Parting shots for Pride

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...

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

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

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

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...

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?

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

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...

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"

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!

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

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

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...

...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....

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...

...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!

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

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...

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

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

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?

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

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

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.