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Thursday, April 21, 2011

Religion and Sexuality: A Reflection

Keeping It Queer
By Erica Chu

Religion and Sexuality: A Reflection

When I was 8 I asked Jesus to be my savior. When I was 14, I dedicated my life to the Lord. When I was 20, I told God, “I’ll go wherever you send me.” When I was 24, I came out as queer.

You could say I was a late bloomer in large part because of the sexual repression I had experienced and the limiting cultural and religious environment in which I’d been entrenched. Some people hear my story and immediately understand that religion has done me wrong. That’s at least part of the story anyway. If I had not been surrounded by such a restrictive environment, my life would definitely have been easier, been less filled with shame, loneliness, and at times despair.

The rest of the story, however, is that my life was full of a lot of good. Though many religious arguments ultimately did damage to me, the religious people that surrounded me were full of love and light. They were also filled with some ignorance, bigotry, and misunderstanding, but my life was richer because I knew them. I know everyone can’t say the same thing. In some cases, religious people have been full of hatred, and they’ve used their God and love as weapons, but in my particular case, the damage was not so severe.

My life is better now. I have made peace with my sexuality and with the sense of sexual ethics I have gained from my relationship with God. I am happy to have come out as queer and to have distanced myself from the limiting cultural environments these religious communities foster, but it’s not easy. I am hurt that I am no longer accepted among those I used to call my spiritual family. I am angry that I’ve worked so hard to make them understand, but it so often seems they are incapable. I am offended that those who say they stand for God’s truth misrepresent the God I know, who is loving, is righteous, is holy, and who accepts a wide variety of sexualities.

Judgments and clashes over religious ideology are common—especially between LGBTQs and traditional conservatives, but it’s also common among LGBTQs. Many of you have faced similar issues with religion—whether Christian or otherwise. Some of you may have left religion behind, and some have renegotiated your relationships to spirituality and to certain religious communities. Others of you may have been nonreligious your whole lives yet can’t avoid interaction with those who represent religious perspectives.

I am a Christian, and I regret none of my former or present zeal. I do regret having at times been unwise, uneducated, and judgmental about sexuality—regrets that extend to mistakes I make about other issues today. Whatever your religious situation and your ultimate choice, be wary of making judgments about what religion means to your fellow LGBTQ. Religion may have been used to do a lot of damage to LGBTQ individuals over the millennia, but in wiser, more educated, and less judgmental hands, religion is also a source of much strength for our community.


Erica Chu is a student at Loyola University Chicago and is seeking a PhD in English with a concentration in Women Studies and Gender Studies. They manage the blog keepingitqueer.blogspot.com and can be reached at ericachu@msn.com.

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