Time to ‘come out’: I am not straight!

Great post from http://hopefulamphibian.blogs.com/:


"… it is time for all Christians to cease to refer to themselves as 'straight'.

Why?

Because to describe oneself as straight, in light of the dominant discourse of our culture and the history of the use of that term, carries with it the implication that 'I am normal' (whereas others are not), 'I am sorted' (whereas others are not), 'I have got it right'.

And I'm not, no I'm not, and I haven't.

I am not straight. Nor, I would suggest, is any Christian I know.

My sexuality has a brokenness to it, a part of that going back to childhood, a lot of that discovered or accumulated along the way. My sexuality contains veins of selfishness, of wilfulness, of the capacity to hurt another. When I bring my sexuality out of the dark and into the light of God's presence these things become apparent, alongside the capacity to give and receive delight, to make love... And by the grace of God, who is transforming me into the likeness of Christ, I am (being) made a new creation (sanctified).

Not straight. Broken - but being restored - like all my brothers and sisters in Christ.

That has to be the starting place for any discussion. I will not claim to possess a superior sexuality to any of my brothers or sisters - I will not speak with them under the illusion that they are broken and I am not. And I will trust that the Lord can heal and transform them as he is healing and transforming me.

Now the difficult part - because what I am about to say may sound as though it contradicts all that has gone before. Believe me, I hope and pray that it doesn't.

I believe that to hear the word of God, the safest and best place to stand is within scripture (with all the care for context and literary form and openness to the Holy Spirit which must accompany that).

And as I do so, I have to say that boundaries are set for my sexuality - I do not have unlimited freedom in its expression. There are boundaries which all of us, without exception, with all the varying degrees of fluidity in our sexuality, find difficult at different times and in different ways. (Maybe not now, but in the past or in the future.)

And one of those boundaries is this - and there seems to be no way around this - that the given place for sexual expression at its fullest is within a lifelong marriage partnership between a man and a woman.

But I think that those who share this viewpoint should cease to pretend that any of us find this easy. (Such pretence has caused untold damage in the church.) If none of us are straight, if all of us are broken, then how could we?

To pretend otherwise is not only to do an injustice to my brothers and sisters who discover within themselves a sexual desire for the same sex, it is to do an injustice to those who never have (and maybe never will) discover a marriage partner, to those whose wife or husband is unable to have full sexual relations due to illness or disability, to the bereaved aching for the touch of their beloved, to the teenager whose sexual desire seems to consume their every waking thought, to the abused for whom sexual contact reawakens nightmares, to those called by the Lord to serve him in ways that actively prevent any hope of marriage - and to many others besides.

So, no pretence that this is easy, no pretence that this is something with which we can live without the help and support of the body of Christ, no pretence that any of us are straight.