culture

After Exodus, What?

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Here are a few preliminary thoughts and questions about the recent announcement that Exodus International, the largest and most influential of the so-called “ex-gay” ministries, will be closing its doors:

1. Like many younger people who are Christian and gay, I have shied away from much of what flies under the banner of Exodus and its affiliates. I was never involved in an Exodus group of any sort, in part because so many of their public statements led me to believe they were addressing themselves to people with rather different histories than mine. When I heard ex-gay accounts of the origins of same-sex attraction—accounts that focused on absentee or distant fathers or failure to bond with same-sex peers in childhood—I realized I was hearing stories that were pretty removed from my experience. I was raised in a very loving two-parent family, and the “father wound” narrative never illumined the possible causes of my homosexuality as it seemed to do for others. And I discerned, however inchoately, however rightly or wrongly, that if I were to join up with an “ex-gay” ministry, I would feel some degree of pressure to conform my narrative to theirs. (The anonymous blogger Disputed Mutability has described that pressure in detail here, and I’d encourage you to read her excellent post along with this one by Melinda Selmys.)

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On Coming Out

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In my experience, the best predictor of emotional health for an LGBT person is generally how many people he or she has come out to.  This effect is most dramatic between someone who is completely closeted and someone who is out to a few friends.  To make sure it’s clear what I mean, to “come out,” short for “come out of the closet,” is simply to disclose one’s romantic or sexual feelings, regardless of one’s behavior or convictions. If a person is “closeted,” his or her sexuality is a secret, and if he or she is “out,” it has been disclosed.  Neither term is all-encompassing; it is common to be out in some contexts but closeted in others.

Most of us are initially closeted as a result of fear. We are afraid that people might shun us if they knew about our sexuality. Those of us who are Christians often fear that we will be judged not to be if we come out. Our fear is often rational – I know people who have lost positions of leadership or employment upon coming out, and some have lost friends or been disowned by family. However, I think the risk is also overblown for a lot of us – I haven’t really faced any of these negative reactions myself.  Nonetheless, rational or not, the fear is extremely real.  I think of my own experience.  Long before I actually came out to anyone, I had the sense that I needed to do so.  Around the fall of 2004, I finally decided that I wasn’t going to take my secret to the grave.  However, I didn’t actually build up the courage to share until the summer of 2005, after my brother initiated a deep conversation about some other things.  Even once I decided the time was right, it took about half an hour to get the words out of my mouth.  Coming out the next few times remained similarly difficult, although it has slowly become easier with time and practice.

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Friendship and “Hooking Up” in College

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In my last post, I mentioned the frequently heard claim that friendship plays a diminished role in contemporary Western culture because we have elevated romantic love unduly. Here’s Paul O’Callaghan: “We live in a society that exalts erotic love as the supreme fulfillment available to human beings. How can friendship compete with the sizzle of sex in the arena of public attention?”

Growing up in a conservative evangelical subculture and later attending an evangelical Christian college—where the phrase “ring by spring” was repeated not entirely tongue in cheek—I’m sympathetic to this claim. From my vantage point, it does seem that romantic love, with its promise that each partner will “complete” the other and be the other’s “best friend,” has displaced or minimized other forms of love in a way that’s problematic, not least within historic Christian theology itself. So when I read books with subtitles like “Why Celibacy Must Be Reinvented in Today’s Church,” I’m inclined to agree.

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On my honor: Reflections from a gay Eagle Scout

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On Thursday, the Boy Scouts of America will vote on a revision of their membership standards. Under the proposed standards, the Scouts will not deny membership to any boy on the basis of sexual orientation or preference alone. The standards also affirm that “any sexual conduct, whether homosexual or heterosexual, by youth of Scouting age is contrary to the virtues of Scouting.”

As both a proud Eagle Scout and a celibate gay Christian, the vote, and the debate that has proceeded it, is personal.

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Scout’s honor

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A while back, a student in my philosophy of religion class turned in a paper which stated that, “in The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values, Sam Harris argued that morality was based on scientific discoveries about the order God had put into the world at the Creation.” I was, I confess, a bit at a loss about what sort of helpful comments I could make on the paper. There’s only so much I could do to soften the blow of, “Actually, Sam Harris is one of the leading advocates of atheism, and his book argued that we can base morality on science, not God.”

I was reminded of that student’s paper the other day, when a friend pointed me to an article by Ken Klukowski, the Director of the Center for Religious Liberty at the Family Research Council, titled “Boy Scout Leaders Propose Incoherent Policy on Gay Scouts.”

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Day of Silence 2013

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When discussing anti-bullying initiatives, many Christians are quite concerned about parents who have to deal with school curricula discussing LGBT issues by talking to their kids about these issues earlier than they’d like. Why are they so often not as concerned about parents who have to bury their middle and high school kids knowing that they killed themselves because they couldn’t handle the pain of what they were going through? Although it’s hard to collect accurate statistics, the best research we have pretty consistently shows that around one in three LGBT teenagers goes so far as to attempt suicide. We have a very real problem on our hands, one that is killing people. While no doubt bullying is not the only cause of suicide attempts by LGBT people, it is often a huge contributing factor. As Christians, we have a responsibility to consider more than just sexual ethics, and to have compassion for “the least of these” who face mistreatment and whose lives are at risk.

Of course, nearly all Christians believe that bullying is wrong, whether related to sexuality or not. However, I think we often fail to understand some important realities regarding anti-gay bullying in particular. For example, it is important to consider the broader social and cultural environments that bullying takes place within. Far too often Christians provide condemnation without grace when it comes to LGBT issues. Even in broader environments, LGBT teenagers are frequently told that they’re disgusting perverts. They may not be told so to their face, but the message is pervasive enough that it can lead to a lot of internalized shame. I definitely faced this to some degree growing up in a conservative Christian environment and finding myself attracted to both sexes, even though I wasn’t sexually active and held to a traditional sexual ethic. Many LGBT teens are hit much harder than I was. LGBT teens often feel that they are so worthless that bullying towards them doesn’t matter, and generic opposition to bullying rings hollow. I strongly encourage people to read a powerful memoir expressing this, written by a woman who is now a Christian with a conservative understanding of sexual ethics, at My Day of Silence 2009 Post, A Year and A Month Late. She describes how it seemed that everyone hated gay people, and as a result she was “drowning in a sea of hate.” She then goes on to say that it would have been helpful to know that someone thought what was happening was wrong. Let the weight of that sink in.

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Welcoming and shaming

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A friend of mine recently brought my attention to a video called “Homosexuality and Hope: My Journey to Truth in the Catholic Church.” In the video, the speaker says:

We can let go of any shame or guilt internalized on account of the existence of those attractions. Ok? This whole myth that we’re supposed to feel shameful? Forget it. It’s not part of Catholic Church teaching, and if you do have shame or guilt because of the fact that you might have same sex attractions, you can let that go. We’ve all been able to let that go. It’s absolutely liberating.

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Thoughts on ‘Does Jesus Really Love Me?’

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I’ve just finished reading Jeff Chu’s new book Does Jesus Really Love Me? A Gay Christian’s Pilgrimage in Search of God in America, and I highly recommend it. Besides being well-written and engaging (I could hardly put it down), it’s also very illuminating. The book is a balanced, fair-minded collection of snapshots of virtually every corner of the (Protestant) Christian discussion of LGBTQ matters. If someone wanted to get a sense for how American Protestants treat their gay and lesbian neighbors, this is the book I would give them first. It covers Westboro Baptist, The Episcopal Church, and everything in between.

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‘Hope for the Gay Undergrad’

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Over at Christianity Today, Allison Althoff has a story about the growing attention to LGBT issues on evangelical Christian college campuses:

Same-sex attracted students at several Christian institutions have attempted to start on-campus organizations with varying degrees of success. Seattle Pacific University’s Haven is an “unofficial club” organized by students. It hosts weekly meetings on campus to encourage honest conversations about sexuality while holding to the school’s “Lifestyle Expectations” regarding sex outside of heterosexual marriage.

“Haven is recognized by the university administration, but not as a recognized student club through the student government system,” vice president of student life Jeff Jordan said.

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Christians: Siblings, Not Friends?

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Last week I caught up with some friends in England, my former next-door neighbors and parents of my godson. My friends have just had their second child and were remarking on how their fellow church members have been bringing meals and helping with household chores and in general offering support. “We couldn’t have survived these last few weeks without that,” they told me.

None of this struck me as surprising or remarkable until my friends recounted a conversation they had with their neighbors. Also new parents themselves, those neighbors expressed their astonishment at the network of support my friends enjoyed. “How do you know so many people?” they asked, incredulous. “How do you have so many friends? I wish we had half as much help as you’re receiving. We have friends we go to the pub with, but we don’t have any friends who brought us meals after our baby was born.”

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