First of all, I want to say thank you all for visiting my
blog. It is comforting to me to know that there are people out there who are
interested in the topic of homosexuality—particularly from a Christian
perspective—and who care about others as individuals…as real people.
And it is important for you to basically know how I approach
the discussion. In case you have not figured it out already: I am gay. And I’m
proud of it too; being gay is nothing to be ashamed of. In fact, I love being
gay and I would not want to have it any other way.
Moreover, I believe God made me to be a gay man, and that it was fully part of the design process when he created me; but in no way do I see being gay as a hindrance to my faith. I believe I am just as capable of living out God’s mission for the world as anyone else, and indeed that is exactly what I intend to do with my life.
Now, if you came here looking for arguments and debate you
will be sadly mistaken. I simply have been through the Scriptures enough
times to safely say that discussions on the Bible lead to a dead end—neither side is ever willing to budge from their position. Therefore, I do not plan to engage
any of that in this blog. (There are plenty of other places for that out there on the internet.)
However, I do think
that being gay and being Christian (particularly Mennonite) gives me an
interesting perspective on life.
From one point-of-view, being gay is not the norm/average. I
very much am in a minority group (even though it is the ONLY one I can
legitimately take as a white, middle-class male)—a 3-5% minority, to be more
precise. Puberty is all the more awkward in the boy’s locker rooms and on sports
teams, for obvious reasons. And don’t even get me started on the extreme
awkwardness of high school prom or other school dances! Simply take everything
you hated about junior high or high school and multiply that ten-fold, and you
will start to get an idea of what we go through.
And from the other point-of-view, being gay AND Christian is
not the norm or average either. Over the last 60 years the trend has generally
been that when someone comes out they are essentially forced out of the church.
Not that they literally get a boot in the ass, but that their lives are made so
miserable that abandoning Christianity is the only sane thing to do. And I do not blame them for choosing that at all. But times are different now: it is not impossible
to find a church that is welcoming and affirming of LGBTQ individuals. I have,
and I absolutely love them. But I will admit that it still is rather strange talking about it
with all of those gay men who did choose to walk away from it all.
So as you can see, I naturally experience things differently
than other people, and therefore I have a slightly different way of seeing
the world. Therefore, that is what
you will find here: my experiences…my story…my life.
And
they are not here for me to gloat or for you to pity me;
they are here for other people to realize what some of us go through on a
daily
basis. They are here to hopefully change people's perceptions and
misconceptions about who we are, to change minds. I can only hope that
these will be meaningful in some way for
whoever reads them.
So sit back, and enjoy the story….
