Let's See Where This Goes

So earlier this month in a radio interview, Rick Santorum was asked whether he considered gay and lesbian couples with children a family. His response, rather surprisingly, was "Yes, of course it's a family." (You can watch the full interview here). I have no idea what this means for American politics.

Though Santorum is still far from the most progressive presidential candidate, he has apparently had quite a come-to-Jesus moment recently. Will this new position have any effect on his other political opinions? Will this bold move change the conservative political landscape? Was it just a political farce in an attempt to gain more centrist primary votes? I have no idea. What I do know is that this affirming comment, coming from one of the most vehement opponents of lgbt citizens, offers a glimmer of hope to the lgbt community that even the most conservative politicians might soon be changing their views.

It's still too early to tell whether or not this is the start of a radical change of opinion by Santorum or if it will affect the rest of conservative politics, but this was definitely out of character for Santorum. I am very interested to see how this comment will shape the rest of the conservative nomination. Let's see where this goes.

What I Did Over Break

First things first: This afternoon, from 4-6 in the LGBT Center, we will be hosting an Ally-themed Fab Friday. Come by and show some appreciation for all our allies, and have a great time with some cool people. There will be cake and free Jimmy John's too, just saying...

Now, for the other thing:

You might recall my last post, but odds are you don't, so I'll remind you. Over the winter break I became very frustrated over the constant need to hide massive parts of my life from my mom, so in my last blog post I committed to coming out to her before I went back to school. 

Well I did.

Now, let me give you some context: my mom is very, very religiously conservative. However, I also knew that she loved me, so I wasn't entirely sure how this would go, in fact, it took me two visits before I could work up the courage to tell her. I did, eventually, manage to work up that courage though. Her response? "I already knew. I love you very much, and God loves you."

How she knew or how long she had known are still unknown to me. Perhaps there's some magical insight mothers are privy to, I dunno. 

While parts of her response weren't perfect, it was by far the smoothest and best reaction I have gotten from any of my family members, and an excellent way to end the break. And I now have the added benefit of not having to hide my life from my family anymore, which is always a plus!

Although coming out to your parents isn't always an option for people, I hope those of you who are nervous about coming out to your parents can draw at least some strength from my story. I never would have expected that coming out to my mom would go as well as it did, but things often have a tendency of going very, very unlike how we expect they should.

Something To Get Excited About

So, in case you haven't heard, the Presbyterian Church (USA) announced in October that it plans on ordaining its first openly gay priest (Scott Anderson). The church's standards for ordination were also revised, eliminating a longstanding ban on gay ordination in the church. The Presbyterians (after the Episcopalians, the Lutherans, and those in the United Church of Christ) are now the fourth mainline Protestant denomination to allow gay ordination.

Of course, this has sparked a massive debate that will not be easily settled, and the Westboro Baptist Church recently posted on their website that they plan to picket the ordination. These are the actions of people that know they are fighting a losing battle.

The Presbyterian Church is a large organization, representing well over 2 million people. Although not all of these people agree with the official position of the church, that such a massive entity has decided to lend its support to the LBGT community is a powerful and hopeful message. The Presbyterian church's decision, however, is much more than a declaration of support and reaffirmation by a large group. It is indicative of a much wider, more fundamental cultural change, and that's what is really important.

The world is changing, and becoming more aware of and sympathetic to the LGBT community, and the decision of the Presbyterian church is just one more indicator of that. People are tired of their religion being used to spread intolerance, and they won't have it anymore. The Presbyterian church is leading the way into a new era, and will likely be the impetus for further cultural change. The LGBT community gained a powerful new ally this month, and it is likely to get many more in the near future due to the influence of the Presbyterian Church and the cultural change its actions represent, and that is definitely something to get excited about.

As Scott Anderson (the soon-to-be-ordained) said in an interview with Reuters, "Institutional religion has not always been a helpful conversation partner with the wider culture and my hope and prayer is that, with this action of the Presbyterian Church, we will increasingly become a more constructive player in the wider cultural discussion about gays and lesbians."

Coming Out To Everyone

I feel overexposed.

This is a feeling that's been bugging me for quite some time now, and it's entirely my fault.

I never really "went public" in high school. Most of my friends knew I was gay, but I was still extremely private with it, and struggled intensely with saying "I'm gay," even to myself. So, I decided that in college that was all going to change. My method for changing this? Come out to everything.

In retrospect, this might not have been the best decision.

Upon arriving on campus, I quickly immersed myself in the LGBT center, Blue Devils United, and this blog. These, especially writing for the blog, garnered me an enormous amount of overexposure. The day my first post hit this blog, everyone, and I do mean everyone, seemed to know I was gay. Granted, I saw this coming, but I thought it was what I wanted.

I'm fine coming out to the LGBT community, it's only when my sexuality begins to spill over into areas of my "straight" life that I have an issue, and before I knew what was happening, people started finding my blog post from all areas of my "straight" life.

I managed to make it okay with myself by saying that this would make my life easier. Being gay in Christian communities is a tricky business, and by having my sexuality already out in the open, it wouldn't come out of nowhere to bite me later. And this made it easy for me to be known as the "gay Christian" role model that I wanted to be.

But I still felt exposed. My business was all over the place. Suddenly, my "straight" life and my "gay" life that I'd worked so hard to preserve were all blended up together. This was what I had hoped would happen, but now I found myself just hoping that I could resegregate my life.

I feel like this is what happens to lots of LGBT people after they start coming out. Coming out is necessary, because your sexuality is a core part of your identity that you shouldn't have to hide, and it can be an extremely liberating experience. But at the same time, when you consider coming out, you're feeling pressured to share intimate details of your sex life to people for no reason, and it's easy to start feeling as though your privacy is being infringed on, even though you're the one doing the infringing. And then there's the added pressure of the knowledge "once you come out, there's no going back," and on top of all that is the decision of who to come out to.

All of these pressures are intensely individualistic. Some people are comfortable enough with their sexuality that they have no problem coming out to everyone, others, like me (as I learned the hard way), are a little more private. After all, coming out to everyone isn't at all necessary, and your sexuality isn't any of most people's business. Of course if coming out to everyone isn't your cup of tea, it can be very tempting to try and segregate your life into "straight" and "gay" spheres, and that is something you absolutely cannot do.

No matter when you decide to come out, and who you decide to come out to, the most important thing is that you take yourself seriously. Don't hide an important part of who you are just because you happen to be in one of your "straight" spheres, and if that means having to come out in that sphere, then so be it. If you're forcing yourself to hide who you are, from anyone, then there was no point in you coming out at all.

Coming out with God

[Editor's Note: I am incredibly excited to introduce you all to our second 2015 blogger, Jonathan! Please give him the same rousing welcome that you gave Kyle last week.]

So, lately I've noticed myself using the terms "before I was gay," and "after I was gay" to refer to before and after my senior year of high school, respectively. I'm still not entirely sure when or why I started doing this.

This seemed rather strange to me when I first noticed myself doing it, but upon some reflection I realized that there was a subtle truth in what I was saying.

Prior to my junior and senior years of high school (or thereabouts), I was heavily repressed. I knew that I sometimes thought about other boys, but I also knew that God would send me to hell if I thought too much about other boys. The concept of a gay person going to church was totally nonsensical to me. After all, why would they bother worshiping a God that hated them? Obviously, I never would have (or could have) considered myself gay (hence the "before I was gay" era). I couldn't be. After all, I was a good Christian boy, and God doesn't make you gay if you're Christian. Attraction to other boys is just something everyone has to deal with, they just never talk about it. Right?

Over the course of my junior and senior years in high school I began to reevaluate those statements. Through the help of a few good friends, a couple gay role models, and a handful of Christian theologians (Desmond Tutu and Gene Robinson especially), I gradually came to understand that the term "gay Christian" isn't such an oxymoron after all. For the first time in my life I was exposed to the possibilities that I could be both, and that I could be gay and not go to hell. What radical thoughts! My whole conception of myself and the world was blown apart. Suddenly, I could embrace that part of me I'd kept hidden my entire life. I didn't have to force myself to like girls anymore, and God would still love me? And thus began the long and difficult process of coming to terms with my sexuality and the beginning of the "after I was gay" era.

Sadly, I am well aware that I don't face this struggle alone. The struggle to choose between religion and sexuality is something all gay religious teens face. It would seem that the current religious climate in America simply doesn't allow someone to be both gay and Christian - you have to pick one. Many gay teens simply toss their religion aside, or worse, they do what I did, and repress their sexuality in order to keep God's love for them. It would seem there's something unfair, or rather, unnatural, about having to make that choice. As Dr Daniel Helminiak puts it, "To have to be afraid to feel sexual is to restrain that noblest of human possibilities, love. It is to short-circuit human spontaneity in a whole array of expressions - creativity, motivation, passion, commitment, heroic achievement. It is to be afraid of part of one's own deepest self.... So, in a profound and important way, for people to have to choose between religion and sexuality is to have to choose between religion and themselves. As we are coming to understand the matter today, it is to have to choose between God and human wholeness."

Choosing between God and human wholeness? Is that a choice God wants us to have to make? Is that really what the queer community has to spend their lives wrestling with? Is that the best God can do? Really?

No.

God is greater, better, and more nuanced than that.

Of course, this doesn't mean we're getting off easy. We're left with the massive responsibility of finding a way to make our religion and our sexuality work. Although God will be with us along the way, working in both our religion and our sexual identity, we still face the very difficult question: How can we find some middle ground between the two? One thing that I've learned in my own attempts is that no one can give us an easy means to reconcile our faith and our sexuality. For those of us struggling to reconcile them, there are plenty of gay religious role models that can help point us in the right directions, but ultimately, our individual middle ground is something we have to work out with God for ourselves.

No matter what stage you're at in this reconciliation - questioning, afraid to question, conflicted, or confident - rest assured, God does not want you to hide from any part of who you are. After all, God made you, and there's no part of you that God can't handle. In recent years (mostly over the past century or so) God has been the victim of the most vicious case of slander ever to occur in the course of human history at the hands of conservative religious groups. These groups and the falsehoods they spread cannot comprehend the breadth and the depth of our God. They cannot understand and they cannot withstand the Good News that our God's love is for all of us, all the time, in all places, people of all faiths, and people of no faith. It cannot and will not be confined to any group which tries to claim it and monopolize it for itself. As the Archbishop Desmond Tutu famously preached, "Jesus said, 'When I be lifted up I will draw all people to myself.' All. All, all, all, all, all! Black, white, rich, poor, beautiful, not-so-beautiful. It's one of the most radical things! All, all, all, all, all! Gay, bi, so-called straight, all of us are meant to be held in this incredible embrace that will not let us go. All."

Don't be afraid to embrace part of who you are because you think God won't like it; God embraced that part of you a long time ago.