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Moving Beyond the Celibacy Mandate

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Time and time again, we’ve described both marriage and celibacy as mature vocations entered into by adults. We started this blog discussing why celibacy needed to be defined by its positive attributes rather than by an absence of sexual relations. Later we asked many married people to tell us how they define marriage. We’ve encouraged the practice of letting celibate people define celibacy and married people define marriage. But, the challenge is that the Church needs a way to speak to all vocations so that individual Christians can discern their paths illumined by the light of Christ. We want to spend some time in this post discussing how churches can discuss vocations in a way where God, through the Holy Spirit, can draw people towards the fullness of life in Christ.

As a first key observation, both marriage and celibacy communicate the same central truth: the nature of the kingdom of God—it is in our midst and we are active participants. When churches help young people focus their sights on the kingdom of God, churches can help everyone discern his or her vocation. Every Christian shares the same starting line on the way to finding his or her vocation: seeking first the kingdom of God. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells his disciples, “Strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given unto you as well.” Keeping the kingdom of God at the center sets our eyes towards the time where all things are reconciled towards God and challenges each and every one of us to do our part in manifesting God’s kingdom through our lives.

What’s unfortunate is that when it comes to LGBT issues, many Christian traditions teaching a more conservative sexual ethic have seemingly lost the mystery of the kingdom of God, focusing instead on a legalistic, “always do this, but don’t ever do that,” form of sexual morality as a way to strive for righteousness. The emphasis on sexual morality can manifest as the straightforward yet often unhelpful, “Don’t have sex outside of a heterosexual marriage” where this moral prescription represents the sum total of vocational guidance given to young Christians in these traditions. In such an environment, many LGBT people can feel ostracized by a seeming mandate to avoid sexual intimacy lest they lose any hope of inheriting the kingdom of God. Newsflash: by virtue of our baptism, all Christians have a solid inheritance. This does not mean that receiving the sacrament of baptism means a person will, for all of his or her life thereafter, be “good to go.” Rather, the point is our baptism invites us to participate in the kingdom of God. Our churches would do well to affirm (and reaffirm and reaffirm again) the power of the baptismal mystery as a way to unite ourselves fully to Christ, so that all Christians can set themselves to the work of showing the kingdom of God to the world.

In many ways, encouraging young people to pursue the kingdom of God is harder than exhorting young people to save sex for marriage. When young people listen for God’s direction, the Holy Spirit might lead them towards vocations where, gasp, they do not enter into marriages. It’s a lot easier for churches to put teenagers on an assembly line where all go through an identical set of rites of passage that culminate in a big wedding than it is for churches to trust that the Holy Spirit’s voice can still be heard above the clamor of raging hormones. In the midst of all the noise associated with becoming an adult in our society, churches should encourage teenagers to orient their ears to the still small voice where God can begin to show every person his or her unique call to manifest the kingdom.

Churches would do well to showcase regularly a belief that all vocations are needed and important. If a congregation thinks about every eighteen-year-old kid it has sent out into the world, then that congregation will realize all of these kids have individual stories. There will be people from that congregation that have done awesome things to serve the kingdom of God who have never married. Part of the allure of the celibate vocation is that there is an unlimited number of potential life stories that align with celibacy. Faithful Christians who never marry are not freaks; they are people who are able to love and serve the world differently than married people. The stories of celibate people should not be relegated to designated times of Celibate Appreciation (i.e. an annual Vocations Week). And it’s okay to let a congregation know if a really cool and inspiring person in your Christian tradition lived a celibate way of life. Catholic and Orthodox Christians have a calendar chockfull of celibate saints, and you still see people marrying regularly in those traditions.

A huge part of discerning one’s vocation is learning how to look honestly at yourself. Discerning vocation requires investigating your authentic desires and noting where they might be different from those of other people you know. As LGBT Christians ourselves, we regard realizing our statuses as LGBT people as a key part of coming to see who we are as individuals. However, in far too many churches, this uniqueness of person is met with a directive about the uniqueness of vocation. We know countless LGBT people who, in the instant they first disclosed their sexual orientations or gender identities, were told immediately, “You have to be celibate.” or “You cannot have sex.” Spiritual advice for LGBT people tends to come in the form of either you have to or you cannot.

What if all priests, pastors, and ministers started approaching situations that involve discussion of sexuality differently? What if spiritual directors left off the specific directives in favor of viewing LGBT Christians as people trying to discern where God is calling them? When spiritual directors start handing down restrictive directives, these spiritual directors are communicating that either they do not trust God to guide an LGBT person or they do not trust the person to listen to God. As we have said many times, LGBT people are people first and foremost. What would happen if spiritual directors started trusting LGBT people as much as they trust straight, cisgender people?

When a person does decide to start exploring a celibate vocation, we want to see congregations willing to support that individual. A vocation is not a cross to bear. A vocation is a pathway to an abundant life. When a person is sharing, “I don’t know if I can continue or even begin in a celibate vocation,” it’s good to come alongside him or her and say, “I know the issue of vocation can be really tough sometimes. I’m here for you. I’m praying for you. How can I help you see more of the kingdom of God in your circumstances right now?” Seeking God’s kingdom unites all Christians regardless of their vocations and enables us to support one another as brothers and sisters in Christ. By encouraging all people to seek first the kingdom, churches do not need to prescribe celibacy mandates. As Christians look for the kingdom of God, the Holy Spirit will guide and direct those called to celibacy to a number of diverse ways of living celibate vocations.

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Christian Formation and the Cost of the Culture Wars

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A reflection by Sarah

About five years ago, I taught a course called Christian Beliefs at a Catholic university. During each class period, we would discuss a different topic that connected in some way to the ideas presented in the Nicene Creed. On the first day of class that semester, I gave the students index cards and asked that each fill his/her entire card, front and back, with as many responses to the following question as possible: “What do Christians believe?” I taught that course twice and have not since been assigned to teach another like it, but being the pack rat that I am, I kept those cards and flipped through them last week while planning an activity for my current freshmen. I had almost forgotten just how troubling the responses where.

First, a bit of context: there were twenty students in the class, mainly from Christian backgrounds. Thirteen identified as Catholic, five identified as Protestant, and two identified as atheist/agnostic. Of the thirteen Catholic students, ten had attended a Catholic high school. Eight of those had been through twelve years of Catholic education. Three Protestant students and one atheist/agnostic student had received education at Christian high schools. Given this information, one might think most of these students would have no trouble generating a list of Christian beliefs that would include many of the religion’s core tenets.

As I perused these index cards last week, I was taken back to the shock I experienced as a second-year teacher reading the responses my class had provided. A few were easily predictable:

  • “Christians believe in Jesus.”
  • “Christians believe in Jesus as the savior.”
  • “Christians believe that Jesus died for our sins.”
  • “Christians believe that baptism washes away sins.”
  • “Christians believe you need to ask Jesus into your heart to go to heaven.”

But those accounted for such a small percentage of student responses. When asked “What do Christians believe?” almost every student in the class included at least two of the following on his/her list:

  • “Christians believe gay people are going to hell.”
  • “Christians believe gay people are sinners.”
  • “Christians believe gay people are pedophiles and shouldn’t be priests.”
  • “Christians believe that if you’re gay, you can’t have sex.”
  • “Christians believe that you have to choose to be straight if you love God.”
  • “Christians believe abortion is a sin.”
  • “Christians believe abortion is murder.”
  • “Christians believe in protecting unborn babies.”
  • “Christians believe you have to be pro-life.”
  • “Christians believe you have to vote pro-life.”

Most students who listed two or more of the above had written perhaps one other statement of belief on their index cards. One responded, “I know Christians don’t like gay people or women, but that’s all I ever learned in Christian school. I don’t know what else to list.” Another produced only four items on her card, indicating that Christians believe in Jesus as savior, gay people as sinners, abortion as murder, and Genesis 1 as a literal account of a six-day creation. A significant number also included statements defining Christian beliefs against certain actions, groups of people, or other kinds of beliefs:

  • “Christians don’t believe other religions are true.”
  • “Christians don’t believe you can be gay.”
  • “Christians don’t believe it’s okay if you kill your baby.”
  • “Christians don’t believe in Muhammad.”
  • “Christians don’t believe in terrorism.”
  • “Christians don’t believe in committing sin.”

I remember taking these cards home after class that day and puzzling over them. Had my students just blown off the assignment? Or were they really unable to think of any other theological issues as core tenets of the Christian faith? At the beginning of the next class session, I initiated a discussion about the responses. I asked everyone to work together in small groups and describe in detail their thought processes during the index card assignment. As I drifted from group to group listening to the conversations, what I heard surprised and saddened me. I heard stories of students who were taught to say a few words for the unborn every night at bedtime prayers but had no idea how to describe the Holy Spirit, students whose high school religion courses had covered morality backwards and forwards but had never touched on Scripture or Church history, students who had attended Catholic school since kindergarten but had no idea that Jesus was God until they had read the first chapter of our course textbook, and students who were becoming (or had already become) so disenchanted with the shallow messages they were receiving at church that they were considering leaving Christianity entirely. It became clear that my students hadn’t blown off the assignment at all. In fact, they had taken it very seriously, and many had articulated carefully all the tenets of Christianity they had ever known.

I handed each group a copy of the Nicene Creed and explained that for the rest of the semester, all our readings would center on theological exploration of different parts of that statement of faith. I asked groups to spend a few minutes looking through the Creed and jotting down some questions they had about what they read. It didn’t take me long to see how eager most of the class was to learn. They posed some excellent questions: What does it mean to say that Jesus is one in being with the Father? What does that weird “light from light” phrase mean, anyway? Why do Protestant churches that use the Creed recite the part about belonging to one holy, catholic, and apostolic church? I remember hearing one young woman say to her peers, “I’ve recited this every Sunday of my life, but never really stopped to think about what it means.”

As it turned out, we had a wonderful semester. Truly this was one of the best groups of students I’ve taught in my career so far. And even though one young man informed me crassly that the best part of the whole term was the day I mentioned that nude baptisms were performed in the early Church, I’m hopeful that most students left the course at least somewhat more knowledgeable about basic Christianity than they had been previously. What saddens me is the reality that a group of young Christians in their late teens and early twenties—most of whom had been Christians their entire lives—were in need of such a basic introduction to their own religion. I see this need emerging again and again in my theology courses, but I’m less surprised by it now after having gained a few years of teaching experience.

The fact that such a reality is possible in a classroom filled with students raised in the Church makes me gravely worried for the future of Christianity. It becomes clearer to me every semester that we as a Church have misplaced our priorities. And it’s not always the students from conservative backgrounds who exhibit this lack of basic Christian education. With some regularity, I encounter students who identify as liberal Christians but know only about Christian principles of social justice and little to nothing about the theology that undergirds those principles. If you look at how Christian leaders are portrayed in the public eye, it never has anything to do with affirmations of the Trinity, the power of the sacraments, or the hope of resurrection. More often than not, Christian leaders that most people see publically (especially in the media) are combatting behaviors and social norms perceived to be contrary to the Christian faith. It seems that anyone can create a list of items that Christians are against: gay marriage, abortion, war, capitalism, poverty, etc. It’s no wonder these are the first sorts of things that come to mind for a lot of young people when they try and list core tenets of the Christian faith. It’s regrettable that Christianity is becoming more defined by boundaries of the culture war than by the good news of Christ. We lose people because we lose the opportunity to invite them to follow Christ as one of his disciples.

As a student of church history, I’m all too aware of the fights people have fought with a desire to keep Christ at the center of the Church. But as issues like homosexuality, abortion, and freedom of religion become the defining issues of American (small-o) orthodoxy, I have to wonder if we’ve placed the culture wars at the center. Every day at work, I see the consequences of these religious battles as I look into the faces of the next generation. I can’t help but sound off from my corner of the universe, entreating all Christian leaders of every tradition to return their focus to Christ. Surely, the attractive pull of the Gospel has the power to guide us all into the fullness of life in Christ… while also having the power to bring the next generation along with us.

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Why the Brother-Making Rite Isn’t Right for Us

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Adelphopoiesis (from the Greek ἀδελφοποίησις), also known as the brother-making rite, is a ritual with historical roots in the Eastern Christian tradition. Medieval Byzantine manuscripts offer evidence that this ceremony was performed in order to unite two people of the same sex as “brothers” in a way that was formally recognized by the Church. Adelphopoiesis did not garner significant scholarly interest until the 1990s when scholars such as John Boswell (Same-Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe) began exploring the idea that this ceremony existed as an early form of blessing for same-sex unions.

Since long before we began this blog, people who have known about our celibacy have been asking us, “If you had the opportunity, would you participate in the brother-making rite or something analogous to it? Would this ceremony be a good way to acknowledge your commitment to each other?” Even though this rite is no longer performed, we get these or related questions at least once a month, so today we’re taking some time to offer a full answer. We do not see the brother-making right as appropriate for our specific circumstances for the following reasons:

We don’t consider each other “siblings.” Though we do acknowledge that all members of the Church are united as brothers and sisters in Christ, we aren’t inclined to think of our relationship as being first and foremost a form of siblinghood. The brother-making rite was used to make the two participants “brothers,” and we are mutually uncomfortable with applying this kind of language to our situation. A large part of understanding our celibate vocation involves seeing it as a mature, adult commitment. Though we don’t know exactly what these terms meant within the context of adelphopoiesis, to us the term “brothers” or “sisters” suggests that two people are under a common authority in the form of an adult parent. This seems inappropriate for our circumstances in that each of us already has a relationship with our own parents who raised us. One might argue that God could be understood as the parental figure in this instance, but it wouldn’t seem fitting for us to participate in a ceremony for the purpose of uniting us as siblings under God as a common parent when we’re already bonded to each other in this way by virtue of our baptisms.

How and in what circumstances this rite has been used historically remains unclear. Adelphopoiesis has not been a regular practice of any Christian tradition for several centuries. Despite Boswell’s argument that the brother-making rite was form of same-sex union similar to marriage, there are a lot of unknowns regarding exactly how it fit into the Church and society in the 9th to 15th centuries. What we do know is that this ceremony involved certain symbols that were also present in Byzantine marriages of the same period and contained references to pairs of saints who shared especially close relationships with one another. We also know that medieval Byzantine marriages involved several stages and the brother-making rite occurred within the context of a single ceremony. However, we don’t have complete answers the following questions: what motivated two people of the same sex to enter into this type of relationship with one another? What was this type of relationship in the first place? What did it look like? How was it understood within Byzantine society? Were there limits on who was or was not permitted to participate in this ceremony? Some sources suggest that the brother-making rite existed to create peace amongst families, and others posit that its purpose was to formalize chaste spiritual brotherhoods for a variety of possible reasons. Regardless, the particulars of its use, purpose, and meaning for the broader Christian community remain ambiguous. As such, we believe it would be intellectually dishonest to suggest adelphopoiesis as a suitable ceremony for honoring our own relationship.

Since Boswell’s work on adelphopoiesis, mentions of this ceremony have become associated with the movement for marriage equality. One need only perform a quick Google search using the search term “brother making rite” to see that discussions of this topic frequently involve the question of whether it was equivalent to marriage. Over the past few years, a number of popular news sources and online LGBT Christian resources have published articles on adelphopoiesis, implying that we can know it was indeed a type of marriage ritual, or we can at least be reasonably certain. Boswell’s work on this topic has been controversial since its publication in 1994, and now his name is associated with almost every mention of the brother-making rite in the modern West. As a result, even mentioning this ritual has become enough to suggest one’s association with the American political left and/or efforts to change the current teachings of some Christian denominations on same-sex marriage. The two of us are firm believers that LGBT couples should be extended the legal protections that enable the partners to be recognized fully as family to one another. However, we have no interest in calling our relationship a marriage, becoming involved with political movements of any kind, or advocating for change in our own Christian tradition’s teachings on marriage and sexuality. Even if adelphopoiesis ceremonies were still being performed today and the other factors we mentioned were not problematic for us, we believe it likely that participating in this ritual would cause more confusion than clarification for others on how we understand our relationship.

Finding ways to honor and celebrate our relationship with friends, family, and community is one of the many challenges we face as a celibate couple within a Christian tradition that teaches a conservative sexual ethic. This specific challenge calls for some creativity along with lots of prayer and support from those who love us. In the future, we would like to take up “ways we celebrate team Lindsey and Sarah” as a topic for exploration here at A Queer Calling. But for now, we hope today’s post has shed a bit more light on why we feel that adelphopoiesis, even if it did still exist, would not be the right choice for us.

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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.

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.