A Rainbow Flag In Narnia

Grateful for a sunset ending

2008-09-20T20:17:00.003-05:00

Thank you, Hollyoaks, for a beautiful "sunset ending."

If you are one of the people who do not follow British TV, you won't know that the Brit young-people's soap Hollyoaks has been featuring an honest-to-God gay storyline for two years involving gay teen John Paul McQueen and Craig Dean (played by James Sutton and Guy Burnet) . Not a wimpy, simpering storyline like the Luke-&-Noah story on As The World Turns, but a story involving love, affection, kissing, and even (gasp!) sex (unlike the US version, which keep tiptoeing around even having two gay boys kiss on TV...).

[You can read the storyline on Wikipedia and actually see the John Paul/Craig Dean episodes (s0me 300-plus of them, including all the side stories) on YouTube - this channel has one of the best and most complete archives of the John Paul/Craig stories (also shorthanded "McDean" for McQueen/Dean).]

I've never been a guy for soaps, but as I was coming out, I was searching for any portrayals of gay characters in modern culture. I've enjoyed the John Paul/Craig storyline for a number of reasons:

The gay characters in the storyline (John Paul, Craig, Spike, Robin, and Kieron) are normal everyday guys - they play football, listen to dance music, have lively family dramas, and are not stereotypical in any way. They are, as Kieron would say, "just regular blokes."
The storyline shows how terribly conflicted teens can be when they find themselves attracted to the same sex. Craig desperately wants to be with John Paul, but goes so far as getting engaged to a girl to prevent having to "be gay." John Paul suffers repeatedly at the hands of other Hollyoaks denizens for being out and open.
The characters are openly affectionate on prime-time TV. It's just not a big deal in jolly old England when two blokes kiss on TV - Hollyoaks, Eastenders and Coronation Street, not to mention the sci-fi series Torchwood, all have major gay characters and storylines. And it's not all just tweaked-out club boys getting stoned and getting off - there is real romance present here.
The storyline didn't end up with someone getting bashed, dying of AIDS, or running away in denial - although there is plenty of violence and denial in the story. The McDean thread actually ends happily, despite all kinds of tragedies over the two year story arc.

So when John Paul and Craig rode off into the sunset together - literally, into the sunset - on September 18th, it ended a challenging and beautiful storyline. Not being a big teen-soap fan, I'm not sure I would have watched the show if it wasn't for the McDean gay thread. But I have to admit that I'm glad that one popular gay story ends with at least the hope of happily-ever-after.

To James Sutton and Guy Burnet - thank you for having the courage to play your characters with such depth and such conviction. To the producers of Hollyoaks and Britain's Channel 4 TV, thanks for the courage to put this relationship in prime-time, and to make the investment to make it much more real than any gay relationship I've seen in the media to date.

Thanks for the memories, boys.

One little word...

2008-08-22T20:05:00.005-05:00

I can't believe it's been nearly six months since I've posted on this blog. Life has been full...

So, it's the 4th weekend in August, and Chris (aka Pookie Bear) has applied for his dream job - working for a well-known RC hobby company in Champaign, Illinois. In emailing with a friend recently, I wrote to her, "I cannot believe, btw, that I am considering moving again. Such is love, I guess." She wrote back, "Ah, so we’re calling it 'love,' are we? I guess we haven’t discussed the status of your relationship with Chris, though it did seem to be going well."

That's what we're calling it, all right. Only because that's what it is...

There are days when I wake up, and still can't believe this is happening.

For the first time in my life, when he says, "I love you just the way you are," I don't automatically assume there is an unstated "...but..." involved. In the 9 months we have known each other, my complexion has been at its worst; my weight has yo-yo'd up and down; the insulin shots I have to take sometime leave really attractive bruises on my stomach (yes, I've found a way to minimize that), and I still sleep with my CPAP breathing machine, probably one of the least sensual pieces of bedroom equipment one could dream of. In short, in the eyes of most of the world, I would definitely be in the "throw-back" category, rather than "a catch."

He can't wait to see me. And to be honest, I feel exactly the same way about him. He's adorable in a way I never thought I'd feel about anyone. It's an amazing experience.

We have vastly different interests. He's a mountain/road biking enthusiast; I haven't been on a bike since seminary (and it wasn't that successful when I was on it then). He loves his Yamaha WR426 dirt-bike; I have no desire to be on a motorcycle (although I have developed an absolutely-genuine interest in AMA supercross and motocross racing, and can't wait for the next race!)

He is a very talented remote-control flyer; it's all I can do to keep an RC plane flying flat and level, let alone taking off or landing (though I have the desire to learn - have had since I was a wee little one). He's a neatnik; I have lived with messes so long, it's definitely been an effort to do the cleaning-up, and I will never be as fanatical about the condition of my cars as he is about his truck and bikes.

He's fascinated by what goes on at my meetings in recovery; he's been to several open meetings (and one admittedly long-and-rambling speaker meeting). I could sit and read, or write, or blog for hours; he has very little use for books, but has developed a great affection for storytelling tapes and CDs. He enjoys what I write, and is one of my cheerleaders. If that book ever gets started (let alone finished), it will be because he'll be kicking me, all the way.

I could go on and on about how our interests dovetail, but are anything but in lock-step. When I have something going on (AA meeting or something), he spends time working on stuff he enjoys. A couple weekends ago, we had plans to go to the Monroe (MI) Jazz Fest - but it was simply an absolutely perfect day to ride his motorcycle - so I sent him off to the Maumee State Forest, and spent time with my family and catching up on work. We have lots of common interests, but that's the very least of it.

Chris and I are soul-mates.

When he's at work, I'm thinking about him, hoping his day at the Son of Evil Empire goes well (or at least not badly). I get phone calls and messages from him; occasionally I'll send him a "luv u" text just to remind him. We literally love to spend time together, doing just about anything - or nothing, as the case may be.

He's caring, and a true cuddle-bear. We're definitely past the "have to be hand-in-hand all the time" stage of the game - but we certainly enjoy it when we are together.

And I've found that intimacy between us - what I was most afraid I'd do miserably at, because of my size, age and health issues - has been a wonderful experience. I've re-discovered romance all over again - my iPod is loaded with all kinds of "cuddle songs" and what my professor Tex Sample would call "belly-rubbers" - the kind of songs where you want to be dancing real slow and real close. Usually, by the time he gets off work (he's working 2nd shift, 3-11 pm) it hurts to stand up long enough to be dancing. But we have wonderful cuddle times, just sprawled out together on the sofa watching the Olympics.

It's not anything like I thought it would be - and it's everything I hoped it would be.

So when he got the word that there might be a place for him at The Company in Illinois, there wasn't any question of "would we go together?" I can no longer imagine any kind of joy in life without this man by my side. I know it's going to be tough; but living with my sister and brother-in-law hasn't always been a bed of roses, either. And living with my landlord and his dog underneath me in Chicago, and living in seminary housing with a room-mate, wasn't always grins-n-giggles either.

There was a moment, about a month ago, where I thought I might be having heart problems. I woke up, heart racing, breathing heavy, dizzy, you name it. I took the medicine I have for panic-attacks (which I sometimes get), and nothing happened. For an hour, in fact. Lying there, freaking out, part of me didn't want to disturb my partner - he'd had a particularly hard day at work that night.

But I simply couldn't risk anything happening to me and not letting him know how much I loved him. That - more than any concern I had for myself - is what made me shake the poor boy awake.

In October 2006, when I first moved here, I was glad I could help out my sister - but I really didn't have any joy for life left. I saw my term-life-insurance policy as the only real value I had left to my life. A year later, I met Chris - and life has just never been the same since. There are parts of my life that I can get terrified about - especially about finances, and the various kinds of insanity that addictive people are prone to.

But I have a lot more will to keep on living - because I want to see, as Paul Harvey says, "the rest of the story...." And, as Stevie Wonder said, "For once in my life, I have someone who needs me."

So yeah - it may very well not be "love." But it's close enough that I'd take it, for the long haul. After forty years, we'll see if he wants to exercise the escape clause - until then, he's stuck with me.

The target for the move to Illinois is October 31. Packing and "trimming-down" has already begun.

The ballad of Huggy-Bear and Pookie-Bear

2008-02-03T22:42:00.000-06:00

Sitting on the floor and talking till dawn
Candles and confidences
Trading old beliefs and humming old songs
And lowering old defenses...

Private little jokes and silly pet names
Lavender soap and lotions
All of the cliches and all of the games
And all of the strange emotions
Singing a love song...
("Love Song," from the musical Pippin)

Chris, The Man From Missouri, has wormed his way deep into my heart - and, it seems, I have done the same to him. I am his "Huggy Bear," and he is my "Pookie Bear" (a play from the musical Rent, if you've seen it). What a rollercoaster this last month has been...a good one, to be sure, but a rollercoaster nonetheless. But history has been rich and thick as extra-creamy Cool Whip for both of us, so, to recap...

Chris had his house for sale for 7 months. In the middle of our third cross-country visit (I spent a week in Missouri the first week of December), his house sold. Closing was on December 28th; and he was ready for an end to Greyhound bus rides to spend time together. So I worked on finding him an apartment he could rent with no immediate job; he worked on getting through all the house-closing hoops.

The adventure to get him here was a journey of inches and miles - him trying to nail down every little detail on the sale of his house in Springfield, MO, and I, trying to juggle year-end closing, finances and family challenges to get down there, and help him drive his belongings back here.

I left December 27th for Chicago, and then from Chicago to St. Louis and Springfield. After all kinds of obstacles all month, Chris' actual closing went without a hitch. But at the end of the day Friday, with the truck packed and ready to go, both of us were exhausted. We elected to crash in a Motel 6 overnight Friday night, and headed out for Toledo on December 29th, and landed here on the 30th. He couldn't move in until January 2, but he had everything so organized it took next to nothing to get everything moved in.

His apartment is in Whitehouse, a little rural community on the southwest outskirts of Toledo - not quite 10 minutes lazy drive from our condo. It's small, but his stuff fits in there fine, and the washer/dryer area has become his "garage," where his bike and tools fit in just fine. So it's workable.

So Chris moved in to his apartment on Weds., January 2nd. On Thursday the 3rd, we left for Washington DC for the national conference of the Gay Christian Network (GCN).

I actually posted about that over here on the Ragamuffin site, just because it was such an incredibly freeing and empowering weekend as a un-ordained minister and former worship leader, to be able to participate in Christian worship with the man I love. It was a freeing experience beyond any that I can describe to you. So many of the beautiful songs and hymns that I hadn't sung since being a worship leader at Faith Lutheran in Prairie Village - gads, nearly 7 years ago. I was such a wreck - just awash in tears of joy at every worship experience while we were there.

Chris went out interviewing the day after we got back from the conference - his 4th day in Ohio. He had a job offer the very next day, as front-desk-clerk/manager trainee at the new Holiday Inn Holidome/waterpark in Toledo. The drive isn't so bad, and the location is new enough that we both think he'll be able to grow into management there. Of course, there are all of the "we don't have a policy for that" challenges with go along with any startup business, and dealing with the general public in Toledo is not such a fun thing (especially when it comes to the water-park, whose clientele certainly can be demanding and bring an air of entitlement, so he's not without his own challenges.

In the meantime, work for me has heated up (as usual), and between Chris' schedule (which gyrates pretty wildly between 7 AM - 3 PM and 3-11 PM) and all my usual busyness, it's pretty much been grab-some-dinner-and-crash, maybe including a movie (if it's not too late). We do what we can...

I'd forgotten what an old romantic I can be (and how much I valued that), to be honest. I've also found that waiting for the right person was worth it, and then some. Because sex wasn't the first thing we were looking for, we managed to find an incredible wealth of common experience between the two of us. He is fascinated with my recovery experience - I'm amazed by his passion for remote-control aircraft flying.

He's always wanted to learn to cook; I am a "let's go play in the kitchen" kind of guy. So I'm also re-discovering cooking, because Chris is definitely kitchen-impaired, but is eager to learn. Some of my old pots, pans and utensils have come out of storage, and we are having fun cooking, when we get the chance. He's more physically fit than I; we are working toward improving that for me. It's a blessing in both directions.

I've found that over a certain age (and thankfully, we are both over it, though he's not far over it...) just the incredible intimacy of cuddling together is something that's very special, all by itself. We'd missed both missed that so badly, having both been affection-starved for quite a while - he in a not-so-healthy relationship that ended months before we met, I in self-imposed closeted celibacy. So the simple act of cuddling and watching movies has been a real treat for both of us - each time we get the chance to just snuggle-up on the sofa, it's still a new experience. That's something I just didn't expect to have such a powerful effect on me, to be sure!

I've started to read to him, as well. Between Favorite Stories from the National Storytelling Conference and Where is Heaven? Children's Thoughts on Death and Dying, we have had a lot to talk about - about life, love, humor, pain, death and dying. You know, small-letter topics...and we've had some great conversations about each of those topics, and a hundred more besides.

In short, this is the story of two people, who surely seem to be madly in love, as well as aware of how badly things could go wrong. We are eager yet cautious; while I surely spend a LOT of time with Chris (whenever I can), I am still getting to AA meetings, and he is going to his first meeting of the local remote-control aircraft flying club, the Toledo Flying Tigers, this Tuesday. He wants to get to an open AA meeting, when his work schedule allows, and I can't wait to go to the Electric Tournament of Champions (E-TOC), an annual indoor festival of RC-aircraft superstars that is held in Toledo the first week of April. And we have about 20 years of vacations planned together...

When we were watching some old movies in my stuff, I came across the musical Pippin. It's a "what's life all about" musical that has several of my long-time favorite songs in it, including the big "will my life having meaning" song, "Corner of the Sky." But I was caught by the message of one of the less-known songs, "No Time At All," and how appropriate it has become for my life. At the end of this, I have two YouTube links - one, a terrible amateur video that has a fairly decent audio-track of the song, and a shorter version done by none other than Irene Ryan, the original "Granny" from The Beverly Hillbillies.

I'd click on the first link, and then scroll through the words. Then I'd go to the end, and hear Granny's version of it. It really captures the spirit of the song better, even if it's not the complete song.

No Time At All - from the musical Pippin

When you are as old as I, my dear
And I hope that you never are
You will woefully wonder why, my dear
Through your cataracts and catarrh
You could squander away or sequester
A drop of a precious year
For when your best days are yester
The rest'er twice as dear....

What good is a field on a fine summer night
When you sit all alone with the weeds?
Or a succulent pear if with each juicy bite
You spit out your teeth with the seeds?
Before it's too late stop trying to wait
For fortune and fame you're secure of
For there's one thing to be sure of, mate:
There's nothing to be sure of!

Oh, it's time to start livin'
Time to take a little from this world we're given
Time to take time, cause spring will turn to fall
In just no time at all....

I've never wondered if I was afraid
When there was a challenge to take
I never thought about how much I weighed
When there was still one piece of cake
Maybe it's meant the hours I've spent
Feeling broken and bent and unwell
But there's still no cure more heaven-sent
As the chance to raise some hell

Everybody....
[ALL]
Oh, it's time to start livin'
Time to take a little from this world we're given
Time to take time, cause spring will turn to fall
In just no time at all....

Now when the drearies do attack
And a siege of "the sads" begins
I just throw these regal shoulders back
And lift these noble chins

Give me a man who is handsome and strong
Someone who's stalwart and steady
Give me a night that's romantic and long
And give me a month to get ready -
Now I could waylay some aging roue'
And persuade him to play in some cranny
But it's hard to believe I'm being led astray
By a man who calls me granny

[ALL]
Oh, it's time to start livin'
Time to take a little from this world we're given
Time to take time, cause spring will turn to fall
In just no time at all....

Oh, it's time to start livin'
Time to take a little from this world we're given
Time to take time, cause spring will turn to fall
In just no time at all....

Sages tweet that age is sweet
Good deeds and good work earns you laurels
But what could make you feel more obsolete
Than being noted for your morals?

Here is a secret I never have told
Maybe you'll understand why
I believe if I refuse to grow old
I can stay young till I die
Now, I've known the fears of sixty-six years
I've had troubles and tears by the score
But the only thing I'd trade them for
Is sixty-seven more....

Oh, it's time to keep livin'
Time to keep takin' from this world we're given
You are my time, so I'll throw off my shawl
And watching your flings be flung all over
Makes me feel young all over
In just no time at all....

(the other version...)

The gift of right answers

2007-12-24T06:51:00.000-06:00

Merry Christmas, everyone. It's been interesting - I've had the chance to interact with a number of gay brothers on the internet, and I find the voices of those who have been my "border collies" on the journey coming through me. It's nice to have some experience, strength and hope to share - for so long, I thought I would be in a perpetual state of taking, rather than giving. This one event showed me otherwise....

So, I have been communicating on and off with Kevin through the beauty of the Internet. I've never met him, but we have a shared history in closeted ministry. He's still in it, as a church musician. This was the pertinent part of a much longer conversation...

I am attending a church that I am, well, very confused about. I thought I could move ahead, but am back at Home Base AGAIN!

Same ole, same ole, if I behave myself and don't end up in the sack with a man, or don't have contact with Gay men, my Pastor is smiling...but if I should do the "naughty" that means, my conscience is wrought up with fear, anxiety and torment, I will go running into his office, and then after fessin up, it will be "discipline" (no playing piano.)

I can't be myself, and I am sadly unable to explain it to ANY of you at GCN, or myself, this fear always in the back of my mind that one being Gay, basically means doctrinally to the church I attend, "you are not truly Saved" and have "back-slidden" and you have "fallen-away" or are falling away, if you "PRACTICE..."

This is not the first, or the third, time he's shared with us about this. People were doing what they so often do - "there, there, it will be all right..." And I just couldn't go along with that (my spiritual mentors in gay life didn't raise me up that way)...and this was the result:

Well, Kevin, some others have shared some great things with you. Here's perhaps a different take...

For much of my life, I have gone to people for help who were almost completely unequipped to help me. I kept going to drowning people for swimming lessons, and then get angry when all I hear is "glub, glub glub"!

One classic example of this was going to straight pastors and friends, in homophobic organizations or churches (or at best don't-ask-don't-tell ones) for help understanding faith in God and Christ as a gay man. And then I'd be left wondering why my faith was so undermined and why I'd stayed closeted for so long...

That's not to say that you can't continue to be a music minister in a straight church - God knows, if we took away all the GLBT music ministers, musicians and choir directors, it'd be pretty quiet in church on Sunday mornings! But in almost every situation, I truly don't believe you can be ministered-to as a gay man of faith by straight people. It's like trying to have a blind man tell Cezanne how to paint a still life - ain't gonna work, baby.

Even the most open and welcoming straight pastors simply do not understand gay sexuality or relational drives. And most Christian pastors have heard, forever and ever, that the worst sins that can be committed are sexual sins (regardless of orientation), and the worst among them are the gay sexual sins.

So when you come to your straight pastor, with his straight community and background, and try to talk about relationships with guys (even platonic ones), he's naturally gonna act like you've run into a gasoline tank farm with a flame-thrower. In many cases, it's not their fault - it's just how they were raised, how they were trained, and how they understand the world.

The hardest thing I had to hear - time and time and time again - is that what others think of me is none of my damn business. I have had to accept how I am, regardless if anyone else is going to like me or accept me. As a wonderful gay Catholic priest once told me, "God's grace is available to everybody in the room - and believe it or not, you are in the room."

You may be able to continue serving this congregation - but some good advice would be to seek spiritual counsel from a gay pastor or counselor, or at an open and affirming church. And stop going to straight people for acceptance of gay relationships - unless you really, really like getting spanked. Because, in 85-90% of the cases, that's all they know.

Picking up some of the books in the GCN recommended literature will help - especially Mel White's Stranger at the Gate and a copy of The Children Are Free by Jeff Miner and Tyler Conolley. I also found these books which are NOT on our "recommended list" to be helpful -

Chris Glaser's Uncommon Calling: A Gay Christians' Struggle to Serve The Church
Is The Homosexual My Neighbor? A Positive Christian Response by Scanzoni and Mollenkott
Many Members Yet One Body: Committed Same Gender Relationships and the Mission of the Church by Craig Nessan
The Church and the Homosexual by John J. McNeill

While Nessan's book is more geared to ELCA Lutherans (leading up to the 2007 national conference) and McNeill's books are heavily influenced by Catholic dogma, they were still very helpful to me in understanding the battles and in helping me to find comfort as one of God's gay kids.

Straight people - and the straight church - only know straight life, and that's all they have to recommend to you, in most cases. I thank God, every day, for the gift of a group of gay Catholics in the community of recovery in Chicago - priests, monks, and lay people - who helped ease me into acceptance of myself as a gay man and as a child of God. And then for a group of straight people at seminary who understood that there was room at the table for everyone, regardless of orientation.

If you're looking for acceptance, check with "family" first. It's easier to live with the rest of the world once you can find peace with yourself as one of us first. That's certainly been my experience, anyway. I never would have made it any other way.

/end sermon/

I'll continue to pray for you, Kevin. Keep talking, keep asking, keep seeking, and pray your you-know-what off.

My dear friend Tom once told me I'd come to understand how the established straight church hurt me, as a closeted gay man, over the years. Guess I'm getting the lesson. Thanks, Tom and Michael, for the gift of honesty about my closeted past. "You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free..."

That freedom is the greatest gift of all. And no wrapping required...

Catchin' up on love

2007-12-04T11:13:00.000-06:00

Well, it has been a busy month in northwest Ohio, and in Springfield, Missouri, to be sure...

Chris (the formerly completely anonymous Guy) came here the first weekend in November. Stayed at a El Cheapo motel nearby, so as not to spook the Straight Folks I live with. It was an amazing weekend - showing Chris around town, introducing him to places and spaces that were important. When he got in from his fifteen-hour bus ride, we had Tony's Ribs (mm mm mm mm mmmmmmmm yummy) and then went to the Art Museum. Got there late, got to see a cool glass-blowing exhibition, and generally walked around the Museum hand-in-hand (not a lot of places you can do that comfortably in Toledo, sadly).

Saturday, we went for a drive along the Maumee River, talking of everything under the sun. Took pictures of each other - as usual, mine were all eyes-shut (I don't know what it is about that...) but it was good, nonetheless. Then we had an early Thanksgiving dinner, complete with Our Family's Stuffing (somewhere between stuffing and meatloaf, unbelievably savory), and an evening of playing turkey-foot (an old dominos strategy game).

This was the first time my family had seen me with someone in a romantic way in, oh, 16, almost 17 years. (The one exception to that was when my dear friend Norma and I came in to Ohio to see the 40th anniversary Peter, Paul & Mary concert in Cleveland - but that, sadly, was more friends than not.) It was also the first time that they'd really seen me openly "gay" - actually with another man who was more than a friend. Hell, it was only the 2nd weekend in my life that I had been with another man - so it was pretty amazing, all the way around.

And they were absolutely A-OK with it, for which I was thankful. I showed Chris how to make gravy, which turned out just great, and he pitched in just like he'd always been there. He managed to win at turkey-foot, too - which my sisters and brothers-in-law won't hold against him for long.

We went to St. Mark's Episcopal Church downtown - a big ol' Episcopal church with a long history of being gay-friendly. And it was - there were couples of every mixture, and it felt amazing to sit in church and hold my boyfriend's hand and just be in God's family as a gay couple. That was an amazing experience, even if the service itself isn't what I would have chosen. The freedom to be ourselves "in church" was a new experience for me, to be sure.

Breakfast at the Star Diner (a feast, to be sure), followed by a ride seeing the colors in the Old West End. Reveling in God's glory...

And then it was time for him to go.

We sat in the Greyhound station, talking about everything but the impending arrival of The Bus, which was verboten because if we talked about that we were both going to cry, and neither one of us were ready to do that...

It became real obvious that this relationship was something way more than "you're nice company, I'm nice company, and we have fun together." As the bus pulled away, I followed in my car until they pulled off onto I-75...about half blind with tears.

It'd been a long, long time since I've felt that strongly about anyone, or anything. Felt pretty damn good, too...

Flash forward - Chris' housemate was going to be gone the week after Thanksgiving. Both of us couldn't take time off from work, but both of us wanted to spend time together. Since my work can be done from anywhere, the answer popped out of a slot. So back on the bus - this time, MegaBus through Chicago, to St. Louis - and a week of "playing house" in Missouri.

It was more real-life - the work-world stress crept into the relationship, and there were a lot of "what's wrong, babe?..." questions on his part. But there were great times - dinners with two of Chris' good friends, and an evening of cooking up zucchini-sausage soup that was an adventure for the kitchen-impaired boy...

It was magical. And we both knew it was going to be just as hard to say goodbye, if not more so. And then it happened.

The house Chris and his housemate own, which has been on the market for seven months...sold. "Under contract," as they say.

And the questions began, for Chris. What's holding him there, what would he do? What would WE do?

That's when he asked me...what I thought of him moving to Toledo.

I was blown away. After all, I moved to Toledo because I felt I had to, for the kids. I don't think I would have come here otherwise. But here he was, in my arms, saying he was ready to move to Northwest Ohio...for me. Just for me.

Holy shit, Batman.

My mind, which tends to run to the negative, saw all the reasons why it probably wouldn't work. But arrayed against all the nay-saying voices was the fact that this man wanted to be with me. And I wanted to be with him. Not just for a weekend. And not to "move in together," at least not yet. But I sure didn't want this to continue to be a long-distance relationship (it's expensive, to be honest).

The second movie we saw together was Transformers (which is just a fun piece of film, to be honest). When Sam and Megan (the two teen protagonists) encounter the Autobots for the first time, they are faced with a driverless Camaro whose door swings open to invite them in...

Sam: It wants us to get in the car!
Megan: And go WHERE?!?....
Sam: Fifty years from now, when you're looking back at your life, don't you want to be able to say you had the guts to 'get in the car'?...

Yes. I sure do...

And so it begins.

He is looking for an apartment and a job long-distance. I am trying to help him find the lay of the land, and find a decent (and affordable) place to live in between the Evil Empire's demands. Part of me is terrified - afraid of the weight of my past relational failures.

But a large part of me is singing hosanna's and torch songs and can't wait and is willing to leap tall buildings...

What a day this has been, what a rare mood I'm in
Why it's almost like being in love

There's a smile on my face for the whole human race
Why it's almost like being in love

All the music of life seems to be
Like a bell that is ringing for me

And from the way that I feel when the bell starts to peel
I would swear I was falling, I could swear I was falling
- It's almost like being in love.

("Almost Like Being In Love," from Lerner & Lowe's Brigadoon)

Yeah, exactly like it, in fact.

Maybe this is insane. Maybe you can't find your true love on a first date on a random chance. But for now, I'm ready to seize the day. Carpe diem. Dive in for all it's worth.

And just "get in the car."

Travelin' prayer

2007-11-01T18:07:00.001-05:00

Hey Lord, won'tcha look around tonight
Find where my baby's gonna be
Hey Lord, won'tcha look out for him tonight
'Cause he's so far away from me
Hey Lord, won'tcha look out for him tonight
Make sure everythin's gonna be alright
Until he's home and here with me...

So, The Guy is getting on a Greyhound tonight at 11:30 CT to make the 15-plus hour ride to Toledo. He'll be at the station early, but that doesn't mean there aren't at least two more chances (St. Louis and Dayton) to have the "leave the driving to us" folks screwing up travel.

Years ago, I heard Billy Joel's Travelin' Prayer on his Piano Man CD (well, to be honest, I heard it on the LP...). I've always had a love for that song, but never thought I'd ever want to be singing it myself. Let alone singing it for a man, who's as eager to see me as I am for him...

I'm singin' it now, though.

Prayers for traveling mercies and a blessed weekend would be welcome. This will be the first time my family has seen me with anyone - let alone a man - in years. So we have an early Thanksgiving dinner and lots of turkey-foot (a dominos strategy game) to play on Saturday with both sisters and their husbands. It will be interesting...

So here, for "C", is my prayer tonight...

And - hopefully - tomorrow night's torch-song...

Torch songs and Greyhounds

2007-10-27T16:23:00.000-05:00

It started off slow.

I'd had my photo and personal ad on a website for "men of larger girth" - cued by a friend from GCN who'd heard me whining about not dating one too many times. And my face - the face I'd struggled so much to accept the looks of, the one in the mirror - caught the eye of someone. (Thank you, Tim B., for that trio of head-shots - they did wonders!)

Actually, the photo and the personal ad caught the attention of a not-inconsiderable number of someones, to be honest. There were lots of folks who wanted to talk dirty, and act dirtier - the typical man-pigs who show up on any dating/hookup site. It wasn't surprising, exactly, except that they found me to be attractive. Despite being sorely tempted to "just do it" with someone/anyone (Hey, I'm not made of stone, here...), I blew off 99 percent of the responses.

But there was one person who did not want to talk about endowment, or positions, or in fact anything physical. It was refreshing:

Well I just finished reading your ad and I have to be honest your pic is what really drew me to it. Then as I read it I was very impressed of what you said. Wow you are a very nice looking man and had so many nice and straight forward things to say in your ad. You seem very down to earth and I would love to chat sometime.

So we did. Chatted first by email, then by phone, then by Yahoo Messenger.

I'm glad we did it that way...email, phone, then visual. We wrote, chatted, then IM'd and finally got to "meet" via instant-messaging web-cam. There was no lewdness (although I admit to considerable teasing on my part), but just friendly chat.

And I really started to feel connected. Connected in a way I had all but forgotten how to feel. It was amazing; in the space of a week I was 50-going-on-16, with every insane impulse roaring in my ears.

I made a decision - a decision somewhere between Carpe Diem and what the hell, why not? - to go meet this person. Problem was, he was in Springfield, Missouri, and I'm in Toledo, Ohio. The first 1400 miles, round trip, were the big problem - but not for a crazed 16-year-old in a fifty-year-old's body, eh? Too much money to fly, too much wear-n-tear on the car (and too much gas) to drive. The answer just popped out of a slot: Leave the driving to us, they said.

Ninety-eight dollars later, I was on a weekend round-trip run via Greyhound Bus from Toledo, to Dayton thru Indianapolis and Effingham to St. Louis, and thence to Springfield. Seize the day, eh?

I left Thursday afternoon, and had a series of not-quite-excellent adventures (the kind you can only have on a series of Greyhound buses populated with oddballs, genteel schizophrenics and good ol' girls, as Gamble Rogers would say). Fifteen hours later - almost 9:30 AM CT, I arrived in Springfield's bus station.

And there he was.

First surprise: he was taller than I expected - he's about 2 inches taller than me. Second surprise: he was much better looking in person than he appeared on camera, which wasn't surprising - 640x480 resolution on those web-cams doesn't do much for a person's appearance.

What I absolutely was unprepared for was the look of delight on his face. Not lust, not let-me-rip-your-clothes off (which, to be honest, I might have accepted at face value, at that point). A look that said, "This is absolutely amazing...just what I have been waiting for..."

I will confess, I have seen that look a time or two. I've seen it on the face of straight men meeting their dream dates; I've seen it on the faces of couples getting married, or going on Marriage Encounter weekends. I've seen it a lot, directed at other people.

But it's been a long, long damn time since I've felt that look directed at me. An impossibly long time. (I admit, freely, that it might well have have been directed at me, but I just didn't feel it in the same way...)

We both had obligations. He went off to work; I set up my PC and spent the day working from my motel room (ah, the joys of a virtual employee!). The delays in bus schedules meant that it was almost 10 AM before I got online. And I tried to stay focused, but I took the time to post this prayer request on GCN:

10-19-07 06:55 PM

Tonight, amazingly, I am having my first date with a guy.

I mean, my first date ever with a man. Ever. Boy, this coming-out late in life stuff is a real rollercoaster! Who'dve ever thunk it?

Our meeting was completely by chance. He's a Christian. Cute as can be. And he sought me out - which is something I never believed would ever, ever happen.

And all of a sudden I'm 50 going on 16. (God help me, even my face has started breaking out again!)

Dinner and a movie. Transformers. Heaven help me, but this is going to be "transforming," alright!

It's really easy to think of this as the breakthrough after thirty-five years of accumulated closeted loneliness. But I'm trying to think of it more simply - it's just dinner and a movie. I've been doing this with women for years.

But there's just one difference, of course. I've never felt for THEM anything like I feel about him.... I feel like a blind man whose sight has just been restored, standing around saying, "WOW! So THAT'S what you meant by candy-apple red! That's just amazing! And look at that cobalt-blue...wow!...."

God, grant me the serenity to just be me, to relax and take it easy, and enjoy the night without expectations....

...and to not faint dead away if I get kissed good night...

Pray for me, boys and girls.

In response, I got a lot of affirming prayers, and this little piece of advice from a brother in Delhi, India:

Oh my! How our little ones grow up... I wonder whether it's time for us to worry about them...

OK, here are the rules:
At the theatre, if he uses the *yawn - stretch - hand behind your shoulder* move - let him
Don't finick about who pays for what (not on the first date)
Footsie under the dinner table is acceptable (but no fondling crotches with the toes)
No need to go "all the way" on the first night - leave some mystery for the next one
But for God's sake, if you HAVE to, use protection
If #4, then you'd better be back by midnight, young man!
If #5, I'd suggest making breakfast together the next morning

It was remarkably good advice, it seems.

As I told my prayer partners, apparently it was the answer to all of their prayers. It certainly was the answer to mine!

Transformers was sold out - so the alternative was the latest Harry Potter movie (dodges lightning bolts from Christian right about THAT, too). The movie was great - and he did insist on sitting close to the screen, so he could hold my hand during the show. (I can hear the collective "awww..." coming here.)

Dinner was fancy Chinese, swapping stories from our youth, our family, our coming-out adventures, with enough similarities to make things amazing. We were the last ones out of the restaurant...

And yes, he kissed me good night. And yes, the temptation to pass out was there, but I summoned enough strength to invite him into my hotel room to return the favor...

No protection was needed, and there's plenty of magic still to explore - but it still was unbelievable. I'd preloaded my iPod with every torch-song in my collection - everything from Mama Cass' classic "Dream A Little Dream of Me" to Ethel Merman's "I Got Lost in His Arms" from Annie Get Your Gun, which scored an "O" for over-the-top romantic. It was nice to see I still had it in me...

One particular romantic fantasy I had fulfilled that night was one I'd seen at the tail end of the British coming-out DVD Beautiful Thing. The two boys who'd fallen for each other end up slow dancing to Mama Cass's classic Dream A Little Dream of Me. And it felt every bit as good as it looked...

Before the rest of the weekend's gathering the next day, he DID take me out for breakfast, and later on, a drive out into the country around Springfield. And it just got more magical every moment. Saturday after events were over, we finally got to see Transformers, and to indulge in what my British "mates" might have called "a bit of a snog-fest."

Sunday, we were at worship together, followed by breakfast and Steel Magnolias. (Yes, I just admitted that I'm gay, 50 years old, and hadn't seen Steel Magnolias yet. Deal with it. I can check that box now, my gay card is secure again.)

The good/bad part is that I now know what I've been missing for 30 years - which will likely make me more of a coming-out advocate than ever before. The good part is that my date weekend proved that all the thoughts I had about having "missed the boat" relationally was, well, hogwash. "I Got Lost In His Arms," indeed...

The bus-ride home got off to a bad start - the 5:00 PM bus was sold out, so I didn't get rolling home until 12:30 AM. We went back to his house, where we saw Steel Magnolias and tried to find a way to say goodbye. (It was not easy, by any means.) He took me back to the Greyhound station (a nice one, as GH stations go), and we talked until 12:30 AM, when I finally got on the bus. A farewell kiss - or 12 - and he was on his way, and I was on mine.

This last week has been more conversations, more love songs, more of what a friend calls "moogly googly behavior" in spades. I'm utterly astounded; as several people would attest, I was absolutely certain of my complete physical undesirability. Now that this guy has spent much of a weekend with me, and video-chatting nightly, and has not run away screaming (in fact, has been more affectionate than ever), I have objective evidence that, as a friend says, "I Was Right, I Was Wrong All Along."

So he calls me the middle of last week: "How about me coming up for Thanksgiving?"

How will that work, I ask. You're a retail manager at a hobby store - you're not going to get the day after Thanksgiving off! Well, let me do some checking, he says. That night, he says, well, actually the schedule has changed, and I won't have Saturdays off after November 10th. So how about next weekend?

Well, how 'bout it, indeed...

So he is poised to take The Greyhound Adventure to Toledo, arriving this Friday afternoon. I'm once again astonished. And giddy. And scared. And delighted.

I know - the conventional wisdom on long-distance relationships is that they rarely end up happily. I know, this might be considered unseemly behavior for someone I've known one weekend. On the surface, it sounds insane. But I've had two friends in sobriety die in the last month - one just dropped over walking out of a meeting last Thursday. I don't know if I have the time to be prim and proper and "go courting." I've waited 30 years - 16 of them sober, 12 of them completely celibate - for this to happen. So I'm in "full-speed ahead" mode.

If this were just unbridled lust, I wouldn't have to do this. After all, there are plenty of people who are on That Website from right around here who would love to "just do the nasty." And I mean this way, that way, every which way but loose. But it just ain't that; it's just not about "tab-A and slot-B" (although I would be lying if that were not a component, and several caring friends have already had The Talk with me about "safety").

If it was just physical, it would have ended last weekend. The combination of my diabetes and high blood pressure made sure that my animal-passionate responses stayed mostly in my head and heart, sadly. And I wouldn't call it "true love" yet - it's not been long enough to even know about that. But there are hopes in that direction...and only time will tell on that one. Like a good souffle', it won't be rushed.

But I think what comes closest is what The Eagles called a peaceful, easy feelin.' Our communications are open, and honest, and I'm not holding anything back. Our internet contact is not (as one friend calls it) "typing one-handed," and our conversations are about both fun and serious and teasing and affectionate.

The quest for torch-songs and slow-dancing continues; he wants to attend an open AA meeting to see what that's all about (he will never, ever qualify, that I can see). We will have a turkey dinner (an "early Thanksgiving") with the family, which will be interesting in itself - they have not seen me in any kind of relationship (straight or gay) since my divorce 16 years ago, and have never seen me express any affection for a man in public. So this will be a revelation, in more ways than one.

Back when I first came out to my Christian friends on my other blog, I used the chorus of a song by worship leader Chris Tomlin, called The Way I Was Made. I believe that I'm doing now what I really wanted to do back in high-school, back in college - what I spent so much time, effort and wreckage hiding - living the way I was made. I can only trust that the One who brought me this far has not brought me to this point to drop me on my fat white butt.

So any prayers - for discernment, for restraint when needed, for abandon when appropriate, for peace among the family, and for travel mercies for The Guy - will be deeply appreciated.

To dream the impossible dream...

2007-10-15T18:42:00.000-05:00

Hi, I saw your personal ad here and I must say you're a very attractive man - just my type.
***
Well I just finished reading your ad and I have to be honest your pic is what really drew me to it. Then as I read it I was very impressed of what you said. Wow - you are a very nice looking man and had so many nice and straight forward things to say in your ad. You seem very down to earth and I would love to chat sometime.
***

I know a lot of men who have heard those words.

But I have to admit in all honesty - and my friends Tom and Michael can attest to this - I never in a bazillion years expected to be one of them.

Half on a dare, half out of a sense of desperate, desperate loneliness, I succumbed to a friend's suggestion and posted my picture and a statement about myself and my level of experience with men (zero over the last 2 decades, plus or minus 10%) to a men-for-men website, and hit "submit."

And then the responses started pouring in.

And now I'm 50, going on 16 all over again. Even my acne is acting up again - it's unbelievable.

Guys wanting to meet me. Dating - what the hell is that? The last time I had a date (with anyone of either gender) it was with a woman in 1994. The last time I went on a formal "date," George W. Bush's father was president, people.

And I find myself in the same place a lot of 16 year olds would be - should I be 'good,' or should I 'have fun'? Several guys - strangely good looking ones - have proposed doing things with me (and to me) that I wouldn't have imagined outside of a porn site. If I spend any time channeling the inner 16-year-old, I get my answer pretty quick...

But I'm 50 - I know better. Sex without some kind of friendship/relationship is just masturbating into someone else's body. But I'm 50 - and celibate - and that doesn't sound so terribly bad, right now. "If you're going to sin, sin boldly," I guess....

But my celibacy has probably also bought me my life - we were talking at our GLBT AA group how awful it was to be sober and GLBT in the 80's, when huge portions of the gay community were wiped out by AIDS. "Safe sex" isn't just about not having babies, as it was with women - it's about not having an awful, fatal disease. Compliance has a MUCH higher price, these days.

The answer is "take it slow, think it through - meet 'n' greet, first, then think some more."

And pray...God is in this mess, somewhere...I'm sure of that. There are just days when I'd really prefer He not be, sometimes.

Growing up - yet again - in public is never a fun thing. But, as Keith L. was asked by his sponsor 20 years ago, on a similar topic, "Of all the problems you have, which one is going to be more fun to work on?...."

What have you done today....?

2007-10-07T13:02:00.000-05:00

What have you done today to make you feel proud?

This week marks National Coming Out Day, October 11th. That makes it an appropriate time for me to coming out from under my gay blogging rock, and step back into the sunshine. There will be more, but this is a baby-step back out of the darkness...

This YouTube video is both a tribute to the Showtime series Queer As Folk and a showcase for Heather Small's great anthem, "Proud." The first time I heard the song was the remix version in the very last scene of the last season of QAF. Judging from the output on YouTube, it has become a gay pride anthem since it came out - though the original video was more focused on racial pride than not.

I have to admit that, while QAF embodied much that was near-pornographic, and was hardly the best model of gay life for much of the gay community, it was also one of the first "mainstream" depictions of gay culture that I'd ever seen. It was one of the first really clear cracks in the wall of my denial. After all, how many straight men are willing to admit they've even watched a scene from Queer As Folk, let alone owning an entire season's DVDs?

So as we start this week, I offer you Heather Small's "ballad" version of this great song, along with this 5 season retrospective from a ground-breaking cable TV series...

I look into the window of my mind
Reflections of the fears I know I've left behind
I step out of the ordinary
I can feel my soul ascending
I'm on my way
Can't stop me now
And you can do the same
Chorus
What have you done today to make you feel proud?
(It's never too late to try)
What have you done today to make you feel proud?
You can be so many people
If you make that break for freedom
What have you done today to make you feel proud?

Still so many answers I don't know
I realize that to question is how we grow
So I step out of the ordinary
I can feel my soul ascending
I'm on my way
Can't stop me now
And you can do the same
(Chorus)

The ELCA, gays, and Camp Out

2007-08-27T00:23:00.000-05:00

Well, it has been a busy and challenging month in the wilds of Waterville, Ohio, boys and girls. I've been dealing with a rather untreated case of life, and so my writing on this blog has suffered. (I haven't done so hot on the Ragamuffin side of the house, either - but I've done better over there...)

So here we are, catching up on a couple big-ticket items that happened in the almost 2 full months of gay life that's gone by since my last post.

Camp Out - This documentary is about the first-every gay Christian bible camp for teens! It's a great story - full of angst and hope and joy. It was broadcast on the Logo gay network a while ago, but for those of you who (like me) are Logo-channel impaired, here is the link to see the documentary online!

It's fascinating to see this now, because one of the primary movers behind this camp is Rev. Jay A. Wiesner, a gay ELCA pastor, and his congregation, Bethany Lutheran Church in Minneapolis, MN, is the home base for "Camp Out." (See more about Pastor Jay at Bethany's staff web-page, including a link to his participation in the LCNA's Extraordinary Candidacy Project (ECP).)

I haven't watched the entire special yet - but what I have seen gives me hope. And I haven't had much of that with the ELCA on this topic for a while.

The ELCA decision - as it's being called - is an attempt to do something while at the same time appearing to do nothing. There has been great celebration over this topic, and yet, I'm not sure it isn't premature...

Here's a quick precis' from the Lutherans Concerned/North America website:

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) decided to encourage its bishops to refrain from or demonstrate restraint in the discipline of rostered ministers in committed same-gender relationships. While the assembly deferred outright elimination of its policy that prohibits LGBT ministers from living in loving, lifelong family relations with their life partner, asked the church to prepare for such decision at its next assembly in 2009.

On the surface, I can see how this makes sense. How does one keep the old church law and yet do the right thing to start to overcome thousands of years of prejudice? The Church has said, "Yes, the behavior which you desire is still a sin. But now the bishops don't have to punish folks in 'unnatural relationships.' The rule still stands, because we believe it's based on Scripture - but we can offer the chance for mercy."

But then you have people in the church like Bishop Ron Warren, the antagonist in the case against Rev. Bradley Schmeling. Bishop Warren knew full well that the question of partnered gay clergy in the ELCA would come up at the Churchwide Assembly in August. Nonetheless, he knew that the church rule against Schmeling was iron-clad: "Practicing homosexual persons are precluded from the ordained ministry of this church."

Warren had every justification to delay, to give the voice of the church time to act - but he and the staff of his Synod chose to press forward, evidently to make an example of Pastor Schmeling. And he did it despite Schmeling's clear record of service, and the love and acceptance of his congregation.

So Bradley Schmeling got his verdict in February. The LCNA webpage about the verdict says it best: the 14-page verdict essentially says

...what is wrong is neither Bradley nor his committed, same-gender, lifelong relationship but the policy that brought him before them in the first place. They called it "at least bad policy," at worst a violation of the constitution and by-laws of this church. And they were just shy of unanimous in that conclusion. Nearly unanimous… Think about that…

In short, "we think the rule sucks, but de' rules are de' rules."

Yes, it was appealed. But in the end, Bishop Warren pushed, the appeal failed, and Bradley Schmeling was slated to be removed from the roster of ELCA clergy on July 2nd - five weeks before Churchwide. The press release from Schmeling's church said it best:

The Committee on Appeals said that Bradley's removal was effective immediately with this decision, since the Discipline Hearing Committee (DHC) had no authority to delay the implementation of its February decision further than the end of the appeals process. The DHC had delayed the removal from the clergy roster until August 15. And, the Committee on Appeals said that the DHC had exceeded its authority by suggesting that the policy might violate the ELCA constitution, and further by suggesting ways to change the policy.

The problem with this ruling is that people like Bishop Warren are still in the church. And while they don't have to punish "practicing homosexuals," they still can.

The bottom line: church leadership still have the gun in their hands, and it is still very much loaded. They have received a "memorial" recommendation saying that they do not have to pull the trigger. The question is, how many will be motivated by hate and ancient prejudice...and how many will be motivated by the love and acceptance that this Jesus person had for the woman at the well?

It will be interesting to see whether the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America will follow Jesus, or their long-standing tradition. My hope is with Jesus (in more ways than one); my fear is that the church often known as "the frozen chosen" will stick to their much-beloved tradition.

A public-service announcement

2007-07-02T21:52:00.000-05:00

The creators of the documentary DVD God and Gays: Bridging the Gap are putting on a series of phone broadcasts and interviews. If you are interested in this, click on my profile and the "email me" link, and I'll send you the information. (I don't want to post the call-in number info on here, as unscrupulous people have tried tying up all the lines for other gay call-ins... /sigh/)

(Frustratingly, I will be in Van Wert with my young charges Thursday night, so won't be able to hear this...)

Hear from the Reconciliation Movement father himself, Rev. Dr. Mel White, in what he has to say about the recent Ex Gay Survivor's Conference, the state of homosexuality and religion post-Jerry Falwell (his former boss), and so much more as our next guest on the God, Gays & You Live Interview Series, Thursday, July 7th, 5pm Pacific/8pm Eastern.

Rev. Mel White will be a key speaker at our God & Gays Gathering. His background is a complicated one. He was a ghostwriter for Jerry Falwell, worked with the religious right leaders all the while undergoing shock therapy, exorcisms and a personal hell trying to rid himself of being gay.

He finally came to acceptance to who he is created to be and co-founded Soulforce, an organization based on Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi's non violent, universal spiritual principles to bring about social change. He is a world renown speaker and author seeking to eradicate spiritual violence on the gay community. His first book, Stranger at the Gate is documented to have saved thousands of people's lives from suicide and his most recent book tells the horrific behind-the-scenes stories of the religious right, Religion Gone Bad.

Since this topic is rarely openly discussed, you never know who you could be helping by forwarding this email around to your networks, blogs, myspace, facebook, groups and lists. Invite 10 people you know to be on the call right now!

There are only 497 spots available on this call. Call a few minutes early to be sure you get in.

*********************
Thursday, July 7th, 5pm Pacific/8pm Eastern

Phone Number: (email me for the call in and password #)

Email us your question in advance
for Mel White: info@godandgaysthemovie.com
and during the call,
IM godandgaysthemovie@yahoo.com

It's free to attend the call, normal long-distance charges apply.
*********************

Here's a switch....

2007-07-01T02:30:00.000-05:00

...cross-posting from the formerly-all-str8 blog, for a change.

Given that a lot more straight people read that blog than this one, I thought it appropriate for Pride to post over there about what I'd like straight Christians to know about being a gay Christian. I was inspired by my GCN friend Peterson, and the dozens of responses he asked to the question a couple months ago: As GLBT Christians, what would you want straight Christians to know about your experience and your identity?

I don't think it's possible to be all inclusive on this answer - but being a man who believes 3,000 words are better than 300, I tried...

Parting shots for Pride

2007-06-29T23:11:00.001-05:00

Somehow, I have managed to miss every single Pride celebration within 300 miles of Toledo. This is not the way I planned for June to end...

Still, there is much to celebrate. This weekend marks the first Ex-Gay Survivor's Conference in California at UC-Irvine. Sponsored by Beyond Ex-Gay and Soulforce, it should be a fascinating first weekend. Just to see Mel White, Darlene Bogle, fellow GCN members (and BxG founders) Peterson Toscano and Christine Baake, not to mention a concert by Jason & DeMarco - that would've been worth the trip by itself. Though they are meeting in the shadow of the much larger Exodus conference, I think in years to come the numbers will flip-flop.

As part of the XGSC, and to speak out against the Exodus conference, three former Exodus ministry leaders apologized for their role in promoting the ex-gay message. Read about it here.

I've been kinda knocked flat by work, by my family's health and financial struggles, and just life - so my "fabulous" flame is not burning as bright as it ought, this Pride month. But I give thanks for every person who has brought me along to this point!

Maybe there's something to the gay bomb, after all...

2007-06-19T02:21:00.000-05:00

In fact, maybe it's already been tested!

This in from Mideast.Jpost.com, reporting about the looting of PLO leader Arafat's home:

...The homes of several other Fatah leaders have also been looted over the past few days, Palestinian reporters in Gaza City said over the weekend. Among them are the homes of Muhammad Dahlan and Intisar al-Wazir (Um Jihad).

"...the (Hamas) attackers also raided the second floor of the house and stole the personal belongings of his widow, Suha, and daughter, Zahwa. "They stole all the widow's clothes and shoes," he added."
---
"Wazir complained that looters stole her jewelry, furniture, clothes and family albums and the personal belongings of her husband, Khalil al-Wazir (Abu Jihad), a top PLO leader who was assassinated by Israel in 1988 in Tunis."

Manly Hamas operatives? Stealing women's clothes?...Yeah, maybe the silly bomb worked after all...

Special wishes for Father's Day

2007-06-16T10:46:00.001-05:00

I posted this on GCN earlier today, but I wanted to share this more publicly as well.

Father's Day hasn't been a big deal for me, since my dad died nearly 30 years ago. But this year, there's a couple groups of fathers I'd like to give thanks for, this weekend...

First, the gay fathers who continue to love and care for their kids when it would be so much easier to just abandon them and pursue "the lifestyle." Your faithfulness is an example worthy of emulation.
The fathers of gay kids who work hard to love and accept their kids exactly how they are. You folks - and there are a bunch of you on GCN - are an example of Christ's love in the world. God bless you for your loving hearts.
The fathers of straight kids, who teach their children that sexual orientation, race, creed and disability are no reasons to hate another human being. You are an example to the world.
The gay men who end up being surrogate dads to those of us who are coming out - especially those of us who are coming out late in life. Your mentoring and sharing "the ropes to skip and the ropes to know" is an incredible blessing!
The pastors, ministers, and "friends of the family" who welcome and accept GLBT people of faith into their congregations. I'd like to especially give thanks for Dr. Tex Sample and Bishop Fritz Mutti, who continue to be an incredible example of love and acceptance, both to the United Methodist Church and the greater Church in general. Long before I was ready to come out, they were an example of the open arms of Christ to me.

And I'd like to say a special prayer for every gay father who is struggling with relationship with his family this Father's Day. May you find hope, strength and endurance to continue to walk the road, despite all the obstacles ahead of you. God bless you all on your journey.

Wishing every day a happy - or at least a peaceful - Father's Day.

A little different look

2007-06-15T23:53:00.000-05:00

Yes, I've been playing with my template. The colors were getting a bit dull for a blog with "rainbow" in the title...

I converted to the new "layout" in Blogger, and on both blogs, if I've inserted a quoted section, it always changes my spacing after I end the "block quote" section. Hmmm... any ideas, anyone?

My epistle to Christian

2007-06-08T09:25:00.000-05:00

Not to Christians, plural. Just one in particular.

Back a year ago, I was following a series of blog links that took me to Christian Cryder's See Life Differently. He's a minister, a church planter, a husband, and a writer. On one of his posts, he'd posted a question about what a church should do with a talented organist and musician who happened to be both gay and non-Christian who was part of the worship-leader team. I put in my comments, which included more than a bit about being gay in the church. He responded with this comment:

What I'd like to learn more about is your struggle with homosexuality. So please bear with me if these are are stupid questions - I really want to understand how you see the world, and you have a lot to offer me here.

I need to share that Christian Cryder appears to be one of the more sensitive, willing-to-listen Christian men I've met in the blogosphere. So I took his questions at face value, and I'm glad to talk about them. I'm sure that I've addressed pieces of his questions scattered all over this blog, but I'm going to address them here (recognizing that this little epistle may well end up being closer to Romans in length than 1st Timothy...).

So here are his questions, in bold:

a) what's your view on the rightness or wrongness of homosexuality?

I don't see homosexuality as wrong. I see it as different, like left-handedness. I certainly don't think it is incompatible with Christian teaching (to quote my United Methodist brothers), because I spent ten years seeking a ministry career while hiding as a deeply closeted gay man. I don't think if you went back and read any of my devotions, any of my sermons, any of my theological musings over here at Ragamuffin Ramblings, that you'd look and say, "Yeah, he's gay."

(Well...ok, maybe this one....)

But 99 times out of a hundred, the faith is the same; just the outward orientation has changed.

Part of the question of "is it wrong,"I think, is conditioned by the idea that this was a choice I made. If I "chose wrong," I could make another choice, eh? But for me, and many others, it's just not a choice. As actor Jason Stuart said in the DVD God and Gays: Bridging the Gap, "How could I possibly convince someone to be gay? What would I say? 'Ach - we have no rights, everyone hates us - come along and join us! Live in my personal hell - with Madonna!' "

Homosexuality is not "how I feel." This is "who I am." In fact, in my very first coming out post, I asked myself, "How can I both be 'abomination' and 'fearfully and wonderfully made'?" The simple answer for me is, I can't.

I'm also going to introduce some unfamiliar shortcut terms for groups that you're already familiar with: Side A, Side B, Side X. Each group has their own view on "right" and "wrong:"

"Side A" gay Christians believe that God can and does affirm homosexual beings (those with unchangeable same-sex orientation), and can and does affirm committed same-sex relationships.

"Side B" gay Christians believe that God affirms homosexual beings, but does not affirm homosexual activity. Their call is to being openly gay, and openly celibate for life.

"Side X" - an inclusive term for gay and straight Christians - believe that homosexuality is "intrinsically disordered," "incompatible with Christian teaching," and believe that the only alternative for GLBT persons is transformation/conversion to a heterosexual orientation and lifestyle.

It's just easier to talk about Side A, B and X rather than explaining forever what we think we mean...

b) how do you understand Scripture to speak about homosexuality? Does it say that it's wrong (and if so is it correct), or are we misunderstanding Scripture? or do you even care?

I'd almost take offense at that last part of that question, br'er Cryder - except that I know it was asked honestly, with a desire to understand, so I'll let it slide.

But you have to understand something. I'm a Christian.

I mean, really. Honestly. I mean, saved. Washed in the blood. Once lost, now found. A kneeling, praying, Jesus-loving Christian. A Romans 5:8 Christian. A Romans 8:38-39, John 3:16-17 Christian. And I find incredible power in Scripture as the guide of my life. Do I always follow it? Hell, no. I have managed to sin badly, and then sin boldly. But I know what's right.

So yes, I do care. I cared enough to come this close to ending my life, more than a couple of times, over it.

In this post, I wrote more about my feelings on the text - along with a great resource on the topic (Many Members, One Body by Craig Nessan). Forgive me quoting myself here, to pull out the heart of the topic:

Nessan suggests that the Old Testament writers had no knowledge of sexual orientation, versus sexual preference - any more than they understood astrophysics when they wrote that the earth was the center of the universe. So the concept of a created, inborn desire for the same sex was impossible for Biblical writers to understand. And the concept of committed same-sex relationships was an impossibility in a world where property and the social order depended on siring male heirs.

You see, I will agree with Levitical writers and with Paul - from a "survival of the people of God" standpoint, hetero men jumping the tracks and having sex with men, back then, was a bad idea - for the same reason that risking eating improperly cooked pork was a bad idea. The "people of God" weren't gonna last long in the desert that way.

But what many hetero Christians cannot understand (in fact, cannot even conceive) is the fact that for a number of men and women, they have not "exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones" (Romans 1:26) because they never had those "natural" desires to begin with. Those men and women never "abandoned natural relations" with the opposite sex - for them, those desires were simply absent, from the beginning.

They not only did not choose homosexuality, they actively fought it. One man I know, Peterson Toscano, spent $30,000 and ten years trying to be straight - shock therapy, two exorcisms, plenty of life in the ex-gay movement. And in the end, he (and almost everyone I have met) ended up either (a) asexual - dead to any kind of sexual feelings (the reaction most people from folks who have left ex-gay ministries) or (b) surrendering to the fact that this is how we were made - gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered.

Trying to enforce those rules on homosexuals today makes no more sense than having church officials persecuting NASA employees for saying the earth revolves around the sun. We simply know better, now. And the conditions that threatened the survival of the nomadic tribes of Israel simply no longer apply.

The trouble, Nessan says, is that both sides of the debate are appealing to different parts of the Bible, and both hold the Bible in esteem (though certainly to different standards). What you end up with is two mutually-exclusive hermaneutics - two seemingly irreconcilable ways of understanding the Bible, and "those passages" in particular. And so both sides stand on either side of the Biblical chasm, shouting at the other side, with a large portion of each side caring less about what's being said on the other side.

We talk about "the six (or seven) texts," which the gay Christian community often refer to as the "clobber passages" (because so many have been clobbered with them from time to time). I find that those are indeed accurate in their cultural context - but again, completely out of place in light of committed same-sex attraction.

I'd also like to point you to this post, which discusses homosexuality in the context of Acts 10. It is a alternate hermeneutic that most folks are not willing to even consider. But I am grateful to Jeffrey Siker, because as a result of reading his essay, I have come to see myself (with apologies to Brian McLaren) as a new kind of Gentile.

It's funny - and a little snarky - but I guess if folks are going to get literal about Biblical passages, then they need to address the questions in this post, too. Or the passages about slaves obeying their masters, and how many white men used that to argue that slavery was Biblical, and therefore as right in the 1850's as it was in Biblical times. Or this loving passage about how to treat one's rebellious son.

As an aside - One of the things that has always annoyed me about Christian wedding ceremonies is how often they use the story of Ruth and Naomi in them...completely ignoring the fact that the language of Ruth mirrors the language of Genesis 2 about cleaving to one another. The love between two women (and it is love, not "deep friendship," if you're willing to read it as literally as we read other passages) is held up as an example for Christian "traditional" marriage. But no one ever questions that. I've just never understood how the love between two women can be an loving, faithful example for straight marriage, but somehow not applicable for a loving, faithful gay marriage...

There are other passages that many GLBT folks cling to, like the acceptance of the eunuch (a group despised in most scripture) in Isaiah 56. Or the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8. Or the Gentiles in Acts 10. All despised. All ritually unclean. Sinful even to talk to, according to the "established church" at the time.

But welcomed by Christians.

I posed my favorite question about the Bible to the straight church over here, three years ago this month. Funny how no one's been willing to address that one in all the ink spilled on how Christians should act...

I guess I'd just like the Christian church to be as literal and as faithful to the rest of the Bible as they would like to be to those "clobber passages."

c) do you make a distinction between homosexual practice and homosexual desire?
Absolutely. In fact, I get particularly annoyed with those who don't. I have not "lain with a man" since 1983 - and have been completely celibate (no contact, male or female) since 1994. So I get more than a little peeved when people understand that I am gay, and start telling me to "repent of my sin," or to "forsake the sins of the flesh," when they see how I am as the sin, and not what I do (or am not doing). My initial reaction always is, "WTF do you know about my sins? Maybe I should go out and rent myself a boyfriend for a weekend (nah, a month...), just so I have something to repent of!"

d) do you think there's a distinction between your homosexual lusts for men, and my heterosexual lusts for women?

Let's compare, shall we?

Think of your best-looking male friend. One that the ladies all find attractive. A handsome, attractive man. Then ask yourself - do you have any physical desire for him? Any sexual attraction to him?

(I'm willing to bet not.)

That's exactly how I feel about desire for women. I recognize their beauty, even as you might recognize that a male friend or co-worker is good-looking. But there is absolutely no desire, no attraction. I won't go into details, but while I can and do notice a rather voluptuous lady, and admire her physical perfection, there is no sexual desire whatsoever.

There is a local cafe' in Toledo - the Star Diner. Their specialty is great breakfast - but their attraction is the stunningly attractive, and rather briefly-clad, group of young ladies they hire as their waitresses. (Folks around Toledo have nicknamed the place "Legs & Eggs.") I notice the beauties - and the effects they have on my straight friends. But when an attractive man walks in, he always catches my eye. Every time.

I trust that if you and I were to watch Baywatch, for instance, I would find the male stars as physically attractive as you might find the female ones. I find the mostly-naked male leads as desirous and stimulating as you might find the females. And while I don't think I am any more likely to bed any of the male stars than you are to have a night of rapture with Pamela Anderson, I'm sure we would have reactions that would be similar in scope - if opposite in polarity. I believe it's exactly the same, in short.

I recently recalled something I'd forgotten for years - a conversation my former wife had with her out gay cousin before a family wedding. They were comparing attractive men - some well-known, some just mutual acquaintances. I remember sitting there, having my own opinions on the subject, but unable to respond or participate because a straight man wasn't supposed to have those thoughts. And I really, really wanted to not think those thoughts. I was married, for God's sake - and despite everything else, I wanted to stay that way. So I lied, and died a little more, that day.

There's another thing - a corollary that most straight people don't understand. Think of a teenaged girl you know - a reasonably pretty one. Do you, as a reasonably young man, find any sexual desire for her? Does she leap to mind as a potential sexual partner? (Again, I'd bet not.) While there are always a few people who might do so, the vast majority of straight men would not seek out teenagers as sexual partners. They might fantasize about them - they might even envy the young bucks who actually do end up bedding "the pretty young thangs." But very few straight men would seek out under-aged female partners.

For a similarly vast majority of gay men, the exact same situation exists in reverse. Which is why having gay Christians men in church is no more dangerous to boys than having straight men in church is dangerous to young girls. Even in the Catholic church, there are thousands of faithfully celibate gay priests, without which the church would simply collapse. The number of offending priests, compared with the size of the Catholic church, is no worse off than the rest of culture - gay or straight.

e) when you mentioned that you never abandoned natural desires, because you never had them, how do you see Romans 1? - was that culturally conditioned? or was Paul simply wrong? (I'm really seeking to understand your hermeneutic for approaching Scripture here).
I already addressed that up above. (Beat it to death, more like...)

f) like you, I've heard many homosexuals say that they simply can't change because that's the way they are. At the same time, there is a small but real minority of ex-homosexuals out there that would beg to differ. What do you think of their perspective? Have you actually talked with any people like them?

I have talked with several people from the ex-gay movement who believe they have changed. And I'm grateful for them, and their success. Because, while I am growing more comfortable with my role as an "out" gay man, the simple fact is, I could have been re-married at least twice, and lived a much more comfortable life, if I could have done that. But as much as I tried desperately to manufacture desire for these women - and mutual friends encouraged me to marry them - I couldn't do it. I couldn't do that again. That would be more sinful by far than the very few same-sex acts I've engaged in.

My perspective on ex-gay recovery almost exactly parallels my perspective on faith healing. I know of a couple of people who have experienced spontaneous, miraculous healing from debilitating illness. I also know a whole bunch of people - including my faith mentor - who were devoted, prayer-warrior, servant-hearted, 100-percent sold-out-for-Jesus Christians, who nonetheless found absolutely no healing from ultimately fatal health conditions. You could try to tell me it was because of their weak faith, or their failure to pray just so or any one of a hundred other excuses.

And then I'd have to hurt you...bad.

I'd have to hurt you, of course, because it just wasn't so. Their faith was mountainous; their prayers were mighty; their lives were as righteous as anyone this side of Heaven can be. Prayer services, faith healing services, anointings with oil, you name it - accompanied by the fervent prayers of thousands of people across the country. Yet they still sickened, and they still died.

At some point, each of these mighty faith warriors had to admit that the answers to their prayers for healing were something along the lines of "no" or "not in the way you want it, no." My mentor Pastor Tom lost his mighty preaching voice, then his ministry, then his mobility and ultimately his life to Parkinson's disease - even as in Lindsborg, Kansas, another ELCA minister with Parkinson's experienced an amazing remission in his disease.

At some point, Pastor Tom recognized that he was not going to be one of the ones who were spontaneously healed. So he accepted what and how he was, and made the very best of the rest of his life. And he was a voice for faith, and for Parkinson's sufferers, for the rest of his life.

That's what I'm doing. I'm glad for the few special ones who are transformed. But for the vast number of the rest of us, acceptance seems to be the answer - even if we don't like the damn answer, for a while. I believe that my "healing" is the gift of coming to accept that I am "the way I was made," and to perhaps build bridges across the divide between gay and straight Christians.

g) Which do you want more - to no longer struggle with homosexual desires? Or to have the church accept your homosexual desires as normal and ok? Or something else?

Christian, I am done "struggling with homosexual desire." As I've written elsewhere, as best I can recollect, I started recognizing boys as desirable when I was 14 or 15 - and started shutting down emotionally and sexually then. I have loved several women - but it was always agape/filios, never eros. I tried desperately to love the woman I married, and instead ended up lying to her - first about sex, then about everything else. My life became one long lie that ended up in destruction of the marriage, our finances, everything.

My one and only male lover shot himself, rather than deal with the wreckage of his addictions, his finances, and his fears about sexuality. Two nights ago, I sat in my car after an AA meeting and listened as a 28-year old man haltingly admitted that he, too, might be gay - and he was more than ready to go steal a gun and blow his brains out rather than face his parents. He's a strong, sensitive, caring, God-seeking young man - ready to end his life because of who he's attracted to.

I am a faithful Christian gay man, looking for a David-and-Jonathan, Naomi-and-Ruth, committed, where-you-go-I'll-go loving relationship with another man. As such, my prayer is that people of faith would at least ask the questions:

Is it possible? Can someone be gay, Christian, and in a committed relationship?
Is it possible that, like slavery, like women in ministry, like so many things, we need to examine how the church sees homosexuality?
Does the Church have the courage to set aside the monster/abomination syndrome, and see GLBT as human - loving, caring, broken human beings? Perhaps even people of faith?

Christian, at the end of your questions, you wrote this:

I am really looking forward to your answers here - if any of this rubs you the wrong way, please let me know so that I try to find a less offensive way of asking.

I am grateful, br'er Cryder, both for your asking the questions, and for doing so in a calm, open and reasonable way. I'm not sure that I've responded entirely in kind - obviously, the topic generates much emotion for me. I will make the same pledge - if I have offended, please let me know as well.

And I'm not sure I've done the best job of explaining everything. There have been hundreds of thousands of pages written affirming gay Christians. No one person can do it all, I think - certainly not in one blog post. But perhaps this epistle will open the discussion up a bit - and give us some common ground on which to share.

I think this conversation about God, gays, and faith is one that will last a lifetime. And I have to admit that the more I am "out" about this, the more I am at risk of suffering casualties for these words. But I am reminded of the passage which was the of my former seminary class: Be strong and courageous, and do the work. Don’t be afraid or discouraged, for the Lord God, my God, is with you. He will not fail you or forsake you. (1st Chronicles 28:20, NLT)

Something blessed, something cute...

2007-06-05T18:47:00.000-05:00

It has been some interesting times. I am backing up on my blogging topics, so I need to do some writing.

But the most pressing thing on my mind right now is a blessing I received from a commenter on this post about the God and Gays DVD. The commenter wrote:

I'd be very interested in seeing that DVD too. I'm one of those homophobe Christians who'd really like to relieve myself of my ignorance in this matter for a number of reasons.

I was curious - was this person being serious? So (since she provided her real email address) I wrote back and questioned her - did she really want to hear more? If so, I gave her a couple of links to posts on here, and a link to Justin Lee's talk about GLBT ministry that he gave at the Evangelicals Concerned conference a couple years ago. I apologized for a lengthy answer, said a quick prayer, and sent it off.

I got back this response:

Thank you very much for your response. I appreciate the thought that went into it!

I was serious with that comment :o/ I am a bit of a homophobe. I've been taught that homosexuality is a sin. And we have to "Hate the sin but love the sinner". But I want to know if it really is that cut & dry. I really do want to understand all the facts.

So you've given me more than enough reading material to keep me going for quite some time! Thank you very much! :o)

I've been praying for that kind of response to this blog ever since I started it - that someone would get here, by whatever hook or crook, and say, "OK, I'll bite - tell me more." To be honest, it brought tears of joy to my eyes. I guess I am still more than a little touched when folks are reached by what I write.

So that's blessing one.

Blessing two was actually seeing the DVD God and Gays. It's a worthwhile effort, though not flawless, by any means. The DVD's opening theme, "What's It Like to Be Gay and Christian?" was over-the-top sweet (not in a good way). But once you get past that, it is full of people sharing their experience of being gay and Christian, and it was worth the money, overall. I'll do more of a review on it later on.

Through the video, I got introduced to Jacob Reitan, the young adult coordinator for Soulforce and a sophomore at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL. The link takes you to an open letter from Jacob and his bio, as well as an overview of the planned "direct action" at the Southern Baptist Conference meeting in St. Louis. Wish I could be there. I'll be keeping my eye on young br'er Reitan, and not just because he's dazzlingly cute, either. /smirk/

OK, now for the something cute. Go here and listen to this.

I don't expect to hear that aired on PBS anytime soon, but it's still funny...

For now, th-th-th-that's all, folks!

Building bridges via video?

2007-05-22T06:50:00.000-05:00

How could I possibly convince someone to be gay? What would I say? "Hey - we have no rights, everyone hates us - come along and join us! Live in my personal hell - with Madonna!"

The quote is from gay actor/comic Jason Stuart, in the trailer for God and Gays: Bridging the Gap. (I'd post the YouTube thing here, but I'm not as smart as that yet - so you have to just follow the link. Sorry...)

I'm not quite sure how I found it (one of those link-to-a-link things), but it looks to be a fascinating thing. The DVD is available but for $24.95, so I ordered a copy. (I've wasted more on a month of online porn, so it seemed like a good risk.) The onlines reviews seem good - my own review to come.

I do love Jason's last line from the trailer, though....

Come on! It's the year 2004, straight people! If you let us marry each other, we'll stop marrying you!

This is stupid - especially given my own history - but I'd never ever thought about gay marriage that way! Talk about preserving the sanctity of traditional marriage!

That behavior is not acceptable

2007-05-15T02:03:00.000-05:00

Warning: this post contains considerable vulgarity. If you find this distateful, you might want to go over here, instead...

One of my AA sponsees has both a considerable anger problem and a habit of throwing vulgarities and epithets around. He comes from redneck stock, and it shouldn't surprise me. But it still does.

I am out to this guy. He knows my story - both as a drunk and as a long-term closeted gay man. But despite that, he still hasn't figured out that "faggot" is not an acceptable term, no matter who he's talking about. So when he's spouting off about one of the many people he still resents the hell out of, the phrase Goddamned fucking faggot still flies out of his mouth.

And when I sit bolt-upright and say, "Oh, really?" he still tries (at least at first) to give me this "Come on, you know I don't mean you" line. "Nah, you're gay, man - he's the Goddamned fucking faggot."

"Oh, so this is evidently Oz, and I'm the Good Fag of the North, and this guy's the Wicked Fag of the West? Is that how it works?" I shot back, the first time he tried pulling this crap. "Sorry, that crap just doesn't fly here, bucko."

It's exactly the same argument I used to hear about "black" and "nigger." It didn't fly with me 30 years ago, and it ain't flyin' today, neither.

I watched with amusement pompous press like The Advocate declaring that the "F-word" dead - that no one would dare touch it. I don't know what little gay campus they're living in, but here in northwest Ohio, "the other F-word" is alive and well, thank you boys.

"Sorry to tell you, bucko," I told my sponsee the other night, "but when the rest of the world says faggot, they're talking about me. And regardless of what spin you try to put on it, when you say faggot, you're affirming that their use of the word is correct. You say faggot when you think of a despicable human being; so do they. You think you can put your good gay friends in some bubble, but you can't. Going around calling people faggot is unacceptable. Period."

(end rant)

Now there is a beautiful image...

2007-05-15T01:47:00.000-05:00

This is the logo of Affirm United (or S'affirmer Ensemble for our French-speaking family), an organization within the United Church of Canada which works for the inclusion of GLBT people into the life and ministry of the church.

I found it by following a link from my friend Poor Mad Peter, and you need to click here to see their rainbow cross used in their congregation's ceremony of affirmation.

I love the imagery of the rainbow and the cross - the rainbow given as a sign of hope in Genesis, the cross as a sign of hope in the Gospels. Here in the Republic of Jesusland, we'll take hope wherever we can find it.

Musings about "gay identity"

2007-04-28T18:36:00.000-05:00

It's fascinating to chase down "bunny-trails" in the blogosphere. One link leads to another, and another, and all of a sudden you're thirty blogs away from where you first started - and my reaction usually is, "Now how the hell did I end up here?"

One recent trail started at Gay Christian Network, on Christine Bakke's appearance both in Glamour magazine and Good Morning America talking about her struggles with the ex-gay world, and the start of the Beyond Ex-Gay website. Her partner in Beyond Ex-Gay is Peterson Toscano, who is known for his one-man show Doin' Time in the HomoNoMo' Halfway House and his blog, A Musing.

That led me to Jay at Adventures of a Christian Collegian, and from there to Disputed Mutability, a Christian woman who identifies herself as ex-gay. And that, for now, is where the bunny-trail ends, because I got hooked into the discussion of DM's concept of "gay identity." I started half a dozen comments between the two blogs, and then realized I had enough for at least one, if not two, posts back here. So DM and Jay, here's at least a first volley.

Before I begin (for those who are reasonably new to this blog) I have to admit first that I am no spokesperson for whatever the heck passes for "gay culture" or "the gay lifestyle." (In fact, I really dislike both of those phrases, because I really feel they are simplistic and sweeping generalizations about something more multifaceted than a diamond.)

But I really struggle when I hear phrases like "gay-identity." It seems like a dodge or a feint around the topic, and here's why.

I've come to believe that homosexuality is much different than homosexual activity, and much different still than homosexual activism. One, in my experience, is an orientation toward potential mates or sexual partners of the same sex. One describes basic "tab-A/slot-B" sexual acts; and one falls into the "marching in parades" category. (And yes, these are probably also simplistic generalizations, which are more or less proof of Mark Twain's ideas about generalizations in general.)

Here's where I'm coming from - a blunt confession: I haven't had intimate relations with a man since Ronald Reagan's first term. (That's 1983, for my younger friends.) ( In fact, I have't had any intimate contact with anyone since Bush The Father was president.)

But not having had sex with a man doesn't mean that I haven't wanted to - nor does it mean that I didn't spend years fighting the acceptance of that as fact.

In my simplistic mind, that means that I am a homosexual (adj; sexually attracted to members of your own sex - WordNet).

I am not (nor ever have been) a Romans 1:27 kind of guy, because I have never forsaken God for idols, nor have I ever "abandoned natural relations with women." I've never had what people call "natural desires," no matter how hard I tried to manufacture them. I tried telling folks I wasn't gay. I did a lot of things (which hurt a number of people) to try to change how I was. I wanted to change.

But wanting something and getting it just aren't the same thing. I wasn't acting like a duck; I wasn't swimming like a duck, or quacking like a duck. But I was thinking like a duck...

...and most importantly of all, I was physically attracted to other ducks. And in searching and fearless moral inventory, I find that even at times when I should have been physically stimulated by female sexuality (whether it was physical intimacy with a woman, straight porn, even Baywatch...), it just wasn't there.

Doesn't get much simpler than that, does it?

I don't (can't) argue with Disputed's discussion of her experience with "gay identity" over here. But I think it's important to testify that my experience has been completely different.

Being gay wasn't something that was important; in fact, for me it was especially important that I not be gay. I didn't find "gay" to be cool, or tribal. In fact, the only reason I looked in the mirror and saw myself as "fag" or "queer" or "homo" was because that's what I heard growing up, time and time again. Come on, Steve, don't be a pansy - time after time. It was exactly NOT what I wanted to be.

And I surely did not feel "a part of" as a result of being gay - largely because I didn't fit any of the other gay stereotypes. (Well, except the ones about show-tunes and Barbra Streisand...can't miss 'em all, I guess.) But I definitely felt like the anti-QueerEye guy - unstylish, unsophisticated, complete un-self-assured. Blah, blah, blah. (Yeah, we better just revoke his gay card....)

The part of DM's discussion that I found most foreign to my own experience was this:

I used to think that my gayness lay at the very heart of who I was. That it was somehow tied to my essence, in a way that was unlike almost any other desire or trait. More essential perhaps than even my gender/sex. (Gender was a collective social fantasy, but sexual orientation, now that was real. That was BIOLOGY.) Certainly on an entirely different plane than any other kind of sexual preference or taste. I can hear the voices in my head even now: "How dare you call it a taste? How dare you suggest that it is a preference? It's at the core of your being! Your bones are gay! Your soul is gay!"

Again, I am not denying DM's experience. But or me, gender had nothing to do with "a collective social fantasy," but instead was all about parts. My parts as a male were far different than their parts as female. I have always been a male, and have had no "transgender" desires whatever. My being gay was not at the core of my being - in fact, it was something that I shunted aside and denied for years.

I remember distinctly a discussion with my "coming out mentor" Tom S., back more than two years ago. I was telling him that it didn't matter whether I was gay or not - because gay or straight, I believed myself physically undesirable and (as such) more asexual than homo- or hetero-. As I told him that , it didn't matter if I was straight or gay - I was still going home alone. Game over.

At the time, Tom tried a number of different metaphors (none of which clicked at the time) to show me that whether I liked it or not, my sexuality was part of every facet of my life - my work, my faith, my recovery, as well as my personal relationships (romantic or otherwise). It was a bigger part of some parts of my life than others; it was almost non-existent in some spheres. But while it was not at the center of any part of my life (other than my lack of sexual activity), it definitely was a part (however small) of every part of my life.

Today, I get it. Sexual orientation is a part of who I am; it is absolutely not all of who I am, or even the center of who I am.

The first image that stuck on this topic was that my sexual orientation was like the chili powder in chili. While being gay is a very small part (by weight or volume) of what I am, it flavors every part of what I am. And when I've tried to neutralize that part, it made my life flat, bland, and utterly devoid of any spice whatsoever. Furthermore (exactly like the chili powder), it's not something I can scoop out (like you could with beans or onions or chopped peppers). Like Prego, it's just in there; it's a part of the mixture - period.

Another image I've used is that my same-sex attraction is like the blue in a tartan-plaid fabric. You could (with a great deal of effort) remove the blue from tartan-plaid fabric - but in doing so, it would cease to be tartan. Possibly, it could still be fabric - but most likely it would probably just fall apart. Being gay is not a dominant part of me - but it's a thread that's shot through the fabric of my existence.

This image of threads in a fabric is particularly interesting because I recently watched the movie Twilight of the Golds. The basic premise of the movie is that a woman named Suzanne who has a gay brother gets pregnant, and during some advanced genetic testing on the fetus, the woman finds out that her fetus will likely be gay. (While this level of genetic testing isn't fact yet, it's not very far from fact. In fact, it's much more science than fiction at this point...)

No one - not her husband, not her mother - no one will say "the baby might be gay;" the closest they can come is "It will probably be like David" (the gay brother) or "it will likely have that trait." The rest of the movie is about what the couple's decision will be: will they keep the baby? Will they abort? If Suzanne keeps the baby, will her husband stay? It brings up (but doesn't club you over the head with) topics of genetic testing, eugenics, and some troubling but prevalent images of gay as a defect/disability versus the understanding of gay as just another facet of personality.

In one powerful scene, David (the gay brother, played marvelously by Brendan Fraser) confronts his sister Suzanne about the choice before her. He shows up at the upscale clothing shop where she works:

Suzanne: "What are you doing here?"

David: "That seems to be the question, isn't it? What if Michaelangeo's mother thought the same way that you do? What if Tennesee Williams' mother thought the way you do? Or Herman Melville? Cole Porter, Martina Navratilova? What if Stephen Hawking's mother didn't want a handicapped child? What if Orson Wells' didn't want a fat one? The point is, you have got to stop looking at this as some kind of curse. It isn't. What it is, is a challenge..."

S: "...Look, David, I know how hard your life has been. I've heard you tell me how lonely and scared you have been. I've heard you talk about people with AIDS, people getting bashed - now I'm not going to put someone else through that -"

D: "Don't make me regret sharing my life with you! Everybody else has problems!"

S: "Not like that, they don't! Now why isn't it more humane for me to wait until I bring a child with no disadvantages into the world?"

D: "Because we'd lose too much!! Everything that you love about me is tied to that one element that makes you queasy. Every human being is a tapestry - and if you pull one thread, or one undesirable color, then the whole fucking thing falls apart, and you wind up staring at the walls."

While I understand the reason for people like Disputed to discuss their ex-gay experience, and I wish her (and so many others like her) well, I can't go there. I am done waiting; I am done questioning what would happen if my faith was somehow good enough to be cured. These are the cards I have been dealt.

One of the songs I always hated in the so-called praise-and-worship music genre was a song called Change My Heart, O God:

Change my heart, O God
Make it ever true
Change my heart, O God
Let me be like You.

You are the potter
I am the clay
Mold me and make me
This is what I pray...

For years, what I thought that song meant for me was, "Fix me, change me, take this ugly pottery and smash it down so it can be remade the way it should be, the way everyone says it should be."

Now, I hear it differently: Change my heart, God. You've made me this way; help me see myself as your creation, as the child of your heart.

Way too many people have told me that they've been touched by my understanding of God, of Christ, and of faith for me to believe that I'm the useless piece of human sewage I used to think I was twenty years ago. Today, the song of my credo is Chris Tomlin's The Way I Was Made:

Made in Your likeness, made with Your hands
Made to discover who You are and who I am
All I've forgotten, help me to find -
All that You've promised, let it be in my life

I want to live like there's no tomorrow
I want to dance like no one's around
I want to sing like nobody's listening
Before I lay my body down
I want to give like I have plenty
I want to love like I'm not afraid
I want to be the man I was meant to be
I want to be the way I was made

May it be so, Lord, today and always. Amen, and amen.

Ah, the homosexual agenda!

2007-04-15T23:01:00.000-05:00

I've been spending a lot of time over at GayChristian.net, and haven't been posting as much as I should be over here. It's been very, very cool for me to spend time with other people who are struggling with the same topics as I am - and it's been cool to be able to point them to some of these posts here, and show how I've wrestled with things.

Today we look at some great information on the oft-claimed "Homosexual Agenda" or "Gay Agenda."

First, take a look at this great summary of the "gay agenda." Make sure you cursor down to read all the bad puns that go with it...

Then go over here and read straight-but-friendly author Mark Morford's summary of our so-called agenda. It's pretty funny, and str8 (forgive the pun) to the point.

But for pure classic delivery, this animated cartoon is great. It's nearly 2 years old, but it's definitely worth the 2 minutes or so to watch it. (Warning - there is sound to this, so you might want to turn it down or put the headphones on if you're at work...)

More to come soon...

Lessons learned at TWC

2007-04-02T00:48:00.000-05:00

I started this post a week ago, and somehow left it in draft mode (what folks in tech support would call a SUE - stupid user error). But I wanted to follow up on my experience at my first-ever gay/lesbian recovery conference - the "Together We Can" conference in Troy, MI.

It's been amazingly eye-opening. My exposure to a whole bunch of people in recovery - some of whom have been out for years, and some of whom have just come out (like me, or even more recently) was a real blessing. And I've learned some real truths about myself - not all of them pleasant.

From the very early parts of my life, one of the seeds of my addictive insanity was an insatiable desire (from a very early age) to be approved-of, to be "good enough," to be validated. And yet at the same time (8 or 9 years old) I had a deep sense that I was not-right, that I was evil, that the essence of what-I-was was wrong in some undefinable way. For years, I believed it to be some kind of basic understanding of original sin or something. (At least that's how I rationalized it.)

I now know the reason that I felt "wrong" in my life was because I knew, deep down, that I was gay. Even before I understood what it meant, I had that sense of being what one dear aunt called "a bubble off square." And even then I understood, from everything around me, that being that way (though in that day, it wasn't "gay," but instead was being a queer, homo, sissy, pansy, or fag) was wrong. It was unacceptable. And the one thing I didn't want to be was unacceptable.

The other thing I've come to learn a bunch about is my resistance to physical intimacy. In this way, I do fit the stereotype of the absent father (though I hate like hell to admit that I fit any stereotype!). My father was gone a lot while traveling for his job, and my mother depended a lot on me. I know now that my relationship with my mother fits under the category of covert incest - a situation where a dependent parent effectively makes their child their partner. (I've got a lot to learn about covert incest...a friend here recommended the book Silently Seduced, as a starter. I've got lots of work to do on that topic...

My relationship with my mom had to be asexual; the "friendships" I made with other boys had to be asexual. So the lesson became: deny what you feel; you're good so long as you lie. That's how I learned relationships were. (Just in case you were wondering, that's not a good thing.)

Resisting inappropriate affection led me into marriage with a woman who cared about me deeply, who was committed to the relationship, and whom I desperately wanted to be "right" for. The problem was, I was absolutely incapable of being a passionate partner - I was a lousy lover (which was bad) and I knew it (which was worse). That tragic self-knowledge left me with a big dollop of shame and self-hate - which was great fuel for my journey deeper into alcoholism.

Even once I got sober, the pattern continued. I tried, time after time, to find romance and passion with women, and ended up friends every time. The friend I went to live with kept trying to fix me up - I told him that I didn't want another relationship, and he kept saying, "So how 'bout some cheap gratuitous sex, instead?" He couldn't possibly know it was the sex I feared as much as harming another person in a relationship again.

And though the church fed my need to be needed and wanted in many ways, they also fed me the same message I'd been getting - intimacy is not right, celibacy is the norm. "True love waits." It's great to be straight, bad to be "bent." In addition, people-pleasing was disguised as "servant leadership" or "sacrificial giving." The churches I joined after I got sober were themselves needy, codependent, addictive groups whose drugs of choice were over-commitment and overwork. And I just continued to stick the needle in my arm...

I knew the "real me" would be unacceptable, so I became a star in service, in teaching, even preaching. If the church was open, I was usually there. But I hid my true self away - unable even to bring myself to the secret sexual releases so common to gay men in the church. It was only after the church rejected my candidacy for ministry (on financial grounds, not on any moral or sexual issue) that I allowed myself to even consider the possibility of coming out.

It took the efforts of two caring, honestly-open-and-out gay men to show me that "being gay" wasn't about who I slept with (since I'd been celibate for a decade) or what stereotypes I fit (because I didn't fit most of them). It was about who I was, and who I was attracted to. And if I was going to be honest, I had to come out. Tom and Michael were (and are) definitely gifts from God to this crazy, mixed-up homo...

So there I was: a week shy of fifty years old, at this conference. On the one hand, I found the freedom and the honesty almost intoxicating. Simply having the chance to see attractive men, and to be able to look, without fear of being harrassed or bashed, was amazing. But with that freedom came the knowledge (once again) that I wasted 35 years - fifteen of them sober, and in supposedly-loving communities of faith - hiding in fear. Loveless, affectionless days wasted, never to be reclaimed.

And while I celebrate my sobriety, and the chance to grow in faith and love, I also find myself furious - with my family, with my church, and with myself - for perpetuating the lie that I was (and at times, still feel) undesirable and unacceptable.

On Saturday night, the conference held a dance. I haven't actually gone dancing with anyone in fifteen years - and have never danced with another man, ever. I've never kissed another man in public. And once again, I was 14 years old and full of insecurities - again. I thought I was past this - but it all came screaming back that night. Quite a serenity buster, actually.

The Friday night Alanon speaker spoke of the promise of Joel 2:25 - "I will restore to you the years that the locusts have eaten." I don't think for a minute that those 35 lost years will come back - and I have to live with the consequences of a life lived in fear. But her words were a reminder that perhaps, this day, I can begin to live a new life - the life God always intended for me to live.

The dance came. Partly, the fear won - I just couldn't bring myself to ask anyone dance for the few slow dances. But I did actually get out on the dance floor for a number of songs; it seems I have at least part of a groove thang left (though I'm definitely going to have to get in better shape before the next conference, just from an endurance standpoint!) I won't ever end up on American Bandstand or dancing on anyone's bar anytime soon - but it was good. Score: B-minus/C-plus, overall.

I have to admit, it was interesting to see some of the other people God put in my life through this conference. Another guy named Steve - who is easily 1/3 again bigger than I am - was one of the most loud-mouthed, boisterous, out-and-in-your-face gay man I've ever met. He made Drew Carey look like an introvert! And the one ~~moronic twink~~ self-centered young man who kept referring to anyone over 35 who looked at him as "old trolls" would have been cruisin' for a bruisin' with any group but this one. Not to mention the group of close-cropped lesbians who looked more like twinks than some of the twinks...it was, well, diverse, to say the least. But a blast nonetheless...

And I found that I have much to share in my recovery community, despite my lack of homo-experience. That still felt good. The fellow who roomed with me was a 40-year-old HIV-positive fellow who's 11 months sober, and unemployed. He wouldn't have been able to go if I hadn't already had the room, and a group of folks from my home group got him his registration. It was just so cool to see the light of his new life start shining into his mind. He'd never seen 300 people in recovery together - let alone 300 GLBT folks in recovery. It was great to watch.

So now, the challenge is how to carry this new knowledge into my daily life. It will be an interesting head-to-the-heart journey, I suppose. But for now, I am blessed to know that there is hope, even for a guy like me. Thank you God, for that beautiful gift!

A few answers for a few big questions

2007-03-28T00:06:00.000-05:00

I've been spending a goodly amount of time online on GCN - the Gay Christian Network. It's a fellowship of about 4,000 gay Christians around the world who have found fellowship, common experience, and support online.

On the message-boards, I read the post of a man who is struggling in so many ways like myself. Since I'm not breaking his anonymity, I want to post my reply to Ron here, because it addresses a number of things I've been wrestling with:
- - -

Ron, you asked some powerful, challenging questions. And they are questions that I am wrestling with, myself. For that reason, please forgive my wordiness, in advance. (Your words are in bold...)

Does God want His followers to have happy, deeply satisfying and fulfilling romantic relationships or is that just something that our Western culture invented? As a seminarian and former theology junkie, I can pretty much assure you that if it's Western Civ, it's not God!

I'm going to strongly, strongly suggest you pick up a copy of The Children Are Free: Re-Examining the Evidence for Same Sex Relationships, by Rev. Jeff Miner and John Tyler Connoley, which you can read about here on GCN or over here on Amazon. The chapter on affirming scriptural passages was fantastic (especially Ruth and Naomi). I needed to hear that. It reminded me much more of what God thinks about our relationships.

I'm a guy who also comes out of the recovery community, and my belief is absolute that God wants us - gay, str8, all races, all backgrounds - to be happy in God's love. I don't believe it because it's a good idea - I believe it because I see people's lives transformed in community all the time.

But for some of us, God has yet to answer our endless prayers to satisfy the deepest longings of our hearts to find a lifelong committed partner. I can't speak for you - but the tragic part of this is that my own stupidity is mostly responsible for my being alone, right now. I stayed in the closet for 15 years after I got sober, thinking that I was "doing God's will." That wasn't God punishing me - that was me mis-hearing God's message, and buying into the lies of the institutional church. Even so, the folks in church thought they were helping me - even though they were dead wrong.

On the Moses scale (n=forty years), I'm still a "quick learner." But yeah, it's tough to see the "wasted days and wasted nights" waiting for God to fix something that really wasn't ever broken...

You may as well ask why a guy I know who is devoid of spirituality has a $300k/yr job, can pay for all the pretty young things he wants, toodling round Florida in some hot speedboat, while I'm still online "at work" at nearly midnight in northwest Ohio. I don't think that's God's will - I think that's pure human screwery. Life isn't fair, but God IS good. I've had to hold onto that one.

...I’m at a point in my life where those quick sound bites just aren’t enough to take away the pain and the loneliness anymore. Well, brother, I turn 50 on Thursday, and I've been celibate and "a solitaire" since the current president's father was in office. So I can feel your pain, at least to a degree. When I hear "wait on the Lord," I want to scream, "What the heck do you think I've been DOING for 15 years? Knitting afghans?"

Is the gay Christian life inherently painful and lonely? To a degree, it's more lonely just because a number of venues for meeting a significant-other aren't open to us, for now. But in many ways, gay life is not any more painful or lonely than straight life is, Ron. There are a lot of str8 people who are in sexually-active, yet emotionally and spiritually empty lives. For an awful lot of folks, their lives consist largely of masturbating into other people's bodies. It LOOKS fun - the whole tab-A into slot-B thing always does. But is it something good? Is it something to be proud of? I think not.

Does God want me to feel this way? No. Ansolutely not. I have never bought into the old nonsense that "God is testing you - just throwing another rock on your back to see what will break you."

I went through years and years of the pain of trying to change my own sexuality because I thought that was His will, and in doing so I lost out on a huge part of my life and youth. So did I, Ron. You and I are in absolutely the same boat there. And it's very hard not to be resentful about that.

That is, until a simply gorgeous man at a gay AA meeting turned to me and said, "You're a nice guy, Steve, but you can be such a moron at times. Did it ever occur to you that you also missed out on the single worst plague ever to hit the world - certainly the worst to ever hit North America. Are you mourning your HIV-negative status? I know a bunch of guys who would swap their years of romping around for your health. It would be a great deal, from their point of view..."

I believe that God does not set down the controls of the world and stir up raw sewage in my life, or yours. If God really is a God of love, a God who sent comfort to so many hurting people in the Bible, why would God be someone so sadistic to tease you with a cool relationship and then yank it?

Answer: God wouldn't. That's just human nature, showing how broken it really is. Happens a lot, gay or str8.

I've had to spend a lot of time reminding myself about what I really believe about the nature of God. After my seminary life ended, I had a lot of times when I felt exactly like you sound. In my blog, I wrote about seeking strength in brokenness,, three spiritual places I'm not, and this post about how my broken life sounds suspiciously like some other folks' lives.

Say it with me:
God is love. God loves me.
God is love. God loves me.
God is love. God loves me.
God is love. God loves me.

(lather, rinse, repeat as needed)

I also realize that my emotions are clouding my perspective right now and that I don’t have a very "spiritual" frame of mind these days. Well, brother, I can only say, "Welcome." Very few people come to GCN because they are on top of their game, and just need some fresh territory to check out cute boys online. Every one of us found GCN because we were looking for the last house on the block. I sure was.

I wish that my faith was stronger, but life has frankly been almost too much to bear lately... That's why God ordains us to community - so we aren't all sick at the same time. We have a God who does not snuff out the smouldering wick, or crush a bent reed. When our last strand of thread is unraveling, we are given a cord of three strands. That's what I found here, and that's what you will find as well, I am sure.

Ron, I understand heartbroken. But I also understand hope. And there's plenty. Forgive me for getting on the soapbox - but also believe me: I needed to hear, for myself, everything I wrote to you tonight.

I get back to Chicago occasionally - it would be a blast to get together when I get back there.

You are not alone. You are loved - by us, and by God. I have to remember that the whole of God's message boils down to this simple acronym: URGBAR. You are gonna be all right.

So am I.

Peace and e-hugs -
Steve

I can't, God can...

2007-03-24T06:42:00.001-05:00

...I think I'll let him.

That, summarized, are the first three steps of the 12 step program of recovery. And I am immersed in it, swimming in it, this weekend at the Together We Can GLBT recovery conference in Troy, MI.

It's been an eye-opener, to be sure.

I am with a fairly large contingent from my home group, the Live and Let Live gay AA group in Toledo. And I've been introduced to a whole level of camp and queeny behavior that I knew was possible, but never really experienced before. To be honest, I don't often refer to any man (gay or straight) as "girl" or "sister," so when I hear things like "oh, LOOK at that girl go," stupidly enough I'm looking for, well, a girl.

I'm getting past that.

The other thing is the freedom to look at other men. There are some beautiful men - and a whole bunch of average guy-next-door guys - and it's just o.k. to be looking. In fact, it's expected. No fear of "WTF are YOU looking at?" up here - which is a whole new level of freedom, to be sure.

And it's the chance to address so much of my past - or lack of past - sexual life. Not that I'm expecting to find any treatment for that celibacy condition I've been dealing with (for, oh, a decade and more...). But the chance to at least explore that - and hear the experience, strength and hope of others - is going to be a great thing.

Last night, the Alanon speaker spoke of the the promise of Joel 2:25 - I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten - and my prayer, for this weekend, is that this can be a start. My goal is to listen, learn, and spend a whole lot of time laughing.

I hae to admit, though, that tonight will be an interesting experience. There is, after the banquet and speaker meeting, a dance. And for those of you who have been out for a while, this may seem strange for a man a week away from his fiftieth birthday - but I have never danced with another man. Ever. I have never kissed a man, other than the peck-on-the-cheek "hello." And I haven't had to ask anyone to dance that I wasn't already at a dance with since high-school.

I am suddenly struck back to 14 years old. Sober.

Pray for me...for the willingness to dance, to ask others to dance with me, to get into the mainstream of my new life. If ever there was a time to do it, it would be now.

Alive and kicking....

2007-02-19T01:46:00.000-06:00

Well, it's been an exciting time, to be sure....

I have to apologize for not posting here in oh, four months - but by way of confession, it's been a particularly busy four months. Most of the absence has to do with my magnificent obsession with work (which ended up with me in the hospital for the weekend of January 5th, as described over here) and ended with a Spirit-led wake-up call over here.

I haven't been blogging about my experiences in the GLBT world largely because there haven't been any - or at least, none worth mentioning. Life has basically circled around

a) Work
b) Work
c) Helping my sister and brother-in-law
d) Work
e) Recovery, and
f) Work

Today (Monday) is the start of a new life - in many different ways. We'll see how long it lasts, but for today, the key phrase is "Thank God almighty, we are free at last!"

There are a whole bunch of things I want to write about - but the top half-dozen or so include

1) SAD - why it's a date, and not an emotion...
2) John Ameiche's coming-out, and why it shouldn't
be a big deal
3) Tim Hardaway's reaction, and why it IS a big deal
4) Rev. Bradley E. Schmeling, and how the
ELCA is dealing with him
5) Chad Allen, Save Me, and how the
religious right is dealing with him
6) How the recovering GLBT community may manage to
get me to dance with another man for my 50th birthday

But for now, it's off to bed for a few hours before the new day begins...

Well, that does it...

2006-10-29T11:25:00.000-06:00

...after 2 years, and after a year of stop-and-start coming out, I finally have stepped through the closet door on my other blog, the one I started after my seminary career ended.

To the best of my knowledge, everyone who reads it who I care about knows already. But it will be interesting to see how the straight Christians who I hung around with for years react - if they, in fact, care at all.

The good news is, I'm not nearly as much of an approval whore as I was two years ago, so it's not gonna matter nearly as much as it did 2 years ago. Or even six months ago.

For now, I'm going out to brunch, and then get into the rest of the day and listen to the Jason & deMarco CDs that arrived in yesterday's mail!

The Heterosexual Agenda - finally documented!

2006-10-28T20:46:00.000-05:00

If there weren't so much truth in this, it would be hysterical:

The Heterosexual Agenda: Exposing The Myths
(A Parody With A Purpose)
–––– With ––––
How To Write An Anti-Gay Tract In Fifteen Easy Steps

While this particular article is definitely and clearly titled "A Parody With A Purpose," it points out the truth about just how basic a heterosexual outlook is to "how things are.

And there are an amazing number of supposedly anti-gay statistical studies here at The BoxTurtle Bulletin which merit review by the GLBTQ community. Now normally, I would rather bite down on tinfoil than read statistical studies most days, but in this case, there are some serious anti-gay myths debunked.

It's a worthy effort that I applaud, because as the old saying goes, "there are liars, damn liars, and statistics..."

Great voices, great video

2006-10-22T17:08:00.000-05:00

Courtesy of GayChristian.net's GCN Radio, I recently heard about the "gay Christian pop duet" of Jason & deMarco. You can hear a great interview with them on the GCN Radio website (the link takes you directly to the broacast), or read a great review of them on the PlanetOut music site.

Or you can just go straight to the Logo Network site, and click on the second Click List Video entitled "This Is Love." Not only is it a pleasant song, it's a visually attractive video of two young men in love. The video has been in the top 10 on MTV's Logo network for 14 weeks!

Of course, it doesn't hurt that both the guys are particularly easy on the eyes, or that Jason Warner is a dead ringer for Randy Harrison (Justin on "Queer as Folk")...

It's so strange to hear them talking about touring, doing concerts in churches as an openly gay, openly Christian singing duo. Jason had been in the contemporary Christian scene in college, and when he came out to his band-mates, he was asked to leave the band and was basically dropped like a hot rock. He started doing a music ministry with the gay-welcoming Metropolitan Community Churches, and prayed for a partner who would affirm his ministry in the church.

Instead, Jason met a partner, deMarco DeCiccio, who joined him in his music, his ministry, and his life. (You can hear the rest of their early story in this podcast from GCN's first season in 2004.)

It's fascinating to hear them talk about their "cross-over" into more secular gay clubs and doing dance remixes of some of their songs (which have been dubbed "Spirit Pop," after their successful 2004 CD release). Unfortunately, it also raises my ire to hear that their supposed Christian following feels like they've been sold out when the boys do club/dance music, or talk about life, love and (gasp!) sex to gay magazines like The Advocate or Out.

Hellooo.....they're gay, partnered singers....what a surprise that they'd be talking about gay life, people...

It's the old story - you can be gay, you can even be "out" and gay. Just don't act gay in front of the straight people...you might spook 'em...

Listen to the two podcasts (especially the 2004 one)...watch the video. True love is cool.

Tonight, I'm headed out to the "Live & Let Live" group tonight - and this time, I am going out to J&G's Pizza, afterwards. The unpacking mess will be here when I get back...

Gifts of affirmation...

2006-10-20T16:30:00.000-05:00

There were two other folks that I had wanted to come out to privately before I did my other-blog "outing," and amidst all the work-world frustration, I got those letters sent this last week. The responses were predictable, in one way, and yet brought tears of joy and affirmation in another.

From my dear high-school friend John:

I am not surprised - you mentioned to me years ago that if someone did not come along you might have to look the other way. Am I surprised - NO; will it change the way I feel for you, No. Ann and I both have cousins that are gay and although we do not like the life style we want them to be happy. You too deserve to be happy. No matter what you do you will always be one of my closest and dearest friends and will always be welcome to come and stay in our home. Just be careful, I do not want to hear of any social diseases! I know this is a difficult situation for you I know many of our friends would not understand.

From my friend and faith-brother Ed:

Regarding the gay thing... no problem. First off...makes little difference to us (will just tell Becca to stop trying to hook you up with a sister). We have several gay friends, so I guess we have a bit of a different perspective than some. Second: We all love you.

From Ed's wife, and my faith-sister Becca:

Just remember friend, I became your friend because you have an amazing heart...and I will always be your friend for that reason. You don't know how much you have changed my life over the years...and even though you aren't around as often now, I know that whenever we get together, I have a friend seated next to me. God Bless you.

The reason I share these is simple:

I lived in fear of rejection for years. I hid in the closet for years, afraid of something that so far has not happened. In fifteen years, the only one who has ever rejected me because of my homosexuality...is me.

Such a tragic, tragic waste. Thank you, God that the wasted time is ended. Thank you, God, for gifts such as you have given me. Thank you that my friends and family can know me - the real me - for the rest of my life. Amen.

Leaving the past, moving forward

2006-10-16T06:25:00.000-05:00

I had great plans for a burst of blogging activity last week - intending for this beautiful coming-out post on my post-seminary-life blog for National Coming Out Day. And as part of this, I wanted to come out personally to three people who knew me from my old lives, including my former wife.

Unfortunately, the big "outing" post never got written last week. The work-world tanked early on in the week, and I got my 40 hours in by about noon Wednesday. Between that and doctor visits for myself and my sister, I got done with work about 7 PM Wednesday, and fell into bed at 8. My thoughts were, "It's waited for three decades - a few more days won't kill anyone." But before most of the raw-sewage broke loose in the work world, I did manage to send my coming-out email to my former spouse.

It was not well received, to put it mildly. I wasn't surprised, and yet I was. On the one hand, our life had been characterized by lies - about money, about my drinking, about illegal activity I'd been a part of. So coming out to her nearly 16 years later just added one more level of lying and betrayal, and ripped open wounds that I'd hoped would have been better healed after a decade and a half.

And, after all, she was at least partly right. What she, and several others in my life, will never understand is not that I was living a lie back then, but that I was desperately trying to be something that I was afraid I couldn't be. I had to believe in my heart of hearts that I could somehow "get past" my same-sex desires and be normal. Until I encountered the GLBT community in Hyde Park, and my "homo-mentors" Tom and Michael, I just couldn't get there.

I still remember, sitting Tom's living room, and saying the words, "Well, I can either be an overweight, under-endowed, greying, middle-aged gay man, and put myself in line for bashing and abuse, or I can be an overweight, under-endowed, greying, middle-aged straight man, and skip all the trouble. Either way, I'm going home alone." And Tom said, in his gentle but forceful way, that sexual orientation isn't about who you're sleeping with - it's about who you are. And it's about honesty. And that's when I "hit bottom" about my orientation.

Strangely enough, so many of the people I've come out to have basically said, "Yeah, well...duh, Steve...no kidding..." So far, only my former wife and my former pastor from Kansas were in any way taken aback. For which I give thanks...

But there is good news, too.

As part of a couple of postings on GayChristian.net, I've been in contact with gay Christians in the Toledo area, and we now have November 11th as a tentative date to get together. The very loose plans are to see the new Toledo Museum of Art Glass Pavillion and then to meet up with a few more folks for dinner.

I'm excited about that.

The other cool thing was getting to my first GLBT AA meeting, the Sunday night "Live and Let Live" group downtown. Unfortunately, as was the case in Chicago, the GLBT meetings are either near-downtown or on the north-side of Toledo. But the 16-mile drive in Toledo only took 25 minutes, and it was a breeze at 7:30 on a Sunday evening.

I actually brought the topic up - coming back to old haunts and old meetings (where I've been visiting, on and off, for 15 years) and talking about how and whether to "come out" in those situations. After all, I have no parter or boyfriend, so the pressures to be "out" are largely in my mind at this stage of the game. Folks shared some great experience - although I had to envy the fact that many who spoke were "out" before they got sober. But, as with so much of AA, there were definitely the folks with whom I identified completely, and almost everyone that I identified with in some way.

The other cool thing was that after the meeting, I was invited to go with the group up to Sylvania, to J&G's Pizza. Now, this was a little unusual, since the meeting was downtown, and Sylvania is the far northwest corner of the world. But "Toledo miles" just aren't the same as "Chicago miles," and it seemed perfectly acceptable to do this. Unfortunately, I'd left a whole mess of unpacking strewn all over my room in order to get to the meeting, so I begged off this week - but with a definite raincheck for next week.

It's a blast from the past - J&G's Pizza is kind of a hole-in-the-wall tradition in the Toledo area - we even had our high-school musical cast-parties there (well, they started there, anyway) back in the 70's. So it will be a fun gathering, and it seems like a fun group.

That's it for now - the work-day sirens are sounding...

Ceremonies for National Coming Out Day

2006-10-06T22:23:00.000-05:00

My good friend and homo-mentor Michael forwarded two "Coming Out Day Ceremonies" for people in the religious communities from the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) website. As National Coming Out Day is October 11th, I thought I'd pass along a sample of the ceremony, as well as the press release below.

It's fascinating, because in my Lutheran tradition, there is a religious ceremony for almost anything - from the dedication of a new home to commemoration of a stillborn infant. But mainline religious traditions neither see homosexuals as people of ceremony or ritual, not as people whose "coming-out" processes are bound-up in their journey of faith. So I found these two ceremonies a blessing.

As another mentor, Ted Menten, would say, I would not treat this as a "How-to" guide so much as a "how you might" guide. As the pamphlet itself says, these ceremonies were created by people whose faith and journey may be much different than my own. So do not let specific language or concepts in these ceremonies imprison or hinder you.

As a good friend says, "we are blessed to be a blessing..."
- - -
Litany of Blessing

A worship leader invites all to stand for the following litany of blessing:

One: Blessed be God who calls us all out of our tombs of fear, who bids us live in with yet more spirit, in yet more truth, who surely did not bring us this far to leave us!
Many: Blessed be God forever.
One: Holy One, as we bless your name, bless us. Sustain all those who risk speaking truth despite the risk, witnesses to Your love and hope and mercy.
Many: Blessed are those who “come out”!
One: Temper the hearts of those who receive “coming out” stories, that disappointment may become honor, that confusion and shame may become empathy
and support, all according to your great mercy!
Many: Blessed are those who have ears to hear, whose hearts are open, to those who “come out”!
One: Embrace those who cannot “come out” because jobs or housing might be lost, because of fear of rejection from those they hold dear, because of hostility and threats of violence, because they might lose family, children, security
or shelter!
Many: Blessed are those who cannot “come out”! May they one day be free!
One: Encourage those who are weary of “coming out,” stand by them, nourish their tired spirits, sustain them in the long journey toward truth and justice!
Many: Blessed are those who keep “coming out”!
One: Build up this community in acceptance, faithfulness, forbearance, solidarity and love, make us sisters and brothers, make us one Body, that we might serve neighbors, strangers— even our enemies— in your gracious name.

- - -
Coming Out Day Rituals Released

Celebrate Coming Out Day with Jewish and Christian Resources

To view the Jewish resource, visit here
To view the Christian resource, visit here

In preparation for Coming Out Day on October 11th, we offer two imaginative and scripturally-grounded Coming Out Rituals, one written from the Jewish tradition by Jay Michaelson and the other from the Christian tradition by Dr. Scott Haldeman. These rituals take seriously the religious and spiritual grace we give to ourselves, our families and our friends when we live full and authentic lives.

We hope you'll consider using these rituals for Coming Out Day or to pull together a service for someone you love. Please also consider using them throughout the year, as coming out is something that can be celebrated at any time. We also hope that if you are not Jewish or Christian these rituals will spark ideas for other coming out rituals. No matter how or when you use these rituals, please write us at religion@hrc.org to let us know how you put them to use. To live honestly and openly is a holy act, and these rituals honor the holiness in all of us and in our faith communites.

For other Coming Out Rituals please vistit RitualWell
(http://www.hrcactioncenter.org/ct/jpzEfWn1JzuS/)
and The Institute for Judaism and Sexual Orientation
(http://www.hrcactioncenter.org/ct/u7zEfWn1Jz7C/).

For regular Scriptural Commentaries from an LGBT and straight-allied perspective please sign up for Out In Scripture
by visiting http://www.hrcactioncenter.org/ct/m1zEfWn1JzuL/.

For weekly Jewish commentaries on the Torah passages please see
Torah Queeries at
http://www.hrcactioncenter.org/ct/j7zEfWn1Jzuz/.

You can also order free copies of HRC's resource Living Openly
in Your Place of Worship by writing us at religion@hrc.org.

Is it that important?

2006-10-05T07:30:00.000-05:00

BruceD from YBMT? posted this comment the other day that bears exploring:

Sometimes, I get the feeling that "being gay" is the most important thing in a gay person's life. Is it really that important?

I had to kinda smile, because when my friend Craig first came out to me, more than a dozen years ago, I had much the same reaction. And I think if the straight world and the GLBT world are ever going to understand each other, it's one of those questions that's worth talking about.

And I'll say publicly what I told Bruce in a brief email reply: the fact that my straight friends are reading, and questioning, and commenting means a great deal to me. So many times in my life, when I have come out, people have said, "Oh, you're gay," and immediately seemed to assume that they know what that meant because of what they've read or heard about "the lifestyle" (99% of which has no bearing on my life!). So Bruce, Penni, and others, the fact that you're reading, asking, and listening for answers, is a blessing.

As I wrote to Bruce, the short answer is that "being gay" is no more important to me than "being straight" is to him. The funny part about that, of course, is that sexuality, and how we relate to people in relationships, drives an awful lot of how we live - and so "being gay" or "being straight" is actually a fairly big part of our lives.

It's like the red thread in a Tartan-plaid fabric - if it wasn't there, you'd still have fabric, but it wouldn't be Tartan-plaid.

What a lot of straight folks don't see is that for homosexuals, the revelation that we are gay also puts us at odds with a significant portion of society - friends, family, church, social structures (though that percentage is diminishing every day). In that way, it's not the most important thing, but - at least to others - it can become "a" defining thing, if not "the" defining thing.

I can't tell you the number of heart-breaking stories that I have heard concerning people who were "sainted members of the church," or Eagle Scouts, or community leaders, who were discovered to be gay - and then shunned. Not because they were caught with their pants down, or discovered in some lewd and lascivious act. Either they came out to someone they trusted, or were seen in public doing something awful like holding hands with another man, and suddenly their world exploded. Thrown out of homes, shunned by family and friends. And so the fear of that, for many of us, makes "being gay" a big damn deal.

I think the heart of it for me, for many years, was the centrality of the question, "What would they do if they knew?" at the heart of every relationship. An example of this is my relationship with my boss, who is an African-American male and an active member of a Christian church. There is a tremendous prejudice against gays in those communities - to such an extent that many gay black men actually marry and live their gay lives "on the down-low" (about which you can read this brief but informative summary on Wikipedia).

So while I am "out" at the office, and don't hide my homosexuality from anyone, I don't find any reason to raise the issue around my boss, because I just don't want to deal with it. (Interestingly enough, the black women in the office found it quite the kick to tease brutha cool about the cute guys in the office....) But with the other 99% of my co-workers, it's no big deal.

So at least until one is both out and comfortable with it, a large part of "being gay" is finding "who is safe" and who ain't - and that does make "being gay" an important part of every relationship, whether the other person knows it or not.

I have to admit that coming back to my original "getting sober" AA community and coming-out to them held some dread at first. But in talking with other gay friends in AA, it's just a matter of mentioning it in passing, and not treating it as a big deal. (Especially in the recovery community, there is more of an emphasis on honesty rather than sexuality - so I don't anticipate much trouble there.)

There is also the issue of community. Every person I know likes to be with people like themselves, at least part of the time. A shared understanding, shared experiences, and common interests provide ways of bonding and making friends - and this is true regardless of culture or orientation or anything else. It's why there is such diversity in the Christian church - because you have people who gather together because of nationality, ethnic background, worship styles, you name it. People like to be with people like themselves....period.

So it's not surprising that GLBT folks seek out people who are GLBT. Especially when people have experienced significant rejection from their families, jobs, or communities, there is a sense of safety, acceptance and togetherness that comes from gay clubs, gay-friendly churches like the Metropolitan Community Church, and other organizations like it. It's one of the reasons I find GayChristian.net such a blessing - there is a shared experience there that is a great blessing.

I'm not even going to try to address the old question, "Well, are you 'gay' first, or 'a Christian' first? Which is first, 'sex' or 'God'?" - because it's a dumb question. It's like asking, "When did you stop beating your wife?" It's not an either-or, or first-or-second question. You see, I am:

- white
- male
- Christian
- nearly 50
- divorced
- in recovery
- gay.

All those things are true, and none of them is "first." Any slice of me, in any direction, would find all of those ingredients.

And I'll say this, to wrap this up: the reason I'm coming out is not because I either have a boyfriend or a gay health problem. It's precisely because I want people to see that people can be "like Steve is," and be gay. People who love God, love life, and are solid members of a community and yet still live with inborn same-sex attraction. The more that gay people are "out," the more people will see what "gay" is, and not be so put-off by it. It's not wrong, it's just different.

So, that's a first shot, Bruce. I'm looking forward to my other gay readers chiming in and adding their own two cents (or more) worth. Thanks for asking, and again, thanks for listening.

Endings, and an interesting first step

2006-09-28T07:31:00.000-05:00

I will be offline for a couple days - I am moving to Ohio, and the cable guys come today at noon to take the modem. So I will be more techno-deprived than I have been since I first came to Chicago, and waited for SBC to install my phone and DSL...

The lion's share of packing is ahead of me, and it will be two crazy days. ..

The interesting first step, though, came in an email from a fellow blogger. He had read that I was listening to the GCN Radio podcasts from GayChristian.net, and noted that I had my address listed on my GCN profile as from the Toledo area. So he reached out by email and invited me to join a group of Toledo GCN members at a get-together tentatively planned for October.

That is very cool.

When I'd lived in Toledo previously, I'd always thought of it as a beer-&-a-shot autoworker's town, and never ever saw any signs of gay culture there. Sure, Columbus and Chicago had Gay Pride Parades, but never anything like that in Toledo. There were always the sly hints and slurs from other guys about this bar or that bar being "fag bars," but other than that, I had no idea.

So my goal had been to connect with the MCC church in Toledo (which, unfortunately, is all the way downtown, some 20-plus miles from where I will be) and see what gay life there might be either near the University of Toledo or near Bowling Green State University in nearby Bowling Green, Ohio. But those were pretty tenuous plans.

Now, at least, I have a name, and an email, of a real live fellow gay Christian. Wow.

So that's it, for now. I have "miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I leave," to steal a famous line. So I am off to laundry, and work, and packing galore. I should be back up and online late Sunday night from the cornfields surrounding the Glass City...

The struggle between faith and religion

2006-09-17T06:50:00.000-05:00

A significant portion of this blog is about my journey coming out of decades of homophobia - much of it instilled by the institutional church. So it's not surprising that I find myself struggling between "finding faith" and "losing my religion." For gay people of faith, it's an ongoing journey of conflict and resolution. For me, sites like GayChristian.net and the online magazine Whosoever have been real blessings to me.

In a recent post, my straight-and-accepting blogging sister, Penni at martha, martha, sounded like she was going through a similar challenge. While her "coming out" and mine are vastly different, they are also amazingly similar. And my first thought was, "Ah, dear sister, welcome to the party...."

The thing that the commenters on her post make very clear is that "losing my religion" (in one way or another) is part of the Catholic journey. (It's not exclusively Catholic - not at all. But more on that later on...)

I know that Henri Nouwen - a spiritual brother of mine - struggled with the Church's teaching on the Eucharist. When he taught at Yale he celebrated open Eucharist in the chapel basement every day. In one of the better Nouwen biographies, Wounded Prophet, the author describes how Nouwen struggled repeatedly with this issue...and, in the end, chose to walk his own path. He lived consistent with his calling, and within the greater community of the Church, while annoying many a bishop over his lifetime.

I don't want to seem like a single-issue guy, or that all religion needs to be seen through this topic, but the issue of gay priests in the Catholic communities is a big deal where I was from, up until recently.

I lived in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago, which contained five seminaries within walking distance of each other, including the Catholic Theological Union (CTU) and about 2 dozen Catholic religious residences. Living in Lutheran seminary housing, my front window looked across the street at an Augustinian friary (I think that's the word for it), and we were just down the street from one of the larger Catholic congregations in the city. In short, you could hardly throw a rock and not hit a Catholic religious community member, at least on the second bounce.

And there were (and are) a lot of gay and lesbian Catholic religious folk in the area. Not just a few; a lot. After all, if your faith calls you to be celibate because of your sexuality, and your heart calls you to service to God, what better synergy, eh?

Every one of them have been struggling, evoking in some way the prayer first written by Martin Luther, and given voice by The Clash:

Should I stay or should I go now?
Should I stay or should I go now?
If I go there will be trouble
And if I stay it will be double
So come on and let me know
Should I stay or should I go?

A very dear friend, and one of my "coming-out mentors," coordinated the RCIA rite for the parish served by CTU. His partner is a former Carmelite priest. You might find Tom's words interesting, even if they might deepen your struggle.

But this struggle between participating in "the church" and being authentic to one's faith and one's conscience is part of the wider Christian journey, too. My former ministry professor, Dr. Tex Sample, co-edited The Loyal Opposition: Struggling With The Church on Homosexuality. While he has held pro-gay beliefs all his life, he has been more vocal in the last several years, and it has cost him - in church consultations and speaking engagements, in friendships, in outright attacks on his worth as a Methodist minister. But he, and the many authors compiled in this volume, believe that there is a place for active resistance to the doctrines of the church, expressed out of love for the church.

For what it's worth, too, there is a distinctly Protestant concept known as adiaphora - things which are not central to one's core beliefs. For instance, the Lutheran seminary and the Presybterian seminary in Chicago shared facilities, worship space, and staff. They could do this because their respective ruling bodies affirmed that the ways in which the two groups agreed were deep and abiding, while our differences were on things which we did not hold to be at the core of our belief.

At my late stage in life, I find that every person whose faith goes beyond "Yes, Jesus loves me/the Bible tells me so" ends up having these struggles. I believe these struggles are at the heart of much of the emerging church activity - seeking relevance and authenticity while preserving (or building) community.

A good friend, Michael Housholder, pointed out that while the local church is frequently sinful, broken and both wounded and wounding, it is also the single best opportunity to be an instrument of God's grace in a given community. Even though I'm not a part of a church community right now, I want to be - and once I get moved, I hope to be. Because I miss the community, and I really think my friend Mike is right.

Forgive the (not-so-mini) mini-sermon, Penni. Know that you are not alone, and that "should I stay or should I go?" are just the two opposite extremes of a wide and rich rainbow of faithful participation and faithful resistance.

God's loving presence will continue to surround you, and your faith will uplift you, regardless how your relationship to "the religion" ends up. I believe that for you - because I believe it for me.

And my prayers will be rising up for you.

GCN Radio 1 - responding to stereotypes

2006-09-08T02:37:00.000-05:00

"The Carpenters? Now that I get."

"You like the Carpenters....well, congratulations on your first OGT - 'obviously gay trait.' Mine are culinary skills, love of the Carpenters, and fear of all blood sports."
(Kevin to Dennis, in The Broken Hearts Club: A Romantic Comedy)

On the GayChristian.net website, there is a feature called GCN Radio. GCNR hosts Justin and Brian have been doing weekly internet broadcasts for several years, addressing issues for people who are both gay and Christian. About the last two years worth of their podcasts are available through iTunes, and more are available on their website.

I have a 45-minute commute from "the 'hood" (Chicago's Pullman neighborhood, at south 115th St. and the Dan Ryan Expressway) to the Evil Empire downtown by Union Station. So between going to and from work, and the 4 hours each way from Chicago to Toledo, I've found much to both smile about and reflect on from their broadcasts. It's not NPR or anything, but there's nuggets of fun and truth in each podcast. And as part of each broadcast, Justin and Brian ask a "question of the week" to encourage their listeners to reflect on a particular facet of gay life (especially gay Christian life).

Of course, I'm listening to these broadcasts in retrospect. So responding to the GCNR crew's questions-of-the-week a year or more later seems a wee bit stupid (or at least terminally behind-the-times). So I'm taking the time to respond to a variety of these topics over the next couple weeks here.

An interesting discussion on the November 11, 2005 GCN Radio podcast talks about a bunch of gay stereotypes. Their discussion barely more than breaks the surface - they start a list, which has a lot of the widely-discussed stereotypes:

- Music: of course, all gays love show tunes, Barbra Streisand, Madonna, Cher, Melissa Etheridge ...I'm sure you can add to the list
- Fashion: all gay men have a special gene that makes them fashionable, neat, organized and star hosts/hostesses - a' la the Queer Eye for the Straight Guy team
- Fitness - all gay men either are gym bunnies, or want to be
- Sex - promiscuity as the gay "gold standard;" all gay men are overly well endowed; all gay men in relationships want to be married; again, you can add to the list.

One of the references on the broadcast that made me snicker was the reference to lesbians and Home Depot - especially since more than one gay man has referred to that chain of stores as Homo Depot. I have to admit that if you're into "manly men," you can find them at Homo Depot - although I've never found anything yet to compare with the twink boi's of CDW (who share the building with the offices of The Evil Empire). A virtual sea of hotties...

Today, I had a personal "close encounter" with an old gay stereotype. I had worn a pink shirt - not because pink is "gay," but because I thought it looked good on me. (And, to be honest, it was clean, unwrinkled, and on top of the pile.) But one of my co-workers made a comment, basically saying, "Boy, Steve, you look good in pink - not that that makes you gay or anything." I smiled at her, and said, "Honey, I sure didn't need a shirt to tell me I was gay..."

I thought her jaw was going to hit the floor, bounce back and break a couple teeth. "YOU??" she all but yelled.

Yes, me, honey. It's not that big a deal...

Which gets me back to the topic. Let's face it - stereotypes are at least partially anchored in truth. That's how they get started. But an awful lot of all gay stereotypes are pure trash - and many of them really do a grave disservice to the gay community. An awful lot of gay stereotypes are fueled by traditional anti-gay fears and misinformation.

But so long as a significant portion of the gay community is hiding in the closet, what will endure in people's minds will be the stupidest of the gay stereotypes. There are some people (both straight and gay) who still really believe that I'm not gay - because I fit so few of the "traditional" stereotypes (being older, greying, heavy-set, definitely not overly-endowed or fashion-gifted in any way...). And, God help me, I bought into those same lies - that I couldn't be gay, because I didn't fit my own homophobic picture of what "gay" was...

That's really the central point of all this.

People won't know how far-off that the gay stereotypes are, and how fraudulent the idea of a "homosexual lifestyle" or "homosexual agenda" is, until we show them what gay life is like, by coming out and staying out and proud. Only when people see the truth - that we literally are all around them - will they stop believing in the old fantasies about gays and lesbians.

In this way, telling the truth really will set us free...

A gift of hope from an extraordinary young man

2006-08-31T21:41:00.000-05:00

On Thursday, I had a day from the bowels of hell at The Evil Empire, and it took the entire AA meeting, getting introduced to the mother of my sponsee's child, and a pralines-&-cream ice cream cone to detox from it. But I find that my Higher Power usually holds the best gifts for last, and tonight that gift was waiting for me in my Gmail inbox.

In previous posts, I've shared about my history in a Masonic youth group called DeMolay, and how part of my struggles about coming out to a dear friend would be to put the kabosh on ever participating in DeMolay advisorship again. (And there's a hundred other good reasons not to do that - but it was still aggravating.)

The email was from a DeMolay advisor in Buffalo, NY - saying that he'd found my blog, and thought I'd be interested in an article in the Buffalo Evening News, an editoral written by his son.

His gay son. His gay DeMolay son.

The article is a little over 2,700 words, and ran in the August 31st edition of the paper. I got a copy of it from their archives, and would be glad to share it with you if you click on my email link or comment below. It describes his coming-out experience as a 15-year-old student at Grand Island High School in Grand Island, NY. He came out to two of his best friends, and they in turn encouraged him to come out to his parents, and then to his close circle of friends. Then a year ago, he came out to the entire school on National Coming Out Day 2005. It goes on to describe some of his fears, hopes, and experiences as an out gay teen.

I read that article, and my first reaction was, "Oh...my....God. What an incredible story..."

My second (and entirely self-centered) reaction was, "Damn... I wish I'd had a tenth of the courage this guy has when I was 18..." I was just completely blown away by this young man and his journey.

And yet - Abram Morgan and I, despite more than thirty years separating us, have much in common in our stories. He starting his "outing" with two good friends; mine began with my two dear friends in AA who were gay, with whom I have shared much that has been important over the last two years. And the first two straight people I told were also two friends whom I trusted deeply.

Like Abram's father, the people I was most worried about were the ones for whom my sexuality was no surprise (like my friends Eric or my other Kansas friends) or no big deal.

Like Abram, I am less afraid of other people's emotional reactions and more afraid of their physical reactions. My friend Tom would walk through Hyde Park with a black leather cowboy hat, a black leather bomber jacket, and an enormous bright purple scarf that pretty well screamed its message. But, as I've often teased him, it's a little easier to be that "screaming" when your a former Special Forces soldier. When you're an out-of-shape ball of confrontation avoidance (as I am), it's a little tougher to pull off the bravado...

But I am learning...slowly.

There are, however, a couple ways in which I envy Abram Morgan his life and his courage. I remember back to my own days as a 19 and 20 year old in DeMolay, and how two of the guys in my own "posse" got caught "in the act." It immediately fractured the gang into two almost evenly-divided groups. The homophobes were on one side, yelling "Fag!" and other niceties, while the "homo-lovers" (as we were called) gathered around our two buddies and did our best to buffer them from the hatred and invective. It was also tragic that while a couple of us did actually end up coming out ourselves, the majority of the "friendly" crew were (and are) straight. And accepting, and loving. (But none of the homophobes would believe that, of course...seems they never do. All gay-friendly folks just have to be fags....)

Ten years later, as an advisor, I listened to a young man tell how he was being driven out of the chapter by his friends - guys whom he had trusted and cared for. He wasn't gay - but he had admitted to them that he'd had some kinky sexual experimentation (with his girlfriend). But even that admission was too "gay" for a trio of his friends, who were deeply, deeply homophobic - and in the end, these morons drove the young man from the chapter, and he ended up utterly disappearing. I often think about him, and hope he found the ability to trust again.

I'm glad that Abram hasn't had to deal with crap like that.

But a comment by Tom on my earlier post is worth repeating here. His partner, Michael, had commented about a coming-out encounter that had gone well, and he'd ended by saying, "Not all stories turn out this way, of course. But it was a great treat for me!"

Tom's comment is insightful:

True enough, but freedom comes when the story turns out the other way -- when the person you come out to rejects you because you are gay -- and life goes on.

That's when the fear that you might be rejected goes away -- you realize that you will be rejected from time to time.

All three reactions -- acceptance, indifference, rejection -- are part of being gay, and all are positive in their own way.

Tom is, of course, absolutely right - true freedom is in having nothing to lose by others acceptance or rejection. It's a place I haven't quite reached - but the openness of people like Abram Morgan give me faith and hope to keep striving.

Thanks, Dad Morgan, for sharing your son's journey with us. And than you, Abe, for following an ancient instruction that we share from our common DeMolay background: Let your light so shine before others, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven. (Matthew 5:16, NIV)

A backward weekend glance

2006-08-24T22:31:00.000-05:00

It was a pretty darn good weekend - despite the fact that it started off with a trip to the dentist to fix a broken temporary crown. (Ick.) But once I got home, took a nap, got my poop in a group (so to speak), and got on the road, it was a good weekend.

The weekend had two worthy moments. I had brought along the movie of the musical Rent, because I hadn't gotten to see it at home for two weeks straight (so to speak). Saturday night, after getting my new glasses and having a nice dinner out, Sue asked what we should do for the evening. They talked about going out to a movie, but Jeff had to get up early, so I suggested watching Rent together.

Now I had no idea of the storyline - but you didn't have to watch for long to get the fact that there are a number of both straight and gay people living in a tenement city in New York, and almost all dealing with HIV/AIDS. And I have to tell you, it would have been really uncomfortable watching that if I were still closeted. I'm sure I would have been wondering, "What are they thinking about this? Do they suspect?..." About a third of the way through the movie (Jeff having gone to bed), I said to Sue, "Man - I had no idea this movie had all these themes wrapped up in it," and she said, "Yeah, and I probably never would have seen it if you hadn't suggested it..."

Side note - if you are one of the benighted ones (as I was) who haven't yet seen Rent, run (not walk) to the video store and rent it. Do it today.

Another VERY cool thing about the weekend was that my encounter with my DeMolay advisor friend went well. We had breakfast at a local diner, a place which could be nicknamed Breakfast at Hooters - truly beautiful young ladies serving breakfast and lunch.

And during breakfast (as I expected) he made an impassioned pitch for me to join him in his work with DeMolay. And later in the conversation, I let him know that, much as I might like to join him, I just wasn't qualified - and made it clear what "not qualified" meant. It was kind of funny - I think it took him by surprise, for a second or two.

But, in his typical direct style, he said, "Well, are you a pedophile?"

"No!"

"Have you been arrested?"

"For what? Of course not! I've been celibate for more than a decade!"

"Then what's the problem??"

Well, we went back and forth, but in the end I told him that I felt it was just asking for trouble, and I didn't think it was a wise place to go. And I told him that I really had thought about doing the "don't ask, don't tell" thing - but it just wasn't worth it to continue the lies. So I wasn't going to go there - period.

And it sure seemed like it was OK, and we were OK.

I have to tell you: No one who has not had to "come out" (about anything) can ever know how wonderful those two letters are.

O-K. No big deal. No drama. Life goes on, and a silent prayer of thanks goes up.

A similar experience happened two days later. Tuesday, my young sponsee Matt was downtown and I took some time from the work insanity to have coffee with him. He got downtown a little early, so he was standing out on the plaza (which borders the Chicago River) when I came down to meet him.

Backstory: In the past, when we'd meet in Hyde Park for coffee, we would frequent the C-shop at the University of Chicago, and he would ogle the attractive young co-eds bouncing through there. It wasn't until after I came out that Matt put two and two together, and figured out that while he was watching the attractive young ladies, I was noticing the equally attractive college-aged young men. Neither one of us were exactly panting in heat, of course - for vastly different reasons - but it finally dawned on him that we might be having similar (if mirrored) experiences.

Anyway, The Employer's offices are in the same building with CDW, a firm which seems to have made "being an Abercrombie-model wannabe" a condition of employment. And a number of the attractive lads seem to enjoy taking breaks out in front of the building, by the river.

As I came out of the building, and spotted Matt, the plaza was populated by a fair number of "the CDW boys." And as I called out to Matt and walked up to him, he hugged me, smiled and said, "How do you make it down here with all these good-looking guys! If these were girls down here, I'd be in real trouble!"

Now, my young friend's orientation is not in question - not in the least. (In fact, to be fair, I had mentioned the "CDW boy" effect to him before, in passing, as one of the few perks of that particular office location...so he knew a little what to expect.) But to me, it spoke volumes that a straight guy would even notice "the scenery" - and realize the effect it might have on his gay friend. And it also spoke volumes that he would be comfortable enough to bring it up - let alone joke about it.

It was just another measure of being "OK." And it felt really, really good.

It's at times like this that my despair for the straight world fades, ever so gently, and I think, "There is yet hope..."

An encounter I'm not looking forward to...

2006-08-14T21:58:00.000-05:00

For years, my friend (who shall remain nameless) and I were advisors for the Order of DeMolay, a Masonic youth group. It was a great outlet for whatever paternal instincts I had - and, at that point, I just knew that being married and "living the life" would save me from my baser instincts. DeMolay had been a big part of my life as a teenager, so being an advisor just felt like giving back to those who had given to me. I took to it like a duck to water - and had a blast with it.

My friend and I were like Bing Crosby and Bob Hope in "The Road to..." movies. Like twin sons of different mothers. Though he was a decade and a half older than me, the age difference never seemed to matter. Our wide-ranging interests and similarly-warped humor brightened many a journey together. We were always getting into scrapes, always ending up at odd places, and had 13 years of great, great memories and lasting friendships. Many of the young men I sponsored are now leaders and advisors in their own rights - one young man's son is leader of a chapter near our town right now.

When my life fell apart, leading me to unemployment and eventually divorce, I left DeMolay completely. I remember having a somewhat tearful dinner with some of my young charges, and trying to tell them that my needing to leave was because of my own problems, and had nothing to do with them. I really loved working with them - the whole mentoring/teaching/nurturing thing just called out to me deeply.

I can honestly say that at the time, I had sublimated my sexuality at that point so deeply that the idea of "being inappropriate" with any of the guys was completely unthinkable. Did I envy a couple of them their good looks? You bet. Was I ever tempted to touch them in any way other than a very "brotherly" hug? Not once.

But my life took me in other directions. Though I joined the Masonic lodge out in a midwestern state, it just had very little appeal to me at that stage of the game. It probably didn't help that in those midwestern regions (and isolated instances elsewhere), there had been some instances of sexual abuse by advisors - and as a result, the adult organization had nothing I wanted. So I never got involved, and stayed involved with the church instead.

The impending move back to my hometown, on the surface, means having the opportunity to get back into advising in DeMolay again. My friend - who has never, ever indicated that he even suspects my true orientation - has invited me to go with him to a DeMolay ceremony this weekend when I am visiting. And though it sounds like fun, just to revisit for old time's sake - I' afraid I know what the real answer is.

You see, I am absolutely certain that "the boys" would be no temptation to me - that's just not ever been a turn-on to me, ever. But I also know that the organization has a "youth protection program," complete with a "comprehensive background investigation" - and the experience of several friends back in the Midwest shows pretty convincingly that there is no room in the ranks of advisors to teen-aged boys for homosexuals. Celibate or not, doesn't matter...if I am a self-identified gay man, my understanding is there's no room for me as a DeMolay advisor. Not even as a DeMolay visitor. Period. Paragraph.

And I'm definitely a self-identified gay man. No doubt there. I am what I am...

And I've already decided that I'm not going back in the closet for anybody. Not family, not friends, certainly not for God, and not for any organization. So the choice is clear.

I just hate the prospect of disappointing my old friend. Not that I think he'd be particularly disappointed that I'm gay - no one's waiting for grandkids from me, at this late stage of the game. I just hate knowing how much my buddy and friend would like me back - and in more than a couple ways, how much I'd like to go back.

But I'm pretty damn sure that road is closed, now and for a long, long time to come.

It will be an interesting discussion...

(Update: for some perverse reason, this post shows up as the #1 listing when searching for "DeMolay sexual abuse." For that reason, I've eliminated all references to my friend or the town. I thought about wiping the post entirely...but in a day or so, the history will be gone....I hope.)

Burning bridges with Biblical literalists

2006-08-13T12:14:00.000-05:00

I was re-reading Jeffrey Siker's closing essay in his book Homosexuality in the Church: Both Sides of the Debate (see the post below for my long-winded review) while eating breakfast at Valois restaurant in Hyde Park this morning. Valois is what my ex-father-in-law used to call "just a joint:" a cafeteria with no real atmosphere but that serves good food cheap. It's frequented by everyone from college kids to elderly condo dwellers, but on Sunday morning there are a large number of black folks of all social strata who come there for a good cheap breakfast after church.

Near the end of my meal, I went to the restroom, and left the book on the table with the rest of my food. As I came back, this very-nicely dressed older black man at the next table touched me on the arm, pointed to the Siker book, and said in a gently chiding tone, "Son, don't you know that there aren't two sides to that debate? The Bible is clear about what God thinks about that topic."

I'm sure he was trying to be kind. I know, in my heart, it was a chance for witnessing. But I'd been reading on half-a-dozen blogs about how Biblical literalists have stomped all over gay folk, and I just wasn't ready to buy it.

I looked at him with what I'm sure was a shocked expression, and I just blurted out, "Yeah, well, that same Bible was used to justify keeping black people in slavery for more than a hundred years....talking about slaves submitting to their masters, if I remember right. Do you suppose the Bible was right about THAT, TOO?"

Well, about a dozen heads (mostly black) turned and stared - so I picked up the book, left the other half of my pancakes behind, and walked out. So much for building bridges between gays and biblical literalists...

Alcoholism, Homosexuality, and Gentile Inclusion

2006-08-13T09:10:00.000-05:00

I know, I know...it's been a month since I've posted on here. I'm trying...forgive the length of this post in advance...

This particular post has been percolating in my brain ever since I was in Kansas in February, and my former ministry parter and pastor tried to make a point about the analogy between alcoholism and homosexuality. At the time, I knew there were some big things wrong with it, but I just couldn't put voice to the ideas in my head. So there it sat for months...

But I've just found Some Guys Are Normal, and I've found great inspiration in Brady's writings. (Congratulations on the wedding, too, Brady - that's truly "absolutely fabulous.")

An earlier post deals with the whole issue of the analogy between alcoholism and homosexuality - one that is gaining popularity in the more loving, caring parts of the "but it's still a sin" branches of the Christian Church. This monster post is basically a response of my Kansas friend, but also a response to Brady's post...

The very best discussion about this topic I've found is in Jeffrey Siker's The Church and The Homosexual: Both Sides of the Debate. I've mentioned this book before, because it's one of the most evenly-balanced books I've ever read from a straight author about homosexuality in the church. It gives voice to very disparate and passionate views on all sides of the homosexuality discussion. I think every pastor should own a copy (hint, hint for my former fellow seminarians...)

In his concluding essay, Siker addresses one huge question:

How does the church determine what is sinful or not sinful, what is inauthentic or authentic human existence before God? Similarly, how does the church recognize and accept the power of God's spirit at work, especially when such recognition and acceptance involves conflict with previous understandings of God's empowering Spirit? (p.181)

One of the struggles in answering this question is when the Church tries to reconcile its understanding of the Bible with the lived experience of gay Christians - people who have a valid and real faith in Christ, who are also seemingly unalterably homosexual in orientation.

[late edit: while Siker's book is a great one, you don't have to buy it just to get this essay. The original essay is available on the web here. Thanks to my buddy Wade/Vursinus for the hat-tip...]

That's where the idea that Christians should treat homosexuality like alcoholism comes in. While I don't agree with these arguments, I also can see how on the surface, it could make sense:

- Some people do have a predisposition to alcoholism - just as some have an innate same-sex orientation.

- While alcoholic orientation is tragic but not sinful, most churches believe that active alcoholism is considered sinful. A number of mainstream churches (but by far, not the majority) would similarly agree that homosexual orientation is not sinful, but same-gender sexual activity is sinful.

- An alcoholic predisposition is seen as a consequence of humanity's fall from grace. But the alcoholic must turn away from drinking, even if they cannot repent of their alcoholic orientation.

- An alcoholic - or a homosexual - will remain so for life, even if one abstains from their core activity.

- The church does not want to invite destructive behavior into the church. In the case of alcoholism, there are financial, social and family ramifications. In the case of homosexuality, the perception of many otherwise accepting denominations is that welcoming homosexuals into the church is the equivalent of inviting promiscuity, infidelity, and child sexual abuse into the church, and that it defies procreation as defined by God.

(Of course, we won't even address the mess of infidelity and promiscuity that straight people bring into the church. Watch VH1 or MTV anytime, and tell me how much promotion of promiscuity, infidelity, drug use and materialism is being promoted by the gay commmunity....)

However, Siker points out a number of ways that the alkie/homo analogy breaks down. He says, "These limitations are so serious that in my view they render the analogy not only useless but dangerous."

- The damaging effects of active alcoholism are almost always obvious; this is just not true for a majority of the gays who engage in homosexual activity.
(Aside: I assume he means sexual activity, here, and not just the destructive homosexual activity of gay fashion, gay art, music and dance, not to mention the horrific effects on local neighborhoods of beautifully-decorated gay homes, tastefully-thrown gay dinner parties, committed gay partners involved in the lives of their adopted children, etc. ...)

:::end mini-rant - back to the sane discussion:::
- the American Psychiatric Association recognizes alcoholism as a disease, but clearly does not do so for homosexuality - so we're comparing apples and oranges.

- Importantly, most gays do not see being gay as something from which they need to recover. It's true that the church sees both alcoholism and homosexuality in similar light (as sinful moral choices), but a significant majority of GLBT people do not. (Siker's book does contain an essay about "ego-dystonic homosexuals," gay people who truly believe that homosexuality is wrong, and choose to live celibate lives because of it. It's another worthy read, if only to understand that topic.)

- Alcoholism is based on the act of drinking - and most straight people who talk about gays focus on the act of gay sex (or what my friend Tom S. calls "the 'ick' factor"). But while there are lots of people (straight and gay) who are just into sex for sex's sake, many gays (like many straight folk) see sex as only one small component of being in a committed relationship.

After all, to focus on "tab-A and slot-B" as the heart of being gay is like focusing on plain fornication as the only reason for men and women to be together. In both cases reducing sexuality to just "the act" just objectifies the participants and turns sex into idolatry.

Siker says, "To focus on the sexual act is to miss the point of the larget context of the relationship. It is to dehumanize and depersonalize gays and lesbians, caricaturing them only interms of their sexual activities rather than seeing them as whole persons with lives that include more than sex."

Siker sees the answer in Peter's vision and encounter with Cornelius in Acts 10. Peter has a dream in which all the creatures of the field - even reptiles - are lowered down from Heaven in a sheet, and the voice of God says, "Kill and eat, Peter." Ol' Pete's horrified - that stuff is unclean in his Bible (what we call the Old Testament). The voice of God is pretty clear on this, too: "Do not call anything impure that God has made clean" (Acts 10:15). And just to make sure he hasn't misheard, it's repeated two more times.

Then Peter gets the word to come to Cornelius's house. He goes, and, well, let's let Luke tell the story:

He said to them: "You are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with a Gentile or visit him. But God has shown me that I should not call any man impure or unclean. So when I was sent for, I came without raising any objection. May I ask why you sent for me?" (Acts 10:28-29)

Cornelius says he got a message from God in a dream, saying to send for Peter and to listen to him (interestingly enough, the same commandment the disciples got from God: "This is my Son, in whom I am well pleased. Listen to him!") So they listened, Peter preached, the souls were converted, and the Spirit of God fell on these unclean Gentiles. And boy, our buddy Pete caught merry hell from the church establishment when he got back to church headquarters.

Sound like a familiar story to you?
It does to me, too.

Associating with Gentiles was sinful; they were outside the Law, and outside the people of God. In the same way, gays and lesbians are seen as "abomination" under the Law (unless you read it right), but we are no more outside the love of God than the Gentiles were. Including us in the Kingdom of God can't be that much harder than it was for the Jewish Christ-followers to include the unclean Gentiles, can it?

At Fourth Presbyterian Church in downtown Chicago (one of the few things I will miss about this town), in 95% of the church activity, there is neither male nor female, Greek nor Jew, free nor slave, gay nor straight. There are condo dwellers and urban campers - sometimes in the same pew. The director of volunteer services for this 4,000 member congregation is also one of the founders of Fourth Forum, a fellowship of GLBT folks (and GLBT-friendly straight folks) - and he is seen for who he is - a gay man, a servant of God and a servant of the church. And not in that order...

May that day come quickly for the rest of your Church, Lord.

These words could have been written specifically to the GLBTQ community:

I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified.

My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. (John 17:14-21, NIV)

Lance Bass to People: "I'm Gay"

2006-07-27T12:55:00.000-05:00

Gay community to People: "Well, duh..."

Welcome home, Lance. You only beat me out by 20 years...so I can only welcome you. We all stay in until the cost of staying in gets too high. I'm glad your "bottom" (pardon the phrase) came sooner than mine did.

As the folks from Southwest Airlines say, "You are now free to move about the country" - out and "free at last."

Oh, and a personal note to People: could you have found any picture that made Lance look less mainstream and more "gay" than that one? Maybe one of Lance in a pink tutu?...

Yes, it's been a long, long time....

2006-07-13T04:09:00.000-05:00

...and I will eventually share a summary of all that has gone on over the last two months. Right now, I'm just trying to "pull the nose up" and pull out of the flat spin I've been in for, oh, months.

But there is good news.

In blog-surfing, I discovered RocketKid's blog. A young gay man who is "out" at a Christian college. A guy who seems to have surmounted, at his tender age, all the BS I bought into for so many years. And a great vlogger (video-blogger, for those of us on the late-adopter end of the scale.)

He went to a wedding of a friend - a good friend. And yet the friend's family were of that conservative Christian ilk who see gays as the enemies of God, the enemies of marriage...just "the enemy." His friend's father was the officiating pastor at the wedding, and made sure to point out that the boy-n-girl were perpetuating God's will, while us fags were tearing it down, and so on.

And RocketKid was hurt. Again. By the church that he obviously wants to believe in.

I posted this on his blog, but I want to say it here, as well.

For a number of years, while I was waiting for God to "heal" me, I joined a bunch of men from my church...at Promise Keepers conferences.

Seriously.

Why? Because I loved the worship, I loved the music, I got high on the energy. As a person in recovery, I understood the need for constant repentance and recommitment to a spiritual life, and that was consistent with the PK message. Back then I'd decided, somewhere along the way, that I wasn't going to be gay, but I was going to be gay-affirming - a "let your light so shine before others" kind of thing. So I just let the anti-gay sewage flow in one ear and out the other. But part of it still stuck in my head and my heart, like maple syrup on a spoon. Yeah, "we" are acceptable to God as sinful folks, but "those folks"...oh, there won't be a fire hot enough for THAT crowd.

And it hurt.

It still does.

The problem is that so many so-called Christian ministries seem to need an enemy, a devil to drive people to God. Everyone knows that nothing promotes unity like a common enemy. And the GLBT community has fulfilled that role for years. We have been the "them" to the Christian "us" for so long that most Christian folks believe it as part of the gospel.

A friend of mine pointed out that being gay is not everything in my life - but it's a part of everything in my life. It would be like trying to take the beef out of beef stew. Even if you tried to pull out all the beef, the flavor of the beef has soaked into the carrots and potatoes and all the other vegetables in the soup. No matter what you taste in the soup, you'll taste the beef there, too. (We'll leave any off-color jokes about "pulling meat out" aside, won't we?)

Another friend said it would be like pulling all the blue threads out of a tartan-plaid fabric. Without those threads, the fabric would fall apart.

Nevertheless, I bought that lie for years - that my same-sex attractions were something I could stuff, bury, hide away somewhere. I wasn't sexually active, and wasn't really at risk of it - so who cared?

I did. God did. God made me this way. To hide this part of my life is insane.

My friend Tom said it best, especially here. The world needs to see us - all of us. When I started the coming-out process about 18 months ago, I knew I wasn't doing it because I'd found some gay dreamboat. I was doing it to be more open and honest with others. My prayer was that when the question came up, people who knew me would be able to say, "Hey - they're talking about Steve. And that's not how I know Steve..."

There's a t-shirt at a store called GayMart here in Chicago that says it all:

"We are your sons, your daughters, your mothers, your fathers, your neighbors, your coworkers, your friends. We are here to love - and we are here to stay."

Amen...

Stepping off the "great debate" train

2006-05-19T01:05:00.000-05:00

Over here at Paradoxy, there is a fairly positive discussion of the infamous Levitical texts related to homosexuality. And part of me really wants to weigh in on that discussion, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. It's not that I don't think people should speak to these passages. It's just that I've grown a wee bit tired of discussing the same six or seven texts (depending on whose list you use), and whether and how they are meant to exclude gays and lesbians from heaven.

Part of the reason I've tired of the debate is because the religious right insist on cherry-picking the Biblical commandments they want to enforce. It's the same old discussion - which parts of the Holiness Code are you going to enforce? (In fact, I need to post that wonderful list of the 10 questions about the holiness code we should all ask the religious right...I'll do that in this post immediately below.)

Another part of the reason I don't want to ante up to the discussion is that in the end, it's mostly futile. First, homophobia is a phobia - by definition, it's an irrational fear. One of the wisest things I've heard about combating homophobia since I've been out is this gay truism: You will never be able to logically or rationally argue someone out of a belief or fear that is, by definition, illogical and irrational. A war of words won't transform 99.44% of anti-gay forces, because they aren't responding to words, they're responding to fears and boogeymen.

But even more important is this truth: in the end, both the homo-haters and the homo-supporters appeal to different parts of the same book to justify their attitudes. This is at the heart of a short but extremely useful book by one of the few sane ELCA voices in this discussion: Craig Nessan's Many Members, One Body: Committed Same-Gender Relationships and the Mission of the Church. Nessan is a pastor and theologian at Wartburg Theological Seminary in Dubuque, IA, and he wrote this book (at least in part) to help inform the discussions concerning homosexuality and same-sex ordination at the ELCA national assembly in 2005 (and beyond, since nothing was decided in 2005...)

Nessan suggests that the Old Testament writers had no knowledge of sexual orientation, versus sexual preference - any more than they understood astrophysics when they wrote that the earth was the center of the universe. So the concept of a created, inborn desire for the same sex was impossible for Biblical writers to understand. And the concept of committed same-sex relationships was an impossibility in a world where property and the social order depended on siring male heirs.

You see, I will agree with Levitical writers and with Paul - from a "survival of the people of God" standpoint, hetero men jumping the tracks and having sex with men, back then, was a bad idea - for the same reason that risking eating improperly cooked pork was a bad idea. The "people of God" weren't gonna last long that way.

But what the religious right refuse to acknowledge is the fact that for a number of men and women, they have not "exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones" (Romans 1:26) because they never had those "natural" desires to begin with. Those men and women never "abandoned natural relations" with the opposite sex - for them, those desires were simply absent, from the beginning.

Trying to enforce those rules on homosexuals today makes no more sense than having church officials persecuting NASA employees for saying the earth revolves around the sun. We simply know better, now. And the conditions that threatened the survival of the nomadic tribes of Israel simply no longer apply.

The trouble, Nessan says, is that both sides of the debate are appealing to different parts of the Bible, and both hold the Bible in esteem (though certainly to different standards), what you have is two mutually-exclusive hermaneutics - two completely irreconcilable ways of understanding the Bible and "those passages" in particular. And so both sides stand on either side of the Biblical chasm, shouting at the other side, who could care less about what's being said.

Nessan suggests that that at the level of "love God, and love your neighbors," both sides are essentially "one body, with many members." He makes the pitch that, if we aren't going to split the church over caring for the poor, and we aren't going to split the church over abortion, just war, divorce, hospitality to strangers and/or any of a hundred other topics that Jesus felt were more central to following him, then why should we even consider splitting the Body of Christ over homosexuality? Why can't we simply agree to disagree, as we have with these other topics? Why aren't we spending our time pointing people to Jesus, rather than focusing on this relatively small segment of the population?

Unfortunately, once again, this is a rational approach to an irrational fear. And the religious right has built up those irrational fears through outright lies and half-truths, turning gay men into predatory monsters bent on overthrowing the social order of straight Christianity. They need an enemy, and they've targeted gays and lesbians as the focus of their ire.

So I'll encourage my friends to carry on the discussion - when they find the occasional Christian who really want to hear facts an understand, rather than just shout at the "homos" and "fags." For me, I will sign up with the author of this great quote:

The Church says that the Earth is flat. But I know that it is round, because I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the Church. (Ferdinand Magellan)

Ten questions for the religious right

2006-05-19T01:01:00.000-05:00

1) When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord (Lev 1:9). The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?

2) I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?

3) I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanliness (Lev 15:19-24). The problem is, how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.

4) Lev. 25:44 states that I may indeed possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?

5) I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself?

6) A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an Abomination (Lev 11:10), it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't agree. (After all, have you seen what whole shellfish look like?) Can you settle this?

7) Lev 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle room here?

8) Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev 19:27. How should they die?

9) I know from Lev 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?

10) My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev 19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them? (Lev 24:10-16) Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family affair like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14)

Getting back in the saddle

2006-05-17T23:13:00.000-05:00

I can't believe it's been more than a month since I've posted here. Yeesh.

I dunno why I stopped posting here - it's not like the "journey out" has stopped or I have somehow decided to go back into the closet. Anything but, in fact.

I have been on quite the self-discovery time - lots of reading, lots of reflection, and yet lots of bouts of deep "what the hell does it matter if I'm out?" kinds of thoughts. There's probably lots to write about on that topic - but I think it's been part of a larger struggle with where my life is going, and what it will look like in the future. Certainly my work, and the enormous drain it has put on my life, was a big portion of that - and the good news is, I'm forcing myself to be more reasonable about the work-a-day portion of my life.

But I have to admit that there have been days - like today - when simply suiting up and showing up at the hallowed halls of The Job have been, well, a massive effort. I love the people, I love the challenge of some of what I do - but there is a sizeable component of my day-to-day work that I just really would rather not do. And when I get home, I don't want to do much of anything else. Cleaning, dishes, that kind of crap has been relegated to the "yeah, fine, who cares" region of my psyche.

I'm still struggling with that sense of depression - but having tried anti-depressants and found them desperately wanting (they work wonders for lots of folks, but did nothing for me) I have to believe the road out of my funk is going to be found in physical and spiritual therapy and healing.

I've found a whole bunch of new muses - and I started to write all about them, but realized quickly that this blog-post would turn into an epistle (about the size of the Biblical book of Romans), so that will have to wait. A quick snapshot of my reading list, though, shows the breadth of my blessings (and my expenditures with Amazon!):

-Wounded Prophet: A Portrait of Henri J.M. Nouwen by Michael Ford;
-Homosexuality in the Church: Both Sides of the Debate, edited by Jeffrey Siker;
three books by Chris Glaser:
-Uncommon Calling: A Gay Christian's Struggle to Serve the Church,
-Coming Out As Sacrament, and
-Coming Out To God: Prayers for Lesbians and Gay Men, Their Families and Friends;
-The Lord Is My Shepherd and He Knows I'm Gay, by Rev. Troy Perry (founder of the Metropolitan Community Churches);
-Stranger at the Gate: To Be Gay and Christian in America by Mel White, former ghost-writer to many conservative Christians and now one of the directors of SoulForce; and
-Is the Homosexual My Neighbor? A Positive Christian Response, the classic 1978 text by Letha Dawson Scanzoni and Virginia Ramey Mollenkott.

The preface to Is the Homosexual My Neighbor? is worth the cost of the book by itself. Letha Dawson Scanzoni is a straight woman, and Virginia Ramey Mollenkott is a lesbian, and the preface tells how the book grew out of the conflicted feelings each had when Mollenkott came out to Scanzoni while working on another book project.

Mollenkott "remembered the color draining from Letha's face in shock over the revelation, the news having been a total surprise" (remember, this book was first published in 1978, when being out was still pretty new stuff). Virginia mentioned her friend's expression in a letter, which Letha took exception to (thinking that Virginia felt rejected, when there had been no intention of it). Virginia's words in a letter back to Letha are instructive:

...for me it is a dreadful thing to know that I am a person who can cause such trauma to a good and decent and loving Christian person. I did not say, nor have I ever thought, that you went pale in condemnation of me. It is the fact that I have to turn you pale at all that is distressing to me...

...No matter WHY you went pale, to me it is awful to be the sort of person who has to deliver such psychic blows to another Christian in the process of being honest about who I am. I was talking about my identity, my wish that I could be acceptable without trauma to others...I was trying to express my inner agony at being a person who is not acceptable until after another person I admire has gone through all kinds of painful changes in order to be able to accept me without deserting their moral standards...I was saying that I wish I had been created acceptable. It isn't your fault I was not.

Those few words really crystallized my own internal struggles about coming-out. I've come to believe that I, by myself and by God's grace, am acceptable. But I've also come to the realization that more than a few of my friends (especially those in the church) probably had a similar reaction (though I haven't known, since many of my "outings" have been by mail or email). And I have to admit that I resent having to break down the barrier of inculturation and prejudice that has grown up thanks to the religious right and others, supposedly in the name of God.

[:::end mini-rant:::]

This weekend is going to be insane. Kind of as bookends are two events that my emplooyer is helpng to sponsor. One of the reasons I was drawn to The Job is that there is a considerable effort on the part of my employer to openly support GLBT causes. As a result, there is actually a workplace PrideAlliance employee group that has more than 200 members, and a co-worker said, "Why aren't you a PrideAlliance member?" So I got on the mailing list, and about 2 days later, we got two different invitations.

The Out&Equal 2006 Workplace Summit will be in Chicago in September, and my employer is one of the sponsors of the conference. There is a reception this coming Friday evening - at the Hyatt Regency Chicago, of all places - for the sponsors and organizers, and my employer has invited members of the PrideAlliance to attend. There will be boring speeches by folks from Da Mayor's office, but it should be fun nonetheless. My first gay social event!

And then on Sunday, The Employer is treating us to a fundraiser for the Center on Halsted, the gay community center that will open up in Boystown in early 2007. The fundraiser is a champagne brunch at Sidetrack, a gay video bar known for their Sunday afternoon show-tunes. We'll see what happens there...I know enough to stay away from the champagne, but as Tom & Damien pointed out to me, it will be a fabulous chance to mix and mingle and just see gay life away from the Queer As Folk stereotypes.I don't know any of the 8 folks who will attend (they're all from our Up North office) but it should be fun, nonetheless.

In between, the good/sad news is that Michael and Damien's move to Wisconsin Dells will finalize Saturday at noon. In a fit of insanity, I'm going to follow their rent-a-truck up to the Dells, just to help them with the last few big pieces of furniture, and to see their new place up in the Land of Ten Thousand WaterParks. But I'll have to scoot pretty early on Sunday AM in order to get back for the brunch.

Several people have questioned my sanity at a four-hour drive on each end of that trip in less than 24 hours. But I love to just get out and drive, at least once we get outside of the city of Chicago (especially since I got the iPod - listening to some of my music collection that has just been collecting dust). And I never have made it up to Tom's farm during the construction phase, so it seems right to get up there this weekend, even if it means I'll need a weekend to recover from the weekend (especially before Hell Week at The Job).

That's it...I've got to get to bed - trash day is just a few short hours away But I want, and need, to keep my thoughts flowing as I keep on going down this river of gay life. And this is a good start!

An anniversary, and a remembrance

2006-04-08T23:55:00.000-05:00

A disclaimer - this is not a fun or comfortable posting. If you're offended by hearing (even indirectly) about men having sex, this posting is not for you. Those few parts are not particularly graphic, but they are fairly central to the story.

If you're still with me, read on...

From the time that I moved to Ohio in 1973, Skip was my best friend. We were two semi-outcasts - he because of his lack of height, me because of my weight and my transfer-student status. Yet somehow we found each other, and we found our niche in high school together first in theatre, then in marching band and choir. We were what Dan Fogleberg would later call "twin sons of different mothers."

Skip and I double-dated a lot - he was always much more successful with women than I ever was - and we became best drinking buddies as well. After high-school, I started off to school (on what turned out to be an eight-year bachelor's degree) and he went off on an abortive career as a vacuum-sweeper salesman and various other kinds of scams. He married his high-school sweetheart in 1977, while I tried and failed a number of times to have successful relationships with females.

In late 1982, after an evening of highly-successful drinking, we ended up together at the home of friend where I was "house-sitting." Our inhibitions were already down, and we ended up in the same king-sized bed in the one heated bedroom in the house. One thing led to another, and we ended up exchanging oral sex. Neither of us were black-out drinkers - so the next morning, we both knew what had happened, but we tiptoed around the subject as if a rhinoceros was in the bedroom with us. We had breakfast, and he went back to his soon-to-be-ex-wife in Columbus.

Over the next year, we had maybe half-a-dozen more oral encounters, all under the influence of alcohol. Either one of us would initiate sex, so it was not one-sided in any way. And we both clearly enjoyed it - although it seemed that Skip was increasingly more uncomfortable about it when we were sober. When I met my soon-to-be wife, I'm pretty sure that our playtimes stopped (there might have been one more encounter before I got married, but I honestly can't remember for sure).

After all, I was intent on being a faithful husband - because that's what I believed "normal" men were supposed to do. I can't say that I stopped fantasizing about sex with Skip, and there were times when I wished we had just had the guts to speak the truth about how we felt about each other. Then, in my fantasy, we'd ditch our respective relationships, take things "all the way" to intercourse (which Skip had hinted at wanting to do) and just choose to be together with each other. By that time, he was divorced - but I was still married (and a coward), and that was that.

Flash forward six years. Both our lives were in the throes of end-stage alcoholism, though neither of us really believed that. Skip, I later found out, was also involved with cocaine and new age "spirit channeling," which was taking him down darker and darker roads. Both of us were in desperate financial straits, spending way more than we were earning, and trying to look "normal" while doing it.

Two weeks before Easter 1990, Skip showed up at my house with a bottle of Drambuie (a long-standing birthday tradition for us) and a really heavy heart. As we sat on the front steps of my recently-acquired house in West Toledo, he poured out his troubles - how his finances were falling apart, how he was having trouble performing at work, how his new girlfriend (another childhood sweetheart) was souring on him, and how his parents and grand-parents had completely rejected him (the girlfriend was black, and Skip's family was pure redneck).

Unfortunately, I had no experience, strength or hope to share with him. I told him, "Skip, I've got no answers for you. I'm probably about 8 months away from bankruptcy myself; my marriage is completely on the rocks; I've got a four-inch hole in my leg from a lesion that was at least partly caused by my drinking; and my family really doesn't care whether I live or die, right now."

I was so wrapped up in my own struggles and shame that I couldn't hear his desperation, couldn't see his despair. We sat on the front steps, side-by-side, and commiserated a while longer. Out of the blue, Skip said, "Yeah, things are so bad between [the girlfriend] and I that nothin's happenin' between us. Hell, she won't even give me a blowjob any more." (Not surprisingly, my own sexual activity had fallen off in similar fashion.)

So I poured a little more Drambuie into his glass, smiled at him, and said (at least half-jokingly), "Well, at least THAT'S something I could help you out with..."

The rest I remember in slow-motion - Skip leaping up off the step, turning and facing me with this look of horrified shame, his expression and body-language almost shouting, "How the fuck could you possibly have said that out loud?"

He stared at me a moment longer, then set his glass down on the step in silence, turned and walked to his van, got in and drove away without another word. As I watched his van roll down the street, I remember distinctly two sentiments: one, that I was so terribly sorry he had been offended by what I had said; and two, that part of me really wished he had taken me up on my offer.

I had no idea that he had gone home that night, packed up a dozen things he had of value, and spent a week traveling around Ohio, handing his treasures over to friends and family members. I had no idea how mentioning our shared sexual history was the absolute final straw for Skip, coming hours after his grandfather (whom he adored) told him that so long as he had "that niggah girlfriend," he would never be welcomed in their house again.

But a week later, he drove back into Toledo very, very drunk. And shortly before dawn on April 8, 1990 - Palm Sunday - he knelt down next to a tree beside a jogging path at the Wildwood Metropark in Toledo, pressed a .38 caliber pistol to his chest, and pulled the trigger.

The bullet did not pierce his heart, as several of his suicide notes said he planned to do. It severed his aorta, and (according to the police report) he spent several minutes thrashing around on the ground, drowning in his own blood, alone.

He was 33.

I had been up all night chaperoning a youth-group overnighter in South Toledo. I hadn't even known Skip had left town, and as I remember it, the first hint of trouble I got was when his girlfriend called my house to ask if I knew where Skip was. About an hour later, she called back, and asked me if I could drive her downtown. It seemed a jogger had discovered Skip, and they needed her to come down and identify the body. All the way downtown, we both hoped and prayed it was a case of mistaken identity.

It was no mistake.

It was even more devastating when I found out that his girlfriend, several of his friends, his ex-wife and each of his family members had received suicide letters, postmarked the day before he died. Because of everyone he knew closely, the only person who didn't get a letter was me.

I remember thinking at the time, "Well, evidently Skip believed I had all the information I would need about why he killed himself."

It took me several years before I could forgive him for that. But in fact, when my own life self-destructed in December 1990, the only reason I couldn't kill myself was because I knew that while it would take me out of any hope of a solution, it wouldn't clear up any of my problems. That simple knowledge, as painful as it was, was also a saving grace for me.

The first time I could find even a smidgeon of peace about Skip's death was at two years sober, being asked to be an AA sponsor by a 19-year-young man - and having him admit to me how often he felt shame over his own "close encounters with the same sex." And as he sat there, dejected, waiting for my judgement on him, I could share with him what happened as a result of my own same-sex encounters - and what they cost me. And out of our shared pain and shame came healing. A few months later, a fellow still in high-school and newly sober did the same thing - and a little more of the pain and shame went away.

It took several more years to admit how angry I had been at Skip for cutting off the chance for us to live together in sobriety. And it has only been in the last two years that I have been willing to admit how much I wished I'd had the chance to be honest with him about how I felt about him, emotionally and physically.

A little over a week ago was my first out "belly-button birthday." I've had the opportunity to tell this story several times in the last six months, and each time I've told it, I've found new strength and new healing.

So on this anniverary date, it seems appropriate to put this story out - if for no other reason than to tell anyone else who might have similar shame or pain about their sexuality this important truth: No matter how far your life may seem to have disintegrated, no matter how many friends and family have rejected you because of your homosexuality, believe this: your life, your love and your story are valuable - both to God, to those who love you, and to others who need to hear your story.

The God of my misunderstanding was waiting for me with arms open wide, when I finally was willing to admit the truth about myself. And I trust that the same God will be there for you, as well.
If even one person hears that message, and chooses to go on living as a result, the pain of sharing this story will have been worth it.

So, all these years later, I need to say these things:

I love you, Skip....still. And I miss you, still. A lot of the hurt, and the anger, is gone - and I have to admit that there are sometimes multiple weeks that can go by without a thought of you. But I still wish you were here.

I'd loved you far more that a brother - even back then.

And I really, really wish I'd had the balls to get honest with myself and with you, and tell you that out loud, before you died.

I wish you could have held on long enough to find out that there was hope, and sobriety, and healing, for the two of us - regardles whether we were together or apart. You'll never believe all the times that I'll hear a song, or have some experience and say, "Damn, I wish you were here for this..."

I still believe those hopes are valid and true for me, today. And I trust that there will be another man - or men - with whom I can share my heart and my body the way I wish I could have with you.
Love,
Steve

It's no longer about passing a test...

2006-04-08T22:54:00.000-05:00

I saw the test (below) on several fellow coming-out-bloggers' sites, and thought it would be fun to take it.

Of course, I also took one of these online tests to see which Dr. Seuss character I was, too. I'm not sure that scale necessarily defined my character or personhood, either.

I'd not heard of the Klein scale before, so Tom's explanatory notes were helpful. Of course, he also said that "Simple-minded categories are for rabbits, in my opinion."
(He says a lot of things "are for rabbits," for that matter. In fact, he's always talking abou rabbits. I'll have to get him to explain the reference on that one. Are rabbits for gay men like gerbils, only bigger?... Inquiring minds want to know.)

I do agree that "fitting in" is (for me, at least) becoming less of a driving force - and I don't need some online test to tell me I'm gay. I know that for a fact. And taking the test was not an indication that I was seeking proof or acceptance by "scoring well" on someone's theoretical scale of fagitude. Thank God, I am well past that.

::::comic-strip sound-bite: "I yam what I yam, an' tha's all that I yam." ::::

Not a surprising score...

2006-04-08T00:03:00.000-05:00

Well, this wasn't much of a surprise:

Klein Sexual Orientation Grid

I scored an average of 4.14

0 1 2 3 4 5 6
Heterosexual Bisexual Homosexual

Meaning
This result can also be related to the Kinsey Scale:

0 = exclusively heterosexual
1 = predominantly heterosexual, incidentally homosexual
2 = predominantly heterosexual, but more than incidentally homosexual
3 = equally heterosexual and homosexual
4 = predominantly homosexual, but more than incidentally heterosexual
5 = predominantly homosexual, incidentally heterosexual
6 = exclusively homosexual

Summary
The idea of this excercise is to understand exactly how dynamic a person's sexual orientation can be, as well as how fluid it can be over a person's lifespan. While a person's number of actual homo/heterosexual encounters may be easy to categorize, their actual orientation may be completely different. Simple labels like "homosexual", "heterosexual", and "bisexual" need not be the only three options available to us.

Take the quiz

Given the fact that I was married for more than six years, and deeply closeted for 30 years, it would be kinda tough (especially given the weight given in this test for the past) to score much higher, I'd guess.

I definitely feel more of a 5, though. After all, there are some disqualifying conditions which would forever prevent me from pinning the Gayometer (being fashion- and decor-impaired, and not being young, attractive, height-weight proportionate, or well-endowed enough). But there are some definitely OGT's _(obviously gay traits) [hat-tip to The Broken Hearts Club for the term]:

- Having videos from both Bel Ami and Falcon studios
- Knowing why they call Lukas Ridgeston "Lucky Lukas"
- Having a significant aversion to all team sports
- Owning more than 1 Barbara Streisand or Carpenters album

And, of course, being really turned on by attractive men....

A public response to an anonymous comment

2006-04-03T01:34:00.000-05:00

Isn't it nice when a person's comments on a post exactly prove the point you'd been trying to make?...

A person who identifies themselves only as "NCS" said that they "noticed a lot of things I wanted to respond to."

Well, there are a few things I'd like to respond to, as well...the commenter's words will be in italics, from now on...

One thing that sticks out like a sore thumb is that you basically do not believe the Bible at all. You are putting what YOU think and feel and what your body feels above the Word of God.

One thing that sticks out repeatedly in your commenting is the amazingly arrogant assumption that you know what I believe.

Did you happen to catch the item - in my very first post - that said that I'd been completely celibate (no sex whatsoever) since 1994?? Do you think I could have done that without the help of God? What sorts of thoughts and prayers do you suppose I was "feeding myself" in order to set myself apart from any kind of intimate contact? I sure wasn't getting that out of Out magazine...

I had several friends that were Christians, went into homosexuality then LEFT it, got married but even they will tell you they sought the Lord for deliverance for this reason: because they knew it was SPIRITUALLY wrong and they WANTED TO PLEASE THE LORD. Anything you feed will GROW.

It's interesting...I've had the similar experience, in reverse, it seems...

I have several friends who still think they are Christians, but are in fact sodomites. Oh, they are married, and blissfully heterosexual in all their physical activities. But they were sodomites, nonetheless - not according to what most folks think about Sodom in tradition, but according to the word of God. They, too, knew that their behavior was "SPIRITUALLY wrong" - but they just didn't care about "pleasing the Lord." Still don't, for that matter.

Because, you see, they come to church in their Lexuses and Infinitis and Land Rovers, wearing Rolex watches and $1,000 suits, and they mouth pious sewage about loving the Lord all the while. But they refuse to contribute a nickel to the food-pantry, the metro-area housing projects, or other efforts to care for the poor and downtrodden. And they certainly would never actually go down there to help.

And you see, my Bible is very clear about the sin of Sodom:
" 'Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.'" (Ezekiel 16:49)

What do you suppose those Christians were feeding themselves?....

So much of what I read on your site says this: "I will place my own body,what I feel and my personal experience above the Word of God."

No - on this site I haven't done anything of the kind. How could I have remained celibate for a decade, if I were placing my body above the word of God?

What I have done is try to reconcile Scripture and my own experience. How can a God who "knew me before I was knitted in the womb" allow enough stitches to drop to make me this way? Because, you see, I had to be created this way. I never chose this - who in God's name would? And I never abandoned anything.

(Well, that's a lie. I abandoned my natural homosexual state long enough to be married for six years, waiting for God to fix me. But I sure never abandoned what you would call "natural desires," because I never had 'em to begin with.)

I am not trying to wound you! But God set down principles for us to live by. Basically, He says: 'do it My Way.'

You're absolutely right. God does say, "Do it my way." But I'm not sure you're seeing what God thinks "it" is...

Let's look to the Scripture, for instance, and see how we are supposed to be treating those who are outside of the community of faith (which seems to be where gay people end up):
The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born. Love him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt. I am the LORD your God. (Leviticus 19:34)

He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the alien, giving him food and clothing. And you are to love those who are aliens, for you yourselves were aliens in Egypt. (Deuteronomy 10:18-20)

Sounds just like our current so-called "Christian" nation's approach to broken families and immigrants, doesn't it?

Well, we can skip all that, can't we? After all, none of that stuff actually applies anymore, right? It's Old Testament stuff...all that law stuff has been fulfilled in Christ. So let's look at the New Testament...

"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments." (Matthew 22:36-40)

You know, I've checked 4 different translations - and not one of them says "love your straight neighbor as yourself." Has the Christian church acted in a loving way toward their gay and lesbian neighbors? Hmmm...might have to uncheck that box...

And we won't even get into Matthew 25:31-46, which Jesus tells us is going to separate the sheep from the goats.

In short, there are supposedly 7 texts about homosexuality - about which there is a significant amount of debate on whether the true intent is "people with homosexual orientation," which was unknown in the Biblical world, or if it was "straight people forsaking normal passions" (Romans 1).

But there are LITERALLY HUNDREDS of verses in this sacred Scripture on which there is no question about the stated intent - and about which the straight Christian church has failed to act, consistently, for two thousand years.

All I'm going to suggest is that before you go pickin' at the splinter in my eye, you'd best attend to the log in your own. Somebody important had something to say about that, too...

How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.(Matthew 7:4-5)

Jesus said: 'if you love me, KEEP my commands')and so he can show forth His holiness and goodness in us.

Absolutely. And I think the gay and lesbian community would be delighted if so-called Christians would just stop being so damn selective about which commandments we're ALL gonna follow.

And many foster homes these days are VERY nice...not all are like the stuff you see in the media.

Really? Come to Chicago and show me. I was a youth advisor for years, and got to see first-hand what loving, caring Chrstians did to kids in those "nice" foster homes. Or talk to my friend Norma, the social worker and Methodist minister in Kansas City. Tell us about how nice foster homes are...

Also, the average length of gay partnerships is 5 years or LESS. And in 20 years I have yet to be in a 'happy' gay home. There is usually a lot of power struggles going on.

Well, I can't address the 5-year statistic - because there are very, very few legal "gay partnerships." No such thing as gay marriage, you know. But isn't it interesting that the states which have allowed gay partnerships have the lowest rates of divorce, and those who have explicitly forbidden gay partnerships so far have the highest rate of straight divorce, and the highest rates of child abuse, in the nation? "They'll know we are Christians by our love," eh?

If you have yet to be in a "happy" gay home in 20 years, all I can say is, you need to get out more. Since, by definition, the number of children in "gay homes" is virtually nil, it follows that all the physical and sexual abuse going on is in straight people's homes - nor are those kids in foster care ending up there because of the breakup of gay marriages.

I intend no condemnation here..but for years, you fed all those desires and they grew and now they are ruling you and coloring all your current experiences.

How can you possibly know what I have fed in my heart? How can you say that, not knowing the number of hours I have knelt in tearful prayer, begging God to "heal" me, make me straight, and fix me? How can you question my sincerity, not having known what Gethsemanes I have experienced? Can you really be that arrogant, to claim to know my heart and my experience from a few blog entries?

And as for being "changed" or "healed," I have come to believe that I am being "changed into His likeness" - being healed of the self-hate and self-loathing I have lived with for 30 years.

You obviously "understand" nothing - and your ability to judge me, and my beliefs, and my history, based on this particular rant is absolutely unbelievable.

How dare you even pretend to profess to know what I believe and what I don't! If I didn't believe the central promise of Christ, his death and resurrection for my sins (and yours), I would have taken my own life in despair a dozen times over by now. My hope is built on Christ alone - regardless of who I sleep with (or don't, in this case), who I vote for, or anything else. Check out 1st Cor. 15:3-8, if you need to see my own personal credo.

I could go on, but I suspect it won't even prompt you to read any of my own backstory - let alone believe any of it. So I'm just going to leave it be.

Your comments, however, have become the perfect proof-text for everything I'd written in my earlier post. I appreciate that more than you'll ever know.

Tired of Christians, tired of Christianity

2006-03-20T01:39:00.000-06:00

On the ride back from Kansas to Chicago two weeks ago, I had the chance to for several extended conversations with Tom, who has been alternately mentor, shepherd and border-collie on my journey out of the closet. One conversation was on the to-Kansas side of the trip, just catching up. But I had two conversations with him - one while I was there, and one on the way home - discussing the various coming-out encounters that I had during that extended weekend.

During one call, as I told him about my encounter with my friend and former pastor (who recommended that I consider what Exodus International might have to offer to me), Tom said, "At some point you're going to have to address the harm that the Christian church has done to you, and how they've screwed with your head for so many years. I know you've got the tools to deal with all the resentment, and I know you'll get to it. Just know that it's coming..."

(He probably used some more colorful language than that, come to think of it.)

Well, that process started in earnest over the last couple weeks, and really came to a head starting Thursday, I think. A number of things happened that really got me to resenting Christians and Christianity a bunch.

First, two horrific stories on GeekBoi's site just absolutely appalled me. This one, where a gay man died because a cop wouldn't allow anyone to give him mouth-to-mouth resusitation, was awful...the kind of thing that movies like "Billy Jack" and "Walking Tall" were made of. People who would rather let people die or rot in jail rather than even consider their vicious little stereotypes have always infuriated me.

But it was this posting, describing the actions of Catholic Charities in the very Arch Diocese of Boston, who basically closed up the adoption activities of Catholic Charities, rather than risk any child being adopted by gay parents, that really got my ire going.

God damn their pious bullshit!!

How dare they speak of the all-encompassing love of God, and yet consign homeless children to unending foster-home care rather than even consider the possibility that a couple of loving, caring, committed homosexuals might adopt them!

GeekBoi's words are so much clearer and to-the-point than mine would be that I'll just point you there. (You preach it, brother.)

But the real frosting on the cake was not in Christians rejecting homosexuals - but in one man accepting me, exactly as I am.

When my seminary career ended, I started a blog where I spent a lot of time (and way too many words) wrestling with God's will for me, given that His church didn't want me as a candidate for ministry (long before I came out to anyone!). And in the process, I came across a pretty fair number of loving, caring Christians who thought as I thought, and who seemed to understand God as I was coming to understand God. So far, I have kept that blogging community and this one pretty separate - largely because I hadn't come out to several family and close friends who frequented my "other" blog.

One of them, my friend Chris, is one blogger who I've actually met face-to-face a year ago here in Chicago when he came in for a conference. A week or so ago, in posting to his blog, I realized I probably should be out to him, and sent him a brief coming-out email and a link to this site. In the email, I said that I didn't expect he'd have any problems with my announcement, but I was still we wee bit nervous, given the polarizing effect of GLBT issues in the church. His email back was instructive:

Steve,

I'm not polar on this issue and love you (still) as a result. I know that my attitude on homosexuality is polarizing among Christians, but I will stand before God on that one. I don't envy your process, but it changes nothing as far as my friendship and personal regards for you. Count on me to walk with you, talk with you, pray with you and quite frankly not consider the fact that you're gay to blip my radar.

After this week of banshee like screeching (otherwise known as term paper writing), I look forward to reading your intro posts.

I honor your honesty and respect you for "coming out" in an intimate way. Peace to you my brother...Jesus loves you. How odd, a Savior who loves the very people he died for...people like me.
Chris

There were many, many excuses I had for why I hid in the closet for so long. But I allowed my buy-in to Christian homophobia to keep myself hidden away in the closet, hiding my truth for the last fifteen years from people like Chris - folks who would have very likely accepted me anyway.

What a fucking, fucking waste. Sorry, but there's just no other way to say that.

By the way, in the middle of all this, I made the mistake of watching the DVD Priest. Don't get me wrong; it's a great movie. But the Amazon.com synopsis gives a hint as to my problem with it:

A Priest tries to reconcile his love for another man with his love for God, but when a girl steps into the confessional and reveals that her father sexually abuses her, he's frustrated by the laws of the church and questions his faith in a God who would allow this to happen.

It's a good story, but it's not a happy story, and it surely doesn't present organized religion in a light that says, "Gee, I think I need to go back to that!" Anything but, in fact...

The rainbow sprinkles on the frosting on the cake, so to speak, has been reading Jeffrey Siker's Homosexuality in the Church: Both Sides of the Debate. While it seems (so far) to be well-balanced between traditional and liberal views on homosexuality, I just find myself getting so damn weary of the Christian biblical party line, which is basically:

1) God made everything. Male and female he made them. Not Adam and Steve, but Adam and Eve. That's the way it works here - God built it that way. Get over it.

2) The bible has seven texts, five and a half of which condemn homosexual activity in varying ways (depending on how you read and translate them). Yes, we know, the Bible has just hundreds of verses about how we should be struggling for economic and social justice for the weakest among us, and and just as many about how we really ought to be treating folks with care and compassion - but we don't have to worry about that crap.

3) Yes, poverty, joblessness and miserable education have a devastating effect on family life everywhere. And yes, we keep claiming that our concern is with the family. But we're going to focus on you fags instead, because it's easier to go after a minority group than to pry those supposedly good, loving Christians away from what really matters - their SUV's, suburban houses, wallets and purses.

Yup, I think I've had enough of this particular group for a while....

Busted - and blessed

2006-03-06T21:40:00.000-06:00

I need to wrap up my adventures in Kansas with two interesting encounters - one very unintentional, and one intentional - both of which turned out quite well.

On my way home, I met up with my friend Norma just north of KC in Liberty, MO. She was a fellow seminarian from KC whom I met in 1997 when I was first starting the whole part-time student thing at St. Paul School of Theology. She was one of the part-time/evening students, and we managed to pal around as part of a group of evening folk, frequently in each other's classes. We started dating around 2000 - just dinners and such, at first - and it became very clear that she really would have liked the relationship to go forward more than it was.

I wasn't completely clueless about my sexuality back then - but was definitely not ready to come out to my school and church. And although there was a great deal of affection between us, I just couldn't manufacture the desire or passion even to go past cuddling on the sofa - though I tried repeatedly. I tried to tell her at the time that it wasn't her - but she wasn't buying it, and she felt pretty rejected. The friendship recovered, and actually deepened over the years - but the relationship remained a pretty chaste one.

So, fast forward to the Kansas weekend. I'd arranged to meet Norma just for a casual lunch, and was also going to take advantage of the time to come out to her. As lunch was served, we were talking about stuff in her life and her work when down the aisle came this truly stunning-looking waiter - think Chris in Latter Days. And I did what my homo-mentor has been encouraging me to do - I looked. He and I locked eyes for just a moment, he smiled and walked on by...and I turned back to see Norma with this odd expression on her face. She asked, "What's up with that?" I must have blushed, and I muttered something about he looked like someone I knew. Norma gave me another weird look, and then said, "Steve...have you ever considered the possibility that you might be gay?"

Whoops. Busted. Big time.

"Actually, that was on the list to talk about today, Norma..."

"Oh, really...?"

It actually went pretty well from there - although the "Why haven't you said anything until now?" issue had her a little miffed. And there were some tears - at least a few of them healing, I hope - as I told her how much I'd wanted things to work out romantically between us, but I had just known that it wouldn't (even though I wasn't willing to admit, even to myself, why it wouldn't work).

I think it helped her to know that it was me, and not her, that was the breaking point in the romantic aspirations. She told me she knew that I loved her - that simple friendships would never have endured what we've endured - and I told her she was right. And as I left for Des Moines, she gave me a hug and a kiss on the cheek, and wished me well.

The visit in Des Moines, with my friend Nathan, was entirely different. I'd emailed him before I left, and linked him to this blog, and he emailed back to say, "Looking forward to seeing you." We had a delightful Lutheran-church-basement casserole dinner - pure comfort food - and we talked about everything under the sun except my orientation. And yet it didn't feel like "the rhinoceros in the living room" - we just talked about what was on our minds. And as I got in the car to leave, I had to wonder - was I avoiding the topic? Was Nathan? Or were things just that OK between us?

The answer came by email late last week:

I know that you are 'Steve.' Your new announcement is a scary thing to you, thus it can be so big. You are still the man who is my friend and the best man at my wedding, that has been successful. Nothing in our relationship has changed. It seems that even though you were not out at the time, you really have not changed since the day we met. You have just realized and accepted some things that are just are, since then.
Take care,
Nathan

As the old song goes, "Who could ask for anything more?"

At this point, I'm wondering what else to do in the circle of church friends. There's a circle of about a dozen folks at the level of "good friends that I care about, have significant history with, but don't keep in constant contact with." Most of them I won't see, other than funerals or weddings, and part of me says, "Who cares if they know?" But part of me says that I need to come out to them, perhaps, most of all. Because there's a number of them - loving, caring people who have supported me and encouraged me - who are nonetheless Promise Keeper members and Focus on the Family supporters, who probably need to at least hear my story, even if they don't want to agree with it.

Decisions, decisions. For now, though, I'm pretty content with where I am, and the journey so far. And that's a good feeling to know.

Baby-steps, and "Why are you doing this?"

2006-03-03T06:03:00.000-06:00

First, to my blogging friends, my apologies. It has been a long and emotional week, and I have light-years to go to catch up with your writings. That's the goal for this weekend, anyway. So please be patient...I really have missed the chance to be able to stay connected with y'all.

Lots of baby steps on the road to Gayopolis - so get a cup of coffee and settle in...

I had not intended for this weekend to be a big coming-out time - as I wrote earlier, it was a weekend for the memorial for a friend, not discussions about my sexuality. But there were a couple folks who I was going to be able to see face-to-face for the first time since deciding to come out publicly, and it seemed like a good chance to come out to them while I was visiting in Kansas.

Friday night, I had a late-night coffee-n-conversation with my friend Eric, who I've mentioned a couple other times in this blog (here and here). It was his dad who died - and so we talked a while about how Eric was doing, and the events of having his dad die while he was out of town. He asked me about stuff about my spiritual life - where I was going to church (no one specific place), how I was doing, and so forth. But when a lull came in the conversation, near midnight, I said, "OK, I know this weekend is not about me, but while it's just us, I have one burning question I have to ask..." He raised one eyebrow and smiled, and I said, "So...you really weren't surprised?"

Turns out that Eric had more-or-less guessed my orientation back in 1997. Back in college, Eric's roommate Rick came out to him, and the two of them remained friends and roommates throughout their KU days. Rick came to stay with Eric's folks in late 1997, as part of recuperating from some surgery. During that visit, I'd met Rick, and evidently I asked Rick and Eric both about Rick's being gay, and how it affected their relationship. In the course of that visit, Rick had evidently asked Eric if I was gay, and Eric said I probably "had some tendencies in that direction." (Yeah, Eric...just a few...)

Eric asked an interesting question, though. As best I remember it, it was, "So really - why are you doing this? Most of the time, when people have come out to me, they are generally looking for approval of their adopting a homosexual lifestyle. Is that what you're looking for? And if not, why are you bothering?"

It's an important question - if only because in many ways I am coming out without the "carrot" of a same-sex relationship, and yet without the "stick" of gay-related disease. For a lot of straight folks, there would really be no other reason to come out. And (for better or worse) I have neither issue in my life, for now.

I gave this answer several times this weekend, when the question came up, and I think it's important to share it here:

"First, because I'm tired of living the lie, and having the folks who care about me not really know me. For me, my sexuality is a non-issue, in many ways - but it's a non-issue that I've expended incredible amounts of energy to hide from people. So the first part of this is simply about being honest - with myself, and with you. It's just easier to be open and honest."

"The second part is more general, if no less important: there is a very prevalent stereotype of homosexuals and the homosexual lifestyle that absolutely does not apply to 90% of the gay and lesbian folks I know. Everyone keeps talking about this 'homosexual lifestyle,' but so far I haven't received my Homosexual Lifestyle Starter Kit, with the hot cabana boy, crystal meth and and a spandex outfit. Maybe it was sent out, and I just wasn't there to sign for the delivery." (hat-tip to GeekBoi for that classic line...)

"But the only way that this stereotype is ever going to die is going to be when gay men like me are willing to step out of the closet and stop hiding their 'gay lifestyles,' which are so damn normal in so many ways!"

"The only way that people are going to come to understand gay life is when they realize the vast number of relationships that they already have with gay men and lesbians all around them. The fact is, it's simply harder to hate what (and who) you know."

"And especially in the Christian church, when people debate 'the homosexual question,' when my straight church friends think about them, I want them to think, Oh, yeah - they're talking about my friend Steve..."

So that's why I'm doing this. And Eric appreciated the answer, I think.

Of course, there is another side of this topic for me, as well.

To be rigorously honest, yes - I'd like to have at least a slice of the homosexual lifestyle. I'd love to have a host of gay friends to go along with the wealth of straight friends I already have, and (someday) a loving and intimate relationship with someone. And in the couple times I was asked this weekend, I didn't shy away from admitting it either. As I've half-jokingly said to several folks, while celibacy is non-fatal, it certainly isn't a lot of fun. (And, thankfully, it is ultimately treatable, given willing practitioners.) For so long, I'd resigned myself to living and dying alone. While I don't know what God has in store for me, I do hope I can find a way to do better than that, with God's help.

And so the weekend went. The conversation with Eric ended well; the conversation with my sponsor Barry on Saturday morning went well, and he ended up in the "well, I'm neither surprised nor unsurprised - but it changes nothing" column.

I had a particularly interesting discussion with one of the young men I'd sponsored in AA before I left - I'd come out to him earlier, via email and phone. But Ryan actually asked a question that floored me: "Now I know that while you sponsored me, you never put a move on me, and I trusted you with my life more than once. But now that you've come out to me, I have to ask you, strictly as a gay man: Do you think I'm attractive?"

Trust me - that was an "oh, wow..." moment. He had me flustered for a moment or two.

After all, as an AA sponsor, I've always believed that sponsorship relationships are really a holy calling - even more so than I'd ever thought of my calling to ministry. And at the time I was sponsoring this fellow, I'd thought myself so personally unattractive that even if I found him attractive, I knew for certain that whatever was there would never be returned, regardless of his orientation (which is definitely near zero on the Kinsey scale). So I'd never, ever thought of Ryan in that way.

Until then.

In fact, it kinda ruined any chance I'd ever have of sponsoring him again. Because yes, to me he is a rather attractive guy.

When I told him that, along with how uncomfortable it was to admit it, he smiled. "You know," he said, "my wife keeps saying things like, 'Those women better keep their hands off you,' and I've always wondered why she thinks I'd be attractive to other women. I just never ever believed it from her..."

And then he smiled, a little sheepishly, and said, "...but I knew you'd tell me the truth."

That brought tears to my eyes.

At dinner Saturday night, before the Sunflower Roundup AA conference, I was listening to my buddy Mike talk about some struggles he was having with various lady-folk, and I half-jokingly said, "That's where we're both alike - when it comes to relationships and sex, it's the same old three problems - 'too much, too little, wrong kind.' You do 'too much,' and I end up doing 'too little' and 'wrong kind.'"

Mike smiled, and said, "Oh, so you're finally gonna tell me you're gay, huh?"

Trust me – that was not the reaction I was expecting...

So, I hemmed and hawed, and finally said, "Well, yeah, actually, that was on the agenda..." He laughed, and said, "Bruce [my first Kansas AA sponsor] and I have been wondering for years when you were finally going to tell us!"

Yeah, Mike...well, it took a while to figure it out for myself, actually...

And that was pretty much the end of that.

Sunday morning was one of my more challenging encounters. I was staying with a friend and semi-retired Lutheran pastor - one who I'd been a ministry-partner with in my original Kansas congregation. He and his wife have been good friends over the last seven or eight years, and they have been some of my biggest supporters when I came to Chicago to seminary. They were two folks I'd hoped to have some time to have a talk with over the weekend, but my schedule and theirs had kept it from happening so far.

So it was a little surprise when, over coffee and orange juice Sunday morning, John said to me, "So, Steve...I've heard that you've been telling people that you're gay...and that it was on your web-site. But I went over to your site, and I couldn't find anything. Is this true?"

Well, that wasn't the way I'd intended to start that conversation, but that worked...

To make a long story less long, John works part-time at the church I'm still a member of back in Kansas, and he'd heard this from my senior pastor, to whom I'd come out via email back in November. Since I'd told Pastor Joe that I was going to be sharing this with several other folks in my circle of church friends, he evidently talked about it with John...which was entirely cool.

John and Judy were the first ones of my friends to suggest talking to Exodus International. Exodus had started out as an "ex-gay ministry," and for years supported efforts to convert people back from homosexuality to a hetero orientation. Over the years, their success rate has dwindled - several of their public "success stories" have in fact returned to "the lifestyle" - and so their focus has changed to getting people to accept their homosexuality as a special kind of spiritual challenge, and to help encourage them to live a celibate life.

In fact, I've talked to folks from Exodus a couple times - both back in the "God can change you" stage of the game and in the more recent "you can live with this and not sin" mode. John and Judy likened homosexuality to alcoholism - in both cases, it's important to accept that you never stop being what you are. But so long as you don't take the proscribed actions (either taking a drink, or engaging in same-sex relations), you can live just fine.

I pointed out to them that I already had the celibacy thing down pat - the first 12 years ought to have proved that - and that, as part of my former plans for ministry, I'd planned on living celibate for the balance of my ministry life. So the whole celibacy thing was a non-starter for me.

For me, the central issue is that I was made this way - I didn't wake up one day and turn to the "dark side" (no pun intended). My sexuality is hard-wired at the core of my being - period. There was no choice made to be gay - and I've done lots of prayers and crying out to God to not be this way. So either God is a cosmic Creator with a quality control problem (the One who says, "before you were knitted together in the womb, I knew you" who nonetheless evidently dropped a stitch or two) - or the way I am is part of the order of Creation.

In the end, they told me they loved me, that I was always welcome in their home, and that God was going to use me in powerful ways. They also gave me a video from the Exodus folks, which I actually agreed to watch. And I sent them a thank-you note for their hospitality, with a link to this blog. I hope they read it. I love them both dearly, and I hope they can come to understand (even if they don't agree).

There is much more I have to write about this weekend, as well as a post or two about the idea of God as Crazy-Boy, but I need to get dressed and out the door to work. But if you've made it this far, I have to say thanks for sticking with me. This is an amazing journey...

Being present, just as I am

2006-02-22T00:22:00.000-06:00

I will be headed to Kansas City for a funeral this weekend.

Jerry Amundson, father of my dear friend Eric, died Tuesday night after three months of degenerative illness. Jerry and his wife Bev had been some of my biggest cheerleaders about coming to seminary in Chicago, and they and Eric's family were among my financial supporters when the bottom fell out of my life financially a year and a half ago. Jerry and Bev have been one of three sets of adoptive parents for me in my sober life the last fifteen years, and they've meant a lot to me.

While Jerry's death wasn't a surprise, it still was a shock. The one rule that everyone who knew him was sure of was, "Don't count Jerry out just yet." So there is a certain emptiness knowing our journey together is done, for a time.

There were a bunch of tears yesterday, as the reports came from the hospital in KC showed that Jerry probably wasn't going to make it, but I'm doing OK with it, now. Acceptance has come eaiser, knowing that he's lived a good life but was in absolute misery at the end. "Well done, good and faithful servant..."

Eric, Jerry's son, is one of about a half-dozen folks in our old church crowd that I'm out to. In fact, he's been one of the most openly accepting of my coming out (he's the guy who called me as "the cute boy from Hong Kong" during his last trip). I've been looking forward to him coming to Chicago for a business meeting, but that trip's been put off several times (due to weather and scheduling).

But there's a bunch of folks that I've not specifically outed myself to - including his parents - and I had a brief debate about having those encounters this weekend. On the one hand, it's an opportunity to come out face-to-face with some people that I love, which is good. On the other hand, I have significant evidence that the world really doesn't revolve around me, and this weekend (or whenever the memorial is held) is about Jerry and his family, not about me and acceptance of my orientation.

For now, I've settled the debate to just be present, to focus on the people and the events at hand - but not to hide if questions come up about girlfriends or "the next Mrs. F." It's the same way I've been dealing with things at work. I don't have to pull an Emmett Honeycutt routine to be out at work - but when we joke about relationships, I'm clear to talk about boyfriends rather than girlfriends, and with my one friend Sabina, who keeps saying "Have you got that straight?" (rather than "Do you understand?") I give her the classic line: "Honey, I don't even think straight, any more..." (And to her credit, she laughs every time.)

I'm guessing the same approach will work this weekend, too. Not camp, by any means - but not hiding, either. No purple scarf (that routine's already been taken) but maybe a pink tie to go with the black suit. Wish I could find a lapel pin like the rainbow "fish" symbol refrigerator magnet my homo-mentors got me, but I don't think I'll have time to go shopping in Boystown before I leave.

Cue the Gloria Gaynor music...

I am what I am
And what I am needs no excuses
I deal my own deck sometimes the aces sometimes the deuces
It’s one life and there’s no return and no deposit
One life so it’s time to open up your closet
Life’s not worth a damn till you can shout out
I am what I am

Amen, Gloria - you preach it, girl.

What and who I am is not how I look

2006-02-19T22:03:00.000-06:00

Late last week, I had a long talk with a young man (ok, not that young...he's 33) who I used to sponsor in AA back in Kansas. He's been through some rough times, and we kind of lost touch. He'd heard through a friend that I'd come out, but we just hadn't talked since last August, when I was really getting ready to move out of the "private" phase and be more publicly out. So it was an interesting conversation...

He was every kind of supporting - delighted to hear about some of the steps I'd taken, curous (as many have been) about the "Why'd you wait until now??" question. Then, out of the blue, he asked, "So...have you met anyone? Anyone special in your life?"

I had to admit that it's only been in the last six or eight months that I've even allowed myself to look at other guys that way. And the standard excuses came out...too busy...too much work...not exactly a circuit boy...but they were half-hearted. And my young friend said, "Well, what are you waiting for?"

Damn good question, Jimmy...

Then, in the process of catching up with friend's blogs, I read Geek Boi's "general coming out" post, where he posted his picture. And I was really shocked...not by the picture (which is really quite nice, actually), but by the words. It was like my words were coming out of his post...

There's a part of me saying "Don't post your pic, don't cross the Rubicon. You're largely anonmyous -- you can always try to be straight later on if the pressure gets too much. Nobody needs to know that you're gay, nobody needs to know anything about you! Hell, you're not cute enough to be gay..." etc,etc ....This is also difficult for me as I have body image issues like you wouldn't believe. I can't help but stare at my picture and just see nothing but ugliness......

I read that and thought, "Sweet Jesus, someone's been reading my mind." Because, you see, I'm right there with ol' GB, folks.

I've been spending a lot of time this weekend thinking about this. I've got pictures of me in high school - and while no one would ever mistake me for a member of the gymnastics team, I was not that hideous a fellow. But I have always had this image of myself as the ugly duckling...and have always been waiting for the magic to happen, and turn me into the beautiful swan. (Hasn't happened, as of yet...) But remembering brought back this set of events that sort of cemented that ugly-duckling image in my head...

Back in my junior year of high school, I was invited to join an all-guys youth group. A group of us got to be good friends, drinking buddies (yes, Virginia, in high school), and hung around together a lot. While I was significantly less rotund than I am now, I really saw myself as horribly obese back then - and showers in gym class showed that I was well behind the curve on the male-endowment scale.

But somehow I fit in with this group of guys - a couple of whom were rather unattractive (even to my jaundiced eye) but most of whom were quite fit and attractive (in what seemed at the time to be a disturbing way). It was a strange mix of jocks and geeks and misfits of all kinds from across several school districts, and yet we still seemed to click in many ways.

One of the ways we'd blow off steam in the summer was going up to a cabin on Lake Erie near Vermillion, Ohio for the weekend. It wasn't much of a cabin - but it had beds, a TV, a flush toilet, and a refrigerator, which was just enough for eight or ten guys planning on spending a weekend drunk and goofing off. I was already an 80th-percentile alcoholic by that stage of the game - so the idea of a weekend drinking sounded like a good deal to me. And, as one of the three guys who were "of age" at the time, I was part of the "bucket brigade" for the weekend, which made me an essential part of the fellowship and guaranteed me an invitation and a comfy bed spot.

There was a lot of sleeping in, swimming, a lot of horsing around, and of course the requisite smuggled straight-porn mags (no porn tapes in those days - the VHS VCR wasn't introduced until later that year, Christmas 1977). (Yes, I'm that old). Sometimes we'd start off with a trip to Cedar Point (not much drinking those weekends until we got back from the Point, of course). But for the most part, it was just hanging around the cabin, the beach, and the barbeque.

After the first couple weekends, it sure seemed like several of my buddies were getting to be much closer with their youth-group brothers than I was. Though all but three of that group ended up well down toward the "zero" end of the Kinsey scale, you'd never have known it from the sounds coming from the sleeping bags on the beach, or the squeaking of the bedsprings in the cabin. Despite the complete absence of women, almost everyone (it seemed) was getting some on those weekends.

Everyone, it seemed, except me.

It was painful enough to know that my romantic life in high school had been pretty bland, never getting past third base with any girl (even my 2-year steady girlfriend). I knew I was no prize physically; but I also knew that these guys weren't going for "attraction" or "beauty"- they were just getting off with whoever was around.

Again - except me.

I started to understand how the red-nosed reindeer felt when "they never let poor Rudolph/play in any reindeer games." I started trying to work my way into the groups - joining them when they took their sleeping bags down on the beach - but when I did that, it seemed there was complete stillness until they thought I was asleep, and then the action slowly started, often with a couple sleeping bags pulled away a bit so they wouldn't wake me.

I remembered waking up one morning with a pounding hangover as the sun was coming up, to find two of my friends asleep on top of their sleeping bags, bare-ass naked and holding each other spoon-style. The lake breeze had picked up just a bit, and they were both covered with goose-bumps. Yet they both had this air of bliss about them, and I could see the navy-blue sleeping bag was sprayed with the dried remnants of the prior night's entertainment. Further down the beach, I could see what looked like two more sleeping-bags zipped together, and another pair of my friends snuggled together in what looked like an excess of "brotherly love."

I looked back at the naked pair in front of me, both turned on and infuriated by what I saw. Standing there, watching these two guys who I'd always considered to be my friends, I had this irrational desire to kick both of them until I smashed their naked ribs in. I remember wanting to find a large rock and smash their skulls. I don't think I'd ever before felt that kind of murderous mixture of envy, disappointment, rejection and rage.

I'd had the empty fear that I'd get old and be alone before, but I think that morning was when I decided that I was never going to be desirable to anyone, period. I eventually ended up having a series of one-nighters with my best friend (the first, and only, male "love of my life"), but only when both of us were drunk. Right about that time, I met a woman who found my personality attractive, and did not seem to find me physically distasteful. Even though I eventually married her, I still felt deep inside that I was truly unattractive and sexually not too competent. And that self-loathing, combined with my dark, skulking doubts about my masculinity, didn't do much for our intimate lives. By the time we divorced, any pretense of intimacy had long since vanished.

When I was first considering coming out, one of my arguments to Tom and Damien went like this: "Let's see...I could either be an overweight, greying, middle-aged, under-endowed gay man, and put myself in line for all the abuse gays get. Or I could be an overweight, greying, middle-aged, under-endowed straight man, and skip all the gay bashing and prejudice. Either way, I'm going to bed alone, it seems..."

That's why when I read GB's "Hell, you're not cute enough to be gay..." comment, it was like I got slapped with my own words.

I've since come to realize that being hot is part of the gay stereotype - which is perpetuated by us average gay guys staying in the closet. While a lot of gay men do look fabulous, being a duckling doesn't make me any less gay - or any less worthy of caring or a relationship. True, I'm probably not going to attract someone like this....at least, not without an offer of a lot of money...

(Ryan Carnes, from the great indie movie Eating Out)

But it doesn't mean I'm going to be alone for the rest of my life, either. It doesn't matter, in the end, what I look like. Being gay isn't about being attractive...I know that now. It's about a physical attraction to men - independent of how I look, or to what kinds of guys I'm attracted. And (though it took a while to see it) I'm now sure that, having come out to more and more people, there isn't any way I can go back into the closet - even if I wanted to. [Cue music: "I Am What I Am"]

But I definitely have to enlarge my gay social venues. Because of my schedule, I haven't had the chance to hang around much with my two favorite homo-mentors lately - and they're moving to Wisconsin Dells in the next month or so. So I've got to get out and get "out" with some of the gay natives - and at least find some friends.

Fantasy life to the contrary, I don't think I'm gonna be going out with Ryan Carnes any time soon- any more than any of my straight friends think they'll be makin' it with any of the Baywatch babes. But my hope (and my prayer) is that I'll find someone who can see past the outside and find some joy with the cuddly bear on the inside.

It'll be worth the effort - and the wait.

Trusting, loving, telling the truth

2006-02-16T06:30:00.000-06:00

The closet is not where homosexuals hide - it is where the truth is hidden until we take it out into the light.

This quote is one of many truths that I've been reading, re-reading, and slowly digesting from Rob Eichberg's classic book Coming Out: An Act of Love. Published in 1990, Eichberg drew from the experience, strength and hope of gays and lesbians who participated in workshops called The Advocate Experience from 1978 to 1990. Despite being nearly 16 years old, it is an incredible resource for anyone who's going through the coming-out process.

Eichberg subtitled the book "An inspiring call to action for gay men, lesbians, and those who care." He does a good job of inviting the straight family and friends of people who are coming out into the process, pointing out where they can help and support the ones they love in their coming out process.

The core of Eichberg's work is simply this: the very core of love is honesty. Yet those of us who are closeted are hiding a central truth about ourselves from those we love - precisely out of fear of losing that love. The first section of the book talks about being gay, and the reactions to it. And it names two central fears of so many closeted GLBT's - if someone finds out who you really are, they won't love you anymore...compounded by feeling you are not even courageous enough to tell the truth. Those two fears helped me to refuse to even consider my true sexuality for years - decades, in fact.

But Eichberg's "inspiring call to action" is no less important - that perceptions about gays and lesbians will never change until the world knows who we really are. He writes, "By hiding your sexual orientation, you have contributed to the prevailing stereotypes of what it is to be gay." It's a message that I first heard from Tom and Damien as they encouraged me to take my first steps out of the closet - and one I'm glad that they ever-so-gently hammered home, because it's true in more ways than I could have imagined.

There's lots more that I'm going to reflect on from this book - lessons I'm learning, and relearning at this point. But for now, the work-a-day (and night) world is calling. But there's more to come...

They should have known all along...

2006-02-05T18:58:00.000-06:00

(Me at 3 years old, in a dashing homemade outfit.)

Yup, that's me.

Notice the smile?
That's what I'm trying to recapture.

The beautiful blond hair is now a slightly flatter blond with tinges of gray... there's no way (short of Clairol or Grecian Formula) to recover the hair. But it's the childlike joy that I'm going for, though. The smile and the eyes that say, "Anything is possible." This will be my avatar, I think, for quite a while.

(But yeah, from that outfit alone, they should have known how I'd turn out...)

There's lots to write about - lots more than I have time to write today. There's a series of posts that will be devoted to my experience with the book Coming Out: An Act of Love by Rob Eichberg. There's the raw sewage flowing between the evangelical Christians and the "emergent church" movement over Brian McLaren's comments about homosexuality.

But for now, there's two things to share - a funny moment at an AA meeting, and a prayer request. First the fun moment...

Thursday night, I'd had about all of work I could take. I was looking forward to meeting up with a young man I'd been sponsoring in AA and going to a meeting together. This meeting just happened to be one of the two "Hyde Park neighborhood" AA meetings at which I'd come out openly. It's a good group - a short speaker shares experience, strength and hope and then comments follow.

During the meeting, my sponsee spoke up, reflecting on his early sobriety. He'd intended to share how he'd been pretty dependent on me as a guide in his early days. Just about everyone in the room knew that I was his sponsor, and had seen him kind of cling to me, and a few others in the rooms when he was newly sober.

But what he ended up saying was, "Back then, I spent a lot of time hiding behind my sponsor's skirt..."

Now I knew (and a lot of people also knew) what he meant.

And we all saw his eyes go wide, as he realized what he'd said, and about whom. What was written all over his face for that one second was "WTF did I just SAY?" He tried to recover, saying "...pant leg," but it was too late. The whole room was roaring in laughter - me right along with them. One person in particular, who's commented on this blog a time or two, started chiming in with images of me in a pink tutu...and that just made the laughter louder. My young friend turned about 15 shades of pink, and stayed pretty flushed even as the laughter died down.

Later that night, as the meeting ended, he was more than a little mortified and kept trying to apologize that he could have said "something like that." I laughed, and told him that it was a beautiful moment, and the look on his face was worth the price of the good-natured ribbing I took about it. My joy was in being free enough to be able to laugh at myself, and reassure him that it was absolutely OK.

Earlier today, as we were talking, I reminded my friend about his little faux-pas (and got another good laugh out of it). He said, "I just remember when you first told me about it [coming out], and it seemed like it was a serious deal for you. I just didn't want to embarrass you about it." I told him that for me, the joy was being able to say that friends joking around like that was going to be part of being out and free - and I was glad that it happened exactly as it did.

What I didn't say explicitly to him (but need to) is that part of the reason I can be more free about being gay is precisely because at the time that I thought my homosexuality would be a big deal to him, that it wasn't. His acceptance of me as I began the public portion of coming out was the gift that allowed me to "keep on keepin' on," and I owe him a debt of gratitude for that encouragement and support.

The prayer concern is this - there are five people that I need to come out to - my former spouse, my late mentor's widow (and one of my surrogate mom's) in KC, and another set of surrogate parents and two of their children. Each one is still very much a part of my life (if a somewhat disconnected, distant part), and each relationship carries some baggage of its own. So just pray for me, as I begin to write those letters, to continue to be open and honest as this journey goes on.

Because only by being open and honest will I ever be able to recover that little boy's joy and hope.

Thoughts from the other side of the Mountain

2006-01-30T00:44:00.000-06:00

On Saturday, I went to see Brokeback Mountain with Damien and Tom, who then graciously invited me over for dinner. (Br'er Damien's review of the movie is here.)

On one level, that was my reaction, too. OK - I can check this box off. Been there, done that. Nice visuals, beautiful cineatography, powerfully acted (if unsympathetic) characters, but definitely not the "oooh, ahh..." reaction I've read in so much of the press. (I did love Letterman's list of "Top Ten Rejected Titles for 'Brokeback Mountain,'", which included Oklahomo, Best Little Bathhouse on the Prairie, and The Good, The Bad, and the Fabulous.)

But there was more to it than that, for me.

I really identified with the character of Ennis - fearful, emotionally-impaired, unable to imagine life outside the rural closet he lived in. It was that same fear of being "found out" that kept me closeted as along as I was. Which is pathetic, especially since so many people I've come out to have said, "Well...yeah, that's no surprise." Not a lot of folks were fooled...

I also identified with Ennis, because the first guy I ever loved (and first male sexual partner) was my best friend from high school. He and I both married, and (unlike Jack and Ennis) never picked up our sexual liason after my wedding. He divorced before I got married, and he found another childhood sweetheart not long afterwards. Both my marriage and his relationship with his girlfriend were disintegrating in early 1990. He committed suicide on Palm Sunday 1990, rather than face his alcoholism, drug use, and closeted secrets.

My marriage ended eight months later, followed shortly afterwards by my entrance into sobriety. I've wondered what would have happened if he and I had both been newly sober and newly-single at the same time. I wondered if we both would have stayed in the closet as long as I did if he had lived.

Of course, it's a silly speculation on so many levels - if only because relationships (especially sexually-active ones) in early sobriety often last about as long as matter-antimatter unions. And the family estrangement he felt resulting from his interracial hetero relationship (a contributing factor in his suicide) would have been nothing to the reaction of his redneck family to his having a gay lover. And I can't deny that his shame over our past sexual encounters was also a contributing factor to his death. So that whole line of thought falls into the woulda - coulda - shoulda category...a romantic fantasy even more improbable than Brokeback.

But the other image from the movie - that of violence against gays - is one that is not nearly as far away from us as we'd like to think. True, it's been ten years since Matthew Shepard's brutal murder, but gay-bashing is still something that goes on every single day (though it rarely gets publicized as anything more than a violent mugging). There are still many places where homophobia can be a justification for murder (the so-called "gay panic defense"). So in that way, it's still a very timely story.

But the movie's best argument is for coming out, and for living the truth, instead of a lie. Would the two lovers have had a longer life up on Jack's parent's land? Would it have been happier, less fraught with guilt, shame, and fear? Who knows. All I know is, every day that I'm out to more people, I lessen the likelihood of living the rest of my life (however much there is) in regret and what-could-have-been. I've lived enough of that - and I'm not going back to it.

Catching up...

2006-01-28T23:52:00.000-06:00

The good news? I'm back, "on-line and real-time" (as a friend says).

The bad news? I started this entry on "catching up" on December 19th.

I've got a lot of catching up to do...

I've been away from this place (and the blogging world in general) for a number of reasons. My "temp job" officially became "my new job" on December 12th - and at the same time, I got thrown into two incredibly messy and tragically-flawed projects almost immediately. The second project went live on January 2nd (about 90 days before it would have been ready), and we've been putting in between 70-90 hours a week for the last four weeks putting out fires.

So my life has been just dealing with first-order topics - work, sobriety, maintaining basic utilities and services (like laundry) - and there hasn't been any bandwidth for much else. It's not that I'm any less gay, or any less in the process of coming out. But frankly, sexuality has been the last thing on my mind - or on my co-workers' minds, either. I think that if Osama bin Laden had shown up, and been able to deal with the issues at hand, our team would have welcomed him onto the team with open arms.

One of the negative consequences of the excess hours has been that three or four days a week I've been driving into the office (rather than risk having to take the train home into the ghetto at 1 AM). So my reading/rest/meditation time has been sucked up by driving down Stony Island and Lake Shore Drive into downtown Chicago. So I've been kind of burnt-out and fresh out of things to say, other than "Damn, I'm glad that day's over..."

My goal, going forward is to post something on both my blogs at least twice a week - if only to think about something other than my two problem-children clients and their payroll challenges.

For now, there's a bunch of things on mind - including four books I've been alternating reading (when I'm not too brain-dead to read), and my reactions to seeing Brokeback Mountain (which I went to see with Tom and Damien earlier today). But the thing that has stuck with me the most happened on the phone a little over a week ago...

A week ago Thursday, I got a phone call about 11:30 PM, and it was my friend Eric. Eric's about the closest thing I had to a brother-in-spirit in my former church community - and therefore was one of the people I'd been more concerned about coming out to, especially because of some of the religious views he'd expressed about homosexuality in the past. Of course, when I actually sent him the email, he wrote back and basically said, "I've know that about you for quite a while, and it doesn't change how I feel about you," which was an immense relief.

Flash forward to last Thursday...Eric was calling from Hong Kong using Skype, a voice-over-IP internet phone service. (He goes to HK, Taiwan and China several times a year for business. Since I'm one of the few people he knows who are up late, he thought he'd try out the VoIP deal on me.) So after the initial "Guess where I'm calling you from?" deal, he said, "Yeah, I thought I'd be your first-ever call from Hong Kong..." (and I could almost hear the smirk in his voice) "...and it's a cute boy, to boot."

Well, to be honest, Eric would definitely qualify as a cute guy (although not necessarily a type I'd be drawn to) but it really surprised me, for some stupid reason, that he'd be comfortable enough to tease me about that. It took me a two-count to recover, and then I replied, "Yeah, and doesn't it just figure that the first time I get a phone call from a cute boy, he's in freakin' Hong Kong..."

And we laughed...and I breathed a sigh of relief. There aren't many things in my life that are big deals - but finding one of my best friends able to tease me about my orientation was a really big deal. Especially when I'd been so terrified about people finding out for so long.

You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. (John 8:32, NIV)

The Vatican's New Stereotype

2005-12-19T00:05:00.000-06:00

It's been a while since I've posted on this blog. It's not been because I haven't had anything to say, but more because of sheer task and information overload, I think.

For a while, I was really struggling with the Catholic church document on seminarians - primarily because it is a 20-year step backwards in understanding gay and lesbian people. I guess I was more irate for my gay Catholic friends who have been so welcoming to me, and who have been pretty wounded by that particularly toxic document.

From everything I've read, I believe the Catholic seminary document is simply an institutional insistence that gay Catholics who are called to the priesthood go back in the closet. For myself, I am terribly sorry for the loving, caring, committed members of the priesthood who are eventually going to have to make a choice. But if there's one thing I've heard time and time again from the men who helped shepherd me out of the closet, it's simply that going back in there is no longer an option.

That's why I found such strong identification with Andrew Sullivan's essay in the December 12th issue of Time magazine. I'm including the text here (and footnoting it, so you know it's not mine!). This article can be found here at the Time.com site, and Sullivan's other writings can be found here.

The Vatican's New Stereotype -
Why its new rules barring gay priests turn Jesus' teaching on its head
(Dec. 12, 2005 issue of Time magazine, page 92)
by Andrew Sullivan

The one consolation that gay Catholics have long had is that the church hates only sin, not sinners. Yes, many of us are far from perfect, and like most married, heterosexual Catholics, we have been known to have sex without making a baby. But we were, as the Vatican assured us in official documents in 1975 and '86, "made in the image and likeness of God." The condition of homosexuality was, for many, "innate" and not in itself a sin. Gay people were "often generous and giving of themselves," said the Vatican, and the notion that gays could not lead celibate lives was an "unfounded and demeaning assumption." The bar on any gay sexual intimacy was still firm--but it was the same bar that prohibited heterosexual couples from using contraception, or single people from masturbating, or any other nonprocreative sexual act. It was a coherent, if difficult, doctrine--and not bigotry.

In this confined and often suffocating place, it was still possible, though never easy, to breathe the love of God as a gay Catholic. Our love of the church helped us overlook its institutional rejection of the relationships we built and the families who embraced us as equals. For many of us, the presence of gay priests also gave immense comfort. Of my three confessors in adult life, all turned out to be gay, although I had no idea in advance. I have known many gay priests, and I'm in awe of their service--to the poor and needy, to the lonely and uneducated, to prisoners and parishioners who have all found grace through their ministry and sacrifice. Often, their outsider experience helped them relate better to the marginalized or the lonely or those taken for granted.

Recall the image of Mychal Judge, the chaplain for New York City's firefighters, carried away from the World Trade Center in the arms of the brave men he ministered to. Judge, a proudly gay man, gave his life for those he served. Under new rules from Pope Benedict XVI issued last week, Father Judge would never have been ordained. Nor would thousands of other gay priests and bishops and monks and nuns who have served God's people throughout the ages.

In the past, all that mattered for a priest, as far as sexual orientation was concerned, was celibacy. If a priest kept his vows, it didn't really matter if he were refusing to have sex with a man or with a woman. All that mattered was that he kept his vows and had sex with no one.

But that has just changed. Even if a gay priest remains completely celibate, his sexual orientation is now regarded, according to a Vatican expert, as a threat to "priestly life." A gay celibate priest, according to the new rules, is incapable of "sexual maturity coherent with his masculine sexual identity." He has "a problem in the psychic organization" of his sexuality, barring him from priestly responsibility. Gay seminarians can be spotted and rooted out because they allegedly have "trouble relating to their fathers; are uncomfortable with their own identity; tend to isolate themselves; have difficulty in discussing sexual questions; view pornography on the Internet; demonstrate a deep sense of guilt; or often see themselves as victims." No serious psychological data are provided to verify those assertions (and many would surely apply to countless heterosexuals as well). What the new Pope has done is conflate a sin with an identity. He has created a class of human beings who, regardless of what they do, are too psychologically and thereby morally "disordered" to become priests.

There is a simple principle here. The message of Jesus was always to ignore the stereotype, the label, the identity--in order to observe the soul beneath, how a person actually behaves. One of his most famous parables was that of the Good Samaritan, a man who belonged to a group despised by mainstream society. But it was the despised man who did good, while all the superficially respected people walked on by. Jesus consorted with all of society's undesirables--with tax collectors, collaborators with an occupying power, former prostitutes, lepers. His message was that God's grace knows no boundaries of stigma, that with God's help, we can all live by the same standards and receive the grace that comes from his love.

The new Pope has now turned that teaching on its head. He has identified a group of people and said, regardless of how they behave or what they do, they are beneath serving God. It isn't what they do that he is concerned with. It's who they are. They are the new Samaritans. And all of them are bad.

Andrew Sullivan's blog, the Daily Dish, can be found at andrewsullivan.com

My last words on the topic...

2005-12-04T10:44:00.000-06:00

Damien's post on Friday angered me beyond my ability to describe, for a while. Don't get me wrong - his writing was great. But reading the blathering and blithering of the representatives of the Catholic Church simply infuriated me.

I'm condensing this down to the simplest points - the quotes from the ZENIT article that Damien referred to are in italics.

The new Vatican document on homosexuality and admission to seminaries and holy orders is not an "attack on homosexuals," says Cardinal Georges Cottier. Rather, the document is an effort "to understand their situation" and sufferings, explained Cardinal Cottier, who until today was the theologian of the Pontifical Household.

You're both absolutely right and absolutely wrong, your Eminence. If I were to I tell you, "Don't go away mad; just go away," it would not be an attack on you. It would be a statement of preference - that I don't want you around. Period. So your statement, while disingenuous, is absolutely true. The Church has not attacked homosexuals; it is simply clarifying their erroneous beliefs and practices surrounding homosexuality and homosexual activity. Nothing personal, of course...

But the second statement is absolutely wrong - because the Church has failed completely to understand the situation of gay men. The Vatican document does nothing more than cauterize the wounds caused by priestly abuse and the failure of the Church administration to deal with that abuse in a proper and timely manner. The Church doesn't understand the situation of gay men; never has, never will. This document just rationalizes the Church's decision to simply excise them, like infected tissue, so that they don't infect the rest of the Church and hurt it any more.

Cardinal Cottier claims that the text is very thought out and says that he would underline its sensitivity.

But, as Damien points out in his post, this document abandons the position of the church which separated "homosexual activity" and the sexual orientation of homosexuality. The Cardinal talks about those who have "deep-seated homosexual tendencies," and those who have slight, "transitory" tendencies, linked to episodes in their lives, of which I would say they can free themselves. Therefore, there are degrees. The "degrees," then, are in whether one can free oneself of homosexual tendencies. If you can't free yourself - if you are homosexual in your being - then it doesn't matter what you do - it only matters what you are. And what the document says, in essence, is if that's how you are, you're out. Period.

All in all, a well-thought out and sensitive position, I'd say...

And I'd sure like to read the studies that support the Church's conclusion that homosexuality impedes, in a certain sense, "emotional maturity". That is so wrong as to be almost immoral.

How the hell have gay priests provided pastoral care, counsel, leadership of congregations and liturgy, and spiritual direction for years on end without "emotional maturity?" How have the overwheming majority of the gay Catholic priesthood lived and served with this so-called immaturity?

The Cardinal's interviewer said, In general, homosexuality is accompanied by this emotional immaturity. It is an affirmation that is going to be criticized, but that is based on experience. Whose experience, I wonder? Just the abusers?

You'd better bet that statements like that are going to be criticized...

Here's another one that just infuriated me: Inasmuch as representative of Christ, bridegroom of the Church, the priest is called to exercise a spiritual paternity among men and women. For this reason, emotional maturity is necessary, which implies a spirit of sacrifice and self-forgetfulness out of love for the other.

Excuse me, Cardinal...There are a whole lot of gay men who are priests. And these men have given up material possessions; taken vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. And the vast majority of them have lived up to those vows. Are you going to tell me that somehow their spirit of sacrifice and self-forgetfulness is somehow defective?

And you say this is not an attack against gay men in the Catholic orders?

Damien makes an interesting point:

He [the Cardinal] does not distinguish those who are sexually active from those who are not sexually active. One can argue that his silence about that distinction is only silence, not a signal one way or the other. Perhaps. Perhaps. One does wonder, though, why no one from Rome wants to issue a statement saying that chaste gay men are acceptable. It would seem so easy a way to stop the conflicting interpretations, assuming they want to do that.

I believe the only reason no one wants to issue that statement is that the Church has concluded that if they don't have any homosexuals around, then there won't be any homosexual abuse, and the Church can stop hemmhoraging money and members. Just do a "clean sweep," cut out the infected tissue, cauterize the wound, and carry on.

And wait until the heterosexual abuse cases start to show up. So you can start throwing out the hetero priests...

To me, the Church has said that people with a given ontology - my ontology, my essential being and orientation - are to be excluded from ministry. Homosexuality has gone from being a sin of action to a sin of being (or not-being, perhaps). Catholicism has always declared that the primary mission of humanity, apart from worship of God, is to procreate - and that anything that stands in the way of that procreation is "intrinsically disordered."

Fine.

Just don't wonder why men of great faith, with servant hearts brimming with love and care, flee your churches, your cathedrals, and your seminaries, your Eminence.

And then stop and reflect on how sterile - and how crippled - your Church will be when they are gone.

The Vatican's document has rung the bell - and there is no way to unring it now. The Church's institutional pride has always prevented admission of error. That's why it took 500 years for them to apologize to Galileo...

This is the last time I'm writing on this, by the way. As Damien pointed out in this linked article, the pogrom has already started. The arrows are pointing toward the door, the door has been opened. The Roman Catholic Church has become an unwelcoming, irrelevant institution to the gay world. The only question remaining is how long it will take for gay Catholics to secede and form the "Rainbow Catholic Church," to preserve the beauties of the Catholic tradition for the GLBT community.

May it come quickly. It's a Reformation that is long overdue.

The obvious child

2005-11-17T01:11:00.000-06:00

Some say a lie is just a lie, but I say
Why deny the obvious child?
(Paul Simon)

Well, evidently I qualify, br'er Simon. Take, for example, the response of one friend of mine from Kansas to my coming-out email...

I'm sitting here with a little smile on my face having just read your letter. I wondered when a letter or phone call like this might arrive. And to think, I was concerned you were going to tell me something life shattering like you feel off the wagon or had AIDS! I've known for MANY years that this was a struggle within for you my friend. I'm very much looking forward to reading your blog on this one! And I'm sure this will make for some interesting discussions!!

Like the love of our Lord, my brother, I can love you no less for that love is not predicated on your sexual orientation but on your heart and very soul which is so beautiful to me!

Now if I could only find some gay men to love my heart and soul, life would be really good...

But I have to admit, in amidst all the relief and acceptance, I find this annoying and haunting pair of questions:

What the hell was so obvious, that more than half the people I've talked to have said, "Well, DUH..."? And if it was so clear-cut to them, why wasn't it so equally clear-cut to me?

and...

Why the hell did I wait so &$%#ing long to do this?

There are lots and lots of promises spread through the 12-step recovery literature - and I've experienced a whole lot of them over the years. But the one that's been elusive (at least as far as my homosexuality is concerned) is the one that says We will not regret the past, nor wish to shut the door on it. God help me, but I'm just not there as I look back on my three damn decades hiding in the closet. Intellectually, I know that it took every minute it took to get ready to come out. But there are times - like today - when it seems like such a hideous waste of time and life.

On the journey from work to my regular Thursday-night AA meeting, I stopped at the Istria Cafe', a little joint tucked under the 57th Street Metra station. My original intent was simply to pick up a cup of pretty-good coffee for the chilly walk from the train to the meeting. But since I was significantly early, I decided to just sit there sipping coffee and people-watching. And one of the people I was watching was the fellow who served me - a particularly-attractive late-20-something man with golden curly hair. It seemed so strange to be looking at him, suddenly realizing, "He's really good looking," and finding such freedom in just allowing myself to look, and to enjoy.

Yeah, I know...it's lame. But these are baby-steps from a person who thought he'd given up use of his legs.

By the by - if you haven't made the acquaintance of geek_boi, you definitely need to read this post of his. As Shakespeare wrote, so I say to you, brother: "All I can say is thanks, and thanks, and ever thanks."

Why come out at all? Why now?

2005-11-08T16:46:00.000-06:00

One of the hardest questions - one that I will wrestle with for a while - deals with "why even come out at all?" I wish this discussion could be a clean, sensible process - but for me, there have been multiple issues affecting my decision (or failure to decide), mostly based on irrational beliefs or fears.

(That's both humbling and aggravating to admit.)

Most of my struggles about accepting my sexuality came from my own poor physical self-image, and my own certainty that my physical appearance would be completely undesirable to another gay man. For so much of the last 15 years, what I would say to myself was, "Well, let's see - you can either be 'closeted' as an overweight, middle-aged, greying straight man, or you can be 'out' as an overweight, middle-aged, greying gay man. Either way, your chances of finding a partner are pretty well between nil and none."

So I believed my choice came down to being honestly-out, alone, and in line for prejudice and abuse, or dishonestly-closeted, just as alone, but abuse-and-prejudice-free. I told myself for years that absent the chance for a relationship, there just wasn't any percentage in coming out.

Of course, the fatal flaw in my logic was that so long as I was unwilling to be honest about who and what I was - so long as my own self-inflicted homophobia kept me closeted - there would never be even a chance of a relationship for which it would be worthwhile to come out.

It took a couple of loving and accepting men in AA (straight AND gay) who shared with me that it really came down to "out and honest and at least a chance for happiness" or "hiding and lying and no chance for honest joy whatsoever."

An unfortunate realization out of this process has been how much justification to stay closeted was the out of the desire to remain a welcomed part of a church community. The sad fact is that I believed it was more important to fit in with my church family than to be honest with myself (and everyone else) about who and what I was.

As much as I railed against the position of the Catholic and Methodist Churches (and so many other mainline denominations) I find I have bought into their party line for myself, even as I have campaigned actively against it for others. It's hard to admit, but I really did believe that my very existence as "intrinsically disordered," as inconsistent with Christian life and ministry.

Looking back, I can see that the wrestling I had with my acceptability to God came from this issue - it seemed I would be damned as abomination by God who was supposedly filled with lovingkindness, who knew the number of hairs on my head and yet somehow couldn't accept me as I've been made. Oh, sure, I could be acceptable to God as a celibate - and I did that for nearly 12 years - but don't act on any of those instincts of yours, Steve. That road leads to Hell, you know...

But even more than that - because I worked most of the way through that issue - I knew that the church communities of which I was a member would not have been welcoming to a gay man. Now, I know that most my close friends would have likely been willing to accept me (though several were particularly unsupportive of GLBT folks until they found out that I was one). But I also watched two different instances where a man was accepted, welcomed, and encouraged to participate in our church community - until they either came out, or were outed by others. And then things got decidely cool.

I've already admitted (at least to a degree) how much my own need for acceptance and inclusion by others made it impossible for me to be honest about my sexuality. It just was easier to lie when it felt like there was no consequence - that there was no downside to living falsely. It's just hard to also admit how much the church helped feed my self-imposed homophobia. They weren't responsible for it - but they certainly helped fuel it.

I also bought into the insanity (mentioned in my first posting) that (since I was convinced there would be no future relationship in the cards for me) that it would be more helpful to be an advocate for GLBT folks from in ordained ministry than to be excluded from both ministry and church by being out. I really felt quite noble in my celibate pursuit of service of God and church...

...that is, until the church told me that the issue that would keep me out of ministry would be my finances, and my indebtedness - and not my sexuality. Sadly, under the current rules of the ELCA, I could have been ordained gay - I just couldn't be ordained broke.

Ironic, ain't it....the only way I could be rigorously honest enough to face this, and really be self-honest and self-aware enough to be a minister was through the brokenness resulting from my spectacularly-failed run at ordained ministry...

Part of the first steps of dealing with all this was finding the Fourth Forum, the GLBT ministry of Fourth Presbyterian Church here in Chicago. The group did a weekly study on John McNeill's classic text Taking A Chance on God, which forced me to dig back into a bunch of my pastoral-care texts on sexuality.

Finally picking up Tex Sample and Amy DeLong's The Loyal Opposition: Struggling With the Church on Homosexuality (which sat on my shelf unread for five whole years...) helped a lot, too. But most beneficial of all was finding in the Fourth Forum members a group of gay and lesbian Christians who had come to believe themselves acceptable in God's sight - and taking lessons from them.

This has been a lot of writing - and frankly, it's not done, but I'm done - like dinner. There's probably more that could be said on every one of these topics. But the important thing for me to say is this: I am not where I once was. As I've quoted on so many other topics, the words of the old black spiritual come to mind:

We ain't where we wanna be;
We ain't where we're gonna be;
But thank you, Jesus - we ain't where we used'ta be.

Questions and more questions...

2005-11-08T01:57:00.000-06:00

It was an eventful weekend, in some respects, and yet in others, not so much.

I decided to ditch the "pink tutu" Blogger template. I'm going to be playing with the design for a while (at least, as much as an HTML-impaired guy like me can...) but for now, this'll do. The other thing I did was ditch the pseudonym. I'm still pretty anonymous out here - but part of the question becomes, why would I still be hiding?

The "deafening silence" I wrote about in an earlier post has been broken - I really couldn't wait, and so I called my friend on Sunday. The conversation was a bit tenuous at first, but it seemed to thaw a bit over the course of the hour we talked. She doesn't realize it yet, but our conversation helped put shape around a series of questions that I know I'm going to be working on over the next days and weeks:

- Why are you coming out now? What's different now than 2, 3 or 5 years ago?
- If you don't have a boyfriend or partner, what does it matter? Why even bother?
- Why couldn't you tell me/us about this before now?
- What does it say about your conception of self, God and friendship that you couldn't be honest about this with yourself, with God, or the people who care about you?
- What does it say about your understanding of God to know that you desperately wanted to be "healed" of the way you apparently were made?
- You have at least one other friend who came out - years ago. What's the big deal? Couldn't you have talked about it with him?

This is certainly not an exhaustive list - but as Bob Barker would say, there are some big-ticket items on that list. And, I should note, I'm not looking for anyone else to provide answers to these questions. These are more like placeholders for some soul-searching and self-examination that's ahead of me.

The other thing that I'm probably not in any position to even address is a potentially uglier, more fundamental question. If I've been unable to be completely honest with myself or my closest friends about my sexuality, how can anyone trust anything I say about my motives with other male acquaintances? What are my motives - really?

I have a growing list of questions, but not many answers at this point. One answer I do know, however, concerning the "sex" part of my sexuality. I've been celibate for nearly three presidential terms - and I'm not going to change that until I'm much, much more solid in my understanding of myself and my relationships with others. That's absolutely bed-rock, at this stage of the game. I've waited this long...

However, that's also about the only thing I'm certain of - other than that for the first time in three decades, I'm headed in the right direction. For now, it's way the hell past time for bed. (I've got to start cutting off the caffeine earlier in the day...)

Beam me out, Scotty...

2005-11-04T14:40:00.000-06:00

Seems that I'm not the only one waiting until later in life to come out. A CNN article reports that George Takei - Sulu in the various Star Trek adventures - told the LA Frontiers magazine that he's gay...at age sixty-eight.

On the one hand, I could say I'm 20 years ahead of Sulu...but then, he has had a committed partner for the last 18 years. So I can't get too terribly smug, can I?..

Deafening silence...

2005-11-04T01:08:00.000-06:00

Thank you - all of you.

The comments and affirmations I've received in the short time I've renewed my journey out of the dark have been overwhelmingly positive - for which I thank God. But while this is gratifying, it is also not overly surprising. After all, the people to whom I've come out so far have been the folks I'm closest to, and the folks I've considered "safest." That was intentional.

After the guys in my AA sponsorship circle, the next group of "close" friends I decided to come out to were folks in my former church home in Kansas. Part of the weirdness of this process is trying to do this by email, since I have no plans (or funds) to travel to Kansas anytime soon.

A couple people have asked, "Why even bother telling those folks? They are 600 miles away - they're out of your life!" That statement, however, is only half true. Many of the folks back in Kansas were the ones whose prayers, phone calls, emails, and active financial support carried me in the months after my seminary career fell apart...and for months afterwards. They were a part of my life - at least, the 60-90% (depending on whose estimates you use) that I was willing to share, exclusive of my sexuality.

The first one of my Kansas contacts, my "adoptive grandma" and dear friend Sandy, was wonderful - I got a response back the same day basically saying, "Yeah, OK. So you're gay. You're still you - nothing's changed. I love you." Earlier this evening, the pastor of my former congregation responded, with virtually the same sentiment.

The third person, however, hasn't respond. Not that day. Not the next day. Not yet, in fact.

The silence has become somewhat deafening.

This whole process is proving to me how much I depend on the approval of others. At a basic level, I know I will be OK, regardless what this person (or any of the other people I get honest with) eventually decide. But at another level, I'm selfish enough that I want this person (and other people yet to be contacted) to be part of my life - to have them stay in touch with me, to wish me well, to pray for me. I have history with these people - after all, we laughed, cried, celebrated and mourned, prayed and worshipped together for almost 13 years.

Of course, a more rigorously-honest evaluation would be that I don't want all that life (and all that history) to become disposable or valueless because of my sexuality
- especially a sexuality that I haven't actually acted-out on in more than two decades.

Evidently I need an MP3 recording of "I Am What I Am" (one of the famous gay anthems from the Broadway version of La Cage Aux Folles) along with one of "The Way I Was Made" - preferably set to continuous looping. Wish I could justify the cost of an iPod - but unfortunately I have a whole list of expenses that way outrank that little expenditure.

"...and the beat goes on..."

Some affirmation, and The Way I Was Made

2005-10-31T00:12:00.000-06:00

I want to live like there’s no tomorrow
I want to dance like no one’s around.
I want to sing like no one’s listening.
Before I lay my body down

I want to give like I have plenty.
I want to love like I’m not afraid.
I want to be the man I was meant to be.
I want to be the way I was made.
(Chris Tomlin, The Way I Was Made,
from the CD Arriving)

Today was an amazing, powerful day.

Recently, I'd been hearing a song by Christian song-writer and worship-leader Chris Tomlin - and it had been pushing me to actually take some action about the coming out process I started way the hell back at the end of last year. Then my dear friend (and coming-out advocate) Tom S. posted this powerful article about coming out - and I really started to realize how much I needed to stop talking about getting ready to think about preparing to come out, and just get "into action," as the text of recovery says.

So today, I came out to two of my AA sponsees - both of whom I had hoped would be open and affirming, but I just didn't know, you know? One I had known and sponsored for a year - in fact, I came out to him on his one-year sobriety anniversary. The other I've known for just a few months - but I really had not wanted to even discuss my orientation until both of them were on somewhat solid ground in their sobriety.

Both guys were completely cool - it was gratifying in powerful ways. Funny part was, unbeknownst to me, the one-year guy actually had another AA member out me over breakfast after a meeting last December (though I'd never actually come out to him), so it was a complete non-event. It was particularly gratifying to hear the words, nonetheless - I'd actually steeled myself to have either of them say, "That's fine for you, no problem - but I need to find another sponsor." I didn't prepare myself for that because I wanted it to happen - but I was expecting the worst, even as I was hoping for the best, I guess. Anyway, it was proof of the AA truism - I've lived through thousands of struggles and tragedies - most of which never actually happened.

In talking with Tom and his partner afterwards, it turns out that several other folks in our AA circles had already pegged me as gay, without saying anything. While I'm not overly surprised, I guess I am a little surprised...it's not like I'm walking around humming Barbra Streisand or anything. And I'm definitely the least in-shape, most fashion-impaired gay man I know...so it will be interesting to see what set their gaydar off.

There's loads more to write - but it's way too late to do it. So (early this morning) I just thank God for friends who encourage, and friends who accept, and a God whose love follows throughout this "great adventure."

Working for an "Outie Award" recipient...

2005-10-31T00:02:00.000-06:00

I've only been in my new job two full weeks - and yet on Thursday, I found out that my new temporary employer, Hewitt Associates, has been named in the Out & Equal Workplace Advocate's Outie Awards for a "Out & Equal Award for Significant Achievement." The Out & Equal press release says:

Hewitt Associates has contributed significantly to making the world a better place to work for its LGBT associates by working at creating an environment safe enough for anyone who wants to be out to do so without any fear of repercussions to their career advancement. The Affirmations exhibits have been a highly visible, high impact, bold way of doing this.

I'm sure it's just a coincidence that October 1st, there was less than a 50% chance of me going to work there; that only on October 14th, did I know for sure that I was starting on the 17th; and that by October 25th, the "Outie" press release was out.

Yeah, right...

Introduction: Judge tenderly of me...

2005-03-20T03:32:00.001-06:00

This is my letter to the World
That never wrote to Me -
The simple News that Nature told -
With tender Majesty

Her Message is committed
To Hands I cannot see -
For love of Her - Sweet - countrymen -
Judge tenderly - of Me
- Emily Dickinson

This is the blog I never wanted to write. For years, and years, I never wanted it to come to this...I never, ever wanted to speak or write these words. But I no longer can hide them, no longer can deny them. It feels so silly to be admitting this now, when I am (as a kind friend said recently) "pushing fifty." But there are parts of my life that just are not going to heal, and parts of my faith life that will never really be true, unless I can be rigorously honest about me - all of me.

There's just no easy way to say this:

I am a gay man. A gay Christian man.

And yet, there it is.

Acknowledging that has been a long time coming...thirty-four years, at least. If not forty.

For some of those who know me, this is no surprise...in fact, it's been a little embarrassing to learn how poorly I concealed my secret. And for some, this will be a big surprise, evoking all kinds of reactions. For now, all I can say is bear with me - I'm working through this slowly, step by stumbling step. This posting is an ever-evolving document to help me - and perhaps, those who have known me - to understand why I'm finally talking about this now.

I've tried to be so open about so much of my life (especially my struggles in recovery) but somehow I never found the courage to take the last step of rigorous honesty, and "come out" to anyone - even the people I love. There's a lot of reasons for that - many of which I'll explore in other writings here. But the two main reasons I've never come out are simply

- I never wanted to be gay, and
- I was waiting for God to heal me - to fix me, to make me "right."

Ever since I've known I had this orientation, at least one silent prayer has always been, "God, please - make me straight, heterosexual, whatever the hell "normal" is. Help me desire what people tell me is Your natural order, OK? If being straight is really Your will, then please - let it be done, and let it be done quickly. I'm ready to go. I'll suit up, show up, and try to play the part - fake it 'till you make it, they say. OK. I'm ready when you are..."

And up until recently, if I had the choice, I still wouldn't have chosen to be gay. Let's face it - on the surface, given society as it is, and the consequences of living as a gay man in it, who the hell would?

(As you'll see, I'm coming, slowly, to feel differently. Sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly...)

For more than three decades, I prayed that "fix me!" prayer. And the only thing that has happened is that I ended up more lonely, more sick of living a lie, and more desperately "apart from" the world than I have ever been. To be honest, at first I just got tired of waiting on what I thought was God's provision. Now, I'm coming to understand that "waiting to be fixed" is not part of God's provision at all. And I'm tired of despising myself in the process. (And, to be honest, if an angel showed up with a magic pill today, I'm not sure I'd take it....but more on that later.)

For seven long years, as I experienced a true call to a life in ministry, I was ready to give it all up. Really...it sounds stupid now, but at the time it made perfect sense. I'd deny my sexuality, abandon any hope of intimate relationships just as a priest would, and just continue to live the lie that I'd been working on my whole life. For all those years, I really, honestly felt that it would better to live acting as a gay-friendly member of the "straight" clergy (who might be able to build bridges and soften hearts) than as an openly-gay clergyman (who would just seem to be pushing his own agenda). After all, the rules of my faith community insisted on celibacy outside of marriage - so either way, sex was out. So why not be of service, eh?

Well, that road is closed, for now - seemingly for good. (And for reasons that have nothing whatsoever to do with my sexuality. According to the rules of my denomination - if not their standing practice and tradition - I could have been ordained as a celibate gay man. We can argue later about how likely that might have been...)

Regardless, I'm coming to believe that God is healing me (though so far, that healing is coming in a much different form than I ever anticipated). I'm gingerly exploring a radical idea: that God gave me this faith, this knowledge, this training, and this "time apart" to face the truth of my homosexuality, to come to accept myself as His child in this way, and to find a way to be a voice for the untold numbers of gay Christians who are tired of hiding, tired of living in the shadows, tired of denying what God would have them be.

I don't know when I "knew" I was gay...but I certainly knew something was different with my sexuality at 14, when guys I knew and trusted were talking about making out with girls, and I wasn't gettin' it. Thank God, I never actually asked any of my buddies, "What's the big deal?" - but I thought it a lot. Soon enough, I figured out that I should be feeling something different - and wasn't. God knows, I tried to act and feel different (and left a lot of emotional wreckage in my wake in the process). Sometimes, I thought it was working - but in the end, it never did.

So at this late stage of the game, I can testify to this: no matter how much I have tried, no matter how much I have wanted it to "work," I have never, ever had even a naturally-occuring thought of true sexual attraction to women...ever. Now, I have tried to manufacture those feelings - with friends, girfriends, my former wife, you name it. I tried desperately, and often. And I really, really, really wanted it to work - and often made myself believe that it had worked - but it never truly did.

Nope. Not once. Like I say...I have tried. A lot.

If that's true, that also means there has really never been a moment of my life when I have not been homosexual. I never "abandoned natural relations with women" (Romans 1:27a, NIV)... because I never had anything to abandon. I was never, ever "there" to begin with. As rigorously honest as I can be, I am coming to believe I began life this way.

I don't think that the majority of Christians can even conceive of this as a possibility - much less believe it.

That's why I'm taking these ever-so-gentle first steps through the closet door - because I find I can no longer remain silent. In the war of words and ideas on homosexuality, there seems to be two main sides:

- the GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual, & transgendered) community, many of whom are in stable, committed relationships (or want to be), who are not sex-&-drug-crazed "circuit boys," who simply understand that they are different, and just want the chance to live and relate to each other openly and honestly, like the rest of the world; and on the other side,

- a significant majority of Christians, who seem convinced that homosexuals (a) have chosen this orientation, (b) have chosen "the homosexual lifestyle" (including indiscriminate sex and drug abuse), (c) are going to hell because of it, and (d) are determined to take all of decent society with them.

In reality, there are probably at least three other groups:

- Christians and non-Christians alike who either do not have an opinion, or who agree with the gay community, but don't want to get in between the first two groups (for any number of reasons);

- Loving, committed, faithful Christians (both straight and gay), who truly believe that actively gay and Christian are not incompatible, and who are willing to speak out about it; and

- Closeted members of the GLBT community who truly want to believe that their homosexuality, their faith, and their lives as equal members of the world community are real, valid, and intimately intertwined. These are people who feel they have to live their lives hiding in the church while trying to find a way of life and faith, but unable to even ask about the topic - for fear of "outing themselves," and being cast from the community of faith.

For years, I consciously chose to be a member of that last group. And that's why I'm writing - and praying - about all of this.

I'm still a Christian. I'm still an alcoholic in recovery. I'm a middle-aged former corporate slave who ditched his former life to come to seminary in Chicago. (For a number of reasons - none having anything to do with my sexuality - I had to drop out for the forseeable future.)

And I'm a gay man.

Coming from the 12-step communities (primarily Alcoholics Anonymous), I've found this truth: you can argue with my ideas, you can argue with my philosophy, you can argue with my dogmas and concepts and beliefs. But in the end, the only absolutely concrete thing I have to offer is my experience, strength, and hope. You may not like my experience; you can choose to ignore or deny my experience. But in the end, the only reality I have is contained in my experience - and my faith. And that's what I'm going to try to share in this digital "great adventure."

Now, at this point, I have heard non-Christian people say to other gay friends of mine, "Hey - haven't you been listening to your so-called 'Christian' friends? Your so-called faith says that you are an abomination, and that you should be cut off from the world, you stupid moron. How can you have a faith that claims that you should cease to exist? Why bother?"

It's a valid question. It's one I've wrestled with ever since I started going back to church. And it's at least one reason why I've stayed in the closet as long as I have. There are many, many answers to this - but here's a few, for now:

First, I'm not doing any of the things that would get me labeled "abomination." In fact, as of this writing, I have not "lain with" anyone - male or female - for eleven long years. My only sexual experiences with a man were more than 20 years ago - and the person involved was so ashamed, he ultimately committed suicide, rather than doing what I am doing right now. So let's clear one thing up: I am not "coming out" because I've found some hot guy to "do the nasty with," or because I have found some special someone to skip down some gay "lovers' lane." Tragically (again, at least for now) nothing could be further from the truth.

Second, and more importantly, as a Christian, I have affirmed the Bible as the inspired word of God. As a seminarian, I affirmed the Bible as the inspired word of God - first, to a specific community in a specific time, and second, as a guide to faith and action. But there are enough valid questions about the translations and intentions of the texts I quoted, and others (even by straight theologians, who have no percentage in "perverting Scripture") to give me hope. I'll be exploring those as I go along.

Thirdly, as a gay Christian, my homosexuality calls into question beliefs about the very nature of creation, about God's power and goodness, about the nature of sin, the essence of humanity, and about God's love for all creation (even me). How can I be an abomination and yet be fearfully and wonderfully made?

John 3:16 (that phrase that so many folks spout at the drop of a hat) says that "God so loved the world" - not the straight world, but the whole world.

Regardless what Pat Robertson, Fred Phelps, or anyone else says, I am a child of "the world" that Jesus came to save. I am a part of the created order of the world. I didn't choose this; I have just been this way - forever. And I am slowly coming to believe that God can and does loves me, and desires me to have a relationship with me - just as I am. I've been told - by people who seem to know - that God wants me to be "happy, joyous and free." I don't believe that God wants me denying what I am, rejecting sexuality as I am drawn to it, and hiding the truth about who and what I am from the world. I cannot believe that I would be created homosexual, and then told to abstain from "that sinful life." Even though I have done just that, out of fear...for decades.

The 2nd step of the 12-step recovery program says that we "came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity." A friend recently told me that he'd heard "sanity" described as the ability to work, play, and love - successfully, and in balance. So it seems that my adventure will be to discover how a a gay man can reconcile the love of God and the promise of salvation in Christ as revealed in the Bible with the ability to work, play, and love as a "practicing" homosexual.

Ultimately, some will say this is impossible. But I have to believe that the God of my misunderstanding is way, way bigger than that.

As of the day I first wrote this, I was a long, long way from "out." For another while, I could count on both hands the number of folks who knew that I'm gay. Now I'm out to a few more people, but still struggling through the closet door. So forgive my fear and struggling - but for the time being, this will be an anonymous blog. I long for the day when I can strip that cloak of anonymity away - but for now, this is just survival, one day at a time.

If I've sent you the link to this site, you know who I am...and I'd ask you to help me preserve that anonymity, until I'm ready to break it. No one else can - or should - be "outing" me until I'm ready to do that. (I'm not silly enough to think it won't happen - but I can at least ask...)

If you're still with me, welcome to the journey.
Judge tenderly of me...

(last updated November 20, 2005)