For newbies, this is the fifth installment of I Changed My Mind on Sexuality, and it’s another long one.
I was six or eight, maybe five, when my uncle threw me into the deep end. It was after the funeral of my maternal grandmother and we little cousins shimmied out of whatever frills and frocks we were made to wear while adults slipped wordlessly by us in mourning. My uncle took the three or five of us to the back yard of the goldenrod Cape Cod and it was there that he threw me in the deep end of the pool.
I came up mad, sputtering, spitting, flailing for the sides. I was furious at him, wouldn’t look at him, wasn’t sorry for my anger at him, even when my father marched me to him, made me stand there and say the words, “I’m sorry.” My uncle was a good man and, I don’t know, maybe that’s how he was taught to swim.
Despite our beginnings, I’ve loved the water since I was a kid. I love the feel of it around me, buoying me when I’m on it, pressing me down when I’m beneath it. I’m reading a novel where the protagonist goes for a swim every morning and evening and I feel the slip of the water when she dives, the shoot of her body through the deeps. I want to be there too.
Seven years ago, a former roommate and friend and I pressed ourselves into the one shaded spot of our backyard pool. It was high noon in high summer in north Dallas. We sunk our backs against the edge and kicked our legs out through the water.
She was telling me of her recent decision to “become affirming.” I listened, she talked, she listened, I talked. Our friendship has always been one with good talking and good listening. Near the end of that conversation, she said a phrase to me I’ve never forgotten since.
“As you go on this journey, I hope we can keep talking about it.”
My reply to her?
“We can keep talking about it but I’m not going on a journey here. I know what I believe about marriage, what the bible says, and what God’s design is, and I don’t plan on changing my mind. I’m listening to you, but I don’t want you to think you’re changing my mind and I’m going to go from point A to point B.”
I’ve made my home was my essential point.
Still, we talked about it. Many times over the ensuing years.
Seven years ago, despite being in a community of people who were not affirming of gay marriage,1 Nate and I have always had people in our lives who were queer. We have trans and gay family, close queer friends, and more. We also have strongly non-affirming friends and family as well.
When my friend used the word “journey” to describe what she envisioned I was about to embark on, and which I had absolutely no intention of embarking on, I objected to it not on the grounds that I hated queer people or was afraid of them, and not even because I had a strong, convictional stance on marriage or gender, but because social security and community meant a lot to me. Being approved of or thought well of in my community mattered more to me than going on any kind of existential theological journey mattered to me. I didn’t have a conviction about the rightness or wrongness of gay marriage simply because I had never considered doing any kind of study, work, or giving thought to it. My community was against it and therefore I was against it
I have always wanted to be good more than I’ve ever wanted to be right.
Maybe you’re different or you think being right is more important than being good, or maybe you’re of the ilk that doesn’t believe there’s anything good in people at all, that we’re worms but for the grace of God. You might think I lack conviction and you might be right. I really don’t know and I actually don’t care, because, as I said, being right isn’t really a goal of mine and it never actually has been.
One of the ways I have measured my goodness is through approval from my community, whether tacit or explicit.2 As a child, perhaps I was easily influenced by peers, in the church they might call this “fear of man,” but really, I think most of us do it in most of our lives. One of the ways we keep ourselves safe from threat is to remain with those we can reasonably assume won’t harm us by dissenting from a clear and agreed upon set of mores, beliefs, ethics, morals, etc. in order to cause harm to us or those we love. When someone dissents, there is clear and immediate discipline, punishment, retribution, or even revenge in order to keep order within the community, herd, society, culture, etc.3
All societies do this and we’re all participating in this to some degree. Let’s just assume we’re all a part of this solution to (relative) safety, and also all arbiters of justice (sometimes harm) when someone goes outside the bounds of what we consider acceptable behavior for our group.
This creates an agreed upon degree of peer pressure or “fear of man” or conviction or whatever you want to call it. We mutually agree that this is how our society will flourish. Think of it as pressure from within (the Holy Spirit) and from without (the community).
The problem is, this makes it very difficult for anyone to think for themselves or to even mention they might be thinking about or through a different way of moving through the world. I’ve had pastors say to me that, “If you’re even thinking about the theology of sexuality in terms of anything other than one man, one woman in a marriage, then you’re already ‘outside’ the bounds, your salvation is already in question.”
This puts an incredible amount of pressure on those within these societies to not only not dissent in an visible way, but also to not mention having doubts, fears, concerns, or interest in exploring why we believe what we say we believe about anything.
And so, in order to do some of this work, it often means removing ourselves from the community.
It often means we do the work alone.
This was, as all my preambles have been, a very long preamble to today’s installation on I Changed My Mind on Sexuality, the process this shift has played out for me among my community and friends.
This is the fifth part of the series. You can read the introduction, Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV.
This series is behind a paywall for many reasons. If you absolutely cannot afford a subscription right now, contact me and I’ll get you sorted. If you can afford a subscription, it’s most economical for you to do a year’s instead of a monthly one ($3.50 a month vs $7). This series may take six months, I’m not sure 😬