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The Questions We Ask

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P_questionShould governments recognize civil marriages between two people of the same sex?

This question has been on the minds of many Americans in recent years. Last week it became largely a moot point in the United States, as a result of the Obergefell v. Hodges decision. My hope is that we can use this as an opportunity to rethink which questions we focus on.

There are many questions that Christians are asking about all things LGBT. Often, the focus has been on one particular question: Is sexual intimacy between two people of the same sex always sinful?

Clearly, this question is an important one, and its answer has many practical implications. Although I answer this question in the affirmative, I am frustrated when others who share that answer act as though this is the end of the discussion. This answer actually opens the door to quite a few further questions. Continue reading →

Interview with Jonathan Merritt

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Over at his Religion News Service site blog yesterday, Jonathan Merritt interviewed yours truly about my new book Spiritual Friendship: Finding Love in the Church as a Celibate Gay Christian.

The interview started off with my saying,

According to Christian writers of the past, spiritual or Christ-centered friendship—the kind of friendship I’m writing about—is a bond between two (or more) people who feel affection for each other. But it’s also a bond that has a trajectory. It’s a relationship that’s about helping one another along towards deeper love of God and neighbor. I like that but would add that as those sorts of friendships mature and deepen, they often start to become more committed and permanent. It’s almost as if the friends want to become more like spiritual siblings.

And it goes on from there. Read the whole thing.

Same-Sex Attraction in Real Life

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The great evangelical preacher Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones once said, “You can be so interested in great theological and intellectual and philosophical problems that you tend to forget that you are going to die.” At the heart of this admonition is, I think, a reminder that ideas and issues and controversies are only relevant as they relate to people, human beings with real lives and real souls.

Nowhere is this reminder more needed in our day than within the Christian conversation regarding same-sex attraction and homosexuality. It is so easy to discuss the “issue” of homosexuality in our culture while forgetting that gay people aren’t simply an “issue” to be sorted out. Furthermore, when we quarantine the conversation to the theoretical realm divorced from the lived experience of folks with SSA, the conversation inevitably becomes blurry, ambiguous, lacking in clarity. This is no knock on philosophy or theory; these things are needed and helpful. But pushing our musings from the realm of hypothetical reflection toward concrete examples of everyday life tends to blow away the haze and bring the fuzzy corners into focus.

Therefore, I want to take many of the ideas often discussed here at Spiritual Friendship and apply them to a real person: me. In doing so, I am not claiming that I have everything figured out or especially that I am representing the views of everyone who writes for Spiritual Friendship. I simply know my own experience best, and my hope is that this exercise will help clear up a lot of what I am and am not saying about SSA.

For this example, I will use a composite of many of my real friendships and combine them into one specific story. That story is about my friendship with Rick (fake name, real experiences).

Continue reading →

Three Cheers for Eve Tushnet!

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Tushnet book cover

Over at Christianity Today, I’ve got a review up of our own Eve Tushnet’s new book Gay and Catholic: Accepting My Sexuality, Finding Community, Living My Faith.

The first part of the review is my very personal story of stumbling upon Eve’s blog—now hosted by Patheos—several years ago:

Sometime in 2007 I discovered Eve Tushnet’s writing. I can’t recall exactly how I found her non-flashy, off-the-beaten-path blog, tagged with the teasing moniker “Conservatism reborn in twisted sisterhood,” but somehow I landed there, following a trail of hyperlinks. I used to read her posts in the morning, while sipping coffee, huddled over my laptop in my cell-like flat in England, when I was just starting graduate school.

Tushnet is a gay Catholic writer who embraces her church’s teaching on marriage and sexuality. By the time I learned about her, I’d been admitting to myself for a few years that I was gay, though I hadn’t told many other people yet. I was still too frightened and unsure of what kind of welcome (or lack thereof) I’d receive. You know those novels and movies about the yearning, aching twentysomethings who are trying to disentangle and sort out their erotic and religious longings, while dreading loneliness and rejection above all else? That was me. Imagine Charles Ryder from Brideshead Revisited, all angsty and insecure, but with a small-town-USA upbringing, and you’ll get the picture. I needed a lifeline. I was hungry to know I wasn’t alone.

Continue reading →

Reflections on Gay In Christ: Dimensions of Fidelity

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A number of writers for Spiritual Friendship recently partnered with Notre Dame’s Institute for Church Life to put on an academic conference titled Gay in Christ: Dimensions of Fidelity. The presentation topics ranged from exegetical frameworks to trans issues to discerning vocations to rehabilitating the Church’s concept of eros, all with the hope of urging church leaders toward greater understanding, compassion, and pastoral action.

Gay in Christ

Like any conscientious graduate student would do during midterms, I ignored all my responsibilities and jumped on a plane to Indiana. Here are three brief reflections as an attendee:

Continue reading →

“Gay in Christ: Dimensions of Fidelity”

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Save the date for a conference in October with many of us here at Spiritual Friendship—including Ron Belgau, Chris Damian, Joshua Gonnerman, Kyle Keating, Chris Roberts, Melinda Selmys, Eve Tushnet, and yours truly!

“Gay in Christ: Dimensions of Fidelity” will be held at the University of Notre Dame from October 31 through November 1. Here’s a description:

What would be an appropriate pastoral strategy for Catholic parishes with respect to parishioners who regard themselves as non-heterosexual in identity but accept the teaching of the Catholic Church on marriage and sexuality? What are the issues that need to be addressed before such a pastoral strategy could be created? At the very least, these would seem to include issues of vocation and identity, the intersection of friendship, sanctification, and intimacy, of love, acceptance and family, and what it means to give and receive gifts in a Church community. It is the hope of this colloquium that we can stretch our own imaginations regarding the possibilities involved. Can the Church be better at receiving the gifts offered to the Church by self-identified gay Catholics who accept Church teaching?  In turn, how can the gifts of ecclesial life in the parish be better attuned to the needs of these self-identified gay members? This workshop style conference is intended to explore such issues with a view towards the eventual recommendation of local pastoral strategies for parish communities.

The conference is free, but the Institute for Church Life is asking you to register if you’d like to attend. I know I speak for all of us who are attending from SF when I say that we’d love to see you there and have the chance to meet and talk face to face!

Conference on Christian Faith and Same-Sex Attraction

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The seminary where I teach, Trinity School for Ministry in Ambridge, Pennsylvania, is hosting a conference on October 10-11 that I hope many of you will be able to attend. We’re calling it “Christian Faith and Same-Sex Attraction: Finding Paths to Ministry,” and SF’s own Mark Yarhouse, Melinda Selmys, and Eve Tushnet (along with yours truly) will be featured speakers. Further details are here, the schedule is here, and the registration page is here.

Here’s the way we’re pitching the conference:

How can our churches speak the Good News of Jesus Christ to our lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer neighbors? And how can their faith and discipleship be nurtured so that they, in turn, can use their gifts and exercise their ministries in our churches? “Christian Faith and Same-Sex Attraction” is a conference designed to explore these questions. The historic biblical teaching on marriage and sexuality affirms that marriage is a covenant between a man and a woman, requiring fidelity and chastity, while the chaste single state is equally honored and celebrated. Such teaching requires sacrifice and discipline on the part of gay Christians (as it does for all Christians), but it also affirms the blessings and opportunities that gay people bring to the life of faith. “Christian Faith and Same-Sex Attraction” will provide a forum in which to examine these questions for the sake of Christian witness in our world today.

I really hope many of you will be able to join us! And even if you can’t come, please help spread the word!

UPDATE: There’s also a very similar conference happening at Covenant Seminary in St. Louis a couple of weeks later, October 24-25. Details are here. If you can’t make it to Pittsburgh, join us in St. Louis!

The New Ex-Gay

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While observing the conversation about faith and sexuality over the past few years I have witnessed a depressing number of harmful and untrue words come out of someone’s mouth right after the preface, “Well, as someone with a conservative ethic…” or “As someone who is ‘side-B’…” (Side-B being clunky shorthand for a more traditional sexual ethic, for those who hadn’t heard it before.)

I understand that some of these people are new to the discussion, are becoming more aware of something that they used to not even have to think about. But…

It’s hard, sometimes, to watch people who are insulated from the consequences of their words keep saying the same harmful things over and over. And it becomes harder when these words are used by others as the example of a “traditional sexual ethic.”

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A Three-Tiered Framework for Thinking About Sexuality

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At Spiritual Friendship and in other venues, we often discuss questions of “disorder” and “sin” relating to sexuality (for a few examples, see here, here, here, here, and here). Others have written about similar topics, such as Denny Burk’s exploration of whether same-sex attraction is sinful.

In all these writings, I see several different categorizations that are in play. I think it is helpful, for the purposes of discussion, to explicitly consider three ways to categorize aspects of sexuality: not disordered, disordered but not sinful, and sinful. Not everyone will agree with me on which aspects of sexuality fit into which category, but I think that explicitly considering these categories is a helpful framework for discussion. I will give a brief description of each, as well as some of my current understanding of what fits in each category and how others disagree with me.

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What I Learned From My Ex-Gay Days Part 2: Reflections

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In my previous piece, I described my experience trying to change my orientation. As promised, in this post I will discuss some practical insights, many of which extend beyond the ex-gay context in which I learned them.

The most immediate insight is directly about sexual orientation change efforts: change in orientation is not something we should promise. Hope in orientation change can be false hope. This is true even for someone who is willing to put great effort into trying to become straight and, more importantly, dealing with the sorts of issues often claimed to be behind a homosexual or bisexual orientation. It is important that we be honest.

Putting my hope into orientation change had less fallout for me than it had for many others. As a man who was already attracted to women, changing my orientation was never quite about being able to function in a marriage. Remaining attracted to the same sex did not have any particular implication about celibacy; it merely meant that I could not be as normal as I wanted and that I would face negative attitudes from some conservative Christians. I was able to come to an acceptance of this reality. However, other people do experience significant hurt. As I alluded to in the first part, even parents may be unnecessarily hurt when they take the blame for their children’s orientation.

Continue reading →