Sharing Our Stories (SOS) was a small group of students from the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and a small group of students from the Alliance of Lesbian, Bi, Gay and Trans Students who, with several staff facilitators from both groups, met and talked over the course of a school year about how to talk about the volatile issues surrounding Christianity and homosexuality (including the LBGTI/Queer spectrum of self-identities). It was a pretty rough experience for all involved, though it was certainly educational. What follows is the text of three emails I sent to the group during the process.
M asks: "After last night's group I was thinking maybe the primary question is not 'Can someone be gay and Christian?', but 'Did God create/intend for there to be lbgt people?'. If God did create sexual orientation, then being lbgt and Christian of course would be a part of the plan—if not, then there are many other questions. What do you think?"
The argument can still be made that people seem to be created with many inclinations and dispositions that are wrong for them to fulfill. Why then is being LBG any different than, say, being a kleptomaniac or a pyromaniac?
We try to fix people who are born blind or deaf or deformed. Why are these people 'broken?' What is the 'ideal' against which they are measured? Does that ideal include only heterosexual orientation?
So I don't think it helps much to assume that orientation is part of creation. And I think it is simplistic to call this a discussion about hetero- versus homo-sexuality; it's about sexuality and sensuality and monogamy and public sex and sex for hire and BDSM and the whole queer ball of wax, not only about people who are 'just like heterosexuals' except for what they invisibly do in the privacy of their own bedrooms.
Personally, I think the core questions are more like:
Why is sexual pleasure a problem that has to be solved?
Who has power when gender and sexuality are defined in the way they have come to be in most Christian churches?
And ultimately it's going to come down to the Bible and/or absolute truth. Unless I have to believe the King James version of the Bible (or Catholic dogma) as interpreted by people currently in power in the Church, none of this is any problem. I've spent my whole life praying and thinking about these issues, and I don't get the same answers as the pope and Pat Robertson. What makes me wrong and them right?
I've tried to do this, many times, and failed; precisely because the only words I have to use are words that I don't own, and so cannot trust to be understood. Every class membership word that comes to mind is either claimed by other people who are adamantly convinced that I am not one of them, or is considered by some people to be a term of derision.
I am sexual, I am gendered, and I am attracted to some other people. But none of the usual words for those things work for me. I'm not a man or a woman. I'm not straight or gay or lesbian or bisexual. I don't know what 'transgender' means, and most people who self-identify as transsexual are certain that I'm not one of them. I simply do not have an identity in the common sex-gender-sexuality space that other people can name and talk about.
The words that do define my place in this culture and this society are words like: aberrant, abomination, confused, depraved, detestable, deviant, filth, freak, grotesque, hideous, laughable, pervert, queer, sick, slut, unnatural, and warped. I've become fond of many of these words, and I sometimes use them to shock people with my reality.
The Bible and the religions that derive from it are all very strongly gendered. The 'aberrant, ..., warped' list of words have all been said to me by people who claim to be Christian, and who base their opinion of me in their Christianity.
"So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them." [Gen 1:27]
I'm not in the Bible. (Perhaps a sentence here and there can be contorted to refer to what people think I am, but that doesn't change the fact that I am not present in the Bible.) If gender duality is a central tenet of the Bible and so of Christianity, how can I be Christian?
I realize it is very egotistical to believe that I am okay and that our culture, our society, and many of the major world religions do not include me, do not speak for me, and do not apply to me. But there it is. It's a difficult stance to take, because in many ways I am a conservative person, follow a rigid code of ethics, and have strong feelings of right and wrong, of social and economic justice, of duty as a parent and a teacher; but I cannot point to a conveniently accessible statement of morality to back me up.
So, I'm a human being with a complex body, gender, sexuality and spirituality; but I have no holy book and no religion. If you want to know and understand me, you're going to have to do it the hard way. And I, personally, believe that's exactly what Jesus meant when he said we must learn to love our neighbor as we love our self.
To begin with, I urge against trying to make things seem too simple. I'm going to say this over and over again. Human beings like to try to reduce all choices to a clearly defined either/or; I believe the world is not actually like that.
The world is not full of straight lines, but we see it that way, and we try to remake the world so it actually is full of straight lines. For example, in the world there is no sharp dividing line between a stream and the meadow through which it runs. We build a concrete channel for the stream, change the meadow into a lawn, and then feel that we understand and control the water and the land. But what we understand is our perception of the world, not the world itself.
Perhaps our ability to simplify situations and remake the world in the image of our perception is why we have survived to become the most dangerous animal on a dangerous planet. Our 'differentiate, choose, and act' strategy works well for basic survival, at which we excel; but it's lousy for long-range planning and cooperation, and not surprisingly we do poorly at those tasks.
God may exist, as may absolute moral truth. But consider: God has already made the world; if our perception of God and of morality does not conform with the world, what does that say of our ability to see clearly? Do we improve the world by rechanneling the streams and replanting the meadows, or do we merely make ourselves more comfortable with our own view of the world?
Orientation:
"So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them." [Gen 1:27]
A person is male or female. A person is heterosexual or homosexual. A person is in a sanctioned relationship or not. Simple either/or distinctions.
One can wish things were this simple. One can believe it is so. One can try to make it so. But it is not so.
To wish / believe / mandate such simplicity is to try to wish / believe / mandate me and people like me out of existence, for we are not simple.
Who decided to replace God's complexity with simplicity? Is this the right thing to do?
Behavior/Choice
One can choose whether to be sexual, with whom, and in what circumstances. As with any choice that can profoundly affect a person's future and wellbeing, choices involving sexuality should not be made lightly or without information and consent.
This is not the issue. This is a red herring.
Lisa's Viewpoint
Sex is a basic human need. To say that sex is okay only within a relationship sanctioned by the Church and/or the state reeks of power and control.
I do not believe that God created such an amazing spectrum of people as I know, only to tell them to spend their lives in loneliness and silence.
This is, for me, the great stumbling block I have with Christianity as embodied by most churches: I and many other people are set apart, but we are not explained, we are not given a place in the scheme of things, we are given no way to fit in that does not do violence to our instantiation. We are swept under the rug of a simplistic view of what it is to be human, told to shut up, and killed if we continue to speak.