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Civil Discourse about Controversy in Christian Community

The following is my senior project writeup, simply copied and pasted from the "book" for your ...erm, reading pleasure. The page numbers obviously won't work, but it'll give you an idea of what's where.


CONTENTS:
Introduction – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – 3
What I did – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – 8
Definitions – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – 11
On the word “Controversy” – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – 11
On the word “Conversation” – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –11
Other Vocabulary – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – 12
Systems – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – 13
The Head-Heart Continuum – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –14
Experience – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – 14
The Diversity Continuum – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –15
Judgment – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – 16
Meta, Method, Matter – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –16
Self-Awareness – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – 17
Concepts – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –18
Identity Labels – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – 18
The Rightful Place of Identity – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – 20
Vocabulary and Metaphor – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –20
Love the Sinner, Hate the Sin – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – 22
Homosexual Lifestyle – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – 22
Homosexual Practice – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – 23
Militant Vocabulary – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – 23
Us vs. Them – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – 23
Reasons – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –24
Why Talk About Origins? – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –24
Why Talk About Self-Harm? – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –24
Why Talk About LGBT Identity? – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –25
Vision – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – 27
Christian Community at Large – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –27
The Church – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – 27
Bear Creek – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –29
Conclusion – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – 32



INTRODUCTION

A couple weeks ago I was explaining my childhood worldview to a friend of mine, and paused for a moment in the realization that at that time, I hadn't yet figured out how all the spirits I believed in could really all be manifestations of one Spirit. My friend laughed and said that at six years old he certainly wasn't pondering metaphysics. I guess that's the impression it gives when I say that I had a nuanced worldview formed by the end of first grade, but I really do think it's just because I have a good memory. I say frequently that children are complex creatures; I don't think their innocence or naïveté diminishes that truth.

But that having been said, I did ask a relentless number of questions as a child. My mother laughs when I say her name in a certain tone, because it reminds her of that time. “Mamma?” “Yes?” “Why don't those people walk across the street when the light's red so they can get run over and go to heaven?” or “How do we know God made the world?” or “If I can tell God loves me because I have a Mamma and Pappa to take care of me, does he still love the girl in my class whose parents are divorced?” But there was one question I never asked since I didn't think it was allowed: “Why should we hate the devil if God tells us to love everyone?”

Fifteen years later, I'm still asking a lot of those same questions, though they get phrased a little differently. I get very frustrated on a deep, existential level when I can't find anyone to ask things, and go to great lengths to find what I'm looking for, gnawing obsessively at whatever topic I'm currently infatuated with until I'm satisfied with the answers. I trace these cycles throughout my childhood and adolescence to the current day, and it becomes almost humorously clear how it came that I am in the place I am today. It reflects something about providence and predestination to me, in some way, and so I'll share with you how I came to choose the assignment I picked for my senior project.

There was never a moment when I first adopted the position I have about origins. One thing I never questioned was whether evolution was the mechanism by which God created the universe. We went to a relatively conservative church when I was a child, and so when we did a study of Genesis in 5th grade Sunday School, I was shocked to learn that some people take the book literally. I did not handle it well. I looked ever so slightly down upon everyone in the class that held to a literal view – including the teacher – and was pretty arrogant and brattish about the whole affair. I and the one other girl in the class that agreed with me zoned out and passed notes, giggling to each other every now and again when the teacher said something we considered particularly ridiculous. This is probably my best personal example of intellectual rot. I have worked hard to improve at what I was incapable of doing right as a fifth grader: to listen with an open mind to those whose positions disagree with mine, to consider objectively the argument's potential strengths and weaknesses, and then to understand how it seems true from their perspective.

And so I divided my world into two camps: the backwards, undereducated camp, members of which were all hopelessly deluded about the correct state of reality, and the camp that understood reality clearly, whose members had minds free of fairy tale hogwash. I would never have dreamed of expressing myself that way, because I did believe in some manner of kindness and respect. But everywhere I went from 5thgrade until 7th or 8th – summer camps, mission trips, my new school – I would find out whether people thought the world was 6,000 years old or not so that I might judge them based on my findings.

A time came when I felt that I had settled comfortably into an understanding of myself and the world, as this issue was concerned, and so it lost some relevance to me. During this time – and I'm still not certain whether calling it “the pit of depravity” or “junior high” is more fitting – a different set of issues became important. Because a fairly substantial number of very personal histories became part of my own, here, I won't describe in very much detail what happened or how: all that's relevant is to understand that about half of my friends (I remember about seven or eight) were struggling with depression, thoughts of suicide, little bouts of disordered eating, and/or addiction to self-injury. I got caught up in some of that, too, and we all found ourselves in some very dark places that required a lot of strength and perseverance. It also meant that I learned how to communicate extremely carefully and sensitively, because so much was at stake. To my knowledge, most of the pain that existed then has been resolved since, but scars don't fade quickly.

There was no question in anyone's mind that it all sucked. If I'm to speak collectively, especially towards the beginning, when none of us had community, some of the most intense pain of our lives thus far was endured. A number of us found an organization online called To Write Love On Her Arms, a self-described“non-profit movement dedicated to presenting hope and finding help for people struggling with depression, addiction, self-injury and suicide. TWLOHA exists to encourage, inform, inspire and also to invest directly into treatment and recovery.” They encouraged conversation and community and hugs and compassion, and those were all things a lot of us desperately needed in that time. It wasn't realistic in the mind space we were in to go to adults, but we had each other, and TWLOHA itself was an incredible support system. For many of us, that was the place we first learned we weren't alone, that there was hope, and that people care. Those things might be understood as facts, but to people in that frame of mind, they often aren't communicated in such a way that they're really believed.

Conversations about these things were had, but they were almost exclusively online, in chat boxes, with other windows open to flip to in case family members entered the room. The mood was one of secrecy and paranoia: these are not things we talk about out loud.

Luckily, life changed and things got better. Although my heart will still always go out to anyone struggling with these types of issues, different things came into view. In my last few years of high school, as I took AP European History and Philosophy, joined debate, and gained new friends, a whole world of interesting arguments opened up to me: Predestination, the Problem of Evil, the Salvation of Non-Christian people, Biblical Literalism, etc. I started a blog halfway through 10th grade so that I would have some place to finish all the conversations we only had time to complete halfway at school; once again, it bothered me to leave things unresolved. Any lecture or sermon I had thoughts on or questions about would be channel into Apostrophe [www.themusingsofapostrophe.blogspot.com]. This provided a healthy outlet for me to ask and answer questions; it was a machine for the organization of dialogue.

In this context, I came across a debate I'd had fleetingly a few years prior on a mission trip in 2008: the one about the moral acceptability of homosexuality. I'd come to a personal conclusion then, but I picked it back up in 2010 to re-examine and fortify my position. My research took me on a much longer journey than I could have possibly anticipated; once again, too many personal histories are involved for me to tell the story in full. What I did learn, however, can be summarized in three points:

  1. There are a whole lot of LGBT people in this world, and a large percentage of them are closeted.
  2. Christian people on both sides of the spectrum really don't handle conversations about it very well.
  3. As a culture, Christian America is pathetically undereducated about LGBT matters.

This was a completely different issue from the others I'd been publishing on Apostrophe. Apostrophe was a very intellectual, very cerebral environment. Sexuality and gender have a lot of stigma, emotion, and culture surrounding them; it means a lot more to society to publish ideas about those things willy nilly than, say, the connection between God's omnipresence and timelessness. Especially because personal reflections are very personal reflections when sexuality is involved, people frequently abstain from conversation. But I had questions, and nowhere to express those questions. I came up with some answers, and had no one to share them with. I yearned for community, but there was no one to commune with. And as I've said before, I don't sit well with unsatisfied conversation.

On and off, I lived in this space for about a year and a half. Then, my high school gave me the opportunity to end the year by doing whatever I wanted for three weeks and then wrapping it up with extensive blabbering about my findings. So I created for myself a project dedicated to figuring out how people think about sensitive conversations and why the Church, in specific, seems to have such a hard time dealing with them. If Christian community is a place dedicated to ideals like freedom, love, respect, truth, new life, and hope, then shouldn't we be overwhelmingly more successful in conversations like these?

When I was already a considerable way through my project, just a couple weeks ago, I remembered the first time I became interested in the debate on homosexuality: the summer before my freshman year on the mission trip I mentioned earlier. I dug out my old journals and sifted through the pages to find my thinking on the matter. To my greatest surprise, I found all three topics I did my project on – the three big topics I've spent my teenage years obsessing over – lined up perfectly, all in order. After work one day, someone started a debate about origins (which I made sure to mention I'd handled much better than I would have in years past); later that week, a friend and I had a good conversation about self-injury; the week culminated with the massive conversation about homosexuality I'd had in mind when I started reading. I'm not sure exactly how to think about this finding, but I'm uncomfortable calling it coincidence: it seems like pretty epic design work that the first gigantic series of conversations I had before the beginning of my high school career would be precisely the same three conversations I'd be having in mass at the other end of the journey. I have been blessed with the opportunity to do a project that could not have been a better “capstone”: the last block in an arch I've been building for seven years.

WHAT I DID

The project itself spanned anywhere from two to four weeks, depending on how you count. My first interviews were on Wednesday, May 16th and my last was on Wednesday the 30th, but my mind has been singularly occupied with thoughts of the project from Saturday the 12th until now (I assume it will continue to be until I present my project on Wednesday, June 6th). The substance of what I did was to drive around to all kinds of different places and record interviews about the three topics (Origins, Self-Harm, and Homosexuality). I had fifteen days of interviewing, seventeen interviews to complete, and twenty-four people to interview. As per the proposal I submitted for the project before I began, I asked three basic questions:

  1. How did this topic become relevant to you?
  2. How have you seen it affect the Church?
  3. What works and doesn't work in conversation about it?

Because these questions were much too vague to make much of in an actual interview, I went back through before each interview and wrote up a prep sheet of questions to ask that were more specific to each person I interviewed. For example,

  • How has self-harm been a part of your life?
  • How important should it be to us to talk about Creation and the crossroads between Science and Theology in church?
  • Speaking as a pastor, how do you respond to difficult topics when you see them come up in a congregation?
  • How does one effectively communicate the difference between disapproving of someone's actions and disapproving of them?
  • How has the fact that you're gay affected your interactions with other, perhaps more conservative pastors?
In addition to an individualized prep sheet, I also went into each interview with a waiver detailing how I might use their interview (whether they'd be okay with me showing it to an audience at Bear Creek, whether they wanted me to keep them anonymous, whether I might put snippets of what they'd said in a video, whether I might publish that little video online, etc.). This has proved absolutely crucial not only in helping me organize and remember who wanted their interviews used for what (we're talking about controversy, after all: confidentiality is a big deal), but also for me to gather mailing addresses. I sent out Thank You notes with the date/time/place of my presentation to everyone I interviewed.

The interviews were the fun part. The time-consuming portion of the work was to make use of it all and process the information I'd received once I got home. Because video files are enormous, it often took several hours for my computer to import a single video, and it would often fail to import. So I had to babysit my computer in order that I might restart the process should it fail. By the time I had imported five interviews, my hard drive was packed to the brim. My parents ended up having to buy me an external hard drive of my own, because my father's wasn't compatible with my computer. Once I had finally made room on my hard drive to get the video onto my computer, I often realized that the camera's memory or battery had run out and that the whole of the interview hadn't recorded.

If everything ran smoothly, it would be about an hour and a half until I could start editing. That consisted of listening back through the interview and clipping the relevant, concise, quotable pieces into a folder for later use. I found on several occasions that it was only until I had spent a substantial amount of time sifting through what they'd said after the fact that I fully understood the worldview with which they were communicating, so it proved very helpful to record and edit the conversations even if I never used them in the video I made at the end.

That video is 3:40 long and took about ten hours one day to put together. I hope to compile an Internet-safe version that I will make available to anyone interested. (Some people couldn't have their interviews shown at my presentation, but didn't mind it published online; some didn't want it online, but didn't mind it being shown to Bear Creek.)
I also read a book recommended to me by a member of the faculty at school, called The End of Sexual Identity, by Jenell Williams Paris. It was a great deal of fun to read because her perspective is so nuanced; I wholeheartedly recommend it. Her basic argument is that it's unwise to categorize people as “homosexual” or “heterosexual” and then expect the boxes to function well, because each of those things could mean a myriad of different things. That people get condemned or blessed based on their acceptance of either of those labels is a preposterously limiting thing to do to a human being. As a cultural anthropologist, she takes a look at all the different ways complex sexuality and gender have functioned in different cultures, attempting to get out of our own cultural context a little bit and focus on the big picture of our design as human beings. Because so much of what she talked about was social dynamics – feelings of belonging and ostracization – and not just sexuality, the ideas I took from that reading became relevant to all three topics I interviewed people on.


1: DEFINITIONS
Three weeks of worldview-intensive learning make it necessary for me to establish the way in which I'd like you to think about the findings I'll present. My paper from here on is divided into four sections: 1) definitions, 2) my framework and the arguments they accompany, 3) big ideas that emerged, and 4) the real-world implications of my arguments.

DEFINITONS:

ON THE WORD “CONTROVERSY”:
The only reason I use the word “controversy” is because “taboo” was too taboo when I went to write up my proposal. So, whenever I use the word “controversy,” I really mean “taboo,” defined by Merriam-Webster as “a prohibition imposed by social custom or as a protective measure.” So, while I understand full well that self-injury is not controversial in any way, conversation about self-injury is avoided, which makes it controversial in some vague way on the meta-level. What is common to all three topics is that they are taboos: they are avoided by people that dislike confrontation or conflict because they tend to be conducive towards those things. People fear (perhaps rightfully) that they will be hurt or offended if they try to talk about them, and so a prohibitive social custom is imposed upon the conversation as a protective measure against that hurt. One argument I will make a few pages from now is that so-called “taboo” topics should loose the prohibition and keep the protective measures, if you will: especially as Christians, we should be having these conversations, but with great care, self-awareness, and sensitivity, so that we might not re-justify the fear and anxiety associated with them.

ON THE WORD “CONVERSATION”:
Especially when I was in debate, I would constantly get accused of arguing with people. I usually ended up dismissing their accusations as misunderstanding. In truth, there is a great deal of difference between “argument” the way it's used conventionally and “argument” the way it's used intellectually. People sometimes perceive them as one and the same: shouting and unhappiness and bad things like that. If you'll allow me to pull out my dictionary again, I believe the corresponding definitions to this understanding of "argument" are: “a reason given in proof or rebuttal,” “discourse intended to persuade,” or “QUARREL; DISAGREEMENT.” Having arguments in that sense – where each party is trying to convince the other that they're wrong or trying to disprove whatever the other has said to get their way or win the fight – is almost universally unpleasant. In homes, between friends, in schools and in churches and in Christian communities of all sorts, it is unpleasant. But an “argument” in the latter sense - a "good" argument - simply means to share your mental processes and reasonings that lead you to a certain conclusion. (See, doesn't that sound nicer?) The corresponding definition might be “a coherent series of statements leading from a premise to a conclusion.” In the first type of argument, it is a prerequisite to firmly dislike anything that opposes you. In the latter, you're welcome to walk away gleefully appreciating what opposes you, simply because you can appreciate the way they've constructed their beliefs. The second type of argument here falls under the category of “conversation” - it is a certain intellectual kind of conversation having to do with ideas, interpretations, persuasions, etc. Argument is the first of two types of conversation I refer to when I say “conversation in Christian community.”

I don't have a nice label for the second type of conversation, because “conversation” seems to be the word people typically use. What distinguishes it from argument (as described above) is that this type is not rooted in disagreement; the dialogue in concerned with exchanging experiences or facts, not understanding the logic behind a certain assertion. It often involves more testimony than reasoning and resolves with “that was nice” or "that was necessary" instead of “that was clever” or "that was deep." One goes about these two types of conversations in very different ways; mixing them up frequently results in the first type of argument, which is a bad idea.

More words I'll be using throughout the essay:
LGBT: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered (a more nuanced explanation on pg. 15)
Queer: a blanket term for all people of gender/sexual minorities (including LGBT)
Out (of the closet): to be open in community about one's LGBT identity/orientation
Cis-gendered: opposite of transgender; an individual comfortable with gender assigned at birth
Self-harm: a blanket term for everything people do to themselves that can be seen as directly harmful, like alcoholism, drug abuse, eating disorders, cutting, etc.
Self-injury: a specific term referring to physical self-harm: cutting, burning, scratching, etc.

Note: starred quotes refer to quotes from my interviews, kept anonymous out of respect.


2: SYSTEMS

SYSTEMS: THE HEAD-HEART CONTINUUM

What I didn't know coming into the project but that became clear as it progressed was that the three topics I chose perfectly represented a spectrum from head-oriented to heart-oriented (or, if you'd like to put it in terms of the above discussion, argumentative to conversational). Many other topics came up to fill in the gaps: race, class, abortion, divorce, cohabitation, drugs, alcohol, etc. Although the three topics I chose are benchmarks, they are not “special” for any reason but because they've been personally relevant to me.

Origins is obviously a very cerebral conversation: it's all about evidence, biblical interpretation, reasoning, etc. It really has nothing to do with personal experience or feelings when it's kept from getting heated. As the interviews went on, it became clear that the closer you get to the Head side of the spectrum, the less necessary people consider conversation (I don't entirely agree; I explain why on p.24). On the other end of the spectrum, you know something has gone terribly wrong when conversation about self-harm includes anything to do with evidence or biblical interpretation or reasoning. It should either be expository or empathetic; terrible hurt is caused when people try to argue with someone in pain. Homosexuality, however, can be on either end of the spectrum depending on the context. Because it's such a hotly-disputed theological conversation to have among intellectuals that have nothing to do with it personally, it can be completely Head-oriented; but when the people involved understand the issue from a personal or emotional perspective, the focus changes entirely and becomes much more Heart-oriented.

NB: The reason I might focus more on this latter topic than the others is not exclusively because I've found more to speak about there, but also because it serves as a dually-applicable average on this spectrum I've described.

ON EXPERIENCE:
Re-evaluating the conflict over homosexuality with this (relatively simple) framework in mind sheds light on the reason people are often so hurt or so insulted, and why people sometimes feel the need to go so far as to divide over the issue. If you're understanding the issue from a Heart perspective, arguments often seem cruel or thoughtless, regardless of your theological beliefs on the matter; if you're understanding the issue from a Head perspective, your Heart-oriented opposition can seem cowardly, stupid, or lacking in intellectual integrity. And that counts for Christians on both sides of the debate. Many with traditional understandings of homosexuality in the Bible are led to think that they have indisputable intellectual superiority over those that buy the whimsical, spineless “little argument that slipped in”* along the way. Experience (being gay or knowing someone that is) is seen as painful and even dangerous from this perspective, because it can lead you to question the validity of Scripture and reject standard teaching based on feelings instead of real biblical exegesis. I'm not saying that this doesn't ever happen, because it undoubtably does (and there's an interesting progressive explanation as to why it does, which I discuss on pages 18 and 19), but I would encourage the traditionally-minded Christian to grant some measure of respect to a perspective that's been adopted by several mainline Christian denominations (Episcopal, United Church of Christ, Evangelical Lutheran, Metropolitan Community Church, Presbyterian USA, some Pentecostal, some Quaker) and many other independent churches.

On the other hand, many Christians convinced of the acceptability of LGBT identity and sexuality have a similar response to traditionally-minded Christians. Progressive Christians often have great disdain towards people that believe marriage should be exclusively in monogamous union between man and woman because they consider them to be stuck in the past or incapable of owning up to their mistakes. In this view, an unwillingness to change is sometimes seen as little more than an emotional, “gut-level revulsion”* and not a measured, objective consideration of an opposing viewpoint. Especially among members of the LGBT community, there is often bitterness towards traditional churches because of the judgment they've received. This attitude shuts down dialogue just as quickly as the judgment (whether perceived or actual) that originally pushed them away.
To complete the “head-heart,” “heart-head” judgment circle, both ends of the argument are frequently bruised by the other's heart-attacks as well. Those fully accepting of homosexual sexuality feel misunderstood, condemned, and reviled; those committed to heterosexual exclusivity fear the moral degradation of society and the sanctity of marriage. But by understanding when and how to respond intellectually and when to respond emotionally, when to argue and when to converse, much of this conflict can be redirected into productive, healthy conversation that is evenly-weighted and respectful.

SYSTEMS: THE DIVERSITY CONTINUUM

Similar to the head-heart continuum, a proper understanding of the diversity continuum is necessary to balanced, respectful conversation, but for different reasons. The diversity continuum has to do with the substance of one's belief instead of the method by which it's approached: most simplistically, it spans from good diversity (1 Cor. 12) to bad diversity (Gen. 3), and different issues are put on the spectrum in different places. It's almost universally accepted that depression, for example, is bad diversity: it should be alleviated whenever possible, not celebrated, even if it does bring a variety of human experience to a community. Biological diversity, on the other hand, is almost universally accepted as a good kind of diversity: all the different climates, ecosystems, and species on our planet are a beautiful part of creation. But a whole range of issues land on this spectrum: race is slightly down the line from pure “biological diversity”: there are those that argue that racial and ethnic diversity stem from the separation of people in a post-lapsarian world, and that this diversity therefore reflects the fall, but my understanding is that this view is a minority view, and that most people celebrate the diverse appearances and perspectives, and cultures that racial and ethnic diversity bring to a community. Slightly over from “bad diversity” might be an issue like single parenting: most Christians would probably say that it's preferable for parents to have partners in childrearing, but there's room for disagreement.

JUDGMENT:
The reason it's important to incorporate an understanding of this spectrum into conversation is that many conflicts over controversial issues are the result of a judgment someone has made about the position of a given issue along this continuum. When a certain idea is placed at one end of the spectrum or the other in any given individual's mind, it is relatively fixed in that position as part of their worldview. To disrespect or judge the individual's understanding of the issue's goodness or badness is often to disrespect and judge their most fundamental understanding of creation and fallenness. In other cases, people simply haven't thought about it enough to solidify a position along this continuum, but if thought has gone into the issue, it has probably been anchored somewhere, and trying to uproot it in a single argument is futile and disrespectful to the entire process that individual has gone through in establishing it in that place. We're human beings; our lives are dynamic stories. For conversation between differing individuals to be healthy and productive, one first needs to accept that the other person has a different story and acknowledge that two completely different frameworks have lead to the conclusion that the topic in question has a certain inherent goodness or badness to it. The next step is to understand fully the other person's framework: there is no point in trying to speak of “truth” when there are two competing worldviews justifying the positions in conflict. That's not to say we can't know truth or understand reality; I believe that God meets each of us where we are and speaks to us here, with all our flaws and all our beauty. What I mean that beginning conversations that are likely to spark controversy with the intention of uprooting the other person's worldview and replacing it with your own it is a pretty stupid idea. Each of us understands reality in a certain way, and as people of faith, it is fundamentally important to validate other believers' love of God and desire for truth, regardless of whatever disagreement follows.

SYSTEMS: META, METHOD, MATTER

For a number of reasons I won't go into now, I've been pretty engaged with the administration at my school, considering that I've never been part of ASB or student government. This, along with my Project (dedicated entirely to talking about talking) has had the effect of teaching me that there are layers of conversation to be had: conversation on the Meta level, on the Method level, and on the Matter level. Meta-level conversation has to do with questions about the existence and basic nature of the conversation: should we have it at all? who should have access to it? when, where, why? what exactly should it be about? etc. Method-level conversation is about the way in which the conversation should be conducted: what guiding principles and goals should frame the dialogue. Matter-level conversation is about the actual content being discussed: the rationality, credibility, and truth-value of what is being communicated. For this project, administration has very cautiously kept me away from Matter-level conversation, pushing me towards Method-level conversation. I will be engaging the Meta level in the final portion of my essay, but only in order to explain the implications of my findings from Method-level engagement.

SELF-AWARENESS:
Once again, the system I've laid out is simple, but understanding it is crucial to handling conversation well. Most heated, angry arguments are born out of a lack of self-awareness of the values one has placed on the Meta and Method levels. If the conversation is being had at the wrong time or place, for the wrong reasons, or with the wrong people, there is a very slim chance that productive conversation will be had in that moment. I.e., teaching Psychology to a big class of first-graders or trying to explain your convictions about The Problem of Evil in the last five minutes of lunch would probably be useless pursuits. (I exaggerate, but the concept of Kairos (timeliness, if you prefer) isn't too hard to understand.) On the Method-level, simply recognizing what you've placed as your goal or highest value can lighten tension. Most of the time when people are bickering over some intellectual dispute like evolution, they have made “victory” their goal; in conversations between self-injurers and friends or adults, the highest value is often to “fix them” or to “make it stop.” Recognizing this within oneself – and perhaps mentioning it in conversation – is often all that's necessary to reverse a downward spiral of offense-defense.


3: CONCEPTS
CONCEPTS: IDENTITY LABELS

“Though many Christians continue to use the term homosexual, the word is often rejected today … The alphabetic approach [LGBTQ] is a helpful term from homosexual because, in its use, those defined by the label are asserting self-definition. It moves beyond overgeneralizations … The old cultural pattern is stable in continuing to bifurcate heterosexuals and all others.” - Jenell Williams Paris, The End of Sexual Identity

One of the most profoundly worldview-altering ideas I encountered in my research, interviews, and reading during my project was the concept of the linkage between identity and behavior. An argument has been made that it's capitalist society that has caused us to associate what we do so closely with who we are, but I would venture to say that it's much more fundamentally human. Even in ancient societies, understandings of class and culture were based off of how one looked, spoke, and presented oneself; what one did (queen, duke, banker, carpenter, milkmaid) seems to have been an even harsher determinant of one's expected character quality than might be the case today. Although contemporary society has much more complex identity constructs, identity labels remain intact.

Paris's argument – which was re-affirmed by almost every interview I had where this idea was raised – was that LGBT individuals often attach a much greater significance to their so-called “homosexual lifestyle” than simply same-sex sex. In fact, it's ludicrous to limit LGBT identity to sexuality to many people that consider themselves queer in some way. For someone to identify as “gay” in today's cultural context is usual much more like identifying as “Mexican,” “athletic,” “female,” or “black” than simply declaring one's sexual preferences. I'm not trying to diminish the sexual implications of adopting a label like “gay,” “lesbian,” or “bisexual,” but what many people fail to realize is that those three words are all 20th- and 21st-century social constructs. They refer to much more than simply same-sex sex.

What I found as I went through my interviews was that even though gay people don't usually want to make a big deal of their sexuality, they consider their gayness to be integral to their personalities, so that, practically speaking, their orientation influences fundamentally the way they relate to society. Being gay is part of one's worldview in a complicated way that is difficult to understand outside of personal experience; it surpasses sexual attraction and extends to the way people understand gender, friendships, communities, and the interactions between people around them everyday. They often see themselves as part of a large, complex, diverse, and very supportive community, with an aura of comfort and acceptance much like the one described by Ellie in her presentation (for those that weren't present, Ellie did her project on ASL and the deaf community). As is the case for people outside the deaf community, many people outside of the LGBT community look to people inside the community and understand their condition as primarily an extension of the fall. People's self-identification as “gay” is translated into “homosexual,” which then is translated to “abomination,” which then is either mourned or repulsed. Whether or not being gay is okay or not, try to consider for a moment what it means to be part of this kind of community: especially for those that fall outside the gender binary in some way or another, the LGBT community is a place of freedom, relaxation, and understanding, where social guardrails can be lowered and people can be fully honest about who they are as individuals, whether or not what they feel the need to communicate has anything to do with sexuality. Many progressives explain that the reason gay people only decide that being gay isn't Biblically condemned until after they come out is because this kind of experience contributes hugely to developing an understanding of what it actually means to "be gay" in the first place.

In one conversation I had with a few gay men, we were discussing the anxiety associated with coming out to one's community and why it's often so significant to gay people to be able to share this part of their identity with their communities. Their answer was, in short, that because being gay is a fundamental (though not overwhelmingly important) component of a gay person's personality and worldview, the psychological inability to be honest about their orientation leads to feelings of hiding, secrecy, and shame in all areas of life, even when it's unrelated to romance or sexuality. Once again, the closest comparisons I have access to would be to compare it to gender or race. I don't mean to imply by this analogy that homosexuality is necessarily correct or incorrect, but if something as fundamental as your identity as a male or female, as a caucasian or Asian or black person were labeled despicable by society, you would shy away from conversation, too. Regardless of what we believe is good or right to do with a newfound discovery of LGBT identity/orientation, it is of optimal importance to create a safe space in Christian community for LGBT people to come to terms with what they believe God has called them to do with that discovery. Simply relegating LGBT identity to a level of moral despicably when a great deal more is involved in the process than just that is to create for LGBT individuals “a war within themselves.”* Especially in a culture where it has become common for gay people to leave the church because of the fear and judgment they have experienced surrounding LGBT issues, it is crucially important from both conservative and progressive points of view to engage conversation with a healthy, informed understanding of the matters involved.

THE RIGHTFUL PLACE OF IDENTITY
My guess is that a number of my audience has been flinching slightly for much of that last page. Some of what I said might come off as condoning of the sexual identity framework: responding to this particular sin with this kind of emphasis can seem to reinforce its particular cultural status as “identity forming” in an almost idolatrous sense. It can be very difficult to deal with sinful sexual behavior when that behavior has permeated an individual so deeply that they confuse their deeply-rooted depravity with God's creation. I would encourage the conservative thinker to take a step back from this reasoning for a moment; it is easy to become so fixated on compassion for the extent to which the individual in question has become seeped in depravity that compassion ironically gets lost in the mix. I provide some practical suggestions for reforming our approach to compassion for gay people in the next section, but here I would simply like to address the question this whole section on identity begs: what does it mean to have a “fundamental” identity in non-heterosexuality if our primary identity as Christians belongs in Christ?

As I mentioned earlier, there are many things we treat as fundamental to our identities, and doing so isn't inherently idolatrous. Just because something is fundamental to a person's understanding of the world – say, being a woman, being South African, or living in the 21st century – doesn't mean that any of those things necessarily reach an idolatrous state of importance in our lives. Yet it would be painful to me if someone called me an illegitimate woman or South African or member of my generation. Those things are a part of me and my story, and to deny my right to claim any part of me – regardless of its moral status – is dehumanizing and dismissive of the impact it has on the way I see the world and God. When I was interviewing Shannon West, a counselor in Kirkland that works with young women, the way she handled this question was as part of a larger conversation about identity labels. She explains that “even when there's a general consensus that certain behaviors – such as self-harm or drug abuse – aren't helpful, and that the ideal is not to be engaged in those behaviors, if the focus becomes that those behaviors are 'wrong,' it shuts down the dialogue. They are what is in the moment. I can think of a variety of other topics that are similar: sexuality, culture, race. Behind all those things is a story about what is being experienced. And those stories have histories, beliefs, and perspectives attached to them. So it becomes less about the 'right' and 'wrong' and more about the person's experience in the 'here and now.'” If we are to apply this worldview-shifting principle across the board, not only to the there topics I've been looking at, but to all forms of diversity, diverging beliefs, and our judgments thereof (as per the argument in my subsection on Judgment on pages 13-14), we would begin to shift away from handling conversation in such a way that we communicate immediate condemnation of the identity categories associated with those things we disagree with or think are harmful to the person engaging in them. We should approach conversation with respect and humility, “considering them better than ourselves.” Instead of insulting a friend's intellectual self-esteem by dismissing their efforts and research, why not critique their conclusions from within a validation of their personhood? Instead of trying to “heal” a friend struggling with self-injury, why not try to understand and empathize with them from where they are – including all their experiences and beliefs – “in the here and how”? We are invited to mourn with those who mourn and rejoice with those who rejoice. Trying to fully understanding them is a good place to start.

CONCEPTS: VOCABULARY & METAPHOR

A final thought I'd like to share before I move on to the next section of my paper has to do with all of the different ways people try to communicate ideas across cultural boundaries. It almost always fails miserably because things are said from completely different worldviews than they're received in, which normally results in massive judgment and/or dismissal.

LOVE THE SINNER, HATE THE SIN
I did not talk to a single person that had significant experience with the LGBT community, conservative or liberal, that had positive things to say about this phrase. For all the reasons I explained above in my section on Identity, it is so massively misunderstood by not only the gay community, but also by most people outside of the select group that affirms the worldview that preaches it, that the phrase has become moot at best. Since orientation and gender identity are so basic to our understandings of ourselves and our relation to other people, it is often impossible for people to distinguish their “sin” from their personhood. Even if what is determined as sinful is acting upon “homosexual tendencies,” thinking of the issue in the frame of mind implied by the phrase “love the sinner, hate the sin” communicates (at best) ignorance and (at worst) hatred. When I asked interviewees for alternatives to this phrase, three of them said independently of each other that we should “love the sinner and hate our own sin.” That's not to mitigate the role of accountability in a church, nor does it mean we shouldn't care – whether positively or negatively – whether people are gay or not. But this worldview shift has the effect of redirecting the bulk of our attention toward living harmoniously (Rom. 12:16) instead of imposing our judgments on very sensitive, personal areas of certain individuals' faith and sex journeys (Mat. 7:1-5). Where we believe the correct response would be to tell people to “go and sin no more,” we need to recognize, regardless of the harmful topic in question, that in most contexts we find ourselves in, such literal application of Jesus' example will likely earn us more resentment than community.

HOMOSEXUAL LIFESTYLE
Once again, across the board, very few people that have known LGBT individuals or that are LGBT themselves have anything good to say about this phrase. Much of Paris's book is devoted to deconstructing the concept of sexual identity, and this is exactly why: it perpetuates extremely broad, provocative stereotypes. There are millions upon millions of people in this world that consider themselves gay, and they don't all adhere to one lifestyle. There are many different ways of acting upon one's sexual attractions; not all of them involve bars, strip clubs and bath houses. It is deeply insulting to gay Christians and their “allies” (cis-gendered heterosexuals that affirm the moral validity of same-sex relationships) when phrases like this, which communicate very little other than disrespect and ignorance, despite the best of intentions. Because the phrase only harms the credibility of the conservative argument, and because I believe there is great worth in communicating our arguments intelligibly to one another, I would encourage those that are accustomed to using the phrase to be more specific about what they mean. For example, “promiscuity” or “lust” much more accurately reflect the sentiment many conservatives mean to communicate when they use the phrase “homosexual lifestyle.” Replacing that phrase with something less offensive does nothing to harm the moral convictions of either party, but helps to foster healthy discussion.

HOMOSEXUAL PRACTICE
For many of the same reasons as the above, “homosexual practice” is not a phrase conducive to clear communication. Homosexuality is not simply a set of actions, and even those that use the phrase wouldn't call it an occupation or a hobby. Replacing it with phrases like “gay sex” or “same-sex sexuality” or something to that extent would communicate exactly the same message with none of the awkward overtones.

MILITANT VOCABULARY
This is a particularly difficult mental and vocal habit to reverse. Even after more than a year of acute self-awareness about this topic, I still personally struggle with it constantly. When we refer to our attitudes about LGBT issues in militaristic terms – for example, “fighting for our rights,” “fighting for what's right,” “the struggle,” “the enemy,” etc. - we risk alienating others for little to no reason. Rephrasing to avoid vocabulary that's so loaded with sentiments of hate and antagonism will immediately help us to communicate more clearly and lovingly.

US VS. THEM
This is similar to the use of militant vocabulary. Referring to either the conservative or progressive camps as “us” and “them” is very dangerous, and if we're going to use that kind of language, we need to be very careful what context we use it in, if ever. It's better to err on the side of avoiding this kind of language because it is exclusive and offensive to anyone listening that doesn't feel part of either rigid box we've created (often, those that value Scripture vs. value feelings, or those that value tradition vs. value science).


4: REASONS

REASONS: WHY TALK ABOUT ORIGINS?

Those that have not made this topic their hobby horse frequently become apathetic about the dispute over Origins. Their argument goes that because it's irrelevant to everyday life, it's unnecessary to the degree that we shouldn't really care about it, in order to avoid conflict. Here I address the opposite side of the spectrum where passion is concerned; being overzealous results in all the many conflicts I've discussed so far (esp. page 19), but as Christians, there is also good reason to care about it, at least to some degree. Not everyone can ever be interested in every topic, but the origin of the world is a very fundamental mystery to ponder, similar to the nature of beauty or our ability to know truth. The very activity of examining what we believe about Origins and why reflects our personal epistemologies, and epistemology builds the framework and foundation for our social interactions. It's true that nothing terrible will happen to us if we decide not to care about the answers to big questions like why God allowed evil, or why he made food with taste. But it's these questions that strengthen our minds, soften our hearts, and free our souls to more recklessly seek God. Trying to understand more what we are and how God operates can be a profound means for God to bring us closer to him. Just like any kind of exercise, talking about Origins may not be “necessary,” in the strictest sense, but allowing that concession calls into question what it really means for any activity to be truly “necessary.”

REASONS: WHY TALK ABOUT SELF-HARM?

I hope that my own brief story (pages 2-3) provided some insight into the reason community is crucially important to individuals dealing with self-harm of any type, but in the end, an understanding of self-harm – and homosexuality – requires some type of experience. What it comes down to is that there is something about being alone that exponentially magnifies pain. You begin to feel that you are the only one that has gone through the things you're experiencing (or have invented the struggle you're dealing with), that you are unlovable, that you're completely out-of-sync with the world, that you are broken beyond repair. Especially in Christian communities, people (teenagers in particular) “know” those things aren't true, intellectually, because they're always told things contradicting the claim of those feelings in church. But when experience provides constant confirmation of the doubts church negates, a great deal of emotional turmoil begins to bubble up: the individual wants their life to affirm what they are taught, but doesn't see any signs of the providence, hope, or community promised. Simply mentioning issues like self-injury or sexual addiction and explaining it briefly can affect young people very deeply.

I'll come back to Romans 12 a third time: we are called to “share with the Lord's people who are in need,” “being willing to associate with people of low position.” There is no reason for Christian community not to make an effort to make people in dark places feel welcome in the church, and every reason to try. In The End of Sexual Identity, Paris says that people often try to practice “mental hygiene” to keep pure in this sinful world, but that we're called to be “salt instead of soap” (Mat. 5:13). If we're able to make that transition, the hope is to make dark places a little bit lighter and heavy burdens easier to bear.

REASONS: WHY TALK ABOUT LGBT IDENTITY?

Despite all my research and conversation, this is one of the most difficult pieces of my entire essay to put into words. Because it sits in the middle of the head-heart spectrum, much of it comes down to the same reasons listed for Origins and Self-Harm, but there is a unique character to this issue, since it is so complex and so uncomfortable for people to talk about. Sexuality is a very delicate topic to try to touch in community. I'm well aware that people become nervous when it's mentioned. The presence of the above two topics in my project is a testament to its delicacy; it is because sexuality has so much shame, secrecy, and emotion attached to it that the administration of my small Christian high school was willing to allow an openly atheistic student do his project on the exploration of religion and the reasons he has for his beliefs but did not think it would be appropriate for me to do mine on the Church's internal pluralism on homosexuality. With that: please know as you read that I don't encourage dialogue without an acute awareness of the sensitivity of this topic.

The first thing I'll do is to recall my description of LGBT identity on pages 16-18. Although sexual orientation will always be, on its most basic level, about sexuality, the reasons conversation about sexual and gender identity is necessary has very little to do with sex and everything to do with community. As I explain (starting on the bottom of page 17), when people in any given Christian community, whether it be a church, small groups, youth group, school, university, or informal group of friends, are unable to be out to their friends, a huge – or at least uncomfortable – gulf is created between them and the rest of the community. Behind a community's willingness to discuss this issue is a much deeper question about its willingness to be deeply interested and invested in others, its ability to love people, and its ability to handle controversy without judgment. Jesus tells us not to judge, lest we be judged (Mat. 7:1), and that we are to be interested in the internal processes of the mind, not just the actions they cause (Mat. 1). If we truly understand the implications of a closeted life to an LGBT individual's place in community, and if we truly understand that people all around us are struggling with these issues, we will make greater efforts to speak openly about them. It would be contrary to some of the most basic biblical ideals – honesty, love, humility, compassion – to completely ignore the opportunity we've been given to use LGBT issues to strengthen the communities they're currently degrading.

A curious phrase kept coming up as I did my interviews. It surfaced on three separate occasions, and I get the feeling from all I've learned that the sentiment would be echoed by many LGBT individuals, both in and out of the Church. It came in response to my asking them the question I've used to title this section. After a short pause, they slowly began to answer: “The closet is death.” The first time I heard it, I just nodded and continued the conversation, but it became eerie the second and third times it came up. That this word in particular - “death” - would be used to describe a condition many Christians feel their faith communities have imposed upon them sends chills down my spine. I worship a God of life and believe that his Church should point towards him. If becoming aware enough about it to encourage conversation is what it takes to bring us closer to that vision, I believe it should be pursued with all the passion of our faith. Why care about homosexuality if we have qualms about its morality? “I don't know that we condone it by being aware.”*

5: VISION

VISION: CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY AT LARGE

Before I give specific applications for all I've said, I feel that it's necessary to take a step back and run over principles one more time. In conclusion, these are the principles and values that I believe should govern our efforts to inspire, engage, and perpetuate healthy conversation about difficult or controversial matters in the church:

  • Love (our deep, agape care for people created precious, imago deī)
  • Curiosity (necessary to truly care about others' lives, thoughts, and experiences)
  • Hope (looking beyond tension and conflict to the peace we have in God)
  • Grace (suspending our judgment and granting unconditional forgiveness)
  • Open-mindedness (willingness to consider others' positions without personal bias)
  • Empathy (truly walking alongside others in their struggles)
  • Self-Awareness (greases the wheels for our ability to see and accept our own weaknesses and the cause for misunderstandings between us and others)
  • Humility (not considering oneself better than others; ability to concede personal flaws)

If we have truly embraced the challenge to incorporate these virtues into all that we do and say, conversation we have in all areas of our lives, whether at church, in school, with loved ones or acquaintances or in secular society, will begin to more fully reflect God in his spirit.

VISION: THE CHURCH

Coming from a teenager that has not grown up with an understanding of or familiarity with liturgy, church hierarchy, or church polity, my reflections about church dynamics will be brief and based almost entirely off of the observations I've made as I have read and conversed with people for this project. You're invited to admire the fraying boundaries of my expertise.

Regarding homosexuality, what seems to be most effective in our current cultural milieu, but which is infrequently done due to the insecurity it seems to leave people drifting in, is to have no official policy about the morality of homosexuality, but to have friends, families, small groups, and congregations think together, so that they might consider individually how to interpret scripture and approach those they encounter for whom LGBT issues are relevant. I'm not aware of churches many churches that have any kind of official, hard-line stance on similar topics, like divorce, single parenting, cigarette smoking, swearing, gluttony, or gossip. My suggestion is that congregations deal with this topic only slightly differently from any of those above topics; there should be extra sensitivity because of the tendency the topic has to explode upon touching certain individuals, but it should be given no special status.

My advice to members of congregations that find themselves divided over the issue of gay ordination is to be patient until the patience begins to ooze out of your ears. The right way to engage this is not force. The best way to make it really, really hard for your siblings in Christ to love you is to blow up the congregation by pushing the issue too quickly. Even those I spoke to at the most liberal church I attended during this project said it was very important to be measured, realistic, and delicate in any action taken against the established order. Applying as an openly gay person to church leadership is not the right first step to take in the conversation, and a fear of the recent political steps taken towards the legalization of gay marriage is not the right reason to take militant steps against homosexuality. The right way is to start conversations. Let's get people talking, and do it as peacefully as we can, so that we might “live in harmony with one another” (Rom. 12:16).

Most congregations handle the other two topics relatively well in comparison. The bigger the church, the more activity is possible. I saw several churches with wonderful counseling ministries dedicated to helping people in hurt; I've heard stories of objective, open-ended sermons preached on these controversies and more; I have spoken to people for whom the Church became an invaluable source of community and dialogue when they wanted or needed it to be there. I would advocate for more of that in any church congregation.

VISION: BEAR CREEK

Here it is: the impact of all impacts, the question of all questions. “Marié, your senior project is about communicating in Christian communities. What does this mean for Bear Creek?”

I have seen Bear Creek improve its approach to the question of Origins even in the six years I've been blessed to live in this community. The couple weeks Dr. Meyer spent with us in Worldview Capstone this year were fantastic, and that is precisely the direction in which I think we need to go as a school. I believe in the vision of Capstone and think that it has great potential to become woven into the fiber of the Bear Creek experience within the next couple years. I'd encourage 7th grade Life Science not to skip over the chapter on Evolution, if it still does, but instead to use it as an opportunity to develop critical thinking and to foster healthy big-picture discussion in the classroom. We already have a good system established for education and discussion about this topic at Bear Creek, so this is all I have to say.

Thinking back on the way Bear Creek could have helped the people I knew that struggled with self-harm in middle school and the first couple years of high school, very little could have been said that would make anyone stop the harmful behavior they were engaged in. Awareness and education, however, have much deeper impacts than just the potential they have to influence healthy behavioral choices. I would encourage faculty to consider the variety of ways chapel time during Wholeness in Christ week, or something of that sort, could be used to promote a basic awareness of and compassion for certain specific emotional struggles that are much more common than one might imagine among middle and high school students. Even if there's potential for a chapel session like that to be dismissed as sappy or idealistic by many students, it often only takes mentioning that there is hope and they're not alone to make a profound difference to someone in a dark place.

Another venue that would be perfect for the promotion of awareness and compassion about issues like self-injury, drug abuse, depression, suicide, and sexual addiction (fantasy, masturbation, porn) would be Health class. (You might be surprised to see sexuality here; I'll expand on that thought in the next section.) Health class provides a safe and structured environment, with the possibility of gender segregation, to talk about issues like these. If kids are able to ask questions and learn from credible sources about these things instead of getting their information from peers, questionable internet sources, porn, misunderstandings of Wikipedia articles, or outdated cultural stereotypes, they will be much better prepared not only to handle the issues they find within themselves, but also in their friends, when they don't feel it's possible to talk to an adult. Although the ideal would obviously be for kids to come talk to their parents when they struggle with things, most kids would not approach their parents at age 13 asking what their newfound sexual thoughts mean, or admitting that they've been burning their upper legs with their hair straighteners every other night. Health class is the perfect opportunity to give kids the information they need to deal with these things as best they can if they encounter them. Approaching an adult is not always realistic from where they stand.

It is incredibly difficult to answer to questions of sexuality, particularly the question of LGBT identity. Sexuality is obviously very complicated. It requires more sensitivity in educational institutions than I can sometimes get my mind around. It means a lot of mental stamina, and an overdose of the virtues I listed in my first subsection of “Vision.” I would be lying if I said I have crystal-clear answers, because I've deliberately spent this entire project and the months working up to it teaching myself that I ought to consider nothing crystal-clear. The first and most essential lesson I have had to learn and embrace as I consider the implications of my findings in this project on the Bear Creek community is that no suggestions I make – whether in this section or previously – must come to have any certain, objective, or unchallengeable worth to me. I believe strongly what I have said and will say, but this is a dialogue, and I am determined to always push myself closer to a willingness to change.

This is the vision I have for education concerning sexuality and LGBT identity at Bear Creek: As I've mentioned, health class is an extremely powerful platform for education. My suggestion would be to have two units on mental health and sexuality, respectively, each of which would be accompanied by a course syllabus that would be sent home to the parents. Parents would have the opportunity to review the contents of each lesson and sign off that their child attend that class or not, and students whose parents would rather they not attend those classes could do an alternative project. A major concern for administration to consider is the role of the parents in education that's as sensitive as sexuality and mental health. It is of optimal importance to respect the parents' wishes for their children's exposure to these things, but I believe many parents would appreciate their children knowing what things like masturbation are before they turn 16, even if they don't know how to have that conversation with them. If the parents have control over their children's exposure to those conversations and the conversations happen in a classroom-controlled environment, there is likely to be much less parental concern about what is being taught.

Specifically concerning LGBT sexuality and identity: I believe the best way we can help students at Bear Creek to enter into healthy, respectful conversation about this topic is by bringing it up in class. Health class, as mentioned above, is a great way to introduce it. If we are a college-prep school, I believe we should be educated about things that we'll have abundant exposure to in college before we find it there. But I believe it'd be better for education about this topic to be more nuanced than the topics I mentioned above. My vision is that kids would leave Health knowing: 1) what it means to be “gay,” “lesbian,” and “bisexual”; 2) what it means to be “transgendered;” 3) that people don't choose to be LGBT, but that this doesn't necessarily condone homosexual sex or non-binary/trans genders; 4) that there exists internal pluralism in the church over these issues, and there are a lot of different ideas about how we should steward the gifts of sex and gender as Christians.

In addition, especially in the light of recent events (the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Washington State's near-legalization of same-sex marriage, DOMA teetering on the edge of being determined unconstitutional), I believe it would be beneficial for Bear Creek students to be taught gay rights history along with the feminist and Civil Rights movements in US History. My vision is that kids would leave US History knowing, for example, what happened at Stonewall, who Harvey Milk was, what Don't Ask, Don't Tell was, and what DOMA and Proposition 8 are. This basic knowledge of gay rights history will be very important and relevant to just about every one of us as we enter highly-politicized college climates on the forefronts of the gay rights movement.

CONCLUSION:
Sitting here in my last few hours before I present this project, I could not be more thankful for the opportunity I've had to engage such important and fascinating topics with such depth and freedom. I extend a few thousand tons of gratitude to all the faculty that put great efforts into allowing me to do this. The project itself has been an unbelievable opportunity to live out the conclusion I have come to: that, yes, conversation is good and necessary, and that community is a gift from God that requires careful stewardship and responsibility. My hope is that the work I have put into this project would, in some positive way, impact this community I have grown to love and care about deeply.

Special thanks to all those actively involved in making this project possible for me:

My mother, for helping me process what I learned, for moral support, and for driving me around before I had my license;

My father, for driving me when my mother couldn't;

Mr. Carruth, for all the time he's taken out of his already full schedule and all the effort he's put into his already busy life for the sake of ensuring that I don't accidentally start a war;

Mr. Davison, for his good advice throughout the project;

And everyone I interviewed for granting me access to seventeen amazing conversations:

Debbie Knox, Larry Bodmer, Stephen Meyer, Tom Van Baak, Dave Shull, Michelle Williams, Dick Williams, Catherine Swadley, Phil Eubank, Joey Domingo, Jenni Butz, Jordan Ellenberger, Shannon West, Tucker FitzGerald, Bruce Waltke, Reed Probus, Phil Calses, Nick Elliott, Larry Grounds, Kevin Neuhouser, and all others:

Thank you.

Scripture Index:

Genesis – 1
Genesis 3 – 13
Matthew 1 – 24
Matthew 5:15 – 23
Matthew 7:1 – 24
Matthew 7:1-5 – 20
Romans 12:15 – 19, 21
Romans 12:16 – 20, 26
1 Corinthians 12 – 13
Philippians 2:3 – 19, 27

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