Category Archives: Vocation

The Celibacy Mandate

Posted on by

In our post addressing 7 Misconceptions about Celibacy, we highlighted the misconception that celibate people are only celibate because of oppressive, conservative religion. Unfortunately, the idea that Christianity in particular tries to suppress the sexuality of LGBT people has significant evidence in its favor.

Last week on Twitter, we saw a friend offer this tweet:

We know better than to consider this kind of biting comment an isolated instance. In too many Christian communities, insults directed at LGBT people are accepted as a part of Christian discourse. Many LGBT people feel as though they need to try and mimic the normative experience of heterosexual people before even setting foot in a church near them. Some “Christian” advocates will attend Gay Pride events to suggest that “God has a better way” where LGBT people can become straight or celibate. Many LGBT people (rightly) perceive that some conservative churches “reach out” to the LGBT community in order to encourage LGBT individuals to excise their sexualities.

Straight Christians will frequently quote Bible verses (and official Church documents, if applicable) that explicitly condemn homosexual acts. This kind of approach draws a line that an LGBT person can never pass over if that LGBT person wants to remain “acceptable” to the Church, and to God. In these contexts, celibacy can be experienced as an unfunded mandate where the LGBT person is left to his or her own devices to figure out how to live a celibate way of life. These contexts rarely provide a person with a positive definition of celibacy.

To say it very succinctly, we hate this kind of celibacy mandate.

To put a bit more flesh on our objection, we believe this kind of celibacy mandate prevents the Church from developing a framework for a life-giving, generous approach to celibacy outside of religious life. This celibacy mandate excuses the Church from all responsibility to help LGBT people integrate their sexualities within a broader, embodied sense of self. After all, the counsel for managing one’s sexuality boils down to, “Don’t have sex.” You can fit “Don’t have sex” 8 times within 1 tweet on Twitter. It is far too simplistic a message to be the sum total of all advice the Church has to offer an individual seeking life in Christ.

Another thing we have observed is that often, Christian communities telling LGBT people that they must be celibate have very underdeveloped views of both celibacy and marriage. In many of these communities, the vast majority of the congregation is happily heterosexually married with children. If statistics are to be believed, several of these families might be comprised of people who have remarried after securing a divorce. We would call these churches “American Dream” churches. In an “American Dream” church, marriage is frequently treated as a rite of passage: Boy meets Girl. Girl and Boy fall in love. Boy proposes to Girl. Girl (and Boy) plan wedding. Boy and Girl get married in some venue using a self-designed service presided over by a clergy person of their choice. Girl and Boy live happily ever after. When something important like your wedding is a necessary adult rite of passage, then it seems heartless and even cruel to deny anyone access to this kind of event.

We would rather be a part of a Church that encourages every person to find abundant life in Christ. We are grateful to be a part of a Christian tradition that has a rather clear theological vision for marriage. In our Christian tradition, it does not make a lot of sense to view marriage as a necessary rite of passage. At every parish we have attended, we see people of all ages actively trying to discern their vocation. We are blessed to know other people who think that God is not calling them to work out their salvation within the vocation of marriage.

It’s worth mentioning that the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches are frequently portrayed as issuing the celibacy mandate to all LGBT people. However, we think that the popular perception of these liturgical traditions overlooks a lot of how they present a theological vision of marriage and celibacy. We do agree that the liturgical churches could do a better job of presenting a more holistic view of their teachings on marriage and celibacy. And honestly, we wouldn’t be surprised if LGBT Christians in some Catholic and Orthodox parishes experience a sense of an unfunded celibacy mandate within their local communities. We challenge those parishes to do better.

Consider the following scenario. You are a straight person. You have grown up all of your life with messages that in order to find yourself fully in Christ, you must get married. Failure to marry is evidence that you lack faith, are completely undesirable, and have no gifts to offer your community. You try to comply with the expectations, entering into various dating relationships, but nothing seems to work. Eventually, you reach an age at which your church offers various mixers so adults above a certain age can meet and greet. Pressure from your family mounts. Finally, they have no choice but inform you that you will be entering an arranged marriage in 3 months or face shunning from your faith community.

We know that scenario sounds nuts. It was supposed to sound nuts. But that’s how we imagine churches might behave if they issued a marriage mandate. Minus the bit about entering into an arranged marriage, we know several middle-aged Christians who are single who have felt a ton of pressure from their faith communities to get married. However, instead of presenting marriage as a mandate, many Christian communities spend time talking about what a marriage might look like, how God can bless people through marriage, and what the Church can do and is doing to support families. Christian churches are constantly describing marriage as a possibility for people in their congregation. The ideal of marriage is almost never presented as a mandate, a demand from a holy God, or an oppressive burden.

We think that many LGBT people encountering the Celibacy Mandate live that nightmare scenario as it relates to being celibate. What is most tragic, in our opinion, is that many Christian communities who believe that celibacy is the best vocational choice for LGBT people tend to avoid talking about celibacy as a possibility that can be absolutely life-giving.

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.

“What if you just went to an Open and Affirming church?”

Posted on by

We regularly receive questions from people asking us whether we have considered attending an Open and Affirming Church instead of our current home parish. These questions have increased as we shared our “10 Things We Wish Our Church Family Knew” post because many people were mystified as to why we would remain in a church community in which any of those concerns are present. Some people have asked us the question because they know we live in a large city where it’s easy to find a church that has adopted an official stance as an Open and Affirming Church. [We know the specific language that church communities can use to indicate a high degree of acceptance of LGBT people varies across different Christian traditions, but for simplicity we’re going to run with the term “Open and Affirming” throughout this post.]

Yet, we do not feel particularly welcome or safe at Open and Affirming Churches either. Our goal in this post is not to critique Open and Affirming Churches. We are grateful for all of the work of so many Open and Affirming Churches do to provide sanctuary to LGBT Christians and those who love them. Our goal in this post is to highlight some of the shortcomings we see with the question “What if you just went to an Open and Affirming church?”

It is important to remember that churches who decide to become Open and Affirming also have statements regarding other theologically important issues. Even though we are members of the LGBT community, we do not regard how a church approaches LGBT people as the single most important of all theological issues. We are not saying that approaches to LGBT people don’t matter. After all, we found it critical to point out areas in which our own parish community falls short when it comes to accepting us as a couple. But to put it succinctly, we are not comfortable selecting a church or, more broadly, a type of Christian tradition based upon its teachings on LGBT issues when we are more concerned with its theological views on Christology, salvation, scripture, grace, and sacraments, to name a few. Responding to our concerns about our current parish with, “What if you just went to an Open and Affirming church?” implies that we should be able to forgo all other theological concerns for the sake of being in a church where people would support the presence of an LGBT couple. We understand and respect that many LGBT individuals and couples do make the the decision to leave more conservative traditions for Open and Affirming churches, and we do not wish to make light of that decision. Experiencing constant rejection is incredibly painful. Many LGBT Christians have been able to find Open and Affirming churches that embrace teachings they consider theologically sound. Different people find diverse ways of balancing the need for acceptance in a local parish with the need for a particular theological approach. All we ask is that others who reach different conclusions than ours on this issue respect our decision to remain in our current parish and our Christian tradition instead of leave.

We are both of a very firm conviction that being in the Church is supposed to be challenging. We believe that the Church envisioned by Jesus Christ is a place where absolutely everyone has the opportunity to connect with Him. What Christ calls us to is not supposed to be easy. We doubt that His vision for the Church included its members gathering in segregated rooms, each of us choosing the room where everyone looks like us, agrees with us, and enjoys the same music we do. The question “Why don’t you just find an Open and Affirming church?” suggests that the best course of action is for us is to forsake trying to be Church with our current congregation in order to find another community where we would be welcomed as an LGBT Christian couple. Every person in our current parish, even the ones capable of making extremely unkind remarks about LGBT people and issues, challenges us to be better Christians. We are doing our best to journey with this current parish as long as we are geographically able. We are very careful to consider what might be necessary reasons to change churches. We are skeptical of the idea that a person is obligated to move to a different church because of conflict with other members. Some of the coolest stories we know have come from situations where an LGBT person was committed to doing life within one church community that previously had no positive experience with LGBT issues. At the Gay Christian Network Conference in Chicago, we heard of a church who decided to break fellowship with their denomination rather than deny a lesbian couple membership. That sort of story cannot happen if people are constantly hopping around churches.

And, if we’re really honest (and hey, we do believe in vulnerability), then we need to say that we do not feel especially welcome in Open and Affirming churches either. The Gay Christian Network has connected us with fantastic, fabulous, and generally wonderful LGBT Christians. Every year, GCN hosts a conference where we gather as an incredibly diverse group and do our best to show Christ to one another. In a way, it is like attending our own Open and Affirming church once a year. A very large percentage of conference attendees are lay members or clergy within various Open and Affirming churches. However, despite knowing and loving these people for a very long time, we have seen that many of our friends from Open and Affirming churches have an odd way of balking at the idea that we have a vocation to celibacy. We often get questions like, “Don’t you know that Jesus will still love you if you have sex?” or “Are you still recovering from your time in ex-gay ministry?” We also get statements like, “Let us know how celibacy is working out for you in 5 years.” or “You really have a great way of glorifying the fact that you hate yourself.” When we try to share our personal struggles with these friends, we occasionally hear things like “I’m sure I’d have trouble believing God loved me if I thought I could never have sex,” and “Of course you’re struggling in areas of your life. You are so sexually repressed.” It seems to us that many Open and Affirming churches have a “zone of acceptability” for what constitutes a valid LGBT relationship; since we are not sexually active, we find ourselves outside of that zone. It’s worth saying that, at this current juncture, we have had more critical questions about our lack of a sex life from people with a liberal sexual ethic than we have had biting statements about our relationship from people with a conservative sexual ethic.

We have noticed that positive change happens slowly and surely. Even in our own parish, we have seen positive change. It is clear that a lot this change has happened through various people who love us sitting down and having a cup of coffee with other people who have been immensely challenged by our presence. Both of us have also seen this kind of change in other parishes that we attended before the beginning of our relationship. We would venture a guess that virtually every church has at least one person or family willing to get to know an LGBT individual as a real person in order to try and share life together. While these friends might be precious and few, they are also the same people who show interest in getting to know just about every other person in the church community. When we have shared stories about how Helen has made us feel a bit unwelcome in the parish with our close friends, nine times out of ten our close friends will make a point to talk a bit more with Helen. Those conversations make a huge difference. Additionally, we are our own best advocates when we go to church to encounter Christ, to pray, and to participate in the life of His Church. We should never discount the power of quiet fidelity.

In summary, we are exceptionally grateful for all our friends committed to walking on this journey with us. Sometimes, the best way to support us on our journey is to listen. There is power in being heard. The question, “Why don’t you just find an Open and Affirming church?” is much more seeking a solution for a perceived problem. We hope this post has been beneficial in helping you to understand how that particular solution carries with it its own difficulties.

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 Good Gays and the Bad Gays

Posted on by

A reflection by Sarah

About a week ago, two members of my family, whom I’ll call George and Ann, had been reading our blog and decided to ask me some questions. George, who at one time believed many conservative Christian stereotypes about LGBT people, now holds to a much more liberal perspective on the morality of same-sex sexual activity. His wife Ann has always believed in a traditional Christian sexual ethic, not only where LGBT people are concerned, but also for heterosexuals. At one time, Ann also believed that homosexuality is a choice, but I’m unclear on whether or not she still believes this. Regardless, both George and Ann like Lindsey as a person and want to be involved in our lives.

With the exception of the season of life when I was discerning the possibility of a monastic vocation, neither George nor Ann had ever heard me mention celibacy before, so they had many queries. The two major ones were: “Do you and Lindsey feel called to this way of life until marriage, or in perpetuity?” and “Why have you never mentioned this to us?” I answered the first by stating that we believe God has called us to lifelong celibacy as a couple. The second question was a bit more awkward. I didn’t see any reason for us ever to have needed to clarify that Lindsey and I are celibate. It’s not exactly the way you introduce your partner to your loved ones, and no one ever expects relatives in sexually active relationships to announce their status as such at the family Christmas dinner. I wondered why it mattered to George and Ann. In terms of respecting our dignity as human beings, what difference would it make to any member of my family what Lindsey and I do or don’t do in our private lives? If any other couple told me that they felt called to live celibacy together, I couldn’t imagine myself asking why they hadn’t mentioned it earlier. A few moments later in the conversation, Ann dropped the bomb that I had been afraid was on its way: “If I had known, I would have felt differently about my decision not to let you stay in our guest room when you came to visit.” 

I bristled. The tone in my voice changed to defensive. A minor argument ensued. New questions popped back and forth between us like popcorn kernels in a skillet. As much as I respect Ann’s right to set her own rules for her own household, her statement struck me as ill-placed; it indicated to me that simply because I’m gay, she had made an assumption about my level of sexual activity, and now, she was making new assumptions because of my celibacy. Feeling that this was incredibly unfair, I noticed the initial, knee-jerk reactions that were flooding my thoughts. If she had known we were celibate, that would have changed her mind about the arrangements for our visit? Based on her previous assumption that we were sexually active, what would she have expected to happen during our visit? Gay sex in the guest room? Does she think sexually active gay people do nothing but have sex every time they’re behind closed doors? Was I really hearing that Ann was prepared to treat me differently than she had in the past, but only because she had learned about my celibacy? Ann could tell that her statement had offended me, and she apologized for the offense. But what bothered me most was that neither liberal George nor conservative Ann wanted to talk about why I had found Ann’s statement inappropriate. Both knew that Ann hadn’t intended to offend me, and I knew it too. But that wasn’t the point. I attempted, quite unsuccessfully, to explain my perspective: that my decision to blog with Lindsey about our celibate partnership ought to have no effect on the level of hospitality family members are willing to show us, and we understand and respect that Ann might not be comfortable having any two unmarried people stay together in her guest room, but it’s hurtful to know she would consider welcoming us to stay overnight in the guest room only now that she doesn’t have to worry about “condoning sin.”

Though we eventually resolved the issue, this situation is a relatively mild example from the many occasions on which I have been viewed as a different kind of gay person once someone in my life has found out about my celibacy. I’ve experienced both conservative friends treating me more kindly and liberal friends distancing themselves from me after learning this piece of information. I’ve been told that I am brave, self-sacrificing, and faithful for choosing celibacy. I’ve also been told that I’m a person of dubious intentions who represents everything that is wrong with traditional Christianity. It’s amazing how easily interpersonal relationships can take a sharp left turn because of assumptions about what a person does or doesn’t do with his or her genitals.

Western Christian culture has a tendency to use legalistic approaches when defining morality. To many modern lay Christians, a “bad” person is bad solely because of his or her engagement in certain sinful behaviors, and conversely, a “good” person is good because of the avoidance of those same behaviors. When the legalistic mindset is taken to the extreme, vocation becomes defined in the negative: being a sexually moral single means not having sex until marriage, or not having sex at all if one remains single permanently. Being a sexually moral married person means not having sex with anyone except one’s spouse, and in some Christian traditions, avoiding inappropriate sexual activity (e.g. oral sex, use of contraceptives) with one’s spouse. In this way of thinking, a “good” gay person doesn’t have sex, and a “bad” gay person does. Many Christians also believe that simply identifying as gay means one is having sex, and being with a partner certainly means this. It’s the default assumption, and it influences the way straight Christians treat LGBT people, both celibate and sexually active. A “good” gay person is worthy of love, welcome, and hospitality, but only if he or she makes his or her celibacy known to the world. A “bad” gay person is worthy of love-the-sinner-hate-the-sin-style admonishment, frequent reminders of Christian religious beliefs about gay sex, and the message, “You would be welcome here if only you would be celibate (or choose to become straight).”

Just don’t do the wrong things and we’ll accept you. Just don’t behave badly and we’ll never have to tell you our moral convictions. Just don’t sin and I’ll welcome you to sleep under my roof. As I see it, all of this amounts to: “Just don’t be human and the rest of us sanctified beings will leave you alone.” I do not wish to downplay the importance of morality in the Christian life or the significance of the big questions in sexual ethics. Furthermore, I do not wish to imply that we should all become moral relativists with no absolutes, or that the Church would be a better place if it adopted a laissez faire, “whatever floats your boat” attitude regarding sex. But sometimes I wonder how we got to a place at which members of the Church are more concerned with monitoring for the presence of sinful behavior than walking alongside and helping each other to work out our salvation.

Before my baptism, I was heathen as any human child born into this world. The Church is a hospital for sinners, and I fit the bill just as much as any soul who walks through the doors on Sunday morning. I am not a saint, a martyr, a courageous witness, a shining exemplar, or–yes, I’ll say it–an idol because I am celibate. Taking a peek under the hood of my soul would reveal, I imagine, that I struggle with just as many sinful passions as the next person–gay or straight, sexually active or celibate. I refuse to define my life as a celibate, gay Christian by whether or not I follow a set of mechanical criteria for what counts as sex. Celebrating the heroism of celibate gays while demeaning and vilifying those who are sexually active (and those who say nothing to indicate sexual activity status) is a dangerous business, and I believe it is contrary to the Gospel. To my mind, there are no “good” gays and “bad” gays. There are only people–sinners, all of us. And saying so is not the same as sugarcoating the reality of sin or dismissing the wisdom and teachings of the Church. While it does matter theologically and philosophically what conclusions we reach on tough ethical questions, a person’s behavior–what it actually is or what we presume it to be–should have no bearing on our decision to treat him or her with dignity and respect.

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.

7 Misconceptions about Celibacy

Posted on by

Since starting this blog, we’ve become even more aware than we already were of how other people can misunderstand the celibate vocation. Many people have never heard of a person living a celibate life unless that person is a priest in the Roman Catholic Church. As readers have been engaging with our various posts via comments and email, it has been suggested that we must be caving to religious oppression, that we are glorifying “lesbian bed death,” and that we are fooling ourselves into thinking that we are not actually living in sin…. to name a few. We understand that the call to live a celibate life in a partnership is indeed a queer calling. We knew from the beginning that people would have questions and misgivings.

We have already taken some time to answer the question, “Why celibacy?” and have made our first attempt at defining celibacy. Lindsey also talked about why defining celibacy as merely avoiding sexual acts is especially problematic. We think it would be helpful at this point to discuss some of the most common misconceptions about celibacy. Our intention in this post is to give a brief overview of these different misconceptions based on our personal experiences of celibacy, and we’ll likely expound upon these ideas further in future posts. Some of these myths have overlapping features, so please consider reading the post in its entirety as we tried to avoid repeating ourselves.

1. Celibate people deny their sexualities.

There are two main ways that celibate people treat their sexualities. Some celibate people do actively try to cut themselves off from sexual desire, treating all forms of sexual attraction and interest as a temptation that ought to be resisted. Other celibate people work to integrate their sexualities within their broader self-understandings. When a celibate person is integrating his or her sexuality, that individual can more readily embrace moments of attraction. Attraction becomes a useful orientating tool where God connects a celibate person to other people, to professional pursuits, to times of spiritual growth, or to opportunities for recreation. Both the specific instant of attraction and the underlying sexual orientation and gender identity that fuels attraction are treated as a great mystery, wherein God orchestrates the diverse relationships that enable a celibate person to live a richly connected life.

Both of us tend to be very outspoken when advocating for celibate people to pursue a pathway of integrating their sexualities. We have known far too many people harmed by the more surgical approaches, and we grieve deeply that so many “ministries” have encouraged LGBT people to adopt an approach of trying to excise their sexualities altogether.

2. Celibate people are only celibate because of oppressive, conservative religion.

We can definitely appreciate that some people feel forced into celibacy because of their religious convictions. However, nothing could be further from the truth for many celibate people. Often, celibate people who have chosen celibacy because of religious convictions feel that this decision is exceptionally life-giving. We plan to address the topic of involuntary, forced celibacy in a future post. Taking a brief look at history, we can see that religion has created pathways that allowed people (especially women) to choose to live celibate lives. It used to happen that families would marry off their daughters in arranged marriages. The rise of celibate communities gave an alternative to that reality. We may get back to that point in a future post as well. This particular misconception about celibacy also downplays the reasons why people might choose to live celibate lives. Many celibate people we have met report choosing celibacy because a celibate life has enabled them to love and serve the world differently than if they were married. They wanted that different way of life.

3. Celibacy is unnatural.

This misconception is quite paradoxical because it assumes that a “natural” vocation necessarily involves sex. It is sometimes pointed out to us that celibate communities cannot reproduce, eventually die off completely, and are therefore living exactly the opposite of how nature intended. One of the most common examples of this is the Shakers, who were once a thriving community of unmarried men, unmarried women, and adopted children, but have vanished almost completely in the modern world.

The claim celibacy is unnatural places the natural order of reproduction as humanity’s highest concern. However, a population of people cannot die off because a fraction of people are called to live celibate lives. If a person places an emphasis on the “natural” order of reproduction to decide what sort of relationships are permissible, then we’d like to know if and how they think about contraception and sexually active same-sex relationships. We would especially like to challenge those people who use a liberal sexual ethic to say that celibacy is unnatural because, all too frequently, many people holding a more conservative sexual ethic are quick to decry sexually active same-sex relationships as unnatural. We would venture a guess that many who dismiss celibacy on the basis of its “unnaturalness” would not say the same about homosexuality.

4. A loving God would not ask people to be celibate.

Many people, both Christians and critics of Christianity, have somehow adopted the notion that if a person feels called by God to be celibate, then that call is inherently oppressive. A lot of people think that God’s calls come in the form, “If you don’t do (insert kind of call here), then you’ll die.” In this paradigm, everything God might call a person to do would be experienced as oppression.

In particular, once people start talking about a call to celibacy, some also seem to conflate understandings of different kinds of love. Some assume that a celibate person is incapable of experiencing and expressing eros and simultaneously neglect how God might provide opportunities for experiencing and expressing agape within the context of celibacy. These people conclude that because celibacy does not provide an outlet to express eros, then a God who is love would never call a person to a celibate vocation…. or that God only calls people to a celibate vocation if those people are not particularly inclined towards eros.

However, God has infinite perspective on what will bring abundant life to every person who finds himself or herself in Christ. With regard to those living a celibate vocation, many celibate people experience a profound sense of loving connection to the world. Elder Porphyrious devotes an entire chapter in his book Wounded by Love (so named in honor of the mythical pelican who pierces herself in order to nurture her young) to the experience of Divine eros. One way the two of us think about the role of eros in the celibate life is that the Divine eros overflows and makes radical hospitality possible.

5. Celibate people are afraid of sexual intimacy.

While this misconception is not without basis because some celibate people do become so in order to avoid having sex, the majority of celibate people are not afraid of sexual intimacy. Based upon when and where we frequently hear this objection to celibacy, we think that most people who promulgate this particular misconception are sexually active themselves and do not have personal experience with living a celibate vocation. Some sexually active people may see their sexual lives as adding a necessary spark to other aspects of their lives and will go to great lengths to preserve their ability to have and enjoy sex. When a person is making a significant investment in preserving his or her sexual life, then the presence of a celibate person could be perceived as threatening.

Many organizations that are a part of the ex-gay movement also rely on this myth to challenge an LGBT person’s statement of their sexual orientation and gender identity. Ex-gay organizations can be quick to say that gay people are simply afraid of having sex with a person of the opposite sex, gay people are trying to cope with a history of traumatic sexual experiences, and gay people are unable to deal with having experienced other types of negative sexual encounters.

At this juncture, we think it’s worth mentioning that celibate people choose to become celibate at different stages in their lives. Part of the misconception that celibate people are afraid of sex comes from the assumption that all celibate people are virgins. This assumption simply does not hold true when considered against verifiable evidence. Many people choose celibacy much later in life than many people might expect. For example, there is a well-established tradition of widows and widowers embracing a celibate, monastic life after their spouses repose.

6. Celibate people judge sexually active people.

People choose celibacy for a plethora of reasons. Those reasons may or may not include the idea that sexual activity (same-sex or otherwise) is inappropriate. Even if a person’s choice to embrace celibacy is partly motivated by a belief that sexual activity is inappropriate, that does not mean he or she is intrinsically judging another’s sexually active relationship. Many celibate people affirm the role that marriage can play in drawing people towards God and towards a holy way of living.

7. Celibate people are asexual or have low sex drives. For such people, celibacy is easy.

This misconception actively defines celibacy as merely the absence of sex. People who share this misconception are often looking for some sort of mechanism that makes it possible for an individual to live life without having sex, which many believe to be an impossible reality. However, this misconception makes a blanket assumption about the kind of person who chooses celibacy without being informed by the experience of celibate people. As we have talked with many different monastics about the intersection of celibacy and sexuality, almost all of them have remarked that they expect to navigate various kinds of sexual attractions and desires until they have been lying in their grave for a few days.

Both of us know a significant number of people trying to live celibate lives. At our recent workshop at the Gay Christian Network Conference, all of our nearly forty attendees agreed that celibacy is hard. We think it’s worth pointing out that most people we know who feel especially called and gifted towards marriage would be equally inclined to say that marriage is hard.

In conclusion, we’ve tried to expound a bit on 7 misconceptions about celibacy and explain why they are misconceptions. We hope this post was helpful for you in thinking about celibacy and encourage you to share your reactions, questions, and feedback in the comments. We appreciate your readership!

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

10 Things We Wish Our Church Family Knew

Posted on by

We both spend a lot of time talking about how best to interact with our church family. The environment can be a bit trying at times, but we stumbled into one particular parish as our home parish and have decided (after much discussion!) to remain there. We’re grateful for the handful of people who go out of their way to make us feel welcome. However, we often wish we could share our experiences a bit more openly and freely in this setting. We hope that, one day, we will be able to do this, but we’re not there yet. To lay out a road map of where we’d like to be able to go, we present “10 Things We Wish Our Church Family Knew.”

1. We are aware of the Church’s teachings on marriage and sexuality, and we don’t need a constant reminder.

Straight people in the Church are constantly trying to tell LGBT people what the Church teaches or what the Bible says. As such, every LGBT person in the Church has heard the official line multiple times from multiple people. It can be really off-putting when a person finds out we’re LGBT and suddenly acts like we’ve never read Romans 1. We’re grateful to be in a tradition that bears witness to the Truth through Word and Sacrament. We believe that every member of our faith community has something to show us about what is true and holy, but there are effective and ineffective ways of serving as a teacher. Inviting us to share in your family celebrations–whether it is your wedding, your child’s baptism, or your mother’s funeral–is much more effective than proof-texting and quoting official Church documents as a way of showing us what it means to be a family within the Church. It also shows that you respect us enough to include us in your family’s big moments.

2. Insults to sexually active LGBT people are also insults to us.

Our vocation to celibacy does not make us immune to discrimination. When you suggest that you cannot support non-discrimination policies because these policies might condone same-sex sexual activity, what you’re really saying to us is that you don’t think we should be able to secure housing or enjoy a workplace free of harassment. We do not appreciate hearing your disdain for organizations that permit LGBT people to participate, especially if the participation of LGBT people is your only objection to a particular group. How do you expect us to know that we are welcome in the Church when you indicate that we certainly would not be welcome in another social context? During times of fellowship, it is incredibly hard to overhear comments that suggest LGBT people are on the same level as animals or are a threat to civilization as we know it. Those kinds of comments lack any degree of Christian charity and make it hard for us to gather the strength to come to church the following week. We also abhor the idea that there is somehow a “good” LGBT person and a “bad” LGBT person. The practice of celibacy does not make us spiritually, morally, or (insert your favorite adverb here) superior to other LGBT people. At the foot of the Cross, we are all radically equal. And we are all human.

3. Our being LGBT is not the cause of personal struggles we face.

Just like other human beings, we face short-term and long-term personal struggles. Between the two of us, we’ve dealt with depression, chronic health conditions, debt, addiction, an eating disorder, job loss, PTSD, and more. Often, we feel like we have to keep up a strong exterior because we’re afraid that straight people in the Church will attribute any personal struggle we experience to our LGBT status. It’s part of the legacy of reparative therapy: well-meaning Christian counselors sought to uncover the root cause of homosexuality in order to repair the damage. We’re not damaged; we’re human. And when we’re really honest, we know that some of you have likely navigated similar problems and can be ashamed to share your own vulnerabilities within the church community.

4. It’s okay to ask us questions.

As much as we hear negative comments about LGBT issues, we have never been able to have an honest, open conversation about our lives with Church members. We have never tried to hide anything from you, but it seems like some of you are more comfortable with avoiding the questions. Lindsey once had a friend say, “If you want to get to know me, make friends with the question mark.” Consider asking us more questions about our travels (especially when we’ve just gotten back in town), about what we do for fun, or about how we are learning to pray together. Talk with us about the experience of the service that day: How did you encounter Christ in the service? What are you taking away from today’s time of worship? How can we be praying for you throughout the week? Questions are the stuff relationships are made of, and we could probably do better at modeling how to ask questions by asking you these questions ourselves.

5. Your families inspire us in our vocation.

Being in the unique situation of a celibate partnership, we learn about vocation not only from celibate monastics, but also from families. The way you approach living life as a family is profoundly meaningful to us. It is meaningful for us when you encourage your children to serve within the parish, when you bring your children into the services, and when you allow them to stay present within the people of God even when their behavior isn’t the best. It is inspiring for us to see your children grow and to have your children tug at our shirts to tell us a story. Watching you as parents love your kids before, during, and after our times of worship shows us a great deal about how Christ loves His Church. We pray for you and your family constantly because we know we’re all mystically a part of the same family anyway.

6. Sometimes, communing with you is hard.

We love being part of a Church that affirms we all share the same faith when we approach the cup. Our friends from open communion traditions often suggest that because we’re from a closed communion tradition, we’re not spiritually challenged to see ourselves at the same table as people who are different from us. In reality, we constantly face this challenge because we know that we have to share the same cup with many of you who are capable of making very biting remarks about LGBT people. We like to remind ourselves that we’re not perfect, and though we might sometimes regard you as the thorn in our side, the feeling is likely mutual. And we come to communion anyway, and we hope you will come too, because we long for each and every person we have ever met to be united to Christ.

7. We aren’t trying to have our cake and eat it too.

We’d like to devote a whole post to this subject a bit later, but we thought it made sense to address the issue here. It is no mystery to us that most people who know us as an LGBT couple presume that we are sexually active. We are equally aware that those people who know us as celibate have trouble with the idea that we live out our vocation as a couple. So we frequently get the questions, “Are you trying to have it both ways? Are you trying to pull the wool over our eyes? How can you be celibate and legitimately a couple? How can you be a couple and legitimately celibate?” Though we can see how it might be easy to perceive our situation as doublespeak of the worst sort, we truly believe that we are called to this unusual vocation. We try, sometimes more successfully than others, to focus all of our energies on serving Christ and His Church. We remember that Christ said where two or three are gathered, there He is among them. And we constantly pray together that He would reveal to us how His will might be done in us and through us.

8. We have been profoundly hurt by the ex-gay movement.

The ex-gay movement is a “ministry” effort geared toward helping LGBT people become straight and thereby, capable of entering into heterosexual marriages. Within this movement, there is an emphasis on using various pop theories about what caused someone to consider themselves LGBT in order to “fix” that person. At its core, the ex-gay movement promotes the idea that LGBT people are fundamentally broken and all our relationships are suspect. Intimacy gets denounced as “emotional dependency” and any kind of gender variance is regarded as “gender identity confusion.” Any suggestion that we cannot have meaningful relationships with others because we are LGBT is profoundly alienating and separates us from the rest of humanity. It’s important for you, our church family, to understand the incredibly harmful messages that have been thrust in our face. The ex-gay movement also colors LGBT people’s experiences of celibacy. Ex-gay ideologies recommend divorcing oneself from one’s sexuality rather than entering a celibate life as a wholly integrated person. Just because we’re celibate, please don’t think that we advocate approaches that encourage LGBT people to denounce, rather than to integrate, their sexualities. Simple reminders that everyone is created in the image and likeness of God and is worthy of respect can go a long way.

9. The Church provides no resources for cultivating a celibate vocation outside the walls of a monastery, so we need your prayers and support.

If you’ve read any other posts on this blog, you’ve probably seen us referencing monastic communities. We do that because monastic communities are places where a person can find others living celibate lives. But even though these communities provide us with wonderful inspiration for many aspects of living a shared celibate life, the two of us do not live in a monastery. We are doing our best to live out a celibate vocation in the world, and the Church remains remarkably silent on these vocations. You, as our church family, know better than most about what obstacles we encounter as we try to live in the here and now out in the world. We need your help, prayers, love, and support as we navigate our journey. Think about all of the ways the Church has helped you learn what it means to live a married life, and then what would happen if you tried to pay that blessing forward in your own prayers that God would illumine our way?

10. We love you and are committed to sharing life with you.

Doing life in the Church is messy, dysfunctional, and human, as the Church is a hospital for the ailing. All of us together share in the Church’s mess just as we all share in the Church’s beauty. Towards that end, we actively choose to answer Christ’s call to be a part of His Body every day. We choose to share life, both globally and locally, with every person who is a part of that effort to be the Body of Christ. And that includes the people in our local church family with whom we may not always agree or communicate well. Despite all of our weaknesses, we want our lives to be orientated towards Christ’s grace that extends everyone a profoundly radical hospitality. As Rachel Held Evans recently reminded us at the Gay Christian Network Conference, we often become angry at God for being so generous that the scandal of the Gospel is not who it keeps out, but rather who it lets in. In that spirit, as much as we are able, we want to rely on God’s grace so that we can continue to share our lives with you…. even when it’s really, really hard.

In no way do we mean for this list to encompass everything we wish our church family knew, but we think it’s a start. Feel free to add to the discussion in the comments.

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.