In the past week two major Mennonite news items were released into the web-sphere: the long-awaited January edition of the Mennonite Quarterly Review devoted to sexual abuse in the Mennonite Church and particularly focused on John Howard Yoder’s sexual abuse of women in the church and, secondly, the Mennonite Church USA Clergy Sexuality Survey. Am I the only one who sees the curious irony that these two items were released together? Am I the only who feels impacted by both, as though my own life has been dissected and dismantled by MCUSA?

“Stained-glass Rainbow Flag with Cross” by Andrew Craig Williams

This past year I took a break from writing to take intentional time for going inward and looking into scary personal territory. This territory involves both the past sexual abuse I’ve experienced and my current queer identity. And today, for better or worse, I’m going to delve into that deeply personal work with all its vulnerability and messiness in public space. And I’m not promising that it’ll be very eloquent.

I am terrified.

I am also convicted.

It’s been a long time brewing, this pain inside that I haven’t been able to express even to myself. This pain revolves around sexualized violence and LGBTQ identification and how the two are interrelated in an obvious yet non-transparent way. This pain revolves around the silence that  MCUSA holds around both of these issues, the exclusion they continue to profess all in the name of an “inclusive” religion. This pain revolves around my own silence and inability to articulate my feelings, experiences, thoughts and emotions. This pain revolves around a desire to understand and educate about sexualized violence and support survivors of sexual abuse, as well as to address the church’s history of queer oppression and support those who live queer lives, all in the same breath. This pain is real, it’s visceral, and it’s finally spewing out of me in a way that I can no longer ignore.

Like many people, I’ve been rather consumed with the MQR addressing Yoder’s uncontrolled sexualized violence. A lot of this information isn’t necessarily new for me, but then again some of the facts that have come out—such as the estimate that JHY has abused over 100 women—completely blow my mind. I’d say the most obvious conclusion is that misogyny, patriarchy, victim-blaming, slut-shaming, and abuses of power have been and continue to be a rampant problem in our church. There’s an unfortunate lack of understanding with the powers that be to acknowledge they actually do in fact hold power that has the potential to severely damage people’s (typically women and marginalized persons) lives, not to mention their spirituality and overall emotional well-being.

In all the Yoder content floating around, I’m most intrigued by  the complexities of the interplay between sexualized violence and LGBTQ justice, and why MCUSA refuses to address this piece of the conversation. It’s baffling to think we can have one conversation without the other.

Jesus went to the Chicago Gay Pride Parade with a great message.

In July 2014 Stephanie Krehbiel wrote a compelling piece titled “Naming Violation: Sexualized Violence and LGBTQ Justice.” The article triggered me in a profound way, opening my soul’s floodgates for days. Reading Krehbiel’s piece was the first time I saw my personal experience outlined in a clear and coherent way. Her writing opened a locked door that previously blocked me from entering my own pain. With the door closed I could never fully understand an affliction inside of myself, something that held my Spirit back and prevented me from communing with God. An affliction created and influenced by the church and its exclusive and damaging patriarchal theology.

To give a little background, I didn’t realize I had been sexually abused as a child until I was 22-years old. I went to therapy in October 2011 to begin dealing with the complexities of this abuse. In therapy I realized the reason I felt uncomfortable “coming out” (as in publicly admitting that I experienced same-sex attraction) was because I had been abused. I grew up in an inclusive Mennonite and queer-accepting family and I never doubted my family’s love. Yet there was something terrifying about being queer that I couldn’t even face, which turned out to be the fact that I had been sexually abused. Reconciling the two within myself seemed impossible. It took my therapist repeatedly saying for months, “Your sexual abuse has NOTHING to do with the gender of the people you fall in love with” that I finally gave up trying to pretend that I wasn’t attracted to women.

About a year went by before I publicly came out to my extended family, and even longer before I became comfortable admitting my sexuality to outsiders or people I didn’t know well. Within one month of coming out publicly online it took an unfortunate experience at the Mennonite women’s conference “All You Need is Love” in February 2014 for me to realize how deep, scary, and demoralizing of a wound the association of queer orientation and sexual abuse is for me. While having a vulnerable conversation about my work with Our Stories Untold, one of only three men at the women’s conference decided to ask me, “So how much of your being gay has to do with your history with sexual abuse?” In the same moment, a sharp, serrated knife and stabbed me directly in the heart… or at least that’s what it felt like. His question was the most shocking and painful thing I’ve ever been asked. I didn’t even know how to respond. Instead of saying something smart or sassy or even defensive, I just sat there letting the shame and guilt wash over me as he continued acting like the good guy for making conversation with some kind of token sexually violated “gay” woman.

I walked away completely dumfounded. His question rocked my world. I immediately began bawling, seeking out guidance and comfort from the amazing women around me. Barbra Graber, my blog partner, helped me see how the comment had been humiliating for me because it seemed to not only insinuate that I should be ashamed of the abuse I’ve experienced in my life, but that I’m also guilty for having that abuse “cause” me to “turn gay.” I felt doubly shamed. In one question that took about 2 seconds for him to utter, my entire self-worth felt shat upon. I heard, “You are not worthy. You are not good. You are broken goods. And because of your brokenness you now do disgusting things. Oh yeah, but none of it is your fault.”

I’m not sure why it took a friend to point the obvious out to me, but as she noted, the experience of sexual violation is prevalent in the population in general. According to reports, 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys have been sexually violated. Yet I’ve only met and spoken to one queer survivor open about her history with abuse in my entire life. There are many who identify as straight who are survivors of sexual abuse. I’ve met and spoken to hundreds of them. My website is filled with their stories. They email me on a monthly basis. So I wonder, if sexual abuse is causing people to turn gay, where are all the gay stories on my website?

Perhaps the better question to ask is: “So how much of your identifying as a heterosexual man has to do with your history of abusing children and women?”

A person carries a gay pride flag at a protest for violence against women. (click for image copyright)

In Stephanie Krehbiel’s piece “The Violence of Mennonite Process: Finding the Address of the Present” she addresses how the Mennonite Church’s obsession with the sexuality of LGBTQ persons continues to exacerbate both sexualized violence and violent exclusion. She explains how Yoder profited from the Mennonite Church’s “perverse obsession with the sexuality of gay and gender-nonconforming people as a stand-in for having real conversations about ethical sexual behavior.” The church has and continues to use the LGBTQ population as an example of sexual dysfunction. They shame queerness and sexual relations beyond the confines of straight “God-ordained” marriage and place LGBTQ populations on the outside of their “sacred” church walls, all the while protecting and defending men–mostly straight white men–who engage in sexualized violence.

I’ve mostly stayed out of the LGBTQ Mennonite conversation because it hurts too much. It really, really hurts. Sticking to sexualized violence somehow seems safer to me. People are less likely to ridicule me for my abuse experiences than for my sexual orientation. I am asked insensitive questions, like if my attraction to women has anything to do with my abuse. I’m questioned how I could have dated men, do date women, and who and what I will date in the future (as if I know!). I’m judged on my capacity to love deeply, something a heterosexual person rarely has to experience. And I’m called to justify my life experiences and choices in a way that a heterosexual person is rarely called to do.

I am grateful the Yoder discernment group and AMBS is committed to talking about the issues of sexual abuse and that a service of confession and lament is happening at the Kansas City Mennonite Church USA 2015 convention. Yet I can’t fully support this service based on the Mennonite Church’s historic insensitivity to LGBTQ experiences. And I can’t quite deal with the fact that the church is willing to tell me that they’re sorry for the abuse I’ve experienced in my life, but not sorry for the violence they’ve caused and hate directed at me because of my sexuality and natural way of loving human beings.

I wonder, would Mennonites suffer less from the epidemic of sexualized violence, including the repercussions of abuses that Yoder committed, if we weren’t so obsessed with rules about LGBTQ inclusion? If the church were willing to have more honest conversation about the fact that pacifists, including Yoder, can and do cause violence on other humans, would so many women and children continue suffering abuse at the hands of those professed pacifist leaders? If our church spent as much time surveying survivors in our midst as they do creating surveys on “attitudes about church membership for LGBTQ individuals,” would congregations know how to better prevent sexualized violence in their midst? What if Mennonites pledged to spend time looking at the violence caused by today’s churches’ patriarchal, rule-based system of sexuality and sexual ethics? What if the church actually called out the violence in these cultural systems that control reproduction, and consider women and children as possessions? What if they apologized and recognized how their beliefs aren’t in line with Jesus Christ’s teachings? These issues—LGBTQ exclusion and sexual abuse—do go hand-in-hand and I do not think the church can turn a blind eye to how sexualized violence relates to our LGBTQ friends.

“Growing into Fullness” by Rachel Halder

The pain I have due to church language, processes, and debates on queer lives is raw. Yet oddly I still long to be accepted as equally beloved by my church. Thankfully I already know I am a child of God, regardless. I have a beautiful relationship with the Divine and I take my spiritual life very seriously. I’ve sought out spiritual homes away from the church, and have found deep healing, nourishment, and profound relationship with Spirit through these outside interfaith communities. And I continue to celebrate God in open and accepting Mennonite communities, and feel fortunate that I’ve stumbled on a few of these inclusive communities throughout my life. The fall of 2015 I plan to attend seminary and study the intersections of LGBTQ exclusion and sexual abuse within the church, and how the marginalization created by faith communities goes against the core teachings of Jesus, and how an interspiritual perspective within the church is deeply needed. I am much bigger than the violence the church has inflicted upon me. Yet the historic insensitivity to BOTH of these issues is disgusting. It makes me feel sick to my stomach. But more than that, it just makes me grieve. And my only consolation is that I know God is right here with both you and with me, crying even more loudly than we can together.