Category Archives: Sexual Ethics

Putting the “Tradition” in a Traditional Sexual Ethic

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A reflection by Lindsey

I have a personality that adapts well to things being in flux. I embrace the uncertainties associated with not always being aware of where I’m going and rarely being sure of the best path towards any goal. When I was in college, I thought I could have everything all sketched out in terms of my 5-, 10-, and 20-year plans. But every time I started feeling like my plans were coming together, something major happened to upset my apple cart. Eventually, I stopped trying to pile all the apples together and tried instead to carry one piece of fruit at a time. I feel like my spiritual journey mirrors many other aspects of my life, where it is regularly in a state of flux as I explore seemingly uncharted waters.

I didn’t start my spiritual journey particularly attached to any Christian denomination. Along the way, my spirituality has been shaped by a number of Christian traditions: I can trace significant influences upon my faith to the Anabaptist, Evangelical, Lutheran, Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Quaker traditions. I’m a bit of a spiritual mutt.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about what I mean when talking about a traditional sexual ethic. There are lots of assumptions about what that phrase means. Many Christian traditions band together in defense of sex being reserved for marriage and marriage existing only between one man and one woman. But that’s not what I’m talking about when I refer to a traditional sexual ethic. What I’m talking about is a sexual ethic strongly mapped to a particular spiritual (or moral) tradition.

I’ve journeyed through enough Christian traditions to know that not all are the same. Each Christian tradition has its own set of emphases and guiding questions. And I earnestly believe that all robust Christian traditions offer people a set of tools for thinking about sex, marriage, vocation, and life in Christ. I find myself wishing that more Christians would leverage the full weight of their traditions to discern how those traditions can more openly welcome, embrace, and guide LGBT Christians into the fullness of life in Christ.

However, as much as I might wish for each tradition to look within its own borders to help LGBT Christians find abundant life, I’ve noticed that many Christian traditions have formed various alliances with other Christian traditions in order to shout down dissenters. As a result, it seems that people have allowed key differences among their traditions to evaporate in effort to find some basic commonality on which orthodox believers in all denominations can agree. The net effect is that Christian traditions write doctrinal statements that hint at vague ideals without showing people the connection between where the tradition is going and where the tradition’s theology came from in the first place.

I think within Christian traditions that consider themselves progressive, it’s entirely possible to have a “traditional” sexual ethic that embraces people who enter into same sex marriages simply because of the way those specific traditions frame their theological questions. I’ll never forget hearing Lillian Daniel speak on the heritage of the United Church of Christ during the 2013 Gay Christian Network Conference. Daniel spoke on how the UCC as a Christian tradition sees itself as inescapably using abolitionist arguments to break down the dividing walls between people and work toward social justice. After the talk, as I reflected on how this Christian tradition views itself I wondered, “In this denomination, is a heterosexual marriage principally about repairing the breach in relationships between man and woman? How would one think about the divide between gay people and straight people? Does one need to have a clear dichotomy in order to have a ‘dividing’ wall? What sort of space is afforded for bisexual and genderqueer people who might find themselves in the ‘middle’ of binaries?” If the United Church of Christ was my tradition, I’m rather hopeful that asking these sorts of questions would help me draw closer to the heart of Christ and pull me into a deeper connection with other people in the same tradition. I’m also reasonably confident that people within the UCC tradition can tell that I have only passing familiarity with their tradition because of these questions I asked.

Looking to the Christian traditions I’ve been a part of, I can see many reasons why these traditions do not affirm same-sex relationships as marriages. Some of these traditions seek to discern how God commands us to live as Christians by offering detailed direction on activities one must avoid. A good number of these traditions also explore gender as a very significant component of how we grow to maturity in Christ. How can a girl grow into a woman of God? How can we raise boys to be men after God’s own heart? In the sacramental traditions, offering the correct ‘elements’ in Holy Matrimony mirrors the pattern of offering bread and wine to become the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharistic mystery. Many of these traditions teach that both marriage and celibacy reveal something about the Kingdom of God, where all vocations are essential. Yet, each of these traditions grounds its sense of a traditional sexual ethic in a different line of reasoning.

In the midst of all my queries, I’ve spent a lot more time trying to figure out what different Christian traditions say about celibacy. By the time I started asking questions about celibacy, I was in a Christian tradition that didn’t say much other than “Sex is a great gift from God, so God opens up the possibility of heterosexual marriage for almost everyone.” I found myself with little choice but to shop around to see what other Christian traditions offered to people exploring celibacy. I found that many Protestant traditions stress the beauty of the single state, discussing celibacy as the opposite of marriage. I found a rich jumble of resources discussing celibacy within the Roman Catholic tradition. I guess it helps that the Roman Catholic Church has spent hundreds of years exploring the various implications of having different kinds of celibate vocations: clerical, monastic, and friar. Within the Orthodox tradition, I found a focus on practically living out one’s vocation and integrating oneself more deeply within the tradition as a whole through the practice of this vocation.

I think it’s absolutely critical to remind Christians that nearly all Christian traditions have a rich theology of marriage, of celibacy, and of sharing God’s love with the world. A Christian sexual ethic needs to be intricately connected within the broader tradition in order to equip people in that tradition for faithful discipleship.

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.

Of Celibacy, Sex, and Silver Bullets

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A reflection by Sarah

One of the arguments I hear most frequently against the idea of a celibate partnership is that in order to be healthy and “normal,” any committed, intimate relationship between consenting adults must involve a sexual union. I’ve heard it suggested that celibate partnerships like the one Lindsey and I share are, by their very nature, unsustainable because they involve denial of sexual expression. It’s understandable that most people would have this perception of celibate partnership, and I’ll be the first to admit that the way of life I’ve chosen is unconventional. Still, I find myself amazed at the frequency with which some non-celibate people will propose sex as the silver bullet solution for many difficulties that arise within celibate relationships. The past few months have been especially tough for Lindsey and me, bringing financial stress, a job search, two car accidents, one car breakdown, a street robbery, and the burglary of our home. In the midst of the chaos, I’ve been both surprised and disturbed by how often people in our lives have approached us lovingly-yet-seriously to ask, “Wouldn’t things be so much better if you just let yourselves have sex? Have you ever considered that might make your relationship stronger during this difficult time?” The most extreme example of this came yesterday in the form of a comment, positing that God is actually punishing us for being celibate and talking about celibacy, and said punishment might cease if only we would become sexually active. Not kidding here.

We spend a fair bit of time here discussing lessons we’ve learned from past celibate and sexually active relationships. Lindsey once shared the story of a failed celibate relationship in order to discuss the process of discerning a celibate vocation and developing the spiritual maturity and common vision that maintaining a celibate partnership requires. Today, I’m going to share with you the story of one of my own past relationships to illustrate that sexual activity does not automatically render a relationship normal, healthy, or good. Unlike the one described in Lindsey’s post, this relationship was not celibate and I had never envisioned that it could be. It was the most sexually charged relationship I’ve ever experienced — so much that this aspect of the relationship dominated.

For the purpose of this post, I will refer to my former girlfriend as Leah. At the time Leah and I began dating, I had already spent a few years considering the possibility of celibacy. But during this particular season of life, I saw celibacy as unrealistic and unsustainable despite my feeling a strong pull toward it from God. Due to my own fear of being ridiculed and considered peculiar, Leah and I never discussed celibacy or the possibility of exploring a celibate relationship. From the very beginning, Leah had made clear that sexual expression was one of her most significant needs. I conceded that if I was at all interested in pursuing a relationship with Leah long-term, I would have to honor that need. It never occurred to me that doing so would likely involve overlooking my own needs. We experienced a powerful attraction to each other based on some common interests and the positive energy we felt while in one another’s presence, so I came to believe that even discussing celibacy with Leah would be unreasonable and selfish.

I had told Leah upfront that although I had been in other sexual relationships before, I wasn’t comfortable with jumping into bed immediately. I asked if she would be willing to give me some time, and offered assurance that I would let her know when I felt ready for having sex. For the first three weeks, all was well. But then she began to tell me that she couldn’t understand why waiting for sex was so important to me. “This isn’t normal,” she would say. “Sexual intimacy is what makes a relationship worth pursuing. Without that, it’s dead.” I found myself feeling pressured into exploring sexual activity with Leah simply in an attempt to keep the relationship from falling apart. But within a few days after I had finally given in, I noticed a troubling change in the chemistry between us.

Almost immediately after our first time together, I felt a massive shift in our relationship dynamic. The decision to have sex with Leah was an opening of Pandora’s Box: every conversation we had became focused on sex and sexuality. Every time we had any sort of physical interaction, it became an occasion for sexual comments or actually dropping everything in the moment and taking a few minutes to engage in sex. This troubled me, and I brought the concern to Leah, who responded, “Would you rather we were experiencing lesbian bed death?” She expressed her belief that sex was the most vital of all dimensions of a romantic relationship, and that as long as sex was still occurring and was enjoyable to her, all our other needs would fall into place. It seemed that Leah understood only two possibilities for our relationship: a pattern of interactions that would always lead to the bedroom, or a pattern of interactions that would involve minimal physical contact in any way and would ultimately become impossible to continue. I considered the possibility that she might be right. Maybe sex was the most important aspect of a relationship and I just hadn’t caught up to speed on that yet.

Though I never felt comfortable emotionally or morally with what was happening in our sex life, I remained in relationship with Leah for quite a long while. As time went on, Leah’s expectations for my sexual performance increased to a level I could not possibly reach. She became critical of my body and my unwillingness to perform certain types of sexual activities. Doing something in bed that did not give her sufficient pleasure (or worse, ended up being unpleasant for her) carried significant consequences. Leah began to withdraw all affection from me after I had made “mistakes” while trying to give her what she wanted. At times when I would assert my own needs and wants, Leah would counter with a statement of her right to express her sexuality in any and every way that made her feel happy. This included attempts to convince me that my own physical boundaries were unreasonable. The relationship began to lose its meaning for me because everything was completely focused on our sexual experiences.

As this pattern continued, I noticed that Leah was losing interest in having any kind of intimacy with me that was not sexual. She began rejecting hugs and offers to cuddle on the couch. Any real conversations we were having ceased, and simply spending time together became a chore. Near the end of our relationship, even the sex stopped happening. Leah claimed that she didn’t feel close to me because I wasn’t giving her enough “good” sex, so she had lost interest in sharing any kind of intimacy with me. Though I attempted to raise these issues with Leah and was fully ready to accept responsibility for my part in them, Leah was unwilling to discuss any of this in a meaningful way. She placed all blame for the crumbling of our sex life and relationship as a whole on me for not giving her enough space and for having too high a need for non-sexual types of intimacy.

I tell this story not to condemn Leah or to suggest that this is normative pattern of all sexually active gay relationships. If you find yourself identifying with anything I mentioned above, please consider seeking help. I’m also not saying this to suggest that I am incapable of embracing my sexuality. Though I am now committed to lifelong celibacy in the context of my partnership with Lindsey, I’ve been involved in other sexually active relationships that were quite emotionally healthy. As I reflect on my past relationship with Leah, I can see that I learned many valuable lessons from its circumstances; but perhaps the most important is that sexual activity is not the magical ingredient to guarantee a relationship will be “normal” and “healthy.”

All too often, people who do not understand celibacy frame “sex within a committed relationship” as a panacea for struggles associated with celibacy. My own life experience tells me that this way of thinking is dangerous. And I’d argue it can be just as harmful as suggesting that celibacy mandates are the silver bullet for addressing all LGBT issues in the Church. In the end, Leah and I were incompatible on a number of levels, including our very different views on sexual ethics. I believe there is nothing that could have saved our relationship, and even without these serious issues with intimacy, eventually we would have seen that we were not a good match for each other. Nonetheless, I wonder if things might have ended differently had sexual activity not become the perceived cure-all for every problem that came between us.

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.

LGBT Media Visibility and the Traditional Sexual Ethic

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Today, LGBT people are more visible in the media than ever before. Many would argue that the LGBT community still does not have enough media visibility. Oppositely, many other people would argue that LGBT issues have too much visibility in the media. Still, some don’t think that it’s important for LGBT people and characters shown on television, in magazines, in movies, etc. to be associated in any noticeable way with their LGBT statuses. Those found in the latter two groups tend to be people who hold to a traditional sexual ethic–often people who mean well, but aren’t sure of how best to approach LGBT issues. However, one could make a strong argument that many of the people campaigning to reduce LGBT visibility in the media are not simply conservative Christians who value traditional teachings on sexuality, but instead are those who hold an anti-gay perspective. Either way, in the eyes of these crusaders, any LGBT media visibility flies in the face of a traditional sexual ethic.

Let’s start by backing up just a bit: we’re sure that nearly all of you, our readers, could identify some instance of the media showcasing sexuality outside the boundaries of a traditional sexual ethic. Some of your examples might even showcase LGBT people and concerns. However, a significant portion of media that feature LGBT people does not say anything about sexual morality. For example, Honey Maid released a 30-second commercial in March 2014 called “This is Wholesome.” The commercial features some different families: a biracial family, a family headed by a single dad who loves his tattoos and drumset, and a family of two gay men and a baby.

In the commercial, the gay couple is featured for 5 seconds. There are zero references to sex. There is nothing sexual that the two men are doing. The men don’t actually show affection to each other; they are showing affection to their baby. There’s nothing to indicate, one way or another, that these characters are having sex. There’s nothing to suggest that the characters are legally married. The words “Dad” and “Husband” don’t appear in the commercial at all.

Yet, many people were incensed that Honey Maid would dare to produce such a commercial. Organizations like One Million Moms were quick to argue that this commercial promotes sexual perversion. We wonder how it’s possible to see LGBT people on television and immediately associate this media visibility with an “attempt to normalize sin.” This same organization accused Disney of “pushing an agenda” when it included a lesbian couple on an episode of Good Luck Charlie. When we watched that particular clip, we did not see any references to sexuality, but found other aspects of the scene that should have been very distressing to people who value marriage, love, and respect.

We can appreciate that some straight people with a traditional sexual ethic feel their beliefs are under attack from many corners of society. However, we’d encourage our readers with a traditional sexual ethic to consider the following observations before holding LGBT media visibility as uniquely problematic.

Media can tell the stories of real people. We’ve noticed that people who are against LGBT media visibility tend not to be aware of any LGBT people in their circles of friends. The idea that your kid might have a friend at school with two moms or two dads is not some hair-brained notion from Hollywood, San Francisco, New York, or DC. It’s the lived experience of real people from all across America and in other countries as well. Additionally, celibate LGBT people are also just as real as non-celibate LGBT people. Some celibate LGBT people even have partners. (And if you’re finding our blog for the first time, take this as evidence that celibate, LGBT, Christian couples do exist.) If a person asserts that LGBT people should not be visible in the media because LGBT people practice a “sinful sexual lifestyle,” then that person is reducing the identities of LGBT people to “sex” while simultaneously denying that LGBT people have just as much diversity in their sexual ethics as straight people do.

Media can give invisible people and groups a sense of belonging and worth. One of the most powerful things about books, television, and movies is how they can resonate with a person’s sense of identity. Most LGBT people, at some point in their lives, experience profound alienation — feeling different, unwanted, shut out from society, and worthless. In these moments, LGBT people can struggle to see themselves as God’s beloved creations. The presence of a visible LGBT person in the media can ease the route of self-acceptance and promote emotional health. For example, Lindsey grew up absolutely enthralled by the space program. Because Sally Ride’s launch date occurred two days after Lindsey’s birthday, Lindsey always felt an affinity towards Sally Ride. However, Sally Ride was not a visible member of the LGBT community until after her death in 2012. Lindsey started asking questions about sexuality and gender identity just as Ellen Degeneres and Rosie O’Donnell had come out, but neither Ellen nor Rosie were people Lindsey especially looked up to. If Ride had been visible as an LGBT person at the time Lindsey started exploring sexuality and gender identity, then Lindsey is reasonably confident that the coming out journey would have been much easier.

Media rarely showcases a traditional sexual ethic, even where straight people are concerned. We hope that this point is relatively straightforward, but we wanted to call attention to the LGBT-straight duality. It’s become increasingly common to see more and more heterosexual sexual activity in the media. Yet, even though people with a traditional sexual ethic are bothered by these developments, one doesn’t see nearly the level of outrage regarding a heterosexual sexual encounter as the ire that manifests when LGBT people are simply visible in the media without any kind of reference to sex. Sarah has been told by multiple acquaintances that they would rather see a heterosexual extramarital affair scene on shows like Grey’s Anatomy than any character on any program identified as an LGBT person. Some have even gone so far as to say that “Adultery is just wrong. But being gay is both wrong and disgusting.”

From our perspective, this last comment is the most telling about how some people view LGBT visibility in the media. We wish straight friends and acquaintances would see that by offering such remarks, they make us feel unwelcome not only in public, but in their own living rooms. Saying that LGBT people should not be visible in the media is not much different from saying that we shouldn’t get to exist at all. We wish these people would afford us space to tell them what celibacy and our self-descriptions as LGBT mean to us. And we wish these people would see us, first and foremost, as human beings.

We’d love to hear from our readers about your reactions to our observations as well as your perceptions of the positive and negative impacts of increasing LGBT media visibility.

Comment Policy: Please remember that we, and all others commenting on this blog, are people. Practice kindness. Practice generosity. Practice asking questions. Practice showing love. Practice being human. If your comment is rude, it will be deleted. If you are constantly negative, argumentative, or bullish, you will not be able to comment anymore. We are the sole moderators of the combox.

The Other Clobber Passages

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When LGBT Christians and their allies speak of biblical interpretation, they often focus their attention on the 6 passages of Scripture thought to address whether same-sex sexual activity is permissible. Because so many conservative Christians quote these 6 passages aggressively in efforts to condemn same-sex sexual activity, queer writers discuss them as the “clobber passages.” As LGBT Christians ourselves, we have been on the receiving end of much Bible-thumping and are grateful for the efforts to challenge Christians to consider these verses more holistically. However, as much as progressive writers call for the importance of placing certain passages of Scripture in context, it also seems that other verses get a free pass to assail celibate ways of life. In this post, we want to discuss these other clobber passages. We’d like to use this post to identify the verses in question, briefly describe the main arguments made about them in LGBT-friendly circles, and discuss why we find these arguments harmful. It is not our intention to offer a full exegesis in this post.

Galatians 3:28 “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”

Inevitably, one of the first verses we hear referenced is Galatians 3:28. People with a progressive sexual ethic/view of gender often argue that St. Paul says gender is a wholly irrelevant construct that is to be done away with in Christ. After all, the first division was between Jew and Gentile, which Paul wrote to abolish. The second division was between slave and free, which the abolitionists worked to abolish. And the last division is the division between male and female, which some hold that modern Christians are working to abolish.

This argument is difficult for us because we’ve come to see some real value in recognizing that the Church is comprised of people from every tongue, language, and nation. Our differences are not obliterated by Christ. Rather, peoples formerly at odds with one another are now capable of being built into one body where each part can complement every other part. Additionally, our own journeys with our sexual orientations and gender identities have led us to regard gender as a profound mystery not easily understood or categorized. We know many people who have been adversely affected by the suggestion that gender is wholly irrelevant because these people perceive a real need to align better their bodies, self-awareness of their gender, and social acknowledgement of their gender.

We take Galatians 3:28 to say that the Gospel does not vary according to ethnic, class, and gender lines. Christ is the same, the good news that Christ has come to earth remains the same for all, and that everyone is welcome to share in Christ’s life without any exception. When you extrapolate this summary to the rest of Galatians as a whole, it seems that almost everything Paul discusses has a one-to-one relationship with our summary. The Gentiles did not become Jewish; the Gentiles were incorporated into the Body of Christ as Gentiles. The children of Hagar were just as welcome in the Body of Christ as the children of Sarah. Joining the Body of Christ did not deny one’s heritage.

Genesis 2:18 “Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.'”

We hear this verse cited frequently as a way to declare all forms of celibacy (and singleness) as being contrary to God’s will. People will rightly observe that this verse contains the first “not good” in all of creation. God made Adam a partner to be Adam’s helper so Adam would not need to be alone. Among those with a progressive sexual ethic, the marital relationship is an essential relationship for everyone (or almost everyone) so people do not need to be alone.

We naturally have strong objection to any suggestion that because we’re celibate, we’re somehow “alone.” We constantly share our lives with one another and with other people around us. “Alone” is the very last word we would use to describe ourselves.

Even as single people, we did not experience singleness as a crushing burden of isolation. We looked for opportunities to build surprisingly meaningful friendships that have stood the test of time. These friendships transcended age and geographic boundaries. Additionally, we have been blessed to be a part of various thriving communities (even if some of these communities were disjointed from one another).

We take Genesis 2:18 to mean that people need to be in relationships with other people. People find the fullness of their humanity when they relate to other people. We’re designed for interdependence, for community, and for communion with God and with each other.

1 Corinthians 7:6-7 “This I say by way of concession, not of command. I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has a particular gift from God, one having one kind and another a different kind.”

Recognizing that it’s a bit challenging to figure out what Paul is talking about here from the bit we’ve quoted, we’re going to back up a bit. Paul is discussing managing temptations towards sexual immorality. We know many LGBT Christians who quote regularly a later verse that says, “For it is better to marry than to be aflame with passion.” Sometimes, these folks look at us askew because they assume that we must be completely divorced from any semblance of a healthy relationship with our own sexualities.

This particular passage is used to make an argument for celibacy as a spiritual gift. Many people regard the gift of celibacy as an exceedingly rare gift. After all, how many people can honestly manage spiritual feats that rival Paul’s greatness? Lindsey has attended many churches that have done various spiritual gifts inventories and remembers people boasting about how they scored a 0 (or whatever the lowest possible test value was on that particular inventory) for “the gift of celibacy.” In these church contexts, celibates were little more than freaks of nature, so it’s exceptionally unlikely that a person would know anyone who possesses the gift of celibacy. The idea that two people would be called to celibacy and then magically find each other in a way that permits them to do life together is akin to finding not 1, but 2, needles in thousands of haystacks.

We’ve also noted that people most likely to quote 1 Corinthians 7:6-7 at us do so in a way to say it’s next to impossible to be celibate, so any perceived “call to celibacy” must be a linguistic device to legitimatize self-hate. One who views celibacy in this way sees celibacy as oppression, oppression, oppression, and a good deal of repression as well. Celibacy does little more than to squish a person. Adding concerns about sexual orientation and gender identity into the mix, many LGBT Christians with a progressive sexual ethic encourage those exploring celibacy to discern any underlying internalized homophobia, assuming that the person feeling “called” to celibacy must be denying any sense of sexual desire.

While we do appreciate that reconciling one’s faith, sexuality, and gender identity can be exceptionally difficult for some people, we resist the carte blanche assertion that all celibates are freaks or remarkably internally oppressed. Such an assertion denies us our ability to tell our own stories. It also prevents us from sharing our definitions for celibacy and explaining how celibacy can be a pathway of integrating one’s sexuality.

When we read 1 Corinthians 7:6-7, we see Paul describing both celibacy and marriage as gifts. There is some distinction between the gifts, but only God is the giver.

As we have explored the question, “What is an appropriate sexual ethic for us as LGBT Christians?” we have had many people throwing Bible verses at us with an attempt to pound us into submission. Both conservatives and liberals are just as as prone to trying to educate us about their interpretations of the Scriptures in ways that can be condescending. But we’re aware that in most cases, this condescension isn’t intentional. We always welcome your comments. We’re particularly interested in learning whether any of our celibate readers have had additional passages quoted to them in an attempt to invalidate their vocations.

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 Experiences of the Ex-Gay Movement

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Not long ago, a reader emailed us to ask if we would be willing to share in greater detail about our experiences of the ex-gay movement and how it was harmful to us. We’ve referenced this vaguely in other posts because it’s an important part of both our stories, but it has taken us a few weeks to determine our readiness to discuss this topic more specifically. Even some people who know us very well have, up to this point, been unaware of our experiences in the ex-gay world. We’re a bit surprised that only one reader has asked about our histories with this issue because we’ve received a fair number of accusations that because we are celibate, we must be covertly ex-gay. This is absolutely untrue, and we would venture a guess that we’ve experienced just as much pain as a result of these “ministries” as have LGBT people who are sexually active. In the future, we will probably elect to write more on the topic of the ex-gay world. Today, we take our first step towards more open conversation on this matter. The purpose of this post is to initiate discussion on our blog about the detrimental effects of ex-gay ministries upon LGBT Christians.

We’ve decided to structure this post around three general subtopics, but before we get there, we’ll provide you with some background on our individual past involvement with ex-gay ministries. Lindsey joined an ex-gay ministry during college after becoming more aware of Lindsey’s sexuality. Lindsey sought support from ex-gay ministry because Lindsey wasn’t interested in being a cause of scandal for Lindsey’s Christian fellowship on campus. Despite living in a big city at the time, Lindsey couldn’t find many local resources that fit Lindsey’s situation so Lindsey participated in an online forum. The online forum provided a space for young adults to talk about their struggles with same-sex attraction, positing different mechanisms behind the struggles and the victories. In this community, the “opposite” of homosexuality was holiness and members worked very hard at overcoming any areas of sexual sin.

Sarah’s experience did not originate with the intention of participating in an ex-gay ministry. Instead, Sarah was seeking affordable eating disorder treatment resources. Sarah had run out of health insurance coverage and did not have the ability to pay for most professional services due to being a full-time student with limited income. Sarah stumbled accidentally upon a free Christian treatment provider, and was unaware that this provider viewed homosexuality, eating disorders, addictions, and all sorts of maladaptive means of coping with life as the results of demonic possession. When Sarah began receiving services from this provider, Sarah had no idea that “treatment” would focus on attempts to pray away all parts of Sarah’s life that a Christian counselor had deemed contrary to God’s will.

Years after our experiences in the ex-gay movement, we’ve been able to identify three major categories of harm that both of us experienced as a result of being involved with these “ministries.” The rest of this post will provide explanations and examples of those.

Emphasis on certain life experiences and problems as “causes” of homosexuality

According to ex-gay organizations, almost any life experience that deviates slightly from what leaders consider “normal” is a likely candidate for the cause of a person’s sexual orientation. For example, a person’s gender identity is especially suspect as LGB people do not have appropriate understandings of their “true” genders in Christ. Within this framework, a woman who has preferred short hair and jeans to long hair and dresses since childhood likely ended up a lesbian because she was never taught to live into her true feminine identity. The same goes for a man who likes the color pink and prefers dancing over football. Guys are encouraged to see themselves as men of God, embracing a strong masculine identity. When members of Lindsey’s ex-gay ministry got together, the guys would be encouraged to play sports while the girls would be encouraged to explore makeovers. Leaders of this ministry lived in the southern United States where various southern gender ideals were promoted aggressively. This organization’s framework postulated that same-sex desire grew from a perceived deficiency of gender where the same-sex attracted person sought out what he or she was missing from another person of the same sex. Lindsey’s rather ambiguous gender presentation was actively challenged. It was exceptionally hurtful for Lindsey to hear that Lindsey’s stable gender presentation was an active attempt to proclaim LGBT status rather than Lindsey’s natural self-expression.

In ex-gay ministries, a person who has experienced any sort of physical boundary violation at any point in life is said to be deficient in his or her understanding of God’s plan for marriage and sexuality. If a person was ever the victim of sexual violence, leaders of the ministry will insist that the incident was what led that person to “sexual deviance.” There is no consideration of the fact that a large percentage of heterosexual people also have histories of sexual abuse, assault, and rape. People who can’t remember ever having experienced a violation of physical boundaries are urged to try harder at remembering—there must be something that happened in one’s past because according to many ex-gay Christian counselors, “Every gay man or lesbian I’ve ever known has been sexually abused or raped.” For a person who has never had such an experience, repetition of these messages can lead to false memories. For a person who has had such an experience, it becomes impossible to discuss trauma, especially sexual trauma, in any meaningful way because the counselor will always tie it to one’s sexual orientation. Sarah experienced a significant amount of this conflation. Sarah sees Sarah’s own history of trauma as directly related to Sarah’s eating disorder. However, Sarah is confident that this trauma is in no way related to sexual orientation. No matter how much Sarah attempted to discuss trauma within the context of the eating disorder, it was unsuccessful because the counselor’s reply was always something like, “Your experience made you susceptible to demons. The Holy Spirit told me that the demon causing your bulimia will not leave unless you’re willing to let Jesus heal your evil sexual desires.” What usually followed was a spiritually abusive style of free-formed prayer that left Sarah cowering while the counselor commanded the “demons” to leave in Jesus’ name. Sarah’s participation in this unscientific form of treatment not only set Sarah back in terms of recovery, but also left Sarah feeling more stigmatized than ever regarding the trauma.

Manipulation, mind control, and questioning the motives of all actions

For both of us, ex-gay ministries were highly manipulative. Ex-gay ministries assume they know one’s story from the instant one first makes contact. While reportedly trying to help individuals cultivate healthy same-sex friendships, ex-gay ministries frequently insert theories of homosexuality that make friendships difficult. Cultivating appropriate emotional intimacy becomes hard as ministries tout claims of “emotional dependency” as what causes a “normal” same-sex friendship to turn in a necessarily sexual direction. According to this mindset, the only way to determine if one is moving towards “emotional dependency” is to examine one’s motives rigorously and ruthlessly. Lindsey had difficulty having conversations with both men and women as the ministry constantly argued that close opposite-sex friendships should be investigated for marriage potential and that close same-sex friendships needed to be interrogated lest sexual desire arise. Feeling constant pressure to question motives in all these friendships, Lindsey found it easier to remain isolated rather than attempt to build friendships even though isolation significantly fueled Lindsey’s depression. When Lindsey would try to push back on the accepted narrative, Lindsey would be sharply chastised. Eventually, Lindsey’s questioning the ministry’s interpretation of 1 Cor 6:9-11 lead to a rupture in the relationship.

At the time Sarah was receiving therapeutic services from the Christian treatment provider, Sarah frequently heard the message that all problems Sarah experienced in life were somehow related to sexuality. Whether the issue was a struggle to remain behavior-free, a difficult experience in grocery shopping, frustration about relationships with family, or a sense of being overwhelmed by academic work, the counselor found some reason to suggest that the problem would cease to exist (or at least, would not be as serious) if Sarah would only choose to “become straight.” The counselor created visions of an ideal life that Sarah could lead as a “sexually healed” person, complete with a husband, children, a fulfilling career, emotional peace, and financial security. Sarah never actually believed any of this, but because of how ill Sarah had become with the eating disorder before, Sarah felt desperate to find an affordable resource–any resource–that would provide some semblance of tools for wellness. That’s why Sarah continued receiving services from this organization, and despite the best of attempts at getting something useful out of therapy while ignoring harmful messages, Sarah began to feel manipulated and sense that this ministry was trying to gain control over Sarah. Regularly, the counselor would meet Sarah in the most vulnerable of moments with assumptive statements about Sarah’s sexual history, claiming the Holy Spirit had revealed to her that Sarah had engaged in immoral sexual activity just the night before. In reality, Sarah was single and sexually abstinent the entire time. However, that didn’t stop Sarah from beginning to scrutinize and obsess over all of Sarah’s actions. At one point, Sarah had a flashback to a therapy session while admiring the aesthetics of a lovely painting featuring full-figured Roman goddesses in the local art museum.

Spiritual and social consequences for questioning and leaving the organization

Ex-gay ministries do what they do because they portray themselves as committed to God’s work. People who leave these ministries to explore a different sense of their LGBT identities are equated with people who have left Christ, who have not fought the good fight, and who will not inherit the kingdom of God. Leavers are people who have been deceived by Satan and are unable to accept their true identities in Christ. Lindsey left the ex-gay ministry after violating a provision in the code of conduct that members were not to have any unmoderated contact with one another. It should have been a red flag that no amount of adherence to group expectations would have been enough to create an environment of trust. After Lindsey left one ex-gay ministry, Lindsey looked for other options in order to be permitted to continue volunteering at church. But without actively participating in an ex-gay ministry of some kind, Lindsey was unable to do anything in the church because church leaders felt uncomfortable with Lindsey’s involvement in the congregation.

It took a few months for Sarah to see that no possible benefit could be gleaned from continuing to receive counseling services from an organization with such strong ex-gay views. Sarah did not have any other treatment plan in place at the time, but was certain that leaving this resource was the only viable decision. When Sarah first informed the counselor of this, the manipulation intensified in attempt to get Sarah to remain affiliated and continue receiving services. The counselor told Sarah that leaving would bring profound spiritual danger and begged Sarah to pray with her for salvation and deliverance. When Sarah refused, the counselor reminded Sarah of an agreement for receiving a full six months of services that Sarah had signed only three months prior. Eventually when the counselor saw that Sarah would not budge on the decision, she resorted to playing upon Sarah’s worst fear: that leaving would mean giving up hope of ever recovering. “There’s not a treatment facility anywhere in the world that will be able to help you if you’re unwilling to surrender,” she asserted. Sarah did leave and never looked back, but it took a few years to get past the associations Sarah had formed amongst harmful behaviors, sexual orientation, and accusations of being untrue to Christ. Fortunately, Sarah began a relationship with a compassionate spiritual director within Sarah’s own Christian tradition less than a week after this incident. He was able to help Sarah deconstruct the poor theological and psychological claims made within the ex-gay world and encourage Sarah to spend time listening to God.

Our experiences of ex-gay ministry are radically different, yet eerily similar. Lindsey sought ex-gay ministry voluntarily, and Sarah stumbled unknowingly across a ministry with ex-gay ideals. We think it’s important to note that many Christian organizations that do not outwardly claim to be ex-gay have an implicit predisposition to try and force LGBT people towards cisgender, heterosexual norms. The tactics used are highly manipulative and become spiritually abusive far too easily. Under no circumstances do we approve of ministries seeking to help LGBT Christians become straight.

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