Author Archives: Sarah and Lindsey

The High Cost of the Conventional Sexual Ethic

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A reflection by Lindsey

I’ll admit it; I’m a child of the 80s. Courtesy of Nancy Reagan, I learned how to “Just say ‘No.'” The slogan taught me that any number of choices I could make as a teenager where peer pressure might be an issue. Drugs? Just say no. Alcohol? Just say no. Sex? Just say no…

Somehow, some way, “Just say ‘No'” snuck into how Christians have taught their kids about sexual ethics. This now-conventional sexual ethic asserts that sex belongs exclusively in a marriage. If a person is tempted to have sex in any other kind of situation, he or she should just say no.

Before I go further, I’d like to point out that I’ve intentionally used the word conventional to describe this kind of sexual ethic. I chose the word conventional because I think that both traditional and progressive sexual ethics can, and should, have much more substance. Christians across the theological spectrum consistently extol the virtues of saving sex until marriage. We know strong advocates for same-sex marriage who also deliver consistent messages about the importance of saving sex for marriage.

I’ve noticed that many adults will default towards presenting the conventional sexual ethic when talking to teenagers. I get that it’s all too easy to portray teenagers as hormonally-driven maniacs, but truth be told, teenagers are human. Everyone has their war stories about surviving puberty. The “crazy teenager” trope goes a long way in helping people make sense of a few very confusing years in life. However, reducing sexual ethics to a tweet rarely does anyone any favors. Teenagers can handle complexity. Just as teenagers are growing physically, they are also developing their abilities for ethical reasoning. When we fall back on the conventional sexual ethic, we’re unintentionally communicating that white-knuckled abstinence suffices as responsible use of one’s sexuality.

The conventional sexual ethic posits that all questions of sexual morality boil down to obedience. Even as I think about the Scriptures used to justify the conventional sexual ethic, I can’t help but hear the guilt and the shame associated when the only Scripture cited is:

“Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body. Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.”

I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve heard well-meaning married people telling unmarried people something to the effect of, “Seriously, Christ bought your body through his death on the cross. Surely, you can wait until you’re married before you have sex.” For such people, sexuality morality is nothing more than checking the boxes that you’ve lived your life rightly and noted your various indiscretions. This line of thought makes it incredibly difficult for people who have followed the rules as they’ve entered into their marriages. The conventional sexual ethic zooms in on how unmarried people should conduct themselves rather than helping married people understand various mutual sacrifices that should define marriage.

The conventional sexual ethic can create an environment where legalism prevails. If you’re a Christian teenager growing up in a community that emphasizes the conventional sexual ethic, being a good Christian can be measured by two things: 1) having a daily quiet time to connect with God, and 2) saving sex until marriage. Everyone understands why praying every day can be hard, but very few people have space to talk about why it might be difficult for some to just say no to sex. These churches assume that everyone is getting married. If you mix the conventional sexual ethic with a view that marriage is necessarily between a man and a woman, you are likely to default to a simplistic variant of mandated celibacy for LGBT people.

When I think about how Christians might want to talk about sexual morality, I keep going back to the idea that all people are created in the image of God. It’s hard to see the image of God in every person you meet. I’m consistently jarred by the fact that God has made every person in God’s image. It’s a message that sticks with me, especially when I reflect on my reactions to this particular advert dedicated to the theme:

It’s so easy for churches that teach a conventional sexual ethic to call attention to how various people of every stripe have simply made “bad choices.” Sometimes I wonder if we frame everything in terms of individual choice because we’re not quite willing to look into the mirror to see where we personally fall short. A conventional sexual ethic can go a long way in helping people feel like they are “good” Christians who are doing all of the “right” things.

Seeing everyone as being created in the image of God should have considerable effects of how we decide to treat people we meet. We can reflect on how Christ’s love was so expansive that it included people on the margins of society. In the Kingdom of God, we find space not only for people who love and serve the world through their Christ-centered marriage but also for celibate people who love and serve the world differently.

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.

Don’t Throw out Compassion with the Cotton Candy

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A reflection by Sarah

“Christianity isn’t supposed to be easy. If I wanted light and fluffy pseudo-Christianity, I would’ve stayed in my former denomination.” Rarely does a week pass without my hearing  this at coffee hour on Sunday. In my Christian tradition, particularly in parishes where the majority of members are converts, there’s no shortage of people who view other Christian traditions negatively. Since becoming part of this tradition, I’ve heard much from others about the deficiencies of their former denominations and very little about the positive and formative aspects of their time in those denominations. I can appreciated the stories of folks who have trouble identifying anything good about their prior Christian experiences. That’s not my story, though I do my best to take in other people’s narratives and express empathy. But I’ve noticed that when phrases like “light and fluffy pseudo-Christianity” enter the conversation, anxiety mounts within me. I become tense and have difficultly engaging further beyond, “Yes (nod)…uh-huh (nod)…that sounds like a challenging experience (furrowed brows).”

For a while, I had trouble putting my finger on what was making me so uncomfortable. Last month, it occurred to me that I have a similar response to, “True Christianity has no room for fluff” as I do to the assertion that childhood behavior problems, insufficient work ethic, and even crime would decrease if only people would “hit their children like they used to in the old days.” I hear these opinions expressed, and something inside me hurts. I also become fearful, and from that point on I have trouble imagining myself ever opening up to the other person about the difficult aspects of my own life.

But why is this? Certainly, I agree with the basic idea that Christianity is (or should be) demanding. It should be challenging. Choosing to follow Christ requires far more of us than showing up for an hour or two on Sunday and putting a few dollars into the collection basket. Growing closer to God means examining all our actions and relationships, making sacrifices that come at high costs, and giving up false beliefs that may feel very comforting. I agree with all of this. I’ve also heard my fair share of homilies that have left me feeling as hungry as I’d be after eating cotton candy for dinner — many within the context of my former Christian tradition. I’ve always come away from those disappointed and exasperated. It does me no good to go to church every week and hear only, “God loves you. You’re a good person. We all need to love ourselves more.” However, I reap no greater benefit from being smacked across the face every week with reminders about each item on my very long list of shortcomings, or my pathetic failures at resisting passions.

When Christians react against cotton candy Christianity by emphasizing rigor and the reality of sin, sometimes a danger emerges. It’s akin to taking too many vitamin supplements and avoiding all carbs in an attempt to be extra healthy. Acknowledging and repenting of sin are essential components of the Christian life, but fixating on these and forgetting about compassion also leaves us unhealthy. I’ve see this happening quite a lot in Christian communities that have rejected a steady diet of junk food in favor of, “You’ll eat what the tradition sets before you and be grateful for it.” Unkindness and coldheartedness toward the sufferings of others are far too easy to frame as “challenging them to live more fully into the tradition.” Especially if those others represent life experiences foreign to one’s own — perhaps life experiences that symbolize ideological positions one opposes — it’s less complicated to dismiss them in favor of pat answers containing the correct theological buzzwords. Cue self-righteousness and vainglory.

As I ruminate on this, I keep coming back to the possibility that all-vitamins-no-carbs Christianity is somewhat classist. (Soon, I’ll be writing a piece on LGBT celibacy and socioeconomic status. Stay tuned.) It assumes that everyone lives and has grown up living a comforted, middle class, white, suburban American lifestyle and struggles with a tendency to resist Christianity’s more rigorous demands. It assumes that if given the choice and both options were equally Christian, everyone would naturally gravitate toward parishes and traditions that serve cotton candy because it’s pleasant and requires no sacrifice…thus, the need to reinforce awareness of our failings and our need to overcome passions.

I think the primary reason that rantings against cotton candy Christianity evoke fear in me is my upbringing was very different from that of most people I’ve attended church with as an adult. There was absolutely nothing soft or comforting about the Christianity of my childhood. The majority of my home county’s population was (and still is) part of the working poor, or lower middle class at best. My parents worked their fingers to the bone for every dime my family had. I don’t want to overplay our financial state because many families had only a fraction of what we did, but I can say without hesitation that as a child my opportunities were minimal when compared to what my suburban Midwest and East Coast friends had at their fingertips from birth. It was inconceivable to think that any Christian in my home county viewed Christianity as light and fluffy: there was nothing light and fluffy about life itself. I remember that when talking with other seven-year-olds about God after Sunday school, I heard “God tells me when I’m bad” and “God tells us to give everything up” arising regularly. I can’t imagine my childhood self ever being ignorant of the reality of sin. If a local pastor or priest had offered a homily proclaiming, “God just wants us to love ourselves more,” he would’ve been laughed away from the ambo or shouted down as a heretic. It wasn’t until graduate school that I encountered cotton candy Christianity at all.

Many people who grew up like I did don’t benefit much from reminders about the rigor of true Christianity. I’ve always struggled with scrupulosity and am hard enough on myself that even the most traditional of priests often tell me I should show more compassion to me. I don’t intend to compare my sufferings with those of others, but some of my own difficult life circumstances such as sexual abuse, addiction, eating disorders, depression, and chronic illness have only added to this beat-up-on-myself tendency. My own scrupulosity coupled with my congregation’s clear rejection of fluff regularly leaves me afraid to share my whole self with other Christians. Part of this is my problem, and I hope to continue working on that with God’s help. Still, I think others bear some responsibility. When a person is already well aware of all failings within his or her first thirty years of life, offering a few quips from the Church Fathers about the passions can come off as callous. It can also leave that person feeling unwelcome, unworthy, and unloved. When fighting a particularly tough battle in life, being alone isn’t ideal…but when your brothers and sisters direct their clubs and maces toward you while insisting that it’s the enemy they’re beating, going solo can seem preferable.

“If Christianity is easy, then you’re probably not doing it right.” I heard those words from the local bishop while on a retreat during college, and I believe he was right. But I’d like to suggest that this also applies if your version of Christianity is all sin and no salvation, all fasting and no feasting, all rigor and no compassion. There’s nothing unorthodox about embracing a suffering brother or sister and assuring him or her, “I know what you’re going through is difficult, but I’ll be here for you. I’ll pray for you and help you in whatever way you need. You shouldn’t have to bear this on your own.” Speaking of God’s mercy to a person who needs comfort does not require adding the disclaimer, “but God is wrathful too.” Giving up junk and fluff does not mean filling yourself with vitamins and rejecting every food that has even one common macronutrient with cotton candy.

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 Commitment

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Hello, Readers! We hope that you find some time to rest and relax this weekend. We have had busy weeks with a flurry of activities and are looking forward to some downtime.

Now, onto our new 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 week, we talked about the diverse kinds of commitments made when people are in meaningful relationships. Lindsey shared about how being committed to Sarah can color the way Lindsey articulates prayer requests. This week, we’re curious to discuss how celibate people describe the relationships they have with other celibate people. There are many ways people can structure their lives as celibate people such as living in monastic communities, in celibate partnerships like ours, or in more diffuse communal structures like the local church. What language is helpful when people want to describe how they have committed to particular ways of life in relationship with others? If you are not celibate, what language do you use when describing how celibates commit to the celibate vocation? How do you conceive of the role commitment plays in celibate lives? 

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.

“You have my prayers and support…unless you’re a sinner.”

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A reflection by Lindsey

We have received some difficult news about how quickly Sarah’s Meniere’s disease is progressing. In the last 48 hours, both of us have had to deal with countless insensitive remarks that leave us feeling drained, isolated, and alone. I’m fluctuating between emotions of being absolutely irate, feeling overwhelmed, and sad. I find the Psalms of lament ringing deeply true, especially if I stop after the Psalmist has laid out the case for why life presently sucks. It’s hard to push forward to the end of the Psalm where we get the goods of being able to trust in God’s awesome majesty.

In seasons like this one, I find myself listening to a lot of Christian radio. It may be simply that I’m in my car a fair bit, driving from Point A to Point B. But when life is hard, I can’t help but notice the lyrics and periodically hear what the DJs have to say. I hear the announcements of “We’d love to pray for you; just drop us a line!” and “We know that prayer works. Don’t hesitate to give us a call,” and I can’t help but feel sad. I’m sad because I wish I could call up the station and say something to the effect of,

Hey, I’m so glad that you are praying for people. Right now, I am feeling like I’ve been hit by a ton of bricks. My partner Sarah has a condition called Meniere’s disease that’s progressing rapidly. We just found out that Sarah has lost all hearing in the right ear. Over the next several weeks, the doctor is going to start a series of injections to try to stop the vertigo attacks but the injections are risky. We’re trying to hope for the best, but I can’t help but be afraid that Sarah might lose more hearing in the left ear before Christmas. We’re trying to be proactive by learning ASL. Sarah has friends who know more ASL than I do, and it helps that Sarah has a knack for languages. I wish I could do better so I could be able to sign for Sarah during periods of significant hearing loss, especially when we’re at church together. This burden is hard to carry because there are so many unknowns, and I’d feel better if people were praying for Sarah, for the medical team, and for us as a family as we navigate through this together.

And truth be told, I can’t ever see myself sharing this prayer request with the radio station or my church’s congregational listserv. There’s something very wrong with the universe where I feel safer putting this prayer request on the blog before I’ve even shared it with the entirety of my Facebook friends list. I’ve thought about this prayer request for days. Every time it crosses my mind, the same question pops up: “Is there any way to make this request without using the word partner?” I find myself paralyzed because the answer to this question is empathically “No.” My emotional and spiritual realities right now are what they are because I am Sarah’s partner. I am going to be here through thick and thin. I am going to figure out how to drop everything to be by Sarah’s side if and when I am needed. I am going to do my very best to learn ASL because I am sure as hell not going to lose my ability to communicate with Sarah. I do not care if other people think I am making mountains out of molehills. At the end of the day, I’m the only person who can look myself in the mirror to answer if I’m living a life of integrity. And with that conviction, you can bet the farm that I am going to call Sarah my partner because I know Sarah would choose the exact same word if our positions were switched.

The instant I choose to call Sarah my partner, I see a tremendous amount of ugliness in the Body of Christ. I can’t bring myself to call the Christian radio station because I’m scared of hearing, “There’s no way we can pray for you and your partner. If you really cared for each other, you wouldn’t be living together.” Putting the word partner out there on a congregational listserv means that even the people most marginally attached to my Sunday morning community may, and likely will feel compelled to speak judgment into my life. People who come most Sundays know that Sarah and I are partners even if we choose not to use that word at church, and even if they choose not to think about it more often than once a week. There are members of our community who would be willing to pray for me or Sarah during individual difficult circumstances, but seem afraid to pray for both of us together lest it appear that they are condoning sin.

So many Christian communities are carefully balanced apple carts where using a word like partner in a prayer request can ignite years of debate. On the blog, I feel safer because there are 193 other posts to reflect on our experiences as a celibate, LGBT, Christian couple. If someone decides to be a jerk in the comments, we can choose to moderate the comment or to answer his or her comment in part by highlighting other posts we’ve written. I like feeling the security of having a reasonably civil venue where I have some control over how the discussion unfolds. It bothers me that I have been in Christian environments for over 15 years where I know that my fears of judgment, gossip chains, and rumor mills are entirely well-founded.

And when I think about how every other LGBT Christian I know can relate to my fears on one level or another, I get irate. How have we gotten to a point where two syllables in a prayer request have the potential to split congregations? How do we claim to be a “loving community” when we deny principal caregivers space to share their burdens with others? How do we even begin to communicate to others that we would much rather find ourselves closer to the heart of the Body of Christ?

I don’t have good answers to those questions. I’m stuck trying to figure out how to find my strength in Christ even when I feel explicitly rejected and judged by those who make following Him their public priority. Right now, I find myself relying on selective hearing, a driving bass line, and a pretty solid drum beat.

I’m in a war, every minute. I know for sure I’ll never win it. I am David up against Goliath… You. Are. Bigger than every battle I’m facing… All by myself, I fall to pieces, but You are strong when I am weakest…You. Are. Bigger than every battle I’m facing…

And there’s a distinct part of me that prays fervently that as I find some places where I can be transparent about what I’m going through, life might be just a little bit better for the next LGBT caregiver to request prayers for his or her partner.

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.

Who Counts as LGBTQ?: Relationships that Break the Mold

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Most of the time when we’ve heard the topic of mixed orientation marriage come up in the LGBTQ Christian context, discussion turns to the ex-gay movement and its history of demanding that gay people change their sexual orientations and prepare for opposite-sex marriages. The focus remains on how mixed orientation marriages rarely last for the long term and usually lead to anguish for both spouses and their children. Names like John Paulk arise as examples of how detrimental mixed orientation marriages can be. We are in complete agreement with friends who speak out against shaming LGBTQ people about their sexual orientations/gender identities and using this shame as a tool to manipulate people into marrying partners of the opposite sex. Our hearts go out to everyone who has suffered as a result of the ex-gay movement’s emphasis on marriage as a goal, or even a “cure” for homosexuality. Yet at the same time, we think mixed orientation marriage and other “unusual” relationship arrangements are important to discuss for other reasons. One of these is the fact that stories of people who choose mixed orientation marriage freely, or end up in an opposite-sex (or same-sex) relationship by happenstance, don’t get much airtime.

We’re interested in this topic and believe it is relevant to discussions of celibacy because we’ve observed similar kinds of assumptions about mixed orientation couples, celibate couples, and celibate singles. The most troubling of these are: 1) we’ve followed our particular vocational pathways for no other reason than a belief that same-sex sexual activity is sinful, 2) we want to deny/excise/cure ourselves of being sexual or gender minorities, 3) we are the new ex-gay movement, and 4) we look condescendingly and judgmentally upon LGBTQ people in sexually active same-sex relationships. The two of us are well aware that our story makes other people uncomfortable. One reason for this is our motivations for choosing celibacy, while religiously motivated, did not originate from beliefs about sin. Another is that we use LGBTQ language to describe ourselves even though we are celibate. Others find this mind-blowing. Today, we’d like to introduce you to two other stories that also challenge assumptions about what it means to be LGBTQ.

Several weeks ago, we came across two articles about couples that challenge prevalent ideas about what it means to enter a mixed orientation marriage, or relationship that is something other than marriage. One of these is about a mixed orientation relationship specifically, and the other is about a relationship that isn’t exactly mixed orientation but raises similar questions as the first article. Around the end of July, we read about EJ Levy who is a lesbian engaged to a man. In the article she wrote for Salon, she details the difficulty people in her life have experienced with accepting her continuing self-identification as a lesbian. She speaks to the misconception that if she loves and wants to marry her fiancé, she must actually be bisexual:

I know plenty of people who identify as bisexual; I am not. The term simply doesn’t apply. I am not, as a rule, attracted to men. I simply fell in love with this person and didn’t hold his gender against him. That won’t change because of our vows, any more than my eye color will. My fundamental coordinates are unaltered.

She goes on to quote Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson, explaining that being gay has nothing to do with an individual’s partner. Regardless of how you feel about Robinson, the point he makes here is an important one that many LGBTQ people (especially those of us who are younger) wish others could understand:

“Gay is not something we do,” Robinson says, “it’s something we are.” It is not about whether you “practice” (though that makes perfect!), or whether you have a partner, or what you do with that partner, or even that partner’s gender (as any gay person trapped in a het marriage knows). It is about who you are, how you experience the world, the eyes you look through, the skin you’re in.

Queer people have understood this for years: For many of us, long before we “came out” as gay or lesbian or bisexual or transgender, long before we had a partner to mirror back to us love and chosen identity, we had to choose ourselves. We had to consciously decide who we were and embrace it, aware that we experienced the world in a manner often at odds with the dominant culture, our lives informed by desires different from what we’re told ours should be. That doesn’t change because a partner does.

Another aspect of this article that we found interesting is that the author does not seem to have any religious reasons for entering a mixed orientation marriage. If she does, she chose not to discuss those in the article. By the way this article reads, it is clear that the author is supportive of sexually active same-sex couples. It seems highly unlikely to us that her marriage has anything to do with denying or hating her own sexuality.

A few weeks after reading Levy’s piece, a friend passed along this article by Mike Iamele at  MindBodyGreen. Mike self-identifies as straight, yet a couple of years ago while he was struggling with a serious illness, he happened to fall in love with his roommate and best friend, Garrett. He says:

We had no idea how to make this work. We had no idea if this even could work. Sometimes we still don’t. It took time — years even — to figure it out. But it’s a relationship. None of us know what we’re doing. We just try and negotiate and compromise. And, little by little, you become just another boring couple.

So, yes, I’m an otherwise straight man in love with a man. But I would never reduce Garrett down to just being a man. Because he’s more than that. He’s a pharmacist and a good cook and a great cards player. And I love him for all of those reasons and so many more. I love him for who he is, not what he is. We’re more than our gender. We’re more than one attribute. And sometimes we need to remember that.

We’re sure there are many people who would be quick to label Mike and Garrett as “gay.” Others might say that even if they aren’t gay, their relationship is a “gay relationship” simply because they are not an opposite-sex couple. Mike says nothing about the couple’s sex life, and he and Garrett have no obligation to explain this aspect of their relationship to anyone else. Yet several comments our own Facebook friends made when we posted his article on our personal pages included variations of, “Are they having sex? If they aren’t sexually active, they’re not a gay couple. They’re just close long-term roommates. If they are sexually active, then they’re gay even if they say they’re otherwise straight.” The broader question that emerges here is, how do we discuss our own identities and the identities of others in ways that make logical sense but don’t force people into boxes? Mike states:

We have this myth of identity — that who we are is the summation of a lot of choices we made in the past. That we’ve got a map for the life we’re supposed to lead, and we’ve got to stick to it. But that’s assuming that we’re all static beings, and that’s not how people work at all.

In every moment, we’re changing and evolving and growing. In every moment, we’re reconstructing our identity. We’re not defined by our decisions from two years ago. We’re not even defined by our decisions from two minutes ago. We’re defined by who we choose to be in this very moment.

We’ll never be “figured out.” Over the course of our lives, we’ll constantly be transforming into a more and more authentic version of ourselves. Our preferences will change. Our passions will change. And we have to be brave enough to choose the thing that makes up happiest in each individual moment.

When I chose to tell Garrett that I loved him, it didn’t matter if it didn’t fit my identity. It didn’t matter if it didn’t fit my sexuality. It just mattered if it brought me love. In truth, that’s all that ever really matters.

We have a lot of empathy for Mike and Garrett because of our own frustrations with labels — not only how others have tried to label us, but the ways we see others being labeled as well. As Sarah wrote in one post, defining labels rigidly can undercut mystery and stifle personal and spiritual growth. We can also identify with Mike and Garrett’s experience of falling into a loving relationship by happenstance, and being brought closer together by one partner’s need for extra support during a time of illness. It’s not only the unusualness of our relationship, but also the way our relationship began that often leads others to describe us in their terms instead of our own.

You might be thinking, “These relationships are minorities. They don’t represent many LGBTQ people.” But how do we know this? That a particular kind of story hasn’t been told often doesn’t mean it is uncommon, or that it is unimportant. And isn’t the LGBTQ community known for giving space to those whose experiences of sexual orientation and gender identity are minority experiences?

We’re interested in reading your thoughts on relationships like these and how they fit (or don’t) into the identity labels currently in use for describing sexual orientation and gender identity. We would also love to hear from others in relationships that don’t quite fit the mold in one way or another.

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.