CHAPTER 1
A Father's Quest for Answers
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Why Am I Writing about This?
"Faith, Family, Friends"
Robin Roberts of Good Morning America, the network TV show, displayed these words on a sign one morning to represent the three most important things in her life. I share these same values. My faith has shaped every part of my life since that late January evening when I was seventeen years old. My family is second only to my faith. Every day I think about my children and wish they were closer. I want them to chase their dreams and follow the road that is laid out for them, but those roads led many of them extremely far from our home in Irvine, California. Then there are friends. We have had many for many years. Some have gone through painfully difficult times with us. We have gone through difficult times with them. We have agreed and disagreed on many things and sometimes not elegantly.
I now find myself in a position in which all three of these values are in conflict with one another. One of our daughters informed us a few years ago that she is a lesbian. For most in our faith community, homosexuality and homosexual practices are sin. If that is true, then the reality of my daughter's confession on first glance pits us against our faith. We find it likewise pits us against some friends. What I know for certain is that regardless of the other two, I must stand with my daughter. She is my daughter. She is a wonderful gift from God, and I love her with my whole heart. This means I have some work to do between God and me. It means I have some work to do with some friends as well.
Over the course of several years, my wife and I worked through some of the difficult questions raised by the confluence of our faith, family, and friends on the issue of homosexuality. We had many long discussions. We have read and explored some of the varied resources that are available. I did research on topics from theology to psychology to biology. This book has come out of these discussions and the research. Although it will present findings, it is still a work in progress—as am I.
The Questions
One will not be able to read far before numerous questions emerge, for which one would like answers, if possible. I list them here so the reader knows the terrain we will travel. At the end of the book, I will return to each of these and provide summary responses.
• Is one born a homosexual or transsexual person, or is homosexuality something someone chooses? In other words, is sexual orientation a choice an individual makes?
• Is same-sex attraction sinful?
• Within the scope of the healing and restoration of creation, is homosexuality a disease to be corrected?
• Is it true that Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) people are more promiscuous than heterosexual people?
• Is it true that same-sex relationships do not last as long as hetero-sex relationships?
• Is abstinence for life the only choice for a Christian LGBT person? Or can they enter into intimate and sexual relationships and still be active participants in a Christian community?
• Is same-sex marriage acceptable from a Christian standpoint?
• Should LGBT persons be allowed to become ordained leaders in the church if they are in committed same-sex relationships or marriages?
• Does support of same-sex marriage disqualify one from leadership and teaching ministries in the church?
My Personal Story
Discussions about homosexuality can become incredibly abstract quickly, and we can easily forget that we are talking about real people. So I begin with my story, which I believe sets this quest in a real-life context.
Not Raised in the Church
I was not raised in the church. For a short period in the fourth grade I think I went to Sunday school and sang in the youth choir at the First United Methodist Church in Corvallis, Oregon. But that all faded away for reasons I do not recall. Life was not easy for our family. My dad owned an ARCO gas station, which included an auto repair shop. I worked there from junior high through high school. I was a bit wild, loving fast cars more than English, history, math, or science; so unfortunately I spent a little too much time in the parking lot and not enough in class. It was the late 1960s, so there was a fair amount of "experimentation" going on, and I was all for experimentation! One January evening of my senior year in high school, I stopped by an old friend's house. We had been fellow experimenters in the past, and I wanted to see how the experimenting was going for her. I found that my friend and another young man had become Christians and were part of the Jesus movement. That night changed my life. I learned just a little bit of the story of how God loved me just as I am. Despite all the ways I had been a moral failure, still Jesus forgave me. I didn't know Genesis from Revelation, but I did know that I was a sinner, and forgiveness with the offer of a fresh start sounded pretty good.
I moved to Seattle and graduated from Seattle Pacific College. I worked for a brief time in a coffeehouse where I met a seventeen-year-old high school student named Debbie, whom four years later I would finally marry. We have been happily married now since 1976 and together have produced five great kids, all very different. Early in my Christian journey, my interest in the Bible and theology seemed insatiable. We moved to the Bay Area in northern California to study at Peninsula Bible Church (PBC) and intern under the singles pastor. I learned to love my Bible through that church, and I learned that we are supposed to love people, all kinds of people. I also learned that many churches spent more time determining who was in and who was out than they did acting like God's people with wide-open doors. PBC however, was different. All kinds of people were welcome there, which was demonstrated through its radical and innovative (for the late 1960s and '70s) Body Life service.
Singles Class in San Francisco in 1979
I served as an intern in the singles ministry at PBC. The main group was in Palo Alto, but there were satellite groups throughout the Bay Area. These were usually started by a single person who had been part of the ministry in Palo Alto but whose work had taken them to more distance places around the San Francisco Bay.
One such group was founded in San Francisco. A modest number of singles found themselves employed in the city, and so they lived there. As part of my internship, I was invited to teach in some of these satellite groups, and so I found myself scheduled to teach a few weeks in the San Francisco class in the late 1970s.
This period was the high point in the Gay Pride movement. By the late 1970s, the sexual revolution of the 1960s had evolved into a sexual revolution for same-sex persons. The center of all of this was Castro Street in San Francisco where a large number of gay bars were located. On a particular Sunday the leadership of the singles class decided that my wife and I needed an "immersion experience," so they took us to a gay bar/restaurant. For us, it was a scary proposition. But the reality was far from scary. It was a restaurant filled with people—a little unusual looking to us but not scary. Sadly the sexual revolution of the 1970s turned into the devastating HIV/AIDS era of the 1980s, which ravaged the gay community.
Singles Pastor at Mariners Church
Following the two years in the Bay Area at PBC, I was called to be the singles pastor at Mariners Church in Newport Beach, California. The group was called the Salt Company, named after the ministry of the same name in the 1960s at Hollywood Presbyterian Church. Several young single folks—many graduates of either UCLA or USC—had formed a singles group as part of Mariners Church, and it was flourishing. They wanted a pastor, so my exceedingly pregnant wife, our young son Jonathan, and I packed up and moved to Southern California—where we have been ever since. Several experiences during my tenure as the Mariners singles pastor would further shape what I thought about homosexuality.
My primary responsibility was to teach Sunday mornings in a restaurant where between two hundred and three hundred single people would gather. I decided to teach a series on sexual ethics and indicated that I would be addressing topics such as premarital sex, abortion, homosexuality, marriage, and some other related matters. Singles groups love teaching about sex, so it was the most well-attended series we ever had—on some Sundays more than four hundred attended! Once the topics of the series were made known, several men in the group approached me privately and revealed that they were gay. Some were handling it OK. Some were not. One young man asked me to meet with him and his parents when he came out of the closet. Another worked closely with me, hoping that I would conclude that committed same-sex partnerships were morally acceptable for a Christian. The core of his argument was (a) that he was born the way he was and (b) that the practices that Paul the Apostle observed were not the same as the committed relationship he was describing. He based much of his argument on the newly released (at that time) book by John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality (1980).
I had two objectives when I taught on the subject of homosexuality. First, I wanted to express to this group of single Christians that many of their assumptions about homosexuality were wrong. At that time, the prevailing belief was that homosexuals "chose" to be gay and that the choice was a choice against God and what was right. I taught that the research (which was not extensive at that time) would demonstrate that same-sex attraction is an innate trait—how a person is born—and not a choice. This was a little radical in 1982, especially in a conservative Bible church, but for the most part, the group accepted what I was teaching.
My second objective was to emphasize the point I had been making throughout the series: the central moral imperative of Christian faith is not finding the rules and living within them. It is to promote life in all of our human interactions by trying to love as Jesus loved. Unfortunately for the young man who had been so committed to helping me understand things from a gay man's perspective, at that time, I felt I could not support homosexual expression as promoting life. I am grateful to this man for his patience with me. I came closer to him than anyone else in that conservative community, but I did not come close enough.
I don't know how many gay men there were in our singles group, but I estimated between 5 and 10 percent based upon the number that I personally knew. I did not know any lesbians because none confided in me. One young single, from a conservative Christian home and also a Christian college, confessed to being bisexual. He had several gay encounters while at college but was conflicted when he met with me some years later. The unsettling part of his story was how depressed he was. I feared for him.
During those years as singles pastor, a man I knew from San Francisco (we shall call him Bill), came to Southern California to visit me. He confided that he was gay. He had been raised in a conservative Christian home and had attended a well-respected Christian college. He said that he had tried really hard not to be gay, but after years of struggle, he had finally come to understand that he was gay. That was not going to change. But he was also deeply committed to Jesus and his Christian faith. Though he knew the two were not easy to pair, he was going to try. Both were part of his identity, part of who he was. At the time I remember feeling sad and confused. Here was this young man who was so committed to his faith, and he was gay. I knew God loved him. I did too! He was a good friend. I didn't know what to say, but what I knew I could not say was anything that condemned him.
Another young man, again from a conservative Christian home, struggled terribly to come to grips with his same-sex attraction. We spent many hours in pastoral counseling together. More important, he was also being treated by a psychiatrist and was on antidepressants. Unfortunately he could not resolve the inner conflict and one day jumped off a building, committing suicide. I have presided over two memorial services in my life. His was the first. I will never forget looking into his coffin and wondering how to put all of this together—faith and his reality.
A clear pattern ties all of these stories together. They were people raised as Christians who took their faith very seriously, but in their young adult years the reality that they were also gay pressed down heavily upon them. In the 1980s there was not much reconciliation happening within the church between a homosexual/bisexual orientation and Christian faith. I often wonder what happened to these men.
Daughters' Gay High School Friends
When I was in junior high and high school, any boy who showed effeminate behavior was made fun of and called a "fag" or other demeaning epithet. Few if any would admit to being gay or lesbian. Much had changed by the time our daughters were this age. They were both involved in theatre and brought home friends who were openly gay. It was no big deal to them. It just "was." We found that their nonchalance about this made it a nonissue for us as well. These were just kids who came to our house and interacted with us, and we found them totally delightful. Sexuality was a nonissue. We were horrified when one young man's family put his belongings out on the street. If he was going to be gay, he was not going to be in their family. Again and sadly, they were a conservative Christian family, and when confronted with the choice between their beliefs and their son, they chose, at least for a moment, their beliefs.
Our Own Daughter's Coming Out
As I indicated earlier, we have five children, and our entire lives are wound around them even now that they are adults and most live—sadly—far from us. Our first three were boys, and the last two, twin girls. Twins, especially same-sex twins, are a force to be reckoned with. There is a bond there that we singletons do not understand. As I learned early on, one steps between them at one's peril. A fight between them becomes a dual assault on anyone who tries to intervene between them.
Both daughters went away for college to different places. That was a hard transition for them but good as well, for they learned that they could live separate lives. But we found that one of them was getting more and more distant from us during her first two years of college. Whereas one would come home for visits or would call, the other would not. Prior to this, we had all four been close, so this shift became increasingly disconcerting. One daughter, after two years at University of Arizona, decided that New York was where she wanted to be, so she transferred to a college in Manhattan. The other, who had become distant, after a couple of starts and stops, ended up in New York for a year as well to live with her sister. We had started to wonder, based upon some conversations about ballot issues in California, whether the one who had started and stopped was a lesbian. It was not until later in that year that we were to have that confirmed.
I suspect most parents when first informed that their child is gay go through something similar to the stages of grief—from denial, to anger (at yourself?), to hopefully acceptance. Regardless of what you believe about homosexuality, it hits you hard. You realize that many of the unspoken expectations you hold will not happen as you had imagined. There is a grieving; there is a loss. What will their future be? How will the world receive them? What about the church? What about our friends? How will the family receive them? Will it even make any difference? What do you think about it? How will you view your child? Dozens of questions in rapid succession are repeated over and over and over in your head.
In that same moment my wife and I each had to make a decision. Would we abandon our daughter over her sexual orientation, or would we stand with her? There really was never any question, but until one faces the actual decision, it is extremely abstract. We had had gay church members and friends, but for us, it had become, in a moment, extraordinarily real. In the midst of a great deal of confusion and uncertainty, we would side with our daughter.
