Having been raised on that milk, I was committed from the very beginning to be exactly that. Fearless, daring, bold, passionate, committed, authentic, honest about what I believed. That was my modus operandi, the norm. And de jure, I've tried to "give God control" of whatever situation I'm in, best I know how. That doesn't mean I always succeed, but I've never struggled with that principle. People call God's love dangerous, people speak about how we should be daring, how faith is an adventure, how we need to be willing to risk everything. They might get a little more specific and say that the world will hate us - like they hated Jesus - that we will be controversial and stand out and become a target if we're truly living our our faith. They also say that we shouldn't box God in, that we shouldn't expect him to be only as big as our own faith. We should be willing to learn from other people. To accept that we are limited. These are not unfamiliar ideals.
In my admittedly naïve, but very earnest application of all these ideals, I have certainly risked a lot. I have found out that God is bigger than people want him to be. I have gotten a decent amount of negative attention. I have unintentionally strained relationships. I have been told I'm going to hell by near strangers. I've been accused of heresy and blasphemy by my closest friends. I've been told I follow a false God and that my faith is invalid. I have been told to keep my thoughts to myself, to be less loud and passionate about what matters to me. But louder than any of that has been the silent pressure I've felt from many directions.
No, none of that has happened while spreading the Gospel. The only thing I can speak about these days that means a lot to me and also solicits a positive, welcoming reaction from people is my faith. (Admittedly, when communicated in an appropriately restrained, mainstream vocabulary.) I actually find it heartening to post Bible verses and such that touch me on Facebook, because like 20 people always like them every time. No, I have not been persecuted for my Christianity. But the things I've been talking about and getting hurt for are inextricably linked to my faith. The first I have dealt with a great deal on this blog [Apostrophe], but the second I haven't, and can't for a while yet. But when I can, I'll finish this, and post it.
A couple weeks after I wrote my post on Homosexuality, I came to the realization that I'm bi. In the year and a half since then, I have had to come to accept that fact without any semblance of a gay community around me, without anyone with knowledge about the community, without anyone that cares about its existence or realizes the power and influence of its place in this world. It was hard enough having to deal with the illegal crush that escaped my repression in the process without coming into a new social label, a new identity, a new community, with no one to talk to or think with. Most people would probably wonder why I so adamantly needed to think everything through and understand what I believed and what everyone else believed and what and who and how exactly I was. If you've read my posts on Apostrophe or know me in person at all, you'd probably understand why: it kills me to leave issues that touch me unresolved. I'm not impulsive, but I tend to be extreme. Something about me refuses to sit on my bum and do homework until the philosophical quandaries disappear.
So when I first came out to myself, having realized that for four and a half years I'd been cowardly and lacking in self-awareness in regard to my orientation, I reacted in a relatively extreme fashion. I wasn't very outward about it, because I knew how sensitive it was; I gradually began to be honest about it when it came up, and I told my close friends. The extremity of my reaction was inward. I spent an absurd number of hours (literally hundreds) watching YouTube videos, mulling through crappy forums, reading psychology, researching neurobiological causal theories, finding arguments about the relevant biblical passages, reading coming out stories, learning about the culture, teaching myself the history of the gay rights movement, undoing sexist/heteronormative/cisnormative thought patterns, becoming accustomed to non-traditional gender presentation and pronouns... You name it. And because there was no one LGBTQ+A around me to share it with - and in general, I just had no close friends at the time - it just kept building and building and building in this huge mound of pent-up frustration. I would try telling a friend about something I'd been thinking about or researching, and they'd respond with dead silence or a weak question, and eventually I'd go back to sulking over It Gets Better videos and my Lambert-Pink-Gaga playlist again.
My grades plummeted 10% in about four classes. I lost all motivation. I would stay up until 2 or 3 doing all that crap and get up again at 5 to finish the schoolwork from 4 APs that I never even touched the previous afternoon. It was utterly stupid. I was obsessive and scared and heartbroken and lonely. I desperately wanted to quit freaking out about it, but it seemed impossible to stop.
You might assume that my faith life was in shambles during this time, but it wasn't. The "adversity" did nothing to particularly strengthen or weaken my faith - I went to him for everything, as normal. But around the end of February, I hit a low enough low that I quit whining and nagging God to take away my problems and offered him this prayer:
"God, I've learned - you've taught - that I very seriously need to get my ass back in the game. Please help me to get there. It is going to be a long struggle to be healthy again. But I'm convinced enough that I need it that I'm willing to do the work to get there. Be with me as I make the journey. "
It was a hellish process. It took until May to try to dig myself out of it all - in retrospect, my faith crisis from that first week of May seems to have had more purposes than one. (Funny how versatile he makes the design, sometimes, isn't it?) Then, well, I fell in love with a man, and he fell in love with me, so we were together and I was no longer so alone, plus the issue was no longer as pressing, plus I could just let the world believe I was straight most of the time. Highly convenient. (Just kidding.) But in all seriousness, there is something about community, about just talking about something, about acknowledging its existence, that makes everything so different. It took a few months for me to fully realize that it wasn't a secret to the world that I'm capable of loving someone anymore, but that allowed me to be more honest about the rest of my journey into being bi. (As a side note, I don't regard my relationship with a man as straight any more than I would consider a relationship with a woman lesbian. I have one orientation, and it gets applied to the person I love, so being in a relationship with Nick has taught me just as much about being bi as being in a relationship with a woman would have. Ask me to explain in person, if you like.)
There was period of crisis in the middle of this school year where there was some drama surrounding the fact that I'm out, and I got confused and frustrated and didn't see any progress happening. So I wrote Conversation. But since that conflict resolved in February, my place in the LGBT community has been entirely about community instead of the lack of it. That's the direction it's moving. I met with administration at school a few times towards the beginning of the year to begin to push for dialogue and education; I did an Anatomy presentation about the neurobiology of orientation and gender identity; I'm doing my senior project about taboo in the Christian Church, a portion of which I'll spend interviewing people about LGBT issues. A couple kids came out to me, and we've very cautiously begun to talk about our experiences and our hopes for the future at Bear Creek. As of April 24th, we are building support among alumni and we're preparing to make more meetings with faculty to push for education in Health and History classes, and perhaps - perhaps - the eventual creation of a GSA. The simple reality that there is any kind of first person plural to speak of is incredible enough, in the mean time. Pushing this process faster than it wants to go or spinning it as agenda could shut down all future progress. There's a very fine line, and we need to be sensitive to it.
When I talk about LGBT issues, I do it because I know existentially it affects people on a deep, personal, important level. I understand what an impact sexuality can have on your faith life, both positively and negatively. I know God has called me broadly to love and specifically to learn how to mediate between people, almost in imitation of Jesus' mediation. I know he's called me to be confident in what I know to be right - not that homosexuality is morally permissible, but that love and grace should guide our conduct. What a lot of people don't realize is that people talk about the "gay community" or the "LGBT community" because it is, in fact, a community. Agape. Togetherness. I see the reflection of my creator - the paradigm of perfect community - in any place people come together to support and encourage and learn about one another, particularly when they come together also as believers. I've seen him more clearly and beautifully because of my identification with this group; I see no reason this should not be shared. Blessings are contagions. And isn't that the reason everyone always preaches dangerous love?
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