To Gay or not to Gay*
As if I had a choice.
But some will argue that I do have a choice.
My attractions and capacity for relationships don’t discriminate against anyone under the LGBTQ+ umbrella. One could say, however, that I chose to marry a man over anyone else I fell in love with waving the rainbow flag. Choosing to marry the person I fell in love with, who happens to be male, doesn’t then cancel out the fact that I’m still a queer person who can be attracted to and have feelings for a woman, trans person, gender-neutral person and plus.
Have you ever fallen in love? Was it something you planned out and chose, or did it just happen with little conscious directive on your part?
To Gay or not to Gay shouldn’t even be a question. So why is it?
We live inside a structure that forces the question on us. Religion influences society and together the two tell everyone what is right and what is wrong. Inside this structure, religion’s loudest message about homosexuality and all forms of queerness is that it’s wrong.
If you don’t believe me, then just ponder for a minute how queer folks might feel and what their social experience would be if there was no one telling them they were an aberration. Where do social moral imperatives come from? If no one ever suggested to society that being queer was wrong or sinful, then there would be no impetus to shun someone who loved whomever they wanted to love, or dressed to the gods in a gender non-conforming way. Queer folks would get on in society just like the straight folks do, without anyone saying one way of life is superior or accepted over the other.
Some progress has been made in churches that are affirming or set up by LGBTQ+ members, and here I don’t refer to the “hate the sin but love the sinner” variety. I mean truly accepting in a “you do you boo” manner, without implying they be straight to be happy and right with God.
Affirming churches are rare, and unless a church is truly not concerned about people’s placement on the Kinsey Scale, then by obligation, their stance considers all forms of deviation from normative straightness to be sin and at the very least damaging. Inside these churches, which are the majority and who dictate to the larger social narrative, sinners must be transformed and saved from their sins. This imperative leaves us with two things about being queer:
Homosexuality is a sin
Religion necessitates gay activism
On point number 1: If religion informs society and the two together say that queerness is wrong, then queer people’s social experience will be stressed, resulting in personal hardship and difficulty. Any time society creates a context where people are not allowed to be themselves, those people will be oppressed and question what is wrong with them and seek to find ways to ease their struggle.
On point number 2: When the person scorned by religion and society experiences inequality, then they will have to fight to enjoy life in the same ways as everyone else. They will have to engage in advocacy and activism for themselves.
We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it.
That means religion and society can react in one of two ways for accepting and treating the LGBTQ+ community the same as straight people:
Let the queer person live their best queer life
Make the queer person change
Enter conversion therapy.
As long as queer folks are made to feel like they are wrongful sinners because they are queer, then they will struggle with social, family, and personal problems just because they are the way they are. And if a gay, lesbian, bi or trans person doesn’t want grief for being the way they are, then it is natural to look for ways to become loved and accepted.
Here we confirm that the struggles and hardships related to being queer are generated from religious and social conditions. Religion makes the parent reject their queer child, and makes that child homeless, and encourages that child’s decision to take their life. Society has members who think that men who look feminine are worth beating up because it is propagated that feminine men are gay, and being gay is a violation, so someone takes it upon themselves to enforce punishment on the gender non-conformer. I’m not saying the church necessarily advocates violence, but let’s not ignore history and present-day atrocities that happen in the name of religion.
Even if you believe violence in the name of religion is wrong, you might still mandate that a gay person remain celibate, not have children, not get married, and not share the same rights as straight people. Your moral conventions cause trauma to the gay person who has fallen in love, wants to be a parent and wants to buy a wedding cake for their ceremony.
While old school forms of conversion therapy have been largely shut down and banned for being physically and psychologically abusive, there still exists its more “subtle” forms.
Finally, I want to address the hypocrisy of churches who say they’re accepting of the LGBTQ+ community, but who are still standing by choice number 2 (queer peeps change) due to their belief that it’s better and more natural and more godly to be gender-conforming straight, so they offer to fix the gay person in the safe space of God’s love.
Enter Bethel Church in Redding, California.
Bethel has been quite vocal about their conversion program for LGBTQ+ people called Changed Movement, using the hashtag oncegay. Underneath their slick and warm embracing message, Bethel upholds the idea that queerness is born of a pathology and history of trauma and abuse rather than recognizing the very oppression they place on queer folks by supporting the message that to be gay is ungodly, unnatural, and wrong.
On Bethel’s website is a ministry called Moral Revolution where their mission statement says
Our vision is to see a revolutionary shift in the way every individual understands, values and stewards morality. We envision a society that celebrates true femininity and masculinity…
To be clear, Bethel’s idea of morality and true masculinity and femininity is of the binary normative sort and does not include the men who wear dresses, the gender-vague, or the butch and lipstick lesbian couple.
One of Bethel’s senior and most outspoken leaders, Kris Vallotton has been under fire for his no-filter sermons and Facebook comments that have stated Bethel’s stance on homosexuality, claiming it to be against nature, that it is constructed out of abuse, and that to be right with God, a person must seek freedom and change in Jesus. The times his more audacious statements have drawn social critique, the posts and videos were taken down. Bethel has had to temper their language to sound less judgy, but their stance remains the same.
On March 25, 2018, Vallotton delivered a sermon that implored Christians to vote against California legislation that would ban for-profit sale of all adult conversion therapy goods. He compared homosexuality to alcohol and pornography addictions in addition to other classically “Biblical” messages about being homosexual. Read the A News Cafe article The Truth Behind Bethel’s Gay Panic for more details. When people clapped back on Vallotton’s message, the sermon was taken down and he addressed the Redding City Council saying
But I do believe it’s my responsibility to teach Biblical truth. Bethel Church holds to the scriptural perspective that same-sex sexual behavior is unhealthful and that Jesus offers loving responses.
We have experienced God to be kind and gracious, and so Bethel only endorses respectful and humane counseling practices that reflect the dignity of all individuals.
A public statement that nearly makes it sound like it’s ok to be gay, except that Bethel ardently maintains that it’s not ok. Bethel offers an e-course with Once Gay leader Elizabeth Woning on their Equipped to Love website, offering pastors resources for how to pastor homosexuals. Section number two in the course will lead pastors through
2 KINGDOM-MINDED DOCTRINE
The establishment of God’s Kingdom in our personal lives: Cultivating a message that the gospel has power for redemption and restoration
Why is homosexuality sin?
Understanding how sexual sin impacts the body of Christ
I could go on because once you start digging (and it doesn’t take a lot), it becomes glaringly clear that while Bethel glosses up their message to embrace the LGBTQ+ community, their ultimate goal is to change them for true acceptance into God’s kingdom.
There are many #oncegay testimonies, and while I won’t take away anyone’s experience from them it is an outright lie for Bethel to say they don’t believe homosexuality to be a sin and that they are not using their form of therapy to convert people to be straight.
This brings us right back inside the structure that makes being queer problematic. So yes, people who are within the queer community will have issues; issues imposed by the church and issues just because they’re a human being. Everyone has issues. Any person who has found comfort in Jesus, whether straight or queer can testify that their life has changed, they no longer do the sinful things they used to do, they now live in freedom and enjoy a loving church community. There remains a problem though when the LGBTQ+ community is preyed upon due to their queer-specific troubles generated by the very moral structure that imposes those troubles in the first place.
If you read some of the once gay stories, you will read about people who seem happy they no longer have to choose gayness and can identify with their God-given gender
God showed me I was created in His image—a man intended for a woman. That is an unquestionable truth but my Bible-toting world stressed what I should not do sexually rather than who I was as God’s gendered guy. That invited me to dig deeper into why I was at odds with my masculinity and to get on with the business of relating to women. Gender reconciliation became a priority in my thinking and in my daily decisions. I learned how to be a good friend to guys (hard at first) and to love a woman whom I married. Best choice ever. I also learned that unless I was rooted in a dynamic community of faith, I would be sucked back into perverting my need for love.
Bethel teaches that homosexuality is a perversion on people’s need for love and that they can keep themselves from this perversion by accepting their God-given straightness by remaining accountable inside their faith community.
In the resources section of the Changed Movement website, they sell a children’s book called I Don’t Have to Choose, a title that implies we choose to be queer, and where some of the reviews say
This book takes the self-esteem and self-identity issues and steers them back into normative reality. This is just a fun book to read to your kids!
This children’s book does a brilliant job illustrating and explaining what should be common sense knowledge regarding our God-given gender (“He made them male and female” Genesis 1:27)
If you aren’t normative, you’re wrong. The church’s campaign to create normative individuals according to their interpretation of the Bible simply isn’t veiled.
If you watch the YouTube videos with Changed Movement leaders Ken Williams and Elizabeth Woning, they defend their love for the LGBTQ+ community by repeatedly appealing to people to “Hear our heart” which is a phrase used in the Christian community to cover a more explicit motivation. I know, I grew up hearing this term regularly when being chastised.
While I don’t doubt that Williams and Woning do love the LGBTQ+ community with their convincing message of love and care, the fact remains that foundationally, they hold the belief that queer folks are damaged because of their queerness, and that they need to be fixed. They need to be changed. Freedom from homosexuality can be found in Jesus.
If the church has caused the queer person distress and the church is offering a way out of that distress, then it is natural that a person might want that.
I won’t tell anyone that their experience isn’t valid. However, if you read through the testimonies of the once gay crowd, it will become clear that they gave up their queerness to live in the freedom prison of rules and accountability to keep them safely straight from queer temptations that could at any moment put them back on the outside of God’s approval. They feel freedom because now the very structure that oppressed them for being gay is embracing them with open arms for living a changed straight life. A former queer person now has the right and good standing to get married, have children, and buy a wedding cake without people refusing them service.
The same old shame and guilt will inevitably be a struggle for the ex-gay person. And, just because someone stops acting queer doesn’t mean they no longer are queer. The ex-gay will have to keep their natural impulses in check.
The answer to our question To Gay or not to Gay still comes down to this:
You can gay outside the church, but not in it.
To those of you who are still in the church and going to counseling to “stay straight,” as one friend told me, I can only wonder if your freedom is coming at the cost of denying your true self. Religion created a problem for the queer person. It is the church that has a problem with who you are. Without religion, the gays are ok.
For those of you who are gay and follow a spiritual path and have found love and acceptance inside a church who doesn’t tell you you’re wrong, then congratulations my friend! You have found the best of both worlds for yourself.
As for me, I will continue living my best queer life, never giving a thought or wrenching my heart about whether or not God or church people approve of me. That is what I call freedom.
*I’ve chosen to use terminology in this article that attempts to include all my rainbow peeps in the LGBTQQIA(+?) community with the terms LGBTQ+ or queer. I use the terms gay and homosexual by way of language that is most commonly used and understood by religion and basic society, which implies all forms of queerness or identity and orientation non-conforming. I am sensitive that all orientations and identities are represented, as someone who for the sake of the lowest common denominator will sometimes refer to myself as bisexual, and who experiences bi-erasure.
