I Am Not A Sin

I am gay.  It is an essential part of who I am.  It defines me.  I didn't pick it up one day and decide it looked like a fun thing to try on for awhile.  I also can't just decide to put it down.  My queerness is essential to who I am.

And yet, and yet, and yet...

I hear nearly every day the mantra of "love the sinner, but hate the sin."  How can that be?  How can you love me but hate who I am?  Not what I do.  Not choices I make.  But who I am?

I hate analogizing sexual orientation to race because it's incredibly essentializing and misses a lot of points, but I do think it has some value here: you cannot claim that being black is a sin, but still truly love black people.  It doesn't work like that.

I saw on a Facebook comment the other day, in response to a post with a link to Matthew Vines explaining his interpretation of the major Bible verses used to condemn homosexuality, that the commenter could not even finish reading Matthew Vines' words because it made them sick to their stomach.

I wanted to comment and ask if they really had a problem with his Biblical interpretation skills or just with the conclusion he was coming to.  More specifically, was it contemplating the particulars of gay sexuality that was making this person physically ill?  Did it really have anything to do with esoteric discussions of Biblical interpretations?

I've talked to my Dad a few times, not a lot because it's painful all around, but a few times, about our differences on this issue.  And one thing he's said several times is that he just doesn't and can't understand it, and he lists off that he doesn't get it theologically, mentally, emotionally, or biologically.  I always want to go, really?  I expected the theological objection.  I disagree with it and think it's invalid, but I was expecting it.  But it made me wonder, how much of people's ostensibly religious-based objections to gayness have anything to do with actual, earnestly held theological beliefs and how much has to do with ignorance, fear, and yeah, a gut-level disgust with something that they personally don't and can't understand?

Pretty much all straight people don't and can't understand why homosexuality would be appealing.  Doesn't matter if they're true allies or not.  They don't and can't "get it."

Well, of course not!  There's a very simple reason behind that: they are straight!  They were born that way.  As in, they don't (and can't) understand sexual attraction to the same sex because they simply are not attracted to the same sex.

Guess what?  I feel the exact same way about the opposite sex.  It doesn't make sense to me.  Now, of course, for myself and a whole heap of other gay people out there, there's this little thing called compulsive heterosexuality that forced us, from the earliest of ages, to think straight relationships were our only option.  So, yeah, I spent most of my life contemplating what it would be like to be in a romantic relationship with the opposite sex.  It never felt good or right in any way.  But I thought about it.  A lot.  Because that's what good Christian girls are supposed to do, supposed to think about.  Not only that, but because of internalized homophobia, I actually tried to convince myself it was what I wanted.  I spent years doing that.

Imagine, just for a second, being a straight person doing the same thing your entire life: contemplating and trying to force yourself to be excited for the prospect of one day engaging in a relationship with someone of the same gender as you.  Feels uncomfortable, if nothing else, right?

Straight people probably don't think about their sexual orientation as being integral to their identity.  In fact, I know that they don't.  They don't have to spend years trying to figure it out.  It's just assumed.  They don't have to explain it to anyone else.  Again, it's just assumed.

Anyways, back to my point: I'm gay.  And it's part of who I am.

So when you say that being gay, or acting on same sex attraction, or however else you want to word it is a sin, you aren't just attacking my actions or my choices.  You are attacking who I am, at my very core.

Last time I posted on here, I called for a conversation with my parents.  We have had a conversation, and we're still trying to figure out how to dialogue about any and all of this.  None of us are good at it.  It's all very painful and awkward and it feels like we never get anywhere.  There was this one moment during that conversation where I got frustrated and I was crying and as I walked over to grab a Kleenex, I just half-shouted "when will you just accept that your daughter is fucking gay!"  My dad said "that's not helpful," and, yeah, on a big level, it wasn't.  We were trying to have a dialogue on a subject that is emotional and awkward and hard to talk about all around.  And it's never helpful when someone gets angry or curses or yells in those situations.

But, at the same time, there is just so much truth to it.

My parents and I can talk theology in circles until our heads explode.  But I honestly don't think that theology is at the root of the disconnect.  I think a disagreement about whether or not gayness is innate is at the true heart of it. And I don't know how to get past that.  I truly don't.  I can cite experts who make clear that being attracted to the same gender isn't a choice.  I can cite incredibly in-depth research regarding how the church has not always condemned gay weddings, and has at times (back in the Middle Ages) even performed them.

But if a person can't get past the mental block surrounding the physical and biological mechanics of gay sex...then I honestly don't know where to go from there.  It's like trying to explain why seafood would be appealing to someone like me who gets nauseous at the sight and smell of it.  It just doesn't compute.

But here's the major difference: I don't think that eating seafood is wrong simply because I don't like it and don't understand why or how anyone could.

My parents believe that monogamous heterosexual Christian marriages are at the centre of  God's plan for humanity.  They've built their lives around that belief.  They counsel couples and teach classes on how to better fit within that model.  So I think this whole thing is harder for them than most, because their straight Christian marriage is so central to who they are, too.

But if I were to keep telling them that their marriage, their love is a sin, that they are hurting themselves and each other by continuing it, they would be hurt.  And offended.  Because it defines them.

Well this, my gayness, who I love, it defines me, too.  And I can't change it.  Believe me, I tried.  I tried for the longest time.  I hated myself for this.  I hated being around others like me.  Other gay people made me so incredibly uncomfortable.  Because I knew.  But I couldn't let myself go there.

But now I'm here.  It's been well over two years now.  I've embraced and celebrated who I am.  I've found someone to love and build a life with.  I can even get married now.  In every single state in the entire country (!!!!!!!).

So I guess what it comes down to for me is this: don't try to to claim that you love me, that you want what's best for me, or that you in any way respect me, if you are going to then turn around and say that who I am is a sin.  I can't change anyone's minds about the theology, and I definitely can't make anyone understand attraction to the same gender.  But when you say that being gay (or acting on same sex attraction or whatever slightly nicer-sounding thing you want to say) is a sin, you are saying that I am a sin.

I am not a sin.

Furthermore, when the Church and every single Christian who has ever uttered the phrase "love the sinner, hate the sin" perpetuates this belief, they are telling me, every member of the LGBT community, and every other ignorant and/or bigoted person out there that we, the queer community, are not human.  We are sins.  So it's okay to not serve us at your restaurants, to not let us into your hardware stores.  It's okay, because we are sins.  It's okay to deny us marriage licenses, while granting it to every twice divorced person and every atheist marrying a Christian and every other person who walks through that door.  Because that twice divorced person may have sinned, but they are not a sin.  That Christian may have sinned by marrying an atheist, but they, themselves, are just a human who made a bad choice.  A gay person, however, is, inherently, a sin.  Until they stop being a sin, they cannot have civil rights.  They can be discriminated against.

How long does it take to get from denying basic civil rights like marriage licenses and equal employment opportunities to enacting actual, physical violence?

Harvey Milk.

Matthew Sheppard.

Sakia Gunn.

Brandon Teena.

Lawrence "Larry" King.

CeCe McDonald.

And what kind of effect does calling LGBT people "sins" have on LGBT young people?

Tyler Clementi.

Leelah Alcorn.

Adam Kizer.

Jadin Bell.

If you think calling LGBT people, who they are, at their very core, a "sin" has absolutely nothing to do with LGBT suicide rates and violence against LGBT people, I challenge you to think a little harder about it.  Think about it this way (and, again, I don't like to compare, but it's useful here): if there was a very strong narrative in this country that being black was a "sin," don't you think that the KKK, the Aryan Nation, and other hate groups would feel that much more comfortable carrying out their heinous acts of violence?  And don't you think those people who called being black a "sin" would have blood on their hands too?  Even if they never once enacted physical violence against a black person?  Wouldn't it also be harder to make the argument that that violence is wrong? (I could go on and on about how distrurbingly close to the truth each of these statements are, but that's for another post entirely...)

When you call gayness a sin, you are saying that I, because of who I am, am less than you.  I am not human.  I am "sin."

There's nothing Christian about that.  Believe what you want for your own lives.  But don't call me a "sin."  And stop deluding yourself into believing that you can label me "sin" and still claim to love and respect me.  It's not possible.

I am not a sin.