When you are a runner for your midwestern college’s indoor track team – which holds its season in the Winter -- and your coach loves to watch you suffer, you find yourself bundling up on Friday nights for mandatory warm-up runs outside in the cold-assed dark prior to your inside gymnasium track races. It was on one of these freezing runs that my buddy, who was on my relay team for a race we were both warming up to run, shared between huffing breaths that she was gay.
We were a tight little group of gangly runners, the women’s college team of which we were both part, so I was not surprised by this admission. Bri was pint-sized, tough-as-steel, rarely found without her sandy-blonde hair in a pony-tail, competitive to the death, and not a particularly lively participator in our team’s giggly crush conversations.
For her, though, I was glad we were surrounded by darkness and facing forward, because saying it out loud as we clipped along, I could tell, was not easy.
Bri was the first friend I knew well to tell me she was gay.
Before I get ahead of myself, though, I need to back a bunch up. To my particular version of The Sex Talk. My brother and I argue about what our Sex Talk consisted of, when really our stories should be identical since we were together when it happened. My memory tells the story of a set of nightly sessions compacted into a week or so when Justin, my brother, and I were small. Justin remembers it taking place more willy nilly over the course of a longer stretch of time. What we both agree upon is that it was a fairly formal thing. Illuminated by a bed lamp, the “S” encyclopedia was one of several resources laid out for these nighttime learning sessions, and it was our Dad who functioned as the facilitator (Mom was supportive but happy to sidestep). He took the job seriously; no stone was left unturned on the subject. We were taught it all: the mechanics of sex, the utility of sex, the pleasure of sex, and the connection between emotions and sex. To help you understand the strong commitment he had to framing it positively to us kids, my dad refused to call it “sex:” instead “making love.” I feel certain there was a brief time dedicated to educating us about how sex can go sideways: sexually transmitted diseases and unplanned pregnancies and the like. But mostly I remember being happily dumbfounded that God had made it so that humans got to do such a miraculous and mysterious and blessed thing with one another.
Somewhere in-between Dad’s sex ed and that jog with Bri, two other things happened. First, I became a complete and total church groupie. I was Sunday School girl, youth group girl, Vacation Bible School girl, summer mission trip girl, church choir girl – and I even attempted to follow along sheet music while ringing bells during worship. I loved church. I still do. Church did me right, mainly because my childhood pastors were the Bomb: our senior pastor was a wise and wickedly intelligent man and my youth pastor, with whom I would converse about everything from ape evolution to Bible conundrums to other world religions to funny Seinfeld episodes, was always willing to entertain and hold space for uncertainty. He was and is an honest, progressive-minded friend.
The second thing that happened was, for a family rearing its children in Louisville, KY in the 80s and 90s, my childhood was starting to see the topic of homosexuality showing up more and more at its doorstep. I will never forget watching “Philadelphia” as a barely-teenager. I did not know what to do with that film. I knew nothing about AIDS prior to watching it (besides the name). I certainly had not seen gay couples show affection in public (you remember Hanks and Washington’s dance scene, right?). I was way too dumb and self-involved and in middle-America (and straight) to be remotely capable of understanding the realities of discrimination homosexuals faced.
“Philadelphia” rocked me, too, because, underneath all of that church awesomeness where truly I was taught about and experienced the real deal of God’s unconditional love, I was also aware of a Christian tenant never directly taught but nonetheless there: gay was not okay. But I just kept singing Kumbaya around youth retreat campfires and learning about this Jesus guy as someone I wanted everything to do with… and all of this spared me from too much squirminess around conservative Christian views, simply because they infrequently came to light in my world.
Until Bri.
People, I mean it when I say: It was easy to know what to do here. My beloved friend – who, along with the rest of the Track Team, I had shared countless Fazoli dinners with, labored through dozens of grueling sprint work outs with, argued over crappy cafeteria meals about politics with, this person I respected and admired and valued – was gay. She told me before she told anyone else on the team, anyone else at the college, even though doing so carried a risk of rejection, since she knew I was a Christian. And I knew exactly what to do: absolutely and completely nothing. Nothing changed about her, about me, about our friendship.
When she explained the tough time she was having with some complex family dynamics, that she was trying and failing to get her parents to accept this piece of who she was, that they’d repeatedly demanded therapists and repentance and camps to set her straight, I grieved. I knew one thing for certain: I was not going to be another influence in her life that said she was living – existing – wrongly. It was clear as day: I said to God, “I don’t know about this, Man, but I sure as heck am not going to decide for You. In fact, I’m straight up not gonna worry about it. The whole thing is on you, after all. Cool?”
Fast-forward through another incredible blessing in my life – that I got to be the first person in our extended family my teenaged cousin confided in about her homosexuality, before her parents, before most of her friends – and you will clearly see how I have come by circumstance to be a strong champion for gay people in my life who have had the courage to come out into their realities. Bri and my cousin cried and screamed and limped and labored through their separate journeys of coming out. To be alongside them while they did it is a gift I will not waste.
So now, I’m educated. I’ve scoured over the Biblical passages that Christians for ages have interpreted to be the final word about homosexuality as a sin. I’ve read Christian books that help me to frame those passages in a generous and Jesus-consistent light. I have attended interfaith workshops where the topic of sexuality has been addressed by minister, rabbi, and monk panelists. And I have prayed. Boy, have I prayed.
But now, instead of reluctant, shruggy theology on the subject, I have come to see with clarity and decisiveness that sexuality and sexual immorality are separate things.
Gonna unpack that: sexuality and sexual immorality are separate things. To do so, let’s retrieve what I’ve said about the sex ed I received in my home as a youngster. Sexuality was introduced to me as profoundly normal. Good. Natural. Positive. I realize not everyone grew up with this message. But, because I did, it was so much easier for me to see sexuality as something separate from morality. Yes, we are sexual beings. Yes, that is good. No, sexuality does not need to be beaten out of us. No, we need not fight against it. My dad didn’t know at the time that by teaching me in this way he was leaving an open door I’d walk through these many years later – that I’d translate my adolescent understanding of how good and God-given sexuality is to all sexuality, the non-heterosexual kind, too.
Is there an overlap where sex and immorality happen together? Yes, of course. People regularly use their bodies and their partners in immoral and worth-reducing manners. Let us all the while remember: It’s not that sex is bad. It’s how we use sex that can be bad. And the bad types – the kind that yield power over the other, the kind that diminishes our or others’ worth, the kind that preys on the vulnerable, and a whole lot of other kinds – run amuck in the homosexual and heterosexual practice of it.
When I assert that sexuality and sexual immorality are separate things, I’m saying that sexual orientation is not the determinant of sin; people are the determinant of sin. I’m saying that purity – I’d hope – is about a heck of a lot more than who one is attracted to. I’m saying that Bri, my cousin, all you out there, and I – a straight gal – are equally responsible for maintaining our separate sex lives to be honorable before God; one is no more inherently honorable than the other.
But – and I mean this – what I’m saying could also be all wrong.
And that is where prayer comes back round. The prayer that’s evolved for me (from the “I don’t know about this, Man.” one) reveals a decisiveness yet is still laced in humility: “Dear God, If I am wrong about this, I’m all ears.” I’ve earnestly prayed it hundreds of times, and I think it captures the vulnerability in my heart. Just praying it over and over has changed me.
Just like Bri and my cousin changed me.
Why on earth do I care so much about gay inclusion?
I’ve come a long way from that dark warm-up run when my pal trusted me with her secret. My metamorphosis on this subject isn’t over yet, either; I’m still growing (and you ought to be, too). But so far, it looks like this:
Living alongside my gay loved ones as they came out is a gift I will not waste; it is part of my story.
The Jesus I’ve come to know has taken up residence in my theology and helps frame Bible passages that at first glance come across as ungenerous towards a gay lifestyle.
Sexuality and sexual immorality are separate things - unless I’ve got it all wrong.
I may have it wrong. And, God, if this is true, I’m all ears.
Amen.
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