A question of faith.
Jun. 16th, 2005 03:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
I find myself blankly offended.
In some ways I'm even more offended because I am a Christian. My faith has always been important to me. Being queer and Christian are two things that most people seem to feel are mutually exclusive, but I can't agree. And then I read things like this. It is painful on a fundamental level. To feel this kind of hatred aimed at me by people who claim, at the same time, to want to bring "Christ's love" to the world.
"You telling these miserable, Hell-bound, bath house-wallowing, anal-copulating fags that God loves them!? You have bats in the belfry!"
That? Where does that come from? Where does that kind of hate fit into Christ's tenant that we are to "love your neighbor as yourself"? It doesn't. It's that simple. It just doesn't. I know that growing up I was terrified of my own sexuality. That the very idea that I might be even a little bit "that way" was something that was out of the question. My ability to wrap my mind around the thought that I was queer wasn't something I was capable of. Convinced that I would be disowned and abandoned, I simply decided to ignore it. My bisexuality was something I viewed as a kind of safety net. I wasn't lying to anyone, I wasn't doing anything wrong, I simply didn't allow that aspect of myself to have any kind of outward effect on my life. I lived the "don't ask don't tell" ideal.
And it ate me from the inside out.
Coming to terms with what I -- no, who I -- am was far from easy. I spent years walking a fine line that, at times, wasn't a line at all, but simply a free fall. Raised to believe that being queer was something patently unacceptable, a sin, something only the craven and wicked chose for themselves left me feeling hollow and lost. I knew God loved me. That certainty has never wavered. What I couldn't comprehend was how I could have been made in such defiance of what I was told were His laws, His rules. Obviously I was failing as a Christian. If I were stronger, if my faith were greater then I wouldn't find myself struggling with this temptation.
I remember attending a church event at a large Baptist church in my area when I was in high school. They were worshiping, singing, and I felt that sense of peace that only comes from God. But then they began to speak about "those things we hide in our hearts." I'm gay, I thought and felt sick. Then one of the youth pastors noticed my distress and, pulling me to the side, asked me if there was anything I needed to share. I'd never told anyone. Never voiced, to anyone, what I was terrified was an irredeemable flaw on my part. But I needed it then. Needed the release of sharing the weight of what I thought was my greatest failing.
So I whispered to her that I thought that, maybe, I was was attracted to girls.
"Have you ever...?" She asked me, obviously trying hard not to let her horror show.
"No."
"Good." And she gave me what I supposed she thought was assuring smile. "We can help you with this. You don't have to be that way."
And in that moment something inside me clicked. Because all I could think was, "But why can't I?"
I would ask myself this question again and again in the years that followed. I would pray and question and deny and, in the end, wouldn't breath word of this to another soul until after I graduated from college. Wouldn't dare to say out loud what I'd feared, and finally accepted to be true back in high school, until a year ago. I was 23. And even though I told my best friend. Even though I knew that Wayne cared about me and would never, never turn her back on me, I still remember the moment of fear that left my mouth dry. Because what if Wayne, of the unshakable faith, turned to me and said that she could only "love the sinner but not the sin"?
There is a kind of deep and unwavering self loathing that you struggle with when you look at what you are sure you are meant to be, and yet fail to achieve. It is fed by a guilt that grows and expands every time you hear the word "sinner" and know that, whether the people around you know it or not, they're speaking about you. It is the usual "coming out" story made that much worse by the fact that you are unable to even come out to yourself. The moment you acknowledge your sexuality as true, you must also accept that, if what the world around you says is right about their God, then you have moved outside God's favor.
Every one accepts themselves along a different timeline. Each person has life defining epiphanies at unique moments in their lives. I have yet to come out to my parents, though my younger sister knows. Why? Because my father's faith has no place for homosexuality as anything other than sin. Even later, I know my father would love me but it wouldn't be acceptance. It would be love in spite of this sin I refuse to let go of. He doesn't hate, but he is like too many others, unable to see past what it is that they have been told it is "good" and "right" to love.
A friend once told me that being gay had to be a choice. "I just don't think that a God that loves His children would make anyone something that wrong on purpose." I don't think it had ever occurred to her that maybe God could love his children even if they are gay.
I read what these people have said. I read the hate and loathing and the fear in their words and I think about how far I have come, how many times I walked to the edge and nearly let them and their small minded words, small minded god, push me over the side. And then I remember my God. I remember and know that it was Him, and my faith in Him that pulled me back from that same edge. It's that same knowledge that gives me my resolve.
I refuse to allow these people the power to take away my faith. I refuse to allow these people and their fear to force me away from the church in which I find love. I refuse to allow these people to change God from a creator who loves, into a weapon of hate.
I'm well aware of the fact that these are all issues we've seen before. It isn't anything new that there is hate in the world, or that much of it is couched in unreasonable, and patently insane, religious terms. But that isn't the God I worship. That isn't the faith that has helped me and made me the person I am today. None of this makes these words hurt any less though. None of this makes me any less angry or offended. You should be too if only because Faith, religious or otherwise, is an intensely personal thing. And yet there are people in the world who seek to rob us of even that. It's our right to defend our own, personal faiths, with as much strength, with as much volume and as much defiance as they do their, "sanctity of marriage," or "family values."
It is our right and it is our job. Arm yourselves well.
In some ways I'm even more offended because I am a Christian. My faith has always been important to me. Being queer and Christian are two things that most people seem to feel are mutually exclusive, but I can't agree. And then I read things like this. It is painful on a fundamental level. To feel this kind of hatred aimed at me by people who claim, at the same time, to want to bring "Christ's love" to the world.
"You telling these miserable, Hell-bound, bath house-wallowing, anal-copulating fags that God loves them!? You have bats in the belfry!"
That? Where does that come from? Where does that kind of hate fit into Christ's tenant that we are to "love your neighbor as yourself"? It doesn't. It's that simple. It just doesn't. I know that growing up I was terrified of my own sexuality. That the very idea that I might be even a little bit "that way" was something that was out of the question. My ability to wrap my mind around the thought that I was queer wasn't something I was capable of. Convinced that I would be disowned and abandoned, I simply decided to ignore it. My bisexuality was something I viewed as a kind of safety net. I wasn't lying to anyone, I wasn't doing anything wrong, I simply didn't allow that aspect of myself to have any kind of outward effect on my life. I lived the "don't ask don't tell" ideal.
And it ate me from the inside out.
Coming to terms with what I -- no, who I -- am was far from easy. I spent years walking a fine line that, at times, wasn't a line at all, but simply a free fall. Raised to believe that being queer was something patently unacceptable, a sin, something only the craven and wicked chose for themselves left me feeling hollow and lost. I knew God loved me. That certainty has never wavered. What I couldn't comprehend was how I could have been made in such defiance of what I was told were His laws, His rules. Obviously I was failing as a Christian. If I were stronger, if my faith were greater then I wouldn't find myself struggling with this temptation.
I remember attending a church event at a large Baptist church in my area when I was in high school. They were worshiping, singing, and I felt that sense of peace that only comes from God. But then they began to speak about "those things we hide in our hearts." I'm gay, I thought and felt sick. Then one of the youth pastors noticed my distress and, pulling me to the side, asked me if there was anything I needed to share. I'd never told anyone. Never voiced, to anyone, what I was terrified was an irredeemable flaw on my part. But I needed it then. Needed the release of sharing the weight of what I thought was my greatest failing.
So I whispered to her that I thought that, maybe, I was was attracted to girls.
"Have you ever...?" She asked me, obviously trying hard not to let her horror show.
"No."
"Good." And she gave me what I supposed she thought was assuring smile. "We can help you with this. You don't have to be that way."
And in that moment something inside me clicked. Because all I could think was, "But why can't I?"
I would ask myself this question again and again in the years that followed. I would pray and question and deny and, in the end, wouldn't breath word of this to another soul until after I graduated from college. Wouldn't dare to say out loud what I'd feared, and finally accepted to be true back in high school, until a year ago. I was 23. And even though I told my best friend. Even though I knew that Wayne cared about me and would never, never turn her back on me, I still remember the moment of fear that left my mouth dry. Because what if Wayne, of the unshakable faith, turned to me and said that she could only "love the sinner but not the sin"?
There is a kind of deep and unwavering self loathing that you struggle with when you look at what you are sure you are meant to be, and yet fail to achieve. It is fed by a guilt that grows and expands every time you hear the word "sinner" and know that, whether the people around you know it or not, they're speaking about you. It is the usual "coming out" story made that much worse by the fact that you are unable to even come out to yourself. The moment you acknowledge your sexuality as true, you must also accept that, if what the world around you says is right about their God, then you have moved outside God's favor.
Every one accepts themselves along a different timeline. Each person has life defining epiphanies at unique moments in their lives. I have yet to come out to my parents, though my younger sister knows. Why? Because my father's faith has no place for homosexuality as anything other than sin. Even later, I know my father would love me but it wouldn't be acceptance. It would be love in spite of this sin I refuse to let go of. He doesn't hate, but he is like too many others, unable to see past what it is that they have been told it is "good" and "right" to love.
A friend once told me that being gay had to be a choice. "I just don't think that a God that loves His children would make anyone something that wrong on purpose." I don't think it had ever occurred to her that maybe God could love his children even if they are gay.
I read what these people have said. I read the hate and loathing and the fear in their words and I think about how far I have come, how many times I walked to the edge and nearly let them and their small minded words, small minded god, push me over the side. And then I remember my God. I remember and know that it was Him, and my faith in Him that pulled me back from that same edge. It's that same knowledge that gives me my resolve.
I refuse to allow these people the power to take away my faith. I refuse to allow these people and their fear to force me away from the church in which I find love. I refuse to allow these people to change God from a creator who loves, into a weapon of hate.
I'm well aware of the fact that these are all issues we've seen before. It isn't anything new that there is hate in the world, or that much of it is couched in unreasonable, and patently insane, religious terms. But that isn't the God I worship. That isn't the faith that has helped me and made me the person I am today. None of this makes these words hurt any less though. None of this makes me any less angry or offended. You should be too if only because Faith, religious or otherwise, is an intensely personal thing. And yet there are people in the world who seek to rob us of even that. It's our right to defend our own, personal faiths, with as much strength, with as much volume and as much defiance as they do their, "sanctity of marriage," or "family values."
It is our right and it is our job. Arm yourselves well.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-20 12:45 pm (UTC)It is our right and it is our job. Arm yourselves well.
A lot of people read what they've been told is in the Bible, rather than what's actually there. I've found that getting people to see what's there can change minds and hearts. Perhaps these few things I wrote (http://www.livejournal.com/users/daegaer/tag/homosexuality) might prove useful to you.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-20 09:31 pm (UTC)If find myself intensely saddened by the number of queer folk I know who've walked away from a church that refuses to accept that maybe they're reading the same Bible we are, but just in completely different light.
And thank you for the links. I will definitely be looking them over. *G*