Every year around this time\u201d\u201dJune is of course Pride month in LGBT communities\u201d\u201dI go back and reread an older essay by Eve Tushnet called \u201cRomoeroticism.\u201d\u009d Tushnet points out that in the nineteenth century, as same-sex love was being newly described as a pathology, a psychological disorder, it was the Catholic Church, of all places, where many same-sex attracted men and women found a home\u201d\u201dbecause it was the Church that, rather than medicalizing same-sex love, celebrated \u201cthe possibility of shockingly chaste same-sex love.\u201d\u009d When I first read that, several years ago now, it reconfigured my whole way of thinking about being gay and Christian: Yes, Scripture was telling me that gay sex wasn\u2019t the true fulfillment of my longings for same-sex intimacy, but no, it wasn\u2019t telling me to deny the goodness of that longing itself. On the contrary, traditional Christianity, it turned out, was radically pro-same-sex love.<\/p>\n
The actual on-the-ground history is messy, of course. Many Catholic parishes aren\u2019t exactly safe places to be out as LGBT, and the rich history of celebrated same-sex love is largely unknown\u201d\u201dor suppressed\u201d\u201din many churches. But Tushnet\u2019s point is that the resources are there in Catholicism (and, I would argue, in my own Anglican Communion and other churches too) to dignify and nurture same-sex love. We wouldn\u2019t have to compromise one iota of historic Scriptural, Christian teaching in order to open our doors to gay and lesbian people, to offer them a place free from disdain and rejection and humiliation, and even to affirm their (our!) desire to lay down their lives for a friend.<\/p>\n