How The So-Called “Traditional View” Forces Queer Christians Into Hiding
Jamie Arpin-Ricci
(from 2020)

(Content Warning: The following article contains mention of suicide.)

While I still held the so-called “traditional view” on marriage and sexuality when I married my wife, my own deeply painful experiences as a bisexual man working in full-time Christian ministry tempered how I engaged the topic. Where others were focusing on the need to stand by “Biblical absolutes” with respect to this (and any) subject, my awareness of the harm being done to 2SLGBTQIA+ people by the church shifted my attention in another direction.

Instead of being a champion for orthodoxy, guarding against the ever-present risk of the notorious “slippery slope”, I was motivated to focus on caring for Christians like myself: young Christian men and women who knew they weren’t like everyone else with respect to sexual orientation and gender identity. In contrast to the aggressive and over-protective rhetoric of most Christian leaders I knew, who characterized us as dangerous agenda-driven deviants, I knew these people were wounded, alienated, and afraid.

So while I continued to serve in my regular ministry capacities, I found that two things became more common secondary focuses: first, that very care and understanding extended to LGBTQ2S+ Christians; and second, calling Christians to more informed and compassionate responses to this topic and people like me. Again, still not affirming in my view, I was resolutely convinced that the church should and could do better.

This latter commitment found expression largely through writing. Through my blog (which rose to surprising heights of popularity at the height of the blogging-heyday), through emerging social media, and through the occasional publication, I found myself using whatever platform available to me to name the mistreatment of queer folks and point towards better ways forward.

Inevitably a few people responded with fiercely condemning language, naming me an apostate, a heretic, a false Christian- all of this, despite my clear adherence to the “traditional view”. While these more extreme responses tended to be in the minority, they still left me unsettled. I had not anticipated that a call for greater compassion would be so soundly rejected.

The most common responses I received, though easier to swallow, were still far from encouraging. Most of them fell into a category I would come to call the “Yes Buts”:

“Should we show compassion? Yes but they need to know that it is sin.”

“Do people have different beliefs as Christians? Yes but the Bible is very clear on this topic.”

“Is all sin bad? Yes but God had declare that kind of behaviour as an abomination worthy of hellfire!”

The pattern was the same: a passing acknowledgment would be made to my words followed by a refutation that left room for nothing but the same. Some would be less definitive in their responses, affirming my sentiments (usually in private). I would try to take hope in such responses. However, time would generally prove that they were not willing to engage further. And when push came to shove, their public responses would either uphold the status quo explicitly or through silence. I began to wonder if there was any value in my speaking out at all.

That was when another response began to emerge. Slowly I started to receive random messages from complete strangers: Parents of 2SLGBTQIA+ kids who wanted to know how to love their kids without compromising their faith; women and men who had kept their queer identities a secret for most of their lives, no longer able to live with the self-harm of that silence; pastors who saw the devastating impact of how the churches rhetoric and treatment were harming queer people, yet fearful of losing their jobs for challenging the norm. What started as a trickle of messages became a steady flow.

One such email came from a pastor living in what he called “the deep south” of rural America. Having created a new email account to protect his identity and hide his secret, he reached out to me having seen something I had written. He was married with children and was well respected in his community. In what was clearly a painfully difficult admission to make, he told me that he was attracted to other men. He was terrified about what that might mean for him, his family, and his faith. Like me, he firmly held to the “traditional view” and had no interest in leaving his family but living with the secret (and faking much of his marital intimacy) was taking its toll.

Responding with a great deal of care and caution, I asked him if there was anyone in his church that he could talk to about this, anyone he trusted to support him. His response chilled me to my core: “No!” he wrote. “If anyone found out about this, I would get lynched.” He went on to make it very clear that he was using that word literally. He was sure that being murdered would be a very likely outcome. Not wanting him to get himself hurt (or worse), I was nervous about how to advise him, so I asked if he thought he would be able to tell his wife.

“No.” he replied again. “She would immediate tell the elders of the church and the same outcome would happen.” Again, I was stunned and overwhelmed. What wisdom could I give this man? He hated his own sexual orientation, was devoted to the traditional view and to his marriage, yet the simple act confessing this truth- a truth he had never acted on- would get him killed. What hope could I offer him? Not long after that, without any reason given, his emails stopped. To this day I wonder at what happened to him.

I wish I could say that his story was a rare outlier. In truth, as more and more stories poured into my inbox, I began to realize the extent of the fear and harm that existed around this reality for many people. More than once someone would reach out to me by email or text, moments away from suicide. While I am grateful that none of them followed through, I could not help but wonder at how many others didn’t reach out to someone and choose to end their life prematurely.

Inevitably these stories fueled the passion and urgency I felt to call Christians into better ways of relating to people like me. And yet, many still did not like what I had to say. This was especially true when I began to speak against the negative impact of so-called “reparative therapy”, attempts made to change the sexual orientation and/or gender identity of someone through various methods. Though I still held to the “traditional view”, the evidence of harm from the vast majority of such efforts was devastatingly clear to me. I was sure people would change their minds if they only heard the stories. Yet, even today, as evidence of the harm of such methods are clearly and widely proven, many Christians defend the abuse as not only their religious right but a necessity.

One of my colleagues found my views on “reparative therapy” problematic enough to report me to the North American Director (who bumped it back to the leadership in Canada where I served). Despite the fact that my views were in no way in violation of any organizations position or policy- and despite the fact that the colleague had violated policy by not reaching out to me personally first- I was given a clear caution. The accusing colleague, on the other hand, not only did not receive any correction but was praised by one of our national leaders for his willingness to speak out.

I found myself deeply confused. I was not violating any rules within the organization, nor was I challenging the “traditional view”. Yet I was still seen as a threat, misguided, dangerous, and inflammatory. Even if misguided, my views were calling for more compassion and understanding, yet were received with frustrated discomfort. And yet, while others in the organization publicly disseminated harmful and even dishonest rhetoric around 2SLGBTQIA+ people, they were left unquestioned and unchallenged. The inconsistencies were too significant for me to ignore.

In truth, it was those very inconsistency that began to make me question the quality of the so-called “traditional views” on sexuality and gender. While it would be years before I made a significant shift in my thinking and embracing the affirming theology that I now hold, it was those experiences that prompted me to dig deeper in prayer, thought, study and understanding.

And through it all, my emphasis in ministry increasingly moved towards caring for people like me and the good fruit of those efforts were impossible to deny. The seeds of my transformation had been planted.