odd man out.

In less than a month, I’ll be returning to Chicago to spend another summer with The Marin Foundation. In the meantime, I’ve got a new post up on their blog called “Walking Away.”

Talking and writing about homosexuality these days is hugely important and hugely exhausting, and if I’m being honest, I think the conversation often brings out the worst in people, including me. In this new post, I talk about how God used a recent reading of John 8 to invite me back into a posture of grace and compassion. Check it out.

I’m biased to think coming out is the ideal outcome for sexual minorities—primarily for their sake, but also for my sake, and for everyone else’s sake. Nevertheless, I get why that’s not possible or practical for many people today.

In my new post over at The Marin Foundation’s blog, I imagine what it would take for every LGBT or same-sex attracted person to feel safe coming out, and I envision how the church could function as a support system for those people by examining how the earliest church functioned as a support system for the earliest Christians. Check out the post here: “Safe Havens.”

A few weeks ago, I changed my Facebook profile picture to an image of me from a former life, a life when I was a trumpet player in the middle school band. Until a couple years ago, I felt a strong aversion to the picture.

The portrait itself is inoffensive: A chubby kid sits up straight in front of a standard gray backdrop. His cheeks are round and pink, his bangs are cemented in the upright position that was nearly ubiquitous on male foreheads in the ’90s, and his be-braces-acled teeth are as metallic as the polished cornet he’s holding with proper hand placement in front of him. He’s sporting a bow tie and a bright green blazer, as all of our school’s wind musicians did, and there’s a tuft of his white shirt sloppily peeking out at his waist, beneath the gold button of his coat. His smile looks 90% genuine, 10% forced. (Maybe 80/20.)

I don’t mind the image itself. The source of my discomfort with the picture for so long was my perception of the person it represented: Throughout high school and early college, I remembered that middle schooler as someone effeminate, uncoordinated, and un-self-aware. He lacked the neurotic self-consciousness to which I would later aspire as a means of giving no external indication to others that I was less heterosexual than my peers were. As a high schooler wearing a navy blue letter jacket (which, coincidentally, I earned through marching band), I was working only from the sort of uninformed behavioral stereotypes that prevail in the more conservative loops of the Bible Belt. My behavior monitoring never reached the point of self-harm or depression, but it was an ever-present factor in my decisions about how to dress and how to speak.

When I tell people the story of my sexual orientation, they tend to be surprised when I reach the high school years and confess I became significantly homophobic for a season. I guess it seems like I should have felt some empathy and camaraderie with the broader gay community, even if I wasn’t ready to identify with them, but my fear of my own sexuality manifested itself as an aversion to anything that might even tenuously associate me with that group that felt so alien and distant. Although my clique wasn’t excessively homophobic, I used “so gay” as much as all the other teenage boys, and I responded to any allusion to same-sex relationships with disgust that ranged anywhere from “Ew, gross!” silliness to crisis-level solemnity. In any case, you would have never heard me performing an exaggerated effeminate, flamboyant voice along with any other friends—I was afraid I’d be too good at it and that people would take note. My homophobia was a means of differentiating myself from (my perception of) the gay community, which was itself a means of differentiating myself from the part of me that was drawn to other guys.

It makes sense, then, that my homophobia would have extended to an aversion to my younger self, who felt no concern about the way others perceived him. The Brent in the green blazer felt utterly perplexed about his sexuality, and in his confusion, he assumed it was something that would go away or change in due time. In the meantime, he was close to his peers, both boys and girls, and he hadn’t decided yet that his mannerisms and inflection held enormous sway over his social and spiritual health. Fortunately, he had been mostly protected from bullying and harassment. Nevertheless, the Brent in the blue jacket was, frankly, embarrassed by the Brent in the green blazer, and he hoped no one remembered how that Brent had acted before he learned the acceptable way to behave.

I don’t want to understate what a big deal it was a few years ago when I realized I could actually stand to look at the picture of me in the green blazer. What started as “actually stand to look at a picture” gradually blossomed into my managing to love, admire, and even like what this kid had to offer: his humor, his creativity, his compassion. I learned to love him in the same way that all of my friends now and all of my friends then love(d) him, as someone who was as annoyingly energetic and inconsistent as every other middle schooler is but was also sweet and sensitive and full of life. This was, not coincidentally, around the time in my adult life when I allowed myself to take up knitting, realizing there are things in my life that are much more important for me to worry about than stereotypes and perceptions that are unconnected to character and virtue. When I was visiting my grandparents’ house a few weeks ago and found the portrait in a framed collage, I knew the time had come for me to introduce it to the Internet world.

This is not a post about gender, stereotypes, homophobia, or mannerisms, though each of those are important concepts worthy of discussion. This is a post about how insecurity and fear caused me to disdain a community of people, including myself, and how outgrowing that insecurity and fear enabled me to love. This is a post about how I allowed my preoccupation with the perceptions of others to distract me away from rooting myself in my sole identity as a beloved child of God. This is, indirectly, a post about how our desire to form young people into followers of Jesus should never, ever lead them to hate themselves or harm themselves, each of which are responses that should alert us we’re doing something wrong.

Most importantly—and self-indulgently—this is a post about a kid. So, friends, meet Brent. He’s in middle school, and he plays the trumpet while wearing a green blazer. He will talk your ear off and ask you questions until you’ve run out of answers, and I wouldn’t pick him for your basketball team, if I were you, though I would pick him for any delightfully nerdy academic event for which you might be in need of a brain. Some of his friends affectionately refer to his hairstyle as “The Alamo,” since he lives in Texas and has a hairline shaped like the historic landmark. He’s also gay, though he won’t be using that word for a long time. I think you’d be happy to know him.

Much of what I write on this blog describes how I’d like to see our culture change to be more hospitable for sexual minorities. Lest I paint too dire a picture of our current situation, though, I want to give a few examples from my life of how I’ve seen people navigate this intersection of faith and sexuality well. The truth is that I’m surrounded by wonderful, compassionate, creative people, and it’s humbling for me to see how their ability to love well is slowly bringing about a new reality in which being gay doesn’t have to be a source of suffering or isolation. The examples I’m giving are small and specific, and they illustrate how important details can be in forming a culture of grace and hospitality. Here are real examples from my life of people who are, in my opinion, getting it right:

1. SLEEPING ARRANGEMENTS

WHAT HAPPENED: Some friends and I recently traveled together. When we were arranging our plans before the trip, a friend who was finding us places to sleep tacked this question onto the end of a text message: “Is you and [straight male friend] sharing an air mattress feasible? If not, that’s totally understandable and either you or [he] will stay with one of our friends.”

HOW HE GOT IT RIGHT: The text demonstrated a measure of sensitivity that’s often lacking in communities who don’t know how to support sexual minorities; he showed empathy by anticipating and acknowledging the potential awkwardness of my sharing a bed with another guy. On the other hand, the inquiry was entirely free from assumptions; rather than telling me he made the decision to put me elsewhere to save me from what might be a tricky situation, he asked what I needed and accepted the answer I gave. (Speaking of details, his use of the word “feasible” was a thoughtful little stroke of genius.) This is a friend with whom I’ve been honest and from whom I expect accountability and edification, so it was natural in the context of our relationship for him to ask me something like that. He cares about me enough to recognize situations that might be problematic for me, and he trusts me enough to respect my judgment in those situations.

As I’ve said before, one of the reasons it’s so important for me to feel safe being honest with my faith community is that I want them to check in on me. I trust these people, just like they trust me, and we’re committed to providing each other with encouragement and, when necessary, exhortation. I want them to confront me when I’m being stupid or selfish with my money, and I want them to confront me when I’m being stupid or selfish with my sexuality. This is only possible in an environment that welcomes transparency. When that environment exists, questions like the one my friend asked are welcome and lead to deeper friendship and mutual trust.

2. SELF-EDITING

WHAT HAPPENED: A friend and I were talking as we shared in some menial labor. As our conversation continued, he started to complain about something (I don’t remember what it was exactly): “The new policy they put in place at work is just so gay because—” After a brief pause, he continued: “Um, I mean, it’s just so stupid because…”

HOW HE GOT IT RIGHT: This was someone who had already directly apologized to me (when I came out to him, actually) for the way his frequent use of phrases like “so gay” may have made my life as a closeted gay person more confusing and frightening. Regardless of the sincerity of his apology and repentance, though, the truth is that it’s really tough to break old habits, and that means even the most penitent person may occasionally find themselves using words they have decided not to use. In the moment, this friend demonstrated compassion through the simple act of editing his speech and moving forward without drawing attention to the faux pas. I knew he was actively trying to avoid that kind of language, and he knew I knew he was actively trying to avoid that language, so there was no need for a tearful confrontation between us. He had already demonstrated an awareness of his mistake and an honest effort to change his habits.

I remember the first time I, as an openly gay individual, heard one of my friends accidentally use “gay” as a slur. We were driving in the car, and as soon as the word left his mouth, I snapped: “What did you say?” My friend was immediately apologetic and remorseful, which led to an unintentionally hilarious exchange in which we simultaneously fired out apologies at one another: him, for using the word, and me, for overreacting so quickly. The reality is that we’re living in a culture that’s presently trying to outgrow its homophobia. This means we need to be prepared to confront harmful language when we hear it, but it also means we need to be prepared to show grace and mercy when people accidentally slip up. This includes showing grace and mercy to ourselves, not dwelling on our mistakes.

3. COMING OUT ADVICE

WHAT HAPPENED: A friend who has decided to seek ordination was preparing to open up about her desired vocation to her parents, who participate in a faith tradition that does not affirm women in ministry. Feeling anxious about the conversation and how her parents would react to her, she approached me with a question: “I know it’s not the same as coming out as a sexual minority, but do you have any advice for me about tough conversations from your own experiences coming out to people?”

HOW SHE GOT IT RIGHT: This friend started by acknowledging the differences between our situations to show that she understood her experiences and my experiences were not the same. From there, though, she immediately moved to seeking areas of connection between us and identifying common emotions and struggles. Whenever you’re close to someone who’s a minority of any kind, there’s a fine line to walk as you relate to that person: On one extreme is over-identifying, where you ignore the differences between you and overlook what makes that person’s experience unique; on the other extreme is over-differentiating, where you isolate the person by drawing too sharp a contrast between you. This friend (not just in this conversation, but generally) made me feel at home while maintaining consciousness of those ways in which my experience is atypical. She respected my otherness without making me feel like an “other.”

Furthermore, she put me in the position of an expert, seeking me as someone with wisdom to share that was essentially unrelated to my orientation. I don’t mind at all answering questions about what it’s like to be gay; but this friend affirmed our resemblance by soliciting my advice for a situation that didn’t depend on my nontraditional sexuality. It’s probably true that most out gay people have a good deal of experience with difficult conversations, and my friend’s willingness to see that reality as an asset to her circumstances helped me to see how the knowledge I’ve gathered as a gay person might be helpful to people regardless of their orientation.

I would love to hear more stories from you about small, simple ways you’ve seen people get it right. What examples come to mind for you?

UPDATE: After posting this, I issued a tweet inviting other bloggers to share their own stories of how they’ve seen people get it right. They were happy to oblige, leading to a number of wonderful stories, which I’ve listed below. Make sure to let me know if you write your own:

gaysubtlety, “Nailed It”

queerconfessions, “That’s a Bingo”

David McFarlane, “Tonal Shift: Getting It Right”

The Registered Runaway, “Because Brent Said So”

Of all the writing I’ve done, I honestly think my new post over at The Marin Foundation’s blog (now hosted on Patheos) may be the content I’m most invested in a broader audience reading and digesting. I’ve written before about demonstrating grace and sensitivity when talking about LGBT issues in a post called “Tread Lightly.” With Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day in the recent past and two major Supreme Court cases related to same-sex marriage in the near future, social media has become a bit of a minefield full of abrasive rhetoric.

In my new post, I make a simple request: “Think Ahead.” Rather than thoughtlessly speaking and posting reflexively to the Supreme Court’s decisions, let’s plan ahead how we might navigate our nation’s dialogue with clear-headed compassion. Check out the post.

I recently issued the following tweet on my personal feed in response to a specific incident:

I think I had to encounter some of the negative effects of being openly gay to appreciate how much I never ever want to be closeted again.

I’ll preface this by saying I’ve been fortunate to never encounter the most negative effects of being gay. I’ve never been physically abused or threatened, I’ve not been explicitly rejected or abandoned, and I generally feel safe where I am. If that’s not been your experience, or if that’s not your context, take what I’m going to say with a grain of salt.

Though my experience has been mostly positive, there have been undesirable ramifications of my coming out over the last two years. I’m not keen on getting into specifics—I prefer to address them directly, on my own—but suffice it to say I’ve run into restrictions and attitudes that didn’t exist in my world when people assumed I was straight. There was a season when I was out to only a few friends and family members, and as we discerned together whether it would be wise for me to come out more conclusively, we wrestled with the knowledge that it would inevitably lead to new complications and obstacles. Because I had opened up to a circle of people who were involved in my life and who cared about me, I didn’t feel any moral or social obligation to make my orientation known on a wider scale. The essential question for us was whether the benefits of incorporating my orientation into the version of myself I allow everyone to see would outweigh the potential risks and costs.

It’s probably true for some sexual minorities that coming out to only a certain coterie of loved ones is the ideal outcome. (I’m biased to think not telling anyone at all about one’s orientation is inherently unhealthy and, to be frank, exhausting.) Nevertheless, I can say with full confidence my decision to be completely out—to everyone from my roommates to my grandma—was the ideal outcome for me, one I’ve not regretted at all since I took that irreversible plunge. By no means do I bring up my orientation or have “the talk” with every person in my life; in my case, being out meant writing this blog and no longer asking people to keep my orientation secret. I’ve essentially accepted that everyone in my life at least has access to that information, if it matters to them.

Whenever I do encounter some of those “negative effects of being openly gay,” my mind automatically starts to try and form the question of whether I’d be happier if I could somehow climb back into the closet, but I never even get the entire question out before I’ve already answered it: No, of course not. (In 2013, of course, the concept of climbing back into the closet is difficult to imagine even hypothetically in light of the Internet, social media, etc.) After spending half a dozen years compulsively monitoring my words and mannerisms and opinions to avoid betraying what I wasn’t ready for people to know about me, it’s difficult for me to exaggerate how pleasant it feels to be free from that anxiety and second-guessing. Actions as forgettable as bringing up some LGBT news item in conversation feel like huge privileges to me because I no longer have to calculate what other people might assume about me. (They don’t have to assume because they know!) Furthermore, actions as significant as working with The Marin Foundation or leading a chapel session at my school about homosexuality have unlocked an entire world of passion and gifting for me that was out of reach when I was too afraid to associate myself with that topic.

So, yes, incidents like the one that inspired my tweet are always severely disappointing and painful, especially for what they signify about where our culture is and how things need to change. But if I have to choose between living honestly with some negative consequences and living dishonestly without those negative consequences, my experience with both of those options leads me unequivocally to prefer the former. That I’m able to say that with such confidence is evidence of how blessed/charmed my life has been, to be sure, but I think most of us would agree that where we’d like to see our culture end up is an environment where people can be honest without worrying about whether that honesty might ruin their lives. In the meantime, those of us who can be out ought not to take for granted what a privilege that is, actively seeking to make it a possibility for every sexual minority.

If you’re the commenting type, I’m curious to hear about your experiences: Are you grateful to be out, or are you grateful that someone in your life came out to you? Or, do you regret coming out / regret that someone in your life came out to you? My experience has been positive enough to make me think the benefits of honesty (even if only the benefits for peace of mind) will nearly always outweigh its costs, but I know others have faced consequences much more severe than mine. How has your or someone else’s coming out affected you? 

My internship with The Marin Foundation last summer was an unforgettable experience, one that stretched and challenged and improved me. I spent time with precious people, I engaged big questions about faith and sexuality more intensely than I’d had the opportunity to do before, and—most significantly—I had the absolute privilege of doing the kind of work that makes you feel alive because it so richly connects with who you are and what you care about and want to accomplish. When I think about last summer, I think about tables full of diverse groups talking about marriage equality and identity development and Chick-Fil-A; I think about hours and hours of phone interviews with sweet parents who poured out their hearts to a complete stranger for the sake of research; and I think about hugs, tears, and words of love flowing freely at Chicago Pride.

It should come as no surprise, then, that I jumped at the opportunity to work with The Marin Foundation again, and I’m happy to report I’ll be returning to Chicago this summer to do just that. This summer will be different from the last in a few significant ways. First, I’ll have a new role with the organization. Whereas I spent most of last summer working on the Parent Resource Initiative, my focus this year will be on teaching and community engagement. TMF provides a few different formal classes throughout the year for different demographics in the Chicago area, and I’ll be helping to facilitate one of those ongoing classes over the summer. I’ll also be more directly involved with TMF’s “Living in the Tension” gatherings, which were one of the most affecting parts of my experience last summer. Finally, I’ll do more writing for some of TMF’s online publications, and I’ll be doing some volunteer work with the Center on Halsted, one of the country’s preeminent LGBTQ community centers.

Second, because of my existing experience with TMF, I plan to use this summer to discern whether I might pursue long-term work with the organization in the future or how I might emulate what they’re doing elsewhere. As I said above, my work last summer confirmed for me that my interest for engaging the church and the LGBT community is more than merely a hobby or some passing fancy for me, and with graduation looming in the next couple years, I want to explore whether I could give a season of my life to engaging TMF-esque work directly. This is a really, really exciting development in my life, to say the least, so I’m thrilled to have another summer to try on different roles and discern what my place is in the broader conversation.

One piece that hasn’t changed from last summer is my need for support in a few forms. I had about fifteen people who committed to pray regularly for me last year, which was profoundly encouraging and beneficial. That some of my pray-ers were people I only knew through the blog was particularly remarkable to me, and I so appreciated the willingness of friends and strangers alike to pray for my summer. If you’re the praying type, would you consider committing to pray for me and letting me know you’re doing so? When I reflected over the work of bridge-building at the end of last summer, I commented, “Demonstrating [the love Jesus calls us to] for the sake of building bridges in our present cultural climate is much harder than I would have expected.” It’s exhilarating and stirring, of course, but it can also be frustrating and demoralizing. I need people to pray that God will empower me and the other staff to demonstrate the love of Jesus in all of our actions, that I’ll be able to serve effectively in my role (or that God will use my lack of effectiveness), and that God will continue to clarify my vision for my future vocation.

I also had no trouble reaching my financial goal for last summer, which just left me speechless and so humbled and grateful. The bad news is that my situation is essentially the same as last summer: TMF is still a non-profit, and I’m still a grad student, so I’ll need help to cover my travel and living expenses. The good news, though, is that I’ve got a potential head start in the form of airline benefits, so I’m hoping that will cover a portion of the cost. Nevertheless, various costs will remain (rent, food, public transportation, etc.), so I am in need of people who can help support me financially. I’ve said it a dozen times and will say it a dozen more: God is faithful, and God’s people are generous. If you feel inclined to give, please do so; but if you feel hesitant, then rest assured God will empower the people who need to give to do so with joy and confidence. When I said, “Every dollar counts” last year, I was mostly trying to be winsome and persuasive; but I learned that every dollar really did matter when it came down to it. If you’re one of the people positioned to give financially, the process is the same last year, and your donations are tax-deductible: Click here to go to TMF’s donation page, select the option for a one-time donation, and make sure to mark the donation as “on behalf of” Brent Bailey. That will insure the donation makes it to my fund.

Let me be honest: I typically have trouble asking people for help, but I find myself strangely comfortable asking you to partner with me. I think it’s because I so value the work of TMF, having seen the positive effects of their efforts, and I sense such a strong purpose and clarity in my role with the work they do. I still haven’t really gotten past the overwhelming gratitude I felt last summer about the entire experience, so the thought of returning feels like too much to ask; but this has always been about something much bigger than me, and I’m eager to do my part. If you’re curious at all about my experience last summer or my expectations for the coming summer, please contact me—I genuinely enjoy talking about it and want to spread the word. Also, if you haven’t had a chance to read the posts I wrote last summer, check out the index by clicking here.

Thank you for reading, for walking with me, and for helping me understand what it means to love God and love people.

Let’s get technical.

Wes Hill recently published a piece over at First Things about why, as someone who thinks about his same-sex attractions “as a kind of ‘thorn in the flesh,’” he chooses to identify as a “celibate gay Christian” rather, I imagine, than merely referring to something like “a struggle with same-sex attraction.” The article was helpfully eloquent (as Hill typically is), but I found myself distracted by the phenomenon of the article itself—namely, that it’s a question audiences continue to ask Hill and that comments on the post continue to take issue with Hill’s self-identification. (It’s not just happening to Wes. This conversation is nearly ubiquitous in circles talking about homosexuality from a non-affirming perspective.)

In my experience, people who choose not to use words like “gay” and “bisexual” for themselves or for others are doing so because they desire (or want to walk alongside people who have expressed a desire) to avoid same-sex sexual activity. Identifying as “gay” sounds to many non-affirming ears like taking one more step down a road to sin: First you identify as “gay,” then you perceive your same-sex attractions as an essential and God-given component of your identity, then your perceptions of same-sex relationships shift from disordered to ordained, then etc., etc., etc. If you mean to abstain from sexual activity, so the thinking goes, why give sinful desires such a foothold by claiming they somehow constitute some component of who you are? (Hill explains well why he uses the “gay” label and points to three other articles that give other shades of nuance to the discussion.) Identifying as “gay” also sounds to many non-affirming ears like idolatry, since many perceive a cultural “gay identity” (something, from what I can tell, associated with flags and political action and certain behaviors) that could potentially compete with a Christ-identity for the Christian who labels him- or herself “gay.” I don’t want to suggest inaccurately that Christians of any orientation who reject sexual identity labels necessarily lack empathy or don’t take the experiences of sexual minorities seriously, and I rather appreciate the way they seem so quick to compare homosexuality to other behaviors they consider sinful—it’s a nice contrast to the way Christians often elevate the severity of sexual ethics. Nevertheless, I think those who condemn others for using a gay identity label are at an increased risk of conflating orientation with lust and of ignoring the vast differences in experience between gay and straight Christians.

First, orientation and lust: Ten years from now, I expect we’ll still be having rich and fierce debates about the morality of same-sex relationships, but I also expect we’ll have moved past the way many present-day debates talk about homosexual orientation in terms of lust and temptation as if merely acknowledging one’s same-sex inclination is necessarily the same as walking a road (even if only in one’s mind) towards sinful sexual activity. In my experience, many gay Christians do often trifle with lust initially as they seek to understand their sexual orientation, just as many straight Christians similarly trifle with lust; when sexual attraction first arrives, humans tend not to know precisely what to do with it. But I also think many Christians (gay or straight) who eventually decide to remain celibate manage to incorporate their sexual attractions into their experience of the world in a way they consider both honest and God-honoring. In other words, they learn what to do with their sexual attraction, just like every Christian eventually learns how to satisfy appropriately their desire for food or rest or possessions or affirmation. Hill points to a post by Melinda Selmys, who effectively demonstrates how someone who experiences same-sex attraction but perceives same-sex relationships as sinful can take ownership of her sexuality as a means of connecting to God and other people. She draws a clear distinction between orientation (which is amoral) and the kinds of temptation orientation tends to engender. Until we can all make this distinction, I think we’ll remain stuck thinking Christians who recognize a same-sex inclination as an enduring, central part of their experience and label that inclination “gay” are necessarily at odds with Christian communities who do not affirm same-sex relationships.

Second, differences in experience: I think comparing homosexuality to other behaviors can be theologically productive but is rather useless in practical terms. Here’s what I mean: Theologically speaking, I appreciate it when someone who considers homosexuality sinful is able to express how other behaviors, like taking more than you need or speaking falsely, are equally (or, in the context of life together, maybe more) problematic. Practically speaking, though, I don’t think there’s much to learn from comparing my experiences as a gay Christian to those of a Christian who struggles with greed or dishonesty, simply because I don’t want to downplay how drastically my experience seems to differ from the experiences of my straight peers. I don’t say this out of a masochistic desire to dwell on how strange I am, and I’d be the first to tell you how much more drastically my experience synchronizes with my peers’ in the most significant ways. But if sexuality is so centrally tied to who we are as people and how we connect with other people—I mean, people all across the spectrum of belief get that sexuality is a big deal—then living as someone whose experience of sexuality is atypical suggests my life is going to differ in some fundamental ways, and it’s helpful for me and for the people in my life to keep those differences in mind as we seek to connect with one another: like how how my well-intentioned interactions with women have often done harm because I did not consider the perceptions they might naturally generate; or how those gender-specific environments that provide a relaxing, head-clearing respite from sexual temptation for straight people (like locker rooms or all-male Bible studies) are sometimes the most confusing and charged environments for me; or how my earliest feelings of romantic attraction were sources of fear and confusion rather than delight and thrill; or how a compliment from a man is more likely to flatter me toward vanity than is a compliment from a woman; or how the Super Bowl commercials that make me uncomfortable may be different from the ones that make straight men uncomfortable; or how I feel an increased risk of misreading demonstrations of affection from both men and women. Each of these scenarios involves more complexity than simply a difference in orientation (e.g., locker rooms aren’t confusing because I’m gay but because I am, like many men, tempted to lust), but each of them remains directly tied to the fact that I’m gay and not straight. They also have the power to provoke feelings of intense isolation and loneliness, both because I feel different and because others may not realize how different I feel unless I make a point to assert those differences.

That’s why, I think, our particular cultural setting makes a “gay” label so very useful and accurate for same-sex attracted Christians, including even those who are abstaining from same-sex relationships. In another of the articles Hill mentions, Joshua Gonnerman describes this usefulness: 

“While there are interesting questions about whether it is good that sexual identity exists in our culture, the simple fact is that it does exist; further everyone is assumed to be straight until proven otherwise. Someone who meets me will be more likely to assume that I am struck by a beautiful actress than by a beautiful actor. So if I’m going to be classified—and we often classify for a good reason, in an effort to know something or someone—I would rather be classified truthfully.”

My ability to connect with any given faith community depends upon my ability to understand them and their ability to understand me, and people seem to understand me better within the framework of “gay” (even as everyone from LGBT activists to ex-gay therapists decries the limitations of that shallow term) than they did when they thought of me as “straight.” “Gay” is, like any of the other ways we identify ourselves, a starting point, a place of introduction into the fullness of my hopes, dreams, flaws, inadequacies, and identity. As a starting point, it’s a concise, potent, and even provocative reminder that my perceptions and experiences are different from those of my straight peers. When a connection forms, I can explore through thick relationships within that faith community what God desires for me and how the community might encourage me toward those ethics. That connection is difficult to nurture, though, in contexts in which people reject my self-identification as “gay” and thereby risk framing my orientation exclusively in terms of lust or disregarding the uniqueness of the experiences that have shaped me.

(One other note, just for clarification: I don’t think Wes or many other gay Christians, regardless of their theology, would primarily identify themselves as a “gay Christian” instead of just a “Christian,” as if “gay Christian” were some new category of person or “Gay Christianity” were a distinct branch of practice. I know that’s the case for me: Only rarely will I actually say the phrase “gay Christian,” since in most cases I’m either talking about myself as Christian or as a gay person. The phrase “gay Christian” is merely a means of suggesting the two realities aren’t mutually exclusive, in the vein of “male Christian” or “brown-haired Christian.”)

A major component of my internship with The Marin Foundation last summer was working on their ongoing Parent Resource Initiative, a major endeavor aiming to create quality, balanced resources for Christian parents of children who come out as LGBTQ. For the first phase of the project, we initiated a huge research effort, interviewing parents across the country to hear their stories and parsing through all of the resources (books, websites, support groups) we could find to determine what parents’ needs are and whether those needs are being met. I had the opportunity to interview a number of parents, and two consistent themes became quickly (and nearly ubiquitously) apparent:

1. Resources for Christian parents of LGBTQ children are rare and difficult to find. In many cases, the books that do exist are heavily biased to the extent that they do emotional damage to vulnerable parents who are seeking empathy and understanding in a confusing time.

2. Christian parents often feel enormously isolated when their kids come out. One of the last questions we’d ask in each interview was, “Are you connected to any other parents who would be interested in interviewing for our research?” Nearly every parent responded with a “No,” and the loneliness these parents expressed broke my heart time and time again.

Although The Marin Foundation has completed many interviews, they want to hear more stories and are still seeking parents across the country who are willing to tell their stories. If you or anyone you know would qualify for the research, please, please consider signing up for an interview. From what I could tell, the interviews tended to be cathartic for the parents, since it gave them a chance to reflect on their experience in a safe setting. I’d imagine the vast majority of people who read this post won’t really connect with it, but I guarantee there are parents out there who are desperately seeking some kind of guidance and support. Countless parents will eventually benefit in a huge way from the resources that will result from this research.

To arrange an interview or learn more about the project, contact Laura Statesir at laura@themarinfoundation.org or 773-572-5983, or shoot me an email here on the blog at omoblog@gmail.com.

“I want to go to college, TAMU or ACU, and either be an engineer or a minister, pulpit or youth.  I want to marry a Christian wife and have at least 4 kids.  I want to serve God always.”

I wrote that at church camp the summer after my junior year of high school.  I was hurrying through questions about identity during a morning devotional, and the first question was broad: “What are some things you want for your life?  What are your goals?”  Evidently I wanted to go to college to be an engineer or a minister, I wanted to marry and have four children, and I wanted to serve God always.

Three years before that, the other eighth grade boys and I spent the spring in “True Love Waits,” a curriculum designed to help teenagers explore benefits of saving physical intimacy for marriage.  A worksheet asked me to envision my life five, ten, and fifteen years down the road: How far along would I be in my education?  Where would I be spiritually?  Under “Family,” my answers were as concise as the answers of thirteen-year-old boys tend to be: In five years, I’d be “Dating.”  In ten years, I’d have reached “Marriage.”  And in fifteen years, I’d “Have children.”

Ten years later, I’m not married.  I’m not married to a Christian wife, and I don’t have at least four kids.  This is primarily but not entirely due to the fact that I’m physically and emotionally attracted to men, a reality I’ve recognized since before eighth grade but fully acknowledged only four years ago.  I don’t remember ever receiving a clear call from God to marry a woman.  I don’t remember any older Christians directly telling me it was imperative that I marry a woman and have children.  Somehow, though, that became the inevitable outcome towards which my life was heading.  It wasn’t that I felt pressured or obligated to find a partner, although questions from curious adults about my dating life were persistent.  It was simply that, in spite of being drawn to men, I couldn’t and wouldn’t imagine any other outcome.  Christians married opposite-sex partners and had children, and that was that.  Growing up in a denomination that didn’t ordain ministers, I regarded celibacy as something only certain Catholics did.  Same-sex relationships were a nonissue, the stuff of hushed conversations and snickers.

Throughout middle school and high school, my awareness of my orientation elicited a range of emotions.  On bad days, it was agonizing, especially because my prayers that God would aim my desires at women were ineffective.  On good days, it was merely puzzling, as I was still heading towards finding a wife and felt uncertain about how my private attraction to men would affect our physical and emotional intimacy.  On very good days, it was trivial, since I optimistically assumed a change in my orientation was still only a few months away and then everything would make sense.  My first year at college was when I stopped perceiving marriage as an inevitability, because that was the year I took a class with a professor from my denomination who was celibate.  Celibacy provided a solution for the dilemma that had felt agonizing on bad days, puzzling on good days, and trivial on very good days: I’d avoid the complications of marrying a woman by staying single, and I wouldn’t ever have to acknowledge my orientation.  Mere months later, I finally admitted to myself I had been exclusively attracted to men as long as I had been attracted to anyone, and I slowly began coming out to friends and family.

For many years, I presumed the way to submit my sexuality to God was to keep hidden that which made me different, to find a way to function within the limited confines of relationship patterns my faith community provided me.  Hopefully you recognize my error, because of course we cannot submit anything to God if we keep it in darkness.  We submit to God by bringing ourselves into God’s light, which requires a posture of humble honesty with ourselves and with other people of God.  When I began coming out and asking candid questions about my sexual orientation, my relationship outcome was no longer certain, and it was extraordinarily painful for me and for people who cared about me to begin re-envisioning my future in light of the reality of my circumstances.  But it also opened the door for conversations and, more importantly, prayers that were sincere and upfront, free from the interference of pretense and posturing.

I have no statistics, but my experience tells me the majority of Christians will eventually marry an opposite-sex partner and have children.  Many Christians will not.  This division is not synchronous with the division between Christians who are straight and Christians who are sexual minorities, because many Christians who are straight do not marry or have children, and many Christians who are sexual minorities do marry opposite-sex partners and have children.  The kingdom of God includes those people who will not marry or procreate.  It was the same professor who taught me not every Christian marries that also taught me Christians are the people who get to imagine the world different from how it is.  God’s re-creating work is foundational to our identity as people who have been made new in Christ, so we see the world through eyes fresh with hope from the bigger picture of God’s activity through the story of history.  One of the ways in which many Christians in our particular setting have failed to exercise their imaginations, I think, is in our concept of the family.  We’ve perceived benefits of the heterosexual nuclear family structure to the degree that we no longer imagine healthy and satisfying relationships outside of that formal structure, and we’re unconscious of the way Jesus initiated a new family paradigm that was an absolute economic and social necessity for many of the people who left brothers or sisters or mother or father or children to follow him.

The casualties of this lack of imagination have been those people who don’t fit well into a network comprised of heterosexual nuclear families.  This includes those sexual minorities who choose not to commit to mixed-orientation marriages, but it also includes people who don’t marry or can’t marry, people who don’t have children or can’t have children, and anyone else who does not follow a five-ten-fifteen year pattern of date-marry-procreate.  The problem is not that we’ve catered our programming to the majority—that’s unavoidable for institutions—but that we’ve ceased to perceive anything outside of that majority as desirable or even viable.  We didn’t err when we told our teenagers to wait for marriage before becoming physically intimate; we erred when we implied our teenagers were all necessarily waiting for marriage and that the only legitimate expression of their God-given sexuality was physical intimacy.  We withheld other options in part, I suspect, because we revered heterosexual nuclear families and desired that outcome for our children, but we didn’t anticipate how isolated they’d feel when that didn’t happen for them or how readily they’d discover alternate options outside of the church.  So long as we force people into darkness, we prevent them from submitting to God’s light.  It wasn’t until I could be honest with myself and with others about my orientation that I could genuinely seek God’s will for me related to marriage—whether God would have me pursue a relationship with a woman (being entirely forthright with her about the particulars of our relationship), remain single, or pursue a relationship with a man.

My perception is that many young people growing up in churches today are encountering the same limited paradigm I encountered but that many others are beginning to acquire the skill of imagination, including an imagination for the atypical structure of God’s family.   Such imagination results from many influences: It comes from churches that invite people to be entirely honest about their experience of the world, churches that promise and deliver a safe environment for people to submit the totality of their identities into God’s light.  It comes from positive role models who do not belong to heterosexual nuclear families but who are committed to the sexual ethics of the faith communities in which they participate (and I’m including in this category those who belong to mixed-orientation families)—and it comes from an attitude of support, respect, and admiration for those role models from the other members of the church, free from gestures of pity or condescension.  It comes from a holistic understanding of our sexuality that is much broader than (but still includes) what a husband and wife do together in their bedroom.  It comes from conscious attention to the impact of our language and our assumptions, with less attention on which terms are in vogue and more attention on how our words can best honor the experiences of the specific people in our midst who are minorities.  It comes from courageous, trusting love.

In these sorts of communities, I suspect we’ll each comprehend more fully how it feels to be (as in Ephesians 2) no longer foreigners and strangers but rather fellow citizens with God’s people, members of God’s very household.