Here’s Part 1

We then started to talk about sexual consumerism—no, not human trafficking, but rather sexuality being consumed to fuel one’s self worth and give them validity as ‘fully human’. So often people feel that they cannot be ‘fully human’ living in the way God created us as sexual beings without the ‘sexual’ part. But what so many miss is that God didn’t create us to idolatrize sexuality, but to be conformed to His image. And if His image was made manifest in Jesus, and Jesus was single (and peep this from the Book of Isaiah), what’s the deal with the world today?

Culture (Mainstream: Christian and secular) look to marriage as the end-all-be-all of ideal human sexuality (gay and straight). In his book, The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries, sociologist Rodney Stark notes that in 59 BC Julius Caesar secured legislation that awarded land to fathers of multiple children, and Cicero fought to outlaw celibacy. Then in the year 9 AD emperor Augustus passed laws that:

*Gave political preference to men who fathered three or more children

*Imposed political and financial sanctions upon childless couples, unmarried woman over the age of twenty, and upon unmarried men over the age of twenty-five

Stark goes on to document how each successive emperor after Augustus added additional perks for married couple with children and additional penalties for unmarried people and married couples without kids.

Here’s my problem—during Jesus’ time and the disciples time after that, marriage, in their culture, was being stripped from a God-honoring covenant to a legally sanctioned relationship with political and financial gains associated with said relationship.

At that moment, sexuality and marriage, became a product to consume to give worth. It’s a shame that mindset has lasted so long.

Much love.

www.themarinfoundation.org

If you have been following along here and here, this is the exact email Andy Comiskey wrote in repsonse to my email to him:

Dear Andrew,

I am glad to clear up any confusion which has surfaced due to my post.  While I commend your sincerity in seeking my ‘full transparency,’ I think many of your questions can be answered by reviewing what exactly has gone on concerning the violations which occurred.

I’ll begin with the exact email I sent to David Roberts of ex-gay watch.  It provides a brief-overview of what went on:

“In 1997, a man met at separate times with two teenagers in the name of DSM and made sexual overtures to them and committed some acts. The details are unknown to us. He like any predator hid what the had done. We became aware of one of these instances at the end of 1997; the teen and his parents came forward, and the man was promptly fired then jailed. The teenager received help for the spiritual and sexual abuse that had occurred. We knew that another teen had met with this man, also in 1997; when asked, the teen claimed that nothing had happened. 5 years later, as a young man, he claimed that he had been abused by that man in 1997. We believed him, and made a lengthy and weighty restitution for the sins committed against him. Since 1997, under legal counsel, we have established new and strong boundaries for all of our dealings with participants. (We no longer offer help to minors.) As many of our adult participants have been subject to sexual abuse as children, we take very seriously our responsibility to ensure that we do not abuse them further. The weight of these offenses committed in our name, and the amount of time and money we have spent to help repair the damage done, has helped teach us that lesson.”

As we became aware of the sexual abuse, we began a ten-year process of seeking restitution with these two teenagers and their families.  Desert Stream faced several civil lawsuits, and criminal charges were filed against the perpetrator, our ex-staff member.

Our restitution involved taking responsibility and seeking forgiveness for our sins and doing all we could to repair the damage done.  This was all under legal guidance, which placed guidelines as to what we could and could not say publicly about their families and their suffering. 

To prevent further violations, we sought and submitted to legal counsel in crafting better boundaries between lay leaders and those they served. 

Within the legal constraints on what we could say publicly, we took many opportunities to make known the sexual abuse and its implications for us as a ministry.  That included integrating into our week-long national training seminars an entire evening dedicated to teaching what kind of boundaries must be in place to prevent such violations and references to what happened in Desert Stream conferences  in the late nineties and in Exodus conferences in both 2001 and 2008. 

I also spoke of this abuse in 2003 with the publication of Strength and Weakness (see pg. 207) and was featured in a lead article in Desert Stream’s spring newsletter in 2009 (available for download online at http://www.desertstream.org/Group/Group.aspx?ID=1000040183). 

On a final note, Andrew, I would have appreciated some warning before your post.  I understand your anger and I should have been more careful before posting such sensitive information in the light of many reading it that had no way of putting the information in context.  Many of your concerns, however, could have been easily cleared up by direct contact.  As you are intent on defending those wrongfully accused by the church, I am perplexed as to why you would so quickly leap to judgment against me in this issue.  I hope this response puts to rest unjust assumptions.”

Below, you will find my email back to Andy. I will not be commenting further on this situation from here on out – I explain my reasoning why in the email:

Andy,

In light of the recent post about learning of multiple child molestations occurring in Andy Comiskey’s ex-gay ministry, Desert Stream Minitries, and how offended I was by his telling of the story (which can be seen on this link), here is the email I just sent to him to let him give us his full explanation:

How my heart breaks right now. I was just alerted by a friend to a blog post written this month by Andy Comisky, director of the well known ex-gay Desert Stream Ministires (whose curriculum is used by many churches, such as bestselling author and pastor John Ortberg’s church, Menlo Park), that describes how a staff member “intrinsic to their operation” sexually molested “at least one young boy who sought them out for help”. You can read the post here.

I don’t know Andy, never met him, but what makes me want to throw up right now is that never one time in his post did he apologize to the teenager or the family for someone in his organization acting out as a child predator!

Not once. 

All he did was indirectly pat himself on the back for keeping the news silent that “not one story was printed about the tragedy” in the face of threats from the family to go to the press.

Yea, way to go Andy. You really kept that one quite. You want a cookie now, for posting it on your blog and paralleling this situation to that of Achan in the Book of Joshua. Give me a freaking break!

I am so on fire pissed right now I’m not going to write any more for fear of what I might say. Please pray for the teenager and his family.

UPDATE #1

UPDATE #2

Much love.

www.themarinfoundation.org

This article was recently published from one of my very favorite publications, RELEVANT Magazine. The title is, “Being Single with Intentionality.” It caught my eye because so often singles in church culture feel as weird and put out as gays and lesbians do.

I was speaking recently at Willow Creek and I brought up the aforementioned point, and the ‘singles group’ sitting together at the side of the auditorium starting cheering really, really loudly. Awkward for everyone in the audience—except for them, me and the gay folks in attendance (yes, gay people do attend Willow whether they know it or not—but they do know it) because we are the ones that really know the truth. Interesting how this works?

But the one thing that kept running through my head while reading this article was the following:

Why do singles have to be intentional in forming relationships with the dominant married culture in the church? Why do the married folks get off so easy—like it’s the singles responsibility to fit into their life, like their life is more important or more worthy, and thus, the singles need to adapt. Forget that! How about this:

You married people need to adjust and be intentional in forming relationships with the singles in your church. You seek them and be intentional about it—not the other way around. I’m tired of the majority culture making the minority culture feel like it’s somehow their fault and they need to be the one’s to change or adapt. Sneaky tricks the majority gets to utilize with power and influence.

I’m over it. I’m calling it out. And I’m not going to stand for this stuff happening anymore.

Grow a pair married couples and be the Church.

Much love.

www.themarinfoundation.org

USA Today recently ran a short piece scientifically comparing gay parents to straight parents. Here is the article. A few highlights I found interesting:

1. It’s shameful that USA Today had to use a picture of a stereotypical gay couple from a TV show instead of a real family. In my opinion, it really shows USA Today’s inability to be realistic to this topic—instead of just portraying the topic through fiction.

2.  In the year 2008, 31% of gay and lesbian couples were raising a child in comparison to 43% of straight couples.

3.  From an adult psycho-social perspective, the quality of the parents does not differ with sexual orientation.

4.  The one part of this article that my personal experience has shown to be different is that children of gay/lesbian couples are teased a lot more overall—especially because of their parents. I have teachers from all over the country calling/emailing me asking me how to curb this behavior, and how use it as a learning lesson on top of punishment. It’s a very real occurrence, and it’s something that shouldn’t just be written about like it’s not a big deal.

What are your thoughts about the article and its conclusions?

Much love.

www.themarinfoundation.org

I will be resuming the previous discussion about Activism tomorrow, as I apologize for the brief departure over the last few days.

It has been a very rough week for me personally as life and death, excitement and pain, have all closely hovered around my daily existence. Two family members had unexpected surgery this past week, one of them being my 86 year old Grandpa. He suffers from Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease, and hasn’t been doing well. The doctors said that it was risky to even let him have surgery because they weren’t sure if he would wake up from the anesthesia. But if they didn’t perform the surgery, he most likely would have suffered enormous pain, ultimately leading to his death. But by God willing him through the anesthesia, he woke up. Though the following night the drainage tube from his back clogged in the middle of the night, and the nurses found him in a pool of his own blood in the morning. They rushed him down to the emergency room and praise God that he was able to regain consciousness. He is in a rehab facility right now, so please pray for the Lord’s comfort throughout all of his pain and uncertainty. This is very difficult for me to talk about because my Grandpa was an extremely integral part of my life—he was involved in absolutely everything I did. I have a very small, very close family, each of which had an important hand in raising me to be the man I am today. It’s impossible for me to ever understate the huge part my Grandpa has played in my life. This journey over the last few years has been very difficult—and this past week was the closest to him dying that any of us have seen.

Also, today is October 17^th, the 12 year anniversary of one of my best friends getting killed by a drunk driver when we were 16 years old. Minding her own business, Alli was hit by a drunk driver going 90 mph, blowing a red light and sending her, and her car flying over 100 ft. Alli, along with 3 others were killed. The drunk driver was the only person to survive. It still stings all these years later, as Alli has never, and will never leave my mind.

But also today, on the 12 year anniversary of Alli’s death, on the day that the rest of my family gets to officially visit with my Grandpa for the first time, I have the humbled honor to officiate a wedding for two of my best friends—Joe and Meg. Weddings are always an exciting time, a time of new life being brought together before God. This is the third, and final wedding I will ever do. I only officiate weddings for my best friends, and these are my only remaining best friends yet to be married. It’s a special honor, but mixed in with the difficult closeness and remembrance of death over the past week, it’s been hard for me to feel emotionally balanced.

However, my Grandpa is still alive, Alli is still in my heart, and I am looking forward to uniting some of my best friends to each other.

Thanks for hanging in there with me these past few days.

Much love.

www.themarinfoundation.org

Here is Part 1 of Mike’s story. Part 2 continues here:

“I didn’t know it at the time, but I soon learned there was a tension there. On the way to my high school youth group every week, my dad and I listened to James Dobson and other conservative evangelicals on the radio as they discussed things like homosexuality’s threat to Christendom and the family in America. Apparently they thought it was a sin, too. I had never heard any of this before; I didn’t even know what Evangelical Christianity or the Religious Right were, but I learned quickly. Although I was young and impressionable, my life experience had made me quite convinced that Jesus had the power to find and save people in broken families just like mine, and that how we voted probably wouldn’t change that. So I didn’t listen to them much; they seemed too old and crusty to actually know the people they seemed so opposed to.

But I ran up against a lot of their thinking in the church. At one point, a friend’s mom even looked me straight in the eye and pronounced that I had been straying from the Lord because I was living in a den of evil. That was the sort of environment I had suddenly found myself in. Regardless, these were the most loving and accepting people I’d ever known, and they quickly became family. As a result, I felt free to share my story with them. Some had opinions, others didn’t. But they all loved me. And I became accustomed to the fact that the people around me were comfortable with my faith, but quite uncomfortable with my upbringing. I sort of assumed the role of informant/mediator on the issue, but I tried not to give it much attention. I was far more interested in knowing these people who seemed to care about me even though I had done nothing to earn it from them.

I eventually went to college at the University of Michigan and found myself on a campus that was in many ways the polar opposite of Conservative Christianville. These people seemed very comfortable with my upbringing but quite uncomfortable with my faith. Then, to my surprise, I found a church community that felt like a new level of home to me. This group of Christians loved me every bit as much as the last, but they weren’t nearly as surprised or uncomfortable with my upbringing. They were absolutely devoted to their beloved Jesus, but came from all kinds of broken and unusual backgrounds, just like mine. So they were no strangers to all of the issues I had known or brought in. But even more so, they were committed to seeing each other grow in the love and grace of Christ, and quickly knit me in as one of their own; that I might experience the same freedom they had. They were not content to leave me in a place where I had comfortably shut out all the pain in my life. They knew Jesus wanted to flip the emotional switch back, that I might fully know his love and grace for me. And they were committed to seeing that happen in my life.

Through re-connecting with my heart and growing more and more into the man God had created me to be, I soon realized that nothing this world over moves me or breaks my heart like this world’s need for the saving grace of Jesus Christ that brought me into ultimate and Divine Truth those nine years ago. I became convinced that the local church is the hope of the world, and I wanted to be the one leading the charge to bring her to the neediest places in the world. So I made the decision to go on staff with New Life Church in Ann Arbor; that community of believers who showed me what it means to be broken before your God and allow his grace to penetrate into the deepest corners of your heart. My dream is to see church communities like New Life’s planted on college campuses around the nation, because I realize that college students are still young enough to believe the world can change, yet mature and able enough to see it through. And I want to be there when they change the world.

Since New Life is committed to serving the campus community, the staff positions are all support-based. In other words, the people we serve don’t have the means to support us financially, so we’re all missionaries. It quickly became apparent that my mom had some trepidation regarding this dream of mine. It was well-founded. She had actually wanted to be a missionary when she was younger, but attended a conservative Bible college that told her that because she was a woman, she could not be one; she could only be married to one. Heap on top of this all the ostracism she felt from the church because of her sexual orientation, and she began to grow some fears that I would become the sort of person who perpetuated all the hurt and exclusion she had experienced growing up. It took incredible humility and patience to walk her through what I had experienced and what God was doing in my heart, and that I’m not disappointed in who she is or how she raised me. I think she’s finally coming to believe that I will not be that church leader who told her there was something horribly wrong with her for being a lesbian.

This summer, God has taken me deeper than I could have ever imagined into engaging the issue of homosexuality. Some of the closest people in my life have come out to me with their histories of same-sex attraction, and the ways that it has secretly caused pain and division in our relationship. Through it all, God is undeniably beckoning me toward an otherworldly forgiveness and love that makes me fearful and uncomfortable in all sorts of ways. He is orchestrating the most masterful of redemption stories with my life, so that he may speak truth and love into all the pain this particular issue has caused me throughout my life, for the sake of His glory and my healing. May my life accomplish just that.”

If you know of anyone growing up straight with gay parents and they don’t know of any safe places to be able to talk or ask questions to, Mike is here to serve. Thanks Mike, for being so bold as to put your life out there for all of us to learn from!

Much love.

www.themarinfoundation.org

The posts throughout the weekend are the life story of Mike Filicicchia. I first met Mike through his comments on my blog, and his story is something that needs to be heard. Mike is straight. His parents are not.

Here is Mike’s blog, and from my experiences with him he has shown me that he is one of the most genuine people (and future pastors!) I’ve ever met. He told me that he hopes to be able to dialogue with others, helping those who are growing up in the same situation. I know he’s looking forward to interacting with you all throughout these posts. Here’s his story …

“I was 7 years old when my parents told me they were getting divorced. It was then that I first realized the world was not a safe place; that good things break, and that pain is inevitable. That’s a tough lesson for a 7 year-old, and I didn’t really have anyone to answer the “why” questions for me. The counselors told me it wasn’t my fault, and I believed them, but they couldn’t tell me why my parents couldn’t manage to love one another when it seemed perfectly natural for me to love them both. Two years later, I came to find out they couldn’t make their marriage work because my mom was gay, and had been her whole life. Much later in life, she told me that she wanted to model a loving marriage to me and raise me to be an honest person, but that she could do neither of those while she was living a lie to my dad and me. She said she felt like a hypocrite.

I had to quickly adjust to life with divorced parents, but more specifically, life with a gay mom. I spent most of my time living with her since the courts tend to favor mothers in custody cases. Quite soon after my mom came out to me, her partner moved in with us. It’s hard enough for a young child to adjust to a new authority figure in their house. But this was even more confusing; I didn’t know anyone who had experienced another woman moving in with their mom. Was she just someone living with us? Just a friend of my mom’s? Could she tell me what do? Did I have to listen to her? There was really no one to talk to me about any of that. I didn’t like her much at the time because she often got angry at me, so I decided I didn’t ever have to do anything she said, and that she was just a disturbance in our otherwise functional household. I became increasingly bitter, especially after my mom explained to me that her and her partner regularly teamed up in anger fests against me at the beginning of every month because women’s menstrual cycles sync when they live together. I know that’s horribly politically incorrect, but it’s what happened and the explanation I received. I wanted to run and be with my dad, but the Powers That Be had agreed the current arrangement was best, and nobody was going to fight on my behalf in that.

At the end of elementary school and into junior high, my friends began to realize that my living situation wasn’t exactly normal; there was another woman over at the house quite often. And she wasn’t a relative. I fed them the same lie I had been fed for a year: that she was just a friend of my mom’s who needed a place for some time, and it made financial sense for her to live with us until she could find another living situation. After a year passed and I began to realize I was being lied to, my friends began to realize the same. My mom was gay. And they let me know about it. It’s bad enough when your “friends” make sexual comments about your mom; but this was worse. They were stabbing at a great source of pain and confusion in my heart with every vulgar comment about her sexuality. I hated it. All of it. I was mad at my friends. Mad at my mom. Mad at her partner. Mad at the courts. Mad at the world, really. And I felt horribly alone. I didn’t understand why this was my lot in life. So I shut down. Emotionally, I just flipped a switch. I didn’t want to feel anymore because it was never anything good.

And then I started going to church.

I mean, I had gone to church much of my life with my parents, but I basically hated it. I saw it as nothing more than a distraction from my beloved Chicago Bears on Sunday mornings. It was boring, and I didn’t actually understand the point of any of it. After my parents divorced, my dad stayed at the same church, and my mom church-shopped for a while, but eventually stopped going altogether. I went with my dad on the Sundays when I was too tired to fight to stay home. When my dad’s church eventually closed its doors due to lack of finances, going church-shopping with him seemed like the nice thing to do. One Saturday night, we happened upon the biggest church I’d ever seen. It met in a converted warehouse near my house, and that night the Word of God disarmed me for the first time in my life. I decided I would start reading the Bible, because it became clear to me that it wasn’t just a collection of lame Sunday school lessons about old guys and being nice. Jesus had words for my life today and tomorrow. As I began reading, I found in the person of Jesus someone who saw me; someone who regarded my helpless estate, and someone who offered a relational intimacy I had never even fathomed, welling up in a promise of eternal hope and a new life. Those were the things my soul craved more than anything, and for reasons I can’t explain, I actually believed that Jesus was my solution; my Savior. I wasn’t looking for answers; I didn’t even know or feel that I was even in need. I just read His words and felt deeply that all of it was true.

So now I was a brand-new Christian teenager attending an evangelical church in the middle of Conservative Christianville, IL. And my mom was gay …

Part 2 tomorrow.

Much love.

www.themarinfoundation.org

The following is written by Jon, a gay man married to his partner, who also has adopted kids. Jon frequently comments on this blog, and I truly appreciate his thoughtful insight to whatever discussion is ongoing. In some recent ongoing discussions on the blog the question of, would a gay family attend a conservative church, was brought up. I actually thought that question deserved its own post. And there would be no one better to answer such a question than Jon. So here you go…

“I grew up in and was confirmed in the United Methodist Church. I was active in our youth group and taught Sunday school for a couple years. I went to college at Luther College in Decorah, IA – an ELCA-affiliated college. I learned much about the Bible during those years, but I also learned how to think more critically about the things that I learned and read.

It was during those college years that I came out as a gay man. I had already privately acknowledged to myself during my early teen years that I was sexually and emotionally attracted to other boys, but there were no real options or resources for coming out during those pre-Internet years in rural Minnesota. During college, I finally met other gay people and allies and gradually became comfortable with myself. I began looking towards the future and questioning assumptions about my potential life as a gay man. I began asking why I couldn’t find the man of my dreams? Why couldn’t we have kids? Why should I limit my interests, my activities, my privacy, or my dignity to fit within others’ expectations for a gay man.

I dated a bit in college, but mostly focused on my academic goals. Shortly after college, I met and fell in love with the man who would eventually become my husband, Mark. We shared many life goals: careers, relationship, home, kids. We weren’t sure how to get there, but it was enough to stay focused.

I had fallen away from the church during college and Mark had never found the right church home here in the Midwest. In my mid-20s, I felt a strong need to reconnect with God, but knew that I would not be welcomed in most churches. Eventually, I met a UCC minister named Pastor Rick who invited us to share worship with his small Christian church. It was the first UCC church in Iowa to have declared itself Open & Affirming (i.e., GLBT-affirming). Mark and I were wed there in 1997 in a religious ceremony – not legality to it due to our state’s Defense of Marriage Act (which in 2009 was repealed). But it was important for us to become a family with God’s blessing.

Gradually, I decided to join this church. I knew we were planning on becoming adoptive parents within a few years and wanted a church community that our kids could grow up in and learn about God and Jesus. But I also wanted a church that would treat our family with the same level of dignity as any other family. I wanted to know that my kids would be safe in Sunday school lessons and would not be secretly taught that their parents are deviant.

Truthfully, my theology is more traditional than my church’s theology. I honestly believe that homosexuality is not universally condemned within the Bible. I don’t understand why gay people cannot be encouraged to follow a model of chastity and marital behavior, but within a working context for their reality. Both Mark and I would be better suited in a more traditional church setting. I have tried to worship at a couple other conservative churches – one a non-denominational church and the other a start-up Presbyterian church. Both of them are relaxed, while traditional with their worship style. Both are active with community service projects. Both actively reach out to the unchurched and otherwise disconnected worshippers in our community. Both encourage members to discuss, learn, and grow with their faith. But neither was ready for a two-dad household.

So we stay where we’re at. Which isn’t terrible but, to be honest, we really have few other places to meet all of our religious needs.

There’s really no way that we could worship at a conservative Christian church that did not respect the dignity or the reality of our family. Too often, I feel like Christians are interested in reaching out to gay people without a real clue about how or why. I have listened to several interviews on this subject and heard way too many questioners talk about how great it is to befriend their gay relative/neighbor/co-worker, but cannot figure out when it’s the right time to tell them to “turn or burn”. I find myself wondering what those people would expect if they befriended me, introduced me to their church, and then told me that I would only be right with God if I dumped Mark.

The truth is that Mark and I have no desire to divorce ourselves from each other. To do so would be disruptive to our boys, who’ve already dealt with separation issues related to their time in foster care. We’re both content with our lives. We both have good jobs, fun kids, distracting pets, and a nice home. We’re well-matched husbands for each other. All things considered, we’ve been blessed by God and I thank Him every day for what we have together.

I could understand if some church leader was to step in and assist us during a time of dysfunction, but that’s not us. Neither of us drinks or uses drugs. We don’t gamble. We don’t sleep around. We don’t go to clubs. Heck, the only time we’ve been to Boystown was during a drive-through on our way to the Chicago ComiCon.

My point is, most churches only seem willing to accept our family if we dissolve our household. One of the most stabilizing elements in my life – my husband and our family – are treated like the most harmful thing that I could maintain in my life. I recognize and reject this crazy paradox of thinking and so do other gay families like us. And that’s why most of us won’t worship in Christian churches.”

Any questions for Jon?

Much love.

www.themarinfoundation.org