Harnessing Our Stories

Just about every LGBT conference these days has a workshop on “Telling Your Story.” As a blogger, speaker, and filmmaker, I am certainly not one to object to storytelling; it’s what I do. Still, I see a need to ask ourselves some questions about our storytelling: why do we tell our story, how do we tell our story, which story do we tell, and to whom do we tell it? Storytelling can be a powerful asset in our movement but it needs to be harnessed.

Why do we tell our stories

“Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign. But stories can also be used to empower, and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people. But stories can also repair that broken dignity.”

– Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

“I’m writing my story so that others might see fragments of themselves.”

– Lena Waithe

At Soulforce’s Symposium on Faith, Love, Science, and Reparative Therapy, I gathered stories on video from many of the attendees. Some of them, such as Rev. Jeffrey Jordan spoke with a fiery conviction on not only the need for full inclusion of LGBT people in all aspects of society, but also of the gifts we queers have to offer ourselves and others. He spoke to change the world, and I couldn’t help but listen. Others told of digging deep to find the courage to come out and of giving themselves grace and forgiveness for the mistakes of their past. One young person shared through watered eyes of finding a place to show emotion and to heal from the wrongs of the past. This person spoke to keep the world from changing them.

Our stories must lead to action

Telling stories can be a cathartic experience for the teller and the hearer. Catharsis can be valuable in its own right and yet if we want to bring about change, catharsis alone is insufficient. Our stories must lead us and those around us to action. They must inspire, empower, and educate us to go forward and take tangible actions in the world around us.

How can our stories lead to action? When we begin with the end in mind, our stories are powerful engines for change. How will the listener respond? When they hear how I was scared to tell my parents that I am queer, will they write a letter to their child? When my friends tell of how something as simple as going to the bathroom can be daunting while they are in transition, will businesses create gender-neutral restrooms? When I share about how my sexual orientation has informed and enriched my life, will churches put LGBT people in leadership positions? When I tell stories of awesome things straight people have done, will others take steps to be vocal and visible allies?

Which stories do we tell?

The overriding public narrative of LGBT lives is one of shame, sorrow, hurt, heartache, and injustice. The woman who couldn’t see her sick wife in the hospital, the son who was kicked out of his home, the child who was forced to wear clothes that didn’t feel right, the college student who was murdered, the marriage that ended. These stories are all true and valid and valuable… and they are not the only stories.

A popular counter-narrative to the one of despair is that of normalcy. “We gay folks are just like you, we just happen to be gay.” It’s well-intentioned but it’s incomplete. I’m NOT just like everyone else and there is value in that difference. Equality and even unity are not the same as conformity.

When we only tell sad stories or stories of normalcy, what stories are we leaving out? How can we tell of the real harms we have suffered and the real injustices which need to be corrected without hosting a pity party? How can we tell stories of our strength and resiliency while noting that our difference is part of what makes us beautiful?

We must tell unusual stories

We must fight against the grain to all tell the same stories. We can share those stories which make us unique because, through specificity, we can tap into something universal.

I can tell of the beauty and significance I attach to every single relationship because there was a time when I couldn’t take a single relationship for granted. I can share the extensive thinking I’ve done on marriage and parenting since “getting married” and “having children” aren’t expected of (or even desired for) me by society. My experience as a cisgender gay male around the policing of my gender can help me breakdown gendered barriers. I can share how I realized I lost privilege when I came out as queer and how that opened my eyes to the other forms of privilege I hold and how that privilege gives me unearned benefits that others do not have… I can facilitate in connecting the dots and encourage everyone to work to end all privileges and oppressions.

What unconventional stories do you have to share?

To whom do we tell our stories?

Virtual activism is popular these days, isn’t it? On National Spirit Day, many of my friends turned their Facebook profile pictures purple. My sister is a sophomore at the University of Maryland. I looked through her 1,383 friends and I was the only friend with a purple picture. Our message ostensibly directed to young people that it’s OK to be queer was not reaching its intended audience: students.

We must take our stories to the places where they are not heard

A few years ago, a co-worker invited me to The Haven, a worship and Bible study group of Christian artists in NYC. During a small group session, I used my experience as a queer person to respond to one of the discussion points (unrelated to sexuality). Having an openly queer presence was challenging for some (including my co-worker) and inspiring for others who felt like outsiders. I connected with a guy afterward who is still a friend today (and way more out and comfortable with himself than he used to be).

Coming out and sharing our stories is inherently a form of activism and must always be a personal decision. No one needs to come out and no one needs to share their story. Safety and survival are a priority. For those of us who can come out and want to; when we take our stories into unpopular places, we bring truth and justice into those places by our mere presence. Where do our stories need to be heard?

We can tell our stories at work, at our schools, in the organizations we work with, to our friends, to our family members, to our extended family, to our neighbors. Our Facebook wall is a good place to start sharing our story and we must take it further still!

How will you share you story?

The Bible, Resistance, Pride, Protest, and Police: Black Lives Matter

LGBTQ Pride Month is upon us and every year, we remind folks: the first Pride was a riot.

It’s not only that the first Pride was a riot though, it’s also that we can find connections between the Stonewall Uprising and stories throughout the Bible.

Jesus was confrontational. 

When he focused his ministry on Jerusalem (after traveling around recruiting for the movement), they turned his entry into a public spectacle. Aggressively and directly countering the Roman imperial army that had also marched in to Jerusalem to quell dissent and “maintain order.” 

Does that sound familiar?

Palm Sunday reminds me of ACT-UP demonstrations and SNCC lunch counter sit-ins and, of course, Black Lives Matter demonstrations that continue to unfold across the country and around the world.

And it wasn’t just that. Facing intense scrutiny from the State, Jesus refused to back down and instead drove out those in the temple who would collaborate with Empire. Brandishing whips and turning over tables. 

Does that sound familiar?

So here we are at LGBT Pride Month. The 50th pride. 51 years after the Stonewall Uprising. When a diverse group of LGBTQ folks fought back against a lifetime of police brutality. Throwing bricks. Punching cops. Lighting fires. It went on for days.

Does that sound familiar?

In the Gospel of John’s telling, Jesus “made a whip out of cords.” In the Gospel of Matthew’s version, he “overthrew the tables” He picked up what was available to him — much like Marsha P. Johnson picked up a brick at Stonewall, much like protestors now are throwing water bottles and rocks and yes, sometimes bricks. Jesus took what was available to him and, to put it bluntly, used it to destroy property in pursuit of justice. 

That’s in the Bible.

We find in the Bible — from Genesis to Revelation — stories of a God who is always, always on the side of the oppressed, the disaffected, the downtrodden, the poor, the outcast. Not out of pity, but because that is where the heart of God dwells. A God who is just and righteous and “spits out” anyone who is lukewarm and casts out those who ignore the needs of others and who calls us to co-create “the Kingdom of God, on earth as it is in heaven.”

As a queer person, I find immense comfort and inspiration in that. I have come to know deep down in the depths of my soul that queerness is holy and that “if God is for us, who can be against us?” 

As a white man, I find immense conviction in that. I inherited heaps of advantage at the moment of my birth because of the color of my skin and my parents’ skin and the way the world treats me and them and their parents before them. And because of the (correct) assumption the doctor made about my gender when he looked at Baby Brian.

I am so thankful that I am queer because it helped me to see the idolatry of the version of Christianity that I had been raised in. From there I was able to tear it down and rebuild a faith that is real, living, and powerful. As part of that work, I came face to face with the ways God is on my side as a marginalized person but also the ways in which I carry privilege. 

My privilege didn’t come from nowhere: it came from white supremacy. I didn’t choose it but I am responsible for it. No amount of guilt or apologies will make it go away.  As my internet friend Charlotte said, “White privilege cannot be renounced, it can only be repurposed to fight against state violence and white supremacy.” 

In the same way that we say “Christianity has always been queer,” you cannot understand God without the presence of Black people. Christ is found in the pink triangle and the cross and the lynching tree. The spirit of God moves at Pentecost and at Stonewall and in every Black Lives Matter protest today. 

The invitation is to remember that we are all shaped by our experiences. The challenges we face, the ways we come to understand God, how we move through the world and how the world responds to us. We say that “all theology has a context” — straight, white male pastors don’t have a monopoly on God or an objective understanding of the Bible. Liberation theologies — Latin & South American, Black, womanist, queer, etc — recognize that we get a more complete picture of the divine as we find God in all of those places. We need each other. 

If you want to find God, she is in the streets proclaiming that Black Lives Matter.

Onward, until justice rolls down,
Brian 

We post our weekly emails (like this) to our site but if you want to share something, we ask that you go directly to Black activists, writers, and theologians to learn from and elevate their work. They are the experts here. 

Here are some friends, authors, and activists we’ve learned from over the years:

• James Cone: A Black Theology of Liberation | The Cross & The Lynching Tree
  • Here’s a NPR interview with Rev. Cone
• Pamela Lightsey: Our Lives Matter: A Woman: A Womanist Queer Theology
• Alicia Crosby
• Ms. Charlotte Irene
• Black Lives Matter
• The Movement for Black Lives
• Rev. Jacqui Lewis and the ministry of Middle Collegiate Church
  • Here are two IGTV videos from Rev. Lewis that you might watch: “Why Should We Look At Social Justice From A Religious Lense?” and “Why Anti-Racism Must Be Part of Our Faith”
• Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II

If you’re going to buy any of these books, here are some Black-owned bookstores you can order from.

If you have any questions or if there’s anything we can do to support you, we’re here for you. Please reach out.
– Fr. Shay & Brian

How queering the Bible enriched my faith

“When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.”
– 1 Corinthians 13:11

I have this habit from the early days of my Christian faith that I can’t quite shake: I usually want to turn to the Bible for a quote to go along with whatever theological topic I’m thinking about. 

That’s an understandable impulse: the Bible is a central document in our faith and practice as Christians. 

The problem, a problem, is that this method of plucking a Bible passage right off the page, ignoring meaningful context, and then using it to “prove” your point has long been abused by Christians to justify or condemn whatever fits their need. I wrote a whole article about how this habit — prooftexting, it’s called — has been used (improperly and unfaithfully, IMHO) as a bludgeon against LGBTQ people. You can check it out here: Is it REALLY ok to be LGBTQ and Christian?

So that’s not what we do here at QueerTheology.com. Rather, we work to engage the whole of scripture; combine that with everything we know about the religious, political, and historical context of the time it was written; look at the way it’s been understood by other Christians throughout the ages and around the world; and examine even (especially!) how it speaks to our current context. 

If Christianity is to be a living faith, what does it say about our actual lives, right here and now?!

That might sound like a lot of work but (a) it’s totally worth it and (b) we’ve figured out how to break it down to make it more manageable for you. Keep reading to find out the why of the former and and the how of the latter.

At the same time, I’m aware that there’s something deeply comforting about having memorable quotes you can turn to for advice or inspiration. Heck, we send out short quotes/lyrics/Bible verses every single weekday morning! The problem arises when we think that our particular understanding of a verse or passage is the only possible “correct” one. When our prejudices become calcified in “orthodox theology,” “proper exegesis,” “faithful hermeneutics.”

The version of Christianity that gets the most airtime in the media and slots on bookshelves is one that has A Right Answer to everything. Perhaps you spent time in that version of Christianity (perhaps you have one foot still in that world, even). I’ve been there, too.

Over the past 13 years, though, I realized something remarkable: God is not found in small boxes or simple answers.

Here’s what I learned, how I learned it, and my invitation to you to dive deeper into exploring the richness that a queer understanding of the Bible can bring to your faith and life.

Uhhh… I like guys. What does that mean?

At some point in my mid-teenage years, I began to realize that I liked guys. Like, “liked them, liked them.” I started to figure out that I might be gay or bisexual but I didn’t quite know what to do with that, so I set out to figure out what the Bible said about it. What started out as solo bedroom Bible study eventually turned into studying religion in college.

That’s when the first crack appeared.

I was a freshman at the University of Southern California and had chosen “Reading Scripture as a Skeptic and Believer” to fulfill one of my general education requirements.

We were talking about the exodus from Egypt and our professor matter of factly said, “The exodus from Egypt didn’t really happen, not historically.” But in addition to being my professor, he was also a rabbi and a man of deep personal faith.

There’s the historical truth of what did or did happen thousands of years ago in the Egyptian desert and of that we can be reasonably certain. There’s no mention of a mass exodus of slaves in any Egyptian writing, there’s no archeological evidence to suggest an entire nation had setup camp for decades. It just didn’t happen.

But then there’s the Truth of it

That, as an Orthodox rabbi told my gay friend over a Passover seder, “With a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, God will schlep you out of your own personal Egypt.” 

That God is forever on the side of the disposed and disenfranchised. That God will free the slaves even if it means sending plagues to the oppressors. That when you’ve hit the end of the road, when an army has you up against a wall (or a river), God will make a way. That the impossible is possible.

I wondered, if the Bible isn’t true then why should I believe it and how can I be a Christian? It took me years to ask the question: are my beliefs about truth true?

My whole faith began to fall apart. I stopped going to church, I stopped reading my Bible, I stopped thinking about Christianity (as much as I could: Christianity—or my limited understanding of it— would still come rushing back in the form of unexpected shame wayyyy too often). 

I knew what I didn’t believe, but I didn’t know what I did believe. There was nothing to fill that void.

Thankfully, queer activism introduced me to Jesus (again)

I spent 2 months in intense, nonviolent direct action confronting anti-LGBTQ Christianity in some of the most queerphobic Christian campuses in the country.

I began experiencing the faith I’d grown up simply hearing about.

I stood in the wind and rain on a two-lane road through a field in middle-of-nowhere Montana to “be an example for believers” (2 Timothy 4:12) and I UNDERSTOOD in my bones what it meant to “offer your body as a living sacrifice” (Romans 12:1). Like, I could literally feel it in my bones because I was so cold and wet. 

I took that experience with me and continued the work of queer activism in my local community.

My queer community in New York City embodied the church in Acts — where “there were no needy persons among them” — in a more real way than I have ever seen before. We replaced Leo’s clothes when he was mugged, we chipped in for Micah’s surgery, we supported Asher’s business.

And the transformative work of queer Christianity isn’t limited to in-person gatherings: I’ve witnessed the power of queer Christian community inside of Sanctuary Collective.

My faith is no longer theoretical. It’s no longer what I’m supposed to believe. It’s something I can walk around inside of. That has flesh and bones and faces and hearts. The spirit of the Divine pulses in us all.

One piece at a time, I began to rediscover my faith.

The more I looked, the more connections I found. Paying attention to my queerness and connecting that with Christianity helped me to rediscover my faith one story, one lesson, one ritual at a time. Bible stories that I grew up listening to, theological ideas that I’d been taught about, all started coming ALIVE for me when I infused them with queerness.

I learned about…

• Finding God’s love in hooking up
• How my first boyfriend could teach me the meaning of the Garden of Eden
• How queer activism can help us to understand the magi’s journey
• About impossible miracles
• The connection between coming out & faith
• How queer sites, like Fire Island, are also sacred sites

I listened to and learned from my transgender friends and was enriched by their experiences too. Queerness has something to teach us outside of our own experiences, too. The Gospel is bigger than any one of us. We need each other in order to see our faith fully.

Fr. Shay blew my mind the first time I heard him preach about Ezekiel and the importance of flesh and bodies. A few weeks ago, we recorded a video of him talking about the story of Doubting Thomas and Jesus’s scars and what that meant to him as a transgender man and he left me with goosebumps (literally). We’re releasing that on Transgender Day of Visibility next week; subscribe to our YouTube and/or “like” us on Facebook to make sure you see it.

This process of finding connections between my life, the pressing issues of our day, and the Bible is a key part of what it means to be a faithful Christian. 

That has ALWAYS been the work of faith. It’s what the prophets did, it’s what Jesus did, it’s what the early church did, it is what we are called to do.

A connection between my head and my heart, between the text and the present, even between sacred and the sexual, has been ELECTRIC. 

As a result of queering the Bible (rather than forever debating the same 7 “clobber passages”), my faith is ALIVE. I’ve put childish things behind me, as the writer of 1 Corinthians also did. I GET IT. Because I have seen, tasted, experienced, embodied a faith that used to feel dry, theoretical, performative, prescriptive, and put on.

I feel more confident. I know what I believe inside and out (and I truly believe it, I’m not just repeating what I’m “supposed” to believe)

My relationships are flourishing. I have built a community and a chosen family that supports each other.

I am living out my faith in real, tangible, visible ways that are truly good news to the world

When we queer Christianity, we uncover something that is both new and ancient. 

Queerness shines a new light on the Bible and helps us to see the text in new ways … but also, at the same time, helps us to understand the original message even more fully. Christianity has always been queer!

When we do this, we acknowledge that there are many ways to understand any given passage, even many different ways to queer the same passage. That’s so fundmentally queer, isn’t it? Queerness is big and beautiful and diverse. There are countless ways to be queer and in the same way, there are ever more ways to queer the Bible and to discover new, profound (and prophetic) meaning. Queerness leads us into a Christian faith that is ever deepening and always refining.

What does queerness have to teach you?

I don’t think I’m special though. I don’t think I’ve done anything that hasn’t been done before, in some way. I am standing on the shoulders of giants. And I don’t think I’ve done anything that you can’t also do.

Jesus said, “I am come that they might have life, and have it in abundance.” That abundant is available to you too and I believe — I have seen! — that queerness is at the heart of it.

Fr. Shay and I have spent a combined 30 years (OMG! We old!) figuring this out. He spent 3 years in seminary (and is still paying off that debt) and I spent a decade putting my body on the front lines of LGBTQ justice, training under civil rights leaders, and studying the intersections of religion and activism. We want to share some of that goodness with you and teach you how to uncover what your own queerness has to teach you about the Bible!

We’ve got two ways to do that:

First, participate in our 7-day Queering the Bible photo challenge on Instagram. All the details are at queertheology.com/challenge

Second, add your name to the waitlist for our Queer The Bible course so that you can be sure to grab a spot (and snag a discount). Interested? Pop over to queertheology.com/queerbible

Got questions? Drop us a line and let us know what’s holding you back, we’re here for you!

Practical Tips for Managing Anxiety Amidst the COVID-19 Crisis

We teamed up Rev. Jonathan Vanderbeck, LMSW, an ordained minister and licensed psychotherapist, to talk about the role of anxiety amidst the COVID-19 crisis.

If you’re like me, you might have some anxiety. That’s normal and understandable. Anxiety is part of being alive. That’s true even in “usual” times and it’s even more natural and understandable given the current circumstances. 

In this video, Jonathan share exactly what anxiety is, what exactly our responses to it are (there are 4! he explains each), and what specifically we can do to manage our anxiety and anxious responses (no shame, no blame).

These are timeless tools that are particularly relevant in our present moment.

You can watch here:

Join us + licensed psychotherapist Rev. Jonathan Vanderbeck, LMSW, to talk about the role of anxiety amidst the COVID-19 crisis.If you have a question you'd like answered, leave it in the comments here or join us live and ask in the chat!

Posted by Queer Theology on Monday, March 16, 2020

Here are the questions that we covered, with some overall notes below.

1.  I’ve heard you say that we need to not let our brains spin with anxiety. But the fear is REAL! This isn’t some imaginary threat, it’s REAL! How do we handle very real threats to ourselves and not be anxious? [8:42]
   
2. What are some PRACTICAL ways to reduce my anxiety? Does going for a walk HONESTLY make a difference? [12:00]
   
3. I’m a pastor, and super caught off guard by my own anxious responses over the last few days. Any advice for holding my own anxiety while also needing to be a soft place for other anxious folks to land? [18:45]
   
4. I can’t tell what is real and what is speculation any more and I think I’m making my anxiety worse. Any suggestions? [24:30]
   
5. This is triggering my OCD/anxiety disorder. Basically, this is my worst nightmare. I don’t know what to do! [33:11]
   
6. How can we help each other while we’re not feeling great ourselves? [45:47 and 18:45]
   
7. I’m wondering about comforting and caring for folks who are being triggered by this Pandemic back to the trauma of the AIDS epidemic. [50:50]
   

Thanks to Hope Zane for taking some notes on the talk

• Anxiety is an organism’s response to real or imagined threat. Redirecting anxious behaviors with small tasks that assert autonomy (taking a walk, putting on clean clothes, taking a shower) is the goal, not stopping the anxiety itself. To be anxious is to be human. [6:24 and 8:42]

• Ideally, try to share your fears with people who can sit with them in a nonreactive, minimally anxious way so y’all don’t create an anxiety spiral for each other [21:25]

• Re: news- focus on fact and not speculation. If you go down the speculation road, ask yourself “if this speculated fear comes to pass, will it affect my day-to-day life?” focus on what you can control [26:40]

• The anxious response: how you feel, how you think, your physiology (heart rate, breathing), what you do. You can’t really change the feeling response, so focus on the rest. [28:14]

• Give people grace for the toilet paper bullshit. It symbolizes control over a small thing. Be curious about people’s hoarding behavior and consider compassion [33:40]

• Normalize your own anxiety, especially when you know you’re doing something irrational but nevertheless feel compelled to do it [41:20]

• Acknowledge that someone’s feelings are as real and bad as they say it is. [42:45]

• Don’t be surprised at how quickly you burn out while trying to help others’ feelings and needs during this crisis. Take care of yourself. It’s not selfishness. Helpers have limitations and aren’t immune to anxiety. [48:00]

• Even experts are having panic attacks, man. No one is immune. Cut yourself slack. [40:50]

• Deep breathing literally does help. Inhale for 4 seconds, hold your breath for 6 seconds, exhale for 8 seconds. (Remember 4-6-8) [55:31]

• TAKE YOUR ALLERGY MEDS IF YOU HAVE ALLERGIES. Having to wonder why you’re sneezing or congested is going to stress you the fuck out. [1:01:00]

• We’re all in this together <3 [1:03:38]

If you would like to make a payment to Rev. Jonathan for his work here, you can do so via Venmo or CashTag: RevJonathan on both.

If you would like to support the work of QueerTheology.com, you can do so through a one-time donation here or through Patreon.

If you would like an amazingly supportive online community and in-depth resources for LGBTQ Christians so that you integrate your faith and your sexuality/gender, explore connections between the sacred & the sexy, deepen your faith, make friends from around the world, and be supported in your faith + life journey, learn more about Sanctuary Collective

#BiWeek Bisexuality & Christian Homophobia

I’m bisexual and I was raised Evangelical Christian and today I want to talk about how Christian homophobia got in the way of me acknowledging and accepting my bisexuality.

Growing up, the message that I got from the church and from Christian culture around me was that homosexuality was something that you did. Orientation was secondary, if it even existed. Or it was seen as a temptation. So homosexuality was looking at gay porn, having gay sex, kissing boys, fantasizing about men, looking at male underwear models.

The emphasis was always on actions rather than orientation.

It didn’t matter so much if you had a bisexual orientation just as long as you weren’t “committing homosexual acts”. In fact, after I came out, I went to a Christian therapist, he asked if I would go to more therapy to move my attractions closer towards bisexuality. Then, I could just choose to only act on my attraction towards women and not my attractions towards men. When it came to bisexuality, the message that I got was that the only problem were the homosexual parts of it.

Now that I’m out and proudly bisexual I understand that bisexuality isn’t one part gay and one part straight. I’m just 100 percent bisexual.

But this particular type of Christian homophobia defines homosexuality as particular acts and then discriminates against people based upon those actions. Orientation be damned. And so bisexual people and homosexual people both experience this particular type of homophobia.

It took me a little while to figure that out and part of the problem for me was that this particular type of Christian homophobia defined “the sin” of homosexuality as specific actions. And so for me the tension came around my attractions to men, my desires to be with men and so that’s what sucked up all the energy and the focus.

You know when you bite your cheek and it swells up and you keep biting it? Or you hit your hand with a hammer and then any discomfort you might be feeling elsewhere goes away because all you can focus on is the thumb you just hit or the cheek that you just bit. That was sort of, for me, what it was like realizing that I was attracted to guys.

That the “problem” — what I thought was a problem, what I thought might be a place where I was going to sin — sucked up all of my time, energy and focus and I didn’t have time or space to consider any other attractions that I may or may not be experiencing.

Another problem for me was the, “God made me this way, I don’t have a choice” defense of being gay.

One of the most common arguments that I heard for how you know it was okay to be gay or lesbian or transgender and Christian was that God made us this way and we didn’t have a choice and so therefore it must be okay because why would God make us this way if it was only going to be a sin? So my entire world view of it’s okay to be gay, hinged on I don’t have any other options. And then every now and then I would be attracted to a woman and suddenly I would be thrown into crisis because now it felt like I did have a choice or I did have other options. So then maybe I was just supposed to choose women because,

“Oh, I’m attracted to this person so if I could choose that, then it means I’m not stuck being gay and being gay isn’t necessarily a choice then being gay might be a sin”

So it was hard for me to any healthy, meaningful relationship with a person who was causing me to have this existential crisis about the goodness of myself and my LGBTQ friends.

When we talk about how it’s okay to be LGBTQ, I think it’s really important that we remember the experiences of bi, pan, queer folks who sometimes do feel like we had a choice or have a choice.

I now understand that when it comes to this idea of choosing, it’s often framed as choosing between genders, but really the choice is between fracturing yourself or between wholeness. Regardless of who bi+ people choose to be in a relationship with at any given moment or choose to have sex with, we shouldn’t have to choose between our queerness, our bi-ness and our Christian faith.

As a bi person it’s important to remember that bisexual people can be affected by biphobia and homophobia. That it’s important that we notice and name and work against the particular ways we’re targeted because of our bisexuality, because of biphobia and it’s also important to notice the ways in which we’re affected by homophobia and work in solidarity with our homosexual peers because we’re all part of one big queer family.