I recently received a message soliciting contributions to the the communion-wide "listening process" concerning questions of the Church's stance toward gay and lesbian people.
Like most Anglicans, I cherish the nature of the Church as communion, and understand that this entails a responsibility to act in consideration of those within the Church with whom I disagree. Surely, it is incumbent on each of us to do what we can to help clear away the confusion that separates us from those with whom we are called to be in greater unity of life and spirit.
I believe the sharing of our stories can serve the cause of strengthening the bonds of communion between us, but only if those stories are told honestly, and in relation to the larger Story which embraces us all—the Gospel as passed down in the Tradition. It is in relation to that understanding that I wish to share some of my story with those engaged in the listening process:
I was baptized as a child in the Episcopal Church, and remained a member until approximately one and one-half years ago, when my partner and I joined a local congregation of the United Church of Christ, for reasons I will explain below. Though I have had to leave the Episcopal Church in order to find a congregation which allows my partner, daughters and myself to participate more fully in the life of the Church, I still consider myself an Anglican.
My family participated in our local Episcopal parish until my early teenage years, when my widowed mother stopped taking us to church. In my high school and college years, I considered myself an atheist; on rationalist grounds, I rejected (and misunderstood) many of the claims of the Church. By my senior year in college, though, I had come to realize that the logical consequence of my rationalist and skeptical principles was complete nihilism. At the emotional level, my rationalist and skeptical leanings had produced a profound sense of anomie, and a good deal of depression. My classes in literature, philosophy, and interpretive cultural studies brought about a renewed appreciation for the power of symbolic traditions to communicate vital truths.
During the year after I graduated from college, I continued this re-evaluation through intensive reading. This brought me to a renewed interest in the necessity and importance of cultural tradition, and specifically, in the Scriptures and Western religious literature as vehicles of wisdom and insight. I began attending the Eucharist at a nearby Episcopal church, was overwhelmed by the beauty and significance of the Liturgy (as I had been as a child), and joined an “inquirers’” class, which led to my decision to be confirmed.
This reappraisal of the respect due to the cultural and religious tradition had a profound impact on my understanding of my sexual orientation. I had identified myself as gay during my junior year of high school (this came as a discovery, not a decision; my sexual attractions had always been toward males). From very early on, I had rejected the notion that my orientation was innately wicked or shameful. However, my new willingness to entertain the idea that much of my earlier thinking had been wrong, seemed to entail the possibility that perhaps I had been wrong, too, in my evaluation of "traditional" teachings about sexuality. So, after calling an end to the relationship in which I was involved, I decided to stop pursuing the possibility of homosexual romances altogether. I began reading works put out by Living Waters, a Christian “ex-gay” ministry, and eventually even decided to start dating women.
The first woman I asked on a date was also the last: "Julie" and I started dating regularly. Early on in the relationship, I described to her my earlier self-identification as homosexual and my ongoing “struggles” (as I then understood them) with sexual attraction toward men, but also assured her of my attraction to her. I was not totally forthright, though,—not even entirely with myself—about the fact that my affectional and erotic attraction to her was not nearly as strong as it continued to be toward men. After six months of dating, I proposed, and we remained engaged for a year before marrying.
During the year of our engagement, I went through a six-month group program run by the Portland Fellowship, an “ex-gay” ministry associated with the Living Waters ministry, followed by a six-month small group study with men who had “graduated” from that program.
"Julie" and I remained married for eleven years. During the marriage, I did not delude myself into thinking that I had “overcome” my sexual orientation toward men, but I did not have sexual relations outside the marriage, beyond solitary fantasies. Those however, remained vivid and were a constant source of temptation. I was aware that I was not, and never had been, passionately attracted to "Julie," but I rationalized this by arguing (mostly with myself) that marriages are built more on commitment and faithfulness than on fleeting passions. I did my best to quell persistent doubts about whether I had not “taken the easy way out” in order to escape from the tensions of living as a gay person in a still largely disapproving world.
Our marriage was not marked by remarkable strife until the last year, when "Julie" asked for a divorce, and said that she had long not felt satisfied in the marriage. I resisted the divorce fervently.
However, during an evening shortly before I moved out of the house, I had what struck me as a moment of epiphany: I was watching an otherwise unremarkable TV drama in which a couple—a young man and a woman—were in some sort of danger. The man invited the woman into his bed. It was not a “sex scene,” though: They sought each other out for solace. But solace is too weak a word. It was clear that somehow, in the midst of the uncertainties they faced, they “fit” with each other in a way much more significant than just finding someone to hug, but also in a manner much more significant than just sexual “gratification.” And it struck me: I had never found that sense of fit, or been able really to offer it, with any woman, and never could. But, I knew quite clearly that I had experienced moments like that with a few men, and that I still could, but only with a man. It struck me with great force what a terrible thing I had committed in misleading "Julie" and myself into thinking otherwise. And, what a terrible mistake it was to have discounted—for so many years—the importance of that factor in my life, in "Julie's" life, in human life.
Among my circle of gay and lesbian friends, I recognize several other couples who clearly have found that sense of fit with each other. Years ago, I formed a friendship with a young woman who, after a terribly abusive childhood, was saved from despair and possible suicide by the love of another woman. Some would have it that the Gospel Tradition would condemn their relationship, and tell her she would have been better to reject it. That seems to me tremendously callous, and tremendously blind to a clear example of healing and restorative love. How could such love not be a gift of God?
Subsequent to my divorce from "Julie," I re-evaluated my fears about my own sexuality, and began attending a number of social groups for gay men (chorus, book discussion, etc.), and an Episcopalian church in Dallas serving a parish made up of a majority of gay and lesbian congregants. After a year, I began dating Sam, the man with whom I now share my life. After a year of dating, during which we grew into an ever deepening love, we desired to formalize and celebrate our relationship, and had also grown concerned about the potentially negative impact on our children of the refusal of our local diocese to recognize the worth of unions such as ours. We joined a local congregation of the United Church of Christ, where, last July, we celebrated a holy union ceremony, with our new pastor officiating, and with my daughters standing up with Sam and me.
Some would criticize my and Sam's partnership, and would argue that, if I was incapable of living in heterosexual marriage, I ought to choose a life of celibacy. Tradition tells us that some people are called to that way of life, finding their sense of fit without having to experience it in the arms of another mortal. I sense strongly that that is not my case. I experience my loving relationship with Sam as a tremendous, God-given blessing. I cannot adequately express the myriad ways in which Sam's love has revealed to me something of the nature of our loving God. I cannot see in what way our love would constitute an inherent sin. But, to continue denying the importance of the gift, as I did for so many years, it seems to me, would be.
My former wife and I share custody of our daughters. "Julie" is happily remarried, and she, her new husband, "Bob," my partner, Sam, and I are friends. We frequently celebrate holidays together, along with the girls. The girls are well adjusted, and successful in school. Following our divorce, "Julie" and I arranged for both girls to receive counseling for a period of about a year to help them emotionally process the transition involved in the divorce, my "coming out" as a gay man, "Julie's" remarriage, and the inclusion of my new partner, Sam, in our household. The girls have forged a close and loving relationship with both Sam and "Bob," whom they regard as co-parents with "Julie" and me, in our separate households.
I am much happier than ever I was while trying to force myself into a heterosexual mold. Being gay is not a "life style" for me, it is simply having the freedom to be me, and not pretend to be something I am not.
I believe that some aspects of the meaning and nature of the Gospel Tradition are misunderstood by many of our fellow Christians when it comes to the issue of sexual orientation. That such a misunderstanding might exist, and might even have wide sway, should not be ruled beyond possibility. The Scriptures, themselves, provide evidence of such misunderstanding and of its correction: The stories of Ruth, Rahab, and other faithful but ethnically “foreign” women in the Hebrew scriptures bear witness of a divinely-inspired corrective to misunderstandings of the prohibitions against “foreign” influences found in Ezra, Nehemiah, Deuteronomy and other portions of the Hebrew Bible. These latter passages—which Scripture itself makes clear were misinterpreted by significant groups in Israel’s history as condemnations of the “inherent” impurity of ethnic foreigners—might be compared with those portions of the Scriptures commonly cited in defense of the position that homosexuality is innately sinful.
I believe that the significance of these latter passages has similarly been misunderstood. Whatever the writer of Leviticus is condemning when speaking of the “abomination” of a woman lying with another woman, or of a man with a man, that writer clearly did not have in mind the reality of the relationship between the two women I described above. And, whatever image of evil occurred to St. Paul when he asserted that arsenokoietai will be barred from the Kingdom of Heaven, I doubt that he had men truly in love, such as Sam and me, in mind.
No comments:
Post a Comment