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The Self-Defeating Sexualization of Gay and Same-Sex Attracted Christians
I’ve written before about how often gay or same-sex attracted people are treated as if the central spiritual and moral issues of our lives are all sexual. For some reason this story strikes me as the...
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Day of Silence
Spiritual Friendship does not have a lot in common with the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network (GLSEN). On most questions related to sexuality, we hold positions very different from theirs....
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Forsaking All Others
For one of my graduate school classes last year we learned to create lists of goals with a counseling client, a process called “goaling.” Our professor went through the process with a classmate and...
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On Bullying
The moment is burned into my memory. It was night, and I was sitting in my parent’s van. I could easily hear the thumping of the band through the gym walls as they were cheering on my sister and her...
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“The Lobster”
Last week I saw The Lobster, an extremely sad and violent romantic comedy about a world in which, if you don’t find a romantic partner within 45 days, you’ll be turned into an animal. It’s sort of “Why...
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Positive and Negative Precepts
Several years ago, Eve Tushnet wrote, “you can’t have a vocation of not-gay-marrying and not-having-sex. You can’t have a vocation of No.” This need to focus on the positive side of Christian...
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The Long Defeat and the Long Loneliness
One of the primary ways I’ve thought about my own life as a gay, celibate believer and also about my larger project of trying to make the church more of a nurturing haven for other gay/SSA/queer...
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A Call to Empathy
Copyright 2015 Gregg Webb It has been a difficult season for me. I’ve been transitioning cities, working through heartbreak, living with nearly constant heartache, beginning the long-term career job...
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The Forgotten Side of the Mountain
Over the last few days, I’ve been attending a private retreat for lesbian, gay, and bisexual Christians. Sunday evening, I was asked to offer a few words of reflection for the group. This is a rough...
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Bearing One Another’s Burdens
What should the Church’s message to lesbian, gay, and bisexual people be? Typically, this question is quickly framed in terms of sexual ethics: should the Church bless same-sex marriage? Framed in this...
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Revelation
[This post was originally written for Friday, October 14. A combination of weather-related travel delays and getting feedback from my friend Chris delayed posting until now.] In the fall of 2009, I...
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When Friendship Isn’t a “Solution”
Paul Wadell, author of some of the few contemporary treatments of friendship in the Christian tradition (that draw on St. Aelred, among others), has an article in an old issue of the Christian Century...
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“Beyond marriage and religious life”
Our own Eve Tushnet has a new piece in America magazine about non-marital ways people can belong to one another. I recommend it enthusiastically. My housemates Aidan and Melanie Smith and I—about whom...
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Permission to Lament
In one of Henri Nouwen’s newly published letters, there comes this moment of real human transparency and frailty: What I keep hoping for are friends who protect, support and care for my celibate choice...
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On Gay Loneliness
This Huffington Post article, by Michael Hobbes, on “gay loneliness after gay rights” has been making the rounds. I first saw it when a friend of mine sent me the link last week, and I was truly moved...
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How Should We Then Live?
The recent debate surrounding the essay “Conjugal Friendship” by Giacomo Sanfilippo has yet again reminded me of a the importance of dialogue surrounding sexual minorities in the Orthodox Church. I’m...
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Heartbreak and Celibacy Pt. 1
Part 1: What Heartbreak and Heartache Have Taught Me About Myself How do you live with heartbreak when you were never supposed to fall in love? What happens when you fall in love with a friend and you...
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Heartbreak and Celibacy Pt. 2
(See Part 1) Part 2: What Heartbreak and Heartache Have Taught Me About Heart The second time I fell in love was with a new friend I met during my last year in St. Louis. I’ll call him Brad. This time,...
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Heartbreak and Celibacy Pt. 3
(See Part 1 & Part 2) Part 3: What Heartbreak and Heartache Have Taught Me About Community I’m a verbal processor and am usually a miserable failure at not gushing most details of my life with...
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Loneliness and the Celibate Gay Christian
This is a guest post by Julia Sadusky, a doctoral candidate in the Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology at Regent University, where she previously served as the Research Assistant for the Institute...
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