Got this in this week:
Hello John,
God bless you, and thank you so much for writing your book, UNFAIR: Why the “Christian” View of Gays Doesn’t Work. I’m right in the middle of it, and sometimes the testimonies in it bring me to tears.
I’m twenty-three years old Christian woman about to finish art school. I’ve recently discovered something about myself: I’m pansexual.
Right now I just began a very new relationship with a wonderful girl. She’s a beautiful soul, and I love everything about her. I know that God created her special and I love to treat her as such. I could go on for hours about how amazing and positive she is, but that’s not the point of my question.
My mother is very conservative, and heck, I was too, until a few months ago. It took a long time for me to realize that I just want to love someone, and what’s between their legs doesn’t matter to me.
My mom caught me reading UNFAIR on Christmas day, which erupted into a serious argument about what God really says about homosexuality. I ended the discussion with, “Mom, we can’t talk about this right now … you are getting too upset. But I love you.”
A few weeks later, she called me, wanting to once again tell me how wrong I am. This brings tears to my eyes to write … because I believe that God wants us to love people no matter what. I can’t wrap my head around the fact that God IS LOVE. God CREATED LOVE, and the feelings I share for my beautiful girl are not feelings of lust or anything. They are TRUE feelings of adoration and thankfulness that she’s here, that God created her, and that, my gosh, she actually loves me right back! It just seems so wrong that God would be angry at me for this.
I have been a Christian since I was four. I love Jesus. I want to tell the world about our relationship, but it hurts that I can’t tell the people who matter most in my life about how happy I am, about how I wake up every morning with a beautiful girl on my heart, and a thankful spirit that God brought her into my life. It’s so painful that I have to wait to share this beautiful new light in my life. I love my mother, but I just don’t think she’d understand or accept me after this.
Do you have any words of advice? If not, thank you so much for reading this and for writing your book. Its been a huge help for me as I deal with this.
In Christ,
X
Dear X,
I think you should just come right out and tell your mom you’re pansexual. She’ll have no idea what you’re talking about. She’ll think it means you’re attracted to cookware. Or that you have a thing for Peter Pan. But so what? Lots of people have a thing for Peter Pan. I mean, c’mon. The most famous Peter Pan ever was a woman: Mary Martin, in her tights and tantalizingly tiny top, flying o’er the heads of her gaping audience.
Seriously. You’re too young to know this, but Mary Martin as Peter Pan seriously tweaked a whole generation of Americans. Add to that steamy, confusing mix the hot fairy that was PP’s perky pal, Tinkerbell,
and you begin to understand why every year tens of millions of Americans frenziedly overeat at Disneyland.
[But seriously: for those readers not up on their emerging terminologies for sexual identification, pansexuality (according to the Wikipedia entry on the matter) refers to “the potential for sexual attraction, sexual desire, romantic love, or emotional attraction towards persons of all gender identities and biological sexes.” It’s distinguished from bisexuality, see, in a way that would … make Sigmund Freud use his cigar to burn a hole right through his dictionary.]
And now if I might be even more serious.
It’s beyond sad, X, that you have to worry about your mother rejecting you simply because you love the person you do. And of course she might actually do that. Parents choose their God over their children every day. I hope your mom—for her sake as much as yours—proves better than that. (And she might: lots of parents don’t at first react well to their children loving same-sexually—but later, after they’ve had some time to reflect and adjust, change.)
From what I can tell you’ve got a few choices:
1. Don’t tell her. I don’t know if you live with your mom, or are seriously dependent upon her in some other material or even emotional way, but you could of course always not tell her. If I know someone’s crazy about a certain topic, I just don’t talk to them about that topic. There’s no shame in protecting yourself by not giving your mom reason to start telling you how evil and wrong you are. Your love is new; you’re allowed to keep it private and pure while it develops into whatever it will. That’s all your business, and no one else’s. You can tell your mom about how you love when, how, and even if you want to. There’s no rush.
2. You can engage with her about your sexuality via a modification of the way I once suggested a guy do with his family in a post called The Elephant in the Room: I Remain, Still, a Gay Christian.
3. Give her your copy of UNFAIR, and basically insist that she read it. Changing the minds of people like your mother is exactly why I wrote/edited that book. And I know it works very well for that.
4. Show her this letter you wrote to me. It’s beautiful. From it beams proof positive that you have no more wandered from the bright and empowering love of Jesus than the sun has wandered from the sky.
[UPDATE: If no one’s being hurt, God’s okay with your sexuality.]
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In