Engagged: Characteristics of the Christian Beard

People are still spewing venom about the whole gay marriage thing. Church officials are trying to deny congress people in New York the ability to attend services if they voted for it. Honestly, what kind of logic is that?  The last thing churches need right now is to deny entrance to the willing. They have enough problems with attendance as it is.

I really wish the religious folk would get past this hatin the gays thing. For one thing, because there are so very few verses about it, you have to hear those said verses over and over again. That gets boring.  I mean, really boring.

Second of all, because of all the gay emphasis and paranoia going on, it's making it difficult for Christian gays to stay happily closeted.  And while I think being out is always best, I do understand that for some people, this is just a damned difficult prospect to deal with.  For one thing, it starts to cause problems in one's life that one doesn't want to deal with. For another, suddenly it's all anyone wants to talk about.

Being from the rhinestone-encrusted belt buckle of the Bible Belt, I've known Christian Gays all my life. Growing up, they were the "confirmed bachelor" or "that poor girl who just never can seem to find a man." Most of often, it was assumed their love lives were delayed because they took care of aging parents or spent a lot of time at school.

The gentlemen would usually be the life of any church social. They would have a gaggle of church ladies as their friends and listen to their problems with a sympathetic nod and advice about how they should trust in the Lord's guidance. They would bring the best dishes to the fellowship meals and always had great singing voices.

Often the ladies would be just a little awkward in their Sunday dresses, maybe shifting a bit from one foot to the other in the same flats they wore a couple of years before. But everyone would love them because they would be the first to stop and help you change a tire in the rain.  They would also show up at all hours to help Aunt Peggy fix her dryer or to take that last puppy no one wanted.

And while these single gentlemen and ladies never married, they were valued and treasured for their kindness, their fellowship, and their service to the church.

The more worldly members of the church probably guessed what the real deal was.  Maybe even the gossipy ones wanted to ferret out information about them.  However, when they tried to bring this to the attention of anyone else, they would be shushed.  Maybe these people weren't living a traditional kind of life, but they were still brothers and sisters in Christ.  No need to hurt anyone or accuse anyone, especially when such things just could NOT be true.

So it was a kind of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" thing in many churches.  And yes, I know that sucks, especially when you DO want to tell. But for those who weren't brave enough or interested enough in telling, it was a way to live in their small towns and still be a part of the institutions they'd been a part of all their lives. Maybe they couldn't tell anyone, but much to their relief, no one asked.

But now, many churches have gone on this hetronormative hyper drive. It isn't enough to just be the quiet privately gay gentlemen who plays piano for the church and never gets caught, or to be the sweet lady that everyone wants on their team for volley ball tournies at church camp. No, now everyone EVERYONE is supposed to fit into the very narrow little molds that Jesus so clearly outlined in the Bible . . . ya know, somewhere, right after he talked about how everyone should hate Muslims and support gun rights.

Women are to have retreats where they discuss makeup and looking as womanly and as hot as possible . . . in a modest kind of way.  Men have classes to train them to be more masculine. If all of this fails, there is always the dreaded Antigay Camp, which I assume is probably way worse than fat camp.

As a side note, I never went to a fat camp. I figured if they ever sent me, I would have smuggled in a bunch of candy bars and sold them to the other needy children.  I can only imagine what gets smuggled in to GayBeGone Camp.

Anyway, because of this, the once content to be private about the private matters gay Christians are running scared. They could always leave the church, but it is very hard to leave something that's always been a part of your life, even when it's being an annoying and kinda of threatening part of your life. So instead, many of them opt to try and conform. The best way to conform, of course, is to get married.

Now, sometimes, the gay Christians will marry each other.  However, this often doesn' work out so well, because what is different about each of them seems to be emphasized when they get closer together. Instead, they will look for people who most conform with the standards of acceptable gendered behavior.

I'll talk about the kinds of girls that closeted Christian gay men tend to select because this is the most common pairing. For one thing, gay Christian women have a slightly easier time blending in and staying unmarried.  There are always an overabundance of single women in churches who want husbands, so husbands can be hard to find.  However, for the gay man, with all these women there weeping because the Lord hasn't send them their soulmate yet, there just really isn't as much of an excuse.

Usually, the Christian Beard will have the following characteristics:

1. She is desperate to get married.  She's nearing or at the age where she is starting to lose hope she'll ever find a husband.  She's made a lot of comments in social settings about how she prays all the time for God to send her someone to love. She has big eyes. She may not have started out with them, but all that despairing and praying has caused it.

2. She's very sweet.  In fact, the word most commonly used to describe her is "sweet." She does things like baking for sick children and volunteering for crap. She always does it with kindness that feels very real to others. All the while she's doing this stuff, she's having this romantic fantasy that the man of her dreams is watching her and noting how kind she is. It's all she's ever wanted.

3. She is kind of icked out by the idea of sex and thinks it's sort of dirty and wishes that God would have come up with some less sticky and personal-space violating way of being loving and having babies.  This isn't so important because the gay man feels he needs a virgin so much as it is he wants to have sex with her as little as possible, because you know, he's not interested in sex with women. The Christian Beard will be very thankful to him for respecting her wishes and in awe of how kind he is for not letting his overwhelming lusts get in the way.

4. Oh yes, because most importantly, the Christian Beard is delusional. She has no idea her husband is in the closet. She possibly doesn't even know what that is or at least, doesn't want to think about it too closely.  She believes he is perfect and sweet and loves her for who she is and really is going to feed orphans ever Saturday Night from 9 til five in the morning.

And while I write all of this with a bit of tongue-in-cheek, understand that this does happen. These days, it's happening more all the time.  I grasp that for centuries, marriages of convenience were the backbone of marriage. That isn't the case with our culture. Or at least, that is what we've been told all of our lives.

Entering into a marriage because one person is scared of being outed and the other person is scared of being alone is basing marriage on very bad reasons.  The religious community needs to ask itself if that is what it really wants . . . sham marriages, fake marriages, all created so people don't have to feel like everyone is watching them.

Again, it is for reasons like this why I believe we should let people be open about their sexuality or private about it if they wish, but in either case, the rest of us leaving them the hell alone. Because, honestly, when you die and go before God and he asks you what your life was about, do you really want your answer to be, "Oh yeah, I was totes instrumental in making a bunch of people miserable and scared . . . in your name!"

Not sure that would go over all that well.