Coming Out Strong

Hi all,

It’s great to see this blog up & running. A (very) short intro to me: I’m currently halfway through medical school at the University of Chicago. My partner and I have now been together for six years - we had a commitment ceremony a year ago.

I think that LTH, HTS is really about Christians who are good people and feel like good people wanting to continue to feel like good people. They may have heard something about the injustices that queer people have undergone, but in general their worldview is pretty clear on heterosexuality being the only possible expression of sexuality. So the idea of “loving the sinner, hating the sin” feels to them like a way of continuing to feel like they love everyone without really changing their ideas about sexuality.

The thing that just doesn’t work about it is that people can’t be separated from their sexual natures in the way that people can be separated from a “sin.” A sin is usually something you DO, usually knowing that you shouldn’t do it because it will cause others harm (I’m sure there are more profound theological examinations of sin, although I actually find the concept a rather weak way of thinking about behavior.) But someone’s sexual nature is a part of who they are that runs deep into so many areas of their life and being. “The sin” (presumably a certain sexual act) is just one small part or facet of that person’s sexuality - it becomes kind of ridiculous to fixate on “it.” So to me, LTS HTS seems like a very primitive way of talking about queer sexuality that shows only the very faintest notion of what such sexuality even is. For example, my relationship with my partner includes eating together, sleeping in the same bed together, kissing each other hello and goodbye, relying on each other for emotional comfort, sex, being each other’s main confidant, lying on the beach together, on and on… notice that sex is just one aspect of a whole relationship, a relationships that cuts through every area of life. Supposedly “the sin” in all that is exclusively the sex part, but that seems to me like trying to pick one little area of a whole picture and claiming something about that piece that ignores its relation to the whole.

Sexuality is integral to humans relating to each other. I’m not sure most straight people even understand that, probably because the way it affects their relating has always been so taken for granted that they’ve never had to think about it. That’s the main reason why, to me, the church hasn’t even really begun to address the issue of queer sexuality. The only teaching they have is a ban on gay sex (”the sin”) but they’re absolutely silent on sexuality itself.

Hey All,
This is David and I’ve found my way her through Katie’s generous request for my occasional input. As many of my close friends may tell you, I tend to blog sporadically so I may appear, disappear and reappear all over again. I am 25 years old and currently live in Chicago, IL with my partner Philip. I graduated from Goshen College in 2002 and have wandered around since then through a few jobs and graduate school. I am very happy to say that I am officially graduating from DePaul University with my M.A. Degree this month after a drawn out unofficial year off. I’m not sure what my input on here will look like, but I’m excited about this new venture that katie has started!

Former BMC board member Adam Hostetter sent this video linkto the office (aka the mothership) and said it would be okay to share here. It is a wonderful story and the video is great. I’ll copy and paste the text that goes with it but I’ll just link up the video and you’ll have to go to the Stories for Change website to see it.

Taboo Underoos Video
“Some things felt right and normal to me when I was a kid, and as I grew up, I realized my “right and normal” wasn’t quite so. This story is about coming back around to my own “right and normal” and feeling FABULOUS about it.”

This also was first posted at YAR (young.anabaptistradicals.org), but I hope it will get some good discussion going here.

I’m going to do a spin-off from the speech I pointed you all to in my last post. So here is the conundrum. I grew up Mennonite. I went to a lovely, nurturing, happy, rural church (East Union Mennonite Church) where I was baptized at 16. I went to a Mennonite summer camp (Crooked Creek Christian Camp) for quite a few years and loved it. I went to many a Mennonite churchwide assemblies as my parents were youth leaders for many years and when I was in high school. I went to a Mennonite high school (Iowa Mennonite School) where I learned lovely things about Mennonite history and faith along with the English and Trig. I served for a year with Mennonite Central Committee (SALT) in South Africa. I spent four formative years at Goshen College. I highly value every one of these institutions as they have played a major part in my formation. Those institutions represent an integral part of almost my entire life. The problem arises when I realize that every single one of these institutions would discriminate against me if I were to want to work for them or even volunteer for them as an openly queer Mennonite.

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First seen at YAR in September 2006

Hey Folks, I’m Katie Hochstedler, aka KatieHo. I’m young and Anabaptist and I’d like to think I’m radical. Who know’s who’s really radical and who’s not?

I spend my time living in Minneapolis and working for Brethren Mennonite Council for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Interests as a full-time volunteer. Right now, it is the best way I know that I can be Anabaptist. I’ve been here for almost two years and I’ll be done in August. Then I’m going to move all the way St. Paul and got to culinary school. Before that I was studying at Goshen College and before that I was growing up near Kalona, Iowa.

Something I find amusing about volunteering for BMC is that while I am working with an organization that is involved in both the Mennonite Church and the Church of the Brethren, I have been volunteering through the Lutheran Volunteer Corps and now the United Church of Christ Volunteer Ministries. Neither Mennonite Voluntary Service nor Brethren Voluntary Service will have BMC as a placement so other churches are supporting me.

Something I did recently was give a speech at a conference hosted by BMC and two other faith based lgbt organizations. I was supposed to be provocative as I was speaking to a group of lgbt and allied church people who were mostly older than me. I thought it was a pretty good speech so I’m going to put a link here so you can read it too. It might give you a better picture of me and what I do at work.