Unapologetically Christian, unapologetically lesbian (this is where it is going ALERT)

I like that. If I had the money I'd put it up on billboards across America and if I ever win the lottery maybe I'll do just that. I suppose I need to actually play the lottery to raise my odds on winning but that's neither here or there.

When I wrote that short little phrase, and as I write this essay I'm thinking of you who fervently believe there's no such thing as a "Christian lesbian." You consider the term to be an oxymoron but more than that, you regard it an offense to the Gospel. You believe if someone really is a Christian they will seek repentance from the sin of homosexuality and will do all they can to change and short of change they will at least commit to a life of celibacy.

I also have those of you in mind who, even while doubting such a thing as a "Christian lesbian" can exist you've admitted to yourself that while you love Jesus and are committed to the Christian life, your only desire in an intimate and loving relationship is with another woman. Because of this apparent conflict you feel as though there's a choice you're going to eventually be forced to make, either to walk away from your faith in God or to deny, reject, or attempt to change your attraction to other women. If that's the personal struggle you're secretly holding in your heart then I'm writing to you.

And to both of you I'm writing as someone who knows you well because at one time I was you. For most of my life I believed homosexuality to be a grievous sin that led good people astray from a true faith in God. When a friend confessed her feelings toward another woman I prayed faithfully for her, counseled her, and rejoiced when her homosexual relationship ended. It was out of love and compassion and my strong belief in what I saw the Bible to clearly say about homosexuality that I reached out to help a friend I feared was slipping away from God and toward a life of destruction.

A few years later, I found myself engaged in an internal conflict I have never before known and that I could never have imagined. Above all else I was a committed Christian whose greatest longing was to live in a manner that brought honor to God but suddenly I recognized my lifelong unnamed feelings as being the very thing that would bring the most disappointment to the heart of God. I told no one so great was my shame and spent my evening hours crying out to God in prayers full of promise. I will change. I will do whatever it takes. I will never do anything to disgrace you. I will die before I do. And prayers of pleading. Please forgive me for whatever I did to make this happen. Change me. Help me. Don't leave me. Please don't hate me. In that moment I looked down the path of my future and saw nothing good.

I really have been there. I really have said and done and felt that. So to you, whoever you are, I want to offer a very basic response to this whole debate around being Christian and being gay. Let's call this little explanatory essay of mine "Christian Lesbian 101: The Basics."

I'm not attempting here to explain Christianity to those outside the Christian faith. I consider myself to be an evangelical Christian in the sense that I love, and am committed to, sharing my faith with others. I really do consider it the Good News and I've never been one to keep from sharing anything for which I have passion. For the purpose of this essay and for the sake of brevity I'm going to use religious-sounding language that I normally would avoid or need to explain in a conversation with someone of another faith just as I would need them to explain their own set of religious terminology that was centered in their own faith tradition. Here I'm directing my words to those of you who already identify as Christians.

When I say I'm a Christian I'm recognizing both a past event and a present reality. There was one moment in the past when I made the conscious and deliberate choice to acknowledge Jesus as my Savior and Lord. As my Savior, Jesus through his life, death and resurrection forgave my sins, restored my relationship with God and secured for me the promise of everlasting life. With Jesus as my Lord I submit my will daily to His will, seeking God's plan for my life rather than my own.

I'm a Christian, not by my own virtue but by the completed work of Christ (See John 11:25, John 5:24, Acts 2:38, John 20:31, Romans 1:16, Ephesians 2:8,9 and Colossians 1:21-23). In all these passages scripture seems relatively clear that while the final choice was mine everything else was left up to Jesus and if that's the case my salvation doesn't hinge on my faith or adherence in church teaching or in those dogmas and doctrines that are nonessential to the finished work of Calvary. It is about Christ and Christ crucified alone and to add conditions or requirements onto that glorious reality is to imply that the death and resurrection of Jesus was insufficient. While a church might say "Believe as we believe and do as we do and you can join us here" Jesus welcomes all who love Him and humbly seek Him.

While I remember the very place and time when at the age of five I became a Christian, there was never a single moment when I made a conscious choice to be a lesbian and I always take it with a mix of mild amusement and irritation when people will argue that it was a choice. My irritation is that people who don't live inside my own skin would be so arrogant as to presume they know what happened within me better than I do and the amusement is in those moments when I play with the thought of how fun it would be to call them some morning asking "So how am I feeling today?" They should know after all.

And let's talk about this choice. At the time I realized I was a lesbian I was firmly grounded within conservative Christianity, both in my family and within the church where I served in full-time ministry. I had a large circle of friends, a lovely home, and a wonderful future in ministry that I loved and that brought my parents great pride and joy. Had you posed my life as a hypothetical situation and asked me what I thought would happen to someone who came out in that setting as a homosexual I would have been able to describe in detail the graphic consequences. I had a history in the church and so I'd seen the church and its people respond to those considered "in sin" and it was never pretty or kind and it was definitely nothing I ever wanted to experience firsthand. Now, I'm not the brightest bulb on the tree but I have enough intelligence to avoid certain choices like sticking my wet thumb into a light switch, coating my body with honey and lying on an ant hill or doing or being anything that's going to upset and repulse everyone I love and cause my dismissal from the only community I have ever known. Most of the gay and lesbian people I know seem to possess the same level of logic and self-preservation.

I'm in a committed relationship with my life partner Dana. We've been together for two years and will be getting married in a Christian wedding at a church this coming Spring. Our marriage will be affirmed by God and the church where our union will be celebrated even though the state will fail to recognize it. There's nothing about our life together that would look strange or odd were Dana a man and our relationship heterosexual. As a Christian couple, we begin each morning by reading devotions together. I cook breakfast. Dana makes the bed. We shower, dress and go to work. During the day we call each other to express our love or to remind the other to pick up more milk on the way home. After the dinner dishes are put away, we watch television or play with the kitten or just putter around the house until bedtime when we fall asleep beside the other. There's nothing bizarre about our life. Nothing unusual. While some would even consider our lives boring I treasure each day as an amazing and joyful blessing.

And yet, there is something very different about being a lesbian in this world. Being lesbian means knowing that in certain parts of this country you can't hold your partner's hand in public like straight couples do without risking being ridiculed or assaulted. Being lesbian means picking up the paper every morning or watching the news every night to hear about some new legislation that's being debated that if passed would negatively impact your life. Being lesbian means listening to false stereotypes being painted about you and the people you love every Sunday morning by television evangelists, all in the name of God. Being lesbian means trying to explain the nonexistence of the homosexual lifestyle or agenda to strangers.

But being lesbian means even more. Being lesbian means celebrating the joy of being a woman. Being lesbian means giving full expression to the depths of the love within you. Being lesbian means living confidently with God's approval rather than with the approval of others. Being a lesbian means standing in solidarity with others who stand on the outside whether they be the poor, the sick, the elderly, or any among God's creation deemed not acceptable by the majority. Being lesbian means finding your courage and living boldly. Being lesbian means experiencing another woman's courage when she takes your hand in a roomful of strangers or shows her engagement ring proudly without embarrassment or thought to what others will think.

I am a Christian. That is my faith. I am a lesbian. That is my sexual orientation. I make no apology for being either and if after all is said and done I remain a contradiction to you then that's fine too. Just realize what that means. When I speak of the presence of Jesus in my life you need to reject it. You have to see the fruit of the Holy Spirit within my life and call it evil. You have to deny the sufficiency of salvation through faith by requiring that I be heterosexual to first receive it.

Maybe you're right and I'm just not getting it and I never will. Perhaps I'm just foolish and naive enough to believe I can have it all, that I can live in wholeness and in relationship with God. So far that's what I've experienced and it's been the most joyful and God-filled adventure of my life!

Isa 55:8-9
8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD.
9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.
KJV

We know that the bible teaches homosexuality is wrong:

Rom 1:26
26 For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature:

Rom 1:32
32 Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.
KJV

But in the very next verse we are told:

Rom 2
2:1 Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest: for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same things.
2 But we are sure that the judgment of God is according to truth against them which commit such things.
3 And thinkest thou this, O man, that judgest them which do such things, and doest the same, that thou shalt escape the judgment of God?
4 Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?
5 But after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God;
6 Who will render to every man according to his deeds:
7 To them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honour and immortality, eternal life:
8 But unto them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath,
9 Tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil, of the Jew first, and also of the Gentile;
KJV

John 8:7

7 So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.
KJV

We will all be judged for our sins. I don't think it is for us to understand God's judgement and the bible tells us not to judge. Just one perspective. I think it's a good thing that she didn't turn her back on God, her other issues are between her and her maker. Just because one isn't supposed to judge doesn't necessitate acceptance.

Anita: Jesus said you must be born again. He also warned that many would claim to know Him, but that they never did. He warned that even the demons KNOW of him...the demons can quote scripture....saying you made a decision to "believe" in Christ, is NOT the rebirth, which is a supernatural experience FROM God. The homosexuals I know of how were RE-BORN (not just decided that they believed in Jesus and would act like Christains, were immeadiately delivered FROM homosexaulity. God did not speak through His prophets, and warn of homosexuality, only to change with the times. God did not destroy Soddom and Gommorah for fun. If you will recall, the men refused to offer of the female, and wanted the male.

Jesus did not hand pick the Apostle Paul to deliver the Gospel to the gentiles, and then allow him to preach unjustly agaisnt homosexuality. Paul said that those who practiced such received in their bodies the "just recompence for their actions".

It is NOT what you "feel", Anita, that counts. It is what the God of the universe SAYS that counts. I'll take Paul's words over yours. Paul said, "Do NOT be decieved....no homosexual will enter the kingdom of heaven." PERIOD.

Romans 1:26
Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones.

James 1:13-15
When tempted, no one should say, "God is tempting me." For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; 14but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. 15Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.

Your own evil desire made you what you are.

What you Gays, Queers or whatever you call yourselves, are missing in your pursuit to convince yourselves and others, is that homosexuality is not a sin to be confessed and rejected.

Homosexuality is a sin like adultry, fornication, lying, etc. The only difference is that homo's do not want to admit that their wrong doings are sins. The adultrer or fornicator nor the drunk do not try to convince all that their sins are not sins, they accept the gospel and try to change their ways and ask for forgiveness.

Why don't you folks just shut up, go to church accept the fact that you are sinners and ask God to forgive you and attempt to change your ways. Don't shove it down our throat that you are sin free of homosexuality.

First of all, who pulled your chain?

Secondly, the real issue, if you had paid attention, is the issue of homosexual clergy. Everyone has to make a choice...fine. But, when the church chooses to violate the very moral standards that it purports to hold, then we are moving into very troubling waters. And the "straights" that enable them are every bit as guilty.

Finally, get off your high horse and go somewhere else if you don't like the conversation that we, concerned members of the church, are having.

Hi, I'd like to say that I just found your site by accident. But I am an active Christian. For all the people who posted to this site with anger and contempt in there hearts, you should be ashamed of yourself. It is not are place to judge, only God judges. I can understand how the media inflicts the idea of how we "should" behave. Just remember the book. It says in Luke that our most powerful weapon, is that of our tongue, and that we should be careful in using it. There is also many scriptures that point out that a christian is to be a forgiving spirit. That we should have infinite forgiveness. You could have just left the page and paid no heed to it, but for some reason you got nasty. A Christian Lesbian may be a contradiction, but so is a Contemptfull Christian. Although I don't agree with this woman's lifestyle, she has my blessing. One day perhaps she will stop, and the only thing she has to do is ask for forgiveness. If she asks for forgiveness after each lesbian act, guess what, she's forgiven. If you feel the need to still be angry with her, I understand. I just pray that are watching outside of yourselves.

The thing about being a Christian is, you don't get to just be one, or claim to be one. There is alot of hypocracy in demanding that homosexuals stay out of the church while turning a blind eye to adultry/fornication on the part of straight people in the same church.

But you can't be a hyprocrite yourself and pretend ignorance to the difference between straights attempting to keep their sin a secret, open secret or not, that they are having an affair out of shame or fear of the judgment of his fellow Christians, and a homosexual screaming from the roof tops that God is a liar and homosexuality is not a sin.

"As a Christian couple, we begin each morning by reading devotions together. I cook breakfast. Dana makes the bed."

While my heart breaks for this woman (as it would for an alcholic, or sex addict who fights a sin) I can only ask if "As a Christian couple, we begin each morning by reading devotions together. I cook breakfast. Dana makes the bed." If one were to make the assumption the its 'OK' to live in the sin of homosexuality whe has been living a sexual life outside of marrage. Every your couple that shacks up are in a 'commited relationship'. It is the same as the Gay Bishop, not only is he gay he is divorsed...

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