There is a good chance that what I’m about to write will alienate me from a lot of people who I care about. I have never been one to do anything that will make people not like me. I will push the limits. I will make veiled, witty references, but I rarely come right out and completely take a side because, as much as I hate to admit it, being liked is a big deal to me. So know that in saying the things I am about to say, I understand the consequences and I don’t take them lightly. I’m here to talk about my faith. I’m here to talk about religion. I’m here to talk about sin. I’m here to talk about homosexuality…and heterosexuality.
I’m also here to confess.
Perhaps the confession is a good place to start. It lets those who know me now know that I wasn’t always as open-minded, which might give some of my friends hope in the human capacity for change. It lets those who knew me years ago know that I have changed my mind about a great many things. My confession is that I used to believe that gays should not be allowed to marry. Actually, that’s not entirely accurate. I didn’t see what the big deal was. In my mid-teens, I didn’t understand why it was such a big deal for two people of the same gender to be able to have their relationship honored in the eyes of the law. It was just a piece of paper, wasn’t it? If the relationship was sound, why did it need legality? To be fair, I didn’t understand the idea of anyone who wasn’t of a faith getting married. If it wasn’t for God, why do it at all?
Well, I was wrong. I was wrong because I was too young to have any concept of a legally recognized union. You darned well do need the law on your side. Being married for three years has taught me some things that have nothing to do with my being a Christian or the love I feel for my husband. You need to know where you stand on mutual assets. You need combined credit scores to buy property. You need the right to be in the hospital with the person you’ve spent your life loving. You need to be able to sign for things. There are so many things that the law can help or hinder based on your marital status and I’m not willing to keep that law from anyone who can legally make decisions for themselves.
None of those things have anything to do with my being a Christian, which I am. I am a Christian because I believe in Jesus as Messiah, which is the primary requirement of my faith. It is nearly the only thing that ties all sects of Christianity together and I can put a checkmark in that box. However, it has recently been implied that I cannot be a Christian if I choose to tolerate homosexuals. I believe this is wrong on many levels. First of all, tolerate is the wrong word. It implies a benevolence on my part to allow certain undesirables in my presence. I am not so vain as to think that I have that right or so self-righteous to think that any child of God could be considered an undesirable. I can tolerate a child screaming on a bus or a long wait at the doctor’s office. These are things that are happening to me. Homosexuals are not happening to me. They aren’t trying to send “extra gay” in my general direction. They just want to be. They are an entire group of people who need neither my tolerance nor approval. The word you are looking for is not tolerate. The word you are looking for is respect. I choose to respect homosexuals as people who are no different from me because they are no different from me. The other word you are looking for is love. I choose to love homosexuals because it is the right thing to do and because Christ absolutely requires it of me and all Christians. Those non-homosexuals reading this, I love you, too, even when your opinions differ from mine and even knowing that some of you are wondering what special part of Hell I get for being such a hardcore “sin tolerator”.
Speaking of sin, I know that some of the other Christians reading this might be thinking the obvious rebuttal,
“What about all the things that the Bible says about homosexuality being a sin? You can’t just pick and choose what you think are and aren’t sins.”
Believe it or not, this is the one place where you have me pinned. I struggle with this question every single day and not just because of homosexuality. I could use the Leviticus shellfish defense, but you’ve heard it and, at this point, it just sounds cheap. I’ve eaten buckets upon buckets of crab legs with a girl who has multiple tattoos who has had sex with a woman and a man at the same time and has been the other woman a couple of times in extra-marital affairs. Last time I spoke with her, she was married and she referred to homosexuality as an abomination before God. If I were to bring up her past, she would likely say that she’s repented her sexual sins before God and those things no longer matter because they’ve been forgiven and she’s now living the life that God has chosen for her. She would also say that her repentance is the difference between her and the homosexuals.
She is using an unfair argument.
If she’s truly with the person with whom she’s going to spend the rest of her life, there’s way less pressure in the realm of “sexual deviance”. Yes, there’s always going to be temptation about, but you are far less likely to engage in casual sex when you are in a happily committed relationship than when you are sailing without an anchor. I would have more respect for her argument if she were single and not pursuing any kind of relationship. Also, and she’ll be the first to tell you this, she’s not gay or bi. She only had sex with a woman that one time because it was what the guy wanted to do and, in her mind, that made it okay. We actually live in a society where people think more highly of a girl having sex with another girl to satisfy the needs of a man than we do of two women having sex because they love each other.
Something doesn’t add up here, which brings me to a story…
In 2002, I moved to Richmond, VA to become a touring actress. I was right out of college and was not looking to settle down any time soon. I mean to say, I wanted to find the right guy and get married someday, but I wasn’t in any rush at that point. I spent my first month in Richmond really stretching my wings. I went to off-the-wall theatre events, hit the bar scenes, and became a karaoke regular at a couple of clubs. I was learning about life and was in no way looking to settle down.
Then my housemate Chad invited me to go to Chuggers with some other casts. Chuggers was a great little bar in one of Richmond’s older districts. It had all the ambience of the best movie bars you’ve ever seen and the bartender made really good chocolate martinis. I was ready for a fun night, but not a life changing one.
As we got settled at the table, I was introduced to the man sitting across from me at the table. His name was Lucas and he was working as a house tech for one of the tours. After the introduction, I’m pretty sure the rest of the people disappeared. Lucas and I became engrossed in conversation for the rest of the evening. We talked about everything under the sun for hours. I remember the feeling, that pit of the stomach flutter that lets us know that we are attracted to someone. Then I felt something else, a calm and warm feeling that encased me like sunlight on a beach. I was going to marry this man. This was my rest-of-my-life guy. It wasn’t lightning or lust (though I’m sure both were present), it was a sense of peace, a perfect calm. We’ll celebrate our eighth year of being together in January.
I tell this story for two reasons. One is to tell you that I have never, ever felt anything like that for a woman. I’ve been attracted to plenty of men in my time, but never once has a woman made my breath catch at an accidental brush of skin. Never have I broken eye contact with a woman because I feared that she would see right through me. And never can I imagine ever feeling that way for a woman. I can’t imagine satisfaction at holding a woman in bed or kissing a woman, yet all of those feelings are things I have felt for men at some point in time or another. I am not straight because I choose it or because it is “right”. I’m a heterosexual because there is simply no other way that I can be.
The second reason I share this story is this: I love my husband regardless of how others feel about it. If a group of people were to come up to me and tell me that I wasn’t allowed to be with Lucas, I would recommend that they invest in a good mirror so they could properly screw themselves.
This has become wordy, so I’ll try to make the rest of this as succinct as possible. What I’m saying is that I absolutely have problems identifying what is and isn’t a sin using only the Bible as a guide. To pretend otherwise would be utter hypocrisy. I don’t know in absolutes what is completely right and completely wrong and part of that is because the Bible seemingly contradicts itself in many places. I am starting to think that the contradictions are part of the beauty of the Bible itself. Parable and metaphor are the staples that hold my faith together. We ask the question “how do we earn salvation”, the Bible answers back in contradiction. It becomes its own divine parable. We are physically incapable of following all of the laws within the pages; therefore, it’s what’s beyond the laws that’s important.
I don’t pretend to understand. A lot of what I’ve written here is a way for me to further understand what I do believe. The best I can do is pray and offer love to everyone I can. Right now, the answer that I keep hearing has nothing to do with dogma and everything to do with love and so that is the path I follow. God bless you all and I hope that you can read this with an open mind and heart.
