Gay celibate
The most difficult part of convincing someone when you are begging for food is figuring out what kind of face to make — appearing both in need and deserving somehow. Glance too desperate and they will think you might make a grab for their purse or ask to move into the spare bedroom. Too responsible and they’ll wonder whether you really need help at all.
I begged in France while living with a religious order. “We acquire nothing to eat. Do you have anything you could share?” I would smile and contain the straps to my backpack like an earnest schoolboy. Starving, but honest.
I had never begged on the street before and was struck by how humbling it is — asking strangers to keep you alive just because they can. And you can’t.
“No,” the eighth woman I asked scowled at me from behind her front door. “Go away.”
I wanted to tell her No really I have no nourishment, no money. I don’t include , like, options here. Do you want to feel my stomach rumbling? Check my pockets for a wallet?
Eventually, a man invited my companion and I into his house and began making each of us a sandwich with thick slices of c
*The following post is written by Greg Coles. Greg is a Ph.D. trainee at Penn State and is part of the collaborative team for The Center. Greg is also the author of the recently released book Single, Gay, Christian, which is published by InterVarsity Press.
I’ve always been bad at blending in. I grew up in Indonesia, where I was six inches too giant and seventeen shades too white to pass for a genetic Indonesian. At college in upstate Modern York, I was the guy from 10, miles away, the one who sang as he walked and edited the college newspaper and wore the same green hoodie every day for two years. I’m abysmal at video games (which made me the black sheep of countless middle school birthday parties), but I’ve had Hamlet’s soliloquy memorized since I was eight. I know what it feels like to get a few funny looks. I’m accustomed to being weird.
Still, I’ve never felt more conspicuous than I did when I came out as a celibate queer Christian.
For one thing, a lot of people just don’t expect the words “celibate gay Christian” to go together. They react as if I’ve called myself an “Ol
In the early s, the gay Christian Network in the US developed various terms to depict the different positions that gay Christians take toward the complex subject of how they should live and identify.
Over the past ten years, every major denomination or tradition of Christianity has ruled mainly in favour of two groups of LGBT/same-sex attracted (SSA) people. The first is called Side A, or the evolving group who observe gay marriage as compatible with God’s will and purposes.
The second is Side Y, which believes that gay persona and same-sex attraction are innately sinful or disordered. Some of these groups would embrace the idea of sexual orientation change as the norm for Christian discipleship.
What we are seeing today is the undoing of the Reformation in the Church of England
At the centre of this centrifuge of tradition war positions is a small, beleaguered-but-brave group called Side B (represented by a bee emoticon on social media). We believe that gay identity, while fallen like all identities, is not essentially sinful and is to be celebrated, but that same-sex
I want you to join a rather unique couple. Their names are Sarah and Lindsey, but don’t form your opinions too quickly. Yes, Sarah and Lindsey are partners. Yes, they are attracted to the same sex. But no, they are not married nor are they engaging in sexual relations. They are celibate. Now, before you race to declare where you “stand” on this situation—Is it sin?! Is it not a sin!? Why are they partners and not just roommates?!—why don’t you get to know them first? If you’re an evangelical Christian, and you’re heterosexual, and you are wrestling with the ask of homosexuality, the foremost advice I can grant you is to end and listen. To tune in is to love and to learn—few people ever learn anything while they are talking or racing to form opinions with ear plugs in.
So let’s listen to the story of Sarah and Lindsey.
PS: Thanks Sarah Lindsey for sharing your story with us. Why don’t you begin by telling us a little about yourselves. Who you are, what you do, and how long you’ve been together?
S&L: Thanks, Preston, for interviewing us. It’s a petty weird to intr