Hello! I am finally able to crawl back out of my research and writing hole that I’ve been in for the past two weeks. I wanted to post this on Sunday but haha, that didn’t happen, so now y’all are getting parts 1 and 2 in the span of just a few days. Finished with my first term of grad school and feeling relieved to have a break.
The following is a short story I wrote for a creative writing class in which the professor prohibited writing speculative fiction; she was an older woman who just wasn’t well acquainted with reading the genre, so she couldn’t critique it well. At first I was really mad about this rule since most of the fiction I had written up to that point was sci-fi or fantasy. But in the end I’m glad because I decided to explore topics that are important to my life—queer Christian identity, the experience of faith deconstruction—in a fictional format, seeing how characters with different traits than me would experience them. This short story follows the journey of a budding relationship between two queer women attending a Christian University (a very specific one but for legal reasons I will not say…but uh friend who went to that university, if you’re reading this, let me know if it’s accurate). I did not attend a Christian college, just a women’s college that had a Christian chaplain that was very supportive of my coming-out, so I did do research into real people’s accounts of being queer at Christian colleges, so I hope I have created a story that reflects aspects of those experiences (but of course everyone’s experience is unique).
Pulling out of a kiss, Elsie put her finger on the button of my jeans and asked, “Can I, Cass?”
We were already making out in my dorm room, down to our bras and pants. I stared at Elsie, feeling her breath on my cheeks. “What if they hear us?” I asked.
Elsie and I shared a room together, so there was no fear of a roommate coming in on us. But even if the people on our hall assumed I was having sex with a guy, someone would still report it to the RA. And if they found out it was two girls? God, we’d get expelled. There’d be all the evangelical bullshit. The Code of Conduct at our school, [name redacted for legal reasons], stated that “Sexual relations outside of a biblically ordained marriage between a natural-born man and a natural-born woman” was not permissible. Being caught in the act would merit a $500 fine and 30 community service hours; that is, for straight couples. For same sex couples, the punishment would surely be more severe.
I met Elsie in our “nondenominational” (read: evangelical, with a charismatic bent, really big, has a coffee shop called He Brews in it) church youth group in North Carolina when we were in 11th grade. I had been attending the church my whole life, my brother was even studying at seminary to be a pastor at it someday, but she had just moved from Georgia. It was at one of the Thursday night services, where we would sing worship music, the pastor would give a short sermon, and then we would play games. Most of the boys went off to play basketball, some of the girls just stood around talking. Elsie was with a group of girls playing Apples to Apples, one of my favorite games, and I asked if I could join. We played rounds for the rest of the evening, even after most of the other girls started to leave. When the adjective “sexy” came up as the card to make matches for, the four of us who were left froze up, giving each other embarrassed, almost fearful glances, and I put it into the discard pile immediately.
I don’t just remember the fear of church, though. I remember the joy, too—both of us do. In the midst of being shamed for our bodies existing because they made our “brothers” stumble, in the midst of being indoctrinated, she and I also managed to have a lot of fun. Elsie auditioned to be in the high school worship band during senior year, and when I saw her sing on that stage, her arms outstretched and eyes closed, I smiled. We would carpool together to the Thursday night services. When it was warm out, we’d get frozen yogurt afterwards, usually inviting other friends along. We’d take selfies and I’d show everyone my nature photography. We would talk about boys and Bible verses and school. But when asked about our crushes, Elsie and I never said anything. We said the boys at our schools sucked. And of course, neither of us could bring ourselves to admit how we felt about each other—it wasn’t even an option in our minds. The plan was to go to college, meet a godly man, and get engaged. That’s what all the other girls said was the ideal, anyway. And [redacted]’s “ring by spring” (of senior year) culture promised that for us. Alongside its strong worship music program, that was what attracted Elsie to [redacted].
The bands that played at our church summer camps were usually groups of students from [redacted]. After the service, they would stand at a table in the back of the theater with information about the school, and high school students could fill out forms to receive emails. We both filled them out, and through the emails that I received I fell in love with the school. It had an intensive cinematic arts program, exactly what I wanted. And we both admired the school’s commitment to the Christian faith.
That wasn’t the only thing we got out of church camp, discovering our college. Camp was where Elsie and I became best friends. We were in the same cabin each time, two summer camps, two winter camps, along with the rest of the girls our age at the church. No one found it weird that we hung out together constantly—it wasn’t strange for church girls to be side-hugging, playing with each other’s hair. What was weird was for boys to be hanging out too much with girls, and the camp counselors would nip that in the bud quickly. I once spent an afternoon kayaking with one of my male friends in the bay, and the youth pastor pulled me aside to tell me I should be focusing on God this weekend, to not fall into temptation. I was silent, simply nodding at the admonishment, and didn’t speak to the friend for the rest of the week.
At the end of our last summer camp, as rising college students, we kept telling people that we’d come back as volunteers for winter camp that year. We never did. That winter break of our freshman year passed without us even asking if we could volunteer. We had started dating in early December, and we were so afraid of anyone finding out. When Mom asked me why I didn’t sign up to volunteer, I told her I didn’t think I was ready to be a counselor. She encouraged me to sign up to be an activity team leader instead. I told her I wanted to put in more hours at my part-time job. She was disappointed, but she didn’t press me more on the subject.
“I don’t think they’ll hear us,” Elsie said, drawing my attention back to the room. “These walls are thick.”
Before responding to her, I sat up and stared at the walls, rubbing the small of her back as she still leaned on me. To the right of the window across from the bed, there was a framed bright orange poster that said “Jesus” in that brown and yellow Reese’s Cup font, a cheesy souvenir I bought at a Christian music festival a few years back which I mostly kept up to be ironic. To the left of the window was a bookshelf, all four shelves filled—several different Bible translations, a boxed set of the Chronicles of Narnia, textbooks for our theology courses that were increasingly exhausting us (how many times did we need to explain to some straight white boy that no, what Paul is saying does not mean that women can’t be pastors?), and of course, with their book titles facing the wall, the texts that I had ordered online about pro-LGBTQ+ theology.
I remember when I first started questioning the church’s traditional teaching on marriage.
Coming in as freshmen, Elsie and I still hung out together as much as possible during orientation, despite living in different residence halls. We had one class together, Old Testament Survey, and we sat next to each other. After class one day, a boy who sat in the row in front of us complimented how I looked and asked if I wanted to go on a date. I said no, telling him I only thought of him as a “brother in Christ.” I figured if God was going to have me meet my “godly man,” He’d make me know it in my heart right away. Afterwards, Elsie and I laughed about it in the car as we went to a frozen yogurt place near campus that we frequented. I would always get chocolate fro-yo with Oreos and strawberries, and she would get vanilla with caramel syrup.
One afternoon in early November, on the way back to campus from the fro-yo place, I stared at Elsie as she drove. I blinked, and in the next moment, it was as if I was seeing at her in a different way. Excitable jitters filled my stomach, and my heart beat faster. I looked at her dyed-blond hair and wanted to stroke my fingers through it. Then, I felt afraid; a wave of nausea passed over me. When we reached a parking lot on campus, I said to her, “Hey, you know how we’re reading Leviticus for our OT class?”
“Yeah,” she said. “What about it?”
“What do you think about all those laws, especially the ones about….” I hesitated to say the word, but finally managed to sputter “Sex.” I looked into Elsie’s eyes.
I said, “Christians aren’t supposed to be attracted to the same sex, right? Only non-believers have that lust. And the Bible seems to condemn it…but…”
We looked at each other, completely still and silent.
Then Elsie said, “I actually found an article the other day that was written by a gay Christian. He believes he’s called to a life of celibacy. If this is your way of telling me you’re attracted to the same sex…I just want you to know that I am, too. But that doesn’t make us not Christian.”
We walked back to my room, and since my roommate wasn’t there, we did a Google search for “homosexuality and the Bible.” We found plenty of links defending the traditional view, but we also found the viewpoint that was called “Side B,” Christians that identified as gay and believed that it was their cross to bear. But unlike what we had been taught, they didn’t believe they could “pray the gay away.” They weren’t ashamed of their sexuality, they simply accepted that it was a part of their life they had to deal with. This helped break through a lot of the fear that we had regarding our sexualities. But as I was reading through these people’s stories, something didn’t sit right with me about them.
One night in early December, when Elsie and I were sitting at my desk exchanging resources we had found, I asked her, “But why would God give us same-sex attractions and then demand that we don’t act upon them? Isn’t that cruel?”
She shrugged, and said, “His ways are higher than our ways—”
“That’s a canned response, and you know it,” I said, frowning.
She sighed. “Yeah. But it’s better than believing that we’re abominations, that we’re going to hell…”
I shook my head. “But it doesn’t make sense. I’ve been reading what the Bible says about celibacy—Paul’s letters describe it as a gift, a calling. Not as…a mandate. I’ve read Genesis 1. God made Eve not because Adam needed a woman; God said ‘It is not good that the man should be alone.’ Why would God give us this desire for deep companionship and then deny that to us?”
Elsie took my hand in hers, her face solemn. “I don’t know. I just wish there was another way to interpret the texts, but it’s all right there, clear as day.”
A moment of silence passed between us. Then, looking back at my computer, I typed “can a Christian be in a same-sex romantic relationship?” into Google. The first few links on the page were definitely from a Side B perspective, but when I went further down, I saw a link to a website I hadn’t seen before. It was run by a gay Christian who desired to be in a romantic relationship. And he didn’t believe the Bible would condemn him for being in one.
“There’s another interpretation,” I said, almost gasping.
I saw the verses that had been quoted by my youth pastor so many times to condemn homosexuality, but explained in a new way. It turned out that the word that was translated “homosexual” in the New Testament had been translated as any number of words in the past; its meaning was disputed. I saw that the man who ran the website had written a book that explained his position in detail, so I ordered it online. After reading through some more of his posts, Elsie and I sat on the floor and prayed together. We held both of each other’s hands and felt the Holy Spirit tell us the truth that set us free indeed: our attractions were not a sin.
As we lifted our heads and opened our eyes, I blurted out, “I really like you.”
She smiled and said “I figured.”
Now, it was the first week of fall semester of our sophomore year, and Elsie and I were rooming together. We had already gone through all the pro-LGBTQ+ books I had bought over the course of the year. And the books I ordered on feminist theology would be coming in soon. We were both involved in online support groups for queer Christians where we shared articles with one another about progressive ideas. I was going down the slippery slope my parents and church had warned me about, and I had never felt so free.
“Oh my gosh, look at this,” I said to Elsie a few days ago, grinning at her while sitting on my bed with my laptop. “They don’t tell you this in Sunday school…In 1 Samuel 18, David makes a covenant with his ‘friend’ Jonathan, who he ‘loved as his own soul.’ Later, when Jonathan dies, David laments by saying of him, ‘greatly beloved were you to me; your love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.’”
Elsie turned in her desk chair and raised her eyebrows, her mouth open. “That’s…really gay.”
I nodded. “Looks like David is a bisexual mess, and I kind of love it. He’s still a jerk for raping Bathsheba, but he’s the closest thing the Bible has to queer representation.”
She looked back at her computer. “I wouldn’t be so sure of that. I just found an article today that argues that Ruth and Naomi were a queer couple.”
Now it was my turn for my mouth to drop. “Okay…That’s a little bit different. Naomi is Ruth’s mother-in-law—”
“Yeah, yeah, and Ruth’s husband died! People argue that they could be gay because, well, just look at what Ruth says to her when she could have totally gone back to her homeland, she had no obligation to help Naomi after all her sons died: ‘Do not press me to leave you or to turn back from following you! Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die—there will I be buried. May the Lord do thus and so to me, and more as well, if even death parts me from you!’”
I had never looked at that passage that way before. I almost giggled. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but…Looks like the Bible is pretty gay.”
Now, I looked back at Elsie, considering her question again. Though I loved her, I still wasn’t sure if I was ready to have sex, especially given the risk of getting caught. I looked at her hazel eyes and her thin, soft lips. Then, I stood up, and walked across the room to the bookshelf. Out of the different Bible translations that she and I owned, I took out my Teen Study Bible, the one Mom gave me when I was 13. It was bound in pink leather, and had my name engraved on it in small silver cursive. Mom had taught me to save sex for marriage, a marriage with a “biblical man.” I opened up the Bible to Genesis 2 to where she had highlighted the verse, “This explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one. Now the man and his wife were both naked, but they felt no shame.” My face went hot, and I thought about how disappointed Mom would be if she knew I was even considering losing my virginity, and to a woman at that.
Elsie walked over and saw what page I was reading. “We’ve been taught so many lies by the church about what the Bible says about sex.” she said, putting her hands on my shoulders. “It does not say anywhere in that verse that they had to wait to have sex until they were married. For crying out loud, it’s talking about the first human beings on the planet, they didn’t have any other options.”
I turned to face her, putting my hands on her waist. “But…All those verses that say sexual immorality is a sin—”
“They’re talking about cheating and pederasty and stuff that actually hurts other people. But this, us? Obviously, if you don’t want to because you’re not comfortable or ready, that’s one thing. But I don’t want you to be making this decision with any shame. Us having sex would not hurt anyone.”
“What if we get caught?” I asked, my voice trembling.
“Then we leave. I’m looking at information about schools in North Carolina to transfer to.”
I was surprised for a moment, but then I smiled. “That’s probably a good idea. We should leave.”
She smiled back. “Is that a yes, then?
I nodded, kissed her, then pressed my thumb onto the button of her jeans.
I don’t really have a reflection question for this piece….just let me know your thoughts on it! And part 2 will be in your inbox on Sunday (and no it does not include the actual having-sex part…it fasts forward to when Cass comes out to her mom).
Seminary life update: I had so much fun doing my presentation on the Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray!! And I would have had more fun on my final two assignments if I had had more time. I did a literature review of articles related to how to better include and empower autistic people in the church. And I did an annotated bibliography that is working towards a capstone paper in the spring—expressing my theological anthropology, answering the question “What is the human being full alive in relationship with God and neighbor?” I wish I had had more time to read some of my sources so that my annotations could have been better, and I turned it in late, but I don’t think that’s going to hurt my grade too much.