Pray the Gay Way
What I learned at the country’s biggest
conference for queer Christians
On the spur of the moment, in a Black Friday flash sale, I bought tickets to the country’s biggest conference of queer Christians. At worst, I figured, it would be a weekend in Portland. At best, it would be a life-changing experience.
I was raised in a different religion altogether and discovered I was queer in my teens, a dozen years before I inexplicably fell in love with Jesus. I had drifted into halfhearted atheism, so no one was more shocked than me at my surprising transformation in the midst of adversity, and my discovery of a new world of devotion, knowledge, and history. I’ve been through several denominations as I moved around the country for work and tried to find my place, and in the process I have met many queer Christians, but I had never been in a room with more than 4 or 5 of us at a time. (The joke is that people find the Gay Christian Network (GCN) after googling “gay christian,” thinking “surely there have to be more of us.”) Being surrounded by 1500 of us at once at the GCN annual conference was too intriguing to pass up.
I held back on my enthusiasm about GCN — I never go to church conferences, especially evangelical ones, and I wasn’t sure how much of myself I wanted to invest in the experience. But I was excited at the prospect of meeting people like me, and maybe even more, I was curious about the ones who were different. One of the reasons I went was to learn more about a group I have had a hard time understanding: LGBT people who believe celibacy is God’s plan for their life, because God made sexual relationships only for married straight couples.
Evangelicals like to talk about “living in the tension,” an idea extrapolated from Augustine, and nobody embodies living in the tension like queers in the church. The defining tension of GCN is Side A versus Side B: respectively, folks who think God blesses committed LGBT relationships, and those who promote celibacy for those with “same-sex attractions.” (If these are my only options, I’d like a different mixtape.)
I’ve been fascinated by the lives of nuns since I read the classic novel In This House of Brede, but the idea that people like me — smart, urban, non-Catholic — would think that their life was made for abstinent loneliness seems very strange. I hoped I could understand it better by hanging out with Side B folks at GCN, and by attending a workshop led by the bloggers who go by A Queer Calling. The AQC bloggers are Side B, but they are also in a committed — and celibate — relationship. Like their blog, their honesty and conviction in the workshop blew my mind.
From the left, especially the non-religious left, it’s easy to argue that celibate Christian queer people are victims of internalized homophobia, false consciousness, or respectability politics. And indeed, celibacy is often wielded as a cudgel. It’s a paradoxical recent move on the part of conservative churches — finally admitting that LGBTQ people exist and are (nominally) children of God, but prescribing celibacy for them without any discussion of how to live it out. Queers in these churches who adhere to what is daintily called “a traditional sexual ethic,” and who deeply believe that that is right for their own lives, are definitely living in a difficult tension—especially since many of them are survivors of the abusive ex-gay movement.
But when you listen to the AQC bloggers it makes a lot more sense. They frame their queer celibacy as a vocation, a personal religious calling, rather than a mandate for all queer Christians. I wasn’t convinced they were right, exactly, but I was convinced this was exactly right for them.
Others were more resistant. One thing I learned at GCN is that in a group of thousands of LGBT Christians, even though many of them have been looking desperately for a sense of belonging, there are factions, fights, and strange bedfellows. The conference’s Twitter stream was constantly trolled by people who thought that any discussion of Side B positions was hateful and oppressive. Meanwhile, some Side B folks stand allied with those of us who think that mainstream LGBT movements have focused too much on marriage, to the detriment of literally every other issue.
The more usual opponents were also present. On Saturday morning the Westboro Baptist Church planted themselves at the convention center’s entrance with their characteristic neon signs. (It’s not clear that they were in Portland just for us; they also protested the Blazers for “punching Jesus in the face.”) A group of allies from local churches formed a “wall of love” to shield conference-goers from the WBC; a local news organization called it “Christians protecting Christians from Christians.” And then, arcing across the grey Portland sky: a rainbow. Pretty heavy-handed symbolism on God’s part.
But GCN was ultimately about attempting to reconcile these rifts within the community, and even the rift between queer Christians and people like Westboro. On Sunday morning, the director, Justin Lee, argued that “loving your enemies” means not just abstractly forgiving hateful protesters, but listening to the perspectives of political and personal enemies in our families and congregations. Thus it is GCN’s responsibility to reach WBC protesters, Southern Baptist leaders, Focus on the Family, Leelah Alcorn’s parents. I think this is a dangerous message to deliver to people who have been abused. But I do admire the spirit of the big tent, of committing to coming together, however uncomfortably.
Since the conference, I’ve read posts about how GCN was a revelation to many people, a first or only affirming space — it was home, family, church. For me, the weekend was an exercise in empathy, but empathy is not necessarily belonging.
Church folks have a tendency to think that “being made one in Christ” erases our differences, but in fact it means that we have an even greater responsibility to understand our diversity, so that we can truly be one body with different parts. It’s more clear to me after the conference that I don’t need to belong in “the LGBT Christian community” to stand with my siblings in God who have been hurt by the church and are trying to find their place there. My religion and sexuality are important parts of my identity, but not the only ones, or even the ones that have most strongly guided my life experiences. I’m an adult convert who was never raised to believe that God’s promises are contingent on my being “fixed.” I have plenty of white and upper middle class and cisgender privilege. I am firmly planted in progressive secular society and in mostly-welcoming church communities. I was fortunate not to feel at home at GCN — because the rest of the world is a much more welcoming place for me.
On Sunday morning, the conference tried out a more liturgical worship service. (I sang in the choir, the only choir I have ever sung with in thirty years of choral singing that had more men than women.) Sheet music was projected on giant screens so that conference-goers could sing along — but one hymn was missing a page. Fifteen hundred people just kept singing “la la la.” We didn’t know the words, but we could still sing together.
