THE NAME OF THE MIRACLE OF THE ROSE<\/a><\/b>: I was kind of startled that the \u201cWhy do you identify as \u2018gay\u2019?\u201d question didn\u2019t come up in Denver<\/a>. Possibly that\u2019s just because I talked way too long, so the q&a; was cut short. Anyway my impression is that lots of people, both straight and not-so-much, really want to know about this question. I don\u2019t know if I understand the question too well since it isn\u2019t one which has ever exercised me\u2013but here\u2019s where my thinking is right now, on what some people may be hearing when I say I\u2019m gay and what I\u2019m actually saying. (A previous post on this subject, written in a sort of galumphing-drunken-elephant style, is here<\/a>.) <\/p>\n First<\/b>, I think for some people taking on a gay identity is seen as setting up a competing community to the Church, which commands our loyalties in the way only Christ should. It\u2019s seen as surrender to something other than Christ. I\u2019m sympathetic to this since I do think our surrender to Christ must be total and unique, and it\u2019s obvious that other communities and identity groups can compete with that surrender. The most obvious example for me is nationality: It\u2019s clear that one\u2019s self-concept as an American<\/a> can compromise one\u2019s identity as a Christian. <\/p>\n And yet when somebody says he\u2019s Greek, the response of the non-Greek Christians around him isn\u2019t immediately to respond, \u201cIn Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek!\u201d and to assume compromised faith on his part. There\u2019s an understanding that national identity both must and can<\/i> be taken lightly, considered as a part of one\u2019s situation rather than a warped lens through which the Gospel is distorted. (The majority of people to whom I describe myself as \u201cgay\u201d view that identity the same way. They don\u2019t actually perceive any contradiction\u2013they might see an added and maybe weird difficulty, but not an internal contradiction\u2013in saying that I\u2019m gay and celibate.) <\/p>\n Second<\/b>, \u201cgay\u201d describes a community (or really, a big, contradictory, feisty tussle of communities) and a relationship to that community, and if you don\u2019t have any notable or positive relationship to that community then that is a fact about you which presumably would lead you to identify differently. My sense is that people who have had very little experience with gay communities, or whose experiences have been largely negative, are a lot more likely to identify as \u201csame-sex attracted\u201d and resist identifying as gay. My own relationship to queer communities has been important to me, largely positive, and characterized by belonging, and that\u2019s what I mean when I say I\u2019m gay. <\/p>\n But there really are no terms which don\u2019t in some way mark out a community. \u201cSame-sex attracted\u201d is identity-jargon too, delineating a specific way of understanding one\u2019s eros: a new way, a way which would be as difficult to explain to St. Aelred (for example) as \u201cgay.\u201d <\/p>\n I\u2019ve written before<\/a> (from a somewhat different perspective than the one I have now) about my coming-out process: that click of recognition, the key turning in the lock. I thought at the time that my alienation was explained<\/i> by my sexual orientation. \u201cOh, so that\u2019s<\/i> all it was!\u201d That turns out to be only partly true\u2013my alienation stems really from the Fall, not from being queer, but queerness is one way I\u2019ve experienced a heightened or stylized version of that universal alienation. That experience was really important to me\u2013and, ultimately, important to my conversion to Catholicism. Explaining it without \u201cself-identifying\u201d as queer would feel really artificial and strained. <\/p>\n Similarly, look, I was a pretty self-centered kid. I don\u2019t know how much progress I\u2019ve made there, but I know that gay and queer communities were among the places where I learned to try to listen to other people, admit my own faults and blind spots, and generally be more giving and less awful. I\u2019ve said before that I was a better girlfriend to girls than to guys and I expect that\u2019s related to my self-identification as well: \u201cGay\u201d names a place where I became a somewhat better person. I want to honor the people who put up with me. <\/p>\n My sense is that if you\u2019re Christian and you\u2019ve had experiences like these, you\u2019re more likely to self-identify as gay, and if you haven\u2019t, you\u2019re more likely to self-identify as same-sex attracted. (Although for a contrasting perspective, see here<\/a>.) <\/p>\n Also, notice the real but limited role played by sexual desire in this description. \u201cBecause I\u2019m gay\u201d I\u2019ve been sexually drawn to women; but also, \u201cbecause I\u2019m gay\u201d I\u2019ve felt intense difference from those around me, felt recognition and a sort of exhilaration when I found writers and musicians and artists who described queer experience, felt a need to be of service to women, and been a part of various communities which shaped me. Collapsing all of these elements of my \u201cgay experience\u201d into wanting to have gay sex seems to me to be a misunderstanding of eros<\/a>\u2013and a willful erasure of every possible element of gay experience which might form part of a positive<\/i> path toward Christ and conversion. It seems like a demand that the path from the gay community to Christ must be a path of rejection rather than reunderstanding. <\/p>\n Christianity has always<\/i> confronted specific communities which were held together by elements which seemed inimical to the Gospel. One major response has been to identify the \u201cunknown gods\u201d in those communities, the places where their own self-understandings indicated a longing for Christ. The community could then be baptized rather than rejected or destroyed. One reason I really loved Frederick W. Roden\u2019s Same-Sex Desire in Victorian Religious Culture<\/i><\/a> is that he talks about the ways in which the cultures and communities which eventually transformed into \u201cgay culture\u201d had intrinsic affinities for Catholic faith. It\u2019s obvious to me how my eros could be baptized, and I\u2019ve written about that stuff a lot here. <\/p>\n