Are you fed up with debating over and over and over again about whether it’s “ok to be gay”? I am.

And at the same time, I remember when that was the conversation that I wanted to have over and over and over again. I needed an answer, an explanation, just the right… something… that would tell me that it’s OK to be gay, that I’m OK.

I don’t think I ever found that answer.

This is what I did do though: watch porn, give up watching porn, come out, doubt my decision to come out, date guys, get crushes on girls, find a new church, give up on God, and get born again.

At some point, I stopped asking “Is it a sin to be gay?” I didn’t need to ask anymore, I knew the answer: of course not!

When was the turning point? I honestly don’t know. When I joined the Equality Ride in 2007, I was out, I was sure that God loved me, and I was preeeety sure that being gay wasn’t a sin. But I wasn’t positive. Or, at least I didn’t have the language to describe.

I dove in anyway. And that made all the difference.

Surrounding myself with fellow LGBTQ people: some atheists, some Southern Baptists, a few Presbyterians… some who believed that God’s love was for everyone, some who believed you’ll go to hell unless you accept Jesus (but being gay is OK), and some who didn’t believe in God.

It was the doing of theology–of talking about God–that led me to a place of self-acceptance. It was discovering and sharing my own story and listening to the stories of other LGBTQ people that utterly convinced me of the rightness of our cause.

Which, brings me today. My friend Shay and I want to create that opportunity for others–for you. So we created Queer Theology’s first course: Reading Queerly. Reading Queerly is a six-week online course which guides you through the process of approaching faith from a queer perspective, and to find fresh ways to find yourself in the story of faith. The course will look primarily at the Christian scriptures — though, you by no means need to be Christian or LGBTQ to participate!

Last week, Shay and I squirreled ourselves away in a monastery to finish the course content. We’ve been putting the finishing touches on it and are excited to be able to share it with you. So, if you want to learn more and get your spot in the class, you can do that right here.

That’s why it’s so important for those of us committed to making this world a better  place to talk frankly about making a living. A real living. We have to.

Look at this chart from Mother Jones:

The income of the top 1% of the US skyrocketed from 1979 to 2007, the income for the top 20% grew steadily, while the income for everyone else flatlined or possibly declined–the scale is so skewed from the explosive growth of the wealthy that it’s hard to tell.

It’s Robin Hood in reverse: the rich are stealing from the poor, gobbling up an ever-greater share of the income.

There are lots of ways to address economic injustice in this country–and world–and we need ‘em all.

Raise the minimum wage.

Reform welfare.

Enact non-discrimination laws & policies.

Cancel debt.

And more. I’m sure you can think of a few!

But we can’t wait for the government–or a corporation–to treat us fairly and pay us justly. We need to start with ourselves. 

You don’t need to wait for maybe just maybe the company to pay you more, or hire you in the first place. You don’t need to cede your power.

The task seems daunting though, doesn’t it?

You have to do well on that test that everyone takes in third grade so you get on the right track in elementary school, so that you get into honors classes in middle school, so that you can take AP classes in high school, so you can get into the right college, so that you can land a good job, so that you can be overworked, underpaid, burdened with debt, and laid off.

How could you possibly change such a system?

To be honest: I don’t know. But I do know that you can begin to chip away at its power.

Make an extra 5 dollars or 100 dollars or 500 dollars this month to prove to yourself that you are not dependent on your at-will employer or your government assistance check.

You don’t need to build a small business overnight, you just need to do a little. Over time, a little adds up. So whether you stay at your job, find a new one, or start something yourself, you will know that it’s because that is what you are choosing for yourself.

Imagine the possibilities.

Charts from Mother Jones

P.S. I’m going to write pieces on “5 ways to make $5 online” and “10 Ways to Make $100 This Month” — if you want, I’ll email them to you. Just lemme know.

It was easier to pretend that I was straight before I looked I gay porn. That’s when it all came crashing down. Before then, I could brush it off. I was just excited to make a new friend, I was just looking for new clothes in the catalogue, or I was being a good Christian by not lusting after women.

By seventh grade, kids were looking at porn.

My guys friends at church never admitted it outright, but they did talk about looking at their moms’ Victoria’s Secret catalogues. I was righteously (but silently) indignant. We’re not supposed to do that! Even then, I knew better than to say it out loud.

My friends from school were more vocal about looking up porn on the internet. How does one even find it?! I had not one clue.

So, I Googled it—er, I Ask Jeeved it.

“Where do you find porn?”

Ask Jeeves replied,

“Where do you find naked pictures of…” with a drop-down menu for me to select “women,” “men,” or “both.”

Naturally, I clicked women.

Wait. Men was an option? People might want to see naked pictures of men? And this fact was so well-known that even Jeeves the algorithmic butler knew it?

It took me a few more times before I would even hover over the option. Select it but switch it back to women before pressing submit.

Until one day I said “Fuck it” and just did it. And that’s when it all changed.

Suddenly homosexuality went from this vague thing that I could not possibly be to an action, a mouse click. And if it was a mouse click, I could unclick it, I could turn it off, I could not do it.

Don’t look at porn. Don’t look at the underwear section of the mall. Don’t look at your friends.

It would take me years to unlearn the lesson I taught myself that year in seventh grade: that being gay isn’t something that you just “don’t do,” that it’s not an action, and most importantly that it’s not wrong.

Gay porn taught me about faith, too

Faith isn’t an action either.

The church I grew up attending teaches that we are saved by faith alone and not by works, they even positioned themselves against “other churches” where going (or not going) to church each week is what mattered, or against Roman Catholics who practiced confession.

But we sure had a whole lot of required actions

• Don’t smoke cigarettes
• Read your Bible every morning for at least 15 minutes
• Don’t drink alcohol (or at least not too much)
• Say a certain prayer to ask Jesus into your heart
• Don’t have sex (or, at least don’t talk about it)
• Go to church each week (unless you have a good excuse), and a Bible study once a week

I judged myself on how many memory verses I’d memorized and whether I brought enough friends to church. (I was never good at evangelizing to friends.)

But, just like being queer, faith is bigger than the actions I used to think defined it.

It doesn’t matter whether or not I watch gay porn… I am still queer.

And it doesn’t matter whether I read my Bible every day or have sex or even believe in God, I can still be—I still am—a person traveling through life working to be the best version of myself and the best member of this human family that I can be.

Have you looked up homosexuality in the Bible? I have. When I first started to realize that I might be not-straight, that was the first thing I did. I spent the remainder of my childhood closeted and devouring anything I could find online that talked about homosexuality and the bible (and then quickly deleting my history, cache, and cookies).

I don’t know about you, but it took me awhile to be comfortable with not-straightness. Jesus, the Bible, and Homosexuality by Jack Rogers was a huge help. As was Peggy Campolo’s unequivocal pro-gay position in conversation with her Christian-famous husband Tony Campolo.

I was looking for an explanation, for someone to tell me–to convince me–that it’s OK to be gay. But that’s how addiction, not transformation, happens. I was always looking for the next hit to remind me that I. am. ok.

I’ve yet to find the magic bullet, the article that will settle the debate once and for all, for everyone everywhere. Have you?

Instead, what I’ve found is that transformation is incremental, it happens in conversations and relationships, in actions and interactions. I never found the ultimate explanation of Leviticus 18:22 and Romans 1. I discovered that there is so much more out there.

Do you want to dive deeper? I know that I do.

That’s why my friend Shannon Kearns and I are working on Queer Theology–we’re creating videos, resources, courses and more over at queertheology.com. It’s not quite ready yet but we just couldn’t wait any longer so we’re going to launch a four-week online course to a limited group.

You can signup below and we’ll follow-up with more information or you can head over to Queer Theology to learn a little more.

I’m revisiting the Bible and looking again—with fresh eyes—at what Scripture has to say about gender and sexuality. The story doesn’t end with sadness and shame. Let’s journey together to find what hope, healing, joy, and power looks like.

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“God loves all His children, but He loves some of us more than others,” an associate pastor at my childhood church preached a few years ago. My jaw dropped. I scribbled the quote down on the church bulletin to make sure that I wouldn’t forget it.

With the space of college in Los Angeles and two years living in New York City between my then-current self and my self of my childhood, the pastor’s words were shocking. I shouldn’t have been shocked though: that’s what our church has always taught.

We were Christians, we who had accepted Jesus as our personal Lord and savior, and God loved us the most. Going to church didn’t make you a Real Christian, so just because our friends went to other churches didn’t mean that they were really saved. Catholics could be Real Christians if they believed the right things and said the right prayer; Mormons were definitely not Christians.

And that’s the God I grew up believing in: a God of boxes. Christians and not Christians, the saved and the damn, righteous and sinful. There was a line for everything. Even the rules for dating were clear: hand-holding and kissing were OK, anything under the clothes was not. And after a year of dating, you need to get engaged or break up.

When, in middle school, I started to realized that I liked other guys, I didn’t have a box to put that in. I was told that a person was such boxes goes in the pervert box, the unrepentant sinner box, the threat to society box.

My NIV Teen Study Bible confirmed what church and society told me, but I couldn’t stop there. I had to seek out and create queer theology, I’ve become born again again, and I clung to one of my favorite Bible verses to “test everything, hold on to that which is good.”

In the process, I’ve found that God is bigger than the boxes of my youth.

If you enjoyed this article, you may want to go deeper with Spit & Spirit, a free digital magazine. Learn more and subscribe.

More entries from this year’s syncroblog

the Anarchist Reverend shares his thoughts on the Queer Christ over on the Camp Osiris blog.

Peterson Toscano shares “The Lost Gospel of Thaddeus.”

Shirley-Anne McMillan writes about Mother Christ.

Adam Rao shares why he is not participating in today’s synchroblog.

Kaya Oakes writes about God, the Father/Mother.

Clattering Bones writes about The Queer God.

Daniel Storrs-Kostakis writes writes about An Icon of God.

Jack Springald writes about Avalokitesvara and queering gender.

Amaryah Shaye Armstrong writes about Inclusion and the Rhetoric of Seduction.

Remember that every day, every minute, every moment…

you are alive

you are well

you are in control

you have a choice

Remember to love, remember what you love.

Remember that you only get this life.

Remember to live it. Remember to live it to the full.

And remember to make a difference.

So Weird, a paranormal drama on the Disney Channel, was my favorite show in high school. I got hooked freshman year when Viola, the student from Germany living with us, and I watched an episode; we were instant fans.

In one episode, Fiona—the main character—enters a structure designed using the Fibonacci sequence and intended to serve as bridge between our world and ‘the spirit world.’ In it, Fi has a brief encounter with her deceased father through the thin veil in the structure.

“Thin places” is not unique to a cheesy Disney Channel original series. The idea of “thin places” is alive in many traditions.

But, as someone whose brain is math-science oriented, I like structure and reason. Ice floats because the molecular structure makes it less dense than water. Our bodies break down food into usable amino acids, vitamins, and minerals. The sun “rises” because our planet is rotating and revolving around it.

Where do I experience the thin places?

Last week, I attended a concert at Marble Collegiate Church in Manhattan and connected deeply to the gospel choir’s portion of the concert. There’s a thin place there. I don’t always know what I believe, but I do know that something came alive in the singers and the audience at that concert.

I know that something profound happened when 50 Equality Riders stepped on to Bethany Luterhan’s campus after being threatened with arrest and, in the wake of 8 arrests, students poured out of buildings to engage in conversation for hours.

I know that something stirred in me while performing in Andy Cofino’s play Out In The Open.

I know, even, that when my roommate and I sit on our couch eating Hagen-Daas and bearing our real selves to each other… that something is happening there.

Tapping In

Recognizing (and remembering) the thin places is a practice for me to cultivate. As much as I want to read explanations in an academic journals, I learn over and over again that there is power in trusting the mystery. In squeezing and then releasing. In letting it be.

My practice, if I can muster it, is to embrace the thin places, to honor them, and to tap into the potential they store.

I don’t know why or how, but so it is.

My friend Emily West was one of my many who shared the video (thanks to everyone else who did too!). One of her friends left a comment on the Facebook post that caught my eye. He wrote,

This was a unique argument I hadn’t heard before. I wonder about a couple things: “God is ready to play wingman,” and that God will “trust my decision.” I think if we extrapolate these, they start to sound a bit off. Is God a sidekick? Is God someone who wants us to ultimately take charge of our own destiny and to make our own decisions, regardless of what those choices are? Or does God demand self-emptying and, ultimately, to recognize that he is Creator and we are all his creatures, not in burdensome slavery but in joyful surrender?

I don’t think the video was trying to deny God’s sovereignty but I do think that that mentality somewhat informs the whole argument. Another question would be Was Adam’s choice a once-and-for-all choice for mankind? Or do we each get to choose anew? That’s the question that sticks with me after watching this.

Did you notice how he described the video? An argument. Does this seem like an argument to you?

(click here to view the video on YouTube)

I didn’t set out to craft an argument. I was sharing a mix of my own personal story and my understanding of the Creation story in Genesis.

I remember when the only way that I could talk about “homosexuality and the Bible” was in arguments. Exegesis, eisegesis, translation, original intent, extant literature, Biblical scholarship, centuries of tradition… Talking points, and facts, and arguments. Someone always had to win (ideally me).

With this video, I didn’t try to argue, certainly didn’t try to win anything, or  to even really persuade.

Here’s one way that I read this particular text. Does it resonate with you?

That’s really all I set out to share and ask. I remember being stuck in that box and I’m glad I’m not in it anymore.

I wonder then, to pay tribute to the Bible, if I’m not missing the plank in my own eye to point out the speck in another’s. What boxes am I stuck in? What boxes am I so stuck in that I don’t even know I’m stuck in.

That’s where the real work comes in, isn’t it? In constantly insepcting and exaiming myself. To be courageous and unrelenting. This is scary stuff. To question one’s self. One’s foundations. The things one holds dearly.

That is my challenge to myself: to find my own edges, the walls of my own boxes. And to then be willing to tear them down.

What’re some of the boxes you’ve escaped from?

I find that the untold stories are the ones most needing to be told.

How do we tell the hard stories, though?

The first step is to tell them to ourselves. To give ourselves permission to explore and experience them all over again. This part might bring up uncomfortable feelings. When that happens, I try to notice them and uncover what my feelings tell me about unmet needs. When I’m looking the discomfort square in the face, it’s less scary. In Everyday Activism, we develop a practice of journaling to tell our own story… to ourselves.

When I’ve rolled my own story around in my head and on paper, it’s time to set it free. To tell other people. Sometimes this is in a face-to-face conversation with another person, other times it’s on a stage to an audience, still other times it’s on video or written form… out to the public web.

This is where it gets tough, right?

In Everyday Activism, I write

I find that when I speak aloud to the intimate, scary parts of me, they become less scary. I’ve also found that people react positively, not negatively. They’re inspired by my courage and vulnerability. Sometimes they share something back with me.

It’s not all cheery. When I told my parents that I am gay, they were sad, confused, unhappy, and awkward (they’re wonderful and accepting now).

The first step is the simplest and the most difficult: simply start.

Photo from Out In The Open: Stories of Queer Oppression & Empowerment. Performed at The Barrow Group Theater.