In honor of Pride month, we wanted to create space to listen to faithful voices from the LGBTQ+ community and learn how their lived experiences contribute to our faith communities. This guest post is by one of our authors, Karen Keen (Scripture, Ethics, and the Possibility of Same-Sex Relationships and The Word of a Humble God)
Lament for Gay Children
Not many know the name Arthur Greeves. But he was C. S. Lewis’s oldest and best friend, a friendship forged in adolescence by a mutual love of Norse mythology. Arthur was gay, a fact well known to Jack (as C. S. Lewis’s friends called him). While Jack is famous today for being a theologian, it was young Arthur’s devout Christian faith that long withstood the barrage of Jack’s atheist objections to religion. When Jack finally became a follower of Jesus, Arthur wept with joy.1
During Pride month, many Christians will not picture a gay, teenage boy named Arthur who loved God and evangelized C. S. Lewis. If children or teenagers are thought of at all, it’s usually to express concern that LGBTQ people are a bad influence on youth. Being gay is considered an adult reality, as opposed to a child’s lived experience. Evangelical psychologist Mark Yarhouse, a professor at Wheaton College, notes that the average age Christian college students report experiencing same-sex attraction is 11 years old. This observation agrees with scientific studies showing that, on average, gay people become aware of their attraction to the same sex around the age of ten. Puberty brings to light biological factors that shaped a baby’s sexual orientation in the womb (for example a pregnant mother’s antibodies to male fetal proteins).
My own awareness of difference surfaced long before puberty. Even in elementary school, I could tell I was not the same as other girls. While my sister loved fixing her dolls’ hair, I preferred action figures and dirt-clod fights. My sister relished learning about makeup from our mom, while I stood by baffled. Dresses and makeup gave me the same sensation as putting on a Halloween costume. My discomfort wasn’t simply exposure to gender stereotypes. It was more than that. I was, in fact, different. Years later, I learned that gay people display higher rates of gender atypical interests and traits in early childhood, well before puberty, suggesting a biological component to a same-sex orientation.
Puberty revealed still more ways I stood apart from my female peers. They were infatuated with the opposite sex; I was not. My bedroom wall had no posters of boy bands or actors, just a poster of Amy Grant in her leopard print blazer that I jubilantly purchased during her Unguarded tour. When I had my first real boy kiss at 15, during a summer mission trip, I thought, is this all there is? Despite being fond of the boy, I felt nothing. In contrast, a year later, I suddenly had a strong urge to kiss my female friend after school one day. Confused, I suppressed the urge and told no one. I didn’t understand why I was always heartsick over some girl and never a boy. By 18, I found the courage to write a few cryptic sentences in my journal acknowledging the truth. But the admission was terrifying. It sparked a decade of turmoil, including several years in ex-gay ministry trying, unsuccessfully, to change my sexual orientation.
As a child, I didn’t have anyone to help me sort this all out. Even as a young adult in my 20s, the Christian leaders I confided in were awkward in their attempts to encourage me. They simply didn’t know what to do, other than to tell me to “keep pursuing Christ,” which meant, “Don’t date a woman.” Since God was (and is) my everything, I joined the celibate gay movement for a decade after my ex-gay days. I threw myself into ministry, expecting to live the rest of my life single. That, in turn, led me to several years of graduate work in biblical studies, where I came to realize that the Bible does not consign me and other gay people to life-long celibacy. (I recount that theological journey in my first book, Scripture, Ethics, and the Possibility of Same-Sex Relationships).
The old myth of adults recruiting children into the “gay lifestyle” still circulates today. But like Arthur Greeves, I was a gay child, and one who deeply loved Jesus. Nobody recruited me into anything. Puberty revealed what Arthur and I had always been, and all we wanted was an opportunity to grow up, fall in love, and make a home with someone. Instead, our lives were disrupted by the aversion that our communities felt toward our difference. In his book, Unclean, Christian professor, Richard Beck, writes about the psychology of disgust and its impact on the church. Often disgust, rather than reason, can form the basis for our arguments in opposition to something.
“The phenomenon of moral dumbfounding is of interest to psychologists because it suggests that in many cases, affect is prior to reason when we make normative judgments . . . We feel something is wrong and then go in search for rational warrants. And we are often so effective in marshalling those warrants that our success often leads us to think that the warrants created the initial normative judgment” (p. 63).
After several years of teaching a biblical understanding of sexual ethics, I have come to realize Scripture is not the primary obstacle to evangelical acceptance of my marriage to a woman. Good biblical interpretation does, in fact, provide a sound case for allowing gay couples to marry. But, when it comes down to it, many who object on “biblical grounds” are simply uncomfortable with that which differs from the norm. Seeing two people of the same sex together feels uncomfortable. Biblical arguments can become a cover for an underlying disgust at same sex relationships. Nowhere is this more blatantly stated than in a disturbing Gospel Coalition article entitled “The Importance of Your Gag Reflex When Discussing Homosexuality and ‘Gay Marriage.’”.
The ten-year-old kid in the pew, waking up to his attraction to the same-sex, is keenly aware of this gag reflex. He knows he is different, and he knows how you feel about it. He knows if you think his crushes on other boys and his budding desires are perverse. And there’s nothing quite so devastating as being the object of other people’s disgust. It can break your soul. So, yes, we need to protect the children. We need to save them. But the place to start is with fighting propaganda caricaturing LGBTQ people as lewd, devious people. The truth is much more mundane and tender—a young boy or girl simply trying to survive an atypical puberty, a child who just wants the same life joys and milestones as everyone else, even if it looks a little different.
If you are a parent or work with children and teenagers, consider these helpful resources:
Rob and Linda Robertson, “Just because He Breathes.” The Robertsons are evangelical parents whose twelve-year-old son came out to them. It’s a heartbreaking, but powerful story.
CenterPeace. A Christian non–profit organization, offers small, supportive weekend retreats for parents of LGBTQ children (including adult children). The next retreat is October 6–8 in Arkansas.
Embracing the Journey. An organization founded by parents of a gay son, is hosting a large Christian conference this fall.
Staci Frenes, a Christian singer and songwriter, writes about coming to terms with her daughter’s sexual orientation in the book Love Makes Room: And Other Things I Learned When My Daughter Came Out
If you want to learn more about the Bible and how to best interpret it, see my new book, The Word of a Humble God: The Origins, Inspiration, and Interpretation of Scripture.
1 Walter Hooper, ed. They Stand Together: The Letters of C. S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves (1914-1963) (New York: Macmillan, 1979), 25-26.
