Reconciling faith and sexuality

Paul,

That’s something I’ve spent lots of time thinking about. So I’m going to take a stab at answering your question as best I can. I feel quite convinced and convicted that the belief or proclamation that being queer (or being of any minority/marginalized group) is sinful, or queer (LGBTQI) sexual practices are sinful, directly leads to violence against queer people.

The one caveat I’d make, is that in your ideal of what christians should be, this probably wouldn’t be the case. That is, I think that you believe christians shouldn’t hold power–christians should never be able to hold financial power over others, or social / political power over others. They should instead be small bands of outcasts from society, practicing the ways of Jesus in the margins of empire. Perhaps I haven’t said it how you would, but that’s sort of how I think you view a good christianity. So if that were the case, then I’d think that probably it wouldn’t matter what any individual christian believed was morally or ethically acceptable for queer people.

However, here and now, people claiming to be christians hold most of the power (socially, politically and economically) in the world. Especially in smaller towns and rural areas, people claiming christianity are the primary actors in the enforcement of societal rules. So when you have preachers preaching damnation, even if they’re directly stating that the judgement is for god to make after we die, what people hear is that it’s okay to belittle someone for being gay; to beat someone up for being gay; to chain someone to the back of a truck and drag them down gravel roads until they die…

It’s not, however, that hearing someone preach that homosexuality is wrong “causes” someone to do that. So to all of you who are going to be offended that I’m accusing you of turning people into murderers, that’s not exactly what I mean. Hearing that preached might plant a seed in someone, but I think that there are people out there who for some reason just want to do violence, and haven’t learned how to completely control that urge. When those people hear christians (the dominant rule makers in our society) say that it’s wrong to be queer, what they’re hearing is that you approve of their violence (so long as it’s against queer people), that you’re on their side. We are in essence creating a safe place for them to be violent against oppressed peoples.

This isn’t unique to queer issues. In a similar way, christians have created a culture where it’s safe to rape, by blaming women for being too attractive or tempting, and by defining women as subservient and lesser than men. And there are many more analogous examples.

Unfortunately, I don’t know what that means for people who honestly believe non-heteronormative relationships are sinful, but simultaneously don’t wish any harm done to those people (and paul, i don’t guess I actually know what you believe on the subject, I don’t want to accuse you of believing that). I’ve seen lots of work done by people who are claiming they want to love everyone, but still believe being gay is wrong: “love the sinner, hate the sin” type of work. It’s like saying “no offense, but you suck”. Just tacking “no offense” onto the beginning of your sentence doesn’t actually make your statement non-offensive. Saying “love the sinner” at the beginning doesn’t make it less hateful.

So, not that you asked for it, but my advice would be that if a christian who’s trying to follow jesus really really feels completely convicted that lgbtqi relationships are wrong, probably the best thing they could do is say “well, jesus didn’t give any clear direction on this so I don’t know”. I’m not totally convinced that that isn’t doing further harm, but at least that way you’re not lying and saying you condone it when you don’t approve, but also you’re not taking the side of /condoning murderers and rapists.

I want to preface that I am only speaking out of my own personal thoughts on this specifically as it related to my current experience as a Black north American Mennonite, because that is where I have run across this issue the most. I am also speaking out of my own background as someone who grew up believing that homosexuality is wrong and also had this same sharp mental divide earlier in my life. So that said there are a few things that come to mind in no particular order:

I think that there are many people (not only Civil Rights/religious leaders, but in the society as a whole) who continue to see same-sex attraction as a choice. So I think there is some sense that if gay and lesbian people would simply choose a different lifestyle they would have all the rights they need and want already available to them. That is different from being born with darker skin, which isn’t a choice, and having to fight against exclusion because of something you have no control over.

I think the above view of being gay and lesbian as a choice is further compounded by a view of same-sex sexuality as sinful. In a traditionalist religious view (and this view would apply to others outside of the black and Christian communities), it isn’t acceptable to fight for a civil right to sin. So you have situations like the one in New York City earlier this year, when rabbis, Mulisms and Christian leaders — many of whom were black but not exclusively — came together to oppose gay marriage. In that view, there is a contrast between blackness, which is not sinful, and gayness which is viewed as being a moral/Christian/religious threat.

On a different note, though, I think that part of the issue also has to do with the way the mainstream gay movement does not always do a good job of integrating issues of race into their platform. To be frank, I grew up seeing gayness and gay rights as a primarily white-identified thing. This is in part because of my own ignorance and because of the secrecy that still pervades many black communities around homosexuality. But it is also in part because of how the movement positions itself. Celebrity isn’t the best standard to judge things by, but think about the people you think of when you think of well known gay people or gay people who are honored for their achievements by organizations like GLAAD. I don’t know about you but my list is pretty white. It is not always clear to me that the popular gay rights movement thinks intersectionally about how gayness interacts with other forms of oppression, and how that in turn affects different individuals and communities and should impact how you talk about the issues. To use broad stroke examples, a gay white male with middle class status still has a lot more power than a gay (or straight) black working class man or woman. A Korean or Latina teenager coming out as lesbian is going to have some very particular trials related to culture and history than a white lesbian teenager coming out in NYC. When a movement against oppression operates as if it is color- and class-blind, it is going to have a real problem making inroads with people for whom class and color are inescapable. (As an aside, this is also one of the reasons the mainstream vegan movement has a hard time reaching people of color and runs into trouble when it uses slavery to talk about animal oppression without having done the needed groundwork–even when there are overlaps between the two.)

I also think there is an issue with movement silos. To give a more specific example, a black pastor friend of mine told me a story about how a group of gay rights activists approached him for help in bridging the gap between them and his peers with regard to some legislation they were hoping to get passed in his city. They wanted him to speak out publicly in support of their agenda, which he was willing to do. But in exchange he asked that they encourage their constituents to back him and those pastors on activist work around some key justice issues affecting the black and brown population in certain areas of the city. They never contacted him again. I think it would go a long way for movements seeking equality to take the risk of backing each other whenever they can, but that requires the intersectional thinking I note above.

I’ll share a personal sentiment that I have been trying to sort through as my own thoughts around homosexuality has begun to transition over the past few years. In my denomination, it can feel like gay rights is outpacing resistance to racism. Now on one level I know this is illogical. I have friends of color who are gay…there are plenty of gay who are not white-identified in the Mennonite Church. But I find it odd (and it can sometimes be easy to feel resentful) that Mennonite churches all over America are willing to be disciplined for being open and affirming and to organize by the hundreds to make declarations about equal membership in the church–that our church might actually split in two over this issue–but it is like pulling teeth to make any real headway with the latent systemic racism that pervades our institutions and our congregations. In fact, there are days when I get really angry about it–I know logically, it isn’t a race. But I would not be surprised if the Mennonite Church is able to progress on that issue long before we are able to make any lasting headway having people of color (straight and otherwise) as equal leading partners at the Mennonite table. So in that regard, it can be really difficult to hear the Civil Rights struggle used to aid a related but distinct movement for freedom, when the people who that movement was supposed to benefit are still being overlooked and oppressed.

So that is my long and vulnerable answer…

Nate,

What you believe to be the purpose of the penis and vagina may well be what the Catholic church has told you but it is not a perspective that you will find in the bible nor from any reputable sex therapist.

Have you read the Song of Solomon? It is about the beauty and love of eroticism. It is full of euphemistic allusion to both vagina and penis, and clear and literal about the erotic beauty of breasts.

In Genesis, Woman was not created so that man could procreate. Woman was created because it was not good for man to be alone.

Your utilitarian attitude to genitalia not only denies yourself and those who agree with you (or feel guilty that you might be right) the joy of a gift of god, it also perversely redefines a holy gift as at best “cheating” or as the Catholic Church has taught, a temptation from Satan. Your sexual ideology defiles what is sacred, what is given by God.

This is why I think the debate about homosexuality in the church is a very different thing to the secular debate about social and legal equality. At the core of the conservative church’s opposition to, for example, gay marriage is not because they think homosexuality is an abomination but because they think free sexuality of any sort is an abomination. They are not scared of gays, they are scared of sex. Open and proud Gays only remind christians of their own repressed sexuality whatever it is.

But as long as the church is a place where anti-sexual pleasure ideologies such as your’s are tolerated as legitimate or even accepted as correct then all the terrible consequences of sexual repression such as mental illness, suicides and clerical rape including pedophilia will remain as demons possessing the church as they do today, especially the Catholic church that has imposed its warped sexual ideology onto the centre of congregational life with supposedly celibate priests.

My hope and prayer is for a healing church.