Category Archives: Sarah’s Reflections

Celibate Gay Christians, Recovering Addicts, and Communities of Abstinence

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A reflection by Sarah

It seems that once every few weeks, there’s a news story about some pastor, activist, celebrity, or politician who has made a comparison between recovering addicts and gay people who abstain from sexual activity. The most recent of these has resulted from a post on the Family Research Council’s blog, in which Peter Sprigg uses Robin Williams’ death and history of addictions treatment as a jumping off point for an argument in favor of sexual orientation change efforts. As I read that post, I was absolutely mortified. It has made me even more certain that the topic of “homosexuality and addiction” warrants further discussion. As of now, the conversation is relatively shallow: mostly folks on one side of the aisle or the other yelling back and forth about whether they’re looking at apples and oranges, or apples and apples.

I wrote once before on why making certain comparisons between homosexuality and addiction is problematic. It doesn’t matter if the person making the analogy is suggesting that gay people can become straight or sexually active gay people could become celibate if treatment programs were offered. The comparison between homosexuality and addiction is rife with misconceptions about both gay people and addicts, and I believe that dispelling these is exceptionally important. But when we who write on this topic focus exclusively on pointing out all the ways that homosexuality is or is not like addiction, we miss opportunities to consider this topic from alternative angles. Today, I’d like to begin exploring one of these other dimensions.

After publishing my own post about why homosexuality and addiction analogies fall short, I began to reflect on some of the the unexpected similarities between communities that celibate LGBT people form and fellowships that recovering addicts form. As I have shared before, I am both a celibate gay Christian and a recovering addict. Over time, I’ve come across phenomenal groups of people in each of these worlds, and I’ve found that the best communities of celibate gay Christians share certain attributes in common with the best recovery communities. But unfortunately, both tend to be characterized incorrectly in similar ways by outsiders. Those looking in from the outside often assume that these communities are focused exclusively on abstinence and have little else to offer their members.

I’ve had dozens of conversations with people who have not experienced either type of community, but nonetheless envision both celibates and recovering addicts as constantly white-knuckling their abstinence. All too frequently, outsiders frame addiction recovery as, “Just stop doing/using (the addictive behavior or substance).” And I must admit, I held this assumption when I first began addressing my own addictions. When I began seeking treatment for bulimia, I believed naively that if I could learn how to force myself to eat normally, all would be perfect in my universe. It didn’t take long before I realized that nothing about recovery is this simple. When an addict tries to explain that it’s difficult to stop using a substance or engaging in a behavior, it’s easy for those who don’t understand this experience to imagine that the addict will spend the rest of his or her life hanging onto a metaphorical ledge by a fingernail.  Every minute a person spends abstaining is then perceived as torturous. With some regularity, I have to clarify that this is not my experience of recovery, and after doing so I’m often met with confusion: “If you and most of your friends at your meetings aren’t struggling regularly to stay in recovery, why go? What’s the point?” Similarly, many outsiders to celibate LGBT communities posit that celibacy is nearly impossible, and that those who do succeed must live in constant agony, ready to bend and break at any moment. Once I began discussing my celibacy openly, I noticed that the majority of people in my life had the same reactions as when I’d become more comfortable sharing my seriousness about recovery: “That’s a long, hard road, Sarah. You’ll be fighting temptation for the rest of your life. What a struggle it must be for you to avoid slipping.” And I’ve lost count of how many friends have suggested that I’m denying myself one of life’s greatest pleasures, and I must have no reason to interact with other gay celibates beyond helping them not to have sex and asking them to support me in not having sex.

A related misunderstanding about both addiction recovery and celibate LGBT communities is that when we aren’t white-knuckling together, we must be commiserating instead. Truth be told, trying to live intentionally — whether as a husband or wife, a celibate, a person in recovery, or a person in any number of other life situations — is full of difficulties. Sometimes, making decisions aligned with a particular way of life is incredibly hard. However, neither my recovery journey nor my commitment to celibacy can be characterized only by the tough parts. It’s not unusual for people in my life to ask me about my support group meetings, “Do you all just sit around and talk about how much it sucks not to be able to do x, y, or z anymore?” And as I share about my experience of fellowship with other celibate gay Christians, the same folks usually ask the exact same question. Non-celibate people, both LGBT and straight, often want to know what celibate LGBT spaces, both in person and online, are like. But it can be challenging to hold that discussion with interested outsiders who first conceive of these spaces as dreary, mournful corners of the internet where everyone bemoans his or her sexual orientation and the challenges of living celibacy. It takes a great deal of time to show others that a commitment to celibacy doesn’t necessarily indicate that life is absolutely horrible and meaningless on just about every metric of human flourishing.

A third common misconception about these two types of communities is that we look down upon others who are not part of our circles. To an extent, outsiders who perceive our communities in this way probably have good reasons. When a person adopts a new way of life, he or she can be especially zealous. For example, it’s not unheard of for an alcoholic who has just begun attending recovery meetings to begin assessing all of his or her friends’ levels of alcohol use. Similarly, I’ve known folks who have spent their first few months of committed celibacy critically examining their other LGBT friends’ non-celibacy. Very few people are comfortably “out” regarding their statuses as recovering addicts or celibate LGBT Christians. But because so many people in my life have had negative experiences with folks in either group (or both), I am told with some regularity that forcing others into a certain way of life is the only reason someone might share openly about his or her journey in a community of abstinence. I’ve lost count of the number of times an acquaintance has told me, “The problem with celibate gays is they all demand that every other gay person has to become celibate.” Yet despite these sentiments from people outside the celibate gay community, rarely have I met a celibate gay Christian who would actively approach a non-celibate gay person with a wagging finger, spouting choice bits of Christianese, and inquiring about the specifics of that person’s sexual behaviors. Likewise, I’ve found that members of addiction recovery communities who would engage in this sort of behavior toward outsiders are very much in the minority.

Healthy communities of any kind focus on a positive vision for life. If someone where to ask me how I’ve benefited from participation in addiction recovery communities and celibate gay communities, I couldn’t conceive of responding with a simple, “They helped me to stop doing a, b, and c.” My active participation in addiction recovery communities has brought numerous gifts. I have received support for living a way of life that is purposeful and fulfilling. I’ve come to see that being accountable is not merely providing an answer to, “Have you avoided particular behaviors?” but is instead thinking deeply, “Am I living a way of life that promotes wellness on multiple axes?” I know that no matter what, I will find acceptance, love, and compassion in these communities. No one is going to shame, berate, browbeat, or belittle me if I experience a relapse. Instead, they’re all going to be there for me as they love me, embrace me warmly, care for me, and remain with me through my challenges. They won’t see me as a hypocrite; they’ll see me as a human. They can witness my struggles and defects of character while at the same time seeing me as a human being worthy of love. I’ve been blessed to observe these same dynamics at play in celibate gay communities. Members of celibate gay communities know that it’s essential to help each other discern a way of life that extends far beyond what we aren’t doing: most of us are much more interested in learning how to draw near to God than in policing whether anyone else is having sex. Having a foot in both of these worlds has taught me that any community of abstinence is healthiest when it is uplifting and welcoming rather than fear-based and forceful.

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.

In Defense of Moms Like Mine

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A reflection by Sarah

Today, I’m writing something that I never thought I would write. It’s a defense of my mom and all Christian parents like her. I’ll admit upfront that this is a difficult post for me because my mom and I don’t have a very close relationship. We’re as different as daylight and dark and have always struggled to understand each other. Rarely do we find ourselves being of one mind on any serious issue. Yet for reasons mysterious, far beyond our comprehension, God saw fit to put us into relationship as mother and daughter. And perhaps this is why I would fight to the death to protect her from being maligned.

Two weeks ago, we published a post on the need for better conversations about issues of LGBT suicide and parental acceptance. In response to our claim that conservative Christian parents approach their relationships with LGBTQ children (minor and adult) in a variety of ways, more than one reader suggested that these parents are always caught in a choice between loving God and loving their children. A few readers found our confidence that it would be possible for parents with a traditional sexual ethic to maintain authentic relationships with their LGBTQ children overly optimistic and a bit foolhardy. Some offered that for many LGBTQ people, even being around a parent with a traditional sexual ethic is inescapably destructive and dangerous. I can’t speak to the life circumstances of another person and do not wish to invalidate the stories of others. Nonetheless, as I was interacting with our readers on this topic I couldn’t help but think of my relationship with my mom because, although we have remarkably different views on sexuality and scripture, I cannot imagine her ever treating me as a lesser human being because of my sexual orientation.

My mom is a longtime attendee of services in a conservative Christian denomination that many would consider fundamentalist. If not a total biblical literalist, she’s remarkably close (except at times when my dad teases her about male headship — she’s not too fond of Ephesians 5 and 1 Timothy 2 when interpreted literally). For my mom, questions about the morality of homosexuality usually come down to a simple quoting of “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind; it is abomination” (Leviticus 18:22). Make your best emphatic statement of “Abomination!” with an Eastern Kentucky accent, and you’ve pretty much summed up my mom’s views on non-heterosexual orientations. Occasionally in the past, my mom has cited 1 Corinthians 6 to hint that I could magically become straight, but it’s always been in the general sense of “Well, Sarah Ann, God can change our hearts if we let him.” My mom has always believed that being gay is a choice, and she holds that belief alongside others that make sense within a biblical literalist framework. For example, my mom would argue that the world was created in six actual days, the Old Testament is a literal record of historical events, and the discussion of every moral question should begin with, “Well, you know, what the Bible says…”

However, I have no doubt that my mom loves Jesus and has always desired that I encounter Christ personally. She’s shared with me that before I was born and she was unsure of her ability to bear children, she prayed — as Hannah did before the birth of Samuel — that if God would give her a child, she would do everything possible to dedicate that child to God’s work. My earliest memories of faith formation involve reading children’s Bible stories with my mom, and my mom reading to my sister and me from her own Bible. Sometimes, she would even plan sick day Sunday school lessons for me at home when I had a cold that was just pesky enough to keep me from attending any church service. My mom is a faith first sort of person if ever there was one. I can’t imagine she’s ever made a decision that wasn’t informed by her relationship with Christ.

When I first came out to my mom, like most conservative parents she didn’t take it well. The news caught her off-guard and rendered her speechless. She had no idea what to say or do. She was a good Christian mom and had done her best to raise me as a person of faith. My mom began zooming in on various theories as to why I “thought” I was a lesbian. Some theories focused on my history of sexual abuse. Others involved speculation that my emotionally difficult breakup with my high school boyfriend might have turned me gay. Occasionally, my mom pulled in even stranger theories such as the idea that seeing two  possibly-lesbian women refereeing my elementary school basketball games made the “gay lifestyle” appealing to me. My mom has spent years adjusting to the reality that I’m not going to become straight, my sexual orientation is not a phase, and I’m never going to bring home a prospective son-in-law for parental inspection. However, in the midst of all of this, she has always made clear that she loves me. She has constantly stressed that I am welcome in her household, and from the beginning has promised that she will never, ever reject me. We’ve certainly had our disagreements over the years since I came out. Some have led to weeks, even months of communication breaks. But I’ve never feared being cast aside from my family. If my mom’s love can survive my coming home with a tattoo within a month after starting college, there is absolutely no doubt that it will survive anything else that she considers a transgression.

At this point you might be saying, “Hey, that doesn’t count. You’re celibate. It would be different if you and Lindsey were sexually active.” Not all of my past relationships have been celibate. One of my previous non-celibate relationships was with a women who was emotionally abusive, manipulative, and selfish. If my parents had wanted to reject this partner on the grounds that she treated me terribly, they would have had good cause to do so. Nonetheless, when I introduced her to my parents, my mom did everything she could think to do in order to make her feel welcome. After that relationship ended, my mom said, “You know, Sarah, I’m glad you’re not with that woman anymore.” I became tense and expected to hear a mini-sermon about the evils of homosexuality, but my mom surprised me by instead citing instances when this past partner had mistreated me. My mom highlighted her observation that this person made many and frequent unreasonable requests of me and became angry when I did not meet expectations: regularly, she would demand that I alter my own daily schedule to run litanies of errands, none of which I ever seemed to perform well enough. My mom reminded me of a time when this partner had chosen a restaurant to take all of us for dinner: she hadn’t considered that this establishment wouldn’t have any food that met my dietary needs, and then became angry with me for ordering an off-the-menu cheese sandwich because I couldn’t eat anything else. My mom played back her memory reel of all the times my partner had made fun of me for being too nerdy, not thin enough, and too religious. At no point did my mom mention anything about “homosexuality.” Instead, shared that she had spent hours praying for me that I would not be stuck in an abusive relationship for the rest of my life.

When my mom met Lindsey, I had to do a double-take that I was actually watching her in action. Every bit of Southern hospitality was on display, and anyone present would have thought that Lindsey had been part of the family for decades. Granted, my mom still makes a point to tell me that she thinks homosexuality is wrong, but she shares this view with me personally and privately — never in front of Lindsey. In the next breath, she’ll ask me a litany of questions to learn about Lindsey’s favorite foods so that they can be on the menu when we visit. I’ve never seen my mom go to such lengths to apologize for her preparation of green beans than when she couldn’t find the freshest bunch to serve to Lindsey. Thanks to my mom (and also my pistol-packing grandmother), Lindsey was included immediately in the Christmas gift circle, on the birthday card list, and on the list of questions for the family to ask before the end of a call every time they phone me. Lindsey and I had been together as a couple for over a year before I shared with my mom that we are committed to living celibacy together. I didn’t think telling her that we were celibate would matter much because my mom tends to view homosexuality as a choice, full stop. Discussing celibacy with my mom has not changed how she interacts with Lindsey and me, and my decision to become celibate has had no effect on my mom’s theological position on homosexuality. Despite this (and maybe even despite herself), my mom really does appreciate and respect Lindsey because she likes seeing how well Lindsey treats me and how much I’ve grown spiritually since the beginning of our relationship.

When I reflect on how my mom has treated me over the years, I cannot help but become enraged when people suggest that because of her extremely conservative sexual ethic, she is exactly the same as parents who have thrown their kids out on the street, demanded that they participate in ex-gay ministries, or forced them into fear-based celibacy or heterosexual marriages. I’ll be frank: my mom would much rather I had the capacity to enter a heterosexual marriage. If my mom had her way, I’d be married to a man with a great job while living no more than a twenty-minute drive from her and my dad. By the time she was the age I am now, she had been married to my dad for 8 years and already had two children. In my mom’s dream world, I’d probably be raising children of my own by this point. To say that my relationship with my mom hasn’t been the best is a significant understatement. My close friends can attest to how conflicts about things other than sexual orientation have had nearly enough power to end my relationship with my mom. Nonetheless, I find it imperative to give credit where credit is due.

When it comes to my sexual orientation, my mom has never once indicated in any way that her love for me is conditional upon my “becoming straight” or choosing celibacy. Instead, she has managed to affirm my full humanity and treat me as a person of equal worth (even though we’re still working on, “Please, treat me like a grown woman.”). My mom has done nothing to make me feel like less of a person because I’m a lesbian. She has taught me so much about affirming the dignity of other people because she always goes the extra mile to do so in her own life. In a rural county that’s nearly 99% white and probably more than 99% fundamentalist Christian, my mom has always been the first person to defend members of religious minorities when the town gossips start clucking about what a pity it is that the few nice Hindu and Muslim families in the area “aren’t saved.” She’s constantly responding to those remarks with, “I believe Christ is the only way, but there are things about how He works that we don’t understand.” As I think about how my mom has approached all of her doubts and wrestling with the questions that emerged after I told her I was a lesbian, I am confident that she has spilled out all of her anguish at the foot of the cross so that she can continue to love me — and every LGBTQ person she has ever met — with no strings attached.

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”

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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.

I Am Not Asexual, and Why I Care What Others Call Me

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A reflection by Sarah

Last week, I wrote a post on some problems I see with defining LGBTQ terminology rigidly and attempting to qualify who is or is not LGBTQ. I’m thankful for all the stimulating discussions that post initiated with friends and readers, including some folks who were encountering our blog for the first time. One of my favorite aspects of blogging is witnessing how quickly a 1,500 word reflection can spark multiple conversations that take off on trajectories I never would have anticipated. In my post from last week, I had stated the following:

I am a lesbian. I experience attraction to women. Occasionally that attraction does include sexual thoughts. However, I experience sexual desire rather infrequently. I can’t even remember the last time I had a desire for sex. I am committed to sharing life with a partner whom I love, but to whom I am not sexually attracted, and who has trouble picking out which letters of the alphabet soup are the best fit.

I was surprised to see that a fair number of the resulting conversations, including one on that post’s comments section, involved suggestions that I must be asexual. Perhaps part of it was because in some of these conversations (particularly on Facebook and Twitter), I was using the example of an asexual lesbian to demonstrate that LGBTQ sexual identity doesn’t necessarily have to involve the desire for sex. But in most cases, even after I explained that I am not asexual, the assertions continued. Over the past week, I’ve been wondering what exactly has led so many readers to assume that I’m asexual, why I’m so quick to claim that I’m not, and whether the answers to these questions are even relevant to the conversations Lindsey and I are trying to initiate. After several days of reflection, I’ve come to see how important the topic of asexuality is to explorations of celibacy, so I’ve chosen to address it for the first time today.

Most of the time, I resist writing posts that delve deeply into topics that are only vaguely related to my own experience of life. I’m quick to call out straight Christians who make ignorant statements about gay/lesbian topics despite their lack of firsthand knowledge. I don’t want to do the same thing to asexuals, so let me make clear: everything I say in this post is from my own experience, and it should not be taken as a critique of the asexual community, or as evidence that all people currently embracing the term “asexual” will eventually realize that they are wrong.

My first reaction to seeing the aforementioned conversations about my blog post was, “Whoa…blast from the past!” Very early in my coming out process, I did experiment with the term “asexual” as a possible identity descriptor. There was a time, back in the earlier years of the Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN) message boards, when I interacted regularly with the asexual community and thought I might be one of them. While most of my now-closest friends were beginning their affiliations with the Gay Christian Network (GCN), I was spending much of my spare time chatting it up with the folks at AVEN. I met some great people during my time on the AVEN boards and got back in touch with a couple of them once Facebook became a more popular way of keeping up with friends, but in time I saw that the term “asexual” was not a good fit for me and it has been years since I’ve even thought much about asexuality.

AVEN currently defines the term “asexual” as, “Someone who does not experience sexual attraction.” There aren’t many other definitions available because asexuality is not widely recognized as a sexual orientation as of 2014. AVEN’s definitions page offers other terms as well such as “demisexual” (someone who can only experience sexual attraction after an emotional bond has been formed) and “gray asexual” or “gray-sexual” (someone who identifies with the area between asexuality and sexuality). As many readers have pointed out, my description of my own level of sexual desire could easily fit somewhere within the broad spectrum of asexual self-identification. One reader referred to me as gray-sexual and insisted that this was an appropriate label for me whether I like it or not. Generally, I believe it is a sign of respect to honor other people’s identities as they understand them. I can’t think of too many things that make me feel more disenfranchised than another person claiming to know better than I do what I am or am not, or what I believe or don’t believe. Could someone with the exact same level of sexual desire as I have rightly claim a term like “asexual” or “gray-sexual”? Sure. If a person sees nonexistent or limited sexual desire as a key component of his or her identity, who am I to say that is unimportant? But it doesn’t change the fact that I don’t identify with these terms.

So does my preferred terminology (lesbian) have any relevance if I’ve chosen a way of life that doesn’t include sexual activity? If Lindsey and I are intentionally celibate, why does it matter what I call myself? Yes, I think it does matter, and two reasons come to mind immediately.

First, identifying as “asexual” rather than “sexual” would change the meaning of my commitment to celibacy. I understand my celibacy within the context of vocation. All vocations involve giving of oneself and making sacrifices for the sake of the Kingdom. Lindsey and I believe that God has given both of us the gift of celibacy, which makes certain aspects of our daily living different from that of other LGBT people who have chosen celibacy purely out of obedience. But this doesn’t mean our celibacy comes without consequence. Sometimes, a way of life that one feels called to comes naturally and is easy, but at other times it is challenging and even feels painful. There are occasions when I begin to think that the grass might be greener on the other side of the fence. As I’ve mentioned before, I felt drawn to celibacy for several years before actually committing to it. I spent a few years second-guessing myself, shifting back and forth between liberal and conservative approaches to sexual ethics, and trying to determine if being obedient to my Christian tradition would necessitate squelching my attractions to other women. As I was dealing with all of this, I didn’t even question whether possibly spending the rest of my life without sexual activity would be a sacrifice — I knew it would be. I knew that in making the decision to live celibacy I would be giving up one very important way of connecting with others, and that would be hard. Especially since pursuing celibacy with Lindsey, I’ve only seen confirmation of this. I still experience sexual attraction to other women, even though it’s rare and even though I’m not sexually attracted to Lindsey. I’ve been in sexually active relationships before, and there’s no denying that these kinds of relationships are vastly different from what Lindsey and I share. Once in a blue moon, I’ll think back on those and miss that kind of connection. Thus, the idea of identifying with asexuality just doesn’t sit well with me.

Second, I have radically different emotional associations for the terms “lesbian” and “asexual,” and I see this as at least partially related to my experience as a survivor of sexual violence. It’s erroneous to suggest that a person who is LGBTQ (or a person who is asexual, for that matter) would necessarily have been heterosexual (or sexual at all) had it not been for a sexual trauma. It’s also incorrect to say that spending time in therapy to heal from sexual trauma will make a gay, lesbian, or bisexual person straight, a transgender person identify with his/her biological sex, or an asexual person sexual. I believe that my lesbian sexual orientation is completely unrelated to my sexual abuse, but I also believe that some people form their entire concept of sexual orientation around those kinds of experiences. If I’m totally honest with myself, I have to admit that’s exactly what I was doing in experimenting with the asexual label for a season of life. During that time, I knew deep down that I had a sexual orientation; I just didn’t want one. I was fearful of what it would mean to accept myself as a sexual person, and I knew that the rare sexual attractions I experienced were toward women. In my mind, adopting the term “asexual” was the easy way out of acknowledging my PTSD and having to struggle with questions of faith and sexuality. It would also save me from total rejection, I thought. I knew that sooner or later, I would have to tell people I wasn’t straight. All the assumptions and questions about why I didn’t have a boyfriend were weighing on me heavily. I was aware that whether I came out as lesbian or asexual, everyone who knew of my being a survivor would blame my abuse and tell me that I should seek counseling to become “normal.” But I thought, “At least if I tell people I’m asexual, they can’t say I’m doing anything wrong.” At the time, the asexual label seemed like the amoral option. I stopped identifying with “asexual” after realizing that use of the term was causing me a great deal of sexual frustration. Oddly enough, I’ve never experienced stronger and more frequent sexual desire than I did during my season of identifying as “asexual.” I consider that more than enough evidence that this label is not the most fitting for me. It’s interesting how coming to identify freely as “lesbian” was part of what opened the gift of celibacy up to me.

The problem with claiming to know another person’s sexual identity better than he or she does is that no two journeys through life are exactly the same. Two people who experience almost identical levels of sexual, emotional, and romantic attraction can have profoundly different senses of identity due to their histories and worldviews. Assigning a sexual identity label to a person other than oneself privileges one’s own self-understanding to an extent. It’s overly simplistic to assume that a one-sentence definition can convey accurately how every person who uses a particular term would describe its meaning. Regardless of whose definition for “asexual,” “gray-sexual,” or any other term a person might fit, his or her own internal sense of self should be honored and respected.

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When Definition Undercuts Mystery

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A reflection by Sarah

“You’re not really a lesbian, Sarah.”

“Why? What do you mean?”

“You like girls, but I can’t see you ever having sex with one, much less having a real relationship with one. If you really are a lesbian, you have sex with women, or at least want it.”

It has been 11 years since my friend Daniel and I exchanged these words over chicken tacos in our college cafeteria. I’ve thought about this conversation on a handful of occasions over the past decade, but never so strongly as within the past week. As I’ve perused the usual blogs and news sources that make their way into my reading queue, I’ve been surprised at how many posts and articles have led me back to the memory of my conversation with Daniel and how it marked the beginning of our friendship’s end.

For as long as I can recall, I’ve had an uneasy relationship with labels and categories, especially those with rigid boundaries that seem arbitrary. Labels and categories have utility. I’m not denying that. But almost always, attempts to define where lines should be drawn result in privileging some experiences while disqualifying others altogether. Because my own experience of sexuality and sexual orientation is not what most would consider typical, I’m entirely uncomfortable with drawing neatly-defined categorical boxes around LGBTQ terminology. Furthermore, I consider the search for one common factor that qualifies certain people but not others as LGBTQ to be a fool’s errand.

More frequently now than ever, I see people defining sexual orientation in a narrow manner. Some people will say that sexual orientation is all about sex or the desire for the sex, or that it should be defined primarily by sexual desire even if it encompasses multiple attributes. Others believe that sexual orientation should be defined by a person’s current level of sexual activity, or the sexual orientation/gender identity of a person’s partner. These ways of defining sexual orientation are often rooted in the definer’s experience of sexuality. If one experiences one’s own sexuality as a desire for sex, then it can be easy to assert that everyone of the same sexual orientation experiences sexuality in this way. I can understand the temptation to this because in the LGBTQ community, it’s common for people to gravitate towards others who have similar experiences of sexuality. For some, having shared definitions for terms like “gay” and “lesbian” provides a sense of unity and comfort.

However, I did not come out as a lesbian because I had an acute, burning desire for sexual intimacy with people of my same sex. For most of my life, I’d had an inkling that something about me was different from other females I knew. I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what that meant or what was at the core of it, but everything began to make much more sense once I met other lesbians. Over time, I started to see sexuality and gender as profoundly mysterious. I came to believe that the mystery of sex, sexuality, and gender exists to draw us deeply into meaningful relationships with other people.

As I reflect on my conversation with Daniel, I can’t help but ask myself why we are so uncomfortable with the idea of sex, sexuality, and gender as mystery. Sometimes, answering with “It’s a mystery” is a cop-out and an attempt to quiet discussion. Yet as I take this approach to understanding myself and my lesbian sexual orientation, I am amazed at how much I continue to learn about what it means that I and others around me are sexual beings. I find myself eager to explore further what exactly it means that I am a lesbian, trusting that as God teaches me more about myself I’ll be brought to greater awareness of what my sexual orientation means as part of my identity. Let me be clear: I am not confused about my sexual orientation, and I do not expect one day to wake up and be straight, bisexual, or of some other orientation. But I do believe that God still has much more to show me about who he has created me to be.

Had I not come to a sense of peace in approaching sexuality as a mystery and accepting that it might be beyond definition and categorization, I wouldn’t have been able to make any sense of my sexuality and sexual orientation whatsoever up to this point. I am a lesbian. I experience attraction to women. Occasionally that attraction does include sexual thoughts. However, I experience sexual desire rather infrequently. I can’t even remember the last time I had a desire for sex. I am committed to sharing life with a partner whom I love, but to whom I am not sexually attracted, and who has trouble picking out which letters of the alphabet soup are the best fit. We’re committed to living a celibate way of life together. When I discuss my sexuality with others, some people will assert that I’m not a lesbian if I’m not having sex. Others will say that perhaps I used to be a lesbian but am no longer because I haven’t experienced the desire for sex in such a long while. Then there are those who will tell me that “partner” is not the right word to describe my relationship with Lindsey because I’m not sexually attracted to Lindsey. This latter group will assert that friendship is the only term that can rightly describe our relationship, or that we must be lying about our commitment to celibacy and failing to see that we’re just imitating marriage. Some people assert that I cannot know my sexual orientation because Lindsey hasn’t yet decided on a particular label for Lindsey.

At times, dealing with these assertions becomes maddening. If I were to devote any amount of my precious energy to sorting how my experience squares with established definitions instead of rolling with the terminology that feels most right to me, I wouldn’t have any strength left to focus on loving other people. And one thing I can say for sure about my sexuality is that every part of it involves a broader pattern of loving, relating to, and interacting with others.

I find it irksome when conversations about sexual orientation and gender identity become so caught up in definitions that differences in lived experience never enter the discussion. Eventually, Daniel’s insistence upon defining my sexuality for me led to the very painful decision that ending our friendship was necessary. Lately, I’ve seen the same pattern of conversation happening when it comes to issues of LGBTQ people in the Church. People across a wide range of positions look to rigid boundaries around what it means to be LGBTQ. I wonder if people are so protective of labels and categories because they believe that keeping definitions narrow and based on their own experiences is the only way to ensure that their voices are heard. I wonder if we fail to leave space for the mystery of sexuality and gender because many people see labels and their definitions as valuable guideposts. Perhaps there’s a fear that saying, “I don’t know” in a conversation about sexuality gives critics a new opportunity for attack. But sometimes, at least in my experience, the more I learn about my sexuality, the more I see how little I actually know about this mystery. And sometimes, “I don’t know” are the three most freeing words I can possibly say.

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.