Main - Hearts & minds: talking to Christians about homosexuality

Darren Main is a yoga and meditation instructor and author. His books include Yoga and the Path of the Urban Mystic, Spiritual Journeys along the Yellow Brick Road, and The Findhorn Book of Meditation. In addition to writing, he facilitates workshops and gives talks on yoga and modern spirituality throughout the United States and abroad and is the director of the Yoga Tree Teacher Training Program. He currently lives in San Francisco.

www.darrenmain.com

Hearts & Minds

Talking to Christians
about Homosexuality

Darren Main

Darren Main 2008

The right of Darren Main to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998.

First published by Findhorn Press 2008

ISBN 978-1-84409-145-4

All rights reserved. The contents of this book may not be reproduced in any form, except for short extracts for quotation or review, without the written permission of the publisher.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Edited by Judith Cope
Cover design by Jasper Trout
Layout by Thierry Bogliolo
Printed in the USA

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Published by
Findhorn Press
305A The Park,
Findhorn, Forres
Scotland IV36 3TE

Tel +44(0)1309 690582
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www.findhornpress.com

Dedicated to Michel Lynch, Richard Schwass and Robert Bankel for giving me permission to love myself and to Jasper Trout for teaching me how to love another man. Without each of you, I would not be the man I am today and this book would never have come into being.

There is an axiom that only a fool is proud of what he cant help being. I was lucky to have been born gay, but that evokes a sense of gratitude, not pride. For me, pride is the result of commitment, accomplishments and character.

I feel pride when I see queer people making the world more beautiful, or responding to prejudice against us with dignity and compassionate strength.

I feel pride when I see young queer people taking a same-sex date to the prom, or two lesbians getting married for the first time in Massachusetts.

I feel pride when we play sports together, do charitable works together, pray and meditate together, and sing together.

Most importantly I feel pride when we stand up and make our voices heard in Washington, DC and in state capitols all around this country.

We are no longer a bunch of queer individuals living in individual closets of hell. We are a community. Our community is filled with many problems and challenges, to be sure, but the fact that we stand together means that we no longer have to suffer alone.

To me, that is worth marching in the streets.

Darren Main
San Francisco, California, June 2002

I was a senior in high school when I first came out publicly. Prior to that, I had only come out to a few friends. I had always dated women, and even enjoyed sexual relationships with them, but I also had an eye for men. I had been struggling to stay clean and sober and was about one year into my sobriety when I embarked on a school trip to Europe.

On one of the last nights of the trip, a group of us were playing truth or dare in a hotel in Venice. All the usual embarrassing questions were being tossed around the room, and when it came to me, I was asked the inevitable question about gay sex. My first instinct was to lie; it was self-preservation, after all. But something inside of me snapped. I was tired of lying and feeling ashamed. I was tired of hiding. In my twelve-step work, I had been addressing the issue of honesty. So instead of doing what I had done so many times before, I opened my mouth and told the truth.

The room fell silent. I half expected to be dumped in one of the canals of Venice and left for dead. Instead, one by one, people began to smile. Some nodded their heads in a gesture of approval. A few of the girls even voiced their support. One person, though, was notably stoic.

His name was George, and he will be forever burned in my memory as the first Christian to try to save me from the sin of homosexuality. To his credit, he waited until we were alone to tell me what a sinner I was. But that was where his thoughtfulness ended. In order to save me, he used every tactic he had to try to convince me I was going to hell if I didnt repent and accept Jesus. I heard about Adam and Steve and about Sodom and Gomorrah. I was told that homosexuality was against nature and that he loved the sinner but hated the sin. He tossed out Bible verse after Bible verse to try to convince me that I was on the fast track to hell.

I had nothing to say in return. I was no Bible scholar, but I did know that God did in fact make Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. As to the many other Bible verses, I had not heard most of them, but they did seem fairly damning. Not having an answer to the case he was making, I did what any bitter and angry young man would doI yelled back at him that the Bible is all bullshit anyway!

Needless to say, things went south from there. George yelled back and things turned into a heated argument. In the end, he didnt save me, and I didnt change his mind about homosexuality. We both parted a whole lot angrier and still feeling that the other was wrong.

George was the first in the long line of Christians with whom I would have this debatea debate that might as well have been pre-recorded because it always went down the same way. The Christian du jour would start off with a soft and soothing voice and usually focused on Jesus love. I would make a comment about Jesus loving all people, including homosexuals. They would toss out the same Biblical verses and I would tell them that the Bible was bullshit. Then came the heated arguments in which each of us would only listen to ourselves. We would end in a huff, and nothing would change.