Gotta be this or that? Would it were that simple.
When I was a teen-ager, a gay man befriended me. He went to my church. Cal was about six years my senior. He was preparing to enter ministry. We spent time together – he introduced me to classical books, we discussed poetry, religion and philosophy and we listened to classical music. One summer we traveled to Europe. I felt very cared for in the relationship – mentored, like a son by a father. During the four years we were friends he never made any sexual advances on me. Although we never discussed sexual orientation, I knew he was gay. This was a time when homosexuality was considered depraved and the devil’s contrivance. I did not feel that Cal was sinister and, as I look back, I profited greatly through his mentoring. The relationship with Cal called forth some of my intellectual and artistic abilities. I am grateful for what the relationship offered me.
In my first church assignment as a priest I was one of two young associates. My colleague was a delightful man, animated, bright, had a compassionate way with people. He married a charming woman. They made a winsome couple and the parish adored them.
On Cal’s day off, he went out of town to visit a friend. The friend was a male lover. The police pulled them over, issued Cal a DUI and the word got back to the rector of our parish. The situation turned ugly. The rector was terrified; ill equipped to handle the emotional and social complexities and called the vestry together. He slammed Cal for being a “drunk and a homo, a disgrace to the parish.” The rector manipulated the support of influential lay leadership to call for Cal’s immediate dismissal. The Bishop concurred. It was my first exposure to how malignant ignorance can be and how brutal it can turn, especially among the traditional standard bearers of mercy and righteousness.
The rector was secretive and never discussed the incident with me. Cal told me there was no attempt either by the Bishop or the rector to work with the suffering the man’s dilemma created for him and for his wife who too was devastated. The church treated him as damaged goods and he had to go.
The tragedy was not that the ecclesiastical leadership didn’t understand the complexities of gender preference or orientation – few did then – but that the clergy showed no compassion. I saw the church as capitulating to the binary world of tidy moralities –it’s either this or that. The church failed in its mission to minister and help the couple’s to begin healing their broken lives. Broken lives are messy – all lives are messy – they are never just this or that, and they challenge everyone involved in the messes to be as wise as serpents and gentle as doves.
I was furious and, quit my position at the church indignantly – with more than a little of the self-righteousness of youth. If this, I thought, is what parish life is like, I wanted no part of it. The incident would shape my life. I left parish ministry to study for a specialized ministry in psychotherapy and pastoral counseling.
It was the right choice for me. I’ve mellowed over time and have seen how much goodness and compassion finds expression in parish ministries when the leadership is secure in itself.
I can say that today we’ve come a way on the road of compassion.
Human sexuality, however, remains contentious among religious bodies. Gender identity is divisive and an anxiety-laden issue for several reasons – confusion and fear being the greatest. Because gender identity is so personally intimate in the formation of self-image and of relational and social attitudes, sexual orientation doesn’t lend to simple explanations or pious platitudes. As the gender revolution grows in popular awareness, the struggle will be to develop a holistic understanding. The issue needs a larger context, and a frame of reference for understanding gender while psychologically and socially regulating differences. The differences need legitimacy, a spiritual place in the created order.
A discussion of the gender revolution appearing in the January edition of National Geographic identifies a glossary of twenty-one distinct categories of sexual orientation worldwide. On the cover is a group photo of seven attractive young people, two of whom are transgender females, the others intersex nonbinary, bi-gender, transgender male, androgynous, and male heterosexual. None of the kids looks anything but ‘normal.’ The Bible tells us God made them male and female, but God gave us little indication at the time the Bible was written of the variations that may attend the two primary gender identities. I wish that God had said more.
As we try figuring it out, I’d offer this hope: that the conversation takes place in an atmosphere of kindness and compassion. For example, to date the debate over restroom usage for transsexual persons is couched in fear of sexual exploitation and violence. When I was young, the myth was that homosexuals preyed on children. It’s incomprehensible to me that a person having gone through the agonies of establishing a sexual identity as lesbian, gay or transgender is going to use restrooms for purposes of exploitation. The struggle of those outside the gender mainstream is not where the quickies are, but the longing to belong and to be accepted.
In the sixties, I remember fondly the first client assigned to me while in training at the American Foundation of Religion and Psychiatry in New York. He was a young gay man – poor, Hispanic, flamboyant and articulate. I will call him Manny. AIDS had not been identified and being a closeted gay was a risky business because sexual liaisons in subway restrooms and bathhouses could spread disease. We knew nothing about AIDS then. Manny wasn’t in therapy because he was gay, but for incidents of psychosis that clouded his judgment and put him in danger to himself and others.
When I think of Manny my hope is that the world today will grow kinder and gentler for people who discover they don’t naturally fit into “this or that” than it was for Manny in the early nineteen sixties. Interestingly, even then psychology and psychiatry had little knowledge about the nature of gender orientation. I am pleased that the American Foundation of Religion and Psychiatry provided Manny and others like him that level of hospitality and acceptance in a hostile world. I hope it helped him live into his life more fully.
Columnist George Merrill is an Episcopal Church priest and pastoral psychotherapist. A writer and photographer, he’s authored two books on spirituality: Reflections: Psychological and Spiritual Images of the Heart and The Bay of the Mother of God: A Yankee Discovers the Chesapeake Bay. He is a native New Yorker, previously directing counseling services in Hartford, Connecticut, and in Baltimore. George’s essays, some award winning, have appeared in regional magazines and are broadcast twice monthly on Delmarva Public Radio.
Dr. David Kyle Foster says
If Mr. Merrill can’t find the scriptures in the Bible where God does indeed express His knowledge of homosexuality and transgender disorders, I’d be happy to show them to him.
Not only does God know about them, He calls people with such struggles to deny their broken inclinations and follow Him, in the same way that He calls people with other areas of brokenness that lead to sin to do the same. I agree that the Church has an abysmal past in handling such situations, but it has since caught up in many quarters. Ministries to both populations thrive and flourish under umbrella organizations such as Restored Hope Network, Help4Families, Living Waters, Mastering Life Ministries (my own) and the like and people are finding healing for their brokenness in droves. As someone who has been ministering to sexually broken people for over 37 years, I can assure Mr. Merrill that his experience almost 60 years ago with his gay mentor doesn’t usually go that way anymore. Usually the young man (or woman) is molested by such men (or women).
In fact, over half of all homosexual males and as high as 65-85% of all homosexual females are victims of childhood sexual abuse. Their suicide, substance abuse, depression, disease, diminished life expectancy, domestic violence (etc) rates are off the charts compared to the rest of the population – and even more so in the most gay friendly locales, such as Amsterdam, New York, Miami, LA & San Francisco. Even gay activists admit this. So what would Jesus do? Number one, He would reveal His love for them, as He did to me when I called on Him to keep His promise of Jeremiah 29:11-14 many decades ago. Then He would call them to leave all forms of sexual immorality (as well as others sins) and empower those who say “Yes” to resist sin with His power rather than their own. At the same time, He would reveal the roots to their sexual brokenness (-abuse, rejection, self-hatred, father-wounds, unforgiveness, etc are all well-known and typical grounds for such brokenness) and heal them one by one as the person cooperates with the process. For some, the change over a period of years is so dramatic that their natural heterosexual desires slowly emerge and they are able to marry and raise a family. For others, there are lesser degrees of change, which I write about in the following 2-part article: https://www.masteringlife.org/index.php/mastering-life/articles/spiritual-truths/item/72-why-people-remain-in-sin-and-bondage-part-1.
But the LAST thing Jesus would do, (according to the Scriptures) would be to sanction the gay lifestyle and suggest that it was okay by Him. It would be an act of hatred for Him to do so considering how broken it is, how powerful He is to fix it, and the eternal consequences that He has warned us about for choosing fallen inclinations over His mercy, love and grace.
Bishop Joel Marcus Johnson, Ret'd. says
Excellent and so thoroughly compassionate as expected. Thank you, good Father, for your ministry and friendship.
George Merrill says
Dr. Kyle’s response to my essay “Gotta be This or That” clearly represents the views many religious people hold concerning the conflicts around gender identity. I applaud the Spy for printing a different point of view and giving another voice to one of today’s most contentious social and spiritual issues.
Kristen Greenaway says
Thank you, Mr. Merrill.