In the aftermath of recent discussions on my blog, I realized that it might have been helpful for me to have revealed where I currently stand on the Side A/Side B spectrum much sooner (for those who don’t know, Side A is the belief that God blesses gay marriage and Side B is the belief that he does not .) I’ve been hesitant and uncomfortable getting into that discussion for various reasons. One reason is that I want to keep Sacred Tension something of a neutral space. The much deeper reason is that I am still growing; my beliefs are still being formed. It was only recently (since the beginning of this year) that I experienced a dramatic shattering and shifting of my previously held positions. I am in very new intellectual and spiritual territory, and I wanted to keep that journey to myself for a while to give myself the time to process these new thoughts before I shared them with the public. I’ve also refrained from getting into my “side” because I am finding it increasingly hard to explain my position in simple terms. A simple letter (A or B) or description no longer suffices to describe the still-forming complexity of my views.
It has been my experience, though, that withholding one’s opinions can only go so far. While it may be helpful for a season to withhold my beliefs about the morality of gay sex and marriage, I’ve found that it often leads to confusion and distrust in the long run. Because I don’t want distrust to enter the dialogue here, I will go ahead and describe where I am on the A/B spectrum.
First, the short version. In this moment in time I am, in the simplest of terms, Side A. I call myself that because my heart just can’t believe anything else right now. No, my mind is not fully reconciled to that fact, and no, the pieces don’t all fit for me yet. The rest of my being is scrambling to catch up/reason with my heart on this matter. I’ve tried to resist, ignore, or contradict my conscience on this point, but I just can’t. My shift towards Side A is not just a conversion of the mind, but a conversion of the heart, and when the heart turns it is next to impossible to fight against it.
At this point in my life, I cannot accept the notion that gay marriage is, without qualification, sinful in every form. I cannot say that long-lasting, long-suffering, self-sacrificing monogamous love is sinful. That is, to me, like saying that light is dark, that Beethoven’s Ninth is not beautiful. The part of my heart that recognizes that God is love is the same part of my heart that recognizes the image of God in the love committed gay couples share. I can’t just contradict my heart and say that gay marriage is wrong. I now believe that would be sinful, as I believe that going against conscience is, in some mysterious way, an act of rebellion against God. I would contradict very intuitive, natural, and deep functions of my heart to say that gay marriage is wrong, and that would lead me into a place of profound compartmentalization and dishonesty. If I do return to Side B, it will be a slow process of both my heart and mind walking the same path. Anything less would, according to my values, betray my integrity.
Now for the long version. Side B – the belief that gay sex and gay marriage are not in God’s original design for humanity and are therefore sinful – has been my default position for years. Even when I wandered, questioned, and pushed boundaries, I always came home to Side B. Earlier this year, though, I unexpectedly left the Shire. A few months ago, there was a moment when, like Sam in the Fellowship of the Ring, I stopped dead in my tracks and said, “if I take another step, this will be the furthest from home I’ve ever been.”
I’m still trying to understand everything that led me to that point. The first few months of this year were a period of intense struggle, agony, and questioning – a kind of irrational season that takes a long time to understand. Like Jacob, I wrestled with the angel in the moonlit desert, and had an encounter with blinding holiness and pain. I’ve already hinted at this season elsewhere on this blog, but perhaps it is time to go into greater detail.
It was in the aftermath of a breakup with a man I dearly loved. We were both committed to our traditional convictions, and yet we found ourselves very deeply in love and committed to each other. I have already talked about some of the devastating questions I confronted about love, doubt, and grief in the aftermath of that complicated relationship, so I won’t get into all that here. But the long and short of it is that my Side B beliefs – beliefs I had held with absolute conviction – came under siege. I had new information I had never seen or allowed myself to consider before. For the first time, I knew what it meant to be in a relationship. For the first time, I understood the power of sexual energy, and the depth of human connection. I began to understand the complexity, beauty, and tragedy of love and relationship that I was denying to an entire population the size of a country. In short: I grew up. A lot.
I entered a crisis of conscience: I can’t ask other people to live like this. I can’t ask other people to enter this chasm. God can, but I can’t. Eros love is as old as humanity itself because it is part of humanity, the same way art and singing and laughter and sorrow and literature are part of the human race. It is one of those things that makes us human – can I be so bold as to prescribe celibacy for everyone, regardless of their calling or belief? How is that not cruel on a fundamental level?
Along with this crisis of conscience, I entered a bloody battle with grief, God, and Side B. In the thick of that struggle, I hit some of the deepest lows I think I have ever experienced in my life. I started living a life I am not proud of, doing everything I could simply to make the pain stop. Like an animal’s, my life had become one huge fight or flight response, my one goal to make the anguish stop at any cost. Worst of all, I didn’t know how to reverse the path I was on. I didn’t know how to stop the self-destruction, or how to care enough to stop. The grief and self-destruction felt like an unstoppable avalanche.
People started to tell me that, if I wanted to be healthy, I would have to let go of my death grip on Side B. I felt trapped and suffocated by how I lived my traditional convictions, as if I were a bird being told, “you cannot fly” or a fish being told, “you cannot swim.” The tension of being human yet not allowed to entertain the possibility of sharing love, loss, and home with another human being was corroding my spirit like acid. The only way to survive was to let go, to back up and re-evaluate my calling as a celibate person. I had no space to do that, though, because to re-evaluate my calling would be to question Side B and therefore to risk standing in defiance of God. I was trapped in a deadly Catch-22, and the toll it took on me grew exponentially.
My mind had to be appeased. As long as I believed that I would be compromising the integrity of my intellect by letting go of Side B, I could not let it go. It wasn’t until a gay Presbyterian minister sat down with me and – in good reformed fashion – spent four hours systematically describing to me his theological basis for Side A that I realized I did not have to compromise my intellect by loosening my death grip on Side B.
The conversation with that minister stands out to me as a turning point. As he spoke, I felt myself release. I let go of Side B. For the first time in my life, I allowed myself to entertain the possibility of having a husband. It was as if a boulder was lifted off of me and light streamed into my life. For the first time in months, I was able to get back onto my feet and start to rebuild my life.
I’m Side A for a lot of reasons: because I want to be honest about my heart, because I feel like my hand was forced, because there was simply no other way for me to move forward, because it makes sense to me intellectually and theologically. But I’m also uncomfortable with announcing a side for a lot of other reasons, too: I am still growing, shifting. My relationship with Side A is complex. I have a lot of doubts, questions, and tensions within Side A. It’s a place of paradox, of comfort and discomfort, of rest and growth.
Most importantly, I’m becoming less comfortable with “sides” and more comfortable with the person of Christ Himself. I realize that, for so long, I had it backwards: I believed the only way to follow Him was to first have clear or right belief, then to serve Him in faithfulness to that belief. For me, right belief meant Side B. This system was all wrong, and I see that now. The only way forward is through Christ Himself, no matter what our beliefs about sexual ethics or gay marriage might be. I am becoming comfortable with my limitations, with saying “I don’t know”, with the possibility that, at the end of the day, I may be completely wrong. I’m here to follow Christ – a God who died not only for my sins but also for my limited intellect. Everything else -including what “side” I am on regarding gay marriage – is secondary to and shaped by obeying His call to respond to the Good News of the Gospel.
