(Most names in this story have been changed. David Godwin’s name remains the same to honor his memory.)
I was raised in Australian Evangelical Christianity in the 80s and 90s, although we never really used the word “Evangelical,” just “Christian.” I thought I was pretty diverse because I attended multiple denominations before adulthood: Baptist, the Church of Christ, Assemblies of God churches (Pentecostal/Charismatic) and particularly the Church of God which no longer exists in Australia, but of which my grandfather was pastor while his daughter and three sons were growing up, and until I was fourteen. My Christian school was associated with an AOG church. My extended family was mostly Christian.
So, it is not surprising that over the years and through various sources I was taught that identifying as lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgender, intersex, queer, asexual or gender diverse, was a sin or some kind of mental illness or deformity. But to be honest, I very rarely heard those specific terms and I was vague on their meanings. The word that was thrown around most was simply “gay,” and I couldn’t tell you what age I was when I first connected the dots that what we were really talking about was men having sex with men; women with women; and/or gender diverse people also engaging in sex. Late teens, maybe. The word “gay” was also used for things that were—let’s say—uncommon. Boys wearing pink tee-shirts might be called “gay.” Girls with really short hair could be labelled “gay.” Even just wearing your clothes the wrong way—pants or socks that come up too high—might be considered “gay.” Hence my vague concept of what being “gay” actually meant or why it was lumped in the sin category by so many Christians around me.
The message that I heard louder than the “being gay is a sin” message, was the message that “God is love” and we as Christians are to love all people, everywhere, always. Now, interestingly, as an adult, I’m not sure there are many Christians who believe this message—what with the amount of racism, sexism, homophobia and war rampant in our world. As a young adult, I could not understand how any Christian could hold a sign that said “God hates fags.” I would immediately retaliate, “No, he doesn’t.” Because I was never, ever taught that God hates anybody. Period. And I knew that waving a sign that said as much, was only going to ostracize gay people all the more. It didn’t make any sense! Why would you want them to feel hated, when in fact, they are loved and need a revelation of God’s love—especially if you believe, as I was led to believe, that they can change? Maybe they can turn straight. Maybe they can be healed from whatever drove them to gayness in the first place. How is being gay any worse than my sin of being an over-eater? A glutton?
I was taught that all sins are equal. It is actually a very dangerous thing to be taught and I no longer believe it is true. I do, however, believe that all sin is equally forgiven by God. But when people argued that “living in sin,” which really only applied to ongoing sexual sin (premarital sex, adultery, addiction to pornography, gay-sex etc), is worse than accidentally sinning or making a mistake, I became angry. We ALL lived in ongoing sin. Being gay was no worse than any other sin. I believed that. Occasionally I would get into deeper discussions about sin, repentance, and forgiveness, and because I advocated that God is love and loves everyone and we are equal before God in our sinfulness, people would actually start confessing their (perceived) sins to me. “I had sex with my girlfriend,” one young adult male told me. I replied something along the lines of, “That doesn’t mean you don’t love God, or that he doesn’t love you. You can still have a relationship with God even though you are having sex outside of marriage, because it’s just another sin and we are all trying to learn to overcome our sins.”
“Just another sin.” That was my catch-phrase. I couldn’t be convinced that gay people were “living-in-sin” any more than I was living in my own sin. And I was still convinced that God loved me, so I was equally convinced that God still loved them and that they could continue their relationships with God. How that played out was, frankly, none of my business. Whether they were ever sorry for the sin of being gay or the sin of premarital sex was between them and their God. I had committed what I perceived as sexual sin too. I had lusted over teenage boys and fantasized about kissing them; holding hands with them; being someone’s girlfriend. We all long for these sorts of things and we all have to navigate our sexual journeys.
When I was about 19, I finally made my first gay friend—or rather, the first friend who came out to me as gay. He wasn’t a Christian, and I obviously was, but he attended church with me once or twice. He was interested in the music and making new friends. In fact, he was a super friendly, sweet guy. He was like a little brother to me at a time when I lived interstate from my biological brothers and sister and missed having them around. I was a little surprised when he came out as gay, because I never knew what gay mannerisms were meant to look like or any of the alleged tell-tale signs. I just assumed everyone was straight unless they said otherwise. My friend laughed at me for not noticing that he was gay. But that’s just how naïve I was. It didn’t change much. We were friends for years after that. He came to visit when I moved back closer to my family. I caught up with him whenever I was visiting his home state. And the time I took him to church was after he had come out to me. I probably prayed that he would “get saved” and “turn straight”—thinking that was for his own good. But I understood that change takes time and that he deserved no judgement from me. He needed my love and support, especially as a Christian who witnesses to the love of God.
When I was 22, I visited my uncle, aunt and three cousins in Canada. Uncle Shane was an Australian who married a Canadian and moved to Canada to create a family with her. And to be a Pastor’s husband. Aunty Caroline was a Church of God pastor who cried at the end of most of her sermons. I loved that about her and I admired her as a female pastor and preacher. During a conversation with my aunt and uncle in which I mentioned my “gay friend,” a look passed between them. A look I did not understand. I wondered what their opinion was of me having a gay friend. I really didn’t think it was a big deal but I suspect some people worry that spending time with gay people can cause gayness to rub off. I was never worried about that. The desperation with which I wanted to marry a guy, did not have me questioning my heterosexuality as a female, at that time.
What ensued hours later as Uncle Shane and I drove from Owen Sound to Toronto, was a conversation about how I had met my gay friend and how long we had been friends, which resulted in Uncle Shane coming out to me as gay. I had no clue. Again. I was surprised and I asked a lot of questions, though I don’t remember specifically what they were. He had come out to his father, my grandfather, and his wife had married him knowing that he had this ongoing sexual struggle. There were some mentors and friends in Canada who knew, but I was the second close family member he’d come out to, and honestly, I felt so privileged. It confirmed again to me that I was the type of person people liked to confess to, because I was gracious. Because I tried to be loving and non-judgmental. (This only added to my living-in-the-sin of pride!)
We talked about his journey and how he basically believed at that time (or had been taught) that being gay was wrong and it was something he had to fight and cope with on a daily basis. It was a struggle. The struggle not to look at gay porn—burning porn at all sorts of men’s retreats. The struggle not to have an affair with a man; not to “lust” for men’s bodies. He was very honest and I felt very proud of him for fighting that fight. I read a testimony he wrote about his struggles and I felt sorry for him for having such a difficult internal battle, but I don’t think I could comprehend—as a female acceptably attracted to men—how much of a struggle it would be for any gay guy to try to live as a straight man, especially in the throes of Evangelical Christianity.
A couple of months after I returned home from Canada, my grandfather, Shane’s father, who was the retired Church of God Pastor, had a heart-attack and remained in a coma, on life-support, for about a week. During that week, Uncle Shane and his family flew to Australia to say goodbye and attend the funeral. That is when Uncle Shane came out to my mother, his sister. She, like me, loved and supported him. Family comes first. What I think we all assumed was that the “temptation” of “same-sex-attraction” wasn’t any worse than any of our temptations and he was very clearly on the “straight” path, married to a woman.
During this family reunion at the end of my grandfather’s life in 2005, I heard murmurings that Shane’s younger brother, Uncle Tommy—also married to a woman and also the father of three children—might be gay as well. I remember overhearing a conversation between two of my aunts—Shane and Tommy’s wives—about what it was like to be married to men who aren’t exactly straight.
In my twenties I believed that the best approach to the LGBTIQA+ community was love, grace and acceptance. Did I want my uncles to stay in their marriages and keep fighting against lust and learning to be straight… probably. Because that’s what we were taught was the right thing to do. I’ve never forgotten hearing these words during a sermon which I think was given by an Australian politician: “God created Adam and Eve; not Adam and Steve.” Protect the roles of men as the head of the family. This role was perhaps a little blurry in my mind, since my aunt was a female pastor and the Church of God that I had spent many years in, seemed quite affirming of women from my perspective. I’ll never forget the sentiments spoken by the matriarch in My Big Fat Greek Wedding: “The man is the head but the woman is the neck, and she can turn the head any way she wants.” I saw my own parents’ marriage as the mutual submission of a Christian husband and wife in which my mother definitely came across to me as the neck that turned the head. The Pentecostal youth group I attended in affiliation with my Christian school, also had female leaders preaching to male and female youth, so the concept that women should be silent in churches was completely lost on me.
When I discovered that my fellow students at Bible-college still debated whether men and women were purposed by God for different roles, I could see how that might be true. Men were, on average, physically stronger than women; and women were capable of conceiving and breast-feeding babies—something people of the male gender usually cannot do (with the exception of Arnold Schwartzenegger, of course). So, while I believed that women and men were equal and that all women should be allowed the opportunity to work at any job they so desired without discrimination—including pastoring and leading a church—I fell in with some other gender norms. Unfortunately, I loved the book Why Men Don’t Listen and Women Can’t Read Maps. My husband says I’m directionally challenged—and I am, as evidenced by me pointing straight up to the sky as north—but we both agree that we struggle to listen and communicate well.
What, you might ask, do these ideas about gender have to do with my journey toward an evolving queer-affirmation? Well, at some point, I started to understand that a person could be born both genders, with both male and female genitalia. I heard stories of parents who decided what gender their baby would grow into, and put that baby through surgery in order to choose that gender. I think we do things like that because we are threatened by blurry lines around gender and sexuality in a world that, until the last century or so, had strict gender norms that still result in books marketed and sold to people like me who fall hook, line and sinker into some middle grey area that is unfortunately closer to the old way of being than the new.
I have found myself discriminating against women without realizing that I was discriminating against my own gender. And in turn I discriminated against people who are gender fluid, transexual, asexual or any other term I may not be aware of, without realizing it. So I discriminated against the LGBTIQA+ community because I was taught that not all gender identities or sexual orientations are equal. I was taught a racist, patriarchal hierarchy. Straight, white men are at the top of the food chain. Far above black men and queer men, and even above white women. But white women are second on the food chain. And Uncle Tommy says that at the bottom of the food chain (in Western society) are black, indigenous and especially immigrant transgender women. Only, this is not the way things should be.
I was inadvertently taught elements of racism, sexism and homophobia before I knew the meanings of the terms. Sometimes in books. Sometimes from Christians who attended racist, sexist and/or homophobic churches. Sometimes from my society where women are still paid less than men and people throw around broad-sweeping generalizations about other nationalities and cultures. Sometimes on the television and in movies with predominantly white casts and token Black or Asian characters.
Meanwhile, my uncles were both coming to their own conclusions about these matters. Reading books and having to reconcile their upbringing under a Church of God pastor who, while at least trying to affirm women in leadership, did not affirm queer identification. He actively protested the Madi Gras. Both of my uncles divorced their wives and one of my uncles began attending a queer-affirming church. I didn’t even know that this type of church existed but I remember telling my gay friend from my younger years in the hopes that he might visit it with me. Unfortunately, we eventually lost contact for the most part, but I will always think of him fondly. He had a special impact on my formation as a human being.
I also have to say, I am so relieved and grateful that neither of my queer uncles committed suicide. Uncle Tommy tried… twice. And it breaks my heart just to think about that. Thankfully, not only did he not succeed, but he has also come to a happy and healthy place with no need or desire to make the pain of life end. Uncle Shane and Uncle Tommy worked through their identities. I heard the story of a man in his thirties or forties—who happened to be the uncle of some of my piano students and also a friend of Uncle Shane’s—who was queer and committed suicide. He was diagnosed with a mental illness and I do not know what that illness was or whether it had a direct relation to being queer, but I do suspect that being queer and experiencing discrimination in our world likely made his mental illness worse. Tragically, he took his own life, as is too often the case. You will never be forgotten, David Godwin. And so, my journey is intertwined and influenced by other people’s lives and stories, and this is the way it should be.
I attended my uncle’s queer-affirming church now and then, but I was going through my own spiritual shifts at the time—grieving the death of my mother in 2011, deconstructing hell and losing a ton of friends I never really expected to lose. I was quite happy attending a small home-based church that preached a powerful grace message. Actually, I became a dogmatic universalist. But interestingly, I still erred on the side of caution. I would still say “I don’t know if being gay is a sin, but if it is a sin, it isn’t any worse than any other sin.” And so, I would preach love and grace toward queer people while planting my bottom squarely on the fence. I recognized that my own uncles had tried to live straight lives for years and follow White-Evangelical-Christian rules, but had found this to be contrary to their very identities. I would sometimes share this with other people, but I mostly wanted my opinions about queer relationships to be my own and not just because I have queer uncles.
However, I cannot deny and do not want to deny that my journey is influenced by my uncles’ journeys. Because that means it is influenced by real LGBTIQA+ people and their experiences. We cannot move forward as Christians without considering the actual experiences of real people—especially those who love God even after being told by so many Christians that being queer is a sin, and maybe even being told that it is so sinful they shouldn’t identify as Christian. My uncles recognized their own attractions to the same gender or to all genders from early ages. Their development was not significantly different to that of a straight person’s sexual development, except that they were told their attractions were sinful and socially unacceptable, and straight people are told that their attractions are normal and socially acceptable.
Why are straight relationships acceptable, but queer relationships are not? Is it because of a handful of verses in the Bible that have been interpreted and translated as queer-condemning? Did you know that biblical translators have to guess the definitions of the words they translate? They guess them based on other writings, other translators and translations, what they know of the original language and how many options there might be for the translation of a word. They also guess based on their interpretation of the entire passage, similar passages, similar words used, cultural contexts, and what they think the author of the passage is trying to portray. The do not and cannot translate literally, because then we would have sentences like: God love he/she/it is. And we would be left to decide whether that verse means God is love, or, love is God, and whether or not we are going to use masculine or feminine pronouns. Best the translators decide… right?
In 2015, I wrote a blog about why I was not against gay marriage, and I went into elaborate detail about my interpretation of Biblical passages based on things I have read and learned over the years. Yes, I do have a degree in theology, and I did in fact study Greek and Hebrew very briefly, but to be honest I’ve forgotten most of that now. I am no Greek scholar. Still, I hope you will read my previous blog and open your mind to different interpretations of Biblical passages that are used as weapons against the queer community. By that time, I had jumped down from the fence, just onto the side of being fully queer-affirming and not against gay marriage. But my pastor still believed it was a sin. Pretty soon, my little home church ceased to exist because of busyness and other priorities, and I stopped going to church for a year or two while I had young baby in 2018. A baby who was born… different.
At the back of my mind, I was still chewing on the idea that being gay is not a choice. That was clear from my uncles’ lives. Queer people are born with queer affinities. Some people are born with both genitalia. Some are born without fully formed genitalia. My daughter was born with a cleft lip and palate—her lip and mouth were not fully formed. Is her cleftie-ness a sin? No. Did we have her clefts repaired? Yes, we did. So that she could eat and speak. I also had her ears pierced and put her in dresses (which she loves by the way), and played into some gender norms that probably disrupted my relationships with my queer family members. But if either of my daughters tell me that she is a boy, or that she is a lesbian, or that she is gender fluid and bi-sexual, I will embrace them. And hopefully I will learn from my parenting mistakes and the ways I have succumbed to a racist, sexist and homophobic western society. One thing I will never do, is hide from my eldest daughter the fact that she was born with clefts. She was born different from what we call normal. And I love that about her.
I was taught that men and women are equal, but I witnessed both sexism and feminism in the world around me. And I have copied that. I was also taught that racism was a sin and that Australia is a multicultural country, but I was not actively anti-racist, nor did I always recognize racism when I encountered it. Isn’t it strange that while I was taught a more progressive view of sexism and racism—that they are wrong—I was taught the opposite about queer people? I have since discovered that racism, sexism and homophobia really all come from the same place. It’s the same argument repeating in a different sphere. Are we going to discriminate or are we going to love? Are we all equal or are some people inferior to other people? Unfortunately, racism, sexism and homophobia are all deeply imbedded in white-evangelicalism and I highly recommend reading “Jesus and John Wayne” by Kristen Kobes Du Mez if you want proof.
What if all the genders are equal? And all the sexual preferences? What if they have far more to do with the way a person is born than with the society around them? More to do with nature than nurture? What if it wasn’t because of some childhood sin, or a history of trauma, that my uncles identify as gay, or bi-sexual, or queer? What if we are all born and designed and created to be exactly the way we are? What if no-one is superior or inferior to any other person on planet earth, who is also born exactly the way they are?
In 2015 queer marriage became legal in the United States. In 2017 it became legal in Australia after the general public voted in a plebiscite with a landslide 61.6% in the affirmative. In May 2021 Uncle Tommy married Uncless Archie (Uncless being the term my cousin came up with, combining Countess and Uncle), and in April 2022, Uncle Shane married Uncle Vince. So I now have 4 queer uncles and I love them all dearly. Do I understand everything about their journeys or affirm them perfectly? No, I’m not perfect and I’ve lived a pretty straight life, so I will probably never truly understand what it is like to identify as queer in our world. I am still inching further away from that fence-line. You know—the racist, sexist and homophobic fence-line that so many of us are taught. I no longer attend (for more than a visit here or there) churches that are racist, sexist or homophobic. The last two churches I’ve attended with regularity have female pastors, one of whom is African American.
I have been queer affirming for years, but for a time I figured that whether or not it was a sin to be queer was a moot point. We are all sinners saved by grace. However, now, I no longer err on the side of caution and I cannot believe that it is a sin to be queer. I believe that most people who identify in the LGBTIQA+ community were born and designed and created by God to be this way. Are there some circumstances under which being queer may result from trauma… perhaps. But is that any different than saying that some people’s seeming heterosexuality might result from trauma or from social manipulation?
If you take a good look at the history of discrimination in our world, you will see that human beings have a proclivity to call the majority or the most powerful “normal,” and “good,” while the minority is labelled “sinful,” or other, or unacceptable, or abnormal… or queer. Left-handed people have been discriminated against by right-handed people. White-Americans have discriminated against African-Americans and Indigenous-Americans. White-Australians have discriminated against Indigenous-Australians. Men have discriminated against women. Heterosexuals have discriminated against homosexuals. But there is nothing innately sinful about my being left-handed or female. There is nothing sinful about being born with dark skin over light skin—hell, Jesus himself wasn’t white. And there is nothing sinful about my uncles identifying as queer and being attracted to, well, anyone.
I recently read a book called “Christian Sex Today,” in which zoologist, Jason John, explains that homosexual species have actually been around longer than heterosexual species. This in itself makes a case for the reversal of discrimination, it is actually heterosexual species that are newer, fewer, less common and less-or-ab-normal. So I cannot believe it is a sin, a mistake, a problem, or unhealthy to be “queer.”
I believe that society as a whole is coming and will come to this conclusion, just as we have been and are becoming actively anti-racist, less discriminatory and more affirming of diversity. I believe this is the direction the Spirit of God is leading. I believe it was always the over-arching trajectory of the Bible: tearing down discrimination and standing for the equal rights of all—and when I say all, I am including more than just the human species. We are waking up to global warming and the fact that everything we do as humans impacts the world around us, just as it has formed and impacted us for millennia. We are all intertwined. We are one living, breathing, expanding organism. We are not actually divided and we are to tear down division. I love the verse in Galatians that says “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” This needs to be and is and should be the ultimate claim of Christianity. Here is my translation: “There is neither Christian nor communist, black nor white, slave nor free, male nor female nor transgender nor asexual, queer nor straight, left-handed nor right-handed, for you are all ONE in Christ Jesus.” Amen
Leave a Reply