Tag Archives: social issues

Seeking Color in a Black and White World

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A reflection by Sarah

A few days ago while I was on my way home from work, I received a phone call from a friend (I’ll call her Gianna) who has been reading our blog. Gianna and I have known each other for approximately six years, but haven’t spoken much since the last women’s studies certificate course we took together. We had a great conversation that included lots of laughter and a lengthy discussion of our favorite Virginia Woolf novels. But near the end of our chat when Gianna started inquiring more about the blog, she asked me a question I hadn’t quite anticipated: “Sarah, I don’t understand this whole celibacy thing. When did you become a conservative?” I wasn’t sure of how to react to the question. Because the word conservative has such a variety of meanings, I wasn’t even clear on what she had meant until she continued, “What happened to the Sarah I used to know, who challenged the status quo, advocated for social justice, and believed in equal rights for all people?” Eventually, this led to a conversation about American political labels and ideologies, complete with questions about who I plan on voting for in 2016 (does anybody know how to answer that question two years in advance?). I began to feel pinned into a corner. Since when does embracing a particular vocation make one a Democrat or a Republican?

One of the many lessons that has kept repeating itself since my starting this blog with Lindsey is that we live in a highly polarized society in which black-and-white thinking prevails, and almost any action, idea, or way of life will be associated with one extreme of the American political spectrum or the other. If you’re a woman who carried an unwanted pregnancy to term and gave the child for adoption rather than getting an abortion, you’re a conservative. If you’re gay, you’re a liberal. If you grew up poor, pulled yourself up by your bootstraps, and now have more income than you ever could have imagined, you’re a conservative. If you hit your lifetime maximum on health insurance years ago and your life was saved by the implementation of universal health care, you’re a liberal. Every time we own a life experience publicly, it seems there is someone ready to ascribe to us a prepackaged set of ideologies.

Let me be frank: I loathe discussing politics. Truly, I do. I dislike the subject so much that it even makes me wince when Lindsey and I are writing and, for the sake of clarity, we feel forced to use the adjectives “liberal” and “conservative” when describing the viewpoints of some Christian denominations and the varieties of Christian ethical perspectives. But that doesn’t mean I have no views at all, or that the convictions I hold aren’t firm. For example, I hail from a region where the coal industry, which provides an enormous amount of jobs, has also ravaged the natural environment and health of thousands of people, including my grandfather. My opinions about the ethics of the coal industry are rock-solid (no pun intended), and aren’t likely to change. Still, I don’t enjoy debating the topic, and when I share my personal experience associated with the coal industry, I’m not necessarily doing so in an attempt to change someone else’s views. I could say much the same regarding my beliefs on and experiences relative to many controversial political issues, including those that are LGBT-focused. Do I have an opinion? Most likely, yes. But should sharing my experience automatically be interpreted as an attempt at converting people to a specific ideology? No. And as you can read on our About page, changing the beliefs of others certainly isn’t the intention of this blog.

On some level, I can understand why a person might conceptualize celibacy as a “conservative” way of life and by extension, associate it with a particular political ideology. The word “celibacy” tends to evoke images of Catholic priests and Catholic and Orthodox monks and nuns—individuals who are seen by many as the faces of two faith traditions teaching that LGBT people are called to celibacy. A number of people would argue that these two Christian traditions are “conservative,” at least where sexual morality is concerned, so living celibacy as an LGBT person, especially within the context of Catholicism or Orthodoxy, might also be viewed by some as an act of conservatism. However, I find it difficult to understand how one would come to the conclusion that because I am celibate: 1) I necessarily embrace a particular set of political viewpoints that can be summarized properly by a label like “liberal” or “conservative”; 2) I would never support challenging society’s status quo, and 3) I do not “advocate for social justice” or “believe in equal rights for all people.”

Church history is filled with numerous examples of celibates whose worldviews and contributions to society cannot be fully understood using black-and-white categorizations. I’d like to share with you as examples three different women from the modern historical context—one Catholic, one Orthodox, and one Protestant. All three of these women were celibates, chose celibacy at different points in life, lived that calling in diverse ways, and would not fit into the stereotypical images of “liberal” and “conservative.”

Catherine de Hueck Doherty (1896-1985)

Born Ekaterina Fyodorovna Kolyschkine, Catherine de Hueck Doherty was a lay Catholic spiritual writer, activist, and foundress of two lay apostolates. Catherine was brought up a member of the Eastern Orthodox Church, but converted to Catholicism—becoming Byzantine Catholic—in England in 1919. Catherine established Friendship Houses in Toronto, New York, and Chicago during the 1930s in response to the needs of people suffering due to racism, xenophobia, and poverty. During her years at Friendship House, Catherine fought constantly against racial and ethnic discrimination, advocating for full acceptance of African American students into Catholic educational institutions that had previously been open to white students only. In 1947, Catherine and her second husband, Eddie Doherty, established the Madonna House Apostolate, which would eventually become a community of over 200 staff workers, committed to living the Gospel without compromise and loving each other as a celibate family. Catherine and Eddie themselves adopted a celibate lifestyle as Madonna House formally became a Public Association of the Christian Faithful within the Diocese of Pembroke, Ontario. Voluntary poverty, radical hospitality, and commitment to sharing daily work and spiritual life are key features that Catherine incorporated into Madonna House living. Catherine reposed on December 14, 1985.

Mother Maria of Paris (1891-1945)

Maria Skobtsova, who would become known to the world as Mother Maria, is recognized as a saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church. Prior to becoming a nun, Maria had been married twice. She was also a poet and a member of the French Resistance during World War II. She is well known for rescuing infants from Jewish ghettos during the Nazi regime. Mother Maria advanced a radically different view of Orthodox monastic life, choosing to engage directly with the world rather than focusing principally on observing the liturgical life of the Orthodox Church. After providing refuge to the poor and those displaced by political turmoil in her convent, a rented house in Paris, she was arrested by the Gestapo following the Fall of France in 1940. Mother Maria lived her last days at Ravensbrück concentration camp. Hagiography suggests that on the day she reposed, she took the place of a Jewish prisoner who was to be sent to the gas chamber on Holy Saturday, 1945.

Mother Basilea Schlink (1904-2001)

Mother Basilea Schlink, born Klara Schlink in Darmstadt, Germany, was a theologian who became a Protestant nun. In 1948, she became a co-founder of a Lutheran-based religious order called the Evangelical Sisterhood of Mary. Before becoming a nun, Klara had studied psychology, philosophy, church history, and art history. At one point, she conducted a study on teenage girls’ awareness of sin. Following World War II, Klara felt compelled to repent for sins committed by Germany during the war. She was deeply convicted by the level of pain and suffering her home country had caused other countries and specific groups of people to endure. In particular, Klara believed it crucial to ask God’s forgiveness for harm done to European Jews. Singularly focused on leading a life of prayer, repentance, and mission, Klara decided to forgo marriage and begin the Sisterhood alongside her friend, Erika Madauss. Thereafter, she became known as Mother Basilea. During her lifetime, Mother Basilea authored many books on the spiritual life, repentance, and commitment to Christ. Her Evangelical Sisterhood of Mary would eventually become an international, ecumenical, Protestant order of over 200 professed sisters. Mother Basilea reposed on March 21, 2001 in Darmstadt.

Though they are rooted in diverse backgrounds in terms of culture and Christian tradition, the stories of Catherine Doherty, Mother Maria, and Mother Basilea have much in common. All of these women wanted to serve God and the world in different ways than people pursuing Christ’s call through other vocations. Often, I hear it suggested that celibacy is a “thing of the past” or “nobody really does that anymore.” If those were your thoughts before reading today, I hope that I have succeeded in demonstrating this isn’t the case. As Lindsey and I continue to blog, we would like to profile, periodically, modern and historical examples of people who have lived celibate vocations. In particular, I hope to share with you more stories of celibate individuals whose lives have defied the stereotypes many people in the modern world associate with celibacy. These people are not, as Lindsey and I have sometimes been called, “rare examples of a gray area in the human experience.” Instead, I believe they show us how abundantly colorful the vocation to celibacy can be.

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.

9 Things We Wish Straight Allies Knew

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We know many straight people who are interested in actively supporting the LGBT community. Some people choose to be allies by simply being our close friends, other people choose to be allies by lobbying for legislation that can mitigate harms being done to the LGBT community, and still more people choose to be allies through different mechanisms. Some of our friends have felt compelled by their Christian faith to learn more about LGBT issues and concerns to be agents for positive change. So many of our straight allies have worked to educate themselves when encountering LGBT people with unfamiliar stories. Yet at times, we feel that messages regarding what makes a person an ally are given with the assumption that all LGBT people have the same needs, views, and life experiences. From our perspective as a celibate, LGBT, Christian couple, here are 9 things the two of us wish our straight allies knew.

1. We are individuals.
LGBT people are just as diverse as the rest of the population, so there isn’t a “one size fits all” approach to being supportive of all of us. What one LGBT person might perceive as supportive, another may see differently. This is also true of LGBT Christians. For example, many LGBT Christians are grateful for allies who advocate for change in their denominations’ theologies of marriage. However, there are also LGBT Christians who are in complete agreement with the teachings of their respective Christian traditions on this matter. There are LGBT couples who desire that their relationships be recognized as marriages within their denominations, and there are LGBT couples who understand their relationships as something different from marriage. Because we are individuals, it is helpful to ask us what we would find most supportive instead of assuming that all of us have the same feelings, needs, opinions, and theological positions.

2. Our stories belong to us.
Regardless of sexual orientation, every person has a story. Stories are powerful and dynamic. They come in many varieties: childhood stories, coming of age stories, coming out stories, faith stories. They hold vital pieces of ourselves, so to share one’s story with another person is to become vulnerable, entrusting that person to safeguard a precious gift. Please remember, especially with stories related to our coming out processes and faith journeys, that these stories belong to us even if we’ve shared them with you once. Not every LGBT person is comfortable with his or her story being used for political purposes. If you’re going to share our stories with other people, cultivate real relationships with us where you can stay current on how our stories are developing over time.

3. We are glad to answer your questions.
We really mean that. Of course, the two of us can’t speak for every LGBT person, but at least from our perspective, questions are welcome. We would much rather answer questions about our way of life, our self-understandings, and our faith than be told what we should or shouldn’t be doing by people who haven’t walked a mile in our moccasins. We have many straight ally friends who are constantly posing new questions to us. Often, these questions challenge us to think more deeply, and to become better Christians. However we have also encountered many allies who seem to think they know everything that is best for LGBT people. They’ve done a lot of reading, talked to a lot of people, and formed their own conclusions. We would like to stress that we appreciate all the researching and communicating our allies do on a regular basis, but what you have read, heard, and seen from other people and sources does not give you the right to make blanket statements about what all LGBT people should do in a given situation.

4. We aren’t just LGBT. We are people, first and foremost.
Our self-understandings as lesbian, gay, bisexual transgender, queer, etc. are very important to us. However, our identities also have many layers. We are sons, daughters, sisters, brothers, teachers, engineers, church members…but we are also people, and that is what matters most. We are not just your “gay friends” or “transgender friends.” We are human beings made in the image and likeness of God. While we are glad to talk with you about LGBT issues, our lives do not involve thinking constantly about our sexual orientations. Start conversations with us in the same way you would with other straight people you know. Ask us about our trip to the art museum last weekend, or our favorite chocolate chip cookie recipes, or the time we spent volunteering with the local wildlife rescue. There are far more interesting subjects to discuss with us than how we feel about the most recent case of a gay couple being denied a table at a restaurant. The more you talk with us, the more you’ll probably see that our lives aren’t very different from yours.

5. Gay marriage isn’t the only issue.
It seems almost anytime a straight person realizes that we are members of the LGBT community, that person’s conversation with us ultimately ends up at the topic of gay marriage. Sometimes, that person will self-identify as an ally and begin telling us how ardently he/she supports gay marriage and how deeply shameful and oppressive he/she thinks it is that gay relationships do not have legal recognition in every U.S. state. We’ve written on the issue of legal recognition before, so clearly we see it as an important topic worthy of serious discussion. But gay marriage is not the only issue of concern for LGBT people. We’re also concerned about the discrimination we can encounter in our places of work, the fact that our LGBT statuses could prevent us from being offered a lease on an apartment, and the reality that we could be refused services at a local business on the basis of our sexual orientations and gender identities. But much more significant than any of those issues are the experiences of LGBT people in countries with far fewer freedoms. There are countries, like Uganda, in which being gay can land a person in prison with a life sentence. There are also places in the world where gay people face the risk of being killed. In the grand scheme of things, we believe situations like these call for a much more urgent response, including constant prayer from the entire Body of Christ.

6. Celibacy and self-loathing are not synonyms.
Frequently, well-intentioned straight allies assume that if an LGBT person is celibate, he or she is trapped in a state of self-loathing. Secular allies can be quick to tell celibate LGBT people that we are allowing ourselves to be manipulated by religious dogma. Christian allies can be just as quick to offer the message, “Jesus loves you no matter what. I can support you in accepting that it’s okay to have sex.” Sometimes, allies make assumptions about the sexual activity statuses of LGBT couples; if a person is in a relationship, this must mean he or she is sexually active or intends to become so in the future. These kinds of attitudes and remarks can be exceptionally wounding, and just as hurtful as the common message we get from many conservative Christians: “You can’t be gay and a Christian.” When straight allies either state or imply that we are repressed because of our celibacy, the message we hear is, “You can’t be gay without having sex.” Asking more questions about our way of life is a much kinder, more compassionate approach.

7. Not all LGBT people want to be activists and educators.
It’s true that some LGBT people feel drawn to the roles of activist and educator. However, not all are so inclined just by virtue of our sexual orientations and gender identities, and we do not “owe it to the LGBT community” to fill those roles. Many of us want only to live our boring, daily lives in peace. Please do not assume that if there is a local protest regarding a marriage amendment that all your queer neighbors will be penciling that into their calendars. And please do not expect that we will want to make the national news if we experience discrimination in some aspect of our daily activities. When we share an experience of hurt or injustice with you, “Which news outlet should I call first?” is not the appropriate question to ask. Forcing us into the spotlight over said incident is not doing us or the broader LGBT community any favors. A better question to ask might be, “How did you feel when that happened?” or “What can I do to support you as you process this?”

8. Pronouns matter.
Many LGBT people can feel exhausted by having to play pronoun games. We sincerely appreciate friends who care enough to learn our patterns of pronoun use. For some of us, respecting pronoun preferences can be as simple as asking, “What are your preferred pronouns?” Yet for others, the pronoun questions are not so simple. Transgender and genderqueer people might relish in having a safe place where others use the right pronouns but could also fear being outed in public. Some genderqueer people prefer avoiding pronouns all together. Be willing to ask questions, practice using appropriate pronouns, and understand why certain people might feel like they have no choice but to try and play pronoun games.

9. We are grateful for your support.
We know many LGBT people who probably wouldn’t make it without support of straight allies. The two of us have been tremendously blessed by some of our straight friends who have committed to travel with us as we adventure through life. As we reflect on the people who have been most supportive and just generally wonderful friends, we can identify an incredible number of straight allies. Some of our straight allies were the first people to know our LGBT identities. Many of our straight allies have helped us feel safer and more welcome in various church communities. We have been so blessed by sharing our lives with some of you for 10 years or more. Thank you so much for seeing us not simply as your LGBT friends but as members of your family.

Whether you are an LGBT person or a straight ally, we’d love to hear from you in the comments. What do you wish straight allies knew?

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.

When Legal Recognition MATTERS

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One evening not too many weeks ago, Sarah was having trouble breathing. Typically, one puff from the inhaler and all is well. But that night was different. Sarah couldn’t hold coherent conversation, was having trouble lying down, and labored with every breath. Lindsey tried to assess the situation. After watching Sarah’s symptoms develop and worsen over the course of the evening, Lindsey made the call to drive Sarah to the nearby Emergency Room.

It is times like these when legal recognition matters.

As a couple dealing with chronic health conditions, we are no strangers to navigating various healthcare webs. Health can play up just about anywhere or anytime. Because Sarah has severe asthma and other health problems, we tend towards choosing to see a doctor when we deem it necessary. In dealing with healthcare professionals, we have had significantly more positive experiences when seeing a provider who can recognize our relationship than when seeing one who cannot and will not.

We were in the middle of an impromptu day trip somewhere in the State of Virginia. On the side of the road, we saw an old train station that had been turned into a museum. Intrigued, we decided to stop and visit. It was a combined railway station and post office from 1910. In this building, a placard over one door reads, “White” while a placard over the other door reads, “Colored.”

It is in places like this where labels matter.

Now, before we take this post too much farther, let us say directly that we do not think it is appropriate to compare the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s with current movements to expand legal rights of LGBT people as though the two are exactly the same. There are many important points of difference, and the few points of similarity that do exist are not our reason for sharing these two stories in the same post. We began with these stories because they are experiences we have shared as a couple. Being in the two different environments–the emergency room and the train station–evoked various reflections that influence how we see questions of legal recognition for LGBT people.

As members of a sacramental Christian tradition, we have no intention of advocating for our church to recognize our relationship as a sacramental marriage. We have no problem with being known simply as “Lindsey and Sarah,” and we enjoy participating in the life of our parish together. A sacramental marriage in our tradition crowns two people as martyrs to one another, laying down their lives for each other in an act of sacrificial love. A sacramental marriage is not about legal name changes, the ability to file taxes together, qualifying for health insurance, gaining access to medical records, coordinating treatment across diverse providers, combining incomes when trying to qualify for a mortgage, and managing end-of-life care. Those functions get housed in the civil (legal) sphere.

Lindsey is often bemused when thinking about how monasteries secure various legal rights that enable them to care for members of their communities. Could you just imagine the scene of an atheist father and a newly-Buddhist mother barging into a Catholic monastery to demand that they alone have the right to plan the funeral of their son who has recently fallen asleep in the Lord? Chaos and madness would ensue. Could you imagine an Orthodox nun tasked to take a very ill member of the community to the hospital only to drop the patient off at registration and have no access to any information about her during her stay? It does not happen that way. Somehow, some way, laws exist in most places to protect the fidelity of the monastic vows and the relationship of each individual sister or brother to the community. …and if those laws do not exist, many Christians rightly call forth “Persecution!”

Society has a lot of automatic systems that just seem to “kick in.” There is a lot of support when parents are trying to make sure that a new baby is appropriately recognized as a member of their family, when monasteries tonsure new members, and when two individuals get married. Along the way, additional benefits accrue–often, without the recipients of the benefits even being aware. A call to one critical agency can set a Rube-Goldberg-type legal machine into action. It’s unlikely that anyone (except maybe some attorneys and the IRS) actually knows the full process by which a newly married couple formally receives all of the 1,000+ legal rights and responsibilities associated with that status.

Many people will argue that marriage or a similar type of legal recognition for same-sex relationships is unnecessary because a same-sex couple can use alternate contractual structures such as securing a Power of Attorney. Both of us know different LGBT couples who have tried to navigate the complex gamut of legal procedures required to use these alternate contractual structures. Several attorneys and multiple thousands of dollars later, they have a piecemeal collection of documents that they hope will safeguard their relationship when legal recognition matters most.

The problem of securing legal protection to care for and provide for loved ones is not unique to LGBT couples. Oftentimes, singles and heterosexual couples who have not yet married face similar problems. One of Sarah’s friends once shared a story in which he was denied bereavement leave from work when his fiance’s mother reposed. His workplace cited that they could not grant him bereavement leave because he was not yet married and had no familial relationship to the reposed. It did not matter that months later, the reposed would have been his mother-in-law. If this event had occurred when he was married, his workplace would have taken him at his word that he needed leave time for his mother-in-law’s funeral. In America, people who are related through blood, adoption, or marriage have a privilege that people who are related by choice do not. (Common law marriages try to bridge the gap in at least some of these instances when a man and a woman share a house for a number of years.)

When we think about it, we see that many Americans do not have the security of knowing the people they choose to share life with will be legally authorized to be there when their presence matters most. The only exception to this is if the people with whom one chooses to do life happen to be one’s family of origin, one’s (opposite-sex) spouse, or one’s monastic family. Any other relationship is relegated to a second-class status. In a way, it is like those signs that hung over the train station doors. It is discrimination based on one human being’s label for his or her relationship to other human beings: family of origin and family by marriage have access to the full range of rights and privileges, and family of choice often gets stuck with the leftovers. More than a few times, Lindsey has had no choice but to remain silently in waiting rooms with no updates when Sarah has been seriously ill or undergoing a medical procedure. Doctors have actively denied Lindsey the ability to see Sarah in a surgical recovery room and access to any sort of aftercare instructions. Once, when Sarah told a physician, “My partner, Lindsey, is here to take me home afterward,” the physician said, “That doesn’t matter. I asked if you were married and have a spouse here.” That same physician later requested contact information for Sarah’s parents even though Lindsey was less than 15 feet away. Because of various legal mechanisms, lack of a legal title negates any level of relationship that two people have to one another.

Given this reality, we ask: what option does an LGBT couple who do not regard their relationship as a sacramental/religious marriage have for ensuring that they are legally protected? Many Christian denominations have promoted the idea that allowing LGBT people to marry legally will have a detrimental effect on how that particular denomination can articulate an understanding of marriage. Therefore, these denominations assert the importance of limiting the legal definition of marriage to one man and one woman. But for all the concern about protecting the institution of marriage and ensuring that there will be no misunderstanding regarding their doctrines on the religious nature of marriage, there is little to no empathy for the lived experiences of so many LGBT couples when one partner has been denied the basic privilege of caring for the other in times of emergency.

For this reason, we tend to believe that all Christian denominations have a responsibility to define marriage theologically in whatever way they deem appropriate while also working to protect LGBT people from undue discrimination in various social contexts. We do not claim to know the best solution for accomplishing this particular work of justice. But, we find these questions critical, and we are grateful that currently, we live in a place where we have some legal options to ensure that we can care for one another. Not every LGBT couple is so fortunate.

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.

Good Luck Charlie, Susan and Cheryl, …and Sarah and Lindsey

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Last Sunday night, the Disney Channel made news by including a same-sex couple in an episode of Good Luck Charlie. By Wednesday morning, various organizations such as One Million Moms had succeeded in broadcasting this 1-minute clip across diverse news outlets. More pointedly, by Wednesday morning, the news had hit our Facebook feeds where knee-jerk reactions and commentary reigned supreme. Some of our LGBT friends were celebrating Disney’s inclusiveness, and a good many more of our conservative Christian friends expressed outrage over Disney’s broadcasting “the homosexual lifestyle” into their living rooms.

Because we both value intellectual integrity, our first course of action was to see what Disney actually broadcasted. The 58-second clip shows a dialogue in which Taylor comes over to Charlie’s house for a play date. Our conservative Christian friends were particularly aghast because Taylor has two moms. If, on the off chance you haven’t already seen the clip, we’d encourage you to watch it for yourself:

After watching the clip, Lindsey was especially bemused that conservative Christians were more concerned about the morality of Taylor having two mommies than about the way Amy (Charlie’s mom) seems to belittle and dismiss Bob (Charlie’s dad) at every opportunity. Somehow, it’s perfectly acceptable to Christians that Disney places a laugh reel right after Amy goes after Bob by saying, “Are you sure that I’m right and you’re wrong? Always.” Sarah noted that this clip is nothing more than two parents bringing their child to a play date. The show does not use the words gay, lesbian, or sex. Bob resolves his confusion over Taylor’s mom’s name by simply remarking, “Oh! Taylor has two moms.” There are no public displays of affection of any kind, between any characters in the clip.

But, there’s a world of difference between what actually aired on Disney and how conservative Christians have reacted to the event. Yesterday, Sarah’s friends took to filling Sarah’s Facebook inbox with messages after Sarah commented about the event. Sarah received messages like the following: (1) “I love you, but I don’t agree with your lifestyle choice. I just don’t want my daughter exposed to that lifestyle.”; (2) “I have no problem with you gay people, but you shouldn’t get to take over everything even television. It’s not fair to innocent children.”; (3) “I’ve always liked and respected you, Sarah, but putting a gay couple on children’s television is just a ploy to indoctrinate them with liberalism and gay marriage.”; (4) “I don’t agree with homosexuality, period. The Bible says it, I believe it, and that settles it. Live your life the way you choose, but don’t put it on my kid’s TV show.”; and (5) “Please don’t take this personally. It’s not about about you. I just want my kids to grow up normal, you know? You and Lindsey are celibate. Why should this bother you?”

Why did we take the time to type out some of these messages? We’re not interested in ratting out Sarah’s friends or gaining sympathy for ourselves. We started this blog with the intention of sharing our story, and the things we post here are things that have actually happened. Sure, yesterday’s comments were fueled by reactions to a lesbian couple on a children’s television show. But, comments in the past (and if trends hold, comments in the future) can be triggered by something as simple as walking through a doorway together into a person’s church, family reunion, or living room.

We have an odd sort of situation. If people just meet Sarah, it is very rare that their gaydars ping. The second people see the two of us together, unfortunately it’s all too clear that we are members of the LGBT community. Lindsey has never had an especially strong gender-conforming appearance and, as such, negotiates a good deal of behind-the-back gossip. When we walk into our home parish together and stand together in the front row, we know other parishioners are aware that an LGBT couple stands in their midst.

There’s another odd dynamic at play. To use a Bostonian saying, we’re both wicked smaht. Sarah regularly gets asked to help our friends’ kids and teenagers conjugate Latin verbs, finalize essays, and solve assorted math problems. Lindsey is frequently pinged if a kid ever needs help with math or science homework. And there’s the occasional situation in which Sarah pings Lindsey because Sarah has been assisting with a math homework set that has turned to physics. In these situations, to use an expression of ours, no one gives two figs about our sexual orientations, our gender identities, our relationship status, or our tendency to tag-team when helping kids with diverse problems. To the parents and their children, we become an available combined brain that’s more reliable than Wikipedia and more conversant than Google…. at least when it comes to high schoolers and their homework.

The different dynamics at play remind Lindsey of past experiences in some Christian communities. As soon as Lindsey disclosed anything related to LGBT status, Lindsey was no longer welcome in lay ministry but could warm a pew and could tithe. If you have ever been in that situation personally, we’d venture a guess that you bristled. That reaction is totally normal and totally okay. If you’re a reader who doesn’t understand why that kind of statement might make people bristle, here’s the deal. That statement says, “We’re not interested in getting to know you as a person, but we’ll gladly fill out a receipt for you.” And now, we’re back to Good Luck Charlie. You see, many of the friends who sent Sarah assorted Facebook messages, who don’t want their kids “exposed to the gay lifestyle,” are the same people who send their kids to Sarah (and occasionally Lindsey by proxy) for homework help.

As we’ve shared before, our vocation to celibacy does not make us immune to discrimination. We are just as much members of the LGBT community as people who are currently sexually active or who desire to be sexually active some day. We could very easily be in exactly the same situation as the couple featured in Good Luck Charlie if we were ever to bring a child over to another child’s house to play. Enabling two children to play together is, fundamentally, an act that invites relationship rather than the exchanging of services. When our friends tell us that they don’t want a gay couple broadcast into their living room by television, we immediately question whether we would even want to visit their house for dinner. After all, if a person is threatened by a 58-second display of another’s humanity, how could we possibly feel comfortable being present for 58 minutes to eat dinner… or 30 minutes to play a board game… or 3 days to help them recoup from surgery… or… or… or… The activities people share when they are honestly in relationship with each other are myriad and endless.

It’s especially challenging when so many people who are reacting to the seemingly benign relational exchange in Good Luck Charlie begin their reactions with “I like you and I respect you, but…” We find it incredible that, for some people, the only time they will utter the words, “I like you” in our general direction will be before they issue a scathing critique of our way of life. Are they really rejecting our commitment to radical hospitality that spurs us to be available when their kids need help with their homework? Do they object to our commitment to eat dinner together every night barring truly extraordinary circumstances? Do they want to pathologize our relationship with Christ and with our church family? How could it be that, even though we generally open our lives up to those around us, these “friends” have seen nothing worth praising or viewing as positive?

Sometimes it seems that where many straight, conservative Christians are concerned, LGBT couples have so many strikes against us before ever setting foot in the door. We can only say, “Good luck, Susan and Cheryl. Thanks for your courage in searching for suitable playmate for Taylor.”

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