Earlier this week Julie Rodgers posted a characteristically forthright and gentle explanation<\/a> of her shift in belief: \u201cThough I\u2019ve been slow to admit it to myself, I\u2019ve quietly supported same-sex relationships for a while now.\u201d This is why she\u2019s just resigned from her post with evangelical Wheaton College\u2019s chaplaincy. The post touches on some of the topics that have shadowed my conversation with Justin Lee<\/a>, and which I plan to return to in my final post in our dialogue, including the way that Christians ourselves offer a \u201ccounterwitness\u201d to the truth of (what I continue to believe to be) the Christian sexual ethic. I want to do two things here.<\/p>\n One is just to thank Julie. It is really exhausting being a \u201chuman shibboleth<\/a>\u201d and I can\u2019t even imagine what it would be like to receive the kind of public hyper-scrutiny, mistrust, and misrepresentation she\u2019s faced while also<\/em> working in a position dedicated to the care of vulnerable young people. Julie has always impressed me with her down-home honesty and her desire to see the good in others.<\/p>\n And the second thing is to emphasize one point Julie makes. She has seen so much sacrificial love, care and devotion in gay couples, on the one hand; and on the other hand she has seen gay teenagers\u2013including those who are striving to be faithful to the Christian sexual ethic\u2013\u201cmarginalized, scrutinized, [and treated as] unwanted and relationally toxic.\u201d She has seen gay people treated as if welcome is contingent on our \u201cholding very narrow beliefs and making extraordinary sacrifices to live up to a standard that demands everything from an individual with little help from the community.\u201d The \u201cgood gays\u201d get highly suspect and conditional tolerance; the \u201cbad gays\u201d get harassed and shunned. Why would anybody want to side with the good gays?<\/p>\n She adds:<\/p>\n Moreover, that kind of treatment isn\u2019t just reserved for those in relationships. The fire I\u2019ve come under (publicly and privately) as I\u2019ve sought to live into the traditional ethic causes me to question whether this is about genuinely held beliefs or straight up homophobia. I say this with nothing but sadness: the kind of discrimination my friends and I have experienced as celibate gays makes me lean toward the latter.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Their relationships are beautiful; our communities are ugly. Who are you gonna believe, the Church or your lying eyes?<\/em><\/p>\n This is the world she sees. This is the world lots of Christians see. And it is a big swathe<\/a>, though not all, of the world I see.<\/p>\n That\u2019s part of why I was so grateful<\/a> that the preliminary report from the bishops\u2019 Synod on the Family talked about the good work done by gay couples. We have got to show that we\u2019re capable of recognizing love when we see it. To do otherwise, to pretend that love isn\u2019t love when it takes place within a gay relationship, is ungrateful; and it makes us untrustworthy guides to the God Who is Love. We can say that a relationship includes beautiful, sacrificial love, even if it misses the fullness of what God wants for the participants\u2013just as we can see and honor the beauty and witness in Judaism or Buddhism<\/a> without believing that these ways of life express the fullness of God\u2019s truth.<\/p>\n And speaking of religious differences\u2026 I was recently hanging out in a Catholic setting, with a mix of adults and the teenagers in their charge. The teens were a mix of Catholic and otherwise, and I doubt all the Catholic teens were strictly orthodox. One of the teens is openly bisexual, and she was sort of butterflying around the room giggling about how she was going to start a \u201cgay club\u201d in this setting.<\/p>\n And the adults interrupted their conversation about how to present Natural Family Planning to teens (this is literal truth), and took some time to joke with her about it. \u201cA gay club? Really? Can I be in your gay club? You\u2019re not gonna discriminate, are you?\u201d<\/p>\n They treated her with fondness, with the kind of \u201clol okay\u201d attitude adults often take to enthusiastic teenagers. The adults are all orthodox to the point of catechism-thumping, like more orthodox than necessary! (that\u2019s a joke y\u2019all, chill), and they take their responsibility to shepherd these kids really seriously. That responsibility is part of why<\/em> they responded the way they did. I don\u2019t think they were deliberately thinking, \u201cHow can I be a good witness to the truth of the Catholic sexual ethic?\u201d, but I do think they had formed habits of humility and open-heartedness. And as the Cat\u2019lick schools teach you, habit forms character.<\/p>\n They treated this girl like they\u2019d treat, I think, a Lutheran teen or a \u201cspiritual but not religious\u201d teen: not Catholic, sure, not following the Way completely, but not some weird special threat. Someone capable of seeing the beauty in our faith if you stop blocking the Light. Someone you can listen to and like<\/em>.<\/p>\n It\u2019s possible to be both orthodox and gentle. Some would even say ungentle orthodoxy is a contradiction in terms.<\/p>\n A final small thought: Protestants (especially evangelicals?) may navigate these waters differently from Catholics or Orthodox. For us the sexual ethic is woven into the fabric of the entire Church. We\u2019re pretty strongly cautioned not to view one issue or one area of life in isolation but to view all things as connected. So the beauty of the Church can\u2019t be separated from Her witness on sexual ethics, or at least it\u2019s much harder to make that separation. I was first drawn to the Catholic Church partly by Her beauty, and partly by the willingness of the (straight) Catholics I knew to make sacrifices in their own lives in order to follow Jesus. The beauty we see in the rest of the faith can to some extent sustain us (or keep us leashed, if you disagree with me) when we\u2019re struggling with one element of the Church\u2019s teaching, and it can also suggest resources we might draw on: If everything\u2019s connected then monasticism<\/a> is connected to the sexual ethic, and art<\/a> is connected to the meaning of sex, etc.<\/p>\n But I resonated so much with Julie\u2019s post<\/a>. I\u2019ve had many of the same experiences she\u2019s had. I think almost every gay, celibate Christian I know can resonate with what she says\u2013which is striking in itself, yes?<\/p>\n