Social Justice

Love, Sex, and Marriage: Not Metaphors

Yesterday, I read this article from the Gospel Coalition by Jonathan Leeman: Love and the Inhumanity of Same-Sex Marriage. I almost couldn’t get past the title, and it took me three tries to actually read the post. If you haven’t already clicked on the link, you may not want to bother; it certainly lives down to its promise.

There is far too much in here for me to address in one blog post. I would love to tackle the idea that Christians are throwing up our hands and saying, “Why bother fighting when the times they are a-changin’?” That implies a passive, rather than an active, position on marriage equality that simply doesn’t exist for many of us. I would also like to take on the assumption that it’s “sinful” to work for marriage equality and that Real, True Christians must wage war against it. It would take several blog posts to explain my position on “Scriptural authority” and “final judgment.” I already gave my opinion on Leeman’s stupid comment about “humanity” when I posted this on Facebook last night.

So, where do I go with this?

As I read through this, the one thought I kept returning to was how we know what love, sex, and marriage are or ought to be. There seems to be an underlying idea among conservative Christians that these things are somehow a metaphor for God’s relationship with humanity. Hand in hand with that view is the belief that this love is correctly represented by (cis) man-woman marriage with penis-in-vagina sex as its ultimate expression.

This belief is supported at least in part by a reading of texts such as Song of Solomon as both a metaphor for God’s relationship with Israel and as a “sex poem.” It is also upheld by a backwards interpretation of what is meant by the Scriptures comparing the Church to a bride and Jesus to a groom. That, however, is a stretch. There is no indication that the Church was created as a bride, merely that the language used reflected something people understood–that is, the complex, intertwining relationship between husband and wife. The same is true in other passages of Scripture drawing the same comparison. In fact, Paul even says this is a mystery.

With such narrow definitions of love and intimacy, is it any wonder that people like Leeman would conclude that same-sex marriage (and, of course, same-sex lovemaking) are “less than human”?

When I read the Bible (full disclosure: I do not take Genesis 1-3 literally), I don’t read about how God made man and woman to be perfect relational complements or metaphors for God/humans or bodies that fit together just so. I read, “God saw that it was not good for the [human] to be alone.” We weren’t meant to live in isolation, but not because God was making a cosmic point. God saw that the human heart needed human love and companionship.

While I don’t believe that God created us with the intent to use us to show God’s love, I do believe God’s love is reflected in us. This isn’t limited, though, to man-woman marriage. It’s present in our deepest friendships; in our parenting; in our siblings; and yes, in our most intimate relationships. Not one of these things is a more perfect representation of God’s love; they are all imperfect–dark, like Paul’s reflecting glass. They are facets of the same glorious diamond.

If we limit the full expression of God’s love to man-woman-marriage-sex as the pinnacle, we fail to honor the deep, profound love that is experienced elsewhere. We begin to view the unmarried (especially women) as failing to achieve a holy ideal. We determine same-sex couples to be “less than human” in their love. We reject those who choose to be child-free as missing out on the actualization of “real” love. That’s not what God wants for us. Jesus made a promise to his followers: When two or more of us are gathered in his name, he will be with us. That promise is so incredibly freeing when it comes to how we see love, particularly God’s love for us.

I see the beautiful, mysterious love of God all around me in humanity. I see it when my son is baptized alongside a baby boy who has two mommies, while my child-free sister and my single-mom sister honor us with their presence. I see it when my children talk about their futures and always include one another because their love for each other runs so deep. I see it in my friends who, time after time, demonstrate their love for me in small ways. I see it in those who spend their time and money working for peace and justice throughout the world. I see it in the tender care offered by pastors to their congregations. I see it in the midst of tragedy when people reach out, even risking their own safety, to tend to others.

God’s love isn’t limited to a single expression; therefore, mine will not be boxed in either.

I support marriage equality

LGBTQ+, Social Justice

Just in case the title of this post wasn’t clear, or you haven’t ever read my blog before, I support marriage equality. There. I’ve said it twice now.

Yesterday, I had the unfortunate lack of sense to use Human Rights Campaign’s flashy red logo with the equals sign as my profile picture in several places. Yeah, my apologies to anyone I offended. I’m normally a person who does enough research to know whether something is a good idea. I had a pretty spectacular fail there, and I’m sorry. I have since changed it, of course, out of respect for others. Yes, it was hurtful to some people I care about, but I also care about not harming people who randomly follow me on the Internet. Kindness shouldn’t require personal connection.

Anyway, because I kept seeing people tweeting about the HRC logo, I did do some digging. Naturally, I came across some good information that explained the problem. Unfortunately, I also discovered several disappointing rants about marriage equality, and not from conservative religious people.

The main point of the anti-marriage rants wasn’t necessarily specific to same-sex couples marrying. It was more about marriage in general, and specifically marriage as it relates to family structure. The argument was that legal marriage perpetuates a certain type of family structure and is therefore discriminatory.

I don’t entirely disagree. I have long said that I think the government should just butt the hell out of marriage in general. Religious institutions can keep it as a sacrament if they want, but removing the legal stamp of approval would make it much easier on everyone. However, that has nothing to do with whether or not I think a certain type of family is “better” than another.

There are a few reasons why I still support marriage equality, despite the fact that I don’t think a legal document should be necessary. First, the way the law is written, there are literally dozens of legal benefits to marriage. It’s a worthy goal to strip those away and make sure everyone has those rights regardless of a piece of paper, but that isn’t going to happen overnight. I think the place to start is by giving everyone the right to marry if they so desire. (And in case you were wondering, no, I don’t include children, pets, and immediate family members in that, but I do include multiple spouses; that’s a post for another day.) I think marriage equality is a temporary patch, but a necessary one.

Second, I think arguing against marriage from a family structure point of view is on shaky ground. Even though the argument is intended to sound like it isn’t heteronormative and biased toward procreation, it actually is. It should not be surprising that of the three anti-marriage arguments I read, two were written by white cisgender heterosexual parents with long-term partners–in other words, people who have the freedom to marry but have chosen not to. I concede that “marriage,” with all its varying definitions over the course of human history, has indeed been at least partly driven by procreation. However, that is not what marriage is; it’s only one of the things marriage can do. Claiming that marriage only legitimizes a two-parent family structure assumes that every married couple wants to parent, or that the potential for parenthood was their only reason for getting married. Should they not have bought into the system? Should they have remained unmarried because there were no children to be “harmed” by their lack of legal contract? It also assumes that there are absolutely no other family-related benefits to legal marriage other than making sure kids have two adults in the home.

Third, no one said that marriage equality is the last battle–or even the first one–toward an inclusive society. I have never heard that as an argument in favor of marriage equality. Maybe I need to read more, but I’ve never read anything in which someone tried to claim that if same-sex couples can marry, it will end all discrimination. But even if someone did say that, so what? Saying something doesn’t make it true, nor does it take anything away from protecting other rights. If one person wants to spend his or her time and money on marriage equality, why would that prevent someone else from making a different choice? As long as a person is not actively supporting discriminatory legislation, I don’t see the problem here. (I feel differently about whole organizations, though, especially when they claim to speak for a community. I certainly don’t want, say, Concerned Women for America suddenly claiming to support “women’s rights.”)

Finally, people want to get married. Couples everywhere want to get married, and not all of them do it because they know the secrets of the tax code. Not all couples need religion as their reason either. Since there are many, many people who want to be married, I support that. I support their right to have a legal document stating that they are married. I don’t really care what their reasons are for doing it; I just want the law to reflect their right.

I do understand why some people feel differently, but I still stand behind marriage equality. Not everyone will choose to marry, but everyone should legitimately have the right to make that choice.

When friendship empowers us

Feminism, Women

By Jules Morgan from Montreal, Canada (Cara's Ad Hoc delicious Uploaded by Fæ) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons — I don’t know why asparagus symbolizes friendship; but this was the 5th image that came up when I typed “friendship” into Wikimedia Images. I liked it.

Sometimes, I feel like I have no fight left in me. I forget why I write and why I speak up, because no matter how many of us have joined our voices, it’s hard to see progress.

But then I have a conversation or exchange comments online and I remember. I know why I do this. I see others doing what they can, what they know how to do, every day in their ordinary lives, and I remember.

Last night, I had a terrific exchange with a couple of people on my Facebook page. Nothing earth-shattering, but it was cool. I connected with one old friend and one new one, and we shared some thoughts.

The original post, which I shared via a fellow blogger, was a link to a Christianity Today article in response to the Steubenville rape case and the aftermath. After a few comments from one friend, another jumped in and asked what I thought of the post I Am Not Your Wife, Sister or Daughter which was linked in the CT article. (I agree, by the way. I think it’s a weak argument that continues to perpetuate the idea that women are only someone in relation to a man. I feel the same way when people use the “it could be your friend/relative/coworker” argument to “humanize” any group of people.) I won’t bore you with the details of our conversation, but eventually, it sparked my new friend to post this question:

Thought experiment: There are two magic buttons. One makes all men see all women as persons. The other allows all women to see themselves as persons. (Person = full empowerment; full ownership of one’s own body, mind, and destiny.)

If you could press only one of the magic buttons, which would you press? Why?

Both my other friend and I (in a rare fit of solidarity; we often disagree with each other–but that’s one of the things I like about her) said we would choose the latter. We disagree on why we would make that choice, but it struck me as important that two people who have vastly different approaches to addressing the ills of the world would be of one mind on this.

The next question, of course, was why we (feminists) don’t focus more on empowering women rather than changing the way men view us. My friend said that what’s important to her is not to worry about educating those who won’t change their minds, to be a better person than those who came before her, and to pass that on to the next generation.

Those are admirable things, and I want to go on record saying that I am absolutely certain–whether she always feels it or not–that this friend is making a difference (even though she absolutely does not need my approval!). We haven’t seen one another face-to-face in many years, but even when we were in college together she was making an impact. She might not remember it, but she was a good friend (along with our whole group) at a time when I needed that. So if nothing else, she affected me. I have no doubt that she is having that effect on others, likely in ways she’s not aware of. She is doing what is meaningful for her and being the person she wants to be. That should never, ever be discounted as unworthy or unimportant.

Which brings me to why I do what I do. I have a vastly different approach. What’s key, though, is that my way of doing things is not better than anyone else’s. Nor is it less worthy. I choose to take on educating the ignorant because I believe that’s what perpetuates cycles of violence and hate. It’s not the small number of perpetrators who allow it to continue–it’s the uneducated people who stand by and do nothing while violators do what they do. It’s the people who sit around asking questions about why rape victims “allowed” themselves to be in that position. It’s the average church-goers who say nothing when their pastors spew hate towards gay people. It’s the ones who say, “I’m not racist, but…” followed by something that sounds remarkably racist.

In the end, people like my college friend give me the courage to do what I do because she has the courage to live it in her corner of the world. It doesn’t matter that we work this out in different ways, because there are any number of approaches to making this world a better place. Instead of being frustrated that all my friends aren’t activists, I’m choosing today to appreciate the beauty of our diversity. And I’m choosing to celebrate and honor the women I know who have the courage to believe in themselves regardless of what anyone else says.

Thank you, friends, for an excellent discussion and the renewal I needed to go out another day and work against oppression.

Spiritual Abuse Awareness Week: After-Image

Bullying, Religion, Social Justice

I wasn’t able to participate in the first day of Spiritual Abuse Awareness week due to other demands on my time. I wasn’t sure I was going to write anything today, either. My experiences are mild compared to the horrific things friends and fellow bloggers have shared, and I believe those people who have survived need safe space to heal. That sometimes includes people like me, who only feel it like the residual tremors of an earthquake, remaining quiet and letting others tell their stories. But I had an experience that reminded me that everything has consequences, even if we don’t realize it at the time. So here is my story about the aftermath of dealing with spiritually abusive people and how deep it can make us bleed.

Last Sunday, the pastor asked to speak to us about our son.

I was on my way in alone; I was playing my violin during the service and had arrived early to practice with the choir. My husband and children were driving separately. The pastor stopped me on my way up to the choir loft and said,

I’d like to talk to you for a few minutes in my office after church, about your son.

I must have looked surprised, because she added that it was about his baptism, which is scheduled for the Sunday after Easter. I nodded and told her that was no problem. But inside, I was panicking.

That’s not really a healthy response to a conversation with a pastor.

I need to say here that our pastor is a lovely woman. She is kind and gentle and delivers fantastic sermons. She has been nothing but loving and warm towards our family, our children in particular. My daughter warmed to her immediately, which is fairly miraculous–she has discriminating taste in people. So there are no circumstances under which I should feel threatened or intimidated by this pastor. Even if I had committed some grave error, I suspect she would handle it with grace.

And yet.

My immediate reaction to anyone in spiritual authority asking to speak to me has become one of fear. I have learned to expect rebukes rather than positive conversations. When I realized what had happened, that my response was out of proportion with reality, I was puzzled. Where in the world did such feelings come from?

I knew that it wasn’t really the result of my experiences as a teenager. I was a little afraid of the pastor of that church, but I don’t believe that I thought of him as genuinely in authority over me. I had no sense of church politics or hierarchy; I was in a bubble of Christian youth culture (as much as there actually was back in the late ’80s/early ’90s). And it certainly didn’t come from the ten years my husband and I spent at our first church as a married couple. That pastor and his family were like an extension of our own. We were close, and we remain in touch to this day despite the 3000 miles separating us.

I’m sure you can guess where this is going. I am not going to sit here and say that I was spiritually abused by our church or the leadership*. That would be lying, and it would be hurtful to those who are still involved. But I will tell you this: There were people in authority there who absolutely, unquestionably used intimidation tactics on me and on others. I was spoken to multiple occasions about my writing, particularly in regard to my feminism and my unwavering stance as an LGBT ally (and once or twice about my parenting). I was never told I shouldn’t blog or use social media, but I received subtle threats about it more than once. Additionally, there were a few adults who used my children for the purpose of coercion and “correction.” (Nothing makes me go all Mama Bear faster than church people using my kids as weapons.)

None of that may sound particularly bad; and perhaps it isn’t. But taken as a whole, it damaged my sense that pastors and leaders are safe people. They may not overtly threaten or shun or shout from the pulpit, but they hold power over the people–in large part because they (or the church structure) dictates that they do. When leaders wield their authority inappropriately, it undermines people’s faith that they can trust them.

This is exactly what happened to me. I believe that over time, I can–and will–regain my ability to trust, because it wasn’t damaged beyond repair. But there are others for whom the same cannot be said. This is unacceptable–not because it’s unacceptable to be non-religious or non-churchgoing, but because the reason for being non-religious or non-churchgoing should never, ever be because it was literally or figuratively beaten out of you.

By the way, the reason the pastor wanted to talk to us was so she could set a time to come to our house to speak to our son about what will happen when he’s baptized, physically and spiritually. We met last night, and it was good–exactly as I should have expected.

I hope you will read the other stories about spiritual abuse this week. There are some remarkable survivors out there. Take the time to get to know them through their words. And if you have been spiritually abused, please read this excellent post by Caleigh on self-care. Meanwhile, I’m going to spend some time praying for the strength to trust again.

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*That is not to say that I wasn’t exposed to abusive beliefs or teachings; I’m speaking specifically here about being directly abused, harassed, threatened, mistreated, intimidated, etc. by pastors, elders, and other leaders in the church.

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For more posts on spiritual abuse, visit these web sites:

Wine & Marble: Spiritual Abuse Day 1

Joy in this Journey: Spiritual Abuse Day 2

Holy Hand Sanitizer

Culture, Religion, Social Justice

Have you ever been somewhere and needed to clean your hands but were unable? Perhaps you were in a public restroom and the soap had run out. Maybe it was in church last week when you passed the peace and shook the hands of twelve strangers. You might have been in the park and picked up some stray trash. If you’re a parent, you’ve surely experienced the same thing with your kids–they tend to get their hands on a whole lot of disgusting stuff, and there’s not always a bathroom nearby.

For times like that, I keep a small bottle of hand sanitizer in my purse. It’s not ideal, even though it says on the label that it will kill the germs. I don’t know about you, but I never feel quite clean enough. It’s better than nothing, but I nearly always think, I can’t wait to get home and just use water and real soap.

The church can be a bit like that hand sanitizer in the way we treat people and the issues in their lives. This morning, I read this excellent piece by Jennifer Luitwieler on the ways in which our culture promises happiness is the reward for skinniness. Now, this was about the wider society, not the church, but a thought struck me: Inside the church, we do exactly the same thing, but we dress it up in Jesusism.

I read a blog post a couple of months ago in which the writer claimed that being fat wasn’t okay with God. It was my opinion then, and it remains so now, that the writer was projecting her own beliefs and insecurities on other Christians. The truth is, God is not sitting up in heaven policing our bodies and demanding that we be thin. There is absolutely no command in the Bible about being thin. We could have a conversation about gluttony, but we need to keep in mind that fat and gluttonous are not synonyms. What’s really going on here is that the cultural pressure to be skinny has seeped into our churches. Instead of being counter to society, we’ve appropriated societal norms and bent them to a Christian worldview.

Body image isn’t the only way the church has done this. We’ve done it with parenting, money, leadership, and even sex. We don’t look for our actions in the persistent call for justice that runs like a river throughout the whole of Scripture. Instead, we’ve merely taken what’s happening in the world at large and tried to write new rules that conform to our interpretation of the Bible:

Culture says skinny is good/fat is bad; the church says God wants you to be a “healthy weight” through “biblical principles.”
Culture provides fertile ground for arguments and attacks on parenting style; the church says there is a Biblical way to parent, which is different based on which interpretation of Scripture one uses and looks remarkably similar to secular styles.
Culture bombards us with investment opportunities and encourages spending; While the church may not encourage consumerism (though this is debatable), it does encourage investment, savings, and tithing (which may or may not actually help those in need, and a portion of which funds the church itself).
Culture has standards for “excellence” in leadership and one can find books and seminars almost everywhere; the church not only encourages the same principles used in business, but often looks to secular leaders for advice.
Culture provides sex without context; the church provides context without sex. Neither encourages having both.

You may be thinking one of two things. First, if you believe we once were a Christian nation, you may be thinking that I have it backwards–it’s the world that has corrupted these biblical principles and the church is merely trying to redeem them. Second, you may be thinking that there is nothing wrong with using the things that have value, so long as we don’t lose sight of God’s truth. Both lines of thinking are flawed.

First, there is no such thing as a Christian nation. Even if there was a time when most people at least nominally believed, by the very nature of who Jesus is there cannot be a Christian government. Jesus effectively silenced any notion of that in the way he ran counter to both the Roman authorities and the religious ones. We have no business linking God and human rule. We also have no business–for much the same reason–linking Jesus and culture.

Second, there isn’t anything wrong with making use of good sense. It is indeed wise, in our society, to save money for retirement. But that isn’t a biblical principle! That’s an entirely secular one. By biblical standards, we should be making sure that our poor and our elderly and our children and our infirm are cared for–without expecting that they’ve “planned” for it. There is nothing wrong with having healthy bodies, but we simply cannot get carried away to the point that we use junk science to support our theories and then call that “biblical.”

In other words, there is no problem with being part of our culture, as long as we don’t become confused and think that what culture says is biblical. We ought to take our cues first from the calls to love and justice in the Bible, rather than attempting to use the Bible to whitewash the culture. The problem is that the church has mostly been in the business of sanitizing worldly principles. Instead of making a commitment to this,

But let justice roll on like a river,
righteousness like a never-failing stream! [Amos 5:24]

we’ve tried to apply the Bible like a Band-Aid to what the wider culture says. We haven’t committed to helping people find healing and wholeness. We’ve rather criticized them for what we believe are “poor lifestyle choices,” which are remarkably similar to what secular culture calls “poor lifestyle choices.”

I would love to stop reading blog posts and listening to sermons on the Ten Ways We Can Improve Our Lives. I don’t need another podcast with five points all starting with the letter P. I don’t need a workshop on becoming an effective leader. I need opportunities to love my neighbor, feed the hungry, and care for the oppressed. Jesus doesn’t care which seminars I’ve attended, he cares which people I’ve served.

When are we going to stop turning church functionally into hand sanitizer? When will we reach for the cleansing soap and water and really wash ourselves clean?

When friendship empowers us

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