23. Wedding

I went to a wedding yesterday.  I love weddings, and this one was beautiful.  The bride and groom are very much in love – they were both practically luminescent.  And of course, there was dancing.  I love dancing.  We (me and a group of friends) danced until well after midnight.  So much fun.  I so rarely get the opportunity to dance that I drink it in when it comes… well, except for that one wedding I went to where all the music was country.  I left that one early.  Anyway, the point is that the wedding was wonderful.  My friend is very happy and I wish them both the best.

I say all of that to say I had a wonderful time, and the vast majority of my thoughts and feelings while I was there were positive, but the purpose of this blog is to provide and outlet for my thoughts about being Christian, Gay and Confused, and of course, being at a wedding will bring some of those thoughts to the foreground.

I am enough of a girly-girl that I have been thinking about and planning my own wedding since I was fairly young.  I remember drawing pictures of the type of wedding dress I wanted in junior high (my tastes have changed a little since then, thank goodness).  I know what song I would want for my first dance, what my colours would be, where I would get my pictures taken, etc…  And every wedding I’ve been to, I’ve catalogued the things I really liked so that I can use them when my own day comes.  The frustrating thing is that I can’t curtail this tendency despite the fact that I know that marriage is probably not an option for me.  I sat there last night, thinking things like “Oooh, that’s a neat idea”, or “Wow, I’ve never heard of that tradition”, and trying to think how I would incorporate them into my own ideal wedding celebration; and every time I would have to give myself a sort of mental slap in the face and remind myself that I probably won’t have a wedding, so I should stop building the idea up in my head.  

And just so you don’t get worried (or excited), I still haven’t come to a conclusion regarding the whole celibacy vs. gay-relationship thing.  It’s just that even if I do eventually marry a woman, I won’t be able to have the traditional wedding that I have envisioned.  I may find a church and a minister that would be willing to hold the ceremony, but I can’t think of a single member of my family that would come… and none of my Christian friends would come either.  So there would be no one giving speeches about what I was like as a child, or telling fun stories about silly things we did in university, etc…  When I think about a wedding without all of these people that I love, it feels kind of hollow… even just thinking about it, my chest has gotten all tight and I’m swallowing back tears.  Wow… I’m never going to have that day when all the people that I love, and who love me, gather to celebrate me and my happiness.  That is a harsh thought.  I’d better move on before I start to cry.  

The other thing that happened was that I saw a guy I haven’t seen in years – he was the staff advisor for the Christian fellowship I was a part of in university.  The friend I have mentioned twice before pointed out his new wife to me – I hadn’t realized he’d gotten divorced.  She went on to tell me how hard his first marriage had been, listing various problems (none of which were adultery), and how happy she was that he was happy now.  And he was happy, I could see it on his face (and in the fact that he and his wife didn’t leave the dance floor for hours!  It was pretty impressive cause… well, they’re kind of old!).   I should tell you that I am happy for him too; I am really in no position to begrudge anyone any joy that they have.  But it frustrated me, how much my friend was celebrating in his happiness, despite the fact that he is in a relationship that the Bible clearly says is wrong.  I couldn’t help but wonder if she would celebrate my happiness if I was in a relationship with a woman that made me happy.  Or would she be worried about the state of my soul?  I know I have mentioned this many times before, but it frustrates me to no end.  How come it’s okay when heterosexuals break or bend the rules when it comes to sex and relationships, but when gay people question the rules (or that there even is a rule) we are in obvious, willful rebellion (or whatever catchphrase is in vogue among Christians these days)?  Again, I think that this is because marriages between divorced people look the same as first time marriages… so people can just pretend that they don’t notice or something.  I mean, really, there can be no other explanation.  

Anyway, the wedding was really wonderful; I had a great time and got to see some people I hadn’t seen in ages.  Weddings are always good for that.  I have another one to go to in three weeks, and then I probably won’t have any for ages.  I think all of my friends from that particular group are married now (or will be in three weeks, anyway).  Oy.  I’m old.

22. "Love the Sinner, Hate the Sin"

As part of my internet routine, I always check out a few other blogs – one of which is Eric’s Two World Collision.  Yesterday’s entry, Scrubbing off Freckles was about that whole “love the sinner, hate the sin” thing that so many Christians say about homosexuality.  He explains that this phrase is pretty much hogwash because people are unable to differentiate between the sin and the person sinning.  I was going to leave a comment that would have basically boiled down to ‘lighten up, dude…’, because I know many Christians who believe that homosexual behavior is wrong, and even some who believe that simply being gay is wrong, and they have only ever expressed their love for me… so despite the triteness of the phrase ‘love the sinner, hate the sin’, I think it is still a ideal to live up to.

But then I encountered this article about how the Vatican is probably going to bar gay people from entering their seminaries – regardless of whether or not they are celibate.  (If anyone leaves  comment about how gay priests are more likely to abuse than straight ones I swear I will rip you a new one – virtually at least… pedophilia is a mostly straight phenomenon)  And then there was this article about the girl who was kicked out of a Christian school because her parents were lesbians – not because she was gay, but her parents!  (Eric wrote about this in another blog entry.)  

I think I have just had a very fortunate experience in the church I attend and the Christians I am friends with… because bullshit like this just keeps happening… just not to me.  For some reason that is unknown to me, homosexuality is different from any other ‘sin’.  Would that school have kicked that girl out if her parents were straight but one (or both) of them had been married before?  Would they have asked for proof that their prior spouse committed adultery?  Is the Vatican going to bar straight men with high libidos from entering their seminaries?  Christians have no problem showing compassion and accepting alcoholics, or someone addicted to porn (but of course, it would have to be straight porn!), or any number of other sins.  But mention that you’re gay… you don’t even have to be in a relationship, you just have to be gay… and suddenly you’re a pariah.  For some reason, most Christians can’t separate the ‘sinner’ from the ‘sin’ here.  This crap has got to stop.

The other problem with the ‘love the sinner, hate the sin’ philosophy – when applied to homosexuality – is that so many Christians see being gay as sin… so when they say “I love you, I just hate the sin”, what they end up saying is “I love you; I just hate this massive part of your identity.”  And if this gets internalized, it can lead to huge problems… as I’m sure many gay Christians have experienced, I know I did.  Trying not to hate myself when I was told I was supposed to hate this huge, core part of my identity… well, it was pretty much impossible.  I’m 30 years old, and I still struggle with not hating myself because of this.  

So… basically, I didn’t tell Eric to ‘lighten up’.  I still think that ‘love the sinner, hate the sin’ is a nice ideal, but the way it is practiced – or rather, the way it is not practiced needs to change.

21. Out of the Mouths of Babes

Yesterday I was babysitting two of my favourite kids and we watched this movie called The Miracle Maker.  It’s basically a claymation (with a bit of animation) telling of the story of Jesus.  It was interesting watching it with these kids whose parents have both, at one time or another, been pastors at my church.  They anticipated pretty much everything (except for Mary Magdalene’s demon possession, which scared one of the kids, but I didn’t know that until her dad came home and she started crying… kids can be weird that way), and were explaining the lessons we can learn from the stories as they came along.  

We get to the part about the temptation of Christ – specifically the part where Satan tempted Christ to throw himself off of a building so that the angels would catch him – and the little girl got a bit confused and started asking what was going on.  I started to explain, but the 8 year old boy jumped in and said “He’s asking Jesus to try and prove God is good, instead of just believing it.  We are not supposed to test God.”

I turned and stared at him – not that he noticed, he was too busy strategizing how he was going to cream me at Risk – it’s not that I haven’t heard that before, it’s just that I hadn’t heard it so clearly before.  I know we are not supposed to test God; I had just not really thought about what that means… or made the connection between this passage and my life.

How many times did I pray and ask God to prove He loved me and that He was good by making me straight?  

Or ask Him to prove His goodness by explaining His rules to me?

So I’ve been thinking about what it means to have the ‘faith of a child’… does it means to accept at face value the statements God has made about His character?  Children believe what you say, no matter the evidence to the contrary.  I think about all the times, as a child, when my dad would tell me he was going to call, or come visit, and I would believe him – no matter how many times he broke his promises, I would believe him (and, if I’m completely honest, I still do that with him… I really should know better by now).  I don’t mean that to say that this is what my relationship with God is supposed to be like, just to point out the absolute faith I had as a child.

Now, I’m going to stray into some possible heresy here… but we grow out of that blind faith for a reason.  In order to be able to fend for ourselves, we need to be able to test things.  We take cars for test drives, we get building inspectors to look at new houses before we buy them… we learn how to test things – and people – so we can see who and what we can and cannot trust.  These are necessary survival skills.  But we are not supposed to apply them to our relationship with God?  That seems impossible to me.  

I know that in comparison to God I will never be more than a child – and I like the idea of being His child that he cares for and looks after.  But it is hard not to question His goodness when I am faced with what, at worst, looks like cruelty, and at best looks like randomness.  Hurricane Katrina… the Tsunami… both very random, and both within the realm of God’s creation and control… and of course, there are countless other examples.

But of course, this is my blog, and this is all about me, so let’s get self-centered for a moment.  I’m gay… and whether or not it’s genetic, or the result of events in my childhood; it’s something I have had no control over.  It’s something random that happened to me.  I can control my behavior, but I cannot control who I am attracted to, who I fall in love with.  And the arbitrariness of the apparent rule against any expression of that part of me bothers me – to put it mildly (again, let me reassert that I am still thinking about this, I’m not sure if such a rule exists).  It seems cruel, and kind of thoughtless – and those are not characteristics that I want in a God I worship.  

And yes, I’ve read the arguments about gender complimentarity, and… well… I guess I’ve just seen too many heterosexual relationships that were not good because there was no real complimentarity, and I’ve seen gay relationships where there was wonderful complimentarity – one of the most balanced relationships I know of is the one I mentioned before, between one of my best friends and her girlfriend.  They just compliment each other so well.  The argument will go on to say that there is no complimentarity between people of the same gender physically… but is the physical aspect the only important and relevant part of a relationship?  Not to mention the fact that I’m not even sure I buy that this argument is based in Scripture… it seems more like psychobabble to me.  

Anyway, the point is that despite all of this, I am called to trust in the goodness of God.  I am not to test Him.  Is that what I’m doing now?  I don’t think so… I don’t think asking questions is testing Him… but I am to trust in His goodness in the midst of all of this.  This is so hard, and I don’t know if I can do it.

20. A Nightmare

It is 4:33 in the morning and I have just woken up from a very disturbing dream.  I dreamt that I was dating a strikingly beautiful woman and that I found out that she was the leader of a cult that abused children – beating them with the backs of brushes with nails in them.  If you read a certain part of this post, you might already know that this is pretty much the worst things my brain can come up with– abusing children… so I think I can safely call this dream a nightmare.  It’s kind of odd.  I don’t have nightmares very often.  Of course, now I’m wide awake and I have to clear my mind of these mental images before I can go back to sleep.  So, I thought I’d ‘blog my troubles away’.

One of the weird things about this dream is that in involved dating.  I very rarely have dreams about dating, or romance or whatever.  I have the occasional sex dream (as I suppose every sexually starved person does)… I wake up from those feeling slightly embarrassed and guilty and then I go on about my day.  But romance?  Relationship? I want those things way more than I want sex and yet they rarely show up in my dreams… and I suppose the part of me that is thinking ‘celibacy’ felt the need to punish me for dating a woman by throwing in the abuse stuff.  Oy.  The subconscious is a scary place, isn’t it?

I’ve been thinking a bit about the phrase “God-given rights”, and wondering what those are.  I’m not talking about human rights, or the rights of the child, or women’s rights, or even gay rights.  I’m wondering what are the rights we have that are given to us by God.  I guess the thing I’m specifically thinking about is this idea that I have the ‘right to be happy’.  I guess I’m just trying to figure out where this ‘right’ is promised me, because it’s certainly not biblical.  In the Bible I see no evidence that God ‘owes me’ the things that (I think) will make me happy.  (Oh man, I’m just imagining the comments I will get over that!)  What I recoil from is the apparent unfairness inherent in the system… how come some people get to be happy and others don’t?  I know that that is an incredibly juvenile thing to say – basically it boils down to whining, “…but it isn’t fair!” – and I’m not 6 years old, and I should know better.  Fairness is not the standard.  Justice (tempered with God’s unfathomable mercy) is.  And in the light of heaven, I suppose it will all balance out… I mean, after several millennia in eternity, who is going to care about a few decades of misery and loneliness, eh?  But I’m tired of hoping in heaven.  That may be blasphemous, I don’t know.  Maybe I should say I’m tired of that being my only hope.  

Maybe I just need to get out of here… get away from all of my married friends… my ‘married with children’ friends.  It’s inevitable, really, I’m 30.  I only have one unmarried/unattached friend – and she’s 24… it will happen eventually.  But that’s only a temporary solution.  Wherever I may go, whoever I meet, it happens.  People get married. I may go away anyway, though.  I’m tired of married people… tired of being around them and having this thing I want in front of my face all the time (Oh man, I can’t believe I just wrote that out… it’s the middle of the night, and I’m tired and uncensored… we’ll see if I leave that in).  

Okay, my thoughts are becoming wildly incoherent and bitter… I should probably go back to bed before I end up writing something I really shouldn’t.  I may have done that already…

Goodnight…er…Good Morning… whatever…

19. Presence

I thought I'd better write another blog entry to maybe stem the tide of comments on my last blog.  Don't get me wrong, I love getting comments, so please, keep them coming... but I must admit to being a little overwhelmed by the response to my last entry.  I had no idea so many people were reading!

Anyway, I thought I'd answer a question that CK asked me about what I mean by 'sensing the presence of God'.  I suppose I should start by clarifying what I don't mean.  I don't mean a 'spiritual experience’ – those wonderful mountaintop moments when God's presence is so overwhelming that you can't help but cry or laugh... or having a revelation, or even 'hearing God's voice'.  Those times are wonderful, but you can't live in that state all the time (at least, I think you can't, maybe I'm wrong.)  

I think in metaphors, so I think this is the best I can give you.  One of my best and dearest friends lives thousands of miles away from me, in Ireland.  Our contact is sporadic at best (but always wonderful and meaningful when it happens), but I have complete confidence in him and in our friendship.  I know that he is there, and I know that if I called him up he would answer, (or call me back) and we would have a wonderful conversation.  I know that he loves me, and that our friendship is rock solid. And this may sound a bit odd, although I think if you think about it you may understand it, but knowing that he is there, and that he is my friend, and that he loves me makes me feel better – more confident... even safer somehow.  And it doesn't matter if I can't see him, or don't hear his voice , or feel his touch all the time, I just know that he's there for me.

That's what I'm talking about (it is obviously not an exact analogy)... but of course on a much larger scale.  I don't feel confident in God's love, or His presence, or the fact that He even hears me when I pray.  It's unnerving, to say the least.  And I know that there was a long time when I was incredibly angry at God – and if I'm completely honest, I still have those anger issues (not all revolving around this whole gay thing, but it's definitely in there) – and so I wasn't praying... but I am now, or I'm trying to.  It's getting harder and harder, because I feel like I'm talking to myself (or the cat).  But I am going to persevere, because... well... what else can I do?  Where else can I go?  Christ has the words of eternal life.  I dare not give up.  

I know that this blog makes it seem like all I ever think about is being gay... and I admit, I'm thinking about it more now than I was before, as I try to figure this out.  But a friend of mine who has been helping me talk this out since the beginning reminded me, I must not lose my focus on Christ.  That doesn't mean I’m going to stop wrestling this out, but He should be at the centre.  Eric talks about this in his latest blog entry... about how Christ is our hope… so I guess when I say I'm looking for hope; I should know where to look, eh?  It's just that... well, as I've said before, I'm wondering where He is.
          

18. Psalm 13

How long, O LORD ? Will you forget me forever?  How long will you hide your face from me?

How long must I wrestle with my thoughts  and every day have sorrow in my heart?  How long will my enemy triumph over me?

Look on me and answer, O LORD my God.  Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death;

my enemy will say, "I have overcome him,"  and my foes will rejoice when I fall.

But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation.

I will sing to the LORD, for he has been good to me.
                                       Psalm 13

This is my favourite Psalm, and I had actually forgotten about it until yesterday, when my pastor read it in church.  As he was reading I felt myself get very excited, thinking “The Psalms!  That’s right, I forgot about the Psalms… David, a man after God’s own heart, felt like this at times too.  I might not be totally lost.”

And then last night, I pulled out my Prayers of Walter Brueggemann (I mentioned this book before), and this is a section of the prayer that I read last night (I’m just reading through it page by page):

We wait,
     not clear about our waiting
But filled with a restlessness,
     daring to imagine
     that you are not finished yet –
     so we wait,
     patiently, impatiently,
     restlessly, confidently
     quaking and fearful
     boldly and daring…

     …we wait for you to ache and hurt and care over us
     and with us
     and beyond us…
               (pg. 7)

This waiting… “How long, O Lord?”   I feel like I’ve been waiting forever… I’ve been waiting so long I’m beginning to question whether or not I’ve ever not been waiting… if waiting for God is like waiting for Arthur to return from Avalon – a nice idea, a pleasant but pretend hope, a great and grand story we tell that is probably not true...  

But I am not alone in this.  Others have gone before me and felt the same thing, like David; whose sins include adultery and murder, and whom God still loved and sought after by sending the prophet Nathan to speak truth into his life.  I say that because I know that there is at least one person who reads this blog who will say that the reason God is distant from me is because I am sinning by being gay – not by doing anything, simply by being gay… that I am dishonouring God… And while I disagree with this person, I believe that if he is right, then I want God to tell me, am I sinning by calling myself gay?  I honestly don’t think that’s possible, but I have felt so alone for so long that I am willing to accept that possibility.  And if so, what do I do about it?  Do I simply change my label?  The label isn’t that important anyway, my sexuality is not the only part of me, in fact it isn’t even the most important part of me, but denying it means lying to myself, to others… even to God… so… hmmm… even as I write this out, that doesn’t make sense.  I don’t think that can be right.   So what is it?  How do I fix this?  Is this something I can fix?  Do I just continue waiting… do I spend my life waiting?  How long, O LORD ? Will you forget me forever?  How long will you hide your face from me?

17. Living Alone

Most of the time I like living alone; I can pick what I want to watch on TV without argument, if I don’t feel like doing the dishes I don’t have to, there’s no fighting over who gets the most comfortable chair (except for recently, while I’ve been cat-sitting. I think I’ve won the fight though).  This does not negate the fact that I would like to be married, or at least know that there is the potential for that… but I figure, if I have to be single (I’m still undecided) I might as well enjoy as much of it as I can.

But then something like today comes along and I realize how nice it would be to have another person around.  I took my dining room table in to a hardware store to get it fixed yesterday – actually, I only meant to take the legs in, but when I got there the guy asked me all these questions (about bolts, and fasteners, and L-bracket…uh…stuff) and I had no idea what he was talking about, so he asked me to just bring the table in so he could see for himself.  I spent about half an hour getting the table into my car, even though the legs were not attached… it was just heavy, and I kept thinking that if I had had just one more pair of hands it would have probably only taken about 5 minutes.  But… well, I was able to do it by myself.  But then today, when I went to pick it up again… that was another story.  The guy at the store helped me put the table back into my car, so that wasn’t a problem, but when I got back home all hell broke loose.  I don’t know if I can describe exactly what happened, but I’ll give you the highlights… I dropped the table on my foot – twice.  I swore in front of an old lady – at least twice.   I blocked the hallway in the basement of my building for several minutes, which would have been fine if it wasn’t for the fact that people were trying to get by – they were not mean, but they were also not happy.  Oh, and then there was the fact that everything just fell into pieces in the elevator, and the aforementioned old lady was stuck trying to hold the elevator open while stretching over my body as I tried to get all the pieces (legs, table top, screws, etc…) out so she could go on about her day.  She was actually really sweet, but I still felt really bad.

I know I could call a friend for help, but it seem so frustrating that I have to do that any time I need an extra pair of hands.  I feel like I’d be using them… or that they might feel that I’m using them.  I do it when I have to – I borrowed a friend’s husband to go car shopping with me, and I originally asked some friends to help me fix my table (it turned out I needed something from the hardware store which is why I ended up going there instead), but today was different.  I didn’t need skill, I just needed hands.  

I suppose a roommate would have helped me with the table… but, well, I don’t want a roommate.  I loved having roommates while I had them; but now that I’ve lived alone I don’t want to be living with, and compromising with, and making decisions with a person who is probably not a permanent part of my life… and who, let’s face it, is just a roommate.  If I’m going to go through all of the things that come with living with another human being, I want it be something more significant than that.  The frustrating thing is, that ‘something more significant’ is something that I want… it’s not a ‘take it or leave it’ thing.  It’s not a case of “well, if I can’t have marriage then I guess I’ll just travel a lot”… it’s a case of  “I’ll travel a lot to try and distract myself from the fact that knowing that I’ll never be able to get married makes me miserable.”  

I wish I could just find some hope somewhere, some hope for more than a distraction, more than “sublimating” my desires with other things… That’s been suggested a few times, and to be perfectly honest, I’m not sure what it means... instead of getting married I help the poor?  Is it really an either/or thing?  Are married people not supposed to help the poor?  I mean, that’s ridiculous… so how come they get to help the poor and have a loving spouse at home?  I don’t get it.  

Anyway, those are my thoughts today… all inspired by dropping a table on my foot and saying ‘fuck!’ in front of an old lady.   In my defense, it really hurt!          

16. Exhausted

Did I ever say that I enjoyed looking at “analysis and study of the Greek origins of words”?  Because John Boswell seems determined to prove me out to be a liar.  Of course, he’s dead, so – unless he read my blog from beyond the grave, went back in time and wrote this book; it probably wasn’t his intention to exhaust the part of my brain that enjoys linguistic stuff… bit still… I am 19 pages into his book, and I am worn out!

The book is Same-Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe.  He wrote another book which is apparantly more of an theological study on homosexuality, but… well, as I mentioned, I am a history buff, and when it came time to choose which one of his books I picked up, I couldn’t resist.  I’m pretty sure (fingers crossed, knock on wood, click my heels together…) that the whole book isn’t going to be about Greek (and Latin, and Hebrew, and German…) origins of words, it’s probably just going to be the first chapter (which is called “The Vocabulary of Love and Marriage”).  One of the main problems is that when he is discussing Greek words, he writes them out in actual Greek, which means nothing to me – and once he has explained a word, he feels free to use that Greek word (in actual Greek) later on, which is pretty much impossible for me to follow, because I don’t read Greek.  Most authors would use an anglosized version of whatever Greek word they were talking about, but I guess that’s too low-brow for Boswell.  

The point (I think) that he’s getting at is that you can’t simply translate word for word, especially when translating ancient documents (which is ostensably what this book is going to be based on).  For example, if, several hundred years from now, someone were to be attempting to translate something from the 21st century  and they came across the phrase “slept with”, they could not in good conscience translate that word for word, because it is most likely to have nothing to do with actual sleep, it probably means “had sex with”.    So he is, as a historian, looking at the context of the documents he is reading, and attempting to justify his translations, and therefore his results with this first chapter… I think I may skip it.  I’m just going to trust him, cause… well, he’s much smarter than me and man! it’s exhausting!

I have mentioned before that I am lacking a sense of God’s presence, and the feeling that my prayers bounce back at me.  I don’t really know what to do about this except keep trying.  The problem is that I’ve run out of words… the sum total of my prayers can be said in one word: “Please…”  I sit down (kneel down, lay down) to pray and that is the only word I can think of.  I can only hope that the Spirit is interceding for me.  I picked up a book last night that was given to me by a friend; Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth: Prayers of Walter Brueggemann and I prayed the first prayer in the book, and I think I’ll pray through this book for a while.  Not that I’ve abandoned my “please” prayer, it’s just that I don’t know what else to do… I want His presence in my life… I’m so tired of not knowing.           

15. A Strong Delusion

I have just now finished reading A Strong Delusion: Confronting the “Gay Christian” Movement by Joe Dallas.  I will admit to skimming through some if it, but that’s because he seemed to be ‘confronting’ things that I don’t believe – i.e.: the notion that believing that homosexuality is innate naturally leads to acceptance of homosexual behavior.  If you’ve read any of my blog you know that I don’t believe that – my attempt to discover if homosexual behavior is okay is not revolving around my belief (or inclination to believe) that homosexuality is innate.  Another assumption he makes is that gay Christians for the most part dismiss the Bible as an authority on homosexuality because the writers of Scripture had no knowledge of homosexual orientation as we understand it today.  Maybe he’s right about the fact that most gay Christians hold this view (Mel White definitely does) – he has had more contact with gay Christians than I have, but that is not the perspective I am looking at this from.  I believe that God knew what He was doing when he put the Bible together, so I’m not going to ignore passages of Scripture simply because the authors may not have understood something – God understands everything.  

So… this book left me a bit frustrated, simply because most of it was not dealing with any issues that I’m thinking about… and because it appears (to me) to give an unbalanced view of the gay Christian perspective.  In the entire book there was only one chapter confronting the actual Scriptural arguments that gay Christian theologians use – and he didn’t cover all of them (notably omitting the arguments I found most interesting: the Roman centurion and the meaning of the word eunuch). He has recommended other books that are more exhaustive, so I’m going to see if I can find copies of them.  I am doing my best to be balanced in my reading.  

One of the other things that frustrated me was his terminology.  This is a syntax thing, I suppose, but for the most part he does not make a distinction between homosexuality and homosexual behavior.  This is a distinction that I think must be made, and the language we use is important in making it… but I may have a personal bias in this… in grade 10 when someone spread the rumor around my entire school that I was a lesbian, I hadn’t done anything, and no one was saying that I had… but… well… it was a bad year.  Luckily I changed schools for grade 11.  Anyway, the point is, the distinction must be made.  And while I don’t think he believes that a person can’t be a Christian and be gay, he keeps saying that because he was not careful with his use of language… and I’m kind of sensitive to that because there was a time (a rather large portion of time) when I was worried that I was doomed to hell because of what I was, so I don’t like hearing that.

One of the things he says that I just disagree with is that Christians do not ‘pick and choose’ what passages of Scripture to believe and preach on.  He says that Christians are quick to condemn heterosexual sin as much as homosexual sin.  I just don’t agree with this.  First of all, no one got up in arms and said that legitimizing common-law relationships between heterosexual couples was a sign that our ‘civilization was in crisis’ … and if anyone did, no one really cared.  There were no protests or letter writing campaigns or spiteful sermons, even though most conservative Christians would agree that common-law relationships are a sin.  For some reason it just didn’t bother people that much… maybe because common-law, heterosexual relationships look like marriage.  Who knows.   And divorce… I almost never hear that talked about.  I went to a church in Toronto where both the senior pastor and his wife had been married previously.  And no one asked whether or not either of their previous spouses had committed adultery, therefore leaving them free to marry again. (Matthew 19:8-9).  And then there’s the issue of women in the church.  Most of the verses that talk about this are dismissed as culturally based, and people look to rather obscure things (like the fact that in his letters Paul sometimes puts the woman’s name first. E.g.: Romans 16:3) to prove that women should be allowed to preach, or speak etc…  And yet when gay theologians try to do the same thing they are accused of diluting Scripture.  

I will say that, other than Tony Campolo, this author is the first one I’ve come across to take the conservative view who didn’t feel the need to use some of the more hateful rhetoric I’ve read.   He also does not insist that all homosexuals can change (even though he himself identifies as ‘ex-gay’).  He probably takes the most reasonable stance on this that I’ve read so far actually… saying that just because some people change does not mean that all change, and likewise, just because some people are unable to change does not mean that this applies to everyone.  

One of the things he talks about in an early chapter is how he believes that the legitimization of homosexuality will lead to the legitimization of pedophilia.  Now before you get all upset, he (quite strongly) explains that homosexuals are not pedophiles (something I wish would be shouted from the rooftops until heterosexuals get it in their heads… statistically speaking, their children are safer from sexual abuse with us than they are in their own homes with their heterosexual parents.)  What he is saying is that he believes that lifting the cultural taboo off of homosexuality will lead to lifting of other cultural taboos, including pedophilia.  He cites some quotations from various sources that sound strikingly similar to arguments from gay activists – i.e.: pedophilia is a problem only to those who are distressed by it.  

I wanted to address this because I think that there is a fundamental difference between the taboo on homosexuality and the taboo on pedophilia.  I do believe that it was the lifting of restrictions on sexual activities between heterosexuals during the so-called ‘sexual revolution’ that led to the gay rights movement.  The idea was that whatever two (or more… the 60s were weird) consenting adults did together was their own business.  As long as no one was hurt, why should anyone else care?  I think the fundamental difference is contained in the phrase that you will hear repeated again and again in arguments for gay rights – “consenting adults”.  First of all, consent.  As a society, we have agreed that children cannot consent – not that they are not allowed to, but that they do not have the ability to consent.  And this does not only apply to sexual activity.  I remember learning at one point (after a weird incident involving our phone bill) that any contract I signed before I was 16 years old was not in any way binding because it was recognized that I did not have the ability to make that kind of decision.  I believe that for pedophilia to be accepted it would take a fundamental shift in our perception of what children were capable of.  Another huge paradigm shift that would have to take place is in our perception of what our role as adults is in relation to children.  Now, perhaps I am a bit extreme in this (I do work with children a lot), but I believe that one of the major roles of adults (not just parents, but all adults) is to protect children.  And I believe that most people, whether they would word it like that or not, agree with me.  This is why, when organizations like World Vision, or the Red Cross (by the way, donate if you can) want to elicit donations; they will use the image of children suffering more than any other. Instinctively, as adults, we want to protect them.  This instinctive impulse is the main reason why I do not believe that the taboo on pedophilia will be lifted, no matter what taboos are lifted in the sexual activities of adults… at least not as a result of the lifting of these restrictions.  

Anyway, I just wanted to address that because his argument was so alarming, and at its base, rather faulty (at least to me).  

Frustratingly, this author (like Stott) also does not offer anything up as hope for gay Christians.  He tells his story, but it is just his story.  He was gay, he is now not, and so he’s married and happy.  But, as he already stated, this is not going to be the case for everyone.  The thing is, I’m realizing, is that none of the conservative authors (with the exception of Tony Campolo – and even then, it’s only one chapter in an entire book) are writing to gay Christians, they are writing to straight Christians to tell them how to argue against pro-gay theology – this book in particular, as evidenced by the hilarious mock conversations he puts at the end of his chapters.  This does not really help me all that much.  

Next I think I’ll read Boswell’s book on gay marriages in the middle ages… I’m kind of inclined to save it for last, because I’m so excited about it.  I hadn’t realized how much of a historical text it was, and, well… I’m a history buff.  But I don’t really have much else to read on this subject on hand… well, except for Women, Slaves and Homosexuals… which… oy.  I’ll get to it.  I will… just not now.  It’s just too heavy.

14. I Yam What I Yam

Words of wisdom from Popeye the Sailor Man.

The friend I mentioned before came over the other night and I told her I was gay… after two hours of stalling.  The problem, of course, is that there is rarely a natural segue into coming out… you know… “It’s interesting that you mentioned your husband – he’s a man, right?  You like men?  Well… funny thing…”

Wouldn’t work.  It always has to come right out of the blue.  So, after she and I had played pool for an hour and a half (she won all three games… I’m going to blame it on the fact that I was nervous), she was about to leave and I just said “There’s something I need to tell you.”

She freaked out, thinking I was going to tell her I was leaving the country again… which I’m thinking about doing.  I hemmed and hawed for a few moments and then just said it.  “I’m gay.”

Her response was not quite what I’d expected.  She tilted her head to one side and said, “I know.”

I’ve gotten that response more than once, and it always makes me nervous when it comes from straight people because I don’t know exactly what it means.

Anyway, she asked me what I was doing about it (again, I’m not entirely sure what she meant), so I showed her the books I am reading, and this blog – I actually showed her the entry I’d written about her.  She laughed when she got to the part about my not having been in love with her, saying “I’m not your type.”  Which was funny, because she may have been joking, but she was right – she’s not my type.  It makes me wonder how much she knew back then, when I was doing my best to hide it from myself… even while I was going out for walks in the middle of the night to scream up at God because He wouldn’t fix me.  

The other funny thing that she said was that she was relieved.  She’d been worried about me ever since I’d come back from Ireland 5 years ago, because she knew I was hiding something from her, but she couldn’t figure out what.  She is officially the first person who has been “relieved” that I’m gay.  

…well, maybe not relieved that I’m gay… relieved that that’s all it was.  I hadn’t had sex, or become a drug addict… or something else even worse.  

One thing about this particular friend is that she says exactly what she thinks, and so she felt the need to clarify something.  When she had said that she knew I was gay, what she meant was that she knew that I had thought that about myself for a long time, but she’s not entirely sure it’s true.  She said this knowing that it would sound dismissive, and even offensive… but I appreciated her saying it out loud, because I get the impression that a few of the people I’ve told feel the same way.  We talked about it for a little while, and I told her I’d probably write about it on my blog, so don’t worry, I’m not doing this behind anyone’s back.  

Actually, she’s not the first person to say that, at least not in so many words.  Most Christians see homosexuality as a symptom of something – effectively saying “Oh, you’re not really gay, you just didn’t have a father figure.”  “You’re not gay, your mother was overbearing.”  “You’re not gay, you were traumatized as a child.”  

I can’t tell you how annoyed I get hearing things like this.  It’s like when white people insist that I’m not “really black” because I’m light skinned… like they somehow know more about me by looking at me than I know by living in my own skin.

It’s not that I dismiss those theories entirely… but… well… I mostly do.  I realize I fall into the relatively small group of people who fit perfectly into the theories that most Christians believe make people gay – absent father, overbearing mother, sexual abuse as a child… I have to say that this annoys me, I don’t like being a cliché.  Besides, I don’t think these theories hold water.  Most gay people I know, and those I’ve simply met in passing, come from two parent homes.  And (sadly) I know several people who were abused as children and came from single-parent homes, and they are all straight.  Not to mention the fact that the theory about absent fathers and overbearing mothers turning people gay is used to apply to men, the explanation doesn’t really work when you use it on women.  

One of the women I told insisted that there was no way homosexuality was innate, despite the evidence that it exists in nature (Have you read that study about the gay rams? Or seen that disturbingly graphic documentary about the lesbian deer? Or heard about the gay penguins in that zoo?) because we, as humans, are made in God’s image and there is no way homosexuality would fall into that because it is outside of God’s natural order.  I didn’t respond, because I am much more nervous and timid when speaking (which is one of the reasons I like writing so much), but that makes no sense.  All sorts of things happen, and are innate, that are outside of God’s design.  One of my best friends was born blind… was that part of God’s design?  Cystic Fibrosis – which is written in the genes – is that part of God’s natural order?  We live in a fallen world – things happen.  I am not going to join with Mel White (who wrote Stranger at the Gate) and say my homosexuality is my “unique gift”… I’m barely coming out from the shadow of calling it my curse.  I think it just is.  It happens.  There is some suggestion (although inconclusive) that it is genetic, there is some suggestion (although inconclusive) that it is hormonal, and there is some suggestion (although inconclusive) that environmental factors play a part.  No one knows for sure.  And it is blindingly arrogant of Christians to insist that they know, when they don’t.  

I think part of the reason people insist on these theories is because, for the most part, straight people can’t fathom being gay… so they try and explain it away.  It’s kind of like what happens to my blind friend when sighted people say things to her like “Well, all your other senses must be heightened,” trying to explain away her blindness by suggesting that her other senses sort of sucked up her sight.  We joke about it, but I know it annoys the hell out of her.  People who can see can’t fathom being blind, so they want an explanation that will make sense to them, and make them more comfortable… like it’s not that she’s missing one of the 5 senses, it’s that it’s been misplaced.  

One of the other reasons I hate hearing the “You’re not really gay, it’s just________(fill in the blank)” is because, inherent in those statements is the idea that if I just tried hard enough, or prayed hard enough, or believed hard enough, or went to this or that program, or had enough therapy I could just get over it.  And as long as I’m still identifying as gay it means that I’m lazy, or without faith.  It also opens the door for all the hate that is lashed out at gay people.  It’s like the difference between the way someone on the extreme right and someone on the extreme left would look at a person begging on the street. The person on the far left thinks “This situation is beyond their control.  They need my compassion.”  The person on the extreme right thinks “They are lazy, if they would just work hard enough they could pull themselves together.  They don’t deserve my compassion or my respect because it’s their own fault.” It’s not an exact metaphor, but I think it gets my point across.

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that I don’t know why I’m gay.  I just know that I am.  It took me a really long time to accept it, and accepting it gave me such relief.  I wish other people could accept it too.                    

13. Blog Day, 2005!

I didn’t know there was such a thing as Blog Day until I read about it on Two World Collision, where Eric had some very nice things to say about me and my blog that made me blush.  I want to highly recommend his blog too… I think it’s really interesting that he and I are starting from basically the same place, and yet we seem to be leaning in different directions.  He’s also just an amazing writer, so his blog is good to read anyway.  Plus, I am so grateful to have found someone who is on the same journey as me; especially someone as intelligent and kind as Eric (at least I think he’s intelligent and kind… it could all be an illusion! *smile*).  

From what I read on Eric’s blog, I think the rules of Blog Day are that I’m supposed to recommend blogs I like. Unfortunately, I’m really new to the blogging world, and there are only two blogs I read on a regular basis… Eric’s, which I have already mentioned, and Bad Christian (both of which I list in my links).  Bad Christian is also an awesome site, with some really thought provoking writing.  

One thing I wanted to write about, that has nothing to do with Blog Day, is just a little clarification on my last entry.   I just wanted to say that I do not necessarily support all of the things that gay rights activists are lobbying for – on most of the issues I am undecided (except for the marriage issue, which I have already mentioned).  For example, I don’t know how I feel about getting “My Two Mommies” into elementary schools.  What I was trying to say was that the “religious right” needs to understand that the motives of gay rights activists are not villainous… and if they continue to attempt to paint gay people as villains they will severely hurt any chance they might have of sharing the love of Christ with them.  

One of my best friends is a gay woman who has been with her girlfriend for over 5 years now. We’ve been friends since high school and she is not a Christian, but as I mentioned before, I have always been very open about my faith.  As the religious right has become louder and more vitriolic, I have felt her pulling away, and it saddens me.  I have tried to stop this, but I don’t know if I can.  The problem, you see, is that all she hears in the diatribes of our religious leaders is hate.  She does not hear any reasoned arguments, or moral objections… just hate.  How are we, as Christians, supposed to share the love and grace of Christ with a group of people who have every reason to assume we hate them?  

I have been including myself in the group of Christians, because I am one, but I have felt that hate too.  And I think I may have seen even worse examples of Christian ignorance and hatred, because I am on the inside – and I am sort of undercover.  I have heard Christians say, in the wake of a gay bashing, that they wished they had been there so they could have joined in.  I have heard Christians say that we should “ship all the faggots to a deserted island somewhere so they can all infect each other with AIDS and die.”  And I have heard other Christians laugh politely when they hear such things, because they don’t think it’s that all that wrong to think them.  

Anyway, that was my point in my last blog.  Sorry to have turned it into a lecture.  Happy Blog Day, 2005 everyone!    

12. Venting, Part II

I picked up the book What’s Wrong with Same-Sex Marriage tonight, and now I’m angry.  I actually don’t know if I’m even going to bother finishing it.  It is so much worse than that chapter in Sex and the Supremacy of Christ that I wrote about before.  The first 2 chapters are about this “Gay Agenda” bullshit that I keep hearing about…the “Homosexual Menace” that is threatening the very fabric of society.  Ugh.  I’ve already sworn once, I’m going to try not to do it again.

I grew up inside this mentality… my mom has been a massive force behind getting gay-friendly curriculums out of schools and campaigning against gay marriage.  She has organized letter-writing campaigns, marches, and anything else she can think of for years.  And before you ask – yes, she knows I’m gay… she prefaces any conversation we have about this with the phrase “I know you have had your struggles, but…”  The reason I mention this is because I want it to be clear that I understand the fear behind all this crap that the “Religious Right” is pumping out… there was a time when I even believed it… probably more vehemently than most people.  I think it was probably an attempt to push what I knew about myself further and further down where no one, including myself, could see it.

I just wish that these people would stop their ranting and raving just for a moment and just try to see things from another perspective… try to understand a few things.

1.  Most gay people, Christian or non, have tried to be straight at one point or another in their lives.  The desire to be accepted by society comes after a long struggle to accept themselves.  The insistence that gay people can change “through the power of Christ” has led many gay Christians to abandon the church, or even to commit suicide, because Christ, for some reason, wouldn’t change them.  I obviously cannot speak for every gay person, but I know that most people that come out of groups like Exodus are not “successful” in changing their orientation… and to be perfectly honest, even some of those who claim to have succeeded I question, simply based on some of the things I’ve heard them say.  The first “ex-gay” man I ever met could not stop pointing out hot guys he saw as we walked down the street, saying things like “Oh man, if I was still gay I’d be all over that guy.”  Once I would have let slip by, but it happened over and over again.  I will point out again that I do believe in an omnipotent God, and so if He chooses, I believe He can make a gay person straight… but for some reason, He doesn’t seem to do this very often.

2.  The supporters of same-sex marriage are not trying to destroy marriage.  They do not believe that homosexuality is immoral, so in their minds trying to redefine marriage to include same-sex couples is no different than when marriage had to be redefined to allow people of different races to marry, or to disallow people of certain ages to marry.   “Redefinitions” of marriage do not, by default, undermine the institution of marriage.  I realize that some have a moral objection to homosexuality… but they need to realize that not everyone has this objection, so their perspective will be different.  This might at least open the way for some civil dialogue… something that has been severely lacking during this debate.

3.  Quoting extremists from the gay-rights movement is no different than when the “liberal media” focuses on extreme and ridiculous comments from Christian media figures – like Pat Robertson calling for the murder of another human being.  Christians everywhere are annoyed by things like this, and yet they do the same thing – like when some obscure, radical, gay theorist says something ridiculous, like that marriage is archaic and outdated, they rush to put it in print.  And I will add this – more insane and ignorant things come out of the mouths of prominent Christians than from gay figures.  For example, Sponge Bob Square Pants?  Not gay!  He is a cartoon sponge that lives in a pineapple at the bottom of the sea!  James Dobson is well respected in the Christian community, but when he goes around saying that cartoon sponges are a part of a ‘homosexual conspiracy’, I am embarrassed to carry the same label as him.

4.  Sentences like “Nobody is entitled to respect for behavior of which we don’t approve” are blatantly ridiculous.  I do not approve of the fact that certain Muslim women are forced (or choose) to wear those long black robes, with black veils over their faces, no matter what the temperature (and it can get pretty hot in Ottawa); but they, and their husbands and their clergy are entitled to my respect.  I don’t approve of this behavior at all, and yet I respect their right to engage in it, and, incidentally, I respect them for holding to their convictions, especially in the face of the discrimination that many Muslims today are victims of.

5.  The push to have gay people represented in school curriculums is not some covert attempt to “recruit” children into a “deviant lifestyle”.  It is merely an attempt to achieve representation.  I think a lot of white people might not understand this, but growing up as a black girl in western Canada, I never once saw myself in any of the things we read at school.  As an adult who works with children a lot, I can’t help but smile whenever I’m reading a book to some children that has people of different races represented… I just wish they’d been around when I was a kid.   I realize that no six year old child is going to hear a story in which a gay person is represented and think “Hey, that’s me!”, but then I doubt that there are any minorities in many of the schools in rural Manitoba… but I still think there should be minorities in their books so that when they encounter one they don’t react with shock and hate.  I realize that sounds extreme, but I was often the only black person – or one of only two or three – at school, or at church… and I got all kinds of reactions, ranging from mild curiosity to unreasoned hate.

6.  Inciting panic with statements like “…their agenda is to adopt all of the unwanted children of America to bring them up with their lifestyle with their way of thinking” do nothing but fuel the hate that is behind much of the violence that gay people are often the victims of.  Most Christians would not condone gay-bashings (at least I hope not) and yet they happily make statements like this that have no foundation in fact and do nothing but make people feel threatened and justified in lashing out at the first gay person they see.

7.  This last one is not that big a deal, I suppose, but it annoyed me.  In What’s Wrong with Same-Sex Marriage they quoted some gay activists as having said that they should “…portray gays as victims of circumstances and oppression, not as aggressive challengers.  In any campaign to win over the public, gays must be portrayed as victims in need of protection so that straights will not be inclined to refuse to adopt the role of protector…we must forego the temptation to strut our gay pride publicly to such an extent that we will undermine our victim image.”  

This does sound pretty calculated and, well… devious, But I have been to Christian seminars, and seen books on “Friendship evangelism” that sound just as bad, if not worse… seminars on “how to become friends with non-Christians in order to convert them”… how manipulative is that?  They teach how to become a trusted confidant, and how to introduce Christ into any conversation.  I am a big believer in being authentic… all of my non-Christian friends know that I’m a Christian, and how important my faith is to me… and if they ask, I am more than willing to talk about it.  But I am not merely friends with them “in order to convert them”; I don’t have an ulterior motive.  I like them.  I’d like them to come to Christ, but I’ll be friends with them regardless.  This is just one example, and I’m sure if I thought for a little while I could think of other things that I have heard in the church that would sound awful to anyone outside of the church.  This is just a classic case of speck versus log.


Okay, I’m done my rant now… it’s out of my system.  I think I can sleep.                              

11. Pride Day at Church

This morning I went to a different church than normal.  I had called the “Gayline” to ask if they knew of any gay-friendly churches in the city, and they could only think of one – an Anglican Church right downtown.  It was a church I had heard of, one that apparently doesn’t believe in the divinity of Christ.  I had no intention of going to a church like that, but I called them anyway, because I had heard that they ran a group called “Dignity” for GLBT Christians.  Turns out that they don’t, but the lady on the phone told me that this Sunday was Pride Day (which came as a shock to me, Pride used to be in early July, they just changed it this year) and so the Sunday morning service would be a special service for the GLBT community.  After quite a bit of going back and forth in my head, I decided to go.  And now I’m telling you about it.

First of all, let me say that I am not an Anglican.  I appreciate liturgy, but I must admit I find it hard to follow.  I should have sat much further back than I did because I spent a significant part of the service not having any idea what was going on, or what was being said… or even if it was being said in English (occasionally, they would speak French – Ottawa is a bilingual city).  For the most part I just sort of cheated and copied the guy beside me, but half the time he seemed to have things memorized… I went to an Anglican church when I lived in Ireland, and actually got used to it then, but it all appears to have left me.

Secondly, I would say that I saw no evidence that they do not believe in the divinity of Christ.  Granted, He did not come up much during the sermon – but I’ll explain that later.  Christ was all over the rest of the service, but I suppose it is possible that it was merely part of the liturgy.

The sermon, as I alluded to, was not much of a sermon, but this was due to the fact that it was Pride Day.  The sermon was given by a lesbian member of the church, and it was basically just about the struggles that GLBT (by the way, that stands for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Trans-People) people go through, and how the Anglican Church has responded, or not responded, to them.  I’d like to go on another Sunday and hear how a regular sermon there sounds.

So… how did it feel to be in a gay-friendly church?  Well… odd, at first.  It was Pride Day, and there were people with rainbow flags all over the place, and rainbow shirts and hats dotted the congregation.  That was the first thing I noticed.  I was greeted by 2 lesbians, and as I walked down the aisle I couldn’t help but notice all the gay people – obvious gay people! – sitting in Church.  I had known that there would be gay people there, but I guess I hadn’t been able to imagine it.  It shocked me.  The next thing I noticed was that the priest and… uh… associate priests (?) were wearing white robes with rainbow coloured…uh…vestments (??  I have no idea what the name of these things are… the sort of ribbon type thing that hangs over their shoulders? Like I said, I’m not Anglican).  This seemed a bit over the top to me, but… well, it was Pride Day.  I’ve been at churches on Canada Day and seen Canadian flags all over the place, and the pastor up at the pulpit wearing a maple leaf tie, so it’s not that odd.  Anyway, I sat there, listening to the overture, and admiring the architecture, and then the priest gave the greeting.  “I’d like to extend a special welcome to all the gay, lesbian, bisexual and trans-gendered people who have joined us today and are a part of God’s wonderfully diverse creation.”

I almost started crying.  I hadn’t known how much hearing gay people – and by extension, myself – welcomed from the pulpit of a church would move me.   And to hear us referred to as a part of God’s creation – instead of as a deviation from, or a threat to… oh man.  I’m getting kind of choked up now just thinking about it.  Like I said, the sermon wasn’t much… it was nothing I hadn’t heard before (although, not in church), but I did keep welling up with tears during it, because I kept remembering that greeting.

And then the weird thing happened.  The service was almost over, and we were all standing up, after having read something from the liturgy book in French.  I was trying to sneak peeks at the guy next to me, trying to figure out what page we were going to next, and also trying to translate what we had just read in my head, and in my fiddling I dropped my liturgy book under the pew.  I was trying to figure out how I was going to get it when all of a sudden everyone sat down, so I sat with them, and bent over and grabbed my book.  The priest was still talking and I was half listening when he said something about visitors standing up… so, in obedience, I stood up… and immediately realized that he had said that visitors should stand up if they wanted to introduce themselves… but I was already standing up and he was already beside me with a microphone.  I was not the only one standing, but the other priest was getting the other people.  There was no way to sit down again without making an even bigger spectacle of myself.    The priest asked me what my name was, and put the microphone in front of my face… so I said my name… and the microphone was still there.  So… I blurted out the first thing that came into my head “It’s been a real blessing to be in a welcoming congregation, thank you…”  As these words were coming out of my mouth, I realized that I was basically coming out to an entire congregation, which felt weird to say the least.  I sat down, and started to cry, which was kind of embarrassing… but a bit of a relief because I had been holding back throughout the service.  And then the service ended, and because I had stood up I guess people felt free to come and talk to me, so I was inundated with greetings, and welcomes.  And if they hadn’t figured out I was gay from what I said, there was no way to get around the question of how I found their church without mentioning that I had called the Gayline, so I was definitely out.  And nobody cared.  That was incredible.

After the service I decided that for the first time ever, I was going to go and watch the Pride Parade for myself, not just watch it from the safety and anonymity of my home.  It was nice to be surrounded by gay people, even though I didn’t know any of them.  The parade itself was nice, if somewhat muted… and I have to say that watching it made me mad.  Not at the parade, but at what I had seen of the parades in the past when watching the summary of them on the news, or seeing the pictures from the parades in Christian newspapers.  I had expected to see drag queens and buttless chaps and flamboyant half-naked men making out everywhere, because that’s what I’d been led to believe would be there.  Most of the people were gay, that’s true, but they were incredibly normal.  There  were a few drag queens, and one pair of buttless chaps (on an unfortunately old man… it was unpleasant), but mostly it was normal looking people marching with their drama groups, their reading groups, their health organizations, and even their ferret rescue organizations (I’m not kidding… I have no idea what the Ferret Rescue Society of Ottawa and Area was doing marching in the Gay Pride parade, but they were there).  It was families with their children (both straight families and same-sex families), it was churches (2 churches actually, I recognized some people from the church I had been to this morning), it was youth organizations, and radio stations.  I did get handed a condom, but it was very discreetly wrapped, and I noticed that they were very specific with who they handed them out to… no children, or even teens were given any.  I couldn’t get over how incredibly normal, and even dull the parade was… not the spectacle of debauchery I had sort of believed it would be.

I didn’t go to any of the festivities afterwards, so maybe that’s where the debauchery happens, who knows.  I have been to the big circuit party before (or what I tend to call the Big Gay Party) that they hold every Pride – when one of my best friends from Ireland came to visit me – he’s gay, and so I made the excuse that I was doing it to entertain him.  But even that party was not the crazy scene of men having anonymous sex in back rooms that is depicted in shows like Queer as Folk.   It was just dancing.

I went back to my own church this evening, and it was a bit of a relief to be back in a service where I knew what was going on, I could understand everything that was being said and I knew the songs… but I did feel a bit sad.  I kept thinking that for the most part, most people at my church would not think that I, as a gay woman, am a part of “God’s wonderfully diverse creation”… they probably believe that I am a deviation from it, I am outside of God’s natural order, I don’t fit in with what God designed.  So I was already sad by the time we began to close the service with a few songs.  One of the songs we sang was “Breathe”.  The words are as follows:

This is the air I breathe
This is the air I breathe
Your holy presence, living in me

This is my daily bread
This is my daily bread
Your very word, spoken to me

And I, I’m desperate for You
And I, I’m lost without You

I began to cry again.  I want God so desperately, I need to know that He’s there, that He’s here with me now… and I have no idea.  I can’t feel His presence at all, and I know that feelings aren’t everything; we can’t be guided by them.  But I would like something, some sort of assurance that He’s still with me.  My prayers bounce back to me as if the skies were made of glass, and I don’t know how to change that.  I remember the parable that Jesus told of the persistent widow (Luke 18), and so I persist.  But I do wonder how long I can endure like this.

I realize that that was a bit of a non-sequitor, but that’s what my day has been…              

10. The Children are Free

I just finished reading The Children are Free: Reexamining the Biblical Evidence on Same-Sex Relationships… like 10 minutes ago. So you are going to get my fresh, unvarnished thoughts. I will probably have to read the book again to digest it properly… I read it today in about 2 hours. It’s a nice, easy read – not like Women, Slaves and Homosexuals which is on my list and terrifies me… it’s just so big, and academic. But I’ll get to it. Another point on the plus side for The Children are Free is that it didn’t cause me to have an emotional breakdown, which I appreciate.

The first thing I will note is that this book had a more thorough analysis and study of the Greek origins of words than I have encountered thus far in my reading, which I liked. I find that sort of thing interesting, just in general… you know, where do words and phrases come from, how have their meanings evolved over time, what did they mean in their original context, what is the linguistic root… all that stuff is interesting to me. So, aside from my obvious need and desire to understand the meanings of the passages in Scripture about homosexuality, I was intrigued.

Most of it was stuff I had heard before – discussion of the words arsenokoitai and malakoi, which have been traditionally interpreted as homosexuals, homosexual offenders, or effeminate. This book had a more in depth analysis than I had read, but the conclusions were basically the same as I’d heard before… both of those Greek words were so rare even in the time the Bible was written, that it is difficult to interpret them properly, and if you look at them carefully, and in context, they seem more likely to apply to the practice of pederasty (grown men with young boys) or male prostitution than to homosexuals in general.

The one I found most interesting was the analysis of the word “eunuch” in Scripture. They look at Scripture and to other literature of the time period and come to the conclusion that ‘eunuch’ as used in Scripture referred to a class of people that would have been assumed to be homosexual. I’m not going to explain the whole thing, because… well, they wrote a perfectly fine section on it, and I would end up quoting the entire thing, but the conclusion that they come to is that to refer to yourself as a eunuch, or to be called a eunuch would be akin to saying that you are a male hair dresser from San Francisco. Not all of them are gay… but, well… people would make that assumption because most of them are.

Using this interpretation, it makes Jesus’ statement about eunuchs take on a whole new meaning. Jesus refers to three classification of eunuchs – those who have chosen to be eunuchs (those who choose celibacy), those who are made eunuchs (those who have been castrated… or had their genitals in some other way mutilated), and those who were born eunuchs. According to the authors of this book, when Jesus referred to those who were born eunuchs, he was referring to people who were born gay. Again, they use contemporary passages from Jewish literature to back this up. I’m not sure what to think of that, but it’s interesting.

Now, the one thing I would say about that is that if it is true, I am not sure about the conclusion they come to… Jesus makes this statement about eunuchs after talking about marriage, and how people are not to get divorced and remarried – how that is adultery. The disciples, I guess had commitment issues, because their response to this is that maybe no one should get married. In response to this, Jesus makes this statement about eunuchs: “Jesus replied, "Not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given. For some are eunuchs because they were born that way; others were made that way by men; and others have renounced marriage because of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it." Matthew 19:11-12.

My inclination would be to interpret that passage to mean that eunuchs (whether man made or born that way) are probably not to marry. The authors of this book interpret the passage as referring to Jesus’ previous reference to a marriage being between a man and a woman. I’ll have to read that section again, and probably do some personal study. It’s an interesting idea.

The other thing this book talks about a lot is how gays are portrayed in Scripture… which was kind of a ‘wow’ moment for me. A few years ago it occurred to me that gay people are in no way a new phenomenon, so there must have been gay people in Israel in the time of the Bible. This is the first time I actually considered the possibility that David and Jonathan might have been in love, something I have since come to believe is probably the case. Their relationship just reads like a love story to me. So, the authors of this book talk about David and Jonathan, as well as Ruth and Naomi. Now, I have heard the argument that Ruth and Naomi were a couple before, but to be perfectly honest, I don’t really see it… not as much as I see it in the story of David and Jonathan. I will say that I have heard the book of Ruth described by conservative Christians as a romantic love story between Ruth and Boaz, but that I don’t see at all. I think there is more evidence for romantic love between Ruth and Naomi than between Ruth and Boaz… but well, it’s just not as convincing to me.

Where I disagree with the authors is that I do not see evidence of a sexual relationship between either David and Jonathan or Ruth and Naomi – although they do make a plausible argument for a sexual relationship between David and Jonathan. It’s just not that convincing to me.

The one that blew me away was the story of the Roman centurion and his servant. Again, using the original Greek, they make a very convincing argument that the ‘servant’ in question was actually the Roman centurion’s male lover, or spouse… and that Jesus would have known this from the language the centurion used to describe his servant. They cite Jesus’ immediate willingness to heal the servant, without condemning the relationship as evidence that Jesus Himself endorses committed, loving, monogamous relationships between people of the same gender. It’s probably the best argument I’ve heard so far. I will probably have to do my own study on that part too… it’s really interesting.

There’s lots of other stuff in there, and like I said, I will probably have to read it again, because I whipped through it so fast, but it is really interesting.

I will say that I still ‘feel’ that celibacy (however miserable that makes me) is the answer… but I don’t think that means anything. I know that there are Christians who would rejoice in that, saying that ‘feeling’ was the Spirit’s witness, telling me the way to go… but these same Christians would tell a gay person who ‘felt’ that gay relationships were okay that they can’t live by their feelings, that feelings can be deceiving… so, I continue my search for truth and hope.

9. Pat Robertson Wants Me Dead

Last night I dreamt that Pat Robertson was trying to kill me.

That is in no way relevant to anything I was planning to write about, it’s just funny.

Anyway… tomorrow afternoon, I’m getting together with one of my best friends. She was my roommate for 2 years while I was in university… while I was in the deepest, darkest part of my depression. The reason I mention that is because I’m thinking about telling her that I’m gay tomorrow. She has been away in Europe for 2 years, and I had decided that I was never going to tell her, but now that she’s back it just makes me sad.

The problem, and the reason I had decided not to tell her, is that our friendship when we lived together was a little…a little odd. I was severely depressed, and she was my most constant and affectionate friend. And I clung to her like a life preserver. I’ve often wondered if I would have made it through those years if she hadn’t been around.

The day she told me she was getting married I threatened to kill myself… sort of. I told her I no longer saw the point of living, and then went out and bought a bunch of sleeping pills. But the pills were not to kill myself, they were actually just to put me to sleep so I would stop thinking about killing myself – at night is when my thoughts can get their darkest.

I wasn’t in love with her or anything, I was way too wrapped up in my own garbage to have those kind of feelings for anyone … and oddly enough, during the second year we lived together I had a crush on a guy – a crush I manufactured after my therapist asked me if I thought I was gay… but… well, it was still real, after a fashion. Anyway, it wasn’t her engagement that threw me, it was the statement that came right after that announcement – that she would be moving out at the end of the year. I couldn’t see how I would be able to make it without her around telling me that I was worth loving.

The unfortunate thing is that I know what it looks like… and that makes it harder to tell her than it has ever been to tell anyone. But the idea of never telling her no longer feels right.

We’ll see… I have until tomorrow afternoon to decide.

ADDENDUM:
My friend had to cancel her visit, so this decision is now postponed until…well, until further notice. Oh, and I just noticed that my blog is now too big to fit on one page… cool! In case you are not blog savvy, you can click on any of the post titles to the right (under the heading “Previous Posts”) to see any that don’t show up on this page.

8. Why

I’ve decided, in light of my little breakdown yesterday, to take a bit of a break from my reading. Probably only for a day or so though, because The Children are Free is sitting here, begging me to read it, and I don’t think I can hold off for very long.

I was thinking a bit about why I am doing this… why I am doing all of this investigation. I suppose it seems obvious to many of you who are reading this, but it’s kind of a new thing for me. I’ve been out (to myself at least) since I was 25, so it has taken me 5 years to actually try and figure this thing out. That’s kind of crazy.

I think the reason it took so long is fear. I kind of assumed that the answer would be celibacy, and I didn’t want to find that out for sure. I did look up gay Christian sites before, but I never looked beyond their homepages, for fear of being tempted… and I made a point of avoiding any gay functions, Christian or non… It sounds so ridiculous to me now. How I expected to live my life in such isolation from the only people with any real hope of understanding what I’m going through, I have no idea.

Well, that’s not exactly true… I have a small idea. I had this ‘hope’ that maybe I would die soon, before I had to actually figure it out. Before I had to face the prospect that God might deny me something I wanted (and sometimes felt I needed) so desperately.

Anyway, after a while it occurred to me that I’m probably not going to die anytime soon, so I have to face this. And as I faced it, I couldn’t hide from the fact that the prospect of a life of celibacy (I always feel the need to point out that celibacy means much more than a lack of sex to me) makes me miserable…and assuming that God loves me, He must want more for me than a life of misery, so maybe I am wrong about this celibacy thing. Or maybe there is hope in it somewhere that I cannot see.

So anyway, why am I doing this? I guess I’m just looking for hope.

7. Breakdown

So, today I read John Stott’s Same-Sex Partnerships? A Christian Perspective… and had a breakdown. I haven’t broken down sobbing like that in months. Oh, I’ve cried, but not that really undignified sobbing with the gasping and all the fluids leaking uncontrollably from my face. What made me sob? Well, I’ll get to that. First I’d like to examine his arguments.

He starts off by saying that homosexuals are human, which frightened me… I appreciate what he was trying to do, to make sure that Christians don’t demonize us, but the need for that is frightening. Anyway, he proceeds to outline the prooftexts that people use to say that homosexuality is a sin, and he includes Sodom and Gomorrah in that list, which just frustrates me. I grew up in the church, and loved all those Old Testament stories, and I never once thought of the tale of Sodom and Gomorrah as an anti-gay story – and believe me, I was hyper aware of anything to do with homosexuality that came up in church or in the Bible. The story of Sodom and Gomorrah was always a story about violence to me, and when I got older I realized it was a story about rape.

Anyway, he sets up (sort of) the arguments supporting same-sex relationships and then proceeds to knock them down. I say “sort of” because he seems to present only the weakest portions of the arguments for same-sex marriage – for example, he says that proponents of same-sex marriage will say that the sin for which Sodom and Gomorrah was destroyed was the sin of inhospitality. That sounds so weak, and it’s just not true… at least not from what I’ve read… most proponents of same-sex marriage will say the sin was sexual in nature…but it was rape, not homosexuality – and by anyone’s standards, rape is a sin. I found this section of the book rather weak. The next section, however, was another story.

The next section was about how we must look at the marriage that God ordained in the Bible (not necessarily the marriages that are portrayed in the Bible) as the standard. This argument, I must admit, has some merit to me – it reminds me of how bank tellers (I’m told) are not shown counterfeit currency, but are made to study the authentic bills, so that when the fake bills come across their path they will see them for what they are. The problem(s) I have with this is that we do not see too many “authentic” marriages in Scripture… actually; there are none that come to mind right now. Also, the verses that he uses to describe this God-ordained marriage are verses I’ve always read as descriptions, or background, not as prescriptive passages in which every word must be taken into consideration. (i.e.: Genesis 2:24 “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be united to his wife…”). The last problem I have with this argument is that it seems too… misty, or something. There doesn’t seem to be much substance to it.

And then there was the part that ticked me off… the part about gay people being more promiscuous than straight people – like we are some how incapable of monogamy. This is a stereotype that just makes me mad. All the gay people I know are in long-term, committed relationships – serial monogamists, if you will… much like most non-married, non-Christian, straight people. As for those gay people who are promiscuous, well it is usually only for a time, before they settle down…again, like most single, non-Christian, straight people. I’m not denying that those anonymous sexual encounters don’t happen, but I can tell you that I’ve heard way more stories about anonymous sex from my straight friends than from my gay ones... I actually can’t think of a single story like that from any of the gay people I know or have met in the past. This theory about gay people being more promiscuous is something I think Christians like to think so that they can justify focusing on us instead of the sexual immorality that exists among straight people. Somehow gay people are ‘more immoral’ than those kids who strip for beads at Mardi Gras, or the ones who video tape them and put it on the internet, or, well,…I could go on…

So, what made me break down? As I’ve said before, while I’m not sure what I believe right now, I think I’ll probably end up on the side of celibacy, which, as I’ve already said, does not make me happy. Well, on page 81, he says “At the heart of the homosexual condition is a deep loneliness, the natural human hunger for mutual love, a search for identity, and a longing for completeness.” With the exception of the identity issue (I’m not sure why people are always thinking that gay people have identity issues), I see all of that in my future if I choose a life of celibacy…so what does Stott offer as hope? Well…basically, he offers the pity of straight people. I suppose he would use the word ‘compassion’, but it’s pity… or at least it read like that to me. He mentions how we will need a confidant, pastors, therapists, a therapy group, etc… all of this just to maintain a life that will still be lonely. This, to me, is not hope at all. And, of course, he mentions the hope of heaven, which is wonderful… but, well… shouldn’t there be some hope here? I mean, shouldn’t my life be more than just days passing by as I wait impatiently to die? I’m already feeling that. I don’t want to live another 40 years in this same emotional place. I don’t want a life that is ‘less than’ that of my straight friends. I don’t want a life where they take turns having me over for Christmas and Thanksgiving. I don’t want a life where when I die; I just melt away, as if I had never existed.

Anyway, that’s what made me break down.

I have been praying such desperate prayers lately, asking God to help me with this, show me what His will is, what He wants me to do…even to just let me know He’s there. I feel like I’m flailing through this alone, and it sucks. It’s like God’s gone deaf, or He’s ignoring me…or (and I can’t even believe I’m saying this) He isn’t there after all. I guess I’m having a bit of a crisis of faith.

6. Final Thoughts on Stranger at the Gate

So I finished Stranger at the Gate… and I have to say it left me wanting. I think part of the reason for that is that I hadn’t realized that it was merely a biography. I had thought it would also include some sort of Biblical theology or arguments to support the position that gay marriage was okay.

As a biography, I suppose, it is perfectly fine. The pastor who I borrowed it from told me she’d thought it was good in that it raised her level of compassion for what gay people, especially gay Christians go through…so I suppose it’s good in that regard too. I guess you can tell I wasn’t all that impressed. My problem, you see, is that I think of marriage as sacred – my issue has never been if it would be okay for me to have sex with a woman, my issue has been whether or not it would be okay for me to marry a woman (the sex, of course, would be included). And while I sympathized with what Mel White was going through, when he began sleeping with men behind his wife’s back I got very frustrated with him. And then, after he and his wife separated, he meets a man and simply moves in with him… without getting married. Now I know that marriage between same sex couples was not (and still isn’t) legal in America at the time, but gay people have been having ‘commitment ceremonies’ for eons – I just ordered a book about gay marriages in the middle ages. And if it turns out that God blesses gay unions, then in my mind it doesn’t matter whether or not the state does… I believe God blessed the unions between slaves when they ‘jumped the broom’, even though it was illegal. I believe if God wanted to, He could bless a same sex union without the help of the state. Of course, I think they should be blessed by the state, just like marriages between people who are divorced (something expressly forbidden in Scripture) are blessed by the state. All of that to say that I was frustrated with Mel for never marrying his partner.

I also was a little put off by his constant reference to his ‘sexual needs’…,well, I get put off by anyone referring to their sexual ‘needs’… it is so often used as an excuse for irresponsible behavior. Sexual ‘desires’ I can understand, I have those… I don’t think I have sexual ‘needs’.

Of course, I say all this as someone who has already said that the idea of lifelong celibacy makes me want to die, so maybe I’m wrong. But I don’t think it’s the idea of not ever having sex that makes me want to die…it’s the idea that I’ll never have any of the rest of the stuff that comes with marriage – the family, the fact that there is someone for whom I am a priority, cuddling up with someone I love while we watch some old movie, making plans about our life… it hurts to think that I won’t have any of that.

Anyway, the point is that I found Stranger at the Gate frustrating. I got a book in the mail today that I’m quite excited about though – The Children are Free: Reexamining the Biblical Evidence on Same Sex Relationships. I think I’ll read a book from the opposing view first though, just to keep things balanced in my head.

5. Driving

I was driving around doing some errands today when I found myself behind a big, red van. The back of the van was plastered with Christian paraphernalia – a Jesus fish (complete with “Jesus” written in the centre, in case people were not sure what the fish represented), a dove, etc… and I had the thought, “The person driving that van would hate me.”

I admit, I’m in a bit of a mood today, so things are a bit darker and hitting me harder than normal, but I have thought that sort of thing before. When I see someone wearing a Christian t-shirt, or carrying a large and obvious Bible around the mall, I make the assumption that these people would reject me outright.

Normally this thought passes through my mind without my noticing it, but I guess writing this blog is making me more aware of my thoughts. I heard myself think that this person would hate me and it suddenly occurred to me how awful that was – not that I thought it, but that I am probably right, that these people who want everyone to be aware of their faith are more likely to hate gay people.

Seeing “Jesus Saves” on the back of someone’s shirt should make me think that the person wearing it is a safe person, that they would love unconditionally, like the Jesus they are advertising would, and yet I have the exact opposite reaction. I grew up in the church and I have seen some of the wonderful and compassionate things that people like that have done, and I’m scared of them. How much more scared must someone be who hasn’t seen any of the good things that Christians are capable of…who have only seen Pat Robertson saying that gay people are responsible for September 11th, or Jerry Falwell say that gay people are a threat to children…Christians must terrify them, they often terrify me.