Adam Venus
The next morning, an assistant walks into my classroom. “Professor Kinnan would like to see you,” she says, looking right at me.
I look around, still groggy from yet another bizarre dream. “Um…me? You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
Five minutes later I’m ducking into a chair in Kinnan’s tiny office, a large cross looming over his shoulder. I am absolutely terrified, but also a little excited – at least life is getting a little less grey.
Professor Kinnan have always had our battles. I am not exactly a San Francisco progressive, but then again, anyone not on the frontlines of the “culture wars” would be considered a progressive around here. Specifically, I can’t stand the way he talks about women. I don’t especially cherish women or think they’re breakable little paper dolls that must be placed on a shelf and revered or anything, I just think they’re freaking people, just like men are, and should be treated the same. Once Kinnan made a remark about how women needed to stop being so “bold” and “reexamine the Biblical role assigned to them,” and something just kind of snapped in me. I raised my hand and asked if that meant he wanted to chain them all to their dishwashing machines while they had baby after baby, a statement which went over predictably well. Mostly I keep quiet, but we’re two different people, and I’ve had a few little flare-ups. I have no idea what he wants from me today.
“I’ve got my eye on you, you know,” he begins, his legs crossed, and my stomach immediately plummets.
“Um. You do?”
“Yes, sir. You do know you’re a standout student on this campus, don’t you?”
Standout for what reason? Sucking face with the janitor?
“I am?” I ask.
“You’re a leader. You’re always helping younger students in need, you’re kind to our staff, you give some of the most eloquent prayers we’ve ever heard in these halls. But there’s a problem.”
I suck in my stomach. “Um…yes?”
“The problem is that half our seniors are graduating early, at Christmas, and we have nobody to give the commencement address. And we want you.”
“You mean…I would get up in front of all those people and speak…about…”
“About how the Lord works and lives in your life every day, and how you intend in pushing that out into a secular world in desperate need of some sanity, and how this school has contributed to all that, and prepared you for the spiritual battles ahead.”
Spiritual battles, I think to myself. Secular world in need of sanity.
But what does sanity mean to him? Does it mean love and compassion and acceptance, as I understand Christianity to be about? Or does he mean taking rights from the disadvantaged? Spreading hatred for LGBT people, who never did anything to anyone to deserve such treatment?
I see Fabian’s bright eyes in my head. Then I swallow. “So…in a few weeks…I will be speaking in front of hundreds of people about what a good Christian I am?”
“Indeed. Hope you’re ready.”
I want to say no. I want to say I’m too busy. But I’m so relieved I’m not in trouble, I swallow my fear and sit taller. “Oh, um, thanks, I’m so excited for this blessing. Thank you.”
“And Venus?”
“Hm?”
His eyes sparkle in a new, scarier way. “Don’t do anything between now and then that would imperil your position on this campus. Now have a wonderful day!”
I rush home for my break between classes. On my bed, I check Snapchat and then blush and screen shot the photo – he’s handwritten me a note in his beautiful writing, saying Thinking of you. Have a great day. <3, Fab.
I text him back. What was that for?
Oh, it’s just the start, he says. Every day I know you, whether a week or a year or more, I will send you a handwritten note. Sorry in advance.
In my head, I sink into a pool of warm milk. Then he asks me to hang that evening, and I say yes immediately, even if it sends shivers down my back. But then he texts again:
I don’t just want to hang, though. I want to try some things we didn’t try before.
You think you can get lucky because of some sweet note? I ask, along with a winking emoji face.
No. I just want to because I WANT to, and the idea alone has been driving me up the walls.
I can’t even respond – instead I turn my phone on airplane mode and try to regain some of the sleep my dreams have stolen from me. During my afternoon nap, though, I have the same dream from a few nights ago, in the burning room – the demon gets closer, the flames get hotter. And when I wake into a cold sweat, I know I have to get some things going. I can’t keep going full steam ahead if my mind is going off the rails every few minutes. So I get to work – he wants to hook up in less than three hours, and before I sink any deeper into this thing, I’ve got some research to do.
As I get out my laptop, I fret to myself. Why me? I was happy before this. I was content. I studied the Word, I went to class, I went to softball practice at my church (which just ended), I had some friends and some charity organizations that valued my work with them. Why did this have to happen? Why now? Maybe that happiness was a lie. Maybe I was asleep until now, and he’s waking me up. Or maybe Fabian is actually the lie, and I’m being fooled by the serpent. Who really knows?
First I find an article about how more and more people are starting to identify as things other than “straight:”
It can no longer be denied that our nation is in the midst of an unprecedented sexual revolution. Older views towards sexuality were much more black-and-white: ninety percent of people were straight, ten percent were gay, and that was it. But recent studies and statistics show something far more varied and intricate. But rather than a sudden change, sociologists attribute this so loosening cultural norms around sexuality. If a person being studied was terrified of being found out, he or she would lie on the form and deny any kind of straying from the accepted norms.
But today people are more honest than ever, and thirty percent of Millennials identify as some form of term under the LGBTQ rainbow, from gay to bisexual to genderqueer to almost anything else. In addition, even men who identify as ‘straight’ report trying out sexual encounters with each other with an increasing frequency, and it’s long been known that females will explore each other, especially at a party or in a social setting.
I chew on my lower lip. So the world is becoming more liberal and accepting, which in my mind is great. Jesus spent his time with street people and prostitutes, trying to lift them out of their lives and send them somewhere higher. All that is fine, and I have no problem with it. But I need to know something else. I need to know how the Bible treats sexuality.
Yes, I read it front to back in middle school, but it’s not like I was ever looking for any of this stuff. I thought it would never have anything to do with me, actually, so why would I have been looking? But now, it’s time.
Now, I know people who confessed to feeling certain thoughts, and went off the deep end trying to “pray” the gay out of themselves. I would never do that, as I believe human nature to be fundamentally un-change-able at the end of the day. Watching my mother’s struggles taught me that much. But before I jump into this, I want to investigate, because I know I can’t change myself. I can’t un-like Fabian. So my two options are either: ignore this forever because it doesn’t mesh with my life, or perhaps find some way to have these two things coexist somehow. I know it seems impossible, but – I’m going to have to become a gay Christian, or I’m going to become nothing.
I look into the Bible’s specific mentions of homosexuality. The story of Sodom, where a population experienced a downfall after certain moral sins, was always associated with homosexuality and “sodomy.” But there is great historical debate as to whether the word “sodomy” was even biblically associated with gay sex. And regarding the infamous Leviticus entries about “men lying with men” being an “abomination,” several scholars think this actually referred to the rampant prostitution that used to happen around temples, as they were community meeting areas.
Still, one passage jumps out at me as if it had claws: they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them. Leviticus 20:13. I see the same nightmare in my head, the demon coming for me, calling for me…then I blink and see my own face, covered in blood…
I shake my head. I’m not done just yet. The apostle Paul once referred to homosexuality as “unnatural,” but the website sheds previously-unknown cultural context on his comments. In the Roman Empire at the time, it was widely accepted (for some gross reason) for men to have sexual relationships with teen boys. Many scholars, according to the article I find, think his comments were originally associated with this phenomenon. And context is so important, because laws can’t be read in a vacuum. If, in a million years, someone found a text of me telling my friend to Snapchat me instead of texting me because I’m in class and can’t talk now, it would make absolutely no sense. You can’t just pull something out of its time and judge it according to your own world – you have to hold it against the world it came from.
In Corinthians, there are also passages about how homosexuals will never inherit the kingdom of God, but then I find a fascinating tidbit – in an original text, the word for homosexual was actually malokoi, which translates into “soft ones.” Okay, first of all: that’s very homophobic, which I never really realized was in the Bible so much, but also: who can say that the term “soft ones” literally and absolutely referred to gay men? There were so many ways in which you could interpret that. It’s like the more I look, the more confused I am…
All in all, my investigation yields…a mixed bag. Like many other things involving the Bible, there are opinions on every side, and nobody really seems to have a clear consensus. There is no clear line between innuendo and established fact. So I guess at the end of the day, it’s going to have to be up to me.
I think of the uglier side of the religious right, the side that has driven me freaking crazy recently. In another part of Deep South, a man running for the Senate had almost a dozen women come forward saying he messed with them, or tried to mess with them, when they were teenagers, most younger than eighteen. They had credible accounts, backed up by people who recalled hearing the tales when they happened from the distraught victims, and yet the evangelical Christian groups came rushing to the man’s defense without thinking twice. Considering how my church treats women, this is no surprise to me. They’re mostly commodities, meant for cleaning and cooking and bearing children. This same man had said shockingly cruel and outdated things about the gay community, including that they should be jailed. When asked on camera if he believed if gays deserved the death penalty, he evaded the question. The death penalty – the freaking death penalty! It was widely known that Jesus himself hung out with the lowest rung of ancient society, and was fine with them. What kind of follower of Jesus would wish literal death upon the backs of people who just wanted to love each other? As Christians, we’ve gotten so far from the original mission statement…well, some of us have, at least…
It reminds me, though, that there is a true danger lurking here. The evangelical community hates gay people – quite literally hates them. My pastor’s voice shook with anger when talking about only two subjects – abortion, and gay people. If what we are doing – and did in the steam room – is uncovered, it could shatter my life.
But soon I shake my head and decide Fabian was right – I can’t let myself be ruled by all this anymore. There are too many contradictions, too many grey areas. Until I figure myself out for good, I will open myself to being with Fabian in the meantime. Even if everything in me riots against the idea, I will pursue this. Or go down in flames trying…
And then my doorbell rings, and I realize I can’t think about this anymore. Not now, at least. Because Fabian is outside. Unannounced. And looking handsome as sin in a blue coat.