24th
Confessing Assumptions About Sexual Identity :: Moving Away From Drawing Lines to Starting Dialogue
So let’s consider this the 2nd part (click here to see the pseudo-intro) of what hopefully will be a 4 or 5 part series of blog posts on “Faith and Sexuality.” The timing of this post actually coincides with nearly 60 other bloggers sharing their thoughts on how to “bridge the gap.” I’d encourage you to visit the site hosting this synchroblog effort at Bridge the Gap—should be some pretty compelling stuff posted there.
In this post I’d like to trace my journey from assumptions to dialogue.
I grew up in a religious home. I was raised Catholic and went to Catholic church until I was 11 or 12 years old. Then my folks starting going to a soft charismatic (no snake handling) non-denominational Protestant church (back then calling themselves “Born Again”; now calling themselves “Evangelical”).
My Protestant socialization was smack-dab in the middle of the emergence of the so-called “Religious Right” (Pat Robertson, the late Jerry Falwell, James Dobson, you know, the usual suspects).
After attending a series of Catholic, Protestant and public elementary schools, I went to a private Christian high school and then went on to study at a pretty conservative Christian liberal arts college (one that was very proud of its Wesleyan Arminian, Holiness tradition).
I wouldn’t necessarily say I lived a sheltered life, but I will say that the religious incubator of my Christian imagination was pretty sheltered. The rules were laid out crystal clear by my church, and holiness was legislated for me by the institutions I studied at.
Now, I’m an 8 on the enneagram (the “need to be against”), so I didn’t always take the rules at face value. In fact, I pushed back pretty hard on a lot of them. But there were, and I imagine still are, a number of assumptions that I didn’t take the time to thoughtfully and reflectively interact with. Many of those things that were externally imposed on my religious consciousness never were personally internalized. And today, I occasionally have an eruption of grace when I discover an assumption needing that attention of reflection and evaluation.
Over this past year, there has been at least one major eruption of grace—an awakening to my assumptions about sexual identity.
This awakening came to surface through friendships. New and old friends who are gay and lesbian have become more a part of my life today than ever before. As these friendships grew and matured, I started finding myself conflicted on what I was taught about the “sin of homosexuality” and the integrity of life that my gay and lesbian friends live.
Sure, thinking abstractly about these kinds of things, it’s easy to come to simple conclusions; but I started understanding the complexity of all this when friendships became central and real human lives embodied alternatives to the conclusions I grew up believing.
So let me start with a confession. I always viewed gay and lesbian sexual orientation as one of two things: Choice or Consequence.
I assumed that being gay or lesbian was a choice a person made about sexual attraction—as if that’s really possible. I mean, try it yourself, randomly pick a person out of your class or work environment and try to force yourself to be attracted to them. Sort of tricky.
I also assumed that being gay or lesbian was the consequence or result of some sort of childhood trauma, for example, an absent father/father figure, the involuntary response to physical or sexual abuse, or even an emotional coping mechanism of a lonely childhood.
Those misinformed assumptions were subsequently reinforced by my religious community who used the Bible to condemn people who had same-sex attractions. There are, of course, a handful of passages of Scripture that refer to homosexual activity, and they seem pretty clear-cut. But many of those passages are surrounded by or tucked into lists of things that also are pretty clear-cut that we don’t tend to observe or even take seriously today.
I mean, these statements and commands don’t leave much wiggle-room in terms of interpretation, but we certainly don’t observe them today:
- “Every male among you must be circumcised” (Genesis 17:10)
- “Anyone who curses mother or father is to be executed” (Exodus 21:17)
- “Do not wear clothes of the opposite sex” (Deuteronomy 22:5)
- ”If a man has sexual relations with a virgin who is pledged to be married, and this happens in the town, you must take them both to the city gate and stone them to death” (Deuteronomy 22:23-24)
- ”If a man rapes a woman who is not engaged to be married, and is caught in the act, the rapist will pay one and a quarter pounds of silver to the parents of the woman. He must then marry her, and, as long as he lives, the rapist can never divorce her” (Deuteronomy 22:28-29)
- ”Do not have sexual contact with a woman during her period” (Leviticus 18:19)
- “Do no wear clothes made of two different kinds of materials” (Leviticus 19:19)
- “Do not eat anything with blood in it” (Leviticus 19:26)
- “Stand up in the presence of the aged” (Leviticus 19:32)
- “You must not charge interest on a loan, either by demanding it in advance or otherwise by adding it to the principle” (Leviticus 25:36)
- “Give whiskey to those near death, and wine to those whose hearts are bitter; let people drink to deaden their pain, and not think of their misery” (Proverbs 31.6-7)
- “Are you single? Do not go looking for a mate” (I Corinthians 7:27)
This list could go on and on and on. And these kinds of lists have caused me to ask different kinds of questions in terms of what they meant when they were written, and what the context was that informed how they were regulated.
In 2009 my context has forced me to ask new and different questions about these things. And in 2009 I hope we’ve moved on from the days when the so-called “Religious Right” made sexual orientation a conversation about “Nature or Nurture.” Not that the nature or nurture conversation isn’t an important one, but at the end of the conversation for most gay and lesbian people it doesn’t really matter. Whether you agree or not, many people who say they’re born gay believe that about themselves, and someone arguing with them about “Choice or Consequence” or “Nature or Nurture” has completely missed the point of their present reality and very real experience.
If people are born gay or lesbian, if they “become” gay or lesbian because of something that’s happened to them, or even if they “chose” who they are attracted to, I’m not sure this is the most important conversation to consider, in fact, I think the whole conversation needs to be re-framed.
I’m suggesting that conservative Christians re-frame the conversation around a few starting points:
- Affirming the Divine Imprint of God in All Humanity. What does this mean to someone who’s born gay? How does the image of God reflect hetero-or-homosexual identity?
- Agreeing to Morality Standards. If Christians want to point to laws regarding sexuality, then what do we do about the sin of perpetual adultery for people who re-marry after divorce (something that Christ actually taught, though he never mentioned anything about homosexuality)? And while we’re at it, our American entertainment industry saturates our iPods and theatres with storyline after storyline back-dropped by casual heterosexual flings. Let’s just be consistent here, if we’re going to judge sexuality, let’s hold a consistent standard for everyone.
- Avoiding the Reductionism of Over-Identifying Someone with Their Sexuality. Is a Caucasian woman more female or more white? Is an African American Baptist more black or more Christian? Is a homosexual from Iowa more gay or more American? Is a straight person living in a slum more heterosexual or more poor? Why do we always seem to put sexuality at the top of the list of human identifiers when someone is gay or lesbian? I mean, I don’t ever remember introducing someone like, “this is my straight friend Michael.”
- Acknowledging the Civil Rights of Same-Sex Couples in Regards to Marriage. Why should conservative Christians have the civil authority to define and legislate their convictions on the state? Marriage isn’t a “Christian invention,” in fact, it’s something that you don’t even need a church for. Today marriage has technically become a contract that 2 people make with the state they live in (often the ceremony performed in a church and validated by a religious community, but even that’s not a requirement), that’s why you need a judge to dissolve one—I’ve actually never heard of a church convening divorce hearings.
I imagine this is enough to get this conversation started. Future posts in this “Faith and Sexuality” mini-series will include reflections on:
My Personal Journey: From Judgment to Grace
- My Personal Journey: From Judgement to Grace
- Friendships: From Ideas to People
- Conclusions and Questions: Where Do We Go From Here?
I’d love to hear from as many of you as possible about these things. What do you think? How do we answer these questions? Where else should this conversation go?
Like I mentioned in the introductory piece to this series, there’s lots more to come, so I’m just getting this started. And please remember to be cool with your comments (read this if you need a refresher).
