Gay Friendships with Christians

It has been an interesting week of self reflection.

In the beginning of last week I lost a gay friend of over twenty years (via email) who suddenly decided that he was not gay (and no longer my friend) and was going to get married to a woman. He’s been a Christian his entire life and has struggled with his sexuality forever. This loss bothered me more than I can simply put into words here. I was angry, very angry. I immediately wanted to send him off a tirade on his hypocrisy and ignorance and spew as many other hateful things as I could think of to lessen the my own pain.

And this is really what we do as people, we look for a target outside of ourselves where we can lay blame and lessen the emotional impact upon ourselves. In reality, what I was fighting was NOT his decision, but the fact that after twenty years he didn’t think I would support his decision and do  what I could to help him in his new life. Somehow his lack of faith in our long friendship made me a failure, and that alone was what my anger was really about; my own self doubt.  Had my friendship been so lacking? Had I done or said something that would make him think this? Did I say something hateful against his wife, or all females at some point in our past? The list of questions and the doubt went on and on, until finally I just sat with it. [Read more...]