Tag Archives: LGBT Christian

The Good Gays and the Bad Gays

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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

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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.

It’s not easy to tell a story

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A reflection by Lindsey

“Tell stories — yours and other people’s.”

My friend Justin usually starts with this piece of advice when he’s talking about how LGBT Christians might try engaging with others who may be less-than-charitable when it comes to LGBT issues.

My experience in telling my story is that it’s tricky. My life experience doesn’t fit into any neatly defined categories. As I’ve reflected deeply on Christian sexual ethics, I keep seeing that it’s an arena full of nuance. Godly living cannot be communicated in under 140 characters. The “answers” do not boil down to neat sound bytes. And the more I try to share what I have been learning, the more I feel like people are telling me I just need to go away. To many people, my story is dangerous.

It is hard for me not to internalize the message that I should just sit down and be quiet. Because I am intensely introverted, I’m naturally inclined to hide when I sense a threat and wait for the whole mess to blow over.

Sometimes I have to remind myself that it’s worth telling my story because I’ve learned nearly everything I’ve learned about sexual ethics by sharing stories with other people. Some of the best stories come from people who find themselves in remarkably different situations from mine.

The good stories, the ones that really shape my understanding of sexual ethics, came from my very closest friends. These stories were stories that everyone else wanted to ignore or shame. And they were stories from people who had done the “right” thing! It seems that no degree of “right conduct” saved anyone from having stories that other Christians wanted to simply ignore.

Too often, it seems like the Church wants LGBT people to tell one kind of story. It used to be that the story was somehow about how God enabled you to overcome your sexual attractions and enter into a heterosexual marriage. However, so many very brave people have told the Church that sexual orientation doesn’t change. As such, the story from the Church appears to be changing.

Yet, similarly, the LGBT community wants LGBT people to tell specific kinds of stories. Be proud. Fall in love. Safely enjoy sexual relationships. Do what you need to do so your body conforms to a particular gender. However, as more LGBT people tell their stories, the more I think people realize that LGBT people are not typecast into certain story lines.

We started this blog because other people wanted to hear our story. The goal of this blog is to share our stories of ourselves as individuals and of ourselves as a couple. People have encouraged us to tell our story because it’s unique, because they haven’t seen other stories like it, and because they think it’s interesting. Yet for all of the encouragement that we’ve had to share our story, it seems like an equal number of people have tried to tell us that we should remain silent: that telling our story will only cause pain for others who will attempt to live as we are and eventually realize this pathway is not their own, or for others already pursuing pathways different from ours.

I’d like to close with an observation that telling one’s personal story requires the teller to be vulnerable. When people respond to a personal story of any kind by encouraging the teller to just go away, it’s a pretty harsh rejection. Personal stories, by definition, are incredibly rooted in the context of a single person’s life. It’s not up to the teller to help the listener figure out which part of the story is most applicable to the listener’s life. That can only happen through mutually respectful dialogue, where both parties are vulnerable and both parties share their stories.

But that doesn’t make telling your story any easier.

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.

1 week after the Gay Christian Network 2014 Conference

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While we won’t be making a habit of releasing new posts on Sundays, we decided to make an exception today because it is exactly 1 week after the closing session of the Gay Christian Network 2014 Conference held in Chicago.

We both have a deep love and appreciation for the work of the Gay Christian Network (GCN). Our story as a couple began through our interactions on GCN. For the last two years, we have been blessed to attend the GCN conference together. We value the GCN community because we have found it to be a place where all people, in every situation, from any Christian tradition, can ask meaningful questions about enabling LGBT Christians to live as faithful disciples of Christ. GCN is a community that values the questions and honors the fact that different people arrive at remarkably diverse conclusions.

Sarah started the conference a bit earlier than Lindsey by participating in the women’s retreat. The retreat was a fantastic time of fellowship, song, and prayer, which featured three inspiring testimonies. The testimonies touched on topics ranging from losing a church family to painful lack of family acceptance to healing from the effects of ex-gay ministry to finding one’s partner. Every story that was shared blessed and challenged Sarah in its own way. Rev. Audrey Connor (Disciples of Christ) delivered the keynote and focused on the importance of truly listening to what is being said by the Spirit and by other people. Listening is about being present and honoring the image of God. This shared time of fellowship with over 100 women enabled lesbian, bisexual, transgender, straight, and other woman-identified people to connect with one another before the conference. Sarah was particularly encouraged by the number of mothers of LGBT children who joined in the retreat.

As the main conference began, we started to shift gears in order to meet newcomers to the conference and provide an extra dose hospitality for more liturgical Christians. Conference can be overwhelming as (1) a lot of the attendees have already connected with other people and (2) the structure of the main sessions closely mirrors Evangelical services where a praise team opens with music before a speaker. On Thursday night, Rev. Dr. Christine Wiley (Covenant Baptist United Church of Christ in Washington, DC) had both of us laughing to the point of tears as she shared that she has spent years “trying to make Christians out of church folk,” and “It’s hard work!”

Sometimes, the biggest blessings at conference come where you least expect them. On Friday morning, we (and everyone else in the room) had tears streaming down our faces as Linda and Rob Robertson shared their story of losing their gay son. When their son Ryan first came out, the Roberstons walked the path advocated by many conservative Christian organizations and encouraged Ryan to ask God to change his sexual orientation. Ryan stayed with that course for five years until he literally couldn’t take it anymore. The Robertsons walked us through their experience as parents watching their oldest son develop a severe drug addiction as he tried to deal with his pain of feeling rejected by God and his family. The Robertsons’ grief was palpable because their son Ryan’s 25th birthday was the following Tuesday, a birthday Ryan would be celebrating in heaven. We both cried and cried and cried through the whole story because it was so easy for us to connect with what the Robertsons were saying.

By Friday afternoon, we found ourselves completely over-extended. We make a point of hosting morning and evening prayer times in our hotel room that are recognizable to people from diverse liturgical traditions. Pulling together these prayer times is a lot of fun, but can be a bit draining. Additionally, we presented a workshop entitled “Celibacy Involves Family” that drew nearly 40 attendees during the first workshop session. We had a blast preparing our workshop together, and we’ll likely share some of the content we presented at that workshop in future posts. Yet, all this running around left us feeling a bit depleted. Lindsey felt especially zapped: conferences can be an introvert’s worse nightmare.

We wanted so desperately to serve the community that we had forgotten how important it was to receive care, love, and support from others. On Friday night, we clued in to our mutual exhaustion. We decided that the best thing to do would be to go down to the lobby, find someone interested in eating dinner at the hotel, and have real human conversation about what was going on in everyone’s lives. We met up with Rebecca and James Farlow, two friends we had met at a previous conference who have graciously served by leading the times of musical worship two years running. They gave us the opportunity to share vulnerably about everything we had been experiencing lately: our car accident on the way to conference, Lindsey’s recent job loss, Sarah’s chronic health problems, and our general frustrations with the universe. The Farlows graciously shared with us what was going on in their life together. It was a sacred time of mutuality, respect, and prayer that refreshed us. We decided it would be best to continue refreshing (and unfortunately, had to miss the concert by Bobby Jo Valentine and Derek Webb). Later, another couple spent some time with us as we celebrated the different ways God has blessed all four of us in the year between GCN conferences.

On Saturday, we prepared for the event everyone was talking about: Rachel Held Evans’ keynote! Her kind, gentle, yet thought-provoking speaking style reminded us a great deal of the challenging content she regularly posts on her blog. We found it particularly meaningful that she contrasted the experience of an ally having a shared enemy with the experience of a sister having a shared identity.

Immediately after the keynote, we embarked on quite the mission: trekking over to a friend’s house to use an oven so we could bake bread. You see, we are a part of a closed communion tradition (and do not partake of communion outside of our Christian tradition) and simultaneously value that GCN offers communion during the Sunday morning service. We recognize that for many people in the GCN community who have endured painful rejection by members of their Christian traditions, the GCN conference is the only time they feel welcome to partake of communion. But we also believe that in having an open table at GCN Conference where people can make a choice to commune, it is equally important to honor the choice to abstain regardless of a person’s reasons. Toward that end, we decided that we would offer to bake a loaf that would remain unconsecrated and be available for all people at the GCN conference as Bread of Fellowship (rather than elements of communion). So across Chicago we went with our ingredients, measuring cups, and mixing bowl to our friend’s kitchen. We enjoyed talking with our friend’s partner as we waited for the various stages of bread making (never, ever try to bake bread in a hurry) and then returned to the conference in time for another round of workshops and more fellowship. Later, on Sunday morning, we would pray for every person registered for the conference by name as we cut the Bread of Fellowship into distributable pieces.

If there is one area in which the GCN conference really excels, it is providing opportunities for fellowship. The conference schedule includes significant time to gather with others, and attendees tend to milk every minute for more time together. Saturday night is reserved for an open mike time where people can share their experience of God at the conference. This sacred time always contains so many awe-inspiring stories of God’s faithfulness, and we consider it a distinct privilege to participate. Moreover, no one seems to want Saturday night to end, so impromptu gatherings tend to spring up all over the hotel lobby. We came prepared with several games, and the ever-extroverted Sarah spent hours playing 10 Days in the USA and Catch Phrase with folks. Spending time with close friends playing board games until all hours of the night makes GCN Conference feel less like a conference and more like a family reunion. It’s also a great way to bond more closely with old friends and extend one’s family of choice to include some really awesome new people.

The last general session of conference featured incredible singing from a choir comprised of conference attendees, a talk delivered by Justin Lee that tried to sum up the events of the weekend and encouraged people to continue letting God transform their lives, and a final circle. It’s a tradition that at the last minute of conference, Justin and Trey (GCN’s Conference Director) announce the conference city for next year. We hope to see you in Portland, Oregon 8-11 January 2015.

Overall, the GCN conference provided a rich time for us to be ourselves in community with other people we have come to adore. As a celibate couple, we are able to receive encouragement in our specific vocation from the diverse people gathered. So many people have found space at GCN conference to be themselves, and we hope that you will consider joining us in Portland. We’d love to meet you!

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.

Why celibacy?

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“Why celibacy?” is a natural first question people ask when they find out a bit more about our relationship. So we thought we’d spend some time talking about why we’ve chosen this route.

Many people encourage LGBT Christians to live a celibate life based on the idea that gay sex is something that absolutely, positively, and without a doubt must be avoided at all costs. Within these circles, there is a lot of talk about what constitutes sex and very little talk about what constitutes celibacy. To these people, celibacy is understood as the absence of sex. We’ll spend some more time talking about what we think celibacy is in a future post; but, for now, we will say that we resonate very much with Eve Tushnet, who says that you cannot have a vocation of “No”.

As for us, we both have felt called to celibacy for some years. Sarah started to explore the possibilities of celibacy around the age of 19 as Sarah witnessed the profound ways nuns loved and served the world. The way nuns lived in the world offered a different pathway to holiness than the paths associated with marriage. Lindsey came to the idea of celibacy a bit later, around the age of 25. For Lindsey, exploring celibacy began as a way to integrate faith and sexuality. Yet, a lot of talk on these topics seemed detached from the practical experience of daily life, so Lindsey sought out many different kinds of people living celibate lives. Watching people live out celibacy challenged Lindsey to cultivate a life in which prayer facilitated hospitality, hospitality created connection, and connection empowered people to come together and share life. While both of us explored the possibility that we might have a religious vocation (i.e. living in a monastic community), we both felt that God was not asking either one of us to commit our lives to a specific religious community.

We are not coming to celibacy from the place that we are afraid and have never experienced the other side of sexually active relationships. And we are not coming to celibacy from a place that regards LGBT sexual activity as the unforgivable sin. We’re unique in that both of us have past experience with sexually active relationships. Sarah does not bemoan past relationships that have included sexual activity because these relationships taught Sarah a lot. From Sarah’s vantage point, it is partly due to the fact that Sarah has experienced such relationships that Sarah came to discover the vocation of celibacy. Sarah hopes to write more on this in the future. Lindsey’s experience of sexually active relationships came more from the challenges associated with drawing “the line” about which forms of intimacy are appropriate. In Lindsey’s view, so much of the material on sexual ethics comes from heteronormative situations where Lindsey has a natural struggle appropriating the existing material on sexual ethics to the particulars of LGBT relationships. We both appreciate learning that extending grace to oneself and others in all areas of life is an essential part of growing in Christ. Grace is a critical touchstone of the Christian faith; and, we’ve found that extending grace is tightly linked to offering hospitality to others.

Together, we have created a space where we can explore celibacy as a couple. As individuals, we have had chances to visit many different celibate communities. Every community we have visited over the years is different. We enjoy trading stories (of all kinds!) with each other. We naturally talk about what we have learned from different celibate communities and frequently discuss how to cultivate our shared vocation to celibacy.

To sum up, the answer to the question “Why celibacy?” boils down to the statement that we feel God is asking us to live our lives in this way. We are grateful for the ways that God continues to teach us about celibacy and look forward to continuing to explore our vocation together.

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.