Sunday, July 3, 2011

Pieces of Me


During the summer, LGBT people celebrate the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots with Gay Pride parades and festivals all across America. In the state of New York, what is arguably the most legendary Pride celebration in Manhattan was boosted by the June 24 passing of a bill legalizing gay marriage in that state. New York now tops the list states as the largest to pass such legislation. The celebration of this milestone will reverberate across the nation this weekend, and rightly so.

Gay pride has always been a somewhat elusive sentiment for me. The prevailing emotion connected to my sexuality has always been one of shame rather than pride. Early on I attributed this primarily to my experience growing up in the evangelical church, where the last thing I was made to feel about my burgeoning sexual orientation was pride. One would think that as I came to terms with my sexuality, the shame would have subsided and in its place emerged a true sense of the pride that so may celebrate each year. But it’s been over a decade since I “came out” as gay, and I still struggle to let go of shame and embrace my gay pride.

While the shame I felt as a young man can be attributed to my religious upbringing, the shame I’ve felt in more recent years has come not from external voices. Rather, it is the appropriate reaction to decisions and behaviors that I am simply not proud of. And herein lies the rub of the gay pride dilemma for me. While my LGBT brothers and sisters celebrate with parades and parties, costumes and music, I’m not sure we’re celebrating the same things.

As I took my first steps out into the gay community in my early twenties, I learned very quickly that my newfound sexuality was a highly valued commodity.  Casual sex could be traded for a sense of belonging, feelings of attractiveness, and endless opportunities to satisfy the powerful cravings of a male sexual appetite that had been suppressed and starved for my entire life. Having distanced myself from the anchors of my faith community (essentially tossing the baby Jesus out with the bathwater in my newfound independence), I believed the hype and dove head first into this new culture where gratification was the prevailing core value.

A decade later, it is painful for me to reflect on the many pieces of me I gave away during those coming out years. Pieces of my innocence. Pieces of my soul. Treasured pieces of me that were haphazardly discarded in an effort to fit my perceived mold of an “out and proud” gay man. These were pieces of me I will never get back.

Needless to say, you won’t find me prancing down the street in a speedo celebrating the aspects of gay culture that have caused a great deal of pain in my life. And because of this, I’ll be perceived by some of my LGBT brothers and sisters as a self-loathing party pooper. But that’s not to say that I won’t be celebrating gay pride this year, because I most certainly will…

In fact, this year I will be celebrating gay pride more than I ever have in the past, but from a new place of self-acceptance and healing. This year I’ll be celebrating the fact that, across the United States, we are slowly but surely winning the battle for equal rights to marry or enter into civil unions. I believe that legally recognizing and validating the commitment of two gay people to live in a committed relationship with each other is the single most important step to changing the unhealthiest aspects of gay culture. There will be less reason for sneaking around in the shadows where healthy sexuality is corrupted by a shame-based grasping for false intimacy. And there will be couples walking around openly in our society as role models of a healthy expression of the deep love embodied in so many same-sex relationships.

And this year I will be celebrating the fact that, through the love of God, close friends and my partner, I am walking again in a restored sense of wholeness as a gay man and a follower of Jesus.

It was last year at a gay pride celebration that I met the man who I believe will be my partner for life. Yes, it was at a gay pride celebration, and the irony of those circumstances is not lost on me. Only a gracious God would meet me at the very point of my internal battle of shame over my sexuality and use a gay pride celebration to begin the next step in my journey toward restoring wholeness in my heart and soul. There is no coincidence in that for me. And each day I am learning first-hand how a powerful love (bestowed by God and reflected through people) can root out shame, and in its place leave a restored sense of one’s true value and worth.

So please allow me to wish you a Happy Gay Pride, my friends. Let’s celebrate the beginning of a new gay identity embodied by selfless and shameless loving relationships that can finally be lived outside of the shadows for all to see.

Sunday, April 3, 2011

Yes, this is what it's like

Even though I write a blog about the experiences of being gay and Christian from the perspective of someone who is just that, a gay Christian, most of the followers of this blog actually lean toward the conservative, evangelical side of the religio-political spectrum. I didn’t expect this to be the case when I first began writing almost a year ago, but it has been one of the best parts of the experience for me as a fledgling blogger. Blogging is much more interesting when you have a readership with opinions that differ from your own.

The other amazing thing about this experience has been the opportunity to connect with numerous young, LBGT people at different stages on the same journey toward integrated lives and identities.

One such opportunity came a few weeks ago as I visited my family in the Midwest.  As plans for my visit came together, a good friend and former teacher asked me if I’d be interested in speaking to a group of LGBT students and their straight allies at a high school in my hometown. Since I grew up in this very school district, I already knew these kids were not on gay-friendly turf. And I was right. In response to some anti-gay threats and bullying incidents that had taken place at the school, a group of LGBT and straight-but-concerned students had formed a Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) as a way for students to find support and a safe place to belong. I accepted the invitation without hesitation.

During the hour-long circle dialogue that took place after school one day, I told my story, listened to the stories of these courageous young people, and then answered a myriad of questions about my life as a gay adult who had grown up on the same side of the tracks as the students sitting around me in that classroom. Without going into too much detail, it was both a humbling and inspiring experience for me. I am constantly amazed at the courage and strength of character that develops in young LGBT people who, like me, are forced to find a way to survive adolescence in environments that can quickly become hostile if anyone were to find out the truth, buried under carefully constructed façades.

A few days later, my teacher friend sent me a panicked e-mail. Even though the school administration had officially sanctioned the Gay-Straight Alliance at the high school, they had come under fire from an angry parent of one of the students who attended the GSA meeting. One of the students had left the meeting and come out to their parents, igniting a firestorm of backlash from an angry parent who accused the school of bringing a “gay activist” to the school to “teach their child how to be gay.” In the e-mail, my teacher friend stated, “This is just so awful. It is a first taste of your world for me.”

Fast forward just a few weeks to a conversation I had with a friend of mine who recently left a position with an evangelical, Christian organization because of the negative pressure he was receiving since coming out as gay. Without delving into the anguish this person has suffered as a result of coming out as a gay Christian within a culture that believes those two things cannot be true at the same time, I’ll tell you that this is someone who has become one of those everyday heroes to me. During our phone conversation this friend recounted to me the experience of accepting a speaking engagement at a very large, public university in the Midwest.

The event was a “bridge-building” event sponsored by both an LGBT campus group and a well-known evangelical campus ministry. The whole point was to, without delving into theological debate and blame casting, address the topic of how Jesus would respond to homosexual people in today’s cultural context. My friend told his story (one very similar to my own), including the very difficult process of reconciling his faith and sexuality with integrity. During the meeting, someone stood up in the audience, disregarding the established rules for submitting written questions, and called my friend a false prophet, a liar and then shouted, “What’s it like to be living in sin?” And this happened on the campus of one of the largest public universities in the United States!

It didn’t stop there, as this person proceeded to post one of the most theologically misinformed, vitriolic blogs I’ve ever read on the topic on a website hosted by his church and backed by a handful of extreme-right “evangelical” pastors. In addition to the accusations leveled during the event, he called my friend “wicked” and accused him of placing “stumbling blocks before the weak.”

As I mentioned earlier, the majority of readers of my blog are evangelical Christians. Since I have grown up in that world, and am Christian myself, I am familiar with the scriptures that talk about persecution of Christians in the end times. Many within the circles of my upbringing spend time thinking and talking about what it will be like in those days when we are “persecuted” for our faith. In fact, it led to a whole series of highly successful novels highlighting the trials and suffering that those who remain true to the faith might go through.

Well, folks, those are mere musings at this point. In the United States in 2011, you’d have to possess a very creative imagination to envision what it’s like to actually be treated hatefully because of your unwavering commitment to your Christian faith.

In stark contrast, right now, today, smack dab in the middle of the public institutions of our society (not to mention the private spaces of churches across America) to simply speak out loud as an unapologetic gay person, even a gay Christian person, often incites the worst kind of hate-mongering and threatening language one can imagine. For those of us who still take our faith very seriously, the religious language (“wicked,” “false teacher,” “gay activist”) has more power than one might imagine, because these are the same names and terms hurled from the pulpit during our formative years in the church. What is more frightening for us is that these hateful words are often accompanied by a very real threat of harm to our physical safety, career or reputation.

My teacher friend admitted experiencing just a glimpse of what I must deal with on a regular basis. If you’re reading this, maybe you’re surprised, too. Or maybe you’re thinking, “Is this really what it’s like?”

Yes, unfortunately, this is what it’s like for far too many of us who choose to remain a part of the communities of belonging we ourselves helped build and sustain for our entire lives. It’s not pretty, and it won’t change unless our straight allies begin to challenge the voices of hatred within their own midst.

Until then, you’ll find me and others like me continuing to raise our voices with the hope that things will be different for those who come behind us, daring to live their lives out in the open with integrity, courage and faith.

Friday, February 18, 2011

The Uninvited Guest

Have you ever had one of those dinner guests who you invited only because you have a lot of mutual friends? Have you ever gotten to the end of the evening to find that the only guest left drinking your wine and sitting in your favorite chair is the one person you were ambivalent, at best, about inviting? Yeah, you know exactly whom I’m talking about. Well, allow me introduce myself. I am that guy. I’ve been taking up a precious spot at an exclusive dinner party for well over a decade now, and I haven’t had any real plans of putting down my glass and pushing back from the table anytime soon. But lately I’m starting to get the distinct impression that the party is over, at least for me.

It all began recently when I had the overwhelming privilege of spending the day amongst a group of heroes. Not the kind of heroes our society lauds (although any one of these individuals could easily change the world, and likely will). And not the typical, seasoned leader that has normally held “hero” status in my life.

On the contrary, I spent the day sitting in a circle with a dozen mostly twenty-somethings, who have defied the odds on a journey of faith, integrity and true grit to stand as young, gay Christians caught between two worlds that have told them they should not, or cannot exist. As a thirty-something who has only recently found the voice to articulate my own journey, I was leveled by the power of a small group of young people whose stories both broke my heart and shattered my notions of what it could be like to be a gay Christian in 2011.

How was it that in a room where I had at least a decade on the young adults sitting around me, I was the one learning a lesson about conviction and commitment? I was challenged by the commitment to faith even at high personal cost evident from each and every person’s story.  I was inspired by a shared commitment to live an integrated life in spite of the voices (internal and external) that have told many of us that we cannot be both gay and followers of Jesus. And most importantly, I was laid bare by their steely commitment to justice, a cause to which I have dedicated my life and career in the pursuit of for other vulnerable people, but not on behalf of myself and people on a similar journey. While I resonated with the first two commitments, it was this commitment to justice for which I found myself without a leg to stand on.

Walking (or should I say hobbling?) away from this experience, I felt at the same time uplifted and, quite frankly, floored by the courage of conviction in the room and the tough questions posed to me by these young believers. Questions I thought I had answers to, but after hearing myself give those answers out loud, have realized don’t satisfy even me, and certainly not the people who were asking them.

The questions boiled down to this one defining issue: Why do I continue to hold my place at a table where many of the people who set the table don’t want me to dine? 

I used to answer quite confidently that the reason I held my place was because I believed God was calling me to change my corner of the evangelical church by pushing myself closer to the table and holding on tight. But over the course of the past few months, I’ve begun to wonder if that answer has really just been an excuse for participating in my own oppression and the mistreatment that comes from being treated as the uninvited guest.  Or even worse, has it been the excuse I’ve used to let the people who set the table and made the guest list off of the hook for trying to exclude me in the first place?

I’ve always opted to give people the benefit of the doubt on these issues, but as I come more fully to love myself as the person God made me and as I experience more fully the unconditional love of God and a handful of good people, I’m finding I’ve run out of excuses for those who’ve tried to keep me from experiencing that love from the beginning.

The answer isn't a simple one. From what I can tell, there are less and less of us gay Christians who are willing to sit silently at a table where we are not welcome.  In fact, many of the people I've been talking with lately are ready to overturn the damn thing and go to a dinner party where we are not only invited, but treated as the guests of honor. And as I've already shared in this post, it's a question I've been wrestling with myself.

The thing is, this particular blog is about finding hope. Even though hope may be difficult to find when we read the news and hear the painful stories of people like us, I do believe there are some bright spots on the horizon, and they are the silent majority of Christians that exist in many evangelical churches who want to fully embrace their LGBT brothers and sisters and believe that we should be invited to the table. We have allies, and many of them are the people we've been seated next to in the pew and hugged and prayed and cried with more times than we could possibly remember. And all along, they knew much more than we though they did about who we were, and grew to love us for that and not in spite of it.

So rather than sit in silence as an unwelcome guest, or rather than get up, overturn the table and storm out of the room, I believe that we gay Christians may need to do something that feels a bit uncomfortable for those of us who have a new-found confidence in who we are. That difficult step is to entrust the role of "re-setting the table" to our brothers and sisters (straight or otherwise), who are willing to use their positions of influence and integrity to validate our presence at this dinner party we call "church." It will require that we swallow a bit of our recently discovered pride, and it will involve taking a risk. But ultimately, I believe this is the only way we can experience true reconciliation, along with the elusive experience of welcome that each of us (most certiainly me), yearn for.

Here's hoping I will see each of you the next time we gather for that special, weekly dinner party more commonly known as the communion of the saints.