Relationships

Dear World: Please Stop Speculating about My Child

Disclaimer: I have my son’s permission to post this. He read the entire thing first and agreed I could publish it.

I wasn’t going to say anything. I was going to let it go. Except, well, I can’t. I have a tendency to overthink and dwell on things, but I tried for a while to put it out of my mind. Only I think this needs to be said, so listen up.

If my twelve-year-old were on Facebook, he could list his status as “in a relationship,” which is one of two things which sparked this post. The other was a comic by Assigned Male about the ways in which we enforce heterosexuality on children from a young age. While I’m bothered by that on its own, it also deeply troubles me that we speculate about romantic relationships between three-year-old children at all. It also bothers me that adults are discussing a middle schooler’s relationships and that anyone feels free to dissect his current one to look for meaning.

Which brings me to now. You, people who are speculating on my child’s past, current, and/or future relationships, are basing your assumptions on stereotypes and a handful of things he’s given me permission to post publicly. You may also be projecting your former self onto my child. I swear I’m going to let the next person have it who says “I was that age once.” Yeah, I know you were, but if you think it’s going to endear me to you or change anything about the way I parent when you tell me how negatively you treated potential partners, you are mistaken.

I get it that some of you didn’t have a great experience at his age. And I respect that if you don’t have kids yourself, and all you have are news stories featuring the tragic end to bullying, you may not realize how different it is from when we were young. Trust me, you don’t need to worry that he’s hiding his true nature and pretending to go along with what he thinks society expects. I have a child who has taken ballet and painted his nails and worn the occasional skirt and grown his hair out longish (until he was told to cut it for the school play). What part of himself do you honestly think he’s hiding?

Here’s the thing. If you don’t live in my household, you are not part of the day-to-day relationship I have with my kid. You don’t hear the conversations we have. I also don’t share them publicly, so you’re not informed about what we discuss in private. Which means that when my kid says something about himself, it’s not your job to question him or suggest he doesn’t really know himself or any other version of implying you know something he and I do not. Are you a person who has lived with him his whole life? No? Then back the fuck off, please and thank you.

If you are an adult pondering my child’s developing sexual and relational identities, there is something wrong with that. Why is it so important for you to be able to pin down what you think you know about him? He’s been dealing with this bullshit since he was old enough to talk—everything from telling him (at age five!) that he’ll be a heartbreaker to making comments on his mannerisms and self-expression to telling him he’s “confused.”

(We deal with the same crap with our other child, by the way, but she prefers I not blog about her. Out of respect, I’m keeping the conversation focused on the kid who doesn’t mind.)

Listen. I don’t believe for a millisecond that most of you in the “what is he” crowd really care about him or have his best interest in mind. Because if any of you did, you would recognize that it is, in fact, none of your damn business. Do not in the same breath tell me what an “awesome” job of parenting I’m doing and then turn around and fail to trust that my kid and I have this worked out. If you truly thought he was at risk of…something (I honestly don’t know what), then sure, I could understand your borderline concern trolling. But if you think his dad and I are doing all right as parents, then why on God’s green earth would you think it’s all right to question how he is expressing his identity?

Currently, my kid has the seventh grade version of a “relationship.” Do you know what this means? It means he emails her and they hug goodbye after the one class they share. It does not mean he’s using her as a cover for his “real” identity. It does not mean she’s his one and only forever and ever amen. It does not mean anything in particular except that they are twelve and trying on being a bit more grown up. That’s literally all. So whatever my kid says is true of himself is true regardless of this one particular girl.

If you are tempted to suggest he’s “still figuring things out,” you’re partially right. One hundred percent of twelve-year-olds are “figuring things out” in lots of ways. That’s what twelve is! But if you mean to suggest he doesn’t know himself or that he’s too young and will eventually change his mind, then kindly don’t. Of course it’s possible he will see himself differently at another stage of his life; that’s true for any of us. But what’s most important is that this is how he sees himself right now. His information is trustworthy regardless of his age.

Admire my kid for how he bravely stands up for others. Appreciate his skill on stage, whether it’s as a dancer, an actor, or a musician. Laugh with him at his misadventures, about which he has a great sense of humor. But don’t place him in the context of his future adult relationships. Let him be twelve.

Dear Heather: You Don’t Speak for Everyone

LGBTQ+, Relationships

I should be writing other things. I should be creating new fiction or writing the blog posts I owe for my publisher’s upcoming anthology or at least finishing my series on bi representation. Instead, I’m sitting here seething at how Heather Barwick thinks she can speak for an entire community of people based on her personal views and experiences.

No, thanks.

She starts off with, “Gay community, I am your daughter.” No, she isn’t. She is the daughter of one person who is part of the lgbtq community. One (and her partner). Heather’s experiences and feelings cannot be used to describe what every person thinks or feels.

She goes on to explain how the “nature” of same-sex relationships make them bad for children, so she’s against gay marriage. There are so many wrong assumptions in that I’m not even sure where to begin. The sad truth is that this can and will be used by opponents of same-sex marriage to deny people’s rights, and anyone who dares disagree with Ms. Barwick is clearly a hateful person perpetrating “reverse discrimination” against opponents of marriage equality.

Here are the problems with her argument:

1. Her opening language leaves a lot to be desired. She has co-opted the phrase “coming out,” perhaps to get same-sex couples’ attention. That speaks to just how little she understands the closet and its implications. Heather cannot possibly believe she is going to be threatened in the same way that lgbtq people are when we come out. These are not equivalent.

2. She assumes all marriages are for the purpose of raising children. That negates the lives of any couple of any orientation who have chosen not to parent for whatever reason. She also assumes that all couples of any orientation who choose to have children are or want to be married. While marriage and having children often go hand-in-hand, that is not necessarily true across the board. Even her own mothers couldn’t possibly have been legally married while raising her. Denying same-sex marriages won’t prevent same-sex couples from parenting, and making them legal won’t automatically lead to parenting.

3. She assumes that the purpose of same-sex marriage is to “imitate” opposite sex “normal” marriage. Not quite. There are two things I dislike when discussing marriage equality: one, having it dismissed as “heteronormative”; two, having it celebrated as “heteronormative.” When two queer people get married or one queer person marries a cis-het person, their marriage is inherently queer. We can have a conversation about the problems that are not being addressed regarding legal marriages in general. However, there is something fantastically subversive about queer marriage. Patriarchal structures be damned—we are going to live out our relationships in ways that look like us, not like something out of last century (or earlier). When queer parents get married, it isn’t for the purpose of replacing a child’s mother or father any more than a cis-het remarriage is an attempt at finding another parent for a child. When same-sex partners choose to get married and/or have children together, it’s because they want to do those things, not because they want to play cis-het house.

4. She assumes all same-sex couples “withhold” adults of other genders, specifically the other parent. It’s not clear whether her own father stayed away because he didn’t like being a father, because he was angry at his ex, or because his ex barred him from contact. She cannot speak for anyone but herself and has absolutely no idea what other families do or don’t do.

5. She picks out same-sex couples specifically to blame. Instead of saying she wished her parents had done a better job of providing for her emotional and relational needs, she chalks it up to her mother and stepmother being lesbians. Interestingly, she uses the same language conservatives use to “prove” feminists are separatists who think men are unnecessary. There are opposite-sex couples who do a piss-poor job of raising their kids too, including keeping their children from being involved with their other parent. Yet no one is blaming heterosexuality. Maybe we should.

6. She demands some kind of honesty from other children of gay parents as though she can speak for them. She mentions divorce and adoption as having aspects that can be tough on kids, and there’s truth to that. It can be hard (in multiple ways) to be the child of queer parents. I fully expect my own kids to one day have questions and want to talk about ways I failed them. Being honest doesn’t necessarily mean opposing any of those things, though. It means simply being honest about what was hard and what was good. The big difference here is that Ms. Barwick is saying same-sex couples should not be able to marry or parent, but she is not saying divorce and adoption should be illegal.

It would be unfair to dismiss Heather Barwick’s life experiences as invalid. That is not what I’m trying to do. I’m exposing the problems in the way she’s chosen to scapegoat an entire community. Instead of telling her story about the challenges she faced growing up, she’s decided to apply it to all same-sex couples/families and make assumptions. She’s using it to stand against marriage, which doesn’t even particularly have anything to do with her situation anyway. The whole time, she says how much she “loves” gay people—so much that she wants to deny rights to same-sex couples, apparently. That’s a pretty funny way of showing love.

Unnatural selection*

Relationships, Sexual Morality

Well, color me surprised: Matt Walsh is at it again.** I never know where to begin with this guy–should I start with his imaginary friends that write him letters and emails? Or maybe with the fact that he’s created caricatures of people for the sake of taking them down? Actually, I might go with just shaking my head at how many people seem to like and follow this guy.

This week’s installment is “stereotypes of liberal college professors.” Oh, nice one, Matt. Let’s take on academia! Because no one has ever done that before and done it better than Matt Walsh! I think it’s hilarious that Matt tries to sell us on his being the subject of conversation in high schools and colleges (remember the one about health class?). No, dude, you are just not that important.

I’m pretty sure my favorite part of the fake email is where, since he couldn’t actually think of something to write, Matt says,

[Five more sentences of insults and pretentious self-aggrandizement]

Oh, okay. We get to hear all about how “worried” this fictional professor is that Matt is a topic of conversation, thus stroking Matt’s ego, but we don’t get to read about the “self-aggrandizement” of the professor.

The gist of the email is that the fictional professor believes monogamy is not natural to humans (particularly men) and is no longer necessary. He then goes on to personalize it, suggesting that Matt will inevitably cheat on his wife. I will admit that I’ve met people who believe this and who are unkind about the way that some people choose to live their lives. However, none of them fall into the stereotypes Matt has suggested here (well-educated atheist in academia), and none of them have had the misogynistic overlays Matt has used in his fictional scenario (that is, only men cheat, only men believe monogamy is unnatural, etc.).

After making a couple of snide remarks about the “professor,” Matt goes on to say:

A married person who doesn’t believe in monogamy seems an awful lot like a Satanist in a church choir, or an existential nihilist performing lifesaving heart surgery. There’s a bit of a philosophical conflict of interest at work, wouldn’t you agree?

No, Matt, I don’t agree, and you’re an ass who doesn’t understand any of the things your conflating here. Matt is equating non-monogamy with cheating. Those are not the same thing. We can have a conversation about whether it’s moral or a good idea or whatever, but we need to do it on the terms of what the concepts actually are. A person can be non-monogamous in a marriage without sneaking around and having illicit affairs.

Matt tells us why he bothers answering these fake emails:

In fact, I wouldn’t even bother to address such absurdity if it wasn’t becoming so widespread. What you people — you socially “progressive” academics — have realized is that you can not launch a salient attack against the ideals behind marriage, or abstinence for that matter, so instead you’ve decided to make the bizarre case that these things are somehow mythological.

“Widespread”? Really? I’m not seeing it. Also, this is not a new thing. People who believe humans are not wired for monogamy have been around for a long, long time. Goodness, I remember reading this stuff back when I was in high school in the ’80s, and it wasn’t new even then (though as a high schooler I thought I’d stumbled on some terrifying new philosophy). Matt needs to catch up a little.

As for not being able to “launch a salient attack against the ideals behind marriage,” Matt needs to catch up there, too. In so many ways, marriage and family have changed. I don’t mean in the last half-century with the changes in divorce laws or in the last ten years with more states legalizing marriage equality. I mean over the course of human existence. The purpose, function, and practice of marriage are ever-shifting, and that isn’t a bad thing at all. I, for one, am happy that I’m not still considered property, for example. The ideal behind marriage–which I would argue is a mutual expression of love, trust, and commitment–can still be present no matter how a couple decides to live that out.

The more you say it, the more people believe it, and the more they believe it the more true it becomes. It’s a clever trick. You’ve succeeded, at least partially, in shouting at a reality until it disappears.

But conservatives never, ever do this. Nope. And it’s never been used to bully, shame, and abuse people. Ever.

Monogamy is not natural. You’re right about that.

It’s supernatural.

I honestly don’t even know what he means by this. He also goes on to talk about “rationality” and a whole bunch of other stuff that generally makes very little sense to me. Maybe I just don’t have Matt’s incredible intellectual powers of debate. At no point does he bother explaining how monogamy is supernatural. I was expecting some stuff about, you know, God somewhere in there, but he never gets around to that.

It’s above our nature. It might not be realistic. Space flight isn’t realistic, either.

I think Matt and I have vastly different definitions of “realistic.” Does he mean “naturalistic”? Because realism, by definition, is something that is real. Space flight has been real for over 40 years.

I’m already bored with Matt’s not-really-a-rebuttal. There’s no direction here. He’s basically saying that the “professor” is wrong because he’s wrong. Or because of space flight. He finally tells us what he really thinks:

If you won 600 million dollars in the lottery, would you go out the next day and break into cars to steal the change from the cup holders? That’s what sleeping around is like when you’ve already found a woman who will pledge her life and her entire being to you for the remainder of her existence.

Ah. So there we have it–he sees non-monogamy as “sleeping around.” Because in Matt’s world, there are only two kinds of sexual expression: Man-Woman-Marriage sex and Get-It-On-With-Anyone sex. On, off. Black and white. He cannot imagine anything outside of those options. (This is, of course, how we know the “professor” doesn’t exist, by the way–he’s created as the anti-Matt.)

You tell me that you are in an “open marriage.” I will probably be lambasted for “judging” you for it, but, sorry Professor, an “open marriage” makes about as much sense as a plane without wings or a boat that doesn’t float.

Matt means it doesn’t make sense to him. I’m willing to bet it makes sense to the people who choose something different. My concern is less about Matt judging a fictional character for a scenario that, in this case, doesn’t actually exist than about the fact that Matt just doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about and isn’t arguing his case particularly well.

Marriages, by definition, are supposed to be closed.

By whose definition? In the Bible, marriages certainly weren’t “closed.” Multiple wives? Check. Concubines? Check. Song of Solomon may even be referring to an unmarried couple. Human history and culture is full of a wide variety of configurations, all of which were considered acceptable. The fact that we’ve now caught up with ourselves socially (to an extent) and can embrace marriage as a choice rather than as a business deal is wonderfully freeing.

If you aren’t strong enough to stay committed to one person, that’s your business. Walk down that path of loneliness and confusion, but you can’t drag the entire institution of marriage along with you. Personally, I like circles but I hate squares. Can I subvert the laws of geometry and suddenly decide that all squares shall henceforth be circles? No, because geometry is geometry, despite my strange square-hating quirks. Similarly, marriage is marriage, no matter how many college professors insist otherwise.

Oh, Matt. You poor soul. Though I now see exactly where he’s gone with this. He seems to think that this one fictional character can single-handedly take down marriage. I don’t think this fake letter is about non-monogamy at all. I think it’s a disguise for Matt’s frustration with the trajectory of marriage equality. I’ve heard that argument before, that marriage is on its way out. You know what’s really shooting down marriage? It’s not people who live happily in open marriages. It’s not same-sex couples. It’s not polys. Heck, it’s not even divorce (I can’t imagine telling someone who has escaped an abuser that s/he has ripped the fabric of society). No, it’s people like Matt who want to cling to a very narrow definition of what marriage is or should be (which is fine, if that’s what the couple wants) and then enforce it so everyone else must follow suit.

Matt seems content to blame crumbling marriages on nebulous philosophies and the relatively small number of people who are honest about their non-monogamy. But that denies abuse, addiction, actual cheating (vs. non-monogamy), religious oppression, misogyny, and homophobia as far bigger contributors. It’s important to open the conversation about how people can live moral, healthy lives. That’s not what Matt’s done here. Perhaps that’s because it’s easier to hide behind imaginary academics than it is to engage with live human beings.

____________________

*I think that was actually the title of a Far Side book. Man, I miss Far Side.

**If you get the chance, check out this page. The Five Drunk Rednecks (I love it) posted a couple of comments on my previous posts about Matt Walsh (it’s so gratifying that I have that much reach with my tiny little blog). So I ventured over to their page. I would call it a treasure trove, except “treasure” isn’t the word I want and I’m not sure what its antithesis is. Anyway, read up on it over there. Matt Walsh has been saying douchey things for ages.

Love, Marriage, and Happiness

Relationships

By Musaromana (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

I was displeased to see that this dreadful thing, Marriage Isn’t for You, is making the rounds. This is one of those overly-chipper-but-somewhat-nebulous posts that’s hard to disagree with on the surface, mostly due to its lack of any depth. I mean, how many of us haven’t been selfish or been hurt by someone else who was being selfish? And really, isn’t there some truth to the fact that marriage isn’t a solo pursuit? So what’s wrong with this article?

For starters, I don’t really want marriage “advice” from someone more than ten years younger who has a fraction the time put into his marriage that I have. I mean, I’m certainly willing to listen to people younger and less experienced than I am (provided they aren’t saying utterly stupid things). Naturally, I do prefer that the person offering their expertise have more knowledge of a subject than I do. I’m perfectly fine with the fact that my gynecologist, for example, is eight years younger than I am. She’s been to medical school; I have not. So when she does an exam, I’m not all like, “Hey, are you sure you’re doing that right?” If I’m getting marriage advice, I don’t want it second-hand filtered through a guy who’s barely past his honeymoon. That’s not to say that newlyweds and young adults have nothing to offer. But if you’re going to tell people what to do, you’d better be able to back that up with some credentials, or people with a lot more experience are going to tell you you’re full of it.

Anyway, aside from Seth Adam Smith’s adorkable lack of real-life experience, I just can’t get behind his words. In particular, this stood out to me:

No, a true marriage (and true love) is never about you. It’s about the person you love–their wants, their needs, their hopes, and their dreams. Selfishness demands, “What’s in it for me?” while Love asks, “What can I give?”

Right. Because 1. there’s such a thing as a “true marriage” (as opposed to all those fake ones going on? I dunno); and 2. it’s not at all co-dependently creepy to fixate entirely on the needs of someone else. It’s possibly his use of “never” here that strikes me the wrong way, but there’s something deeply obsessive and weird underneath those words.

Seth follows that up nicely with a vague story about how he was being “selfish” and it caused major problems. I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. It could have been anything at all, from not pulling his weight in household chores to spending fifteen hours a week watching Internet porn. He gives no indication about what made him so utterly, appallingly selfish, nor why his wife had to “soothe his soul.” He uses strange, vaguely religious terms (his heart was “callous” and “hard”) to not really tell us anything. He’s not clear on what his wife actually did, either. We know she was “soothing,” but what is that? Like ointment?

After this cryptic story, Seth assures us that marriage is about family. Gee, thanks for that–I wasn’t clear. I thought maybe marriage was like a corporate merger only with sex. Actually, I’ll bet some corporate mergers also involve sex, so it’s probably not that different. Oh, wait . . . I guess a lot of us have been confused about it; thanks, Seth, for clearing that up!

At the end, we get the lovely sentiment that the more we give, the more we receive. Which is ironic, since Seth just spent a whole page detailing why marriage isn’t about us. So why should we care if we get anything in return? I mean, it’s not about meeeeeeee! He’s not forthcoming on the details of what the payoff is, either. Do we get the satisfaction of a job well done? A cookie for effort from the spouse for not being a jerk? Or is this supposed to be like, “You live for me, I’ll live for you, we’ll both be happy” kind of a thing? I’m also not getting where the love from “thousands” of other people comes into play here. It sounds more like Seth just didn’t know how to finish his article so he gave it the Hollywood extended ending treatment–not much to add to the story, but aren’t the special effects cool?

Anyway, it’s not that I want to advocate for being a total ass to your spouse. Of course being completely self-centered is a terrible way to treat people. But that seems like common sense, not something to turn into your life’s Guiding Principle or whatever. It really is okay to want to be happy. There is nothing wrong with expecting your relationships to be mutually satisfying. If my husband didn’t make me happy, I wouldn’t have married him. If I didn’t enjoy my friendships, I wouldn’t hang out with those people. Do I operate based solely on what’s going to please me? No, but neither do I operate solely on what’s going to please someone else.

Strangely, in telling us this story, Seth somehow manages to undermine his point–that marriage isn’t about us–by making it entirely about him. I’m going to give him a few years to figure out that there’s a happy medium between expecting relationships to feed you and expecting to meet others’ needs to the exclusion of your own. Hopefully by that point, he will have a story or two about what he’s done for his wife, rather than what she’s done for him.

More on NALT and being an ally

LGBTQ+, Relationships, Social Justice

Yesterday, I wrote about why I’m not making a NALT video. I want to expand on that a little. There are some valid concerns about the project, but from what I’ve seen, a lot of those concerns border on what the project might do rather than what it is doing and on assumptions rather than experiences.

One big issue is whether or not the people making the videos believe that’s all they need to do to be good allies. First of all, it’s a pretty big assumption to think that those people are not already doing other things. All we know of most of them is whatever they happen to say in a couple of minutes. We don’t know whether they think they’ve done their part. Obviously that could be true, but I find it hard to believe that the majority of people who make the videos are sitting somewhere feeling satisfied that they’ve completed their assignment and can now move on. It also assumes that all of those people are straight and cisgender (hint: they’re not).

I think one of the things that frustrates me is the belief that it’s “easier” to be an ally online. That has not been my experience at all. I find it far easier to be an ally in real life; it doesn’t take a whole lot of effort. It mostly consists of being a good friend–which isn’t usually about someone else’s sexuality anyway. Sure, there are times when I need to take action. Sometimes I vote for legislation that extends the same rights I enjoy. Sometimes I have to ask people not to say stupid, hateful, or hurtful things. More often, though, it’s about getting a cup of coffee together or chatting while our kids play or having our sons baptized on the same day or attending a wedding celebration. It’s about sharing together the things that are important to us, including our identities. It’s not complicated.

When I first started to blog, I stayed anonymous for a long time. I didn’t do it out of fear. I’m hardly a person who cares that some church official might decide that I shouldn’t be involved in ministry. I did it to protect the people whom I was serving. I wanted to stay web-silent so that I could be a safe person for youth and their families. I know people who have been threatened and bullied for supporting their gay children, and I believed they and their children needed someone safe to talk to. If I had been public, I would have been removed from ministry and therefore have been less available for people who needed me.*

When the time was right, I began using my real name. It was mildly risky on my part, but that was at a point when I knew that I wasn’t putting anyone else at risk. When people make these videos, they may be doing the same thing. It may be a first step in being public after a time of flying under the radar. They may be risking much more than I was in making a statement.

When I named myself, I discovered something: It’s a lot harder to be a good ally online. It’s tricky to navigate the wide range of needs among people I don’t know anywhere but the Internet. I’ve learned a lot, including that sometimes people’s needs are completely opposite. The NALT campaign is a good example–some people feel hopeful and encouraged while others feel angry and hurt.** I’m an incredibly sensitive person, and I tend to absorb other people’s feelings. That’s a good thing, except when people are expressing such vastly different emotions. It puts me in a place where I feel like I have to choose between people I care about and respect. It makes me want to quit the Internet and run back to the safety of doing this only offline.

Here’s the thing, though. I think that’s as it should be. It is hard. If it were easy, everyone would do it. Everyone would know all the right words and there would never be a question. Everyone would be able to be a good ally offline and on the Internet. We would never have to work at listening, caring, speaking, or writing. Taking on the challenge–whether one finds it harder online or off–is important, necessary work if we ever expect social change.

Not everyone can do it on the Internet. Maybe passing on blogging, videos, and tweets is the best option for some people. Those who resent having to walk such a fine line are probably better off concentrating on other things. Those who are so tenderhearted that they are slowly sucked dry by conflicting views might need to back off in order to have the emotional reserve to care for people in their own lives.

For the rest of us, though, it’s worth staying in. It’s okay that we’re hearing different answers to the same question, because no two people are identical in their experiences. There is no Hypothetical Idealized Ally. There’s no perfect way of writing or talking about these things. I think my first rule of being an ally needs to be, “Don’t tell other allies how to do it correctly.” I don’t have everything right. All I can do is point back at those to whom I’m an ally and say, “Ask them.” Even then, it’s going to depend on the individual. My default is to individually ask, “What do you prefer?” and act accordingly when communicating with that person.

Even though I find it difficult at times, I’m not going to be silent on the Internet. I may get pushed from different directions at times, and that has to be okay with me. I have to go with it because it’s not about me. When I make decisions about what I write or whether I’ll make a video, I have to go with what feels right in my heart because sometimes there’s no way to do both of two opposing actions. I can’t both make a video and not make one. What feels right to me at this time is not to make one, even though I know there are people who may be disappointed. If people care so little about me as a human being that they reduce me to being bad or good depending on whether I agree with them or I’ve done exactly as they wanted me to, then those aren’t people I want to spend much time with.

Where have you found it harder to be an ally? Online or offline? Where have you found it harder to find allies? What advice would you give to those who want to be allies online?

______________________________

*I know I’m being vague. I simply can’t be more specific in order to protect people I care about.

**Or some other combination–say, hurt but hopeful. All those feelings are valid. The difficulty is in how to proceed when pulled in opposite directions.

Why I don’t need a video to prove I’m not “like that”

LGBTQ+, Relationships, Religion

At this point, I’m not sure who’s reading this and also has some knowledge of the NALT (“not all like that”) project. I also don’t know who’s reading this and also might be either upset by or supportive of the project. Either way, I want to explain why I’m okay with the project, but I won’t be making a video.

Some years ago, when I was first trying to figure out how to love and serve LGBTQ people, I could’ve used something like NALT. I was in a situation in which I didn’t know any other Christians who believed same-sex relationships were not sinful (though I knew a few who thought the “condition” of being gay might be okay so long as one didn’t act on that). I knew exactly two gay Christians. And trans* people? Hell, they didn’t even exist in that world. Just to be clear, I wasn’t necessarily looking for other straight allies–just anyone who had a different view from the conservative one. When I went seeking, all I found were organizations that wanted my money. It took about two years of actively pursuing it to find others, and then it was only because I decided to open a Twitter account and follow people who looked like they might be progressive. Believe me, I understand the desire to find like-minded people.

One of the reasons I kept up the effort is that I have a lot of LGBTQ friends, family, and acquaintances in my offline life, and I had done a lot of damage with my religious posturing. I’m lucky some of these people decided they still like me. I suppose I thought I needed to make things up to them somehow. I had been so trained in “love the sinner, hate the sin” that I wasn’t sure anymore how to just love people. Of course, I do know better these days, and I no longer need an outside source to tell me how to care for my friends.

I also have a lot of friends, family, and acquaintances who are not LGBTQ. By now, the majority of those people should be aware of where I stand on things, whether it be in regard to Christianity and LGBTQ people or feminism or the doctrines of total depravity and hell. I don’t feel the need to explain or defend myself. The people close to me don’t need me to say anything else; they already know I’m “not all like that.” In fact, some of them have used those exact words to describe me. I had to laugh once when my cousin said she was telling a friend about my husband and me and she said we were Christians but whispered, “But they’re not like that“–and apparently, the other person knew exactly what she meant.

All of that is why I see no need to make a video to announce to the world that I’m “not like that.”

That’s why I’m choosing not to participate in the NALT project. My offline loved ones don’t need it; I’m not a big enough online voice to be noticed by megachurch pastors; and it won’t do anything to help my online acquaintances. On the other hand, I’m not going to write a blog post condemning the project. I know far too many people who have found it to be meaningful and powerful. I know straight allies who have found each other, I know LGBTQ Christians who have, some for the first time, heard the message that their spiritual and sexual identities are not mutually exclusive. I know people–cis-het and otherwise–who want to use this as a way to stand up to bullying anti-gay pastors. I can’t slam the project on the grounds that some people don’t care for the terms used or don’t see the project as helping them or their loved ones directly, even though I do understand where those feelings come from.

One of the criticisms I’ve heard about the project is that it’s taking some kind of “easy” way out of being a “real” ally (and yeah, that’s mostly something I’ve heard cis-straight people say). I’ve seen online arguments about it and a good deal of the sort of rage usually reserved for Mark Driscoll or Hugo Schwyzer. So tomorrow, I’m going to talk about being an ally, walking that fine line, and what it really means for something to be easy or hard in that context.

What are your thoughts on NALT? Will you make (or have you already made) a video? What might be some better alternatives for people who don’t want to make one?

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