There has been renewed concern among many in the Presbyterian Church about a move towards full acceptance of LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning) people in all areas of church life (including support for ordination to ministry and for same-sex marriage). To this effect, a number of overtures have been submitted to General Assembly, and conversation on the issue is underway in the Presbyterian Record, in social media, and in various other church venues.
I would like to share here some of my reasons for my wholehearted support of this movement. First, I have decided it is time to declare openly in the church that I am gay myself. I have done this recently in the congregations where I have strong connections. And at the 2015 General Assembly, during discussions about a process for dealing with the overtures on sexuality, I declared myself and called for “safe space” for people like me to have a voice and to be able to tell our stories as a critical part of these conversations. I am writing now to follow up on that appeal, claiming a voice and telling something of my story in the hope that this will help inform our discussions over the months to come.
I have been keenly aware of my strong homosexual orientation from adolescence on. For many years I struggled to suppress it, fearing hostile reactions if it became known, and trying to conform to the heterosexual norm that seemed to be the only acceptable way of being in my world. The loneliness and despair I often felt were a burden I feared I might never be free of.
Finally in 1998, in the midst of all the challenges of transition my wife Marie and I were dealing with as we returned from several years of serving the church in Mauritius, I faced my reality. Throughout our nearly 13 years of marriage, Marie and I had been living quietly and painfully with the awareness and the effects of my orientation, and we finally agreed that it would be better to separate with a commitment to remaining friends so that both of us could seek to develop healthier and more fulfilling lives.
We told our family and friends of our decision to separate; sharing the specific reason with those we felt could understand and support us. My parents and siblings, at first unsettled by this revelation, moved with time to full acceptance of our situation. Most of them clearly understand such acceptance as a matter of Christian principle.
I came out to family and friends just as I was receiving the call to be the minister of Glebe Presbyterian Church in Toronto. While I knew the Presbyterian Church’s official stance on the gay issue—and specifically on gay ministers—was disapproving, I determined not to be frightened or bullied out of my vocation. In one way or another, I had served the church all my life, and coming to terms with my gayness did not negate any of that or make me unfit to continue to serve. In fact, I felt strongly that it was not I who was in error here; it was rather the church’s position that was wrong and unjust. I believed that I should remain in ministry in a continuing effort to be a faithful servant of the gospel, despite the church’s error on this matter—serving in part out of the gift and the vulnerability of being gay, and hoping to help the church move towards full acceptance of people like me.
So I have accompanied the people of Glebe and more recently Leaside (since the congregations of Glebe and Leaside amalgamated) through many years of Christian service. During that period I have worked away at expanding the circle of people in my congregation and in the wider church who can be trusted with knowing I am gay and who are ready to offer support.
Since coming out to the extent that it felt safe in the church, I have developed a committed relationship with my partner David, and we now live together in Toronto. He and my former wife Marie are on friendly terms with each other and are both fully accepted as part of my family. Not only I, but Marie, David and my whole family have had to deal with the consequences of my growing up “closeted” in a church and a broader community that provided practically no vision, affirmation or guidance for living a valued and healthy life as a gay person. In the midst of this challenging and hostile environment, faith has been vital in helping me and my loved ones to find our way out of the closet of ignorance, shame and fear, and to act responsibly and lovingly towards one another and within the church.
I am very encouraged by the unexpected groundswell of active concern for this issue in various corners of the Presbyterian Church in recent months. It is particularly striking that the majority of people voting to send overtures or otherwise expressing support for inclusion are not gay themselves, but are simply acting out of a sense that the time has come for the church to act on this issue in love and justice.
One of my frustrations over the years has been that the church’s disapproving stance strongly discourages people like me from speaking openly about the actual experience of being gay in the church, and about our faith perspective on the matter. Out of fear of possibly very damaging repercussions, we remain silent. There we are, faithfully serving our church, yet voiceless in the midst of swirling and often hateful discussions about us.
The church has paid lip service to “safe spaces” and “listening” on this issue over the years; but we have done very little to ensure that I and others in my position are actually heard or really made to feel safe. I am no longer willing to accept that injustice, and it is for that reason that I am now declaring myself more boldly.
It is time that the people about whom we are talking should be granted a full, respectful hearing right in the centre of this conversation. It is time that they should be guaranteed a safe space to tell their stories and express their faith understanding freely and honestly. I am now speaking out, claiming my voice in these discussions, not just for my own sake but because I believe the church should always be challenged to be a community of active respect and nurturing for all people, especially those who are vulnerable to debilitating discrimination. Perhaps my voice can help the church continue to grow into that safe, inclusive, nurturing community.
As I turn now to my faith perspective on this issue, I am not focusing on the handful of biblical texts that are commonly cited as specifically speaking against homosexual activity in some way. These have already been extensively debated by others. Rather, I reflect on the grand thrust of the Christian gospel towards ever widening the circle of inclusion and love, especially for those whom human society and faith communities have devalued, condemned and excluded.
There are of course many texts in the Hebrew scriptures that promote an expansive understanding of who is embraced in the compass of God’s love and who should be welcomed into faith community. Such texts are fundamental to the teaching of Jesus and the Christian way. There is, for example, the declaration of Jesus in Mark 12:29-31 that the greatest commandments are these from the Torah: to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength” (from Deuteronomy 6:5), and to “love your neighbour as yourself” (from Leviticus 19:18).
Many of the stories of the gospels show how Jesus lived out such all-encompassing love. His teaching and actions were profoundly informed by the repeated affirmation in Hebrew tradition (e.g., Deuteronomy 10:17-21) that God seeks justice and shows love especially for those who are vulnerable and at risk of being denied a full welcome and a fair share—people like the widow, the orphan and the stranger. Jesus took this seriously himself, and called for the faith community in turn to do justice and to show radical love for people on the margins.
The story of the man born blind in John 9 is one that illustrates Jesus’ passion for such justice and love as he turns his attention to a person shunned by his community and left to beg at the roadside. The disciples’ question to Jesus—which no doubt reflects the judgment of the whole community—is: who sinned, this man or his parents, that he should be born blind?
Jesus’ reply is astonishing and revolutionary: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.” The actions and interactions which follow are rich with spiritual meaning: Jesus and his followers, and this man himself, are shown to be “sent” to do the work God intends. The gift of sight is received by the blind man through earthy anointing and clarifying washing in the pool with a name meaning, again, “sent.” Religious leaders are hostile as they struggle with the challenges and truths symbolized when Jesus elevates this outcast to a place of dignity and health. The man’s parents stand quietly in support of their son. And this one who was blind, and thus judged by his community to be sinful and worthless, now displays startling courage and prophetic vision.
In the course of the controversy, Jesus radically reverses questions about who actually remains stuck in sin in this community, and who does and who does not truly see.
The healing depicted in this story goes far beyond the granting of physical eyesight to a particular man in a specific time and place. The more important healing is initiated when one who has been deeply stigmatized and callously rejected is raised to a place of full worth in the community.
The healing really gets underway when unjust and devastating prejudices are challenged and serious re-evaluation can no longer be avoided. The healing extends beyond that particular community as this story, recorded in the gospel of John, starts to circulate far and wide, and on down through the centuries. The healing grows as this story and others like it have their transformative influence on societies’ attitudes towards people who are disabled, different, disadvantaged.
I myself am the beneficiary of the healing that has grown out of stories like this. I am a man born blind. Affected by congenital optic atrophy, I have lived all my life with less than 10 per cent of normal vision in my better eye. It is in large part because of stories like this that my condition is recognized in society, including the church, as a disability rather than a curse—as something caused by a genetic aberration rather than by sin—as an opportunity and maybe even a gift rather than a disgrace and a dead end.
Stories like this have influenced our thinking such that my wise Christian parents, whether they would express it exactly this way or not, have steadfastly believed that I too was born blind so that the works of God might be revealed in me. Such understanding has enabled them to encourage me to live my life to the fullest, developing abilities and talents, and doing my part to contribute to the common good. Because of my own wonderful parents, I have a particular tender spot in my heart for the parents in John’s story.
There is no medical cure for my eye condition, and I do not waste time yearning for a divine intervention, a miraculous healing that would give me perfect physical eyesight. But real healing does come to me in the thoughtful support offered by my parents and many others in my life. And I do experience healing through amazing technologies that open to me a world of possibility—optical aids and electronic devices that enable reading, telescopic viewing, independent mobility, and so on. In significant part, I trace the motivation for offering me practical help and developing assistive technologies to the change of mind and heart urged by stories like this one in John’s gospel. If the stigma and shame associated with disabilities like mine had not been radically challenged, there would be no interest in seeking ways to enable me to participate fully in human society.
It takes much time, thought, prayer, research and struggle for the Christian gospel to have its radically transformative impact in the church and in the world. The apostle Paul, having himself been converted to the way of Jesus and having studied his work and teaching, was able to affirm the grand truth that “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). But it has taken centuries for us to take to heart the real-life implications of this great affirmation, and gradually to translate it into positive change in the church and in society.
Women’s liberation—and in the church, women’s ordination—the abolition of slavery and struggles to overcome racism, and efforts at interfaith dialogue and understanding are just some of the moral enterprises in modern time that have been inspired in significant measure by the trajectory of the Christian gospel towards justice and love for all. Various liberation and rights movements, while not identical to one another, have significant overlaps and intersections; and the Christian thrust towards justice and love for all is a connecting cord through these commonalities and differences.
In the lived experience of church and society, these Christian principles sometimes serve as a guide for addressing, by extension, issues not specifically known or mentioned in scripture; and at other times, such principles have been judged to trump or supersede certain specifics of scripture which may be culture-bound, scientifically inaccurate, morally questionable, and so on.
With the possibility of such extended application of gospel principles in mind, I come back now to re-imagine the story of the man born blind. What if Jesus and his disciples had found at the roadside a man born gay? Now I know that the term “gay” and probably the whole concept of fundamental sexual orientation were unheard of by anyone, including Jesus, in that context. But I want to try to imagine the questions and the challenges of that biblical scene extended and applied in our time to a reality now widely recognized.
As suggested above, there would be intersections and differences between the case of the man born blind and that of a man born gay. Blindness, for example, was, and is still, commonly considered a deficiency or disability, and therefore healing or some sort of remedy or relief is likely to be thought desirable, especially by the person affected. Being gay, on the other hand, is increasingly understood as simply a difference, rather than an illness or disability; and if there is full affirmation from community and healthy self-acceptance by the gay person, there is no question of healing or remedy for the condition itself. But of course homophobia remains strong and virulent in our time, both in society and internalized by gay people; so healing of hateful attitudes and their devastating effects is still vitally important.
I know also that there is still argument, in the church and elsewhere, about whether people are born gay or whether it is a matter of environment that could be undone or of choice that could be altered. From my own experience, I am certain that my orientation is a given, whether I was actually born with it or whether it developed somehow early in childhood.
The typical arguments that it must result from influences such as an overprotective mother or an absent or abusive father simply do not apply in my life. And as I have said, no amount of wishing or praying could change my orientation. My gayness is no more a matter of choice than my blindness.
So for the purpose of my re-imagining of John’s story, I believe it is valid to speak of a man born gay.
So if Jesus and his companions found this man born gay at the roadside, outcast from his community, I imagine the disciples’ question might very well be the same: “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born gay?” And I dare to imagine also that Jesus’ reply would be the same:
“Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born gay so that God’s works might be revealed in him.”
In this scene, Jesus would lift this man also from his position of rejection to a place of dignity, signifying here too, through earthy anointing and clarifying baptism, that this man has been sent to do the work God intends. Controversy would erupt here as well, the orthodox community leaders being furious at having to re-evaluate their prejudices and re-think their concepts of justice. In the midst of the swirling outrage, the gay man’s parents would stand quietly in solidarity with their son. And thus supported, this man, who had been judged by his community to be sinful and worthless, would show striking courage and prophetic understanding born out of the crucible of his suffering. Here too, Jesus would radically disrupt settled notions about who actually remains mired in sin in this community, and about who does and who does not truly see—or truly love.
I dare to re-imagine the story in this way because I believe it is a faithful understanding of the arc of the gospel towards justice and love for all. From inside the experience of being both blind and gay, I can only affirm the faith that I am God’s beloved child in every aspect, created as I am so that the works of God might be revealed in me. In each of these significant differences from the mainstream, I know both gift and challenge. The gift includes unique ways of perceiving, of connecting, of appreciating, of loving. The challenge involves overcoming fear, finding my way through bewildering terrain, looking for strength in vulnerability, daring to trust and love. As I try here to put into words the nature of the gift and the challenge of being blind and being gay, it is striking to me how similar blindness and gayness are, and how much gift and challenge overlap and blend.
In my gayness, in my blindness, in all that I am, I cherish the words of Psalm 139 where the poet prays in profound trust and wonder:
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works; that I know very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.
In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed.
How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
I try to count them—they are more than the sand;
I come to the end—I am still with you.
(Psalm 139:14-18)
For all of the reasons I have tried to suggest here, I am convinced that a move in our church to full inclusion of LGBTQ people would truly be a faithful response to the gospel and would bless and enrich our faith community and our witness and service to the world. I welcome responses to what I have written, and I am willing to participate in further conversation about these important matters. May God bless us all on this journey.
