My friend Christine Holcomb is working at PFLAG this summer. She asked some of her ministry colleagues to write narrative pieces about sexuality and faith in order to provide parents of GLBTQ youth accounts of how persons and religious communities have wrestled with these issues. Here's what I wrote...
I was born and raised in a middle class, white, American, protestant home. In many ways my family exhibited identity marks and patterns of privilege. Fortunately both of my parents, but especially my father, were born into communities of religious faith that preached and (for the most part) practiced justice. Thanks to roots firmly planted in the reformation tradition, I was taught by my parents and church that G*d’s love was freely given for everyone. Further: there was nothing I had done or could do that would separate me from the love of G*d. And perhaps most importantly, I was taught that though G*d’s grace existed for me without condition, it also existed for every other human being on this planet—no exceptions.
I cannot tell you how many times my parents knocked me off pedestal after pedestal reminding me that I had not chosen to be born with resources and access to success when I got a little hot on myself. Likewise, whenever I saw abject poverty and suffering, I would ask the big questions about fairness, and they would respond: “nobody chooses what they’re born into—not you, not these people out here hungry—that’s why people who have a lot must give more than what’s required by the world in order to ensure equality for everyone.” Now, this idea of not being able to determine what we’re “born into” doesn’t rest well with ideas of G*d as ultimate controller of the universe, and while this narrative essay is not intended to deconstruct omnipotence theology I would encourage you to invest in that project on your own time. Many people might assume that G*d chooses who will be rich and who will be poor before they’re born, but I’m not sure such thinking can reconcile itself with the idea of an all-loving G*d.
Eventually, I realized my parents’ teachings were probably true: I didn’t deserve the privilege that came along with white skin and middle class status any more than someone without those marks deserves hunger and social ridicule. There is an element of arbitrariness to what we are “born into” and the path of the faithful is to ensure that notions of what we are born into matter a lot less than notions of what all human beings, regardless of origin, need in order to survive. I came to appreciate these teachings over time, though they often clipped at my ability to judge others too harshly or praise myself for too long. But when my dad decided he was going to start fighting for gay rights at church that was tipping the balance too far!
I was eleven, just hitting puberty, beginning to feel some of the societal pressure to become an attractive girl-type, and (as is quite typical for kids that age) my dad already embarrassed the hell out of me. When he got elected to chair the Open and Affirming Task Force at my local church, I thought I would just die. What if my friends found out that my dad liked gays? What if they thought I liked gays?
I look back on those years of watching him fight for the most despised and oppressed members of our community and cannot help but laugh at how much inner resistance I had when it was happening in the moment. At bottom I think I feared losing his attention, not being accepted by my peer group, and finding out that some of the things I held sacred (like ideas about gender, marriage, family and G*d’s preference for all things heterosexual) were wrong or at least worth questioning. William Sloane Coffin once wrote: “It is always a good decision to change your mind when to do so will widen your heart.” I had some mind-changing and heart-widening to do back then. But that same theology about the arbitrariness of what we are born with came in real handy. G*d’s love is for everyone—no exceptions, right? Right. My father’s O&A Task Force succeeded in making my home congregation open and affirming (not just tolerant) of the LGBT community back in 1994.
Today I am openly queer and in-care with the United Church of Christ. I do not think I was born gay. Some are; some aren’t. I choose to love all people—no exceptions—with my mind, heart and (sometimes) my body because I think this way of loving most faithfully mirrors the love of G*d. As a devotee of the Most High, it is my job to mirror and embody the love of G*d on earth.
When it comes down to it, I think there’s a spectrum of sexual/gender preference and a wide range of desires that people inhabit. That’s the difference between the oppressions of poor people and sexuality oppressions. We want to honor the spectrum when it comes to desire for love, but end the widening binary of good and bad when it comes to economic, racial, ability and gender realities.
I’m writing to you today because most of you have children who are either coming out as or exploring non-normative gender and sexual identities. For the love of G*d, I hope you will find it within yourselves and find a community of faith who supports you in allowing your child to love however your child wills to love, so that eventually all this trivial argument may end and a unified fight of our common enemy—poverty—can begin.
May peace be upon you, now and always.
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