Human Sexuality - “Gay and Catholic” with Eve Tushnet
The views and opinions expressed in this podcast do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the hosts, The Weight Podcast, or Oxford University United Methodist Church.
Shownotes:
Many believe that the Church’s traditional teachings on marriage condemn LGBTQ+ Christians to a life without love. How can we broaden our view of same-sex love, kinship, and commitment? Eddie and Chris are joined by Eve Tushnet, author of Gay and Catholic: Accepting My Sexuality, Finding Community, Living My Faith and Amends: A Novel. Eve identifies as an openly lesbian woman who has chosen a life of celibacy within the Catholic Church, and for some, her story may seem like a contradiction. Faithful to historical Catholic tradition, Eve writes primarily for gay Christians and anyone who wants to make the churches more welcoming for gay and lesbian members. In this episode, she discusses the harm the church has caused to LGBTQ+ Christians, what we learn from scripture regarding same-sex friendship, and healthy approaches for creating inclusive environments within the church.
Series Info:
In March 2020, we started this podcast with the intention of introducing a larger conversation about human sexuality, a central area of division and disagreement in our particular denomination. We’ve decided to come back to that conversation, to explore the church’s relationship to the LGBTQ+ community in light of the various perspectives within the body of Christ. Our context places us at an interesting intersection of the conversation: we’re pastors in a college town, with a lot of progressive folks on a whole range of topics, and we’re pastors in Mississippi, a conservative state, with a lot of folks who think of themselves as conservative on a whole range of topics.
In this series, we hope to honor the weight of a wide range of experiences and perspectives. You will hear from church leaders who have vastly different angles on this cultural moment, on the church’s mission, and how the church should think about biblical authority and interpretation. You will also hear from several people within the LGBTQ+ community, those who are deeply committed to the church and those who have felt like the church’s witness often leaves them feeling on the outside.
We invite you to consider the weight of another person’s concerns, maybe someone with whom you deeply disagree, but to do so in a way that honors their humanity, their story, and their convictions. We make no attempt to be exhaustive or comprehensive. Our aim is not to persuade you on which side to take on this issue. Many of you already know what you believe, and nothing said on this podcast will change your mind. What we want to do is help you better understand both your own views and the views of those you may disagree with.
Resources:
Order Eve Tushnet’s book Gay and Catholic here.
I'm Gay, but I'm Not Switching to a Church That Supports Gay Marriage
Read Eve Tushnet’s articles in America Magazine here:
https://www.americamagazine.org/voices/eve-tushnet
Check out Guiding Families of LGBT+ Loved Ones here.
Follow Eve Tushnet on Twitter:
Full Transcript:
Eddie Rester 0:00
I'm Eddie Rester.
Chris McAlilly 0:01
I'm Chris McAlilly.
Eddie Rester 0:02
Welcome to The Weight.
Chris McAlilly 0:03
Today we are continuing a conversation about human sexuality. This has been a bit of a miniseries for us and one that we know is a particularly poignant one and one where there's a lot of disagreement about how the church should relate in this particular cultural moment to the LGBTQ community. We're having a range of conversations.
Eddie Rester 0:27
And it's an important range of conversations. What we want to present is not something that you have to agree with each and every episode. But what we hope you'll do is engage with it. Listen to it. Our goal is not to fight with folks on the podcast. Our goal is not to present something that says this is what anyone has to believe. Our goal has always been to open up the conversation for folks.
Chris McAlilly 0:54
Yeah, the podcast is called The Weight. And what we hope that you can do in hearing these stories and hearing these testimonies is to honor the weight of somebody else's convictions, especially if that person's convictions are different than your own. And, you know, we don't assume that we're going to change anybody's mind or that your mind is going to be changed. In fact, we know that you probably have your convictions, just as everybody does. But we hope that you'll maybe learn something new or have kind of more better awareness or understand for your own views or the views of somebody else.
Eddie Rester 1:29
A depth of understanding what you believe, or a view of "this is what someone else believes." And I believe that can be helpful for us in the conversations that we need to have with one another inside the church and outside the church. And don't forget that for this series our release schedule is Monday and Thursday as kind of a miniseries. We want to get more voices in each week. So listen for us on Mondays. Watch for us on Mondays and Thursdays.
Chris McAlilly 1:57
Thanks for being with us on The Weight. Like it, share it, and let us know what you think, if we're missing something. We know it's not exhaustive, but if we're missing something, let us know we'll come back to this conversation.
Chris McAlilly 2:06
[INTRO] We started this podcast out of frustration with the tone of American Christianity.
Eddie Rester 2:12
There are some topics too heavy for sermons and sound bites.
Chris McAlilly 2:16
We wanted to create a space with a bit more recognition of the difficulty, nuance, and complexity of cultural issues.
Eddie Rester 2:23
If you've given up on the church, we want to give you a place to encounter a fresh perspective on the wisdom of the Christian tradition in our conversations about politics, race, sexuality, art, and mental health.
Chris McAlilly 2:35
If you're a Christian seeking a better way to talk about the important issues of the day, with more humility, charity, and intellectual honesty, that grapples with Scripture and the church's tradition in a way that doesn't dismiss people out of hand, you're in the right place.
Eddie Rester 2:50
Welcome to The Weight. [END INTRO]
Eddie Rester 2:53
Well, today, we're thankful to be with Eve Tushnet, who's with us from Washington, DC. She is a writer, has a book coming out later this year. We'll talk about that in just a few minutes. Eve, welcome to the podcast today.
Eve Tushnet 3:06
Hello, thank you very much for having me on here.
Chris McAlilly 3:09
In our research, we found that you are, in addition to being a writer and writing in Christian conversations and spaces, you also review horror movies. Is that right?
Eve Tushnet 3:19
Yes.
Chris McAlilly 3:21
That puts you... Eddie, do you watch horror films? I haven't had this conversation with you.
Eddie Rester 3:25
I'm not a big horror movie guy. I tried to watch some of the Freddy Krueger stuff back in the 80s and realized that I'm more of a Star Wars guy.
Chris McAlilly 3:32
How did you get into that, Eve?
Eve Tushnet 3:35
I did a lot of book and arts reviewing in general, and it just happens that a lot of what I enjoy watching is horror. And once you've watched a bunch of it, you have things to say about how any individual thing relates to the other parts of the other movies that have come before it. So it was something that was relatively easy for me to write about.
Eddie Rester 3:57
So are there movies that have come out in the last two or three years that you would say, "Eddie, I know you're not necessarily a fan, but you might you might try these, just in terms of good movies?"
Eve Tushnet 4:09
Well, in terms of like just good movies, I think "The Babadook" really pleased a lot of people and was moving to a lot of people who hadn't expected to like a horror movie, since it's really more a sort of allegorical or symbolic exploration of grief. And I will say "The Witch" if you are at all interested in theology, I think "The Witch" is both an incredibly good horror movie--scary, sad, stark--and it's also based pretty directly and clearly on actual testimony from, I think, 17th century witch trials. So it gets very deep into what people actually believe in and takes it completely seriously. It's a sad movie. It's a hard movie for a Christian to watch, I think, because it gets into some of the kind of anguish questions that this Christian family has as they're kind of being taken apart by possibly a witch.
Chris McAlilly 5:09
Wow. That's really interesting. I hope that at the end of this conversation, you don't feel like talking with Eddie was a horror show, but it may be that.
Eddie Rester 5:20
You worked real hard at that one.
Chris McAlilly 5:21
I know. It was right up on a tee and I just wanted to take a swing at it. Sorry.
Eddie Rester 5:25
Well, Eve, we want to talk to you today as part of our series of exploring human sexuality, its relationship to the church and you are, you identify as an openly lesbian woman who has chosen a life of celibacy within the Catholic Church. We want to kind of pull that apart. So tell us, because I know a lot of our listeners won't know who you are, won't know your story. Tell us your story.
Eve Tushnet 5:49
Yeah, so I was not raised Christian. I was raised pretty much secular reformed Jewish, you know, very progressive family, progressive environment, which meant that when I began to realize that I was gay, it was not sort of a huge trauma. It was basically a good experience. My parents were very accepting. My best friend, who was also gay, and I started the Gay Straight Alliance at our high school. And I was pretty, you know, I think, self-accepting in that. And then, when I came to college is when I, for the first time, met Christians who could talk to me about their faith in terms that I could understand.
Eve Tushnet 6:37
Obviously, like, throughout my life, people had tried to share their faith with me, but for various reasons, it kind of had not resonated at all. Whereas the people that I was meeting in college were talking about things that I found really fascinating, moving, that had clearly been personal to them. And it caused for some of them rifts in their family, since a lot of them were also converts. They had really kind of struggled, you know, as young people, to accept this truth. And they were able to share it with me in a way that I've... in a way that really didn't single me out. A thing that I really appreciated in retrospect, hearing other people's experiences, was that they just talked to me about the things in their faith that were important to them. They talked to me about the incarnation, the crucifixion, the resurrection, the Eucharist.
Eve Tushnet 7:30
They didn't try to do the well-meaning Christian thing of, "Oh, I see that you're a lesbian. Let me tell you what Jesus thinks about lesbians." It was much more like, "We're going to talk to you about the things that are most important to us, which is Jesus." And I became increasingly kind of enthralled. It really felt a lot like falling in love. I took a class on the history of Christian doctrine. I started reading theology, trying to understand this stuff. I began asking more questions. And I asked them about the church's teaching--most of them were Catholic--on sexual ethics, because it really was, for me, probably one of the biggest barriers to imagining myself ever being an actual, real, practicing Christian.
Eve Tushnet 8:27
I got a fair range of answers, some of which were beautiful, but not actually convincing for why the church did not have gay marriages, why we wouldn't even have thought in these terms. This was 1998, 1997. So it would have been more like, why doesn't the church accept gay relationships? And so, some of the answers were beautiful in their way, but not actually convincing. Some of the answers were quite bad. The story that I always tell is the priest that I talked to about this, who tried to explain it and it kind of, 'Well, you know, when a man and a woman come together, the parts fit together really well. It's really good. When two people the same sex come together, like if two women are trying to have sex, the parts just don't really fit together. It's like, if you try to open a door, but the doorknob is wrapped in barbed wire."
Eddie Rester 9:26
This was the answer you got?
Eve Tushnet 9:28
I looked at him like... I couldn't be like, "But, Father. No, it's not." But that was... That was not helpful.
Chris McAlilly 9:40
I guess it was not helpful. My goodness. Yeah. I wonder, where did you come across more helpful answers?
Eve Tushnet 9:47
Well, to be honest, I mean, it depends on what you mean. If it's like have I found a kind of natural law, start to finish, this is why scripture is the way that it is answer, I really haven't found one that I find particularly convincing. That would convince me if I didn't already accept the authority of scripture and the authority of the church as an interpreter of scripture. I will say over time, I came to see that there is a pattern in scripture, which is more than just a couple isolated verses, but a pattern in which same-sex sexual activity is prohibited. You can't find the Bible having a good word to say about it really. Whereas same sex love, the love and devotion and commitment between two people of the same sex is actually held up as a model for us several times.
Eve Tushnet 10:43
We see in the scriptures presentation of the covenant between David and Jonathan, the promises of Ruth and Naomi, and then the deep intimacy between Jesus and John which allows Jesus to give his mother Mary into John's care from the cross when he says, "Woman, behold your son. Son, behold your mother." These are images of love between two people of the same sex, which brings them into a family, into kinship with one another, which has consequences even beyond their death, which has deep resonance in our spiritual lives. And they're not sexual or marital relationships.
Eve Tushnet 11:22
But unlike in our contemporary culture, the Bible doesn't restrict intimacy, commitment, covenant devotion, love, solely to sexual or marital relationships. It actually has a wider vision of love that includes these stories of two men or two women and their devotion to one another. So that, I mean, I think that pattern is something that you can see, just from reading scripture. Although I didn't, I needed people to point it out to me and help me to see it because it was so foreign to the way that our society thinks about and divides up sex and relationships and intimacy and commitment. But that's the best I can do. If you want an answer to like, "Well, why is scripture like that?" I don't really know.
Chris McAlilly 12:10
Right. I wonder, you've written in not just Christian or Catholic spaces, but you've also written a really fascinating article from several years back in the Atlantic and some secular spaces. How has your writing been received? I think particularly for secular, progressive audiences, what do you think they get right about your perspective? And what do you think are some misconceptions?
Eve Tushnet 12:35
Yeah, well, I think one of the things that, in general, gay Christians who are pursuing what you might call a traditional or historic sexual ethic give to secular spaces that people there are really excited about is a broader vision of kinship and commitment, and how we love one another, because we're not planning to marry. And because we're not called to religious life as a priest, or a nun, or a friar, what have you, most of us. We've had to explore other paths of shaping your life around loving relationships. And this is actually something that tons of secular people are really interested in. They, too, have felt that there's something lacking in a world where marriage and romance and sex are kind of the only way to make deep, lifelong bonds. Parenting, that used to be the other one.
Eve Tushnet 13:31
But they, too, have felt like but what if that's not enough? What if even we, as spouses or parents, need the deep support of friends, need community? And what if, what if we're not called to spend our lives in marriage? Or as parents? What if that doesn't happen for us for whatever reason? Does that mean that our lives are just barren and isolated? And so when you say actually, Christian history has models for how you can shape your life and weave a web of kinship that is broader, and that includes friendship through God parenthood, through community life, including living in community and through lifelong devoted friendship. A lot of people will say, "This actually sounds like a response to a need that I have even though I'm, you know, a progressive, Unitarian, what have you."
Chris McAlilly 14:23
On the flip side, I wonder kind of what you see. I mean, because you're writing explicitly as a Catholic, and you talk a lot about kind of the Catholic interpretation of scripture. What do you see from the conservative end of the spectrum, perhaps, ways in which conservative Protestant or evangelical or fundamentalist readings of scripture differ from the Catholic church or maybe some misconceptions that you see from the conservative side of who you are and your particular perspective?
Eve Tushnet 14:56
Yeah. I should, I'm not going to try I set myself up as somebody who knows a lot, to be honest, about Protestant stuff, including Protestant readings of scripture. My impression is that one of the biggest divides is really about the view of celibacy. That came up in the Reformation. That was one of the issues that I think Luther, especially, really raised with the Catholic Church. And it seems to me in some ways, you know, American Catholics have almost accepted the idea that marriage is better or kind of real love and that the height of emotional intimacy can only be had in a marital relationship, which is not what we find in Scripture. And it's not the tradition of the Catholic Church, in which celibacy is presented as not an isolation or a barrenness or it's not like lack of sex. Lots of people are currently not having sex. Celibacy is an arena of love. It's a way to free you to love other people around you.
Eve Tushnet 16:13
And also, as St. Paul says, it opens you up in a special way that I think we don't understand very well, to intimacy with God. I, for a long time, sort of like accepted that this was probably true for some people, but didn't really perceive it in my own life. And I think slowly, I am starting to feel like I'm not just sort of unmarried and kind of hanging out there with my friends, but celibate in the sense of attempting to devote my body and my spirit to God through renunciation of sex and marriage. And that's a tradition and a practice in the church, which for millennia, right, was exalted. And which I think we're ultimately going to have to rediscover, if we want to serve anybody well who is not going to fit into the kind of nuclear family/romance movie model.
Eddie Rester 17:16
As you have that conversation, I'm thinking, one of the things that I see is that people are marrying much later. And so this idea of kinship and friendship and holy friendship, really, I think it deserves a significant conversation in our cultural moment, for a lot of different reasons.
Eddie Rester 17:41
One thing I want to kind of dig into is, as a faithful Catholic--I was raised Catholic, family back to when the earth cooled, Roman Catholic--one of the things I remember, my grandmother, in South Louisiana.
Chris McAlilly 17:59
This was Mawsy.
Eddie Rester 17:59
This was Mawys. Mawsy and Pawsy. They didn't always agree with everything in the Catholic Church, particularly when the Catholic Church moved away from the Latin mass, Mawsy got very furious. Talk a little bit about, I mean, your understanding of celibacy fits, I think, beautifully within a lot of the theological heritage of the Catholic Church. But also, you don't, in other ways fit within the theological understanding of the Roman Catholic Church. So how do you stay Catholic in there?
Eve Tushnet 18:37
Sure. Oh, also, I think that I am orthodox, you know, I try. I don't try to color outside the lines. I think that everything that I'm saying is pretty well, actually, within the bounds of Catholic teaching. I'm exploring areas that have not been explored a lot recently, but in terms of what are the possible models for same sex love? What are the purpose of these longings and yearnings that we've been given? If it's not gay marriage, what is it? But I'm drawing on history and tradition that were practiced in Catholic societies, by people who were, if you had told them, "Oh, you're doing something weird. That's not really Christian," they would have looked at you like you had three heads. So partly, I'm just trying to accept the whole thing, everything that the church presents as her teaching, even though, because of ways that our culture--our culture always distorts our perception of both God, obviously, and also the church's teaching in scripture. And I'm trying a little bit to kind of unwarped that lens and see things that may be harder to see for us as 21st century Americans, but they're really there in scripture and in Catholic teaching. So that's part of it.
Eve Tushnet 19:57
And I guess the other thing is just, why does that matter to you? Right? Like, why does it matter if the stuff that you're saying is the stuff that the Church teaches or in harmony with church teaching? And it matters to me, basically, because--and I think this may be easier for converts, honestly. I came into the church because I trusted her, not because I trusted pretty good priests or I thought Catholics in general were unusually trustworthy. I think that was not particularly credible to me in the 1990s, and has only become less credible, as we've, I think, thank god, uncovered a lot of the evils that have been done by Catholics, both recently and historically.
Eve Tushnet 20:38
It was not because I thought they were good people. It was because I genuinely believed that the church is the bride of Christ, and our mother and our teacher. She feeds us with the Eucharist. She nourishes us with the Eucharist. And she guides us with her teaching. She gives us Jesus as the bread of life and also Jesus the way. When he says, "I'm the way, the truth, and the life," we discover that way, through the same means by which we receive Him in the Eucharist that is through the church. So that's a look at why it matters to me. And if I were convinced that the stuff that I was saying was actually heretical, I would stop saying it. I think. I hope.
Eddie Rester 21:18
And for you, and we heard it a little bit there and I've read some of what you've had to say, the Eucharist, really, for you invited you in and understanding of the Eucharist has sustained you and sustained your faith. Tell us a little bit about that. Why has the Eucharist been just so life giving for you and your faith?
Eve Tushnet 21:42
Well, you know, partly, it's a mystery, right? Like, how do I know? But I think also, it brings together so much that is so central to the Gospel. It brings together God as our Creator, who can use the creative things of bread and wine, these kind of sensual, sensory experiences, to draw us close to him, not rejecting our bodies, but actually meeting us precisely in our bodies and giving himself to us physically, through the Eucharist, to transform us into creatures more like himself. So partly just the deep, incarnational beauty of it.
Eve Tushnet 22:26
And partly, it's that it is the sacrifice. Catholics believe that every mass is the same sacrifice. It's not a repeated sacrifice. It is that moment on Calvary, and that Jesus is broken for us and comes to us in the most vulnerable form possible, which is both an incredible response to our sin and the need for justice and that we can never fulfill ourselves and also an incredible act of solidarity with everyone who, in this world, suffers, is marginalized, is tortured, executed. So I guess it's that it really brought together a lot of the things that most drew me to the church in the first place.
Chris McAlilly 23:10
One of the things that I've read that you've said or that you've written in another context is just kind of the motivation of not just having these experiences and trying to figure it out for yourself. But you do that within the context of a vocation as a writer and really a blogger, but then a writer of memoirs. And one of the things I heard, that I read that you wrote is, "I think the biggest thing that I want people to hear in my writing is that there is a future for individual gay people in the Catholic Church that doesn't require repression, self-hatred, or being totally alone." Talk a little bit about perhaps, I guess, some of the the harmful approaches that you've seen as the church attempts to relate itself to the LGBTQ community.
Eve Tushnet 23:59
Yeah, I mean, so I was super sheltered and protected. My own experience in the church, and especially when I was coming into the church, was really good. I tell the story of the priest and the doorknob wrapped in barbed wire. But that was probably the most unpleasant thing that happened to me because of being gay in the Catholic Church for quite a long time. And that is fairly far from most people's experience. I have this new book coming out. And one of the purposes of it is really to explore the ways in which growing up in the church can harm today, can harm a gay person's soul, their relationship with God, their understanding of who God is, and how to restore that relationship and to learn that God is not a rejecting, abusive, judgmental creature, thing, that you have to either live up to or be cast out from, because that has been, I think most people's experiences.
Eve Tushnet 24:55
I think, probably most gay kids who grow up in the church either have explicitly been told that gay people are going to hell or that gay people are enemies of the church, things of that kind. They've been attacked for being gay or being perceived as gay. They've lost jobs in ministry positions. They've seen other gay people lose jobs in ministry positions because they came out. There's just a lot of deep pain that comes from things that you see, but there's also a deep pain that comes from silence. When I was coming out in the 90s, one of the primary slogans of the gay rights movement at that time was "silence equals death." And I think that that is what a lot of gay kids are experiencing in the churches even now, not knowing that there's any precedent for them at all.
Eve Tushnet 25:47
I've had many people say, "I thought I was the only Christian person to ever have these feelings, these experiences. I couldn't believe that it was really happening to me, because nobody I knew, there was no one out there, who was both kind of trying to be a good Christian and also experiencing being gay, and realizing that you're gay." It's vanishingly hard to imagine what your future might be like, if nobody out there is doing it, if the people that you know who are gay, or that you see on TV or what have you, have all left behind the beliefs that you hold, and all the people who have your same beliefs appear to be straight, then it really can feel like you're caught with nowhere to go.
Eve Tushnet 26:34
And that's devastating in itself. It leads a lot of straight people astray. It leads them to give bad advice because they don't have anyone to ask either. Straight people also are trying to be good mentors, good parents, good ministers don't necessarily have a lot of people that they feel like they can talk to about the needs and experiences of gay people growing up. And it leads to a huge range of terrible outcomes. I assume it contributes to the suicide rate and the rate of suicidal thoughts among LGBT people, which is higher by quite a bit, I think, than heterosexuals.
Eve Tushnet 27:14
And it also just leads to people making bad decisions in their lives. People who think that they have to be straight and have to try to fix themselves, who get married, because they think it'll help them be and stay straight. It doesn't help. And in fact, is a very painful, often heartbreaking situation. People who get into relationships, same-sex relationships, that they keep secret, which means nobody can help them if anything at all. Because they're not willing to tell anybody that that's what's going on. Just a lot of deep trauma that's ultimately coming from a belief that there's no place for them in God's heart, that God has no real future for them or no hope unless they become straight. And that, I think, ultimately is just devastating for people.
Eddie Rester 28:04
The flip side of that question is, if you've seen bad approaches what about healthy approaches? What are ways that you've seen churches engage gay men and women who've often thought, "There's no place for me in the church?"
Eve Tushnet 28:22
Yeah, there's a really wide range. I think there are a lot of potential good things and good things being done. If people want a book, especially if anybody out there is listening whose kids have come out, and you are wondering kind of how can I be a good parent to them? Or what if I didn't handle this right? There's a very good book called, I thin it's, "Guiding Them Home." Hold on a sec. "Guiding Families of LGBT Loved Ones," which is published by a group called Lead Them Home. And that's a Protestant group, which, I believe based in Presbyterianism, but I could be wrong, which has a lot of just personal stories and guidance and some really good--I don't agree with everything in it--but it's got a lot of real wisdom for people who are trying to understand what it means to genuinely welcome someone, if they share your beliefs, and are having experiences that you weren't expecting them to have, or if they don't share your beliefs. How do I genuinely welcome them with unconditional love? So that's one resource, "Guiding Families of LGBT Loved Ones," and Lead them home is a good resource as well.
Eve Tushnet 29:34
Tere's also, you know, places, people who have really made deep sacrifices. When the mass shooting happened at the Orlando Pulse gay nightclub, one of the people who came out to help was an Assemblies of God Pastor, I want to say his name was Gabriel Salgero, who encouraged his whole congregation to give blood. He did grief counseling with the victims and the families. And he, for those who had been killed, he helped organize funerals, paid funeral costs. And so it's kind of like seeing and seeking out those moments when you can be of service on a deep sacrificial level, I think it means an enormous amount to people, knowing that you stand with them when they're victims of violence, and you try to protect them.
Eve Tushnet 30:22
I know people who have been doing fantastic work in schools, working with gay teens and their peers and trying to create a school that is genuinely and completely safe for gay kids. I am the co-coordinator of gay and lesbian ministry at my church, which I would not hold up as like, this is the perfect thing. But I think we do an okay job of genuinely welcoming people, regardless of where they are in their journey with Christ, and just trying to grow closer to God together. You don't have to agree with the Catholic Church to come. You don't have to be Catholic. We just try to be a place where you know that you're welcome and that people there will genuinely care about you and pray with you and try to kind of love you and help you to love God. And I think places like that, where there's no pressure on "do you agree with the church or not?" can actually be huge havens. I think people need them as much as they need guidance and good direction in their spiritual lives. They also need places where people understand that your spiritual life has a whole lot of issues in it, and for right now, we're not going to talk about the sexual ethics.
Chris McAlilly 31:34
Yeah, that's really, really helpful. I think one of the things I hear in that and then also in your writing is that you're exploring different models for what a healthy approach to faith and human sexuality might look like. I wonder, the article that I read of yours that I was just really intrigued by was in the Atlantic, I referenced it before, "I'm Gay, and I'm Not Switching to a Church That Supports Gay Marriage." I think it was written in maybe 2013.
Eddie Rester 32:02
In 2013.
Chris McAlilly 32:03
I wonder what has changed since then for you, you know, what is the same? And then how do you think about same-sex couples that are in marriages? How do you think about churches that support gay marriage? Just what's your relationship to the broader Christian conversation in America around these things?
Eve Tushnet 32:23
Yeah, let me see, let me say a series of things. I think the biggest thing that has changed is just talking to more people who have had a much harder experience in the church than I have. On the one hand, I think it's important to say my experience in the Catholic Church has been basically great. It is possible, it is really genuinely possible, to be openly gay and to find people who will love and support you in that and give you guidance, and to live in harmony with the church in a way that is life giving, and loving, is not a mirage. On the other hand, it's equally important to say that that is like a tiny, minority experience. And most of the people that I talk to have had a much, much, much harder time.
Eve Tushnet 33:05
And so that's really kind of reshaped, I guess, my own priorities and what I talk about, how I work on stuff. And I think it's necessary for pastors and parents, too, really everybody to know coming in that when someone comes to you and says, "I'm gay," or "I experienced same-sex attraction," or "I'm pansexual," or whatever it is that they come to you with, that there's often a deep history of wrestling with self-hatred, wondering if God really loves them. There's often a deep kind of... I don't want to make generalizations. Not everybody has the same experience. But one thing that I have said in the past that people really resonated with is that often when gay people come to the church for guidance, the guidance that we receive assumes that the biggest thing we struggle with is lust, or the thing that people need to talk to us about is sexual ethics, when actually the thing that most gay Christians struggle with more is despair, the fear that there is no hope for them.
Eve Tushnet 34:12
So in terms of kind of broader conversations, I mean, I have friends who are in same-sex marriages. To me, maybe one model that might be helpful is religious difference. Like we know, you and I disagree on a bunch of stuff that we both think is actually very important, and makes a real difference in the meaning of the Gospel, what Jesus wants from us. And yet, we're able to kind of be normal with each other and try to follow him together and deepen our relationship to him together. And that might be one potential model for divergence on these questions of ethics and sexual behavior and the nature of marriage, I think.
Eve Tushnet 35:01
I was involved in advocacy against gay marriage in probably around the late 2000s to early 2010s. And I look back on that and think, it's not that the stuff I was saying was false, but I really wish I had had different priorities. I really wish I had understood that I could say all these, to me, to my mind, interesting and true and nuanced things, but what kids were hearing growing up from their pastors, in church, from their parents, was gay people are enemies of the church and gay people are going to hell. And counteracting that message is vastly more important to me, than the civil law around marriage. And it always should have been. So I think even acknowledging the degree to which individuals, we ourselves, have, in some cases, contributed to the despair that people feel it and repenting for that and try and make amends is an important first step.
Eve Tushnet 35:59
Ah, I feel like I had some other things to say. Oh, right. Churches that have what you might call a progressive ethic around marriage. I, you know, I just don't really see it as my place. People know what the Catholic Church teaches on a wide variety of subjects, where others diverge and disagree. And I don't know that I have more to say other than how can we kind of love one another and love Jesus together without any of us pretending that we believe something that we don't?
Eddie Rester 36:31
You know, one of the things that I hear in you is just a graciousness of theology, graciousness of the willingness to learn, to hear, to listen, to share with others as well. And I think that's important for us to move beyond that us versus them mentality that all of us get drawn into. Are there other things that you would say this is also helpful to escape that "I'm right, you're wrong. You're going to hell. I'm not going to hell," kind of mentality that churches just get drawn into and Christians get drawn into very easily?
Eve Tushnet 37:17
Yeah, I guess, ultimately, one thing is, which I think if you get to know enough people, you'll notice this, regardless of what questions you're focusing on, that there's not a kind of sharp divide between people in people's lives. It's not like some people are always following the church and other people are always strange sheep. People go back and forth a lot. Because it's genuinely hard. Our culture does not make it easy to figure out what the truth actually is about something like the Christian sexual ethic. And in that ambivalence, in that confusion, people make a lot of choices, some of which they end up really learning a lot from and shape their lives in good ways. Even if they, looking back on it would say, "I sort of wish I'd take another path." Because God can bring good from all of our choices. There is a way to give all of it to God. So I guess that's sort of a vague way of talking about things. I don't know if I have stuff that's much more specific than that, though.
Chris McAlilly 38:24
I wonder, as we kind of draw to a close, I wonder if you have a word for someone who may be listening who identifies as a part of the LGBTQ community, what would you say to themb today?
Eve Tushnet 38:37
Yeah, well, I mean, you know, it would depend a lot on what their actual questions were. I think the biggest thing is that if you have ever felt or feared that your sexual orientation separates you from God, that he loves you. Not only even that, and through that, that there will be a time I think when you look back and say it was precisely in my experience of being gay or being out or being transgender, what is it, whatever it is, that I was brought closer to the heart of Jesus, that these are experiences that we can learn to be grateful for. And that's true, even if you end up kind of accepting Catholic or, quote unquote, traditional Christian belief.
Eve Tushnet 39:21
I think one of the biggest journeys that a lot of people who do accept the quote, unquote, traditional teaching is the journey from thinking that maybe God loves you in spite of being gay to being grateful to be gay and really seeing God working precisely in that area of our sexuality.
Chris McAlilly 39:41
And what would you say to churches or Christians who desire to make the church a place of welcome for gay and lesbian people?
Eve Tushnet 39:53
Ah, honestly, like, you know, it depends on where you're at. But one of the big things is if you just start talking about gay people, in a norma,l welcoming way, where it's clear that we are part of the body of Christ and that people are out there listening who care about this stuff, people will come to you and tell you more about what they need. If you put stuff in the church bulletin, that's, you know, quoting Wes Hill's book, "Washed and Waiting," or "Spirit," his book, "Spiritual Friendship," you know, or anything, the "Guiding Families" book that I mentioned, people will come to you. If you talk about it from the pulpit, people will come to you.
Eve Tushnet 40:27
I've had several people at my church say that when they heard the announcement that the priests made at the end of mass, that there was going to be a meeting for the gay and lesbian ministry, they were astonished and deeply moved, because they never heard anybody say the word "gay" from the pulpit before, especially not when it was like, "And these people are welcome specifically in our church," like, "in an hour. In the basement." Anything you can do to kind of put it out there that you are interested in hearing those stories will lead people to come to you with their stories and questions. And then just receiving that with as much humility and interest and creativity as you can, that's probably the biggest thing.
Chris McAlilly 41:10
I think the more conversations that we have along these lines, I'm just reminded of the fact that the intersection of Christianity and human sexuality is incredibly complex and mysterious, and certainly not monolithic. And we appreciate you. You've given us an opportunity to hear your story and your witness. Thank you for being with us today.
Eve Tushnet 41:31
Thank you so much.
Eddie Rester 41:32
[OUTRO] Thank you for listening to this episode of The Weight.
Chris McAlilly 41:36
If you liked what you heard today, feel free to share the podcast with other people that are in your network. Leave us a review. That's always really helpful. Subscribe, and you can follow us on our social media channels.
Eddie Rester 41:48
If you have any suggestions or guests you'd like us to interview or anything you'd like to share with us, you can send us an email at info@theweightpodcast.com. [END OUTRO]