Brave Space is our Gay Straight Alliance on campus looking to provide spaces for respectful, engaging, safe dialogue and committed to promoting the awareness and understanding of sexuality and gender issues. As the leadership team within Brave Space, we are simply captivated by our visit with Melissa Florer-Bixler, pastor at Raleigh (N.C.) Mennonite Church and speaker for Spiritual Life Week. Let us give you a little bit of insight with why that is.
In identifying within the LGBTQ+ community, we have had our personal struggles with Christian church. We have been and have dear friends that have been emotionally and verbally abused by church leaders and congregations. LGBTQ+ persons are being told that they cannot live such “lifestyles” or simply are not allowed in the church. They must choose which is more important to them—their faith or their life. They have been told they cannot be both Christian and LGBTQ+. Therefore, some people start believing that they cannot be both. What we have a hard time with is that these struggles (internal and external conflicts about being both) have been significantly researched and discussed. We would like to dispel a myth.
The idea of us leading a “lifestyle” is simply false. This is NOT a lifestyle. Living as a Christian is a lifestyle. Living as LGBQ+ is not something people choose to do every day. It is not simply a way of living, but an innate reality that people struggle with and experience their whole lives, whether they identify or end up not identifying. Being LGBTQ+ is our identity.
LGBTQ+ is just as much a part of a person’s identity as is having brown hair or green eyes. Choosing to be Christian is a lifestyle. Choosing to live a life devoted to loving and accepting others unconditionally was a part of Jesus’ lifestyle. Is that not what Christians hope to emulate?
It is important to point out that you can be both. You can be both. You can be devoted in your faith in Jesus, in Christianity and be LGBTQ+ or if you don’t identify, you can be an ally — a real ally. What does it mean to be a real ally? Melissa Florer-Bixler is a good example of an ally. When there is someone that comes to campus from the outside world, who is strong in her Christian faith and also stands in solidarity with us, we pay attention. She held space for the LGBTQ+ community in forum, in chapel, on The Wit. And these are all places where Christian LGBTQ+ individuals and allies go to attend, worship and pray. When we can lower our own shields and lofty “values” and truly understand the other side that has been oppressed and discriminated against, that can free all of us.
Galatians 3:28: “28 There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
In solidarity,
Heidi Mercer
