A few years ago, I wrestled with my beliefs on the issue of homosexuality and what my faith had to say on it as well as where I thought the church had missed the mark on how we dealt with the issue. And like a good evangelical, once I figured out what I knew, I believed the issue done. However, what I believe—or think the Bible has to say on a matter—doesn’t exist in a vacuum. We balance our orthodoxy with our orthopraxis. Which brings me to Lucien Soulban, Dark Faith, and Mo*Con.
–Lucien Soulban. Lucien and I have been friends for seven years or so. He, John C. Hay, Richard Dansky and I formed a writers group called the “Bastard Sons of Mort Castle”. Lucien’s also gay. Because we’re friends, and thus free to push in on each other’s lives, we’ve had numerous conversations. One time when we were at lunch at a World Horror Convention, I thanked him for being a part of my life. It’s easy to come to some position, achieve some theological point, it’s another thing for your “position” to have a face. So when people would come up to me and ask “What are we going to do about ‘so and so’?” (aka “the gay person in our church”), all I could think of, all I heard was, “what are we going to do about Lucien?” And I only had one answer for that: figure out how to love him better.
–Dark Faith. We got over 600 submissions for our anthology. I saw the anthology as an extension of what we do at Mo*Con, that is, have conversations. So when we invited authors to write their takes on faith (or art or race or sex or any of the other social justice issues we’ve covered under the umbrella of faith) the ones that resonated most with me came from a real place. One of the things we noticed was how many stories turned on the idea of homosexuality, more specifically, religion’s stance and/or handling of the issue.
–Mo*Con. All sorts of folks come to the convention from all sorts of religions and worldviews to discuss issues. I never get tired of listening to people’s stories. I’m always especially curious to know what kept them from or drove them out of the church. So many stories have the similar echoes: rejection from the church when they found out what they wrote; rejection from the church when they found out they were gay. Condemnation and shame were the lessons they took home from the church.
A pastor friend of mine called the issue of homosexuality and the church the “apologetic issue of the day.” I’m sure we will be having a continuing conversation, on my blog, at Mo*Con, and beyond. We’ll wrestle with the issue within the writing community and within the religious community. But I figure it never hurts to have a conversation, build some bridges, and be a part of each other’s lives. Put some orthopraxis to our orthodoxy, and figure out what it means to love one another. As we continue to be in relationship with one another, talking and challenging one another, I’d say it’s worked so far for me and Lucien. So we’ll give it a shot at Mo*Con.
Ha! At last! He gets to the issue (if not to the point!) Haven’t been back here in a while; been busy. On Halloween night thought of sending message that if Mo didn’t make it quick with the lgbt pronouncement as promised, LOKI would be invoked! Right into the life of Mo, to make it even messier! But your promise has been kept so the ultimatum has been abated. (You must have felt all that thought pressure from afar.) Just to warn you Maurice though: my patron really does have his fiery eye on you! He knows you now through me.
Now all you have to do is grow a spine and quit making like Obama and TAKE A POSITION ON THE ISSUE. There is no neutral ground: either you accept gays have a right to exist, that they are right to exist and that whatever created the templates for the varieties of human nature was correct to give them form..
Or you make like a conservative extremist and blame them all on the Devil! (Or the Trickster God? Loki smiles proudly; but tells me that all that is pagan is within nature; so none..
..it can be condemned under the “unnatural” rubric. Christians have some very strange ideas on this topic. Incidentally: did you know that neither Judaism nor Islam out of the other monotheistic faiths believe in original sin? I found that out yesterday by accident to my great suprise, because I thought they might, as they share so much of the same mythology. But apparently the theology is different. An article on “kids who kill” in the NYT which consulted theologians from all these faiths told me so. You learn something every day!)
Well now; like I said; there are no “gay-nosticists”. You either admit their full existence: Which means their continued right to exist and not to be de-gayed; or you echo the tea party’s etc bluster about Satan. Defecate or get off the pot! My Patron says so!
Yours in greatest sincerity, Liz.
Haven’t you put a reply comment to my comments here? (not that I can see them.)
Are you an, EHEM, gay-nostic? See, what lgbts want, and I know, though they would probably view me as at best on the fringes of that culture if there at all (but Loki is my guide!) Is to be viewed as “normal”, in a civic sense, by everybody including religious people. They don’t want to be told they’re weird, or barely on the right side of criminal. Or to be thought of as “sinners, but it’s not as great as some sins, really, and whatever they deserve, it’s not the Rev Phelps coming after them with signs saying God hates them – nobody deserves that!” Well thanks for the sentiment but really, nobody deserves condescension either! And not to be told that you can see past the sin/deformity, either, that “you like them as people/human beings.” All Christian condescension. Not what lgbts want. We (hmm, yes!) want the right simply to exist and for that existence to be acknowledged, in things like civil law. We want equal rights!
[…] March 16, 2011 at 4:47 am With Mo*Con quickly approaching and with our main conversation centering on the issue of homosexuality and the church, I thought that I would encourage some guest posts from some of our guests as well as interested […]
[…] March 30, 2011 at 11:29 pm With Mo*Con quickly approaching and with our main conversation centering on the issue of homosexuality and the church, I thought that I would encourage some guest posts from some of our guests as well as interested […]
[…] April 4, 2011 at 10:41 pm With Mo*Con quickly approaching and with our main conversation centering on the issue of homosexuality and the church, I thought that I would encourage some guest posts from some of our guests as well as interested […]