Unapologetically Christian, unapologetically lesbian (this is where it is going ALERT)

I like that. If I had the money I'd put it up on billboards across America and if I ever win the lottery maybe I'll do just that. I suppose I need to actually play the lottery to raise my odds on winning but that's neither here or there.

When I wrote that short little phrase, and as I write this essay I'm thinking of you who fervently believe there's no such thing as a "Christian lesbian." You consider the term to be an oxymoron but more than that, you regard it an offense to the Gospel. You believe if someone really is a Christian they will seek repentance from the sin of homosexuality and will do all they can to change and short of change they will at least commit to a life of celibacy.

I also have those of you in mind who, even while doubting such a thing as a "Christian lesbian" can exist you've admitted to yourself that while you love Jesus and are committed to the Christian life, your only desire in an intimate and loving relationship is with another woman. Because of this apparent conflict you feel as though there's a choice you're going to eventually be forced to make, either to walk away from your faith in God or to deny, reject, or attempt to change your attraction to other women. If that's the personal struggle you're secretly holding in your heart then I'm writing to you.

And to both of you I'm writing as someone who knows you well because at one time I was you. For most of my life I believed homosexuality to be a grievous sin that led good people astray from a true faith in God. When a friend confessed her feelings toward another woman I prayed faithfully for her, counseled her, and rejoiced when her homosexual relationship ended. It was out of love and compassion and my strong belief in what I saw the Bible to clearly say about homosexuality that I reached out to help a friend I feared was slipping away from God and toward a life of destruction.

A few years later, I found myself engaged in an internal conflict I have never before known and that I could never have imagined. Above all else I was a committed Christian whose greatest longing was to live in a manner that brought honor to God but suddenly I recognized my lifelong unnamed feelings as being the very thing that would bring the most disappointment to the heart of God. I told no one so great was my shame and spent my evening hours crying out to God in prayers full of promise. I will change. I will do whatever it takes. I will never do anything to disgrace you. I will die before I do. And prayers of pleading. Please forgive me for whatever I did to make this happen. Change me. Help me. Don't leave me. Please don't hate me. In that moment I looked down the path of my future and saw nothing good.

I really have been there. I really have said and done and felt that. So to you, whoever you are, I want to offer a very basic response to this whole debate around being Christian and being gay. Let's call this little explanatory essay of mine "Christian Lesbian 101: The Basics."

I'm not attempting here to explain Christianity to those outside the Christian faith. I consider myself to be an evangelical Christian in the sense that I love, and am committed to, sharing my faith with others. I really do consider it the Good News and I've never been one to keep from sharing anything for which I have passion. For the purpose of this essay and for the sake of brevity I'm going to use religious-sounding language that I normally would avoid or need to explain in a conversation with someone of another faith just as I would need them to explain their own set of religious terminology that was centered in their own faith tradition. Here I'm directing my words to those of you who already identify as Christians.

When I say I'm a Christian I'm recognizing both a past event and a present reality. There was one moment in the past when I made the conscious and deliberate choice to acknowledge Jesus as my Savior and Lord. As my Savior, Jesus through his life, death and resurrection forgave my sins, restored my relationship with God and secured for me the promise of everlasting life. With Jesus as my Lord I submit my will daily to His will, seeking God's plan for my life rather than my own.

I'm a Christian, not by my own virtue but by the completed work of Christ (See John 11:25, John 5:24, Acts 2:38, John 20:31, Romans 1:16, Ephesians 2:8,9 and Colossians 1:21-23). In all these passages scripture seems relatively clear that while the final choice was mine everything else was left up to Jesus and if that's the case my salvation doesn't hinge on my faith or adherence in church teaching or in those dogmas and doctrines that are nonessential to the finished work of Calvary. It is about Christ and Christ crucified alone and to add conditions or requirements onto that glorious reality is to imply that the death and resurrection of Jesus was insufficient. While a church might say "Believe as we believe and do as we do and you can join us here" Jesus welcomes all who love Him and humbly seek Him.

While I remember the very place and time when at the age of five I became a Christian, there was never a single moment when I made a conscious choice to be a lesbian and I always take it with a mix of mild amusement and irritation when people will argue that it was a choice. My irritation is that people who don't live inside my own skin would be so arrogant as to presume they know what happened within me better than I do and the amusement is in those moments when I play with the thought of how fun it would be to call them some morning asking "So how am I feeling today?" They should know after all.

And let's talk about this choice. At the time I realized I was a lesbian I was firmly grounded within conservative Christianity, both in my family and within the church where I served in full-time ministry. I had a large circle of friends, a lovely home, and a wonderful future in ministry that I loved and that brought my parents great pride and joy. Had you posed my life as a hypothetical situation and asked me what I thought would happen to someone who came out in that setting as a homosexual I would have been able to describe in detail the graphic consequences. I had a history in the church and so I'd seen the church and its people respond to those considered "in sin" and it was never pretty or kind and it was definitely nothing I ever wanted to experience firsthand. Now, I'm not the brightest bulb on the tree but I have enough intelligence to avoid certain choices like sticking my wet thumb into a light switch, coating my body with honey and lying on an ant hill or doing or being anything that's going to upset and repulse everyone I love and cause my dismissal from the only community I have ever known. Most of the gay and lesbian people I know seem to possess the same level of logic and self-preservation.

I'm in a committed relationship with my life partner Dana. We've been together for two years and will be getting married in a Christian wedding at a church this coming Spring. Our marriage will be affirmed by God and the church where our union will be celebrated even though the state will fail to recognize it. There's nothing about our life together that would look strange or odd were Dana a man and our relationship heterosexual. As a Christian couple, we begin each morning by reading devotions together. I cook breakfast. Dana makes the bed. We shower, dress and go to work. During the day we call each other to express our love or to remind the other to pick up more milk on the way home. After the dinner dishes are put away, we watch television or play with the kitten or just putter around the house until bedtime when we fall asleep beside the other. There's nothing bizarre about our life. Nothing unusual. While some would even consider our lives boring I treasure each day as an amazing and joyful blessing.

And yet, there is something very different about being a lesbian in this world. Being lesbian means knowing that in certain parts of this country you can't hold your partner's hand in public like straight couples do without risking being ridiculed or assaulted. Being lesbian means picking up the paper every morning or watching the news every night to hear about some new legislation that's being debated that if passed would negatively impact your life. Being lesbian means listening to false stereotypes being painted about you and the people you love every Sunday morning by television evangelists, all in the name of God. Being lesbian means trying to explain the nonexistence of the homosexual lifestyle or agenda to strangers.

But being lesbian means even more. Being lesbian means celebrating the joy of being a woman. Being lesbian means giving full expression to the depths of the love within you. Being lesbian means living confidently with God's approval rather than with the approval of others. Being a lesbian means standing in solidarity with others who stand on the outside whether they be the poor, the sick, the elderly, or any among God's creation deemed not acceptable by the majority. Being lesbian means finding your courage and living boldly. Being lesbian means experiencing another woman's courage when she takes your hand in a roomful of strangers or shows her engagement ring proudly without embarrassment or thought to what others will think.

I am a Christian. That is my faith. I am a lesbian. That is my sexual orientation. I make no apology for being either and if after all is said and done I remain a contradiction to you then that's fine too. Just realize what that means. When I speak of the presence of Jesus in my life you need to reject it. You have to see the fruit of the Holy Spirit within my life and call it evil. You have to deny the sufficiency of salvation through faith by requiring that I be heterosexual to first receive it.

Maybe you're right and I'm just not getting it and I never will. Perhaps I'm just foolish and naive enough to believe I can have it all, that I can live in wholeness and in relationship with God. So far that's what I've experienced and it's been the most joyful and God-filled adventure of my life!

She left out #3.

3. I am a hypocrite.

I can read what scripture says, but I selectively read it so I can have my cake (#1) and eat it too (#2). Regardless of the glaring contradictions I try to rationalize what I'm doing with what I know is right. For a while I prayed and struggled with what I knew to be a problem, but then I blew all that off and decided that God has issued a special dispensation for me and my wife. I use every possible occasion to clothe myself in a semblance of Christian behavior, so my blatant and unrepentant disregard of God's strictures on homosexuality might go unnoticed, along with my gleeful celebration of sinful behavior. I have no trouble swallowing camels while straining at gnats. Whenever people exhibit any disapproval of my ways I either call them nasty homophobes, or cover my eyes and ears and seek out those who'll laud my superficial Christian attributes and ignore the cancerous sin that has captured my soul.

..you feel as though there's a choice you're going to eventually be forced to make, either to walk away from your faith in God or to deny, reject, or attempt to change your attraction to other women

Every Christian married man faces the same choice.

For that matter, so do Christian singles who are past 30 and are facing the terrifying possibility of never marrying. A few have the "gift of celibacy" and are honestly content living single, sexless lives -- but most of them are in a state of daily agony, crying out to God and wondering why they've been rejected for so many years. (I was unwillingly single til my late 30's, so I speak from experience.)

For those whose marriage is long delayed, or who will never marry at all -- yet are committed to God's law of abstaining from sex outside of heterosexual marriage -- the spiritual struggle is intense and ongoing. This article may be of some value to such a person: Talkdown: Preparing for Singleness when you'd much rather be preparing for marriage

what do you call a so=called bragadocious Liberal christian ?

Someone in need of biblical church discipline... Loving confrontation, culminating in expulsion/excommunication if the rebukes are unheeded... and a joyous "welcome back!" if the prodigal elects to repent and return.

"until bedtime when we fall asleep beside the other."

She says she's a Christian, yet 'shacking' up with someone, be it a man or a woman, she has no problem with.........I think she's just babbling to make herself feel redeemed...it's still a sin........
I'm a Christian, yet I sin everyday......we all do, doesn't make it right just cause I'm a Christian......
Weirdo.

Well, scripture doesn't condem lesbian behavior to anywhere near the degree it condems sodomy.

Romans 1:26 Rom 1:26 For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural,
Rom 1:27 and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error.

I don't see any difference in God's condemnation. Sin is sin is sin...there are no gradations in the mind of God, as far as I can tell. Do you see something different?

but the root of homosexuals is a disdain for scripture.

Actually, the root of homosexuality is well understood by honest psychologists, such as those over at NARTH. That is to say, the reason why some people are tempted in that direction, can be logically explained.

Homosexuality is a curable addiction. But, as with all other addictions, one needs to admit that it's wrong ("repent"), before one is willing to even try to get better. Like alcoholics in denial, homosexuals for the most part steadfastly refuse to take that first step.

But some of them do. One fellow I know, went through every program under the sun, and was able to quench his behavior but didn't lose his desires - until he found complete freedom through www.cleansingstream.org. Over the next couple of years, even his mannerisms and tone of voice changed. Maybe next he'll lost his fashion sense?

Total Depravity

Well, seems like more than one person in this article is suffering from T.D. There's our lesbian friend, her partner, and the religious organization (note I did not use the term Church) that will perform this abomination...

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.