Love, David

“Am I going to cry at this movie?”

I asked one of my friends on our way in to Love, Simon. He and his husband had already seen it once, and were sort of evangelizing for the film. Honestly, if they hadn’t invited me to go along, I’d have probably skipped it.

Love, Simon tells the coming-out story of a typical American teenager, in a typical American town with typical friends and a typical family. In fact, that’s the major set-up. Everything is so normal about Simon’s life that coming out would up-end everything, despite the fact that his loved ones are just as tolerant and friendly as you could hope for.

I’m an old gay. Okay, I’m only 39. Heck, I’m an LA 39.

Still, part of my grumpy old self harrumphed at this whole set-up. A tall, attractive straight white man in his early 20s portrays a tall, attractive, upper-middle class white teenager who thinks it would just be the worst to have to come out to his accepting family and friends in the year 2018.

I didn’t want to be grumpy about this. Reviews had already been written about the movie asking if kids these days really needed to see a coming-out story. Aren’t they all liberated and stuff now? And as someone who came out late in life, who didn’t get to have his high school rally around him, I was kind of harboring the same sentiment.

Simple Question

Church Clarity offers a simple service—a list of churches, and whether or not they’re LGBT-affirming.

I’m beyond ecstatic that this website exists, and beyond angry that it has to exist.

Shortly before I moved to LA, my home church issued a position paper on homosexuality. It was not technically about that—rather, it was framed as a statement on marriage and gender roles—but seeing as how Obergefell v. Hodges had happened only weeks before, it was definitely about the gay stuff. Strangely, they really didn’t need to do it.

Their position on the subject was already in print, buried on page 20-something of a PDF in a rarely visited corner of the church website. I knew it was there, because I’d been on staff at one point and knew where we kept such things. I also knew what we believed anyway, because I’d been attending this now multi-campus megachurch ever since it was a few people in my pastor’s basement.

Mere days before I left town, I went out for drinks with one of my campus pastors, a guy I’d known since childhood who was basically my big brother figure. It was with him that I’d had some of my deepest conversations about what was going on with my sexuality, my depression, my faith, and a host of other things over the years. It was also with him that I’d agreed to step down from the Communion-serving team after admitting that I’d had a boyfriend.

He asked me what I thought about the position paper.

I told him that, obviously, I didn’t agree with it. But, if I did, it was exactly the way I would have worded it. The entire thing was about as clear-minded and compassionate as one can be when outlining a non-affirming theology.

“But you guys should have published it years ago.”

“That’s what my wife said.”

Finding the Future

“Where do you see yourself five years from now?”

Kind of a weird question to be asked outside of a job interview.

I was having dinner with my straight best friend, his fiancée, and our friend Joe. Like many a dinner with church friends, I had taken the conversation in that casual, post-meal intimacy as an opportunity to come out. The moment had been planned by my friend and me, since he wanted his soon-to-be-wife to get to know me and my story better, and he’d included Joe in the proceedings with my approval.

This was back when, for lack of a better term, I identified as Side-B, although I’d only just learned what the term was, and was still chewing it over.* Up till that point, I had more or less been living with the expectation that eventually I would grow out of my same-sex attractions, fall in love with some nice girl, and continue on with life like the other, normal Christians around me. I had never officially gone through any ex-gay therapy or treatment, but you could basically put me in that camp.

My story, as told to Christian friends till then, usually made a happy arc from my early 20s’ realization of my attractions to the present day, where I was working through my healing process to whatever heterosexual life God had intended for me.

My story that evening took a new twist, however, thanks to the stirrings caused by That Guy and a re-examining of my beliefs. I didn’t spell it all out for Joe and the others, because I hadn’t figured it all out yet, and I also knew if I really confessed where my mind was going with these new ideas, I’d probably get into trouble. It was enough to admit that I was now using “gay” to describe myself, instead of “struggling with same-sex attraction,” and that there was a robust theological debate going on amongst LGBT Christians that I had now entered.

I’d expected awkward questions about my theology, or my identity, or maybe an argument, but Joe’s business-like query snuck up on me. And I had no answer.

If he’d caught me a few months before, I’d have spoken more confidently, but by now everything had changed.

See, while you certainly risk losing your past—not just the physical home, but the ideological structure you were raised on—when you come out, another thing that I found myself missing was my future.

Not in the sense that I was suddenly cut off from opportunities or had my life threatened. Simply that where I thought I was going, the inevitable and predictable path of the life of a good Christian boy, was replaced with a new map. And that map was either blank, or full of tangled, multi-colored threads weaving in random directions that I could not interpret.

My New Favorite Podcast: Mission Log, a Roddenberry Star Trek Podcast

with Jon Champion and Ken Ray, produced by Roddenberry Entertainment

Thirty years ago, I stared at the picture on the back of a Cheerios box, wondering what the characters depicted there would sound and act like in their new show. That show was Star Trek: The Next Generation. It premiered 30 years ago today, in 1987, and changed sci-fi forever.

Holy shit, some fan kept that cereal box, because of course they did.

I re-watched TNG last year for Star Trek’s 50 Anniversary. Of course, I’d seen it many times, but hadn’t gone back to it in a while. I didn’t have any nearby nerd friends at the time to discuss it with, so I turned to podcasts and discovered Mission Log. Produced by Rod Roddenberry, son of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, and hosted by two old-school Star Trek fans (one of whom was up for the role of Wesley Crusher back in the day), Mission Log scratched my Star Trek itch just right.

Jon Champion and Ken Ray, the two smart and winsome hosts, discuss the series episode-by-episode and movie-by-movie. Jon introduces each show with an enthusiastic, well-researched deep dive into Trek trivia, with info even I haven’t heard about. With hundreds of episodes across five television series—and now six, thanks to Discovery, or seven if you count The Animated Series, which they do—this podcast thankfully has a guaranteed long life. Currently, Jon and Ken are about halfway through the last season of TNG, so they’ll be moving on to my favorite Trek, Deep Space Nine, very soon.

I marathoned my way through their Original Series coverage last summer, and found myself leaning more and more on the optimism, humanity, and hope the show represents, as our current timeline was taking a dark turn. Every Mission Log ends with Jon and Ken discussing the “morals, meanings, and messages” of the episode, and since Star Trek is all about messages, there’s always a lot to digest.

Three or Four Little Words

People say some nice things when you come out.

No, really.

When they’re trying to be supportive, the first thing they make sure you hear is, “I love you.” They want you to know that they don’t hate you, that they don’t harbor any homophobia like those protestors on the news. They don’t want to kick you out of the house or the church.

If they’re a guy at your church, they might say, “I respect you.” This is to assure you that they still value you as a man, that they don’t think less of your masculinity because you’re gay now. You’re still part of the brotherhood, just a slightly wonky one.

Those aren’t the only three words they say. Usually, there’s a “still” in there, too, implied or otherwise. You may have changed, or rather your identifier may have changed, but they have not. And whatever part of you they knew before this change, they still love and respect that.

Maybe not the new part, but the “you” that you’ve always been, the you that they perhaps hope you will return to being someday.

This is not to say that these aren’t nice things to hear, even necessary. I just never got out of them what I think the speakers meant for me to get, and for the longest time I couldn’t figure out why. I felt guilty that I couldn’t accept my loved ones’ kind words.

Until one day at counseling, I heard a new set of three words that had never been spoken to me in my life.

My New Favorite Podcast: “Out On The Lanai” with H. Alan Scott & Kerri Doherty

How in the heck did an 80s sitcom about old ladies suddenly experience a revival in popularity in the 2010s? How in the heck did a sitcom about old ladies get made in the first place?

All this and more are discussed in “Out On the Lanai,” my favorite Golden Girls podcast. Favorite, because it’s mostly the only one, and even if it weren’t, host H. Alan Scott describes it every week as: “The only Golden Girls podcast you’ll ever need to listen to.” Every week, he and co-host Kerri Doherty watch an episode of The Golden Girls and talk about it, sometimes with a guest, sometimes just the two of them, and they are never less than entertaining and enlightening.

Another good question about The Golden Girls is why it’s so popular amongst LGBT folk, particularly gay men. H. Alan and Kerri discuss this topic often, usually hitting on the answer that women, especially women of a certain age, are marginalized both in culture at large and in popular culture. Thus, the boldness with which the Girls live their lives and assert their vitality in the face of a society that wants to forget they exist resonates with the experiences of the LGBT community.

Also, the limitless amounts of sass.

Churchy Attendance

I can’t explain what I did this weekend.

I kept telling people I was going to a church event. Eventually, I added a “y” to make it a “churchy” event. Maybe church-ish, or church-like.

It was in a church. It was a gathering for a lot of people who might call themselves progressive, or post-evangelical, or deconstructionists, or simply questioning. It was certainly a lot of young white guys with beards. And like good Los Angelinos, we waited in line for it while chatting about where we’re originally from.

It was the closest I’ve come to church for several months, aside from a surprisingly enjoyable Grindr date this summer who invited me to check his out.

His church, I mean.

The date was enjoyable, not the church.

My New Favorite Podcast: Queery

(I’ve been a podcast lover for years, and now that I live in LA, I have even more time to catch up on them thanks to my commute. There are lots of new shows out there with interviews and subject matter for queer folks in general, and queer Christians in particular. Whatever show I happen to be listening to in the moment tends to be my favorite, and so I shall share My New Favorite Podcast with you every week.) 

Queery, with Cameron Esposito (produced by Feral Audio) 

The theme song for Queery is a catchy track called “Who We Are,” by A.W. 

“Let’s get lost, it can’t be too hard 

Take my hand, I’ll take you so far 

Let’s go find out who we are.”

I love that this song, and the show, celebrates the quest for personal identity. This drive runs the heart of many a queer person (or a “Queero,” if you will, the portmanteau of queer/hero that Carmen uses to address her listeners). We find ourselves pushing up against expected standards of what men and women should act and look like, and inventing new terms that fit us better than the ones we were given. 

These days, I’m one of those people that uses hashtags in their social media profile and makes sure to check people’s pronouns before addressing them. I wouldn’t have approved of this a few years ago, because I didn’t want to be that guy whose personal feelings overrode God’s plain and sensible definitions. But haven’t we Christians been pretty obsessive about our personal identifiers for, I don’t know, ever since we got started in Judea 2000+ years ago? 

At the time, we didn’t even identify as Christians, but as members of The Way. “Little Christs” was a pejorative term we were labeled with by other people, until we saw how nicely it worked if we used it for real. Since then, we’ve split up and renamed ourselves thousands of times. Some of us take offense at including the names of certain denominations under the term Christian. We rush to introduce ourselves as Christian-but-not-like-that, understanding the cultural context the name has for others. Some of us experiment with terms like Jesus-follower or disciple, to try to better name our experience. And we’re very careful to point out that our faith is a personal relationship with Jesus that no one else can define for us. 

We’ve been using a form of “This doesn’t feel right,” as an impetus to challenge the standards of our faith for centuries. 

If you want to hear people’s hearts on the matter of personal identity, Queery is a good place to start listening. Carmen headlines each episode with a quick disclaimer that the terms and identifiers used by her guests might not fit everyone who listens, and that’s good to keep in mind whether you’re a queer person trying to discern your pronouns, or a straight Christian who’s still puzzling out all these acronyms. And hey, she’s a comedian, so if you don’t like the subject matter, at least you’ll be entertained. 

Just My Type

Promise I’ll get to more actual gay stuff as this blog continues, but I figured I’d hop on the trendy new discussion of Christians’ recent love of personality tests.

Nerding out over personality types is a hobby of mine, because I love watching people figure themselves out. And I like figuring myself out. Whether you give a little or a lot of weight to it, I think they can help us understand why we tick the way we do, and to be more patient with others who tick differently than ourselves.

Good personality typing engenders empathy, in short. Nothing wrong with that.

Still, the old fundamentalist part of my brain has nagged at me at times for digging MBTI and other personality theories so much. I got into it around the same time that I was coming out, and I worried I was replacing my spiritual roots with a pseudoscience. Discovering that other queer Christians were into things like say, meditation or the Tarot, stoked the fires of my worry.

I’m not worried about it now (not even the Tarot), and I’ll explain why if you’ll allow me to fly my nerd flag for a bit.

Though I got hooked on MBTI a few years ago, Enneagram seems to be the test of choice these days for both progressive and traditionally Evangelical Christians. This is typical of my habit for picking the B-list of whatever is popular (my phone is an Android, my favorite Star Trek is DS9, my Hogwarts house is Hufflepuff). I’ve caught a nicely in-depth Enneagram discussion on The Liturgists podcast a while back, and columnist Jonathan Merritt just published a piece examining its recent popularity with Christians.

IT (2017): “We All Fight Down Here”

(An odd post to begin my new blog with, but strangely fitting. This and other film-related posts will be a spoiler-ful discussion. I’m not writing it as a review or recommendation, but as a dive into the thoughts and themes inspired by the experience. I’m also typing the name of “IT” the monster in all caps, to distinguish from the plain pronoun.)

IT (2017, directed by Andy Muschietti) 

Most horror movies bore me. My eight-year-old self would be flabbergasted to hear this, if he even could hear it, as he’d probably be wrapped under the covers at the mere sound of the words “horror movies.” More shocking to him would be the fact that I actually enjoyed getting scared at IT.

Modern day me is kinda surprised by that too, to tell you the truth. But modern day me is also surprised at how well this decades-old story represents a kind of evil of which eight-year-old me was blissfully unaware.

The effectiveness of IT compared to less interesting fiends lies in the very nature of the titular monster.

If I find myself sitting through one more haunted house movie where pleasant-but-secretly-troubled suburbanites wonder cluelessly about strange sounds for an hour-and-a-half until finally confronting a CGI ghost in the last five minutes, I will die and go haunt someone myself to show them how it’s done.

IT, however, isn’t about a ghost who spooks you with a few random acts of telekinesis.