My Last Post on Homosexuality

OK, I did not expect this blog to be about homosexuality and the Orthodox Faith, but it has become so. And this will be the last post from me on this topic.

The essay in which I say all I know about sex (“A Pebble in My Shoe”) still stands, of course, as does my further thinking about the same koan in response to my critics, “Burning Down the House,” in which I take the same koan to be about discernment.  Maybe it’s good to read those first anyway. I will probably refer you to both essays, to avoid repeating myself.  In any case, this will be more personal, and should leave no stone unturned about my own sexuality and my reaction to it. I will not write about it again.

To begin with, I am gay. This should come as no big surprise, but I can guarantee this is the last you’ll hear of it. I have a partner, whom I met in 1994 when we were both 39. We started living together in 1999, and we got married in about 2013–whenever it was that the Supreme Court ruled that it was not a “skim milk” marriage, in the memorable words of Ruth Bader Ginsberg.  I sought my partner pretty actively, when I came to understand some of what I’ve written below.  We are monogamous, and have not actually had sex in many years, two facts that will probably have the late Fr. Thomas Hopko spinning in his grave, as is said.

It is because of him (Fr. Hopko) that gays and women are today so vilified in the Orthodox Church. His legacy in that regard will likely never be overcome.  He’s one of those who was always an evangelical in some way, which is why he was one of the people inclined to welcome those people in.  He also got that the Church was about more than just the Bible, and he also felt that anything that came out of his mouth was correct. His method was always to begin with, “It is my belief that the church’s teaching is ______.” Fill in the blank. This was usually based the Bible, but it could also be the hymnography, iconography, the teachings of  the Fathers (they were NEVER wrong) or sometimes just way things were (again, NEVER wrong). The blank would usually be simply some factoid he believed to be true, and that he fully expected to be quoted later as one of the “proof texts” so dear to the heart of the evangelicals who are now taking over the church. I was recently visiting Berkeley, Calif., and saw in the parish there a little booklet of his sayings. He is already being treated as a holy father. Even though he’s pretty obnoxious, but he’s not to the evangelicals who have embraced him.

I will also likely anger the many evangelical heretics who can see homosexuals only as victims or predators. Anything else would cause them to think and discuss, but that is simply not allowed. After all, they are in the Church that has always had all the answers, and that never changes. The above is a bald-faced lie. Those afflicted with gayness are supposed to want to be monks and nuns. (Completely ignored is the fact a sane monastic institution no longer exits). They will often scorn dialog with me, as I would pose a threat to their many gay friends who are rightly choosing a celibate lifestyle in the Church according to what they are told is the Church’s ancient teaching, though it is in fact very recent. Anyway, when I ask to meet these people the discussion always ends. Either they are people the evangelical heretic suspects of living such a lifestyle or, as I suspect, such folks don’t exist at all and the evangelical bully is simply lying. In any case, the fact that it is ALWAYS a conversation-ender I find telling.

As for myself, I was aware of being different sexually from a very early age. The first people I remember being attracted to were male. I was barely 18 when I joined the Coast Guard and was sent to Alaska. This was partly about getting out of the San Joaquin Valley of California where my family is from (we’d have been an old family by California standards, if we weren’t White Trash. That cancels everything else out), partly to avoid being drafted into the army during the Vietnam war, and partly to take advantage of the old GI Bill for education (I credit that great social program with saving my life). But it was also about traveling to a place where there just weren’t many women. The perfect cover for a guy who wanted not to make any waves. Though back home in the San Joaquin Valley, they kept wanting me to be with a woman, being such a good and smart guy otherwise. And it only got worse as I got older.

In the seventies I became familiar with Orthodox Church in Kodiak, Alaska, and ended up joining. This was after a fairly bad encounter with Christianity I’d had through evangelicalism back in the Valley. I was particularly attracted to the notion of salvation as theosis (becoming God), and to the profusion of words and images.  They were acknowledged to be inadequate. That’s what made them so beautiful. It should be said that I always had a predilection toward ultimate things. I remember it from my childhood. I can also remember the moment I learned that I should keep it to myself.

Anyway, I was very serious about the Church. And I spent more than a year in a monastery and couple years at the main seminary, eventually getting my MA in theology. I then went to Boston, where I had a long career in publishing, working my way up from the bottom. It was in Boston that I encountered the Buddhist teachings and I practiced that concurrently with Orthodox Christianity for nearly 30 years.

Heterosexual marriage has gone through many changes in two millennia, and even further back, not even becoming a sacrament everywhere until about 1000 AD. It was primarily about the uniting of two families and ensuring the legitimacy of children. And it was a container for lust, if you were lucky. Lust, that wanting to relieve oneself by using another (see my “Pebble in My Shoe” essay, elsewhere on this blog).  Those who’ve read my previous reflections on sex will know that I think the physical act is usually transcended, no matter who you are or where you’re coming from. And that transcendence does not mean negation of anything that came before. Rather, what came before is very good, as long as it is seen as being along that trajectory. Sex included. It becomes “bad” when taken as an end in itself. Like the perfect little nuclear family with sex act at its center, going on like that forever.

What will bring the Orthodox Church down, is in fact, the refusal to discuss gays and women. Many changes have taken place in the last hundred years or so, and those changes have to do with the separation of the sex act from reproduction. Women are seen to be sometimes ordinarily intelligent and sometimes even brilliant (or really dumb) just outside the Church doors. But just inside they cannot be discussed. They can’t even serve in the altar as girls.  As something of a veteran of interfaith dialogue, I can say that Christians are generally the guilty parties in it. In order for real dialogue to take place, both parties have to be to a degree vulnerable. Christians are never vulnerable. They always protect some area that cannot be challenged. When that happens there can be no dialogue. I believe this to be true of the internal dialogue on homosexuality too.

And the nuclear family (mother and father as equal partners united by the love that sustains them, with a couple children—their numbers limited by birth control—had according to some overarching plan) is a modern invention entirely.  Though the institution has changed drastically in the last century or so, there are still some people for whom sacramental marriage works. Who can hide their love in the institution pretty well. Among those people are the ones who think they are doing traditional marriage, when they are not. Who think the nuclear family is eternal, or is what God had in mind all along. You need only look to the top two tiers of traditional iconostasis to see that that’s untrue. The people pictured there, and whom we’re supposed to emulate, are mostly polygamists.

Also among these are the people who find the homosexuality discussion valuable, but probably not now. It’s just too soon. (It’s for some reason always too soon, even with so many people suffering.)  When will it not be too soon? They think what will be discovered is that homosexual acts are forbidden, and that there needs to be a robust monastic institution to receive these folks. They mourn the fact that there is not one.

Those who say that the Orthodox Church has no hang-ups in regard to sex usually cite St. Spiridon, who said that husbands and wives should enjoy each other. But then there are still those who think that all pleasure is misguided. Clearly, the sexual question has never been resolved among the Orthodox. Though many former evangelicals will claim that it has. It is, after  all, why they are here: the place with all the right answers and where everything has always been decided, nothing, blessedly, ever changes.

My strong intuition is that what we call “God” is not a monster. Not the sort who instills sexual urges in us, and then forbids us to acknowledge them. That’s bullshit. But it’s complicated, because sexual feelings are indeed to be overcome. I mean, you definitely want to learn how not to use people to get off. The best teachers are often celibate in a very fruitful (I know that sounds weird) way. Sex is good, like all created things, but it doesn’t not become a regular part of daily life (our “sex life” as they say) that double-sided truth makes it hard to talk about, homosexuality included. The fact that only a small number of us experience it, makes it especially hard to talk about. But talk about it we must. The fact that sex has only lately become separated from reproduction has to be discussed. It is in fact a good time to do it. That it is not happening is a very bad thing.

Which brings me back to those of us who have no other choice than to exit the Church.  We will generally be women or sexual minorities, who realize that the dialogue MUST take place, but is not happening. And we are all people for whom the separation of sex from reproduction has very important repercussions. We are also people who do not regard God as a monster.

And, last of all, we rebel against the decision that has already been made. I am not hanging around, waiting to be told I must leave Eric. I am not a fool. And I will  not break up with my spiritual friend, without whom I would probably not be alive.  Because that will not happen, and because the dialogue is  not taking place, I have no choice but to depart, along with women and with the other small number of gays. This is very painful, as I love the Church and I already miss it. But I suspect I will not be alone. The Orthodox Church will become an evangelical sect. Meanwhile some, like me, will be Orthodox Christians outside the Church, having as our heroes and spiritual parents Isaac of Syria, Mark of Ephesus, Gregory Palamas, and Mother Maria Skobtsova. May I be wrong.