Theology Not Apology

May 14, 2008

It’s not at all surprising one of the recurring messages for GLBTQ Christians is that in being gay we’re creating a problem since something happens nearly everyday that gives that snarly little message another minute of air play.

In our families we hesitate in coming out to the people we love because we don’t want them to be upset. We worry about the burden it will be to them, the pain it will put them through, the conflicts it will create, and when we finally tell them we’re gay, we feel guilty at having been responsible in some way for their tears or anger; after all, if we’d never said anything, they would have been spared from it all. In our ongoing relationships with family and less than affirming Christian friends, we avoid revealing anything about our lives so as to not upset them further. While they talk easily about what’s going on in their lives, when it comes time for us to share what’s happening with us, we answer with a superficially-safe, “Oh no much, just more of the same-o same-o.”

We see what the issue of homosexuality is doing to the church. Christians on both sides are engaged in heated debates on the bible and homosexuality in their congregations, denominations, and right here on the internet. Mainstream denominations are threatening to splinter over the inclusion of GLBTQ people in the life and ministry of the church and the ordination of gays and lesbians. Straight pastors have been removed from their pastorates because they dared to preside at a gay wedding and other well-known personalities in the church world have been ostracized and ridiculed for voluntarily standing as GLBTQ allies and advocates in the church and society. As we celebrate those congregations that have declared themselves GLBTQ-welcoming and are grateful to our straight friends and allies who’ve paid a personal price, at the same time we carry a lingering sense of indebtedness to them and grief for all the fuss and bother our sexual orientation has brought to the church of Christ. We wonder whether we’re trying to push change too quickly and so we hesitate pursuing church leadership and avoid any physical contact with our partner within eye shot of the church building because it might be easier for everyone if we’re just a little less visible and vocal.

In these ways and others the message is reinforced that our sexual orientation is a major problem, responsible for division and tension in the church and stirring up pain and conflict in our families. We carry that voice inside ourselves and for some it becomes internalized and generalized to such an extent so that the problem is now no longer my sexual orientation but the problem is me. I’m a problem. I’m a problem to my family. I’m a problem to the church. I’m a problem to God. When we internalize the problem as ourselves then it’s understandable we find ourselves at times living as though we need to apologize for our very lives. “I’m here, I’m queer, I’m sorry.”

You are not a problem. That you are gay is not a problem. That you are gay does not even cause the problem. The problem does not belong to you. The problem is how others respond to us. The problem isn’t us but it belongs to those who respond to our full humanity as though it were a problem. No. That’s not even it. The real problem lies in all the erroneous teaching concerning the bible and homosexuality and the ignorant misinformation that’s been perpetuated about GLBTQ people over the decades. The problem resides in the church that already had a huge problem with the issue of sexuality long before we ever raised our gay voice. The problem lives outside us. The problem is not us. The problem is not you. I’m being repetitive here for a reason dear friend.

That the problem isn’t me or about me doesn’t mean I feel nothing in seeing the pain of those I love in my coming out to them, but rather than guilt or anger I feel compassion, recognizing that their pain comes from a lifetime of Christian teaching where exclusivity hides in the shadows of its doctrine and from those within Christianity who’ve used their public platform to promote fear and misinformation about gays and lesbians as a fund raising campaign and to seek conservative acclaim.

That the problem isn’t me or about me doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate the price that’s been paid by straight allies and friends. I’m deeply grateful and moved by the sacrifices I know have been made by so many but I hold that with knowing what they’ve chosen to do has nothing to do with me. In Micah 6:8 we’re called to be a justice people and so each time someone stands up for GLBTQ people that’s not something they’re doing for the sake of you or I, but something they’re doing for the sake of the Gospel. Just as you and I, as GLBTQ people are equally called to advocate for justice, not only for ourselves but for any and all who are marginalized and oppressed.

When talking one day about Christian ethics, a man I greatly admire said that “Everything we say and do says exactly what it is we believe about God. We live our theology.” Those words changed how I approach life. It’s the touchstone I constantly return to through the day, at least those days when I’m being intentional in life rather than moving through in a fog and a flurry. “What am I saying about God in the action I’m about to take or in the words I’m about to speak? What do I believe about God by this thing I’m holding in my heart; by this thought that I’m giving my attention?”

In claiming the wholeness of our lives as GLBTQ people and in particular GLBTQ people of faith we have nothing to apologize for, but rather we are declaring the theology of our hearts; that God is a creative God, a God of surprises, a God of radically ridiculous and extravagant love, a God who on occasion just can’t resist doing the most unpredictable things while working through the most unexpected people. A God of love, grace, and compassion. A God of those who are gay and straight and bi and trans and anyone that falls anywhere in the wildly creative spectrum of humanity.

In Gifted by Otherness, M.R. Riley recalls of her own spiritual journey toward reconciliation,

I was not convinced that I either had a problem or was a problem. I saw clearly that others had a problem with me, but their view seemed merely quaint and ignorant. To judge by the richness of my spiritual life, God did not have a problem with me. I believed then and believe now that I was born gay by the grace of God, and that God found this good, as God found all creation good.

Okay, I’m going to say it one more time. The message telling you that you’re a problem or that your sexuality is causing a problem is wrong. Wrong, so wrong, absolutely wrong. You have nothing to apologize for as a gay, lesbian, bisexual or trans person of God but everything about grace and wholeness to declare to a world that could use a double dose of both. And then some.

Word out.

This is shared by Anita over at sisterfriends-together.org. I think it is absolutely amazing.

When I wrote the other day that I believe we are who we are and we love who we love because it’s by God’s design and for God’s purpose that we’re GLBTQ people; when I called being gay a divine calling, a holy vocation and for the sake of the Gospel, I was saying I believe all that today but I haven’t always.

I didn’t believe being gay was a gift when after 15 years of full-time ministry as a children’s pastor the senior pastor called me into his office and said “For your remaining two weeks as the children’s pastor at the church, I need to ask that you not be alone with any of the children; that you do what you can to avoid being with them at all.”

I had no confidence that being queer was a divine calling when the Christian publishing company called to inform me that while they still wanted to purchase my Christian Education program for national distribution it could only be under the condition that my name not appear as the author because they couldn’t risk having their evangelical market discover the material had been written by a homosexual.

I couldn’t have imagined it was God’s plan I was a lesbian when a Christian educator’s organization passed along word to me that despite having been one of their most popular workshop presenters over the previous six years, they were putting me on notice that they knew I was gay and therefore never again would be asked to speak at their annual conference or participate in any manner whatsoever.

I didn’t dare believe my sexuality was for the sake of the Gospel when it came time to receive the annual application to renew my denominational ministerial license in the mail and my mailbox remained empty; when a loved one who had supported my ministry from the beginning coldly said I should never have entered the ministry at all; or when I closed the door for a final time on an emptied church office where I’d counseled with parents and loved on their children through the main part of my adult years.

For all these reasons and for others held too close to my heart to openly share, I know that calling our sexuality a divine gift, a holy calling, God’s plan, and our purpose can be a challenge when the internal messages and external circumstances seem to reflect a different reality. I really do get it which is all the more reason why I admire you for taking on the challenge to believe something different if only for four days or for two.

All that I mentioned above came about in the first two months following my own coming out as a lesbian. While I had already come to peace concerning being a Christian and a lesbian, I understood my sexuality at that time as something more akin to a burden than a blessing, an oops of God rather than a gift of God. After all, it was coming at such a high price and then there was all that had been lost around my ministry. I had loved the ministry and that my greatest responsibility in my call had been to simply love people and tell of God’s even greater love for them. I couldn’t help wonder if the most meaningful and rewarding years of ministry were behind me.

Haman had tricked King Xeres into issuing a decree that would lead to the destruction of all the Jews. When Mordacai learned of Haman’s plot he sent a messenger to Queen Esther his niece, a closeted Jew, that she should petition her husband the king for the salvation of the Jews. When fear caused Esther to resist the idea, the message Mordacai sent back to her was this:

Do not think that because you are in the king’s house you alone of all the Jews will escape. For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this?” (Esther 4:14)

Uncle Mordacai dares to suggest that the reason Esther had ever become queen, gaining privilege and renown might well have been for this very moment by placing her into a position where she could save her people, bringing relief and deliverance to the oppressed.

I read this passage one evening during my personal devotional time and something about it grabbed hold of me. Several weeks later I went to a GLBTQ Christian gathering where Marsha Stevens was the keynote speaker. Marsha told of her early years in Christian music when the Jesus Movement exploded and we (the currently middle-aged we) were all listening to Christian groups like Love Song, Second Chapter of Acts, and Children of the Day. She’d written the song, “For Those Tears I Died” while still in her teens, a song that was part of my own youth, playing it over and over again on my clunky 8-Track, strumming it’s simple chords on my acoustic guitar, and carrying the alto line in the church youth choir. Marsha recounted how after coming out as a lesbian she began to receive packages in the mail from churches around the country, filled with copies of her song torn from church hymnals and song books in angry protest upon learning the song writer was gay. In the midst of what must have been a devastating time in her life, Marsha turned to the story of Esther and the words “For such a time as this” rattled inside her, and rather than grieving the past success in ministry she’s once experienced, Marsha continued on to sing and proclaim the Gospel message as an out lesbian Christian and to establish a ministry that’s taken her around the world, healing and blessing the lives of countless GLBTQ and straight people. Marsha believed that all her past successes and accomplishments had been to prepare her for such a time as this.

For such a time as this. The phrase bounced around in my heart for days and then months and when it came to finally rest the idea that being gay was the purposeful intention of God for my life replaced the sense that my sexual orientation was merely a fluke or a flaw. I could never have imagined doing anything in ministry more rewarding or meaningful than all those years of pastoring children and their families, but then I could have never imagined the utter joy of the opportunities I’ve been given in recent years to proclaim God’s unconditional love to GLBTQ people or to anyone for that matter who needs to hear the message of the love of God, the message of the Gospel.

So many doors closed years ago but so many have been opening ever since. I’m an ordained clergywoman. I officiate at the table. There have been opportunities to preach in church and lead workshops designed for GLBTQ Christians. Every Sunday morning, I sit pretzel-style on a small carpet circle in the front of the church and gather the children around me to tell them how precious they are to God and how great is God’s love for them. And then there’s this online ministry and the countless emails I’ve received over the years that say in one way or another, “Thank you for reminding me that God wants to be in relationship with me. Thank you for helping me see God is with me and loves me.” I could never have imagined or thought to ask to be part of anything like this.

In the end I lost nothing in coming out that wasn’t given back to me in extravagant abundance. Everyone is called by God and we spend our lives seeking to live into that calling; to discover our way of being the presence of Christ in the world. The calling doesn’t stop the day we come out. The voice of God isn’t silenced even in the closet. God’s hand is on you. God’s spirit within you. God’s anointing upon you. Who you are is the very person God needs for you to be in this world. You have a way of speaking and living God’s love that will touch someone in a way that my life and others lives simply couldn’t do. Your life reflects a particular angle of God’s character and being that’s the exact angle someone else needs desperately to see. These might sound like sentimental words and sentimental they might be but they’re also very real. Nothing in your life is unusable to God. Nothing is less than a gift when devoted to God’s glory.

Whatever you’ve done in the past, wherever the present finds you, God has called you…for such a time as this.

Discussion

With everything that went on in the UMC this week, and the PCUSA coming up soon, it seems fitting to discuss LGBT inclusion in denominations that are not all that inclusive.

How do you feel about staying in a denomination that is not inclusive to LGBT people? People who leave because of it (like going to the UCC)? Is all this fighting actually accomplishing anything? Should people stay and fight or go to another denomination? Is there a difference for people who want to be ordained and laypeople?

Gay... No Problem for God

marriedtothesea.com

Queering Religion, Queering Self

My experiences of living in tension with a norm of heterosexuality have significantly shaped my worldview so that my queer sexuality is at the core of everything I think and believe. As a very reflexive person who gets off on theoretical musings, I could write volumes and will certainly contribute more to this beautifully-conceived blog. I want to begin, though, by posting an email I recently sent to a friend in response to some of her concerns about homosexuality in relation to her particular Christian beliefs. I am deeply interested in religious studies, so I could talk forever about sexuality and religion. However, at the end of the day, I believe it is the truth of human experience that deserves our full attention and respect. And so I will enter into this blog world by sharing some of my experiences as I related them to my friend in a recent email...

I first realized an attraction for other boys very naturally. What I mean is that it did not seem strange or somehow inappropriate. It was not until puberty, when those childlike emotions developed into concrete sexual desires, that I realized that I was different and deviant in an unacceptable way. In fourth grade, an outside mission group came to my church, and I asked Jesus into my heart. From that time forward, I was committed to living a life worthy of Christ. When I realized that my body longed for things I believed to be contrary to God's expectations for my life, I felt impure and prayed fervently for change. All throughout high school, I would pray for hours on end that God would help cleanse me of sexual thoughts that I believed to be sinful. I read the Bible often, hoping that I would find something that would click and lead to lasting change. Eventually I was led to a charismatic Bible study where they talked about life in the Spirit. Immediately I was drawn to the idea that the Holy Spirit could dwell inside me and override my human thoughts and failings. There were certainly weeks where I felt like I had successfully remained strong in the Lord, but the same desires would resurface. I felt hopeless, and yet I still thought that if I prayed long enough and believed hard enough that God would ultimately transform my weak self. At one point I was bothered to the extent that I confided in a friend, but when she asked about it later, I said that I had finally worked through it and that it was no longer an issue. I was too embarrassed to admit that I had somehow failed in the Lord.

As I look back on that time, I remember a single moment more vividly than any other. One morning I woke up and could not fall back asleep. I prayed to God, using as many words as possible, hoping that I could say something right that would spark a new way of being. Out of nowhere came the thought, "What if God does not care if you are attracted to men?" I cannot say now if God was speaking to me in that moment, but it was a question posed with such seriousness that for an instant, I believed it could be legitimate. It scared me to death. In the second that I entertained such a radical notion, I immediately reacted with the thought, "But what if I accept my attraction to men as natural and God really does have a problem with it?" I trusted that I would be safer believing my desires to be impure, and so I passed off that notion as ridiculous.

It was not until many years later that I experienced the question, "What if God does not care if you are attracted to men?" as a moment of grace. I had done everything I could think of, and I had done it for years. I had furrowed my brow in prayer hard enough that my head would hurt. I had worked myself into an emotional frenzy often enough that I believed I could hold onto the feeling if I would just work hard enough. And then I realized that believing in God is believing in the humanity that God has created. Reading the Bible is participating in a conversation about what it means to live in relation to God and other human beings, a dialogue that has been taking place throughout history. Being religious is bringing our experiences of God and of the world to the table and discussing what we know to be true about life. Living in community is engaging in the fullness of one another's humanity and creatively dealing with tensions so that we might value and cherish each other.

As you know, I have committed my life to studying the Bible. I could discuss with you how I think about the Bible and homosexuality for all time if you would like and would certainly welcome the opportunity to engage further. However, for this moment, I just wanted to share with you something deeply personal and spiritual from my experience.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people experience a hurt that goes beyond interpretation of the Bible. As people discuss the technical aspects of scripture, those who do not readily fit the dominant expectations must deal with a confusing and painful reality. People who struggle every day to put God first feel as if they are failing because a part of their humanity does not match what some say is the proper way to live. I have a really hard time imagining that God ignores those desperate prayers. I cannot put my faith in a God who would allow a gay teenager to ask every day for guidance only to be left feeling utterly helpless to the point of taking her own life. It happens, and it happens to people who earnestly work to commit their lives to God.

What if God does not care if they are attracted to people of the same sex?

Tyler's link of interest: www.thetaskforce.org (Link "Other Links" on right column)

Coming Out By The Green Queen

Growing up in the 1960’s and 1970’s was in some ways very different from today, particularly in terms of being gay and the larger culture. I was 12 years old when Stonewall happened and I can recall the brief article in the New York Daily News reporting on the “incident”. It wasn’t until 1973 that the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its Diagnosis and Statistic Manuel (DMS). It may be hard for some to imagine but before the mid 1970s it was illegal in many places in the United States for queers to “congregate”, thus the few and underground gay bars that existed were routinely raided and patrons/staff arrested; and it was not uncommon for queers to be forced into mental institutions by family or school authorities, particularly those whose gender expression didn’t fit into the accepted social norm. A fear that was very real for me. There were no Pride parades, no gay rights, no “Will and Grace”, no positive expression of gay people in art or media. If you have the chance to watch either “The Children’s Hour” or the original version of “The Boys in the Band” you will get a good image of exactly what it was like to be lesbian or gay in those days.

It was around Christmas time 1979, I was driving around in my car with my best friend, who had recently decided to leave college in Texas and return home to Long Island. That evening my friend decided to “come out” to me and in response to his “confession” I came out to him. It was a very freeing moment, to speak out loud to another person and admit the truth of myself. Though it is kind of a funny thing, because you see, I was what was often referred to as an “obvious homosexual”. I didn’t really need to say I was queer because all the boys, well most of them, constantly called me “faggot” and “fem”, particularly during my teen years, and not in an endearing or empowering manner. Those were years filled with shame that instilled a sense of self-loathing that has haunted me throughout my life. So that night to speak out loud to another person in an atmosphere of honesty and affirmation was truly a freeing moment.

Over the course of the next few months I would “come out” to all my friends and family. The reaction by most of them was almost universally the same – “So tell me something I don’t already know.” I guess being an “obvious homosexual” has its good side too. My mother was the only one who acted like she was shocked by the news, and carried on as if I had placed a dagger in her heart. I remember at one point in her initial rant her saying “I never would have thought you were a homo.” To which I recall responding, “Well Mom you are the only one.” My father didn’t react at all as he had silently come to accept the fact that his son was a “faggala” many years before, much to his shame and disappointment. He had hoped for a son who would enjoy fishing and hunting and have John Wayne as his role-model, instead of a boy who loved paper dolls and cake decorating and whose role-models were Doris Day and Donna Reed. My parents never openly rejected me and they tolerated the fact that I was who and what I was, but they would never really come to embrace it either. I suppose, given others stories, I have something to be grateful for in that fact. My younger sisters were cool with it, my second oldest sister wasn’t the least bit surprised, but my oldest sister came to quietly accept something she wished she could deny.

In the end of June 1980 I would move out of my parent’s home into an apartment in Flushing Queens with my best friend and another young gay male friend, and I began to live as an open and self-accepting gay person from that point. That was many years ago, and I have never regretted my decision to come out and live as I am. I’m not saying that there aren’t things I’ve done in my life that I regret and wish I had done differently, who honestly can say they have no regrets, except perhaps a fool or a liar; but I am glad that I came to accept myself for who I am, and coming out made a huge and positive difference in my life.

The funny thing is that after all these years the only place I am forced to keep more or less silent about who I am is in my church. Funny because God knows who God made, and Jesus called me to Himself knowing who I am and He never asked me to be something I am not. Yet when I am with my brothers and sisters in Christ I must walk a tight rope. A tight rope not made by God but by human bias and preconceptions. No where in the bible does God say it is a sin to be a homosexual, but it does say “though your father or mother may forsake you, I the Lord will never forsake you”, and true to God’s word God has never forsaken me. Jesus likewise never condemns homosexuality or asks any body to change their sexual orientation, but He does say “Come to Me all you who are weary and heavy burdened, and I will give you rest”, and so He has given me rest and restoration, and I know, despite the misunderstanding of some of my sisters and brothers in Christ, that no thing and no one, not even the self-righteous, can ever separate me from the love of God in Christ.

The Green Queen's links of interest: www.epistle.us (Link under "other links" on right column)