How The Religious Institute Aims to Improve the Lives of Religious Bisexuals

In my life, I have been seen by others as a straight woman, a lesbian, a gay man, and even a straight man (which still baffles me).  Once people get to know me, they learn that I say I have attractions to people of multiple genders, but they don't often believe me.  When I started dating Mr. Boy, many of my friends who met me after my previous relationship with a man were shocked.  Even though I had stated my bisexuality (for lack of a more convenient term), my friends assumed that was talk and I was really only attracted to women.

In religious contexts in particular, even in otherwise queer-friendly spaces, this invisibility is worse and I have often encountered outright biphobia.  I think part of the reason bisexual invisibility is increased in religious spaces is the focus on finding one person to share your life with (I say one here because religious groups, as a whole, have not caught up to ideas of non-monogamy).  When people are in a relationship, this is praised in religious communities to an extent that erases sexual orientation.  This is particularly true in liberal Jewish communities where the reaction to someone saying they have a partner of the same gender is to ask if that partner is Jewish (another conversation for another time).

The Religious Institute today releases a book-length guide which will improve the experience of bisexual folk in religious communities.  The first resource of its kind, Bisexuality: Making the Invisible Visible in Faith Communities, is a comprehensive guide for religious communities to welcoming and inclusion people who have attractions to more than one gender whether or not they identify as bisexual.  The book asks the reader to consider whether the B in LGBT actually gets heard at her congregation.  Parts 1 and 2 of the book present an overview: Part 1 focuses on what bisexuality is and how people experience it and Part 2 on the justifications for inclusion of bisexuality on religious grounds from a variety of religious perspectives.  Part 2 also contains a brief contextualization of the "problematic" passages about LGBT folks from Tanakh and the New Testament.  The third part of the book outlines how to create a "bisexually healthy" religious community.  And the last part of the book outlines additional resources.  In short, the book attempts to address the issue Emily Alpert Reyes describes in her column "Why Bisexuals Stay in the Closet", which, incidentally, gets quoted in the book (props to friend and fellow University of Chicago Alum).

Suggestions in the book range from the often-overlooked-but-easily-implemented (writing out lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender so that the B isn't functionally silent) to the takes-specific-training-and-is-hard-to-implement, like the model of pastoral care it advocates.  That and the background information in Parts 1 and 2 enable this guide to be used by clergy and lay leaders regardless of prior familiarity with the issue, but also allow those with much experience to go even deeper.  The beginning of the introduction best describes the intricate issues examined in the book:

Imagine the following situations in your faith community:

• A congregant comes to you for pastoral counseling. He is excited, yet distressed that 

although he has always identified as straight, he has fallen in love with someone 

of the same sex.

• You are on the search committee for a new pastor in your community. One of the 

applicant’s profiles states that she identifies as bisexual. 

• A married woman in your congregation finds explicit homoerotic websites on her 

husband’s computer and comes to you for advice.

• A person everyone believes to be gay comes to a congregation party holding hands 

with a person of another sex.

• Two middle school students in the youth group announce that they are bisexual. 

Is your faith community prepared for these situations? Is your faith community open to 

people whose sexuality does not fit into the categories of gay/lesbian or straight? Does 

your faith community have access to resources about bisexuality and bisexual people? 

Even if you think you are good at theses issues, I encourage you to read through this book to see if your practices fall into some of the pitfalls the Religious Institute has identified.  I was surprised that some behaviors I thought were inclusive (hello big many-gender-loving trans guy here) could actually be detrimental.

Things the book does really well:

* Casts a wide net on what constitutes bisexuality that is well-explained.  The authors explicitly state who the guide is intended to help include, even, and perhaps especially people that don't use the term bisexual to describe themselves but experience same and other gender attractions on at least one dimension of sexuality.

* Combats the gender binary by using terms like "another gender" and "another sex" instead of "opposite sex" or "opposite gender".

* Talks about the ways in which bisexuals contribute specially to religious life and spiritual awareness.

* Presents nuanced and well-informed definition of sexuality and accounts of bisexual experience. I love the multiplicity of bisexual narratives in the book.

* Breaks down suggestions in a way that any congregation can start to implement immediately.

Things I don't like about the book:

* The phrase "bisexually healthy".  I assume it is meant to parallel the organization's use of the term "sexually healthy", but I don't think the usage is parallel and I think the term is confusing, even after it is defined.  I would advocate the words "friendly" and "safe" for bisexuals instead.

* The book is extremely monogamy-normative and does not address the issue of how to include and pastor to bisexuals who are not monogamous.  I personally think that the attitudes can exhibit the same poly shaming that is normative in many religious communities.  As a poly ally, this rubbed me the wrong way.

* Christian buzz-word terminology.  Uses of the terms "welcoming and affirming" and "faith communities" that originate or were popularized in Christian contexts present a barrier to non-Christians reading the book.  We would use "inclusive" and "religious communities."

Things that should be improved for the next edition:

* Better representation (particularly resource-wise) of religious traditions other than progressive Christian denominations.  In one resource list, Christian resources are divided by denomination, but no Jewish movement resources are listed.  Instead, there is one sub-header "Jewish" that lists Keshet and Nehirim.  This sort of listing, combined with the Christian-centric terminology

* More testimonials, with special effort to include testimonials of folks who are partnered to someone of the same gender.  Where partners are discussed in personal narratives, they are always of another gender than the writer of the narrative.

* A consistent use of gender instead of sex when the authors do not mean to focus on phenotypic, genotypic, or legal sex.

* Expansion to non-Abrahamic traditions - the book as it is now relies on the shared context for expression of values of Abrahamic faiths and the shared values of the Abrahamic religions.  Many other religious traditions are sexually healthy and would like to be safer, inclusive spaces for bisexual folks, and this guide would not be useful for them.  The authors state that it is intended for Christians, Jews, Muslims, and Unitarians.  But this sort of inclusion is necessary in all religious spaces.

In all, this is an incredibly practical and useful resource, and every religious (or faith, I suppose) leader should invest.  Good work, Religious Institute!

Nuanced Perspectives, Digital Media, and Human Beings

After a deliberate absence from digital media following the death of Mr. Boy, I have been re-immersing myself in digital content lately, returning to getting my news online, keeping up with my twitter feed, and catching up on my webcomics, fanfiction serials, and blogs.  Facebook still remains elusive, as any time I log on, somebody is still congratulating me on my marriage, and I don't yet have the strength to change my relationship status.  While on my calculated hiatus, I read the news in the local paper and also the New York times, and kindly bowed out of any discussions regarding new developments on the interwebs.  Returning, I have a new perspective on the way media is produced and reacted to online.

We make big controversies over things that are trivial and minimize or sideline those things that terrify us.  Fierce debate can occur about what really happened in the elevator with Jay-Z and Solange, what should have happened, and how all the players in that situation should act following the incident.  Since none of us have power over what happens in the Carter-Knowles family, we could speculate without consequence.

But when Elliot Rodger killed 6 people and injured 13 others because he felt entitled to have women who rejected him, the internet quickly broke into 3 camps that did not converse with each other.  I'll call the first camp the extremist camp.  This is the camp of people who believe Rodger was justified in doing what he did, or at least that he wouldn't have done it if women had been more reasonable.  Some members of this camp have since been arrested.  The second camp was the feminist camp, which saw Rodger's crime as part of a systematic hatred of women that should not be tolerated, exemplified here.  And the third camp is the isolated crazy person camp, which puts forward Rodger's history of mental illness as explanation of what happened.  After each camp responded, they moved on, focusing on other facets of existence.  They were able to do this by compartmentalizing the killings, either as part of their own crusade against uppity women or as an extreme case of a systemic societal problem (either as perpetrator or victim).  Although their voices on the internet are louder than proportional, advocates of mass murder are few, and the world treated the killings, if not the motivation behind them, as an isolated case.  We compartmentalize mass murder because to treat it as something that could happen to us or by us terrifies us and if we really stopped to consider how anyone could become or be a victim of mass murder, we would cease to be productive citizens.

Still, the approach of over-analyzing topics that we can wrap our heads around and not analyzing those we can't is extremely problematic, as Jonathan Z. Smith outlines in his essay about the White Night.  The essay, entitled "The Devil in Mr. Jones", counters the assertion that Jim Jones was an isolated case in religion and the best approach is to move one.  Smith argues that if we dismiss how the Peoples Temple was started, how it grew, how it developed into Jonestown, and how the White Night occurred as unrelated to the study of religion, we will not understand how Jones manipulated religious phenomena in a way that caused the deaths of over nine hundred people.  If we say that atrocities are only committed outside of a societal framework, we don't correct the societal framework in a way to reduce the occurrence of atrocities.

I've recently read some flame wars on the use of PrEP (a medical phrophylatic approach to reduce risk of contracting HIV).  A bit about the treatment: Truvada is administered to HIV-negative patients who are at high risk of contracting HIV, including men who have sex with men, sex workers, and injection drug users.  Early studies suggest that the prophylaxis is highly effective for males who are compliant with the protocol.  So the flame wars, instead of discussing how we can provide PrEP cheaply to those who may benefit, weigh the merits of advocating PrEP instead of condom use (as if we only have space to do one or the other), and whether we should even be trying to convince gay men that they should alter their behavior to avoid contraction of HIV.  People are arguing over how gay men act or think instead of how to allow this resource to be useful to as many people as possible.

As a Jew, it's been hard to escape the news about the recent kidnappings of students at Yeshivat Har Etzion.  Before going further, let me say the non-nuanced, unequivocal things I think about the situation.  First, these students are victims of a crime.  Second, it is the wish of any decent human being that they be returned safely as quickly as possible.  Third, I believe that the modern State of Israel has a right to exist and a right to govern the land it currently occupies.  Fourth, Palestinians are human beings and have a national identity and have a right to self-determination in their own land.  Fifth, a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the solution most likely to eventually achieve lasting peace and stability in the region, which should be a desired goal for the entire world.  I've followed reporting from various sources with various political inclinations regarding the kidnappings.  But the internet is in two camps: either Israel is at fault for its occupation or the Palestinians (as a whole) are at fault because Jewish teens were kidnapped..  There is no nuance to the argument.  Even Samuel Heilman's article urging a systemic look only advocates that Israel and its yeshivot do more to protect their students to prevent students in yeshivot from getting kidnapped in the first place.

In my own head, the argument is very nuanced.  It starts with compassion for the teenagers and worry about their lives and safety.  I am angry at the kidnappers, but am reserving judgment on whether they acted as a part of a larger organization.  Whenever conflict is at the brink of resolution, violence escalates.  And yes, while Heilman may not think it does much, I am reciting Psalms for the missing boys.  Then, my head goes to the point that Gush Etzion is in the West Bank, and in my mind it is immoral for Jews to occupy the area, and I don't understand any Jew who lives, studies, or sends their children to the area.  And I also know about the four villages in Gush Etzion that existed prior to Israeli Independence that were destroyed by the Arab forces in 1948 and their predecessor Migdal Eder.  And I know the land they were built on at that time was formally purchased despite the fact that it fell on the Arab side of the Partition Plan.  And I know that K'far Etzion was founded in 1968 in part by the families of people who had lived in Gush Etzion prior to 1948.  But, in my view times have changed, politics have changed, and the best way to have avoided the kidnappings in the first place is for Jews to withdraw to Partition Plan borders, or for Jews who do not want to to live under the authority of a Palestinian state.  Currently though, Jews, particularly those involved in perpetuating and expanding formal Jewish structures, living on Palestinian land are part of the problems of occupation.  Yet I know the reality of moving an established yeshiva is not simple.  And I know those kids.  Well, not Naftali Frenkel, Gilad Shaer, or Eyal Yifrah, but those like them.  They are reasonable men who took gap years, or occasionally grew up in Israel and studied at the yeshivot in Gush Etzion, some of which were prestigious.  The range of their politics about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict mirrors that of the Jewish community as a whole: from staunchly anti-Zionist to extremely pro-Israel.  They are, on the whole, nice Jewish boys, who taught me how to identify which yeshiva someone had attended by the specific type of kippah srugah he wore.  And the ones I lived near in college opened their homes to me, a non-observant (by their standards, at least) queer Jew because that was how they wanted to celebrate Shabbat.  And when I married the Catholic Mr. Boy, they sent us the well-wishes of mazel tov and sheva brachos [sic] because they wanted to be a part of our happy occasion.  They are the fiercest pronoun police and can't stand it when anybody does it wrong for me.  And they have taken down mechitzot so I may pray with them.  So, when I hear the developing news and I watch the minutes tick by, I don't see Naftali, Gilad, and Eyal.  I see Yoni, Rafi, and Zach*.  I see Asher, Avi, and Daniel*.

I don't have a way to reconcile my image of settlers helping perpetuate a system of apartheid with the providers of shabbes tisches and blessings for my big gay interfaith wedding.  And absorption in the internet's way of forming camps doesn't help.  But people do.  Being open to making friends with people I never thought I'd interact with, both online and in person, allows me to see the nuance in situations.  It allows me to know that unless someone can have access to a stable living environment and follow up care, he is not likely to be compliant with a PrEP regimen.  It allows me to recognize that Palestinians and settlers are human beings, both when they are living well and when they are choosing poorly.  And it allows me to admit that the stuff that horrifies me horrifies me because it is horrifying, whether it be the mass suicide of an entire religious movement or the kidnapping of boys, and I need to try to understand it rather than compartmentalizing it.

*Names changed to protect identities.