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When Others Judge

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Advent is a time when it makes sense to seek a bit of a new start. This past year has piled on many different challenges, each challenge establishing its own new “normal.” We’re slightly embarrassed by how hard it’s been for us to respond thoughtfully to our email. However, we refuse to dismiss any reader query even after a period of substantive delay. That said, we now attempt to answer a reader’s question that arrived several months ago:

How do you respond to being judged? How is it different when the judger is a parishioner vs. someone in authority such as a priest? Is it different when the thing you’re being judged for is something that’s true (e.g. being LGBT) vs. when it’s something false (e.g. having a sexual relationship that violates your church’s teachings)?

It’s hard to imagine a single person who likes being judged by others. We often go to such great lengths to avoid being judged by others, even when we find ourselves falling prey to the idolatry of people-pleasing. However, judgment happens because it’s an easy thing for people to do. Christ warned us all about judging the speck in our brother’s eye before seeing the plank in our own. It’s easy to tell when something is out of place in another person’s life and incredibly hard to tell when something is out of place in your own.

The two of us talk regularly about various spiritual challenges we are facing. We can’t help but note that harder spiritual challenges frequently demand more difficult, more consistent, and more persistent action. We’ve committed to the sojourn together. Discussing the various ways we fall short does not feel like a judgment from on high, but it does involve making reasoned judgment about what is best for one or both of us to grow toward Christ.

Thinking about the way we use judgment between the two of us helps us respond when we are judged by others.

  • Is the person commenting on something he or she has directly observed?
  • Is the person committed to accompanying one or both of us along our spiritual journey?
  • Is the person identifying actions that he or she must undertake directly to offer more meaningful support?
  • Has the person considered the costs associated with taking his or her recommended course of action?

We find that our response is different when all four questions get answered “No” than when there’s at least one “Yes.” Even when all four questions get answered “No” we try asking whether there’s any truth in what a person has said. It’s a lot easier to let things go when people are projecting their own stereotypes upon us.

The easiest question to answer in the affirmative is, “Is the person committed to accompanying one or both of us along our spiritual journey?” We tend to view the local church as an incredibly important spiritual community. If a person is in our local church, then we’re more likely to consider the merit something he or she has said. There are certain people who have a track record of saying assorted uncharitable things about us that aren’t true. We do our best to remember where they are coming from and to pray for them to grow spiritually themselves.

We also don’t mind talking with people when they are concerned about something they have observed directly. It’s not judgmental gossip if they have seen it themselves. Many times, incorrect judgments happen when people are unfamiliar with something. As celibate people navigating in a parish compromised of married people, we regularly encounter people who think that it’s appropriate to make an analogy between their before-marriage lives and our lives now. If they are parents, they frequently think about the relational counsel they would give their own children. We find ourselves explaining the differences between teenagers and people in their early thirties, and we’ll also share our experiences from various celibate communities. We try to remember that 1) everyone always has the potential to learn something and 2) learning occurs in communities. All people, especially the two of us, have blind spots. If someone points something out to us that they’ve observed, we consider what they’ve seen and examine our consciences.

Generally speaking, when we experience negative forms of judgment, people have not considered the third and the fourth questions at all. People rightly observe that we live together. They might decide our arrangement is scandalous. We have considered various facets of how living together spurs us both towards Christ-orientated ways of life with our spiritual directors, close friends, and each other. However, we’ve also noticed that the people who are most vocal about how living together is inappropriate are those who are completely unwilling to learn more about how we care for and support one another. Many people will use decreeing “righteous judgment” as a way to excuse themselves from the demands of being in a caring community with others.

When all four questions get answered “Yes” judgment rarely feels like judgment. Living life together in community demands that people have hard conversations together in order to help one another grow towards Christ. People work together to figure out the best ways forward that lead everyone to spiritual maturity. There’s a sense that we all are doing our best to pursue Christ together, learning along the way.

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.

Reflections on Transgender Day of Remembrance

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A reflection by Lindsey

Today is the International Transgender Day of Remembrance. It’s a sobering day for me. I have experienced increased hostility in various (thankfully, former) workplaces after people started suspecting that I’m somewhere on the LGBT spectrum due to my self-expression. I’ve witnessed friends being harassed for their gender identities and expressions. I’ve listened to a significant number of them tell stories of being harassed, and I’ve watched more than one video documenting physical violence of transgender people. Transgender Day of Remembrance reminds me that many transgender people have not lived to tell the tale.

I chose to write a reflection for the Transgender Day of Remembrance because I wanted to reflect more deeply on issues of gender expression and gender identity. One way I’ve found helpful to think about gender identity is that it’s a profoundly mysterious part of a person that bubbles to the surface in forms of gender expression. From my experience, we as a society have different conventions for how we collapse various forms of gender expression into two binary options of male and female. Gender is treated as a basic part of polite discourse. I’ve been thinking a lot about how transgender and genderqueer people often face violence unless they clearly fit into either male or female categories, or pass. In LGBTQ circles, passing frequently refers to one’s ability to be perceived as a gender-normative straight person. Passing concerns how other people perceive you. One’s ability to pass can be critically important if one longs for strangers to use the proper personal gender pronoun immediately. For many transgender people, being able to pass acceptably in the vast majority of social situations can be seen as essential to survival.

In a reflection I wrote several months ago on affirming kids in a gendered world, I claimed:

Kids have natural ways of expressing themselves. Freedom to explore different hobbies and personal sense of style can go a long way in helping kids become comfortable in their own skin. Will the world come screeching to a halt if a 4-year-old wants a buzz cut, a 10-year-old wants to learn how to solder electronics, a 7-year-old wants long flowing locks, a 6-year-old wears a suit and tie, a 3-year-old brings a doll everywhere, a 12-year-old begs to take babysitting classes, or an 8-year-old wears a dress?

However, even as I wrote this reflection, I was painfully aware that society has ways of disciplining kids who push the envelope of gender too far through nothing more than their existence. I can’t think of any usual social situations where a 4-year-old girl with a buzz cut would be accepted as a “real” girl or an 8-year-old boy wearing a fabulous floral dress would be accepted as a “real” boy. I’ve seen far too many parents bitterly embarrassed by, for example, their little girl’s appearance after the child had “discovered” scissors or her older brother had put a big wad of gum in her hair. I’ve also seen far too many examples of young boys’ being shamed and ostracized because they were seen in dresses. To be sure, some children might have parents willing to model bold resiliency skills; however this kind of parent is incredibly rare. Many parents would rather their gender-variant child learn to “fit in.”

With that pressure to fit in, transgender and genderqueer children can face some awful trade-offs between simply being themselves and avoiding undue negative attention. Some transgender and genderqueer children learn to pass even though a small part of them dies a little bit when they make an active choice to turn away from the gender expression that comes to them naturally and turn towards more socially acceptable gender scripts. Concerns about being accepted socially can lead some people to feel like they have no other option but to edit, and perhaps to try and censor, how their gender identity bubbles to the surface. When some transgender and genderqueer children think about how they would like to share themselves with the world, the ever-important social need to pass can cause them to reject their first, second, third, and perhaps even tenth most natural forms of self-expression.

I think we all have an inherent sense of what works for us on an individual level when it comes to self-expression. If I say, “Button-down shirt and khakis” many people experience a reaction of things like: “That’s definitely me.” or “That’s the antithesis of who I am.” or “I really can’t be bothered to have an opinion.” That sense of me or not me matters. But when it comes to various gender scripts in society, that sense of me or not me gets amplified one thousand fold. When society consistently genders a person wrongly, that person can feel completely invisible and insignificant.

Consider a person who tells a male cheerleader that “he’s picked a great way to meet a lot of, *wink* ladies.” What is the cheerleader to do when presented with such an obviously gendered script? Does the cheerleader chuckle nervously and awkwardly while ignoring the comment? Does this person look the questioner in the eye in order to give a knowing nod and a smirk? Or perhaps redirect the conversation towards developing broad skills of athleticism and teamwork? Does the cheerleader strongly defend his participation on the squad because four of his female friends begged him to join the team in order to qualify for co-ed competitions? Or open up and share about a passion for encouraging others to be enthusiastic supports of a team even when that team performs poorly? Likely, the original comment has nothing to do with the cheerleader’s motivation for joining the squad and has much more to do with asking a male cheerleader to assert his masculinity.

Asking a male-appearing person to assert his masculinity relies on various social scripts to determine whether one is safely the “right” gender. These tests have a range of socially acceptable answers. Being able to pass these tests successfully requires matching the message from one’s physical body to the words that come from one’s mouth with a socially acceptable answer. For transgender and genderqueer individuals, trying to fit into acceptable social scripts can lead to deep dissonance. Every test opens up a chasm between the answers they would love to be able to give and the answer that they feel compelled to give in order to fit in with social expectations. It can feel impossible to give any answer with any degree of integrity.

On each Transgender Day of Remembrance, I can’t help but remember those who fell into the chasm. Many tests of a man’s masculinity or a woman’s femininity pull upon a vast collection of gender stereotypes. It’s all too common for interrogators to rely on sexism and misogyny, asking questions with distinct tones and postures to pressure a person into answering rightly… or else. Transgender Day of Remembrance is an attempt to highlight how demanding another person assert his or her gender clearly and properly can quickly escalate to violence. What is more, fear of transphobic violence often compels the urgency with which some transgender and genderqueer people seek ways to pass. Some people may even be crushed spiritually by trying to pass. Constantly conforming to other people’s gendered expectations can leave transgender and genderqueer people feeling adrift and out of touch with themselves. It’s far too easy to fall into despair if one feels like one has betrayed oneself.

And so, on the Transgender Day of Remembrance, I remember that we still have a long way to go if we want to create spaces for kids to be themselves in an incredibly gendered world.

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

Celibacy can be a gift, and should not be a mandate. But it’s not that simple…

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A reflection by Sarah

I know we’ve already posted once today, but I felt compelled to reflect on a quip that Lindsey and I hear more and more often: “Celibacy is a gift, not a mandate,” or one of its variants. We see this message in the work of authors like James Brownson and Matthew Vines, and it appears at least once in every internet comment box attached to an article about LGBT celibacy. If you’re at all involved in the current conversation about LGBT people and the Church, you may have noticed that this catchy little quote has become almost a mantra for many Christians who affirm sexually active LGBT relationships but want to be clear that they are not disparaging celibacy as such. I can respect that. Celibate LGBT Christians need support and affirmation in our vocations. I welcome any sincere effort to be more supportive of celibates, who are often hated equally by liberals and conservatives in the Church. But while I can respect the sentiment, I cannot pretend to agree with the statement as it is worded.

Both Lindsey and I have stated many times on this blog that we believe celibacy can be a gift and celibacy should not be mandated. There should be no doubt at this point that we believe celibacy is a vocation to be discovered, not a frying pan with which to bash LGBT people (or anyone) over the head. We’ve also been open about our own sense that God has given us the gift of celibacy. Why, then, do I take issue with the assertion, “Celibacy is a gift, not a mandate?” The answer is simple and clear: it creates a false dichotomy in which celibacy can manifest in only one of two ways. Either a person is forced into celibacy by a religious institution or some other external entity, or that same person feels naturally inclined to celibacy because it has been given to him or her as a gift from God. Within this framework, the only legitimate reason for pursuing celibacy is the latter. Anything else is a form of self-loathing. Usually, I don’t like to make such confrontational statements on the blog, but I cannot in good conscience sit by and listen to this argument without calling it out as hogwash.

Before you click away from this post and accuse me of being “just another hateful, non-affirming member of the celibacy movement” (we’re a movement now? I must have missed that memo…), stick around for the example I’m about to offer. It has no relationship whatsoever to LGBT issues.

In at least one past post, we’ve already referenced Hildegard of Bingen who was given to her monastery as a “gift to God” when she was a child. She was a visionary, a composer, and a writer who penned theological, poetic, medical, and other kinds of texts. She did all of this within the context of a monastic vocation that she did not choose for herself. Unfortunately, I could not find the following clip with English subtitles, but it’s from the German film Vision: From the Life of Hildegard von Bingen. It shows young Hildegard with Jutta, her caregiver who would teach her the ways of monastic life. Does the child in this video appear to be a person who is discernibly manifesting the gift of celibacy?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZn7rfpPDEo

Hildegard is not the only child ever to have been given to a monastery to live out the rest of her life in a celibate vocation. Before her time, this phenomenon was even more prevalent. One of the earliest uses of the term “oblate” was in reference to children whose parents handed them over to monks and nuns — children who, in accordance with the canons of the Church councils prior to the mid-seventh century, were treated in all respects as monks and nuns. It was not until the Tenth Council of Toledo in 656 when slightly stricter age limitations were placed that these young people even had the option of leaving the monastery after reaching adolescence and before making vows. Were all of these children forced into celibacy? In a sense, yes. Perhaps some of them did develop that gift over time, but it would be absurd to think that every child in this situation over multiple generations was naturally inclined toward a celibate way of life. Equally, it would be unreasonable to suggest that every child experienced this way of life as “forced.” In the medieval period, the idea that every person could choose his or her own vocation based on personal gifts given by God was unimaginable. I’d be interested to know how celibacy within this historical context would fit into the “gift vs. forced” dichotomy. Try to make it fit without imposing 21st century western notions of autonomy, free choice, and individualism as norms that transcend time and place. You can’t.

The argument that “celibacy is a gift, not a mandate” is ahistorical and thoroughly modern. It fails to take into account over a thousand years of Christian history where a person’s pursuit of celibacy and marriage had much more to do with factors outside his or her control than a personal sense of calling from God. This is not to dismiss the stories of people who, from the 1st century forward, have pursued celibacy as a response to a God-given gift. To disregard those stories would be to disregard my own, and Lindsey’s. People are often confused as to why I find “Celibacy as a gift, not a mandate” so problematic. As a person who does feel naturally inclined to celibacy and believes that God has called me to live out the rest of my life in celibate partnership, I see that statement not as an affirmation of my way of life, but as a backhanded compliment. Somehow, my celibacy is okay because I perceive a call to it, but my friend’s commitment to celibacy is “self-loathing” because he struggles every day to live it. Or maybe my celibacy is not okay. Perhaps I should have to answer hundreds of questions to prove to everyone in the LGBT Christian conversation that I really do have the gift of celibacy and am not just repressing my sexuality. I’ve head that one from a number of people.

These are only a few of the problems that arise when discussion of celibacy becomes dichotomized, especially by people in Christian traditions that have dismissed celibacy completely for centuries. If you’re going to affirm that the gift of celibacy exists, show some integrity and admit that the Christian tradition has never limited celibate vocations to those who are specially gifted. Until a broader discussion of celibacy is included in the LGBT Christian conversation, affirming celibate vocations as gifts just doesn’t cut the mustard. “Affirming” people will still view celibates as suspicious purveyors of homophobia, and “non-affirming” people will not find the “gift” argument a sufficient reason for supporting the marriages of gay people who aren’t gifted with celibacy. Yes, celibacy can be a gift. No, celibacy should not be a mandate. But it’s not that simple, and pretending that it is is downright irresponsible.

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

I do not want to be the “gay Christian” anymore

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A reflection by Lindsey

There are times when certain kinds of conversations seem inescapable. In the aftermath of the Extraordinary Synod on the Family and the ERLC conference on the Gospel, Homosexuality, and the Future of Marriage, I find myself caught in a fire fight. Like many fights in the culture war, it concerns an entirely small territory. There’s a 3-letter word that gets in the way of other people’s ability to see my humanity. I don’t know anywhere I can go to possibly escape the fight. Even trying to hide out at home doesn’t shield me from people’s callousness.

I remember my first interaction with the word gay. I was 14 years old, and Kevin Kline had a starring role in the movie In and Out. Please take a couple of minutes to watch the trailer.

I remember having an uncomfortable sinking feeling in my stomach. One day, I’d have to deal with someone else making a public declaration of “Lindsey’s gay.” And then I’d be caught in an awkward limbo, feeling unable to deny the accusations and too afraid to confirm them as true. The word gay is an oddly expansive cultural signifier. When other people call you gay when you’ve not said that you actually are, they are usually suggesting that you flaunt gender norms so strongly that you’d rather couple with a person of your same sex. When other people call you gay, they are considering you a particular kind of person rather than suggesting you have a fondness for specific sex acts. Playground bullies have all sorts of vulgar language to use when it comes to sex acts that they employ liberally.

Fast forward 17 years later and I’m still feeling caught in that limbo. We have people who proudly proclaim, “I love Jesus too much to call myself a gay Christian.”

But, what happens when other people in the church foist a label upon you to justify their mistreatment? What happens when people cite simple matters of hair style, clothing choice, preferred forms of sentence structure, subconscious ways of holding one’s body, and most common vocal ranges used when singing in order to declare that you’ve never given your life to Jesus, that you don’t care about the ways of Christian morality, and that you certainly have never been a part of Christ’s Church?

I long for the day when I can simply go to church, say my prayers, search my heart with the safety of knowing that I am God’s child, determine how to participate best in the sacramental life of the Church with the help of a trusted confessor, and enjoy in fellowship with all those gathered. I long for the day when people assume that I’m doing my absolute best to unite myself fully to Christ seeking support from the teachings of my Christian tradition. I long for the day when I am truly treated “just like everyone else.”

The people who tell me that I just need to find my identity in Christ fail to realize that Christ is at the very core of my identity. They also fail to realize that He alone has kept me alive even during the seasons of their most aggressive, hostile, and repeated attacks of telling me that there’s no way I exist. When I was a teenager trying to sort through why everyone else treated me as though I was impossibly different, I hadn’t had one moment of sexual experience. I was just being myself without concern for the fact that, as Lindsey, I’m quirky. As I’ve grown older, I’m stuck with a hard reality that when I look at the lives of my married friends, their relational lives are distinct from mine and there’s nothing I can do about that. The only people who seem to understand this difference are those who can appreciate that not everyone is called to heterosexual marriage, and not everyone has a pattern of relating that consistently points to the marital vocation.

A lot has changed since I was 14 years old. I can’t imagine how my life would have looked differently if I would have known that Sally Ride was gay. I’d be hard-pressed to identify a more significant childhood hero. I admired Sally Ride even more than I admired Neil Armstrong, and that’s saying something. This week, Tim Cook has decided to speak clearly about the simple fact that he’s gay. What he says here really resonates with me:

Being gay has given me a deeper understanding of what it means to be in the minority and provided a window into the challenges that people in other minority groups deal with every day. It’s made me more empathetic, which has led to a richer life. It’s been tough and uncomfortable at times, but it has given me the confidence to be myself, to follow my own path, and to rise above adversity and bigotry. It’s also given me the skin of a rhinoceros, which comes in handy when you’re the CEO of Apple.

I have to wonder if conservative Christians who tell me not to identify as gay are trying to ensure that I build that rhinoceros skin. I can’t help but wonder if people say “Don’t identify as gay” in an effort to really say, “There’s no way these hateful and hurtful comments would get to you…. unless of course, you are, you know…. living immorally.”

It’s much easier to assert that gay people are 100% opposed to Christ than it is to appreciate that “gay” and “LGBT” are used frequently as broad umbrella terms to communicate something of a shared social experience. In reporting on the experience of celibate gay Christians, Vanessa Vitello Urquhart wrote, “Make no mistake—celibate or not, these people are a part of the LGBTQ community. They share the same fears we do, experience the same stigma, and have felt the same tension, between hiding and safety on one side and openness and self-acceptance on the other, that defines the LGBTQ experience in 21st-century America.”

If you as a conservative Christian want to end my need to find value in the descriptor “Gay Christian,” please tell the Church to stop persecuting those of us who do not fit cleanly into heteronormative molds, and stop making excuses for people who behave uncharitably toward us. When you tell me that the only place I should discuss my sexual orientation and gender identity is in confession, you’re actually reinforcing the norms of the judgmental world I know as a gay person. You’re telling me that I need to hide something even though I’ve come to seek Christ, the person who knows me more intimately than I know myself. I’d welcome it so much if I could walk into a church, pursue Christ with you, and share how he is guiding and directing me to leave my unique mark on this world that has not yet fully been redeemed.

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

On Otherness, Alienation, and “Don’t Say Gay”

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A reflection by Sarah

Last night, I dreamed of myself lying on an operating table, wide awake as my own blood pooled in my open body and began to drain from it. The surgeon loomed over my torso, aware of my consciousness and abject terror but unable to see that I was dying. He tugged at my innards, working calmly and methodically, remarking several times along the way that he understood my pain but cared too much about my wellbeing to try a different protocol. Then, I woke up.

Once again, I’m writing a post on a day when we don’t usually publish. I’m doing this not to be dramatic or whiny, but because during the past four days I’ve reached new levels of spiritual exhaustion, and while I’ve attempted to reach out to others for support I still have a profound sense of alienation. As I write, I feel as though I’m bleeding out spiritually and no one from within my tradition is noticing — least of all, those whose counsel I have trusted and respected since before my conversion. And all of this began with quibbles over a three-letter word and its impact upon straight, conservative Christians.

I’m not about to give you a detailed defense of why the word “gay” is an acceptable layer of identity for a Christian who is exclusively attracted to people of the same sex. There have been several brilliant blog posts written on this topic already. I find more resonance with some of these than others. If you’re a straight Christian who is wondering why gay Christians find the word “gay” so important you should begin by reading these items by Joshua Gonnerman, Wesley Hill, Melinda Selmys, Jeremy Erickson, Julie Rodgers, Brent Bailey, and Eve Tushnet. In the future, I would like to write my own post that delves more deeply into the compatibility of “gay” as a cultural identity with “Christian” as my most important identity, but for now I’ll just link Lindsey’s and my post on why we call ourselves a celibate LGBT Christian couple and a past reflection of mine where I talked about gayness and Christian identity on a very basic level. I’ll also be completely forward in admitting that my thoughts on this topic need more time to marinate before I can articulate a full defense of the term “gay Christian.” Anyway, moving on…

I’ve noticed an increase in language policing lately, both in my parish and in the blogosphere. A couple of days ago, I found this blog post by Matt Moore who claims that he “loves Jesus too much” to refer to himself as a gay Christian. While I respect Moore’s own personal story for what it is, his post smacks of condescension, implying that same-sex attracted people who identify as gay love Christ less than those who don’t. (Gay Christians who read it and were left with a similar impression as mine should be made aware of Andrew Asdell’s response piece.) Reading Moore’s post was especially painful this week because I was (and still am) incredibly emotionally raw from a conversation that Lindsey and I were involved in after church on Sunday. If you’ve been reading our posts recently, you’re probably already aware that we’ve had some challenging experiences related to acceptance within our parish. Most people have come a very long way and are slowly coming to embrace us as part of the community, and for that we are grateful. Given that, you might be wondering, “What’s the problem? People are starting to welcome you. What more do you want?” To put it bluntly, the problem is that because we are being welcomed any instance of unwelcome we attempt to address is thrown back in our faces, blamed on the fact that we identify as “gay.” This is true even when there is some acknowledgement that Person X or Person Y was behaving inappropriately toward us.

To be clear, we are not claiming to be victims or martyrs. We are members of the Body of Christ, just like every person at our church, and our stories matter. Our lives matter. No one in our Christian tradition would argue otherwise. Many would likely cite how much they love us and care about our lives as their primary reason for admonishing us to find identity in Christ and reject terminology that’s easily associated with sin. What goes unnoticed — sometimes willfully ignored — is the spiritual toxicity of this admonishment when it’s offered to gay Christians. We’re all different, and it’s true that some Christians with same-sex attraction don’t find it helpful to use the word “gay.” I don’t advocate forcing anyone to use the same language as I use for myself. I believe that the best way to understand a person’s individual needs is to have a candid conversation with that person. In that spirit, here is what I have to say to Christians who think policing LGBT language is a good idea:

If you tell me to turn away from the word “gay” because it keeps me from finding my identity in Christ, you are refusing to believe me that the most sacred, treasured layer of who I am is my identity as a follower of Christ. If you tell me this in one breath and state in the next that I’m an exemplary person (which is far too high a compliment for me), you’re sending me mixed messages. Is something in my behavior leading you to question my commitment to Christ and my willingness to make sacrifices in order to follow him? If so, why are you calling me exemplary? Cognitive dissonance much?

If you imply a hope that at some point in my spiritual journey I will grow out of using the word “gay” and come into a holier form of identity, you are not hearing me when I tell you that understanding myself as “gay” has only increased as Christ has drawn me nearer and nearer to himself over time. You are communicating to me an assumption that people only begin to see themselves as gay when they have fallen away from God. That is not my story. Though I have been through periods of living as an especially bad Christian, I had never yet been sexually active at the time when I came out as gay. If I thought it would do any good, I would explain in detail how much I’ve changed for the better since coming out. I would tell you how strange my family and peers thought I was as a child, how I began to notice in the 3rd grade that my perception of beauty was different from that of other girls, and how at that age I experienced my first crush on the teenage girl playing the lead role in a community theatre show. I’d fast-forward to the 7th grade and tell you how baffled I was to realize that the feelings I had for other girls were the same feelings all my female friends had for boys, and how I dated the same boy throughout high school to force myself into opposite-sex attractions that would never come. I would tell you how devastated I was when we broke up because I truly believed that he was the only person in the world who would put up with such a freak. Then, I’d detail my journey of self-acceptance. I’d glow while sharing with you the peace and connectedness to Christ that I felt when I could finally say, “I’m not a mistake. I’m just gay. God didn’t mess up when he created me.”

If you say that my using the word “gay” might cause a weaker brother to stumble because the majority of straight people think all gay people are sexually active, you are making excuses for my brother’s sin and asking me to take responsibility for it. This tells me that you care more about my brother’s welfare than mine, and you’re not fully willing to remind my brother that behaving hatefully and judgmentally toward others is a sin. Or perhaps you’re willing to talk to him about this — now that I think about it, you probably are. But you’re still blaming me to an extent for another person’s moral failing, and frankly I have enough moral failings of my own to keep track of without worrying about someone else’s. Not that I want to be a source of scandal, but obsessing over other people’s neuroses is not spiritually healthy. And let’s be honest: people in the Church have a nasty tendency to be scandalized by things that are not scandalous, then respond by scandalizing the person who was supposedly the source of scandal in the first place.

If you tell me that “gay” is an inappropriate word for a Christian to use for herself, you are communicating to me that there is nothing that makes my experience of life different from straight people’s experiences, and that any discrimination I face in the Church is not real. You may not be intending to do this, but you’re creating more space for even greater hostility by minimizing my experiences and telling me that offenses I experience must be projections of past hurt onto a current situation. In saying that I might encounter less hostility if I stopped identifying as gay, what you’re really telling me is that the easiest way to deal with discriminatory behavior is to ignore it and tell myself that I’m no different from anyone else. Bring on the pat answers and generic solutions for real instances of cruelty: “Someone talked about you in uncharitable ways at coffee hour? If you stop saying ‘gay,’ maybe he won’t do it anymore.” Reminds me of my fourth grade science teacher who advised that if only I’d cut off my long hair, maybe little Justin wouldn’t be so tempted to yank at my braid every five minutes.

If you are worried about what words I use to describe myself when I don’t even use them at church anyway, you are telling me that celibacy is not enough. Our Christian tradition teaches that sex ought not to take place outside of marriage, and marriage was intended to unite one man and one woman in an eternal commitment that is open to children. Okay. My partner and I are celibate and draw much of our model of doing life from monastic patterns of living. Our relationship does not include anything that our Christian tradition teaches as reserved for marriage. The tradition recognizes two types of vocations: married and celibate. We’re trying our best to figure out what a celibate life in the world ought to look like, and I think we’re not doing too terribly considering that non-monastic celibacy is a relatively new topic for discussion. Why isn’t that enough? How is it that I can be making every possible effort to live into the vocation to which God has called me, and a three-letter word has the power to diminish what I’m doing? Somehow, I just can’t see Jesus caring as much about the word “gay” as Christians do.

If you will not even consider my words when I tell you that I see being gay as a kind of “otherness” that is just as beautiful and valuable as other kinds of human differences, you are denying my experience of life. You are denying that I exist. This is perhaps the most detrimental, alienating, soul-crushing aspect of shaming a gay Christian for how he or she self-identifies. No, it doesn’t help to tell us that we do exist, but as people made in the image and likeness of God, not as gay people. I’ve yet to hear a convincing argument that gayness couldn’t possibly be a kind of otherness that is good and meaningful. Until I do hear one, I’m going to continue saying that straight Christians ought to listen to those of us who describe our experiences in this way. Not to suggest that racial minorities experience life in remotely the same way as sexual minorities, but saying to a gay person, “We’re all the same in Christ” is like saying to a black person, “The Church should be colorblind.” Try telling a black person that there is nothing good in the black identity, a poor person that there is no good in the poor identity, a Deaf person that there is no good in the Deaf identity, or an addict that there is no good in the addict identity. Try telling a Russian, Romanian, or Greek person that there’s no good in any form of ethnic identity. The reactions would not be pleasant. By telling me, “Don’t say gay,” you are attempting to strip me of a different yet equally meaningful cultural identity.

If you insist that “gay” means only what you — a straight, conservative Christian — think it means, you are closing yourself and your parish off from a vibrant, committed, faithful group of people who are eager to serve Christ. Instead of showing us love, you’re showing us the exit. You are telling us that you would rather we bleed out on the operating table than give us the support we need to heal from past wounds that other Christians have caused. You’re implying that policing the language of the LGBT community is more important to you than leading LGBT people to Christ. Don’t you realize that there are LGBT people who would love to be part of your church community if only you would help us with our real spiritual problems and stop assuming that the gay identity is a spiritual problem? You need to know that even celibate gay Christians feel unwelcome at church — even forced out — by your inability to consider how we understand identity. It might be easier to think after we’ve left, “They’ve fallen out of the faith. They’ve gone back out into the gay lifestyle because they love their homosexuality more than they love Christ.” I don’t know a single gay person who has left church because of a desire to have sex. Not one. But I know hundreds who have left because of alienation.

Speaking of alienation, that’s the emotional space I find myself in at present. In the spirit of our value vulnerability, I’ll admit that right now the idea of setting foot in church makes me feel hatred toward myself and anger at God and the Church. I don’t understand how it’s possible that the Church has failed so miserably to minister to such an expansive group of people. It makes no sense to me that even the best parish experiences I’ve ever had have come along with undertones of authoritarianism, spiritual abuse, and stubborn refusal to hear the cries of wounded parishioners. I don’t see why it’s so difficult just to be loving, and to reevaluate one’s approach when someone else points out, “I know you’re saying x, y, and z out of love, but these assumptions are causing harm to people who are different from you.” I have no idea what I’m going to do this Sunday, or any Sunday in the near future. When the options are 1) risk triggering depression and addiction in order to receive the Body of Christ at Liturgy, or 2) spend Sunday at home with Lindsey, God, and the angels and saints in our prayer corner, the decision is not straightforward. I have no intention of apostatizing. I love Christ far too much, and no matter the negativity I experience at church I simply cannot stop loving him. But I might need to be an inactive non-communicant for a bit. At the moment, it may be the best survival strategy I can pull together.

(In case anyone is about to tell me that I should “just go to an open and affirming church,” read this first. Also, stay tuned. Lindsey will be reflecting tomorrow on the same topic I addressed today.)

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