Category Archives: Gender and Sexuality

Gender and Sexuality, Religion

A heterosexual evangelical Christian writes about LGBT matters and a friend (foolishly) asks for my thoughts.

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I was going to write and publish another post containing my musings on Justin Lee’s book, “Torn:  Rescuing the Gospel from the Gays vs. Christians Debate.”  However, blogging buddy Matt Stone dropped me a note on Facebook inviting me to offer a critique of Nigel Chapman’s paper, “Gay Sex for Evangelicals:  Why gay sex is biblically condemned, and how this understanding solves the Evangelical impasse over same-sex attraction.”  It’s basically a paper written by a heterosexual evangelical Christian to other heterosexual evangelical Christians (and possibly gay evangelical Christians who take a view that’s commonly called  Side B among gay Christians and those who interact with (or discuss) them.  He breaks the paper down into two parts:

  1. A section in which he describes the current state of affairs of how LGBT Christians generally experience life in their evangelical churches and explains why this should be a great concern for pastors and all evangelical Christians everywhere.
  2. A section in which he explores places where the Bible condemns same sex sexual activity in an attempt to understand why it does so and how that applies to same sex sexual activity in general and even sexual orientation.

Overall, I really don’t have much to say on the actual content of either of those sections or the arguments he makes.  I think they’re pretty spot on, and reflect what has already been said on the subject (I’ll come back to that statement in a bit).  However, I do have a few thoughts on the paper, it’s presentation, and the general culture which inspired it.  And I will share those thoughts roughly and as-is now.

  1. Oh look, another heterosexual man has decided that he has something to say about LGBT issues.  Am I really supposed to be excited by this?  I mean, heterosexual men’s voices aren’t exactly underrepresented in this conversation.
  2. The above thought is somewhat (but only somewhat) mitigated by the fact that Chapman encourages fellow heterosexual Christians to actually listen to LGBT people and even offers quotes from LGBT youth in the first part of his paper.  All the same, just once, I’d like one of these heterosexual men to do exactly that and then stop without adding his own commentary.
  3. All of his arguments in part two look great to me.  Then again, they looked great to me the dozens of other times I’ve read them when they were put forward by other people, often LGBT Christians who struggled with these questions for years.
  4. I’m deeply bothered by the fact that Chapman doesn’t seem to acknowledge that he’s covering new ground and that his arguments have long been put forth by others, namely LGBT Christians.  (See my first point in this list.)
  5. When those same arguments were put forward for years by LGBT people, they were summarily dismissed by many heterosexual evangelical Christians on the grounds that LGBT Christians were “just trying to rationalize their sin.”
  6. The fact that Chapman is presenting these arguments and claims that they are (now) “unassailable” is contemptible in my book as a result.  The fact that a heterosexual man is now presenting these arguments does not magically make them “objective” whereas they were biased back when LGBT Christians were presenting them.  The fact that Chapman doesn’t address this issue and charge his fellow Christians for dismissing “unassailable” arguments simply because they were originally offered up by LGBT Christians is something I believe he needs to repent of.
  7. I really wish he would have stopped after the first part.  Not because I disagree with his conclusions in the second part (in fact, I’m inclined to agree with them), but because it continues to play into the contemptible notion that it’s up to heterosexual evangelical Christians to determine the moral way for LGBT people to live their lives and that it’s the most important question to the whole “Christian theology about LGBT people and the issues they face.”  It would be nice if for once, heterosexual evangelical Christians would let LGBT people worry about what the most moral course for their lives would be and instead focus on things they are responsible for and can change:  Like the hate or lack of love (because let’s face it, there’s a lot of wiggle room between hating someone and being loving toward them) that LGBT people feel around them and in their churches.  That’s something that they should be able to answer without delving into questions about the morality of same-sex sexual activity.  And that’s a fact that gets ignored every time someone like Chapman insists on answering questions about the morality of same-sex sexual activity every time he talks about how Christians should treat LGBT people and the issues they face.

Books, Gender and Sexuality, Religion

Musings on “Torn”: Christians showing grace

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As I mentioned in my previous entry, I want to spend some time examining Justin’s advice for moving forward and away from the “culture war”[1] that he offers in chapter fifteen.  After all, most of the rest of the book consists of him telling his story or explaining his own take on Christian theology in regards to homosexuality and same sex relationships.  The former deserves no response beyond careful reading and the encouragement of others to also read it.  The latter holds little interest to me, as I don’t consider my life to be bound by Christian theology.

But finding a way forward to living peaceful lives with the many Christians that share my workplace, my shopping centers, and the rest of the world with me, that’s something I can get on board with and discuss.  So in this post, I want to consider Justin’s first suggestion:

Christians must show more grace, especially in the midst of disagreement.

In this section, Justin focuses on how Christians approach gay people.  He reminds us of his own exchange with a high school friend that he shared in the second chapter.   He focuses on the fact that his answer boiled down — as Sean pointed out — to the old adage that just about every gay person has heard:  love the sinner, but hate the sin.

In this part of chapter fifteen, Justin reflects on his own experience of people who loved him, but hated his “sin:”[2]

Yes, I know I’m a sinner, as we all are, but something about the phrase feels condescending and dehumanizing, as if I’m now the “sinner” rather than the person’s friend or neighbor, and “loving” me has become the new project they’ve taken on out of obligation to God rather than a genuine interest in my well-being.  For this, it seems I am supposed to feel grateful, as if this were a great imposition on someone who could easily have passed me by and left me in my sinful state.

In addition to the dehumanization of being turned into a “love project,” I’d also note that a lot of Christians who “love sinners but hate sin” have what I would consider some strange ideas of what it means to love other people they consider “sinners.”  You will often hear many Christians talk about “love” in these situations about needing to “lovingly correct the other person,” which often leads to constant streams of preaching about the sinfulness they hate so much.  Not only does this mean once again telling gay people the same things we’ve heard dozens of times before — a reality I noted elsewhere — this kind of preaching about the sinfulness prevents such Christians from getting to ways in which they relate to and show love in more recognizable — and dare I say more traditional — ways.

Love is not an abstract comment.  It’s something that is tangible and can only exist in a real relationship.  And I’d argue that Christians don’t need to just show grace, but need to learn to love in relationship better.  They need to start getting to know LGBT people and knowing what their individuals troubles, concerns, and needs are.  To make an allusion to a popular myth, they need to find out who is actually naked, who is actually starving, who is actually in prison, and act accordingly when dealing with each of those people.  Some needs are somewhat universal among all LGBT people, but can even manifest in different ways among individuals.  Others are more specific to individuals or subgroups within the larger community.  The only way Christians — both as individuals[3] and collectively — can respond to these needs is to become familiar with them first-hand and on an up-close, personal level.

Christians also need to be prepared that meeting LGBT people’s needs may cause them discomfort.  After all, part of loving someone means loving all of them and living with all of them.  That’s the problem with the “hate the sin” part.  Christians who want to “love the sinner while hating the sin” want to conditionally accept some parts of the “sinner” while ignoring the rest.  This does not make for a healthy or desirable relationship.

Over the years, I’ve had a few Christian friends who believe that same sex relationships were wrong.  They loved me — or at least tried their hardest.  We’d get together and talk.  We’d discuss our work, our families, theology (mostly when I was still a Christian), and just about every thing else in our lives.  Then on occasion, I’d fall into a false sense that I really could talk about anything and I’d talk about my love life (or my attempts to find love).

Suddenly, the conversation screeched to the halt at an awkward silence.  The other person would say something rather non-committal, then change the subject.  Just like that, I was reminded that there were just some aspects of my life that were “off limits” for conversation because they were things the other person would rather not think or wrestle with.  If I wanted that friendship to continue, I had to be willing to hide that part of my life — one that I considered (and still consider) extremely important to me.

Needless to say, those friendships faded away over time.  Christians would do will to remember that “love” offered with conditions or limits is not felt as love by those so limited.  That’s a hard truth, but experience teaches me that neither grace nor love are easy.

Notes:
[1]  I also want to note that in my experience only one “side” refers to it as the “culture war.”  To LGBT[4] people, it’s not a “culture war” so much as a struggle to be treated with the same basic human dignity and allowed to enjoy the same legal protections that heterosexual, cisgender people already enjoy without even having to think about it, let alone worry or struggle.  So I’d say that the way forward would go much greater if Christians would drop the phrase “culture war” and similar rhetoric altogether.

[2]  I don’t accept the idea that same sex relationships are inherently sinful, so I’m choosing to use quotes around the term.  Then again, I don’t buy into the whole theology of “sin” anyway, so there you have it.

[3]  As an aside, I think that an essential key to moving forward is for Christians to stop thinking in terms of “The Church” on an institutional level.  Institutions don’t have relationships.  People do.  It’s why Justin’s point says “Christians need to show grace” rather than “The Church needs to show grace.”  Until Christianity as a whole lays aside the power structures — those structures most vested in seeing things in term of a “culture war,” I suspect the way forward will be treacherous and possibly downright impassable.

[4]  I’m a bit divided on being inclusive in “LGBT people” in this blog post/series or just coming right out in saying “gay people.”  Truth be told, much of the book, while applicable to trans people, focuses on sexual orientation (and gay male sexuality at that) rather than trans issues.  This leaves me torn between wanting to acknowledge other sexual minorities and fearing that by including them in a rather nominal way, I’m belittling their importance and the importance of issues that affect trans people far more harshly than they do me.  Quite frankly, trans people get that kind of treatment enough and I’m still working out ways to do a better job of not contributing to it.

Books, Gender and Sexuality, Religion

Musings on “Torn”: About these “good people” who keep hurting gay people…

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[Content Note:  Discussion of subtle homophobia.]

While reading Justin Lee’s book, “Torn:  Rescuing the Gospel from the Gays vs. Christians Debate,” I began to notice a pattern in the book.  Justin would often describe an unpleasant and even hurtful experience he or another person had with a fellow Christians, then note that the Christian acting hurtfully was really a good person.

I think I get what he’s trying to say here.  I get that he’s trying to make it clear that he didn’t consider any of these people horrible monsters that deserved to be vilified.  I also get that, as he was writing a book that was trying to find common ground and build bridges, it makes sense to affirm and focus on the humanity of those who have done and said hurtful things.

decent-human-cookie.jpgAnd yet, I find it hard to think of someone who has just dismissed what another person has said about their personal experiences as being very “good” in that moment.  I find it hard to think of someone who has just said something — even out of ignorance or misinformation — that deeply wounds and alienates another person as “good,” either.  Certain people may not be Horrible Monsters?, but can we at least acknowledge that there’s a huge spectrum between those two points?

I’m reminded of a recent comment Fannie made on her blog when she was writing about people who denounce and wish to distance themselves the Westboro Baptist Church:

Many bigoted[1] opinions and actions are far more subtle, insidious, and
micro-aggressiony than the rhetoric and actions of either of these
groups. These groups are widely recognized among reasonable people as
being hate groups, extreme, and very problematic. And, for that reason,
opinions and actions that are more subtle than WBC or KKK-style bigotry,
when called out as harmful, are often more readily dismissed and
trivialized (often by those who denounce the WBC) and are therefore more
enduring.

While I appreciate Justin’s desire not to demonize those Christians who have done and said hurtful things, I do think that calling such people “good” helps keep those more subtle microaggressions[2] invisible.  Enabling people to continue to think of themselves as “doing good enough” — which is what I feel the “good people” tends to do — as long as they meet a very low bar of not actively disowning LGBT children, picketing funerals, shouting condemnations at those attending pride events, and so on is something I find troubling.

On a related note, Justin often suggests that many of these Christians say, do, and believe in the things they do often due to misinformation they’ve been given by certain other Christian leaders.  I also find this problematic.  While I certainly agree that many Christians have been misinformed by wrong-headed and even deceitful Christian mouthpieces, I think there comes a point that every individual needs to take responsibility for what information they accept as factual and solid.

I’m actually rather disturbed by the idea that some Christians take the “expertise” of Christian leaders — many of whom are straight — as authoritative and never check in with gay people, who are most likely the experts regarding their own lives and experiences of gender and sexuality.  Even when listening to ex-gay Christians, who have at least had some experience with same sex attractions themselves, I would think it important to dig into what they are saying and make sure (1) you understand what they are really saying and (2) that their own experiences are truly universal to all gay people.  The first is often not true due to uncommon language uses (e.g. nuanced meanings of words like “change” and phrases like “freedom from homosexuality”) among ex-gay ministries.  The latter is not true simply because of the diversity of experiences that gay people have.

It seems odd to me that people who belong to a religion that claims to value truth — a religion in which the Apostles themselves praised people for testing for themselves everything the Apostles themselves taught and urged them to do so — would simply accept information so uncritically, as many Christians appear to do when it comes to questions around homosexuality.  So while I can certainly appreciate the misinformation they operate under, I’m inclined to hold them responsible for it, whereas Justin seems more inclined to excuse them for it.

It often seemed to me that Justin — and in fairness to Justin, I have seen this tendency in others and no one should take this as me simply bagging on one guy — is in such a hurry to get Christians to build bridges that he’s willing to prioritize making sure their consciences don’t get ruffled too much over the unhelpful and sometimes hurtful things they have done.  Personally, I don’t think that this is a working strategy, as I think that often, the only way to truly change that is to ruffle some consciences.

Note:
[1]  I will ask readers not to get hung up on the word “bigotry” in this quote.  This post is not intended to be a forum on what does and does not qualify as bigotry, nor will I allow commenters to turn it into one.  If the word really bothers this much, I would suggest you mentally substitute the phrase “things that make gay people’s lives more difficult or cause them pain or harm in any way” for the word for the purposes of this discussion.  I believe the point both Fannie and I are making will still be clear.

For those of you who really want to know why I have no desire to get into the “what counts as bigotry game,” I will note that it’s partially because I think it’s too often a game played with a stacked deck.

[2]  I will include specific examples of the kinds of things I’m talking about in future posts as I talk about a number of the items Justin discusses in chapter fifteen, “The Way Forward.”

Books, Gender and Sexuality, Religion

Musings on Torn. A Kindred Spirit.

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As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I’ve been reading Justin Lee’s book, “Torn:  Rescuing the Gospel From the Gays vs. Christians Debate.”  I have a little less than 100 pages (out of the total 259 pages) to read.  While there are some things in Justin’s book that I take issue with — such as his tendency to fall into the trap of focusing on showings how Christianity stands out from all other religions — there is much in the book that I like.

In truth, there’s much in the book that I can identify with.  I can relate to the whole concept of being “God Boy” (though no one called me that and I don’t think I was quite as outspoken as he was) and “having a secret” while growing up.  I resonated greatly when he started talking about his initial reactions when he first started discovering his feelings for other boys.  Justin puts it thus:

At first I had ignored the feelings.  Puberty is a confusing time, after all, so I assumed these attractions to guys were just some sort of weird phase I had to pass through as I matured.  I’d heard Christian authorities such as radio host Dr. James Dobson say that young teenagers sometimes went through a period of sexual confusion, and this seemed to be the proof.

I too remember telling myself that I was just going through a phase when my sexual feelings for other boys first started surfacing.  And yes, I seem to recall various religious experts — most likely including James Dobson — saying things to encourage that kind of thinking.

In some ways, I can also related to his awakening to the realization that he had no sexual interest in girls as a teenager.  Justin writes:

As teenagers, my guy friends had become interested in girls in a different way, and they talked eagerly about their eyes and lips and breasts and legs.  I avoided these conversations, telling myself that the reason I didn’t lust after women was that I was a good Christian boy.  Lust was a sin, so I convinced myself I just didn’t objectify women the way some of my friends did.  That wouldn’t have been Christlike, after all.

I remember a couple of boys in my class that began talking about girls’ anatomy and “humping” them (I’m sure that latter part was all talk) as early as the fourth grade.  And at the time I took my failure to have any interest in such things — like Justin — as simply a matter that “good Christian boys” didn’t think about such things.  (In some ways, I still feel that was true, given just how young we were at that time.)

However, as time went by, I became more keenly aware of just how uninterested I was in girls and just how bizarre this really was.  I remember one night when I was in high school, I lay in my bed and actually tried imagining kissing the female classmate that I was allegedly interested in (in fairness, I did think she was a great person and would have loved to spend more time with her as a friend).  Not only could I not imagine doing so, the thought left me feeling cold and a little bit disturbed.  And that realization left me feeling even more disturbed.
I think that was one of the first times when I really began to wonder what was “wrong” with me.

So in many ways, while there are some things that I don’t agree with Justin on — and there are one or two things I’m still waiting to see how they play out in the rest of the book before I express concerns — there are many ways in which I find myself nodding along as he recounts his experiences.

In many ways, I think that’s a good thing.  One of the central themes of his story seems to be that no one was there who understood, and that’s a theme I can relate to.  I think that’s a theme that many LGBT people — and especially those who grew up within evangelical Christianity — can relate to.  In many ways, Justin’s book is a way of letting those who may now be going through those experiences know that they are not the first and there are those who can relate and understand.

I’m not sure whether Justin’s goal of rescuing the gospel from the “gays vs. Christians” debate will be met, but that sense of offering understanding and camaraderie to those who came after both of us strikes me as something that makes his book priceless.

Gender and Sexuality

Musings on sharing stories, vulnerability, and listening.

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[Content Note:  Gaslighting, Subtle Transphobia]

As a writer, I love stories.  I love telling them.  I love crafting them.  I love reading them.  I love listening to them.  I love learning about the people who are a part of those stories, how they were shaped by those stories, and how they shaped the stories in turn.

I also love to hear actual people’s stories.  I love hearing about their lived experiences.  If someone has an experience or personal anecdote that they’d love to share with me, I’m often happy to sit down and listen.

The thing is, just as with fictional stories, real people’s stories also involve painful moments.  Unlike fictional stories, that pain doesn’t cease to exist when I close the cover of a book.  The person who lived through that story lives beyond the written page or the campfire.  I think that’s something that’s important to remember when listening to stories of real people.

I was reminded of this a little over a week ago when I listened to a segment from the Drew Marshall Show called “LGBT’s and The Church,” which originally aired on March 23.  The segment is available for audio download (Note:  Above Content Notes definitely apply to the audio, as well as notes for subtle homophobia.) on the show’s site, and I highly recommend listening to the whole thing.  Both Lisa Salazar and Wendy Gritter are wonderful, engaging speakers.  I was particularly captivated by the first (roughly) thirty minutes of the hour-long segment.  In that part of the segment, Drew Marshall invited Ms. Salazar to share her story as a trans woman.

What bothered me about that part of the show, however, was the less than perfect job done of listening to her story and in caring for her comfort and safety while she told the story.  Sure, Mr. Marshall was not a total brute.  He respected Ms. Salazar’s gender identity and used the appropriate pronouns when addressing and speaking about her.  At one point later in the show, he even acknowledged that when he and his other two guests got talking, they were effectively talking about her and wanted to get her back involved in the conversation.

And yet, there were those little things — little things that can add up — that left me cringing. And angry.  I actually got angry listening to the segment, watching this man engage in little behaviors that I felt effectively trivialized the story that he had asked Ms. Salazar to share.

I want to emphasize that last point again.  Drew Marshall invited Lisa Salazar to share her story.  This isn’t even a case of a trans woman volunteering information about her life and her experiences, where a failure to really listen and engage with her story would be bad enough.  This is a case in which a trans woman was actively invited to join a discussion for the explicit purposes of sharing those experiences.  Asking someone to speak and then failing to listen well or honor their act of making themselves vulnerable enough to share strikes me as particularly egregious.

After I thought about it, I decided to send an email to Drew Marshall on April 3.  I’ve decided to also share that email here on my blog.  I do this not because I think that Drew Marshall needs to be publicly shamed, but because I actually think that the actions he took that I found problematic are all too common.  So I would take this time to invite anyone reading this to evaluate how well you listen to the stories of other people and how well you contribute to their sense of safety and comfort as they share.

Mr. Marshall,

My name is Jarred Harris. I am a thirty-eight year old gay man living in upstate New York, and I am writing you about the “LGBT’s & The Church” roundtable which aired on your show March 23. I found out about the roundtable through one of the participants, Wendy Gritter. I was unable to listen in when the show aired but have recently downloaded and listened to the full MP3 file that is now on your site.

There is much I could say about the show, but I want to focus on the first twenty-five or so minutes, in which Lisa Salazar shared her story at your behest, and some of the things that I found problematic with your handling of that part of the roundtable as facilitator.

First, let me say that I find it commendable that you would invite a trans woman to participate in your show. In a world where LGBT people in general and trans people in particular are often talked about rather than talked with in Christian venues, it is unfortunately remarkable that you would take that step. In many ways, I got the impression that you were sincerely interested both in hearing her story and having your listeners hear it as well. Having said that, there were a few things that you said and did that I found incongruent with and detrimental to that goal.

I would note that when you invited Ms. Salazar to share her story during the roundtable, you were inviting her to open up and make herself vulnerable to you, Wendy, Dr. Brice, and all your listeners. That is asking much any person, let alone a person who has suffered marginalization and othering throughout their life. I admire Ms. Salazar for courageously accepting that invitation on your show. It’s an act on her part that deserves the most respect and sensitivity in response. I would like to share a few instances where I felt you could have done better in that regard.

One of the first things that I noted is that, if I were to assume that this segment of your show is representative of how you handle things, I would conclude that you tend to be the kind of person who likes to use humor to lighten the mood and keep things from getting “too heavy.” Unfortunately, I felt that such attempts in this case were inappropriate and troubling. To give one example, when Ms. Salazar shared the concept of gender dysphoria and talked about how it is exactly like being “depressed about one’s gender [that is, the one assigned at birth],” you made a joke about “being depressed with the male gender in general.” While I’m sure that you intended it to be a mood lightener, I will note that it came across to at least me as trivializing the very real and painful experience of being at odds with their assigned gender that Ms. Salazar and many trans people experience. I also felt it was a way to escape from actively engaging with those painful experiences she had, experiences you had invited her to share.

Another example of humor I found inappropriate was when she was talking about meeting her wife and the fact that she wasn’t attracted to men, you joked that she “wasn’t following the rules.” Again, this struck me as again making light of very real experiences she was having and the trouble she was having making sense of them. I was also troubled by this because as I understand it, many trans people actually do experience trouble with “rules” — particularly gatekeepers in the medical and psychological community — that insist trans people have to act and feel in certain ways. (As trans author Julia Serano put it in “Whipping Girl,” cis or non-trans women are allowed more varied ways of being women than trans women are.) So, I found your jest about Ms. Salazar not following the rules especially discomforting, as it potentially trivialized a very real problem faced by trans people. I’m aware you may not have been aware of that particular problem, but I would like to suggest that your unawareness of such an issue is all the more reason to refrain from joking when someone like Ms. Salazar is sharing her experiences.

One of the other things that bothered me was the couple of times when you played devil’s advocate (asking Ms. Salazar to address arguments others may make). While I certainly understand why exploring those arguments may have been necessary for the rest of the roundtable discussion, I found it troubling that you chose to do so during the part of the segment in which you asked Ms. Salazar to share her story. (There was no sense to me that the conversation had shifted out of “sharing time” into “debate time.”) Again, inviting someone to share their story and then asking them to spend their sharing time to answer arguments that a hypothetical person — or a real person, for that matter — might ask them, inadvertently privileges those arguments and their need for a response over the experiences of the person in question.

The last thing I want to bring up is the time or two when you interrupted her to ask her to talk about something in particular — the most notable example being when you asked her to talk about meeting her wife. I suspect that this was motivated by the twin concerns of time constraints and the fact that you felt that what you asked her was important for your listeners to hear. With regard to the first concern, I am completely sympathetic, though I would encourage you to find a different way to manage that issue rather than guide the story someone else is telling about themselves. I find the second concern completely problematic, however. If you invite someone to share their story, I feel it is vital that you allow that person to share their story in their own way, as they see fit. To do otherwise is to dictate to the other person what aspects of their own experiences actually matter.

As I draw this email to a close, I would like to point out again that inviting a trans person — or any other LGBT person or any person at all — to share their story, you are asking them to make themselves vulnerable to you and anyone else around them. I bring this up because one of the things that I found most troubling — and this is part of the reason I’ve chosen to write this email — is that I feel you asked Ms. Salazar to be extra vulnerable when you asked her to share what the most hurtful thing that was ever said to her, something that cut her deep in her soul. You asked this after potentially trivializing things she already chose to share with you — such as her experience of gender dysphoria that I mentioned earlier. I would encourage you to consider how you receive and respond to someone’s experiences in the future before asking them to share something that’s potentially even more painful for them to share.

Again, I commend you for being — as far as I know — one of the few people who have invited a trans person onto your show to share their experiences, and overall I think you treated Ms. Salazar with a fair bit of respect. However, I would encourage you to also consider how small things that you say or do during that time of sharing may run counter to the sharing process and hurt people in the process, even unintentionally.

Regards,
Jarred Harris

Gender and Sexuality

Yep, still not a joke.

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coming out, family, April Fool’s Day,
It’s April 1st again.  For those who know me, you know that means it’s my coming out anniversary.  I wrote a lovely series of posts about it back in 2011.  If you haven’t read them before, I highly recommend them.  (If you have read them before, read them again anyway.  They’re worth it.)

shirt.JPGI found it timely that this past weekend, I found myself facing a reminder that coming out is a process, and that while I started that process seventeen years ago today, it’s still not complete.  There’s plenty of people — most notably people in my extended family — that don’t know or don’t realize I’m gay.  I was reminded of this fact this past Saturday when I was attending a funeral for an uncle.  After the service, two different people (one a second cousin and the other an old friend of the family) thought to ask me if I was married yet.  (It was pretty obvious that the assumption was that if I had married, I would have married a woman.)

I simply smiled and said that no, I was still single.  I didn’t figure that a time set aside for grieving was an appropriate time to expand on my answer.  Certainly, given where most of my family is religiously and politically, it was not a good time to come out, which almost certainly would have created if not a full-fledged scene, a ripple.

Of course, I’ll also note that it’s nice to say “most of my family,” as over the past couple of years, I’ve actually found a couple new allies among my extended family.  In fact, I was talking to one of them before one of the people came up to us and asked me “the question.”  What was particularly amusing was the fact that being gay or being an ally, it can be difficult and risky at times to come out.  I glanced at the person I had been talking to after saying “No, I’m still single.”  We shared a smile.

To all those who are well on their way in the coming out journey, I would invite you to celebrate with me today.  For those who are just beginning or are struggling with just coming out, I offer you my sympathies and understanding.  And to those who have stood beside me, whether for most of those seventeen years or only the last few, I say thank you.

And for heavens sake, everyone, just stop asking single people whether they’re married yet.

Gender and Sexuality, Religion

Homosexuality, theology, free speech, and the prices involved

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[Content Note:  religiously based anti-gay sentiment]

Should Christians be able to communicate publicly their convictions that homosexuality is sinful.

The above is a question that Wendy Gritter recently got asked, shared her views on the question (she did so on a friends-only Facebook post, so I don’t feel right reposting what she said here), then invited many of us to offer our own thoughts on the matter.  I did so as a couple comments on her Facebook post.  I wish to repeat and/or summarize those thoughts here as well as share a few other thoughts.

My short answer to the question is yes, Christians and everyone else should be permitted to publicly voice whatever convictions they have, even if I personally find those convictions or their choice to voice them to be problematic or downright detestable.

I suspect that some Christians might object to the second half of that sentence, the part that starts “even if.”  The thing is, that’s the price of free speech:  Everyone else gets to exercise theirs as well.  That means that if someone says something that I find objectionable or troubling, I get to critique what they said and state why I find it objectionable or troubling.  Furthermore, I’m allowed to form my opinions of not only what people said, but of those people based on the things that they have said.

Honestly, I find that belief to be hurtful and harmful toward LGBT people.  I’m also inclined to consider even the most gentle, nuanced, and most compassionate of that particular conviction to be harmful to some LGBT people.  I say that as someone who went to a church who never really played up the evils of homosexuality in its sermon, but received the message sufficiently that things almost didn’t end well for me.  Those kinds of convictions have consequences, and far too often, those consequences fall people other than those who hold or express them.

But rather than focus on why I find the belief or conviction itself troublesome, I’m going to spend most of this post explaining why I find the expression of that conviction troublesome, unnecessary, and counterproductive.

First, I want to start with a practical, if somewhat confrontational point.  We all know some Christians are convinced that homosexuality — whether that means being gay, identifying as gay, or having same sex sexual relationships to that particular Christian — is sinful.  Some Christians — a lot of them, really — have been saying it for decades.  I’ve been hearing it for more than seventeen years, myself.  So I have to wonder, at what point are those Christians going to accept that their message has been heard and quiet themselves so they can actually listen to someone else for a change?  Because quite frankly, I’ve had my fill of listening and would like my turn at being listened to.  And I mean really listened to.

So why do some Christians feel the need to keep repeating a message we’ve all heard for decades?  Do they really think they have something to add to that message that we haven’t heard before?  My seventeen years of experience has provided me no evidence that such is the case.  The only new things I’ve heard are from people like Wendy who are saying it’s time to listen.

In many ways, I think Fred Clark is right when he attributes it to tribalism.  For many in the evangelical Christian religion, Fred argues that denouncing homosexuality is a sort of tribal marker, done to demonstrate that a person is properly a part of the evangelical tribe.  That’s all fine and good, but not being a member of that tribe, I’m not all that interested in seeing those tribal markers on parade.  Such Christians have a right to parade them, but they don’t have a right to expect me to stick around and watch, let alone ooh and ah.  And to be honest, I’m not convinced that parading around one’s tribalism makes a lot of sense for a group that — as I understand it, at least — is supposed to be trying to pull as many people into the tribe as they can.  And when the expression of those tribal markers actually negatively impact some outside the tribe, well, I’m not sure you can get much more counterproductive than that.

Moving on, I also want to express my view on morality and how that impacts this whole topic, as words like “conviction” and “sin” lead me to believe that we’re talking morality.  Morality has to do with choice, and the only choices any person has any control over is their own choices.  I can’t make your choices for you, dear reader, nor can you make mine for me.  Ultimately, we are the sole masters of our own morality and solely the masters of our own morality.  So when heterosexual people start talking about whether homosexuality — however they’re defining that word — is moral, I note that they are laying down moral laws that don’t have any direct impact on their own lives.  They don’t have to struggle against those prohibitions or restrictions.  They are effectively trying to dictate burdens to be laid on other people.  Not cool.  To them, I say focus on sins that you actually might struggle with.

Now in fairness, there are non-heterosexual who believe that same sex sexual relationships are sinful.  Because of that belief, they choose to remain celibate or enter into what some call a mixed-orientation marriage.  That is their right, and while it’s certainly a choice I wouldn’t make, I honor their moral agency.  But I really don’t see the point in even them broadcasting that conviction, unless they are discussing at as their personal choice.  The thing is, I’m not convinced that’s why some of them do so.  Too often, I get a sense of “this is what I’m doing and what you should do too” behind them.  To which I say, nope.  My moral agency, my decision.

Personally, I think unless a non-heterosexual person asks for advice on what to do about their sexual feelings or how one handle’s ones own sexual feelings, it’s best to keep one’s own counsel on whether one things homosexuality is a sin.

But yes, everyone has the right to ignore my advice on that count.

Gender and Sexuality, Rants

Today on Rape Culture FM

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[Content Note:  Rape Culture]

I’ve done a couple of posts that I’ve titled “Today on Sexist Morning Radio” after listening to the morning show on 98PXY on the way to work.  To be honest, I think I could probably write a minimum of one such post a week if I had more time or remembered the incidents by the time I have a chance to do any blogging.

Today’s gem, spoken by Duffy[1], however, goes far beyond sexism.  That’s why I’ve chosen what I consider a far more appropriate title.  After all, I can think of few statements that embody rape culture better than the following:[2]

She’s my wife.  She’s supposed to give me sex anyway.

To be honest, Duffy’s statement doesn’t really surprise me.  After all, he has in the pas indicated that he used to feel that the women he dated owed him sex if he paid for the date.

Now, I’m not saying that Duffy would actually have sex with his wife without her consent (but given that, statement, wow).  But at the very least, he’s reinforcing the idea that men are entitled to have sex with at least some women.  And that’s the kind of idea that emboldens and shields those who would take what they want regardless of consent.  And he used a radio station with a large audience to reinforce that idea.  At best, that’s irresponsible.

So to Duffy (and those like him), I would like to send out this reminder:

You are not entitled to sex from anyone at any time.  Not your spouse.  Not your significant other.  Not the person you bought a nice dinner for.  Not the person you keep doing dozens of favors for in hopes that you’ll hit the sexual jackpot in time.  And I’m disgusted that I actually have to tell you this.

—

[1]  I should note that while I’m focusing on Duffy’s
particularly horrible statement, his co-hosts should not get a complete
pass on contributing to rape culture.  After all, they tried to present the
idea that Duffy should try to make up with the argument he had with his
wife so that he’ll “get to have sex” later tonight.  (It’s their
suggestion that caused him to make that awful statement.)  It seems to
me, at least, that even they are turning sex into something Duffy gets
from his wife rather than an mutually fulfilling experience that they
share.  That’s a problematic understanding of sex at best.

[2]  This is not a verbatim quote.  However, Duffy’s exact words stated the same sentiment and equally as explicitly.

Gender and Sexuality

What the…?

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I woke up in the middle of the night tonight and have been having trouble getting back to bed.  As a result, I ended up getting online for a bit.  (That makes no sense from the perspective of needing more sleep, but hey, I never claimed to make sense all the time.)  I ended up having some guy contact me on MeetMe.  He said hi, asked me how I was.  I told him I was fine but was trying to get back to sleep and would catch him some other time.

He messaged me back “ok,” then almost immediately followed up with this little gem:

I’m sick of all the women.

My first reaction was “wow.”

My second reaction was “all what women”?  Because seriously, I doubt he’s met every single one of the roughly 3.5 billion women on the planet.

My third reaction, related to the second, was “Really dude?  Who pissed in your Wheaties and why are you blaming it on all women?”

My fourth reaction, related to the third, was “You really sound like you might be one of those heterosexual men who feel entitled to get something (affection, sex, admiration, whatever) from women.  If so, I don’t blame any woman who might’ve taken issue with that or any behavior you exhibited that is rooted in such thinking.”

My fifth reaction was, “You know, I have a lot of female family members and friends who I absolutely adore.  I also have talked to and met several women who I don’t know well enough to adore, but think are pretty damn spiffy.  I’m offended that you would expect me to diss those women in my life by joining in your ‘women are such total pains’ bash-fest.”

Realizing that any of those statements, if expressed to the guy, would simply result in a protracted argument.  That’s definitely not something that’s going to help me get to sleep.  So I sent back a simple response:

Just so you know, that statement is pretty much a conversation stopper for me. I’m back to bed now. Good night.

Hopefully he gets the message.  But I was so gobsmacked by the whole thing that I had to share my full thoughts with someone.  Thank goodness for blogs.

As an aside, this experience reminds me of Melissa McEwan’s wonderful post on finding women likable and how society makes it difficult to do so.  I highly recommend it — along with just about everything else she writes.  Melissa is one of those women that I don’t feel I know enough to claim to adore her, but she’s gone well beyond “pretty spiffy” in my book, too.

Gender and Sexuality, Rants, Society

Entitled Assholes Online: The Caught Liar

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Today’s installment of this series is compliments of the social networking site, Tagged.  I’ve been on Tagged for a few years now and I deal with all kinds of interesting people there. As a result, I recently updated my “About Me” section on my profile to read as follows:

I’m not LOOKING for anything. I’m here to meet people and chat. If a friendship comes of it, great. If I meet someone LOCAL and we end up romantically involved, that’s fine too. But I am not on any quest to find love or anything else. So don’t ask me what I’m looking for. Don’t ask me for my Yahoo ID, my Skype or anything else. I’m not interesting in camming. And I swear, if you ask me my age, my sexual orientation, or anything else that is already listed in my profile, I will BLOCK you for failing to take the time to go through the information I’ve already provided to everyone

I suspect that today’s entitled asshole didn’t bother to read that, otherwise I would think he might have a clue that the following first message would not be well received:

hi handsomer baby, can we hook up? am single and searching. how are you today? am seriously looking for a man to be my wife your response would be an honor. regards

First of all, I’m not sure why he both asks if we can hook up and indicates that he’s looking to find a man who will be his wife.  In my experience, those tend to be two different activities.  Furthermore, while I’m sure there are exceptions, the kind of guys interested in the former aren’t generally interested in the latter and vice versa.

As for bringing up marriage in the first email:  Seriously?!  All he seems to know about me is that he finds me handsome — or possibly that he suspects I’m easily seduced by guys who compliment my looks.  He has a long ways to go with me before I’ll be ready to talk about marriage.  Unfortunately for him, the trip just got permanently canceled as far as I’m concerned.

Plus there’s the whole fact that he specifically said that he wants me for a wife.  If you’re going to use gender-specific terms like “husband” or “wife” rather than something gender neutral like “partner,” then you’d better use the term that’s appropriate for my gender.  This is particularly important because I get the strong guy that this guy is intentionally using the term “wife” to indicate that he’s looking for a guy to be the subordinate, weaker, and/or more submissive partner in the relationship.  That just pisses me off.  No person should be expected to be the “lesser” partner[1] in any relationship.

This also suggests to me that I don’t matter.  As the potential “lesser partner,” I seem to merely exist in this guy’s mind to possibly meet his needs and desires.  My feelings, my needs, my expectations do not seem to matter at all.

I noted that Tagged indicates that the guy is in Kenya (hey, I told you my profile information would come in handy), so I decide to go with a curt and pointed response that says the distance is an issue for me rather than climb the “you’re being an entitle ass” mountain that looms before me.

Try someone on the same continent as you.

He came back with the following response:

am in pensacola Jarred, why you scolding me away from your heart ?

Okay, so now he claims to be in Florida.  Given that I’m practically dipping my toes in Lake Ontario, the distance is still an issue.  But I have bigger issues than that, so let me go through them.

First of all, he corrects me and claims we’re on the same continent.  But he doesn’t say, “Wait a minute, why do you think we’re on different continents?”  That’s one big misconception for me to have.  If I were in his shoes, I’d want to know how someone got such an allegedly wrong idea.  (Frankly, I think he’s lying and he really is in Kenya.)

Instead, this EA starts asking me why I’m “scolding him away from my heart.”  Again, this is why I think he’s ultimately lying.  Rather than trying to clear up the misconception, he’s attempting a guilt trip here by suggesting that he’s just a nice guy and I’m trying to keep him at arm’s length.

Except here’s the thing:  I have every right to keep him at an arms length.  By asking me why I’m “scolding him away from my heart,” he’s implicitly assuming that he’s entitled to have my heart.  No way.  I decide who gets near my heart since, you know, it’s my heart.  And this dude has already given me plenty of reasons to put a full army battalion between it and him.

So given his total sense of entitlement and the fact that he has presented me with conflicting information and has made no effort to explain it, I decided to call him on it.

According to Tagged, you are in Kenya.  Liar.

Finally he decided to offer an explanation:

am not in kenya i went there on a contract business am i have completed my contract

I’ll be honest, given the rest of his behavior, I’m considering the other experiences on the site.  I’ve heard a lot of people talk about being from the United States, yet in Africa “on contract.”  While I’ll grant that this is the first EA that’s claimed to be back stateside, I also recognize this is a common ruse of scammers.  I’ve heard the whole “I’m on contract and there’s an issue with money, please help me out” bit before.  And given this guy’s total sense of entitlement and the fact that his story reeks like last week’s roadkill already, I’m thinking it’s not much of a stretch to imagine he’s a conman as well.

Before I could respond to that message, he sent me a follow-up:

how could you just make conclusion on something so irrelevant?

I’m simply amazed that someone could consider the question of where they actually are and the fact that their profile and what they are telling me don’t even match up is irrelevant.  Again, this is a sure sign that what’s really irrelevant is me.  As far as he’s concerned, I should just STFU and be delighted that he wants me to be his “little woman.”

Like that’s going to happen.  So I made my feelings clear:

Still not interested.

The fun thing about EA’s is that they’re often masters of butthurt.  I got two final replies from him before he blocked me:

then bounce
who cares

Yeah, because he contacted me looking to get something out of me, yet I’m the one who should get lost.

As for who cares, I don’t know.  Which guy spent a lot of time trying to get the other one to just trust him and give him a chance despite other guy’s stated lack of interest?

Notes:
[1]  I actually think that this is a reason that gendered terms are best avoided when talking about people in relationships.  No one should be a “wife” if by “wife” we mean “lesser partner.”  I think it’s much better to go with gender-neutral terms[2], suggesting a more mutual and egalitarian relationship.

[2]  Though I’ll admit I have a different problem with the term “partner,” especially when it comes to same sex relationships.  It can be somewhat vague and allows some people to pretend that the partnership is something other than the romantic and sexual relationship it is.