I came into social justice work for two reasons: my faith and my queer identity. My Catholic upbringing instilled in me the values of serving my local community and treating all people as gifts from God. My connection to the LGBTQ community gave me the language of justice and the importance of loving yourself and one another proudly.
These two aspects of my identity were woven together so tightly, I considered them one in the same. More importantly, I love these parts of myself, and I believed that sharing them with my community was a way of communicating God’s love. But as much as I believed that these two were inseparable, I learned quickly that many others disagreed.
I heard my fellow parishioners’ comments about their disapproval of both Pope Francis and outspoken LGBTQ Catholics. I also faced disappointment from my LGBTQ friends when they asked how I could be a part of something that they believed was solely built to harm us. I felt more and more hesitant to talk about my faith with my friends, and I stopped going to church.
As I wrestled with questions on the ethics of dignity and belonging, I searched for stories like mine.
In a moment of growing support for LGBTQ rights from religious leaders and simultaneous life-threatening attacks in the name of religious convictions, I felt existentially out of place. Yet, I knew I was not alone. As I wrestled with questions on the ethics of dignity and belonging, I searched for stories like mine.
During my senior year at Santa Clara University, I met regularly with four other young LGBTQ Christians to discuss the overlaps between being Christian and being queer, the possibilities for a shared community for LGBTQ Christians and the ethics of belonging.
The five of us shared our stories over coffee and lunch, as we studied for exams and after both major LGBTQ and religious events on our campus. These conversations were emotional, filled with laughter and sometimes with tears, and each conversation had a level of mutual understanding: we weren’t sure what the future looked like for LGBTQ Christians, but we nevertheless wanted to try to foster a community for ourselves and each other.
Storytelling is the means of understanding and interacting with the ethical challenges of belonging and it was of the utmost importance to me that the stories of my conversation partners remained central to my work. Storytelling is how we relate to one another, find common ground and confront our greatest challenges as a collective. With the resources and support of the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University, I was able to share their stories and argue for the full respect and appreciation of LGBTQ Christians.
Each person…spoke about love: the love they have for their partners, their family, Jesus and themselves.
When speaking about the similarities between the values of being queer and a Christian, each person—Cara, D, Noah and Shelly—spoke about love: the love they have for their partners, their family, Jesus and themselves.
Cara shared that her partner was the first person who “reflected God’s love in every way,” and that the love she saw in the queer community was the practice of unconditional love she read in the Bible.
Noah drew connections between cura personalis, the Jesuit practice of caring for the whole person, and intersectionality, the feminist theory that multiple identities can intersect to create unique and compounding experiences of oppression or privilege, to express that dignity necessitates a recognition and care for all parts of a person’s identity, not just those that seem palatable or convenient. It is from this recognition and care that we can work towards love.
I hope to be another piece in the long journey of returning ourselves to lives led with love.
This project was not without roadblocks. I met with many other students who did not want to be a formal part of the project out of fear of being judged by their queer friends or excluded from their church groups. And yet, after each of those encounters, they would say, “Thank you so much for doing this. I didn’t know there were other people like me.” This reaction is testament to the importance of storytelling and to the importance of platforms like Outreach. There are too many instances of stories being erased, silenced and long forgotten. That is what ultimately isolates us and leads us to fear and mistrust.
With this work, and in writing this reflection, I hope to be another piece in the long journey of returning ourselves to lives led with love. That hope sometimes dims—I refuse to ignore the great injustices, senseless violence and systemic oppression that plague our world—but I feel a great responsibility to return to our stories and remind each other of the love we were born to express. In sharing this work and giving a platform for the stories of LGBTQ Christians, I hope we can return to these building blocks of recognition, respect, care and love. Our dignity demands it.
This essay is a reflection on the author’s project, “Queer, Religious, and Gen-Z: A Call for the Dignity of Belonging” published by the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University.
