if the reason for this is unclear. It means that we need to be in meaningful relationships with our brothers and sisters before offering admonishment lest we inadvertently make false assumptions and commit sin ourselves. [Points finger back at self and offers thanks to God for Vicky Beeching.] I believe one of the most important ways we can live into the love mandate is by supporting each other as we discover our vocations, not just to marriage or to celibacy, but also as sons and daughters, parents, teachers, engineers, writers, providers of shelter to homeless LGBTQ teens…

Today is the Tuesday after GCN Conference, and I am doing my best to pour my sadness into prayer. I pray for the coming of a day when every person is known and loved, grey area-dwellers are appreciated for their greyness, and celibacy and marriage mandates are artifacts long overcome by our shared vocation to love.

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.