Unpacking shame through writing

The topic of shame and writing came up again this week—long story how—and I wanted to say something about it. For me, a lot of the shame I’ve encountered, dare I say most, came from religion. In my writing, I have chosen to dismantle it rather than distancing myself from it.

For many of us, because Christianity in particular has left us scarred and traumatized around sex and sexuality, we choose to write negatively about it or avoid it entirely. Those are both valid choices, but they are not the ones I made. Instead, I prefer to subvert it.

A note here on why I specifically do that with Christianity and not other religions: First, I only have personal experience with two religions in my life. I don’t feel I’m the one to process whatever teachings there may or may not be in other faiths. Second, I don’t feel I need to process this with anything other than Christianity because that is the primary source of the rigid rules and shaming I experienced.

The reason I write what I do is to lift that layer of guilt and allow my characters to experience something I did not: faith without strings attached. With that said, I have written all of the following (in no particular order):

• A bisexual Christian woman who waited until her late fifties to find love, only after traveling the world and being with many kinds of people
• A genderqueer Catholic who links worship, prayer, and sex literally and figuratively
• A bisexual Catholic who enjoys consensual non-monogamy and whose faith leads him to acts of service
• A bisexual trans pastor of a non-denominational church
• An asexual/aromantic pastor of a non-denominational church
• A lesbian Christian teen
• A Baptist family with multiple queer members, including a bisexual older widow, a married lesbian, and a bi man in a polyamorous relationship
• A bisexual Christian songwriter
• A bisexual Baptist minister in a polyamorous relationship
• A lesbian agnostic Christian who enjoys contemporary Christian music
• A Catholic bisexual trans man in a polyamorous relationship
• A gay Lutheran whose relationship moves from open to monogamous and married
• A teen who is figuring out her bisexuality while trying not to lose her faith
• An asexual/aromantic Christian teen who metaphorically kisses a lot of frogs before realizing she’s her own princess

There might be more, but those are the ones I can think of at the moment. I’ve also written a whole lot of allies in the lives of these characters. Their faith is what led them to embrace their LGBTQ+ loved ones rather than rejecting them.

I’m not so idealistic that I’m unaware of the realities. But I do this on purpose. One, there are a lot of people who struggle with wanting to maintain their faith and their queerness. Two, there are family members who need to see healthy examples of supporting their children, parents, and siblings. And three, I am so tired of the way conservative evangelicals in particular seem to think they have the market on what being a “real” Christian looks like.

Sometimes I wish that people of Christian faith would listen to themselves and how they conceptualize non-Christians or Christians whose life doesn’t look like what they’ve been taught to expect. They want things to be tidy, for someone to have “sin” and then overcome it. After all, that’s what most churches, even ones that aren’t conservative evangelical, teach in some form.

But life isn’t like that. People are more complex. I don’t want to only show one kind of relationship, and I don’t believe that people engaging in healthy expression of their sexuality is “sin.” Nor do I believe that there is one single way to be healthy and whole.

I suppose like with everything else in my life, I don’t want to pick a side on this subject. So I’ll keep writing about people of faith who don’t feel a need to push their agenda on everyone else, LGBTQ+ people of faith, and places where those things meet each other.