Disclaimer: The following opinions do not claim to represent the views of any person or institution other than the author. The ideas contained in the essay flow from many years of dialogue, reflection, and therapeutic work with gay persons and their families.
The data from solid research is clear. Youth who report same-sex attraction are at greater risk for psychological distress, behavioral disorders, and social rejection including (but not limited to) suicide, substance abuse, bullying, stigmatization, depression, and self-injury (Saewyc 262). If estimates are correct, 3 to 5 percent of young people are gay, and therefore it is highly likely many gay youth in Christian communities are subject to significant suffering and trauma related to their feelings of same-sex attraction, their status as social deviants, and the effects of being stigmatized with the label of “sinner.”
This is not to say that despite these adverse conditions all gay youth are destined to have mental breakdowns, engage in suicidal behavior, or become victims of bullying and stigmatization. Gay youth have shown remarkable resilience in the face of multiple stress factors inherent in living in communities in which one is a member of a sexual minority. That many gay youth move into successful adulthood is due not only to their own resilience, but also to many protective factors some individual gay youth have available within their particular communities—supportive parents, friends, teachers, counselors, and pastors, who mitigate the many negative aspects of being a gay youth. However despite resilience and personal support, many gay Christians remain at risk and suffer from various aspects of what Erik Erikson named “identity confusion” (17). What kinds of responses do we often see in the Christian community?
The Fall 2015 edition of the Calvin Theological Seminary Forum can serve as an illustration of responses (3–16). In writing about “Same-Sex Relationships,” conservative Reformed theologians seem to behave like modern-day “Pharisees and scribes,” busily constructing biblical grounds and justification for assigning actively gay Christians to the category of evildoers and sinners. While neglecting the revealing work of the Holy Spirit through compassion and personal experience in favor of presumably objective/rational analysis, conservative Reformed theologians seem to occupy themselves with finding intellectual arguments for why sinners—in this case gay persons, are outside the law of God and therefore undeserving of full participation in the life of the covenant community.
Claiming to develop a Reformed view rooted in the tradition of John Calvin and taken directly from scripture, these theologians create a view of same-sex attraction that avoids dialogue with alternative readings of scripture and ignores innovations in epistemology and biblical interpretation that offer real hope for inclusion for gay youth. It is surprising to learn, given all we know about the role of context and worldview in human knowing, that an analysis could claim to be “open, honest, and without bias” while failing to account for the authors’ own epistemic interests and presuppositions. Such so-called “open, honest” analysis yields consequences that do exhibit bias; namely, stigmatization, prejudice, and discrimination directed toward gay Christians, dispossessing them of their identity and sense of belonging to the life of the church, the school, and the family. The fruits of this kind of analysis lay bare the deeper purpose—to perpetuate the exclusion of gay youth and adults from participating in the joy of full fellowship in the church, school, and broader Christian community.
On the pastoral side, Reformed Christian responses to the plight of gay youth and other sexual minorities have shifted away from outright condemnation to a focus on self-examination marked by guilt feelings and admissions of failure to “love the sinner and hate the sin.” The ground for this change was laid, for example, in the 1973 Synodical Report 42 of the Christian Reformed Church (609–33) and its distinction between homosexual orientation and homosexual behavior. This distinction, while plausible as an abstraction, creates a dilemma in which gay youth can be affirmed in their identity only as long as they do not act as gay persons. Compulsory celibacy is not a tenable or attractive goal for the majority of gay youth.
While suggesting a softening of attitudes toward gay persons, the 1973 Synodical Report effectively shifted attention away from the real afflictions suffered by gay youth toward the persons responsible for the suffering itself, as if the real problem is how to address the guilt and moral failures of the heterosexual majority in the church. The failure of Christian schools and churches to take real action to create a hospitable and safe environment for gay youth is covered over by platitudes and sentiments marked by expressions of guilt and compassion for the suffering of gay people.
One is tempted to suggest that many Christians exhibit attitudes akin to those who pass by the injured man in the parable of the Good Samaritan. Rather than helping the injured man as the Samaritan does, it as if Christians, like the priest and the Levite, pass by, and then focus on how to assuage their guilt for not offering anything more than expressions of sympathy. Compassion without action shows itself in the long run to be little more than condescending pity and empty sentiment. Consequently, it should be no surprise that rather than being known for hospitality and love, Christians are perceived by the broader culture as “anti-homosexual” (Kinnaman 90).
Given this climate of either outright hostility or empty sympathy, gay youth can find few resources for developing identity and self-respect in the church or school. Instead they frequently turn their back on the Christian faith and deprive themselves of the protection and sheltering of a covenant community, thereby heightening their vulnerability to the many difficulties and negative developmental outcomes well-documented by researchers. To flourish and achieve a successful identity, many gay youth must leave the church and escape from the Christian formation available in Christian secondary schools and colleges.
How can neglect and avoidance of the suffering of gay youth be understood as something other than moral self-justification? The answer may lie in what social psychologists have described in social attribution theory. According to social psychologists, we explain the causes of human behavior via two types of attributions, internal or external. In the former type, human beings explain behavior as caused by some personality trait or disposition. In external attributions, we ascribe the observed behavior as caused by factors external to the person. For example, how does one explain the causes of poverty? Internal attributors explain poverty by pointing to personality traits in poor individuals such as low need for achievement, inadequate work ethic, or lack of intelligence. External attributors explain poverty by looking to social/environmental causes such as lack of educational opportunity, discrimination in hiring, and segregation.
It would seem that many Christians who refuse to support gay Christians continue to offer internal attributions to explain the plight and tragic circumstances often associated with being young and gay. To put it simply, for the internal attributor, gay youth are unfortunates who suffer from bad genes, traumatic sexual abuse, or a weakness of the will that disposes them to exhibit sinful patterns of thought, feeling, and behavior. Unfortunately, internal attributions connected to gay persons typically lead to blaming the victim for their plight and the attendant suffering that follows. It also tends to place complete responsibility upon the afflicted to alleviate their own suffering.
In the milder version of internal attributions, gay youth are pitied because they had the misfortune to be “born that way” or to have received traumatic abuse from deviant parents, uncles, grandfathers, teachers, or coaches. Their membership in the category of sinners is not judged to be their fault directly. However, in the “hard-line” version, gay youth are blamed for choosing their identity as an act of disobedience. Gay individuals suffer because they choose disobedience and openly defy the clear will of God expressed in scripture. They are rebels against God who, once recognized, must be willing to suppress the expression of their identity and submit to special restrictions upon their behavior if they are to remain in Christian fellowship. The social context seems to pose gay youth with difficult choices infused with emotional conflict—remain hidden and seek to escape recognition, “come out” as gay and accept the extra burden of restrictions imposed upon sexual minorities, or actively ignore those restrictions and openly express one’s identity in defiance of the community. Each of these paths is stressful and compounds the crisis of identity for gay young people.
As a clinical psychologist and psychotherapist, I have found many gay youth are subjected to a profound dissociation from their bodies, particularly at the stage of puberty when strong desires for sexual activity occur, along with heightened awareness of one’s identity and self-worth linked to the embodied self. Unlike heterosexual youth who are faced with the challenge of developing ways to channel and explore their sexual drives, gay youth must repudiate them altogether in order to conform to their social environment.
Thus, whereas straight youth deal largely with the challenge of conforming to social and moral demands upon the timing, context, and degree of sexual expression permissible in their community, the gay adolescent must isolate and block all sexual feelings in totality. Since sexual thoughts and desires are largely involuntary, the gay young person often despairs over their inability to control the sexual side of their identity. The inability to control aversive experiences has been identified as leading to a condition psychologists call “learned helplessness,” a state strongly associated with depression and despair. Other gay youth may resort to self-medication to suppress sexual desires, or employ intoxication to dampen inhibitions in order to engage in sexual relationships without regard for the consequences.
Unable to establish meaningful relationships with peers in the Christian community, gay youth often seek relationships with others in high-risk contexts, exposing themselves to unprotected sexual activity with partners who may carry sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV/AIDS. Suicidal thought and action can develop when gay youth experience themselves as condemned to a life of social exclusion, unending alienation from their sexual desires, and no hope of achieving a mature adult identity that combines community affirmation, full participation in adult roles, and interpersonal relationships of love and sexual intimacy.
Will gay youth continue to remain “at risk” while theologians continue to wrangle over the finer points of biblical interpretation and wring their hands in pity for the gay members of their schools and churches? Are there glimpses of hope for change? I believe there are—not just among individuals, but at the level of ideas, institutions, and policies. Public opinion polls reported by the Pew Research Center indicate greater acceptance of gay marriage, especially among the young. Recent changes in civil society, often imposed by the courts, have ensured equal rights for gay persons in housing, employment, marriage, and parenting. Various churches have endorsed full participation of gay persons in the life of the church. It would seem that much has changed on an interpersonal level, with many persons reporting positive relationships with family members and friends who have “come out” and are fully accepted and loved.
Gay persons are increasingly represented in media and entertainment as real human beings who exhibit integrity, courage, and a capacity for love; these are positive role models for gay youth. Prominent Christian leaders have endorsed the concept of full acceptance of gay persons. Advocacy groups promoting change have arisen in churches around the world. Church leaders, Christian educators, and Christian counselors are calling for a paradigm shift away from a culture of blame to one of protection, from prohibition to acceptance, from a focus upon banning to belonging, from policies that control to policies that support, and from an attitude of mere toleration to celebration of the gifts gay persons bring to enrich our churches and communities. Such a shift is akin to what Wendy VanderWal-Gritter has called “generous spaciousness” (53). Her work, already described in an earlier edition of this journal, offers a real path forward with concrete suggestions for redirecting the church and the school toward embracing gay persons as image-bearers of God and welcoming them into full covenantal participation and membership (32–36).
Perhaps we may see a day in the not-too-distant future when affirmations of diversity in all Christian churches and schools will include sexual orientation as well as gender, race, and national origin. Certainly for those Christians who believe in common grace, the evidence of positive changes in the broader society may be recognized as the work of general revelation that comes to us from outside the confines of the confessing church and leads us to understand special revelation in new ways. Jesus once said that when the people of God rest upon inherited tradition rather hearing the Word, even the stones will speak out and glorify God. It is humbling when the faithful must admit that long-held beliefs must change as the church was forced to acknowledge with Galileo long, long ago. The acceptance of sexual diversity may approach that same level of radical transformation. Just as the church eventually came to accept that the sun does not revolve around the earth, so may the church come to realize that heterosexuality is not the center of the moral universe. Rather the various sexual identities of Christians, whatever they may be, orbit around a common center, the incarnation of God in the person of Jesus Christ, who taught us to love our enemies, who ate with sinners like ourselves, and who showed us how to suffer and die to ourselves. Such is a reason for hope for Christian schools in which all God’s children—gay, straight, and in-between—are recognized as true image-bearers of God, our Creator, Redeemer and Friend. Gay youth: Have faith and trust in the Lord; change is gonna come.
Works Cited
Calvin Theological Seminary Forum. Biblical and Hermeneutical Reflections on Same-Sex Relationships. Grand Rapids: Calvin Theological Seminary. Fall 2015.
Christian Reformed Acts of Synod. Report 42: Committee to Study Homosexuality. Grand Rapids. 1973.
Erikson, Erik. Life History and the Historical Moment. New York: Norton, 1975.
Kinnaman, David, and Gabe Lyons. Unchristian. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2007.
Saewyc, Elizabeth. “Research on Adolescent Sexual Orientation: Development, Health Disparities, Stigma, and Resilience.” Journal of Research on Adolescence (2011): 256–72.
VanderWal-Gritter, Wendy. “Being a Hospitable Community for Those Outside the Heterosexual Mainstream.” Christian Educators Journal (2011): 32–36.
_____. Generous Spaciousness. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2014.
Michael DeVries serves as professor of psychology and director of the graduate program in counselling psychology at Trinity Christian College in Palos Heights, Illinois.