Category Archives: Intimacy

The Idolatry of People-Pleasing

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It’s no secret that LGBT people in the Church frequently deal with criticism. We’ve spoken to how it can be challenging for LGBT Christians to find a church home, ways that people draw lines to separate the “good” gays from the “bad” gays, how LGBT people are expected to conform perfectly to standards of morality, and how some churches can regard the mere presence of an identifiable LGBT person as a distinct threat. The question is not whether the criticism will come, but is instead how we will deal with that criticism that will inevitably arise. Sometimes, responding directly to others’ opinions and critiques is necessary and helpful. Meaningful conversation would not be possible without some level of disagreement; no one experiences intellectual growth as a result of interacting only with people who share one’s worldview in totality. But at other times we wonder if the urge to respond to real or perceived criticism introduces toxicity into our lives.

In our position as a celibate couple who blog regularly, we feel under the microscope quite often, and that’s to be expected because of our choice to share publicly about our personal experiences. We are coming to realize that there will always be people who claim our relationship is something that it’s not, tell us that we ought to wear our celibacy on our foreheads if we don’t want to be perceived as a threat, claim for any number of reasons that we should stop talking about celibacy altogether, and/or disapprove of our lives in one way or another without ever telling us directly. Learning how to cope with these various levels of scrutiny is a challenge. It’s no wonder that a lot of LGBT Christians, ourselves included, develop people-pleasing tendencies. Though the temptation to please others has an obvious source, we have to admit that focusing our efforts on appeasing others’ judgments is unhealthy.

There’s a fine line between defending oneself and engaging in people-pleasing. In today’s political climate, almost every LGBT person encounters situations where he or she needs to respond to another person’s comment or action. Many LGBT Christians can feel like our place in churches we call “home” is precarious. Saying the wrong thing in the wrong environment can lead to significant consequences. However, always sitting on the edge of one’s seat because one expects to be shown the door can cause an any person to shift from standing up for himself or herself towards dangerous forms of people-pleasing. It’s even possible for people-pleasing to become idolatrous.

Constant people-pleasing behaviors can lead to obsession over what others think. When a person has experienced significant judgment from others, he or she can develop a habit of trying to get inside of the critic’s head. When we assume what another is thinking, we can imagine the worst even in the best of situations. A snowball effect can begin wherein we observe that a member of our parish has glanced at us with an odd facial expression and, not even five minutes later, we are imagining that person must be one step away from complaining about us to our priest. All this happens entirely inside our own heads without any external conversation. In the absence of dialogue, panic arises from envisioning that everyone else is making assumptions about how we live our lives. But regardless of how common a reaction this is, people-pleasing tendencies are destructive because they can put a stopper on real conversation.

People-pleasing can get in the way of seeing where we actually fall short. Obsessing over what other people think can prevent us from searching our own hearts. Feeling the need to prove constantly that we are living faithful lives can block our abilities to appreciate how sin interferes with our relationship with God. Constantly worrying about whether a particular person from church thinks we are not living a proper sexual ethic takes up the headspace necessary to contemplate our tendencies toward pride, anger, and other passions that have nothing to do with sex. From time to time, we notice ourselves thinking more about what might be offending other people in our faith tradition than taking inventory of the real ways we are offending God. We could be a lot more patient, loving, joyous, thankful, and forgiving if we did not devote so much of our time to worrying about other people’s thoughts. The noise created when a person cares so much about what other people think can block God’s still, small voice almost entirely.

When we get caught up in people-pleasing, we do a disservice to others by catering to unreasonable expectations. Doing everything possible to appease another’s sensibilities can be harmful to that person’s spirituality. In instances where others really are making unfair judgments about us, changing totally innocent behavior just to please them effectively removes from them all responsibility for taking a look at their own spiritual lives. Oftentimes, the things that offend us are indicative of the sin lurking in our own hearts and minds. When we make aggressive attempts to people-please, we can enable the judgment within another’s heart and discourage him or her from examining that.

Additionally, we often end up drawing artificial lines and second-guessing behaviors that are totally innocuous. We fret over questions that arise in our own minds: “Will someone find it inappropriate for Lindsey to refill Sarah’s water glass when we’re eating together at church? Is sitting next to or across from each other at the table more likely to result in gossip about the intimacy of our relationship?” As we write this, we’re a bit ashamed of how absurd those questions sound. Maybe some people do analyze our every move in public. Maybe no one does. But whenever we listen to the internal voice that compels us to worry about that, we stop relating to the world as our authentic selves, and we start putting on various masks to everyone else around us. More often than not, attempting to please others leads us to behave rigidly and create arbitrary boundaries that we would never consider implementing during times when we’re tension-free and hanging out with the folks who know us best.

Focusing so much on how certain people see us prevents us from being able to connect meaningfully with others. If we’re worried constantly about what other people think, it’s virtually impossible to get to know those folks as people. When interacting with a person who we know holds some kind of unfair judgment against us, sometimes we have difficulty seeing beyond that judgment. We have trouble remembering that the person we are looking at is a human being who bears the image of God and cannot be reduced to his or her incorrect judgment on the issue in question. Seeing a person as nothing more than a puppet for a particular ideology is dehumanizing and unchristian, and we need to put a stop to that.

Caving to the temptation of people-pleasing distracts us from living into and discerning our vocation. When we do this, we shift away from living a vocation of hospitality, intimacy, vulnerability, and shared spiritual life that is turned outward to the world. Instead we adopt a vocation of, “Do what’s necessary to keep everyone happy with us and prevent them all from realizing that we’re actually human.” This latter “vocation” is no vocation at all. When we are trying to avoid doing anything that rubs another person the wrong way, we can find ourselves paralyzed and doing nothing at all. Vocations involve striving to manifest the Kingdom of God to the world. Doing nothing for fear of upsetting another is a poor witness. We might even go as far as saying it’s burying our talent in the ground. Not only that, it is entirely self-centered and self-serving to behave as though one’s purpose in life is nothing more than, “get through while ruffling the fewest feathers.”

We know we’re not the only LGBT Christians who struggle with the temptation towards people-pleasing. Sometimes it can seem that the only way to have one’s voice heard is strict adherence to all of the expected social and cultural norms of one’s faith community, even if there’s space for more varied discussion in one’s Christian tradition broadly. Perhaps one of the most widely destructive aspects of people-pleasing within the LGBT Christian conversation is privileging of certain terms and key phrases (e.g. “Side B” and “gay sex is a sin”) as the only possible indicators of a person’s theological orthodoxy. Naming the ways that we drift towards people-pleasing personally has been challenging, but we hope that discussing some of its effects on our lives will encourage everyone participating in conversation about LGBT people in the Church to consider ways in which this behavior stunts further development of dialogue. We’re grateful for all of your prayers for us and our vocation as we, with God’s help, work towards ridding our lives of this and other destructive tendencies.

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 Being Different

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A reflection by Lindsey

This week, I’ve found myself reflecting a lot on my experiences growing up. As a kid, I was different. It was rare for me to find places where I perceived that I fit. No matter what the metric, there were ways I frequently experienced a strong sense of otherness. I constantly looked for opportunities where I was like the other people gathered, and by the time I hit fifth grade, I realized that these opportunities required that I travel outside of my typical geography.

You see, early on, I realized that I was smart. I was that nerdy kid, incredibly enthusiastic about seemingly random things. When I discovered science camps at my local university, I was in my element. Finally there was a place where it was okay to be that geek.

Consistently being different is hard, especially when we live in a world that values conformity. I think nearly every adult can identify acute places in his or his childhood where, no matter what, feelings of difference were a constant companion. Feeling different can be excruciating. I remember some of the questions that used to run through my head when I was younger: Why must I salivate over logic problems instead of waiting with baited breath for this week’s basketball games? Why would I rather bury my nose in a book than chat it up with the “cool” kids? Why is it that I can’t wait to get home to do my science experiment instead of play video games? And yes, I would have used the word “salivate” to describe my relationship with mathematics.

Regularly, I use concepts of otherness when discussing my personal comfort with using LGBTQ alphabet soup to describe myself. To me, LGBTQ simply indicates that I experience the world differently than cisgender, heterosexual people. To make sense of cisgender, heterosexual people, I try listening to them describing their experiences. However, the more I learn about said experiences, the more convinced I am that mine are different. I’ve accepted that there is an overwhelming majority of straight, cisgender people around me. But, just as science camps afforded me a place to relax and be myself, spend time around LGBTQ Christians gives me yet another space to experience a deep sense of belonging.

With some frequency, I find myself wishing that more conservative Christians could appreciate my desire for room to relax and just be me. When I was a kid, I learned that virtually every school had smart kids. The way to get a bunch of smart kids together was to create opportunities that acknowledged how our smartness could be used to create community. Similarly, I believe that it’s absolutely true that virtually every church has LGBTQ Christians. It’s worth creating space for LGBTQ Christians to gather, to have an opportunity to feel less different and more at home.

I remember the huge sense of relief when I walked into my first Gay Christian Network conference in 2008. All of a sudden, I was with 200 other people who were like me! However, I almost couldn’t work up the nerve to go. I had heard so many conservative Christians completely bashing any and all LGBT organizations. If these organizations claimed to be Christian, then they were certainly distorting the truth of the Gospel and merely parroting what itching ears wanted to hear. I didn’t feel like I had any space whatsoever to affirm an event like the GCN conference as a good thing. I have since attended five GCN conferences because GCN is one of the few LGBT Christian organizations that has any space to walk alongside me as I journey alongside Christ. To be sure, it’s only one space, but it is certainly a space where I feel an absolute sense of being at home.

In many ways, I felt that same sense of home when I first went to science camp. As I have grown older, I have heard many arguments about why schools should stop providing programs to gifted students. While I’m confident places like science camp will continue to exist, I hope every student has somewhere at school where he or she feels a sense of being accepted. Why are we so quick to tell people who find themselves in a minority demographic that nothing can be done in their backyards to help them feel more at home?

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.

Erotic Eucharist: Nurturing Deep Attraction Between Friends

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Today’s post is a guest reflection by Dan Brennan, author of Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions: Engaging the Mystery of Friendship Between Men and Women. We believe it is just as important to give voice to heterosexual experiences of deep, meaningful, relationships outside of marriage as it is to create space for the stories of non-marriage relationships among celibate LGBT Christians. Dan, who has been married to his wife Sheila for several years, has also grown spiritually from a close relationship with his friend Jennifer. We are fascinated by Dan’s work in the area of sacred friendships and are honored to share a sample of his writing with you today. As always when reading guest posts, please keep in mind that everyone’s story is different, and the experiences, perspectives, thoughts, and theological ideas presented by the author will not necessarily match completely with ours. If you are a celibate LGBT Christian or ally, or if you have a story to share that is related to the themes we discuss at A Queer Calling, feel free to Contact Us.

A reflection by Dan Brennan

She sat to my left. Sheila, my beautiful wife, sat to my right. We were about ready to celebrate the Eucharist which we did weekly in our Anglican church. My attraction toward my female friend who regularly sat next to my left was deepening. Before I had any theories about “erotic” Eucharist, before I knew any language to describe “erotic” Eucharist, I was thoroughly processing my attraction.

Looking back on this season in my life nine years later, I can definitely rejoice in the spiritual eros I experienced in participating in the Eucharist at the time. Ever since I became an Anglican several years earlier, I longed to meet Christ every week in the Eucharist. Liturgy was no-run-of-the-mill religious ritual where I went through the motions. The Eucharist was where I celebrated the Feast. Each week I lifted my heart before the Lord’s presence. Christ was my sweet desire in Eucharistic intimacy. The real presence of Christ was my sweet delight. Each Sunday, I yearned for the deep beauty, goodness, and delight of Christ’s presence in drinking “the cup of salvation” and eating “the bread of life.”

So perhaps in hindsight, it was no coincidence I became open to explore the connection between the divine eros in the Eucharist and my deepening attraction toward my female friend.

Before I proceed, I’m honored that Lindsey and Sarah have invited me to write a post on their blog. Ever since I came across their blog a couple of months ago I’ve admired their particular calling and how are they are engaging subjects like chastity, sexuality, friendship, and the LGBT community. I’m writing from a straight white male perspective aware of my privilege. My journey has led me to a deep curiosity of how sexuality and friendship can flourish in close friendships and community. I admire Lindsey and Sarah’s call to celibacy.

Taste and See that the Lord is Good

Opening my desires, my attraction, my longings, and my anxieties while I ate the bread, drank the wine, and fed on Christ’s love and presence was a powerful discipline for me during this season. I had intuitive trust in seeking Christ through Eucharistic intimacy. I had come to know Christ, I had come to receive Christ, and I had come to trust Christ through this intimate connection. Opening my attraction for my female friend to Christ was a natural thing for me to do.

Each week I surrendered my friendship, my attraction, my desire for deeper connection before the Lord as I drank the cup of salvation and ate the bread. Wisdom is better than jewels and all that I desired could not compare with my knowing the sweet and sheer delight of Christ’s real presence in the Eucharist (Proverbs 8:10-12; 30).

What is deep attraction? I desired ongoing intimacy with my friend at multiple levels: spiritual, emotional, physical, and intellectual. Did I have a sexual attraction for her? Or was it a nonsexual longing to deeply connect with her that included physical affection? It’s hard to sort that out when you are opening yourself up to deep attraction. I was not physically attracted to her when we first met. But as our friendship grew she became deeply beautiful in my eyes. But I was fiercely committed to my wife and I was also committed to seeing my friend as more than an object to be pursued for sexual gratification. So what I mean by deep attraction is the desire to connect with the whole person in friendship with passionate commitment to not make a move toward sex.

I was seeking the delight and presence of Christ in the Eucharist among other things. Years later, I would read something Amy Frykhom suggested: “True, deep, real pleasure is an avenue to the Holy” (See Me Naked). That was my intuitive posture as I sought Christ in the weekly Eucharist. I was not seeking self-indulgence. I was seeking the beauty of the Christ I knew in the Eucharist.

My attraction to my friend was utterly paradigm-shifting for me and opened up a whole new world as I sought to bring the wholeness of who she was before Christ in weekly Eucharist. It was conventional wisdom for evangelical men to run away from any kind of deep attraction toward women in which both parties had no romantic potential. I was seeking Christ as my wisdom as I explored this deep attraction; not a conservative list of dos and don’ts.

Too Good To Be True

Nine years later I can say I’m so grateful for the Eucharist and the gift of deep attraction. I have no regrets about continuing to talk about delight, pleasure, and mutual cherishing with a trajectory toward deep attraction in friendship. One of my differences with Christians who are my critics is right here: they think I am promoting something too good to be true for our present culture and world. Some think I’m a “daredevil.” Some think I’m suggesting a practice akin to “emotional dating.”

For many years, my conservative evangelical sexuality prohibited me from experiencing “too good to be true” moments outside of my marriage. In the past 10 years I have intentionally chosen to be open to attraction in friendships—including deep attraction with my other sex friends—with the Eucharist at the heart of integrating my sexuality and my friendships.

As Christians living in a post-Freudian culture, we are going to have to address the question: are we are going to view the Eucharist through a cultural Freudianism or are we going to view the cultural Freudianism through the Eucharist? Viewed through popular Freudianism, sex in a materialistic world is the ultimate, too good to be true story. Viewed through the Eucharist, the ultimate too good to be true story is union/intimacy with God and with one another.

At the center of the Christian faith is the Eucharist which invites us all—straight, gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, transgender, queer—to this “too good to be true” intimacy where we eat and drink and take in Christ, we digest his body. Eucharistic intimacy summons us to the life and love of Christ, of shared intimacy in the present world but also into a future world. In the midst of chaos and dysfunction, it is hard to believe—‘too good to be true”— deep attraction toward healing, human flourishing, shalom, and deep delight. The Eucharist offers us a narrative where friends know the powerful delight of Christ’s love in this world.

I’ve now lost track of the many “too good to be true” moments in my various female friendships and in my marriage. What a deep joy to experience too good to be true moments with Sheila as a result of/in the midst of our other friendships. If we have good marriages, families, friendships, we all experience moments of that kind. But I am deliberately including those moments birthed of deep pleasure and love which involved my other sex friendships.

I have no doubt, that Sarah and Lindsey have experienced some of those “too good to be true” moments in their own friendship. The cultural Freudian narrative would believe Sarah and Lindsey could not experience such depth in their relationship sans sex. However, if you view their friendship through the lens of an Eucharistic intimacy, there is no ceiling on spiritual beauty in their relationship.

I continue to nurture a deep attraction toward my wife and to this day, I find her more beautiful than ever. I also continue to nurture a deep attraction toward my female friend. We have been close friends for twelve years. I had made several decisions back while I was “staying with” my attraction in a contemplative posture in my practice of the Eucharist. I took responsibility for my own actions and refused to ever act on any sexual feelings or any erotic energy I was experiencing in my friendship. I refused to fantasize. I also stayed clear of any pornographic material. I continued to nurture my attraction and love toward Sheila.

It just so happened somewhere about nine years ago that as I was experiencing the sweet and delightful love of Christ in the Eucharist and my growing delight and attraction toward my female friend, I encountered the gift of sexuality and friendship. Instead of running away from it, ignoring it, or seeking sex, I chose to nurture something deeper: a social desire for an alternative intimacy in friendship which did not neuter my sexuality. This didn’t happen overnight. But I continued to seek Christ, engage in conversation with trusted others, and eagerly search for wisdom on a wide range of issues pertaining to sexuality and friendship.

I now have a wide range of friendships. I view nurturing a deep attraction with my other sex friends as an intentional practice for being authentic in my sexuality and being authentic as a trusted and safe friend. “True desire,” writes Philip Sheldrake in his rich book, Befriending Our Desires, “is non-possessive. It is an openness to the future, to possibility, to ‘the other’ whether human other or God.” Nurturing a deep attraction is to choose the path of Eucharistic intimacy: to learn to receive, to learn to be open, to learn attentiveness to real presence, to forgive and seek forgiveness, to let go, and to attend to delight and beauty in our deepest relationships. It is too good to be true. But this is the trajectory of the Christian faith. To find the greatest treasure in the world—Christ in our relationships.

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.

10 Misconceptions about Celibate Partnerships

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Even as we thought about naming our blog before we began writing, we knew there would always be people who misunderstand our way of life. There are many misconceptions about celibacy in general, and it’s understandable that there are even more about celibate partnerships like ours. Seeing as we already spent some time clarifying the nature of our relationship last week, we thought that it might be a good time to expound upon some misconceptions we’ve encountered about celibate partnerships since beginning our writing project together.

1. We entered into celibate partnerships because we are lonely. Without a doubt, this is the most common of all misconceptions we hear. Whether it’s the suggestion that we are to be pitied because “it must be so difficult to get through life alone” or oppositely, the assertion that we need to suck it up and realize that being lonely is just our “cross to bear” as LGBT people, we hear some form of this on a regular basis. We can’t speak for others who have decided to pursue celibate partnerships, but our decision to do life together was in no way related to fear of or difficulty coping with loneliness and isolation. To understand more of what we mean, read the post we wrote on that topic.

2. We are trying to imitate marriage. Some of our acquaintances have asserted that the only way to understand words like “couple” and “partnership” is within the context of a pathway to marriage. Because we have shared that we are not interested in a sacramental marriage and would not be eligible for one within our faith tradition even if we did want that, we’ve heard it said that we must be imitating marriage. Frequently, we have noted parallels between the marital vocation and various celibate vocations, stating that certain aspects like intimacy and vulnerability are present within all types of vocations. Seeing parallels between our kind of vocation and another kind does not mean that we are attempting to imitate the other. Within the past week especially, we’ve discussed this further with our friends who are also in celibate partnerships, and no one we’ve ever talked to about this has seen his/her celibate partnership as an imitation of marriage.

3. We endanger our partners’ personal commitments to celibacy. Again, we can’t speak for other people here, but as for the two of us, we find that doing life together strengthens both our personal commitments to celibacy. Though we often hear folks wondering why we don’t see the life we share as a near occasion of sin, the possibility that   we might encourage each other to abandon celibacy seems totally unrealistic to us. We learn a great deal from each other, and we see each other growing in virtue as a result of living together and sharing in various aspects of life.

4. Our relationships are sexually abstinent, but not truly celibate because there must be some element of eroticism. Some folks have the idea that because we consider ourselves “partners,” we must be struggling against lust for one another. From there comes the assumption that celibate partnerships may be sexually abstinent, but not celibate in the most honest sense of the word. Speaking from personal experience, our relationship has never been based upon physical attraction, arousal, or desire. Near the beginning of our relationship, we had many conversations about what does draw us toward each other since neither of us remotely fits the physical type to whom the other is attracted. We saw easily that our common ties were commitment to doing life with another person who also feels called to celibacy, similar intellectual interests and capabilities, and willingness to help each other grow in holiness. Eroticism has never been part of the picture for us.

5. Only women enter into celibate partnerships. Sometimes we hear it posited that only women–and more specifically, only women with low sex drives–would be able to maintain celibate partnerships. We do know several other celibate LGBT couples, and believe it or not, none of them are female. All other celibate LGBT couples whom we have the pleasure of knowing at this time are men, and some have been together far longer than we have.

6. We choose “liberal, unorthodox” spiritual directors who will tell us only what we want to hear about our relationships. This misconception is one of the most frustrating because it implies that 1) no theologically orthodox spiritual father would ever support our manner of living for any reason, and 2) individual spiritual fathers cannot be trusted to guide those who seek their counsel. The two of us see receiving strong, theologically orthodox spiritual direction as absolutely necessary. We would not feel comfortable seeing a priest for confession and spiritual direction if he were advocating that we do whatever we want or see ourselves as exceptions to the expectations of our Christian tradition. Our respective spiritual fathers are fully aware of our relationship to one another, and both have offered us great encouragement. They are also committed firmly to upholding traditional Christian teachings, and we’ve never had any reason to doubt their orthodoxy.

7. Our relationships are defined by exclusivity. An objection to celibate partnerships that we’ve heard more recently is that it’s inappropriate for two unmarried people to have an exclusive relationship with one another. We’re going to say something controversial here: we don’t think any healthy relationship, celibate or otherwise, is entirely exclusive. Certainly, marriages within Christianity would view sex as one specific area of exclusivity, but even our married friends (at least those who see their marriages as thriving) don’t view their spouses as their everything. It’s impossible for one person to meet all emotional and spiritual needs for another. That goes for us just as much as for people living other vocations. We don’t see our relationship as exclusive. In fact, we’re confident that it wouldn’t work if we didn’t also have other important people in our lives whom we consider our family of choice.

8. Doing life together is nothing more than a matter of convenience. This misconception comes in two variants: 1) the idea that we chose to share life because it’s convenient, and 2) the belief that if we don’t view our shared life in this way, we should. To address the first variant, we’ve stated in numerous places that our doing life together was an organic development. But that doesn’t mean there was no intentionality behind it. Though we do know some celibate LGBT couples who have begun sharing life merely for the sake of convenience, we view our own relationship as focused first and foremost on helping each other to grow closer to God. To address the second variant…well…we’re actually confused by this one. Why would it be better to live together for the sake of convenience than to live together because we feel called to helping each other journey toward Christ? Is this intention suitable only for married couples and monastics? Were someone to answer “yes,” we would heartily disagree.

9. We are actively seeking to redefine traditional Christian teachings. We’ve written in other places on the blog about just how hurtful this assumption is. Based on our own experience and those of other celibate LGBT couples we know, nothing could be farther from the truth. Every celibate LGBT couple with whom we are personally acquainted has expressed a strong desire to live fully in accordance with traditional Christian teachings on marriage and sexuality, and this is true even for couples we know whose decision to pursue celibacy is not rooted in a belief about sin.

10. We don’t see each other as friends. We find it troubling how often people attempt to place all relationships within a “marriage” and “friendship” binary. In the near future we hope to do a full post on this topic, but we find it rather insensitive and condescending when people tell us, “There’s already a name for what your relationship is, and that’s ‘friendship.'” That said, there seem to be just as many people who want to tell us that we see our relationship as a marriage (or imitation) because we clearly don’t view ourselves as friends. This isn’t true. As we’ve said over and over again, finding the most fitting terms for describing our relationship is a struggle for us, and probably will be for a long while if not for the rest of our earthly lives. But other terms we may use–partners, couple, family, team–do not negate the fact that we are also friends.

Are there other misconceptions about celibate partnership that we did not discuss in this post? Is there something you are interested in knowing more about relative to myths and realities about celibate partnership? Feel free to leave those and any other relevant discussion items in the comments section.

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.

Showing Love in the Midst of Difference

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A few weeks ago, we published two posts on ways people could be more supportive of celibate LGBT Christians. Our target audience for these posts was straight Christians with both traditional and progressive views on sexual ethics. Not long after publishing these, we heard from several non-celibate LGBT Christian readers who wanted to know if there are any ways they could be more supportive of celibate singles and couples within the LGBT community. In response to these inquiries, we wanted to share some positive examples of how non-celibate LGBT Christian friends have shown us encouragement, kindness, and compassion.

As we reflected together before drafting this post, we concluded quickly that we have lots of awesome friends. We decided to keep our comments as generalized categories instead of stating names because we hope that many of our friends will see themselves in multiple categories. We’re so very grateful to all of the people who have shown us love, even across various theological differences.

With Lindsey being between jobs right now, we’re deeply appreciative of how our friends have stepped up to the plate to offer help when we’ve needed it. Our friends have been there with love, prayers, and significant financial support. We have been amazed at how this generosity has crossed all borders that divide Christians. Several friends even approached us with gifts before learning about our exact needs. To say we were blown away is an understatement. We remain profoundly grateful and look forward to the day of being able to pay their generosity forward. These folks can testify to the fact that you don’t have to be living the same kind of life as another person, or even understand his or her way of life, in order to extend to Christian charity.

We’ve also been humbled by friends who have shown us an earnest belief that every person matters, has value, and is worth getting to know. These folks will ask us questions about our way of life, knowing that our answers do not come from a place trying to convince them that they must adopt our way of life for themselves. They are legitimately curious when asking us about what we did the previous weekend, which books we’re reading, how God is challenging us to grow spiritually, and other such questions. Many of these friends neither understand nor agree with our approach to sexuality-related issues. Nevertheless, they exemplify that having the same theology and the same way of life is not a prerequisite for meaningful friendships. Their relationships with us showcase that it is in fact possible to experience authentic intimacy and care for another person without focusing on who’s “right” and who’s “wrong.”

We have also been so grateful for friends who have thrown themselves selflessly into supporting us through some really hard stuff. As our regular readers can attest, the last several months have been trying and stressful for us. It’s been great to have friends we can turn to whenever we need a listening ear regardless of what’s going on. If we’re experiencing a major problem in our lives or in our relationship, these friends are our “go-tos” when we need a sounding board. It’s also fantastically mutual in that they will call us whenever similar shit is hitting the fan for them. We’re able to take the time to listen, pray, be present for, and find solutions together when necessary. This arrangement works almost flawlessly because we know that these friends view us in identically the same way as they view all of their other close friends rather than conceiving of us as “that weird celibate couple.”

Another trend we’ve noticed in our close non-celibate LGBT friends is that they are fiercely protective of us. Mother bears have nothing on some of these folks. It’s comforting to know that we have friends we can turn to when we want to feel outraged about something that has happened. We have friends who don’t need to have all of the details before offering to readjust some heads, eyes, ears, or other body parts. When Sarah’s tires got slashed several months ago, it brought a smile to our faces that we had friends offering (in jest) to fly into our metro area to seek some vigilante justice. Though we’d never want someone to incite violence on our behalf, we are glad to have friends who will defend us if we’ve been wronged, support our choices as we deal with the aftermath of being wronged, and move into our emotional space with us when we just need to be majorly irked for a few minutes (or hours or days, as the case may be). Even though they certainly would not choose celibacy for themselves, we know they’d go down swinging to defend us as a celibate couple.

We’re amazed at how many specific individuals came to mind as we wrote this post. We lost count at 28. All of these people are LGBT Christians. Some are partnered, some are dating, and some are hoping to find that special someone. They come from virtually every Christian tradition under the sun. Some are out in very public ways, and others are not. Some have decided to transition their genders socially, medically, legally, or any combination therein. They are scattered across multiple countries. Some are incredibly active in church, some rarely attend religious services of any kind, and others are everywhere in between. We are incredibly blessed to share our life with so many people who can see beyond right and wrong as they look into the heart of Christ.

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