Author Archives: Sarah and Lindsey

Is the Gay Couple at Your Church Having Sex? It’s None of Your Business.

Posted on by

A few months ago, one of our readers forwarded us a link to a short Ancient Faith Radio podcast where Frederica Mathewes-Green, a writer and speaker within the Orthodox Christian tradition, offers her thoughts on pastors and same-sex attraction. It was recorded in 2012, and we haven’t gotten the links to the mp3 and podcast download to work properly. If you’re interested in listening to it before reading the rest of this post, it’s best to click the “play” button on the page itself after you’ve followed our link. Though this podcast isn’t new and isn’t nearly long enough for a full resource review, we wanted to share some of our thoughts on its content and welcome our readers to share their own thoughts in the comments.

We’ll say up front that if you hold a progressive sexual ethic, you will likely disagree with a significant part of this podcast’s content. If you hold some form of traditional sexual ethic, you will likely find yourself agreeing with at least some parts of what Mathewes-Green has to say, but may also find yourself challenged. Regardless, today’s post should not be taken as a blanket endorsement of everything Mathewes-Green has said publicly about LGBT issues.

In this talk, Mathewes-Green offers her opinion on the question, “What is the proper response if I find myself at an Orthodox parish where two people who seem to be a gay couple are accepted, and are even receiving communion?” Part if her response is that what fellow parishioners are or aren’t doing in their private lives “Is really none of your business.” She states that matters such as whether a person is engaging in sexual activity with a same-sex partner should be left between that individual and his or her confessor. She also says that it is appropriate for a parishioner to ask a priest where he stands on sexual ethics issues generally, and to use that information in the process of determining whether to remain at that parish or to continue seeing that priest for confession and other pastoral care needs.

No matter what kind of sexual ethic a person holds, there’s something to learn from this podcast. Prying into the lives of others is not Christian. Accusing another person of wrongdoing on vague suspicion is not how Christ calls us to treat our brothers and sisters. Making assumptions about what someone else is or is not working on in spiritual direction is destructive for both the person making the assumptions and the person on the receiving end. Everyone’s privacy should be respected. These statements apply across the board when it comes to questions of whether someone is committing sin.

One aspect of this podcast that we liked was Mathewes-Green’s reminder that no one can know fully what is happening in another person’s life unless that person shares it, and that person has no obligation to do so when met with rude demands by a fellow parishioner. A common stereotype of conservative churches is that devout members of these communities are obsessed with the sex lives of others. There’s a bit of truth in many stereotypes, and the two of us have experienced more than our share of mistreatment within both our former and current traditions because of assumptions other Christians have made about us. As we’ve written before, our celibacy does little to protect us from hurtful rumors and vindictive actions. But there’s no reason that straight people with traditional sexual ethics have to behave in this way toward LGBT (or suspected LGBT) members of their congregations. Fairly often, we hear it suggested that only in liberal congregations will members take a “none of my business” approach to other people’s private matters. Yet that appears to be Mathewes-Green’s approach, and if you’ve listened to even one minute of the podcast, it should be abundantly clear that she is no liberal.

The other bit we found helpful was Mathewes-Green’s emphasis on the pastor’s role in providing spiritual direction. When we leave questions like, “Who is permitted to commune?” and “Is so-and-so living in a way that’s informed by our Christian tradition?” as private discussions between a parishioner and the pastor, we trust that pastor and God to help all members of the parish sort out complicated issues in the best way possible. We develop even greater trust in our church leaders by making inquiries about where they stand on controversial matters and leaving it to them to apply Christian teaching in individual circumstances. The two of us have found much comfort in knowing that we can ask our own priests questions about where they stand on theological, liturgical, and practical matters. We’ve grown a lot in our own spiritual lives as a result. We’re also grateful that we and others have the freedom to decide who will serve as our spiritual fathers. It seems to us that trusting pastors to do their jobs and seeking guidance elsewhere if we have doubts is healthier than declaring ourselves parish inquisitors and obsessing over why someone isn’t fasting with the rest of us, why a family hasn’t been at church in two months even though we’ve seen them at a baseball game, or why a child doesn’t realize that stomping an anthill in the parish courtyard is poor care for God’s creation. Trusting those charged with providing spiritual guidance to all these folks is not the same as saying, “Anything goes. Let’s all be relativists!”

We wonder, how would conservative Christian traditions respond differently to LGBT members of their faith communities if more people took Mathewes-Green’s approach to the presence of same-sex couples? Would such a shift create space for churches to be more welcoming while not compromising their convictions? How might LGBT members of conservative churches react 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.

Celibacy, Choice, and Obedience: In Defense of the “Forced”

Posted on by

A reflection by Sarah

We’ve shifted to a Monday, Wednesday, Friday, plus Saturday Symposium posting schedule, so I feel a bit odd writing an additional post for today. But the writing bug bit me, and I figured I could take a quick break from working on my dissertation and the response we’re currently writing to Maria McDowell’s recent piece at the WIT blog (that will be coming out on Monday, in case anyone was wondering. We’ve received a ton of email about it).

Over the past few weeks, gay celibates have been receiving quite a bit of media attention. It began with this article at Slate by Vanessa Vitiello Urquhart. Then more recently, Sarah Pulliam Bailey at Religion News Service wrote another article on gay celibacy featuring Julie Rodgers, and Eliel Cruz at The Advocate published an op-ed defending the place of celibate gay Christians in both the Church and the LGBTQ community. Several responses have been written already. Eve Tushnet, a celibate gay Catholic, published this article yesterday, arguing that celibacy (as understood solely in terms of “sexual abstinence”) is not really the point: vocation is. Francis DeBernardo wrote a post on New Ways Ministry’s blog suggesting that celibacy is becoming the new reparative therapy for LGBTQ Christians, and that it is harmful to those who don’t feel a sense of call to celibate vocations. Then, Stephen Long at Sacred Tension published a post today reflecting on Cruz’s piece and stating, “I do believe that it should be a private choice and that neither the church nor the gay community should pressure them. But, as long as the church believes that gay sex is universally sinful, I honestly wonder if that will ever fully be a reality.”

As I’ve read each of these and the comment responses they’ve received, I’ve seen a troubling implication arising over and over again — that there are two types of celibate gay people: those who choose celibacy because they feel called, and those who are forced into celibacy by their faith traditions. I’ve never been good at following the first rule of the internet (“Don’t read the comments!”), so over the past few days I’ve been devouring the comments sections on the three news articles and responses. I’ve seen hundreds of statements such as, “I don’t mind celibate gays as long as they don’t try to force me to be celibate,” and “There’s nothing wrong with gay people who feel called to celibacy. It’s a spiritual gift for some people. But gay people who are celibate just because their church says they have to be are oppressed and delusional.” These comments show a grave misunderstanding of the commitments that some LGBTQ Christians make to celibacy. They fail to consider that regardless of the reason for choosing celibacy, many LGBTQ celibates are — like Eve Tushnet says in her article linked above — more concerned about developing a meaningful, Christlike way of life than with simply abstaining from sex or telling other people they shouldn’t be having sex.

As Lindsey and I have stated repeatedly on this blog, our choice to live celibacy comes from the deep sense of call. We are, like Francis DeBernardo says, the sort of LGBTQ people whose “celibacy is a calling, a response, and a choice.  For them, it is a joy.” We are the category of people Stephen Long says he isn’t talking about in his response to the Cruz piece. It would be all too easy (not to mention prideful) for us to pat ourselves on the back and say, “People are recognizing that some LGBTQ Christians feel called to celibacy. Maybe we’ve had a small role in helping folks to see this.” But that’s not what we’re doing today. Instead, we grieve the false dichotomy that this discussion has furthered.

One of our primary purposes on this blog has been to discuss celibacy as a vocation, and that discussion falls shamefully short when limited to celibates whose stories are like Lindsey’s and mine. We wrote recently that celibacy as a vocation can be meaningful regardless of the celibate person’s level of choice. For a person who is truly interested in making a lifelong commitment to celibacy, whatever the reason, that way of life has to be meaningful in order for it to be sustainable. Lindsey and I did not come to celibacy in the same way as many of our celibate LGBTQ brothers and sisters, but all of us deal with the common struggle of living, as best we can, as imitations of Christ. And we see that as far more important than the question of why a person chose celibacy in the first place.

We use the word “choice” very often in our own writings. We also hear it from others, and it has become a sort of buzzword within the past week. But it seems to us that “choice” does not have the same meaning every time it’s included in an internet comment. Most of the commenters I’ve read this week have implied that celibacy can only be good and valuable when, to borrow Aaron Taylor’s analogy, it’s just another option in a well-stocked grocery store. There’s a common assumption that in order for a choice to be a choice in the truest sense, there must be at least one other available alternative. Most folks who advocate for celibacy being a “choice” rather than a “mandate” are actually saying that celibacy can’t be a choice unless gay marriage is also an available choice within every Christian tradition. They see no possibility that an LGBTQ person could choose celibacy freely as a response to his/her Christian tradition’s more conservative theologies of marriage and sexuality. But people like Eve Tushnet and many of the folks at Spiritual Friendship often counter this assertion when they discuss celibacy as a choice to obey the teachings of their churches.

When I think of the word “choice,” I cannot separate it from the word, “obedience.” All the choices I make every day, no matter what they are, have some connection to my obedience to Christ. For a Christian, no choice can occur in a vacuum. Some of my choices seem freer than others. Whether they actually are or not is up for philosophical and theological debate. Perhaps material for another post.

Back to the topic at hand, I make choices all the time that are for my own good rather than because I necessarily want to select a certain option. Due to a recent diagnosis of Meniere’s disease, I’ve had to shift my diet entirely to very low sodium foods. If you know me in real life and are aware of how much I enjoy sushi, Thai food, and other high sodium cuisines, you probably have a sense of how much I resent that choice. But I made it anyway because I wanted to do everything possible to prevent further permanent hearing loss and minimize my number of missed work days due to vertigo. I chose to obey my doctor because he knows better than I do what will minimize this condition’s damage to my hearing and balance. Some might be thinking, “But you didn’t have a choice. You were forced into that choice because of your medical condition.” Actually, that’s not true. I could be choosing to eat California rolls with extra soy sauce every day. Some days, I do make that choice. And I pay for it with my health, because all choices have consequences. In this situation, the best choice is not the choice I like. It’s a choice that limits how I get to experience certain aspects of life. Some days, it even makes me depressed. It’s a choice I made because there was no other healthy alternative. But it was still my choice. There was a point at which I finally felt ready to say to my doctor, “You’ve told me this is what I have to do in order to be healthy. I don’t understand it, I don’t like it, I’d rather be making a different decision, but I’ll trust you on this one.” However, I hope that someday, I will be able to say that I’ve found a sustainable way of life as a person with Meniere’s disease. It’s because of experiences like this one that I can see why a person might choose celibacy out of a sense of obedience, but still see celibacy in vocational terms.

Obedience is a gift freely given. True obedience comes from a desire to do what is being asked of you, even if you don’t have a full understanding of why it’s necessary or why other possible options would be worse for you in the long run . It does not come from being beaten into submission. If you’ve ever watched a child for an afternoon, you know that it’s impossible to make a child obey if she is absolutely intent on being disobedient. If you’re a good caregiver, you’ll be firm without resorting to abusive tactics to get the child to do what you’re asking of her for her own good. In many cases, the child will eventually come around and choose to obey. But if you’re abusive, she will probably come to resent you. If she does what you ask her to at all in this case, it’s likely coming from survival instinct rather than true obedience. When I hear people talking about forced celibacy, I have to wonder whether they’re speaking strictly of churches that abuse and bully their LGBTQ children into submission, churches that ask all their children to practice a conservative sexual ethic, or both. Most of the time, I think people conflate the two. I get this impression every time I hear someone suggest that people like Eve Tushnet, Ron Belgau, and Wesley Hill have been “forced” into celibacy and are delusional. Have they chosen celibacy in obedience to the teachings of their Christian traditions? Absolutely. But is this the same as being sexually abstinent because of fear that abuse will come your way otherwise? I don’t think so at all.

I think we need to change the direction of the recent conversation on “chosen” versus “forced” celibacy and “gay celibates who feel called” versus “gay celibates who are celibate because they have to be.” The truth is, we’re all the same in that we’re living every day, making choices, and trying our hardest with God’s help to be Christlike. Lindsey and I would never advocate shaming, beating, manipulating, harassing, or bullying anyone into celibacy. Neither would any of the other LGBTQ celibates we know personally, yet they’re accused of such regularly just because they chose celibacy from a place of obedience rather than a place of, “This is my personal calling from God.” I think the number of people who are actually forced into celibacy through abusive means and stick with it is very, very low. But the number of people who have experienced these sorts of abuses and have eventually chosen non-celibacy is very, very high. Perhaps that’s what leads so many to slap the label of “forced celibacy” onto celibates who don’t feel a “call” to it, but chose to pursue it as part of their Christian vocation because that’s what their churches ask them to do. I hope that future discussions about this topic will involve more kindness, compassion, and questioning. Attempting to judge who chose celibacy for the “right” reasons and who chose it for the “wrong” reasons benefits no one.

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.

On the Decline of Hugging

Posted on by

A reflection by Lindsey

Everyone who knows me knows that I love hugging. I regard Lindsey hugs as a global public good. Hugging can tell you a lot about people, especially if you’re lucky enough to embrace another person who knows how to speak the language of Hug. Yes, I firmly believe that hugging is a language. And unfortunately, hugging is quickly on the decline.

I have some hypotheses as to why people have stopped hugging. However, I don’t find any of these possible reasons especially convincing. So I wonder, why are people so willing to send hugging to the margins of acceptable touch?

The word acceptable gives us some clues. Somehow, some way, an untold number of westerners have bought into a cultural myth that hugging belongs only in one’s family. You can hug your mom, dad, aunts, uncles, grandmas, cousins, siblings, grandpas, and anyone else who might receive regular invitations to your family reunions. Venture outside of these limits of acceptable hugging, and all of a sudden, you’re somehow indicating a romantic interest.

I’ve been in plenty of venues where I find myself asking, “What message is this hug sending?” But more so, I wonder what the other person is communicating to me. Is he/she nervous, confident, stressed, jubilant, comfortable, completely weirded out, or some other mash-up of various emotions? When one speaks Hug, one can learn an untold number of things about another person from a single embrace. Hug speakers expect that no two hugs are ever the same because no two people are ever exactly the same. It’s not enough to know that, “Bill likes to have every last bit of air squeezed out of his lungs,” and, “Sam would always prefer a high-five over a hug.” Huggers need to be adaptable, adjusting their hugs to meet people wherever they are.

Good hugging requires a high degree of emotional awareness. You need to know what’s going on in yourself, read what’s going on in another person, and make adjustments accordingly. Good hugging is hard. It allows the two people a level of connection they may not otherwise experience. And I think most people just aren’t comfortable with that much vulnerability. After all, if you’re going to hug someone properly, you have to share physical space for a bit. It can be easier to keep your distance from others.

I think the world is a better place when huggers can hug. I do understand that not everyone is a hugger and I wouldn’t want to pressure anyone to change his or her hugging style. However, I do think many Western cultural contexts frown mightily on hugging and put huggers in a proverbial straight jacket: keep those hugs to yourself! Many people would caution celibates to avoid hugging lest hugging lead down the slippery slope of sexual temptation.

From my perspective, freedom to hug is part of the wonder and joy of my celibate vocation. I see hugging as an overflow of radical hospitality. It’s a part of my vocation I’ve always been good at. I remember working at Scout camp and giving good night hugs. Some weeks, the campers literally lined up for my hugs. The trend has continued. It’s rare for me to visit friends and not spend a good chunk of my day giving hugs. I love it when people say, “Lindsey hugs are the best part of these gatherings.”

It’s never quite computed in my mind why people assert that a celibate vocation means cutting oneself off from all forms of intimacy with others. I believe that celibate vocations open us up to the possibility of deep human connection. For me, that connection frequently comes through hugging. Something about hugging helps me feel deeply connected to myself and to another person. I’m able to come alive in a different way than usual. Not everyone has the same appetite for hugging, but different people can meet the same need in other ways. For Sarah, that same sense of connection comes from long, energetic, enthusiastic conversations. I occasionally experience a desire to be incredibly excited for long stretches at a time. There are some select friends I’ll share those experiences with because I want to be accepted exactly as I am in those moments. But my intimacy needs aren’t the same as Sarah’s, so Sarah’s way of connecting with others doesn’t work quite as well for me as hugging.

I have to wonder if hugging is quickly on the decline because people would prefer to avoid being vulnerable with one another. It’s humbling to be asked for a hug. It can be even harder to ask for a hug yourself when you need one. No one wants to be the emotionally high-maintenance friend. We avoid conceiving of ourselves as interdependent on anyone, making occasional exceptions for our close family. However, when we draw firm and static lines around who we can be vulnerable with, we also find ourselves talking about “acceptable” people to hug. I think those lines do much more to hurt us than to help us. And so, one hug at a time, I hope to create more space for people to share their vulnerability with me and experience acceptance.

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.

Our Celibate Gay Agenda

Posted on by

Today’s post is a response to another inquiry from a reader. Actually, from multiple readers. One particular reader, who has instructed us to identify her as Crystal, asked us:

You have to know that churches use stories like yours to tell sexually active gay people they have to be sexually abstinent. How do you deal with that? Do you ever think you shouldn’t tell your story because it isn’t the same as other gay people’s experiences and not all gay couples are celibate like you? You say you don’t have an agenda besides talking about your experience of celibacy and other things, but aren’t you playing into an agenda by telling your stories even though that’s not what you wanted?

From the beginning of our blogging adventure — even from day one — we’ve received regular questions about our “agenda.” Sometimes, it’s about “the gay agenda.” Other times, it’s about “the agenda of the religious right.” On occasion, we’ve receive emails within hours of each other suggesting that we are promoting both. But over the past few weeks, we’ve begun to see a different phrase popping up when folks contact us with these types of questions. More and more, people are asking us directly about the “celibate gay agenda.”

Like many of our LGBT friends, when someone in real life accuses us of having a hidden “gay agenda,” we’re tempted to offer a semi-snarky rundown of our daily activities to demonstrate the point that our lives don’t look much different from those of straight people: “Today, my gay agenda is to wake up, go to the gym, take a shower, go to work, come home, have dinner, and go to sleep.” Most likely, you’ve heard something like this before. It’s a half-joking, half-frustrated response to the assumption that somehow, all gay people everywhere are part of an intricate plot to take over society. We have to admit, some of the questions we get about the supposed celibate gay agenda evoke the same frustrations. At the same time, we’re well aware of how agenda-driven conversations about LGBT people and the Church have become, and it’s probably best to share some candid thoughts on where we stand relative to people’s perceptions of the hidden motives of LGBT celibates.

Let’s start by taking Crystal’s questions one by one. First she asks, “You have to know that churches use stories like yours to tell sexually active gay people they have to be sexually abstinent. How do you deal with that?” Yes, we do know that. We deal with it by speaking out publicly against it. There’s a level at which we can’t control how others use our story. We put it out there to the internet, and we lose control over what people have to say about it. That’s a reality of blogging, and we were jolted into it very quickly. But from time to time, we do get to see how people use our thoughts on certain topics in their interactions with LGBT acquaintances, friends, and family members. In most of these instances it’s positive. But anytime we hear of someone telling a non-celibate LGBT person, “Celibacy is possible. It’s not that hard. Just look at Sarah and Lindsey at A Queer Calling,” we try to shift the conversation to the real issues at hand. We remind people that the purpose of our blog is to interact with others interested in discussing LGBT celibacy — not to suggest that celibacy is easy, and not to hold ourselves up as examples for the entire LGBT community. We encourage readers who find our writing helpful to use it for fostering productive conversation — not for hitting someone over the head with a frying pan.

Crystal then asks, “Do you ever think you shouldn’t tell your story because it isn’t the same as other gay people’s experiences and not all gay couples are celibate like you?” No. We don’t ever think this. Because we believe all people’s stories are worthy of being told and heard, we figure that includes ours as much as anyone else’s. We see no logical reason to silence ourselves. We also believe that it’s possible to learn something from everyone, so wouldn’t want to see other LGBT stories silenced, even if those stories have very little in common with ours and even if we disagree with the theological opinions of the people who tell them. The possibility that one’s story might be used against others is a poor reason not to tell it. As we said above, we can’t always control what people say about us or how they use the content we publish here. We do have a responsibility to be fair to others when sharing our experiences, and we feel respected when other bloggers with experiences different from ours acknowledge that celibate LGBT Christians exist and do their best to be fair to us.

Crystal’s last question is the one that encapsulates many others we’ve received from readers recently: “You say you don’t have an agenda besides talking about your experience of celibacy and other things, but aren’t you playing into an agenda by telling your stories even though that’s not what you wanted?” We don’t think so. We don’t have any intention of becoming someone’s pawns. We are the owners of our story. No one else is: not other members of our Christian tradition, not the larger group of celibate LGBT voices, not the broader LGBT Christian community — nobody. And we don’t own other people’s stories either. Anyone can start a blog. It’s not that difficult. When we launched ours, we anticipated having maybe 20 regular readers, mostly friends. We never dreamed that so many people would be interested in our perspectives. A Queer Calling came to be at a time when we felt a need for more meaningful interaction with other people on topics such as celibacy, vocation, spirituality, and LGBT Christian issues. It began as a project to help us explore where God is calling us, and to give us something new to enjoy together during Lindsey’s period of unemployment. We write because we see celibacy as an important topic that far too many people dismiss as old-fashioned, oppressive, and indicative of a lack of self-acceptance. And that’s all. Playing into a larger agenda would require our consent on some level. We haven’t given it, and feel free to share this post with anyone who may be unaware of this.

If you see our story as dangerous in one way or another, trust us, you’re not alone. Those sorts of assertions fill our inbox every day. We can understand why people with a variety of theological positions and life experiences might feel uneasy about our writing. We hear that most often, though not exclusively, from people with progressive sexual ethics. To those who see us in this way and perhaps believe that we shouldn’t be sharing our story, we have some questions for you. Have you ever thought about the broader LGBT Christian conversation’s overall impact on celibates and our places within our Christian traditions? Have you ever considered the possibility that the discussion (as it is now) about LGBT issues in Christianity could be making celibates less and less welcome in our church communities? Do you think it’s possible that non-celibate LGBT people aren’t the only ones fighting for the ability to be known and loved?

We’re going to be blunt for a moment: non-celibate LGBT Christians often argue that the stories of celibates make it harder for them and their families to feel safe at church, but many do not realize that this goes both ways. If you’re a non-celibate LGBT Christian, know that church folk are just as inclined to use your stories against us. As more moderate Christian traditions move toward accepting liberal approaches to sexual ethics, more conservative Christian traditions are refusing to acknowledge the existence of LGBT people in their parishes at all. Formerly-civil discussions about LGBT issues in conservative churches are now ending at, “Why can’t you just choose to be straight and get married or at least identify as SSA instead of gay? LGBT language has a liberal political agenda attached to it.” We fear the possibility that a time may be approaching when celibate LGBT Christians have only two options: 1) attend a church with a liberal sexual ethic where, in many cases, celibacy is frowned upon or misunderstood and celibates are not supported adequately; or, 2) attend a church with a conservative sexual ethic where celibates are expected to deny their sexual orientations or leave. So, to be fair, we’ll concede that in addition to simply “sharing our story,” our agenda also includes educating about the mere existence of celibate LGBT Christians in all kinds of traditions. As our weeks and months of blogging so far have passed, we’ve become aware of multiple instances where LGBT celibates in denominations with liberal, moderate, and conservative approaches have been made to feel unwelcome — all because we don’t fit the norm in any church environment.

To end today’s post, we offer these questions for our readers’ consideration. Is it really safe to assume that everyone involved in this conversation has an agenda that can be lumped into one of two categories that are polar opposites? How much more productive might our discussions be if we did not assume the worst about people we perceive to be on the “other side” of debates about LGBT issues in the Church? And finally, have we reached a point at which stories can’t stories just be stories?

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: Parents and LGBT Children

Posted on by

Hello everyone! How is it August already? The summer is flying by. We’ve had some great conversations on the blog this week. Thanks so much for sharing your perspectives! We always welcome all commenters to our comment box.

Now let’s discuss 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 opened a conversation about parents and how they respond to their LGBT children. We’d love to hear more about relationships between LGBT children and their parents. If you’re LGBT, what factors do you consider as you contemplate sharing information about your sexual orientation and gender identity with your parents? If you are LGBT and out to your parents, how did your parents respond when you came out? Did you feel rejected, accepted, or somewhere in-between? What did your parents do well? What do you wish your parents had done differently? If you’re a parent of an LGBT child, what questions did you have before your son or daughter came out? How did you respond when your child came out to you? How has having an LGBT child affected your personal sexual ethic?

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.