celibacy

All the Celibate Ladies? A Different Question About Labels and Language

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Last week I had a great lunch w/another gay Christian woman. We differ pretty strongly on how one follows Christ, both in terms of communion/church (she’s a Protestant) and, relatedly, in terms of chastity. But the difference which I found most striking wasn’t a difference in belief; it was our respective emotional responses to some of the terms people use to describe “my side” of the Christian discussion of sexual orientation and chastity.

My new friend described me as “single,” which for her was a neutral to positive term. “Celibate,” which is the term I usually use for myself, sounded really negative to her. I wish we’d talked about this longer, since I don’t know exactly what she associated with “celibacy”: repression, frigidity, spinsterhood, perversion? I do know what I associate with the term “single,” though: stressed-out straight women made miserable by the unhappy prospect of dating (or, and this is sometimes even worse, not dating) straight men.

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The Story that Led Me Here

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It all started in the first grade: my deep affinity for stories. For as long as I can remember, I’ve made sense of the complexities of the human experience through stories. I found solace in my suffering by resonating with others’ stories. I found answers to some of life’s big questions in the context of stories. And I’ve made an ongoing decision to allow my own story to fuse into the greater one that’s been whispered through the Scriptures, through the historical Church, through the God who came to dwell among us to invite us into His giant story of restoration.

It’s within the context of that beautiful story of redemption that I make sense of my experience as a woman who likes women and loves Jesus. I declared to myself that I was gay when I was fourteen years old, and then to my family at the age of seventeen. Shortly after coming out, I was taken to an ex-gay ministry where I spent a decade learning about the way of Christ with some incredible people that I treasure to this day. I found a community who loved Jesus and extended endless grace to me, a community I desperately needed as a confused teenager trying to make sense of a chaotic existence.

During my decade with Exodus, I grew to love Christ more than anything else in the world. God’s giant story of redemption was the foundation of every teaching, every piece of advice, every reason behind every step I was encouraged to take at every point in my process. But inherent in the redemption they proclaimed was an assumption that redemption entailed a shift in my orientation—a shift from gay to straight. So I stopped my old habits, confessed every attraction, shadowed straight girls, dated cute guys, and stopped calling myself gay because as a man thinketh, so he is. But I was still a girl who liked girls. I was still gay.​

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Why I Need Celibate Gay Christians

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I was forced out of the closet by a phone call. A dear friend had confessed that she was struggling with attraction for a woman, but was trying to not act upon it because of her Christian faith. Our other two friends on the phone strongly recommended she accept her sexual identity rather than let her sexual practices be dictated by her religious beliefs. I—the once militant atheist—came to her defense and said she should let her conscience be her guide. If she believed her religion that deeply, then she should try to her best to adhere to it and we shouldn’t admonish her for prioritizing her religion over her sexual inclinations. This, of course, stunned them and I was forced to come out of the closet as someone interested in Christianity. I confessed that I had started doing Bible studies and attending church. These were the friends least surprised when I was baptized a few months later.

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Talking about Bicycles

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One of the common criticisms of a traditionally Christian sexual ethic is that it forces a lot of gay people into involuntary celibacy, which some find very lonely, painful, frustrating.

I want to start by saying I think this critique is at least partially right. Trying to be faithful to a Christian sexual ethic without the support of either a spouse or a religious community is difficult. When you add misunderstanding by many in the Christian community, the task is only made more difficult.

In this post I want to focus in particular on how to be honest about all that is painful and difficult, while still holding firm to the hope that obedience to Christ is good for us, that by conforming our lives to His will, we will blossom and flourish in some meaningful sense, even if we also face significant struggle.

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Why the Church and the World Need Celibate Gay Saints

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Recently there has been a “coming out” pandemic amongst celibate gay Christian bloggers. First Matt Jones—previously known as “Jordan” but now blogging under his own name at A Joyful Stammering (and Spiritual Friendship)—went public about his identity. Then Catholic blogger Steve Gershom revealed to the world that he is actually Joey Prever.

For two reasons, this trend is good news for both the Church and the world. The first, as Matt Schmitz points out, is that given the increasing acceptance of homosexual relationships in the West, the Church can no longer expect its teachings on sexuality to be credible if they are presented merely in syllogisms. If gay people are to be convinced that the Church has something to say that is worth listening to, that message will be best received when it comes from gay Christians themselves, and is shown forth in their lives. If the Church wants to speak credibly about homosexuality it must be prepared to speak “in the first person,” just as it has recently made an effort to teach the truth of Christian marriage by canonizing married saints and encouraging first-person experiential accounts of living out the Church’s teachings on marital love.

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The Meaning of Vocation

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This is the sixth in a series of posts looking at my Catholic Faith, and how it relates to my life and my sexuality. Click to see the first, second,  third, fourth , and fifth installments.

In many Catholic circles today, vocation is often considered to be a calling either to marriage or to the priesthood or religious life. Growing up, I considered my vocation to be a calling to one of these ways of life. I either had a celibate vocation as a priest or religious, or I had a vocation to marriage with a woman.

I dated for a while, both in high school and in college. I dated women whom I found interesting, exciting, and beautiful. I never seriously considered how my attractions to women differed from other men until somewhat late into my college years. For me, men dating women was a good societal, religious, and human norm that was based upon mutual respect and discernment of a possible life spent together.

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No One Is “Doomed” to Celibacy

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Back in July, I happened to be in Dan Mattson’s home town visiting friends. Dan and I got together over beers for a really good evening talking about our experiences as same-sex attracted Catholics committed to chastity.

This isn’t to say that we see eye-to-eye on everything. Dan has sometimes been critical of writers on this blog for their use of language. As should be clear from various posts about language this week, I take a more pragmatic approach to language than he does.

However, despite our differences, I have a lot of respect for Dan. I thoroughly enjoyed our time together in July, and I hope our paths will cross again soon.

This weekend, Dan posted a really great reflection, titled No One’s “Doomed” to Celibacy, on his blog. In it, he recounts a conversation he had on an Internet message board. Another participant wrote:

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On “Higher” Vocations and the “Marital Paradigm”

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Back when Joshua Gonnerman and I were students at Thomas Aquinas College, from 2005-2009, we were in an environment where the combination of geographical remoteness, Dominican community, and school-wide common study meant that any and every sort of intellectual conversation could take place. One would walk into the Commons and (I am perhaps underexaggerating here) and hear conversations abounding about anything, from Roman history according to Tacitus and Suetonius, to the political philosophy of the American Founding Fathers, to the question of how it is that angels may be said to move according to Aquinas.

There were a few “hot topics” every year that tended to repeat themselves, and one of them was the question of vocational order. This arose from a careful distinction Aquinas made in the Summa, but one which, left unclarified by those giving it only a partial reading, tended to give students heartburn. There is an order among the different states of life in the Church, one defined by both the weight of the sacrifice one makes to be in that state, and also by the juridical order of the Church herself. Because one makes a complete sacrifice of oneself, a holocaust, in entering religious life, Aquinas says that (objectively speaking) religious life is the highest form of life. In this he follows St. Paul, who says in 1 Corinthians 7 that he would that all would remain celibate, but that God calls some to marriage. (Of course, the way he puts this is a legendary bone of contention for those attempting to “justify” marriage as a high vocation. I tend to think he vindicated this, though, by his famous “husbands, love your wives” injunction at the beginning of the same chapter.)

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How is Gay Celibacy Different from Straight Celibacy?

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[This is the third in a series of three posts on celibacy. The first was What Does Genesis 2:18 Really Teach? and the second was The Gift of Celibacy.]

While on the topic of singleness and celibacy, I think it would be helpful to talk about some of the practical ways that things are different for a lot of people who are celibate because they’re exclusively gay.  I’ll start with my standard disclaimer that as someone who is attracted to both sexes, I am not entirely speaking out of experience.  However, this is something I’ve discussed quite a bit with others, and I think my experience brings something to bear as well.  I’m not trying to say that the situation of exclusively gay people is entirely unique, but there are some practical differences people don’t always think about.

Many straight Christians are celibate by choice.  They may discern a specific call to celibacy as a form of dedication to God.  Those who find celibacy forced upon them by circumstances, regardless of sexual orientation, will have unique difficulties.  Ron Belgau offered some initial reflections on these issues in Seeds of Celibacy, and I offered some related thoughts in The Gift of Celibacy.  Even in these cases, however, there are some important differences between involuntary celibacy for straight people and involuntary celibacy for gay and lesbian people.

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Chris: This Is Me

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This is the first in a series of posts looking at my Catholic Faith, and how it relates to my life and my sexuality.

For a time now, I have been engaging in intense self-reflection, considering the direction that my life seems to be taking and the ways in which I can develop as a Catholic and as a human being. It seems to me that many Catholics today are confused about their relationship to the Church and its teachings about sexuality. Many are unsure of whether they can find a place in the Church. They feel alienated by misunderstandings, confusions, misrepresentations, unjust caricatures, and unfounded discriminations.

I count myself as among these Catholics. And I’ve realized that, if I am going to get past these obstacles, it is time for me to be open about myself and to reach out to others who are like me.

The main point of this post is the firm and frank admission: I’m gay.

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