Distrust From All Sides

With every letter we write, every quick update email or phone call, every gathering, dinner, or weekend spent with family, many of us find ourselves facing the elephant in the room: cautious distrust. Or maybe cautiousness and distrust. And that’s not even counting outright hostility.

It’s a strange feeling, to be carrying on a conversation knowing there’s a deeper thought behind the words; knowing that your family is questioning virtually everything we say or do and wondering just what motivates their child’s life now that they’re out of the closet.

Conversations are carefully clouded and questions shrouded such that a full answer is not necessary – just tell me enough of what I want to hear. Generalizations are enough – after all, I don’t really want to know what interests you these days, just in case you suddenly morphed into some demonic creature of hedonism on your way past the closet doorframe.

But there’s another spectre that gay Christians deal with and that’s that we are caught in the middle betwixt two communities who distrust each other. We carry with us the stigma from both sides – to our Christian cousins we are tainted, sinners, misled and backslidden; to our GBLT cousins we are judgmental, two-faced, and a risk.

The Beau and I have worked hard to develop and maintain relationships on both sides of the fence. Some of our dearest friends are gay and straight ex-Catholics, non-Christians, or practicing and non-practicing Jews. With such a diverse group of friends we are bound to learn of habits, beliefs, relationship structures, relationship practices, and the like, which we wouldn’t necessarily have in our relationship or would drive the fundies out a window.

But what we’ve found is that our friends don’t always trust us, for no other reason than the fact we are both gay and Christian. On the Christian side, they sometimes feel spiritual topics are off-limits, whereas personal feelings or frank, open discussions about life, love and other mysteries are sidestepped by our gay friends for fear we would judge them.

It’s difficult. On the one hand, we’ve been judged so badly by our own churches, universities, families, and friends that we couldn’t bring ourselves to judge our friends for what we may not agree with or understand. On the other hand, we have to prove that – moreso than any other friend would, for we have the stigma of our practicing religion.

Day by day, evening by evening, game night by game night, we try to prove ourselves loyal, and loving – to both sides. Hoping, praying, working, to be seen as a bridge, as something different, as real.

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 Filed under Daily-Life
08/07/06 07:13 PM
by The Blogger
  1. David says (Aug 9, 04:36 PM ):

    it’s post’s like this that make me, (and hopefully many others) respect you a great deal.

    God bless you.

    (as if me or anyone saying that mattered to God) ; )
  2. April says (Aug 10, 11:07 AM ):

    Thank you for this post. And thank you for continual enlightenment. I need your insight to counter my Southern up-bringing, and to show me God’s love in a way that I don’t see demonstrated enough by Christians.
  3. John says (Aug 10, 03:49 PM ):

    April,

    I’ve read your blog. You are a marvelous person, and a great mother.

    And a real Christian
  4. This Gay Christian Blogger says (Aug 12, 12:08 AM ):

    :)
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