A Father's Quest for Answers

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Why Am I Writing about This?

"Faith, Family, Friends"

Robin Roberts of Good Morning America, the network TV show, displayed these words on a sign one morning to represent the three most important things in her life. I share these same values. My faith has shaped every part of my life since that late January evening when I was seventeen years old. My family is second only to my faith. Every day I think about my children and wish they were closer. I want them to chase their dreams and follow the road that is laid out for them, but those roads led many of them extremely far from our home in Irvine, California. Then there are friends. We have had many for many years. Some have gone through painfully difficult times with us. We have gone through difficult times with them. We have agreed and disagreed on many things and sometimes not elegantly.

I now find myself in a position in which all three of these values are in conflict with one another. One of our daughters informed us a few years ago that she is a lesbian. For most in our faith community, homosexuality and homosexual practices are sin. If that is true, then the reality of my daughter's confession on first glance pits us against our faith. We find it likewise pits us against some friends. What I know for certain is that regardless of the other two, I must stand with my daughter. She is my daughter. She is a wonderful gift from God, and I love her with my whole heart. This means I have some work to do between God and me. It means I have some work to do with some friends as well.

Over the course of several years, my wife and I worked through some of the difficult questions raised by the confluence of our faith, family, and friends on the issue of homosexuality. We had many long discussions. We have read and explored some of the varied resources that are available. I did research on topics from theology to psychology to biology. This book has come out of these discussions and the research. Although it will present findings, it is still a work in progress—as am I.

The Questions

One will not be able to read far before numerous questions emerge, for which one would like answers, if possible. I list them here so the reader knows the terrain we will travel. At the end of the book, I will return to each of these and provide summary responses.

• Is one born a homosexual or transsexual person, or is homosexuality something someone chooses? In other words, is sexual orientation a choice an individual makes?

• Is same-sex attraction sinful?

• Within the scope of the healing and restoration of creation, is homosexuality a disease to be corrected?

• Is it true that Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) people are more promiscuous than heterosexual people?

• Is it true that same-sex relationships do not last as long as hetero-sex relationships?

• Is abstinence for life the only choice for a Christian LGBT person? Or can they enter into intimate and sexual relationships and still be active participants in a Christian community?

• Is same-sex marriage acceptable from a Christian standpoint?

• Should LGBT persons be allowed to become ordained leaders in the church if they are in committed same-sex relationships or marriages?

• Does support of same-sex marriage disqualify one from leadership and teaching ministries in the church?

My Personal Story

Discussions about homosexuality can become incredibly abstract quickly, and we can easily forget that we are talking about real people. So I begin with my story, which I believe sets this quest in a real-life context.

Not Raised in the Church

I was not raised in the church. For a short period in the fourth grade I think I went to Sunday school and sang in the youth choir at the First United Methodist Church in Corvallis, Oregon. But that all faded away for reasons I do not recall. Life was not easy for our family. My dad owned an ARCO gas station, which included an auto repair shop. I worked there from junior high through high school. I was a bit wild, loving fast cars more than English, history, math, or science; so unfortunately I spent a little too much time in the parking lot and not enough in class. It was the late 1960s, so there was a fair amount of "experimentation" going on, and I was all for experimentation! One January evening of my senior year in high school, I stopped by an old friend's house. We had been fellow experimenters in the past, and I wanted to see how the experimenting was going for her. I found that my friend and another young man had become Christians and were part of the Jesus movement. That night changed my life. I learned just a little bit of the story of how God loved me just as I am. Despite all the ways I had been a moral failure, still Jesus forgave me. I didn't know Genesis from Revelation, but I did know that I was a sinner, and forgiveness with the offer of a fresh start sounded pretty good.

I moved to Seattle and graduated from Seattle Pacific College. I worked for a brief time in a coffeehouse where I met a seventeen-year-old high school student named Debbie, whom four years later I would finally marry. We have been happily married now since 1976 and together have produced five great kids, all very different. Early in my Christian journey, my interest in the Bible and theology seemed insatiable. We moved to the Bay Area in northern California to study at Peninsula Bible Church (PBC) and intern under the singles pastor. I learned to love my Bible through that church, and I learned that we are supposed to love people, all kinds of people. I also learned that many churches spent more time determining who was in and who was out than they did acting like God's people with wide-open doors. PBC however, was different. All kinds of people were welcome there, which was demonstrated through its radical and innovative (for the late 1960s and '70s) Body Life service.

Singles Class in San Francisco in 1979

I served as an intern in the singles ministry at PBC. The main group was in Palo Alto, but there were satellite groups throughout the Bay Area. These were usually started by a single person who had been part of the ministry in Palo Alto but whose work had taken them to more distance places around the San Francisco Bay.

One such group was founded in San Francisco. A modest number of singles found themselves employed in the city, and so they lived there. As part of my internship, I was invited to teach in some of these satellite groups, and so I found myself scheduled to teach a few weeks in the San Francisco class in the late 1970s.

This period was the high point in the Gay Pride movement. By the late...