Mr. John Maddex: “Transformation: An Orthodox Look at Same-Sex Attraction.” I’m John Maddex, and this is episode three of our four-part series. In the last episode, we learned that the Church is very clear about the difference between same-sex attraction and same-sex activity. We also discovered we all have a war going on within us related to the passions. The existence of passions [does] not have to trouble us, especially when the evil one plants thoughts in our heads. Those may be lustful thoughts, and they could be lust for someone of the opposite sex or the same sex.

So, knowing that we are all in the same boat, what can and should our gatherings as a Church look like? Are we ready to discuss it? Are we open to conversations? For someone like Margaret, she doesn’t think we’re quite ready.

Margaret: I simply can’t imagine a 25-year-old—pick a number—in a relationship or not, walking into the doors of an Orthodox church today and—maybe they’re on the fence theologically, maybe they’re asking a question about “Is this right?” or “What does Jesus think of this?” I can’t imagine that person walking into the doors of an Orthodox church today and saying, “This is a place where I could get help wrestling with this issue, trying to figure this out, with the people,” where we know across the street they’re going to get a warm welcome: you come in, you come in with your boyfriend or girlfriend, it’s all good. In fact, you’re going to get celebrated.

Mr. Maddex: Why can’t we talk about it? What are we afraid of? Our panelists seem to all agree that we need to listen more and talk less. Everyone has a story, a reality that is unique to them. We are called to love one another enough to know them, but we can’t love or know without listening. Andrew Williams.

Dr. Andrew Williams: You can’t have a relationship with somebody without knowing who they are. You can’t ask somebody to hide things that are quite important aspects of who they are, because then you’re asking them basically not to be in a relationship with you, and I think that’s really important. Fr. Tom Hopko says that in his book as well. He says that in order for people to live their lives through in the Church, they have to be able to talk about their sexual feelings to their pastors, to their confessors, to spiritual elders, and to compassionate friends. And therefore it’s important that everybody in the Church is ready to have those conversations, because if you’re not willing to have those conversations, you’re not willing to accept people into relationship, into fellowship, into communion.

Mr. Maddex: From a pastoral perspective, Fr. Anthony Perkins sees an opportunity to apply sensitivity and empathy, by listening and getting to know the person in a deeper way.

Fr. Anthony Perkins: One of the things that I love about Orthodoxy is that it allows for a pastoral response to so many issues. There’s this idea of subsidiarity, where we—the best solution for most issues can be found at that local level, and at that personal relationship. So the pastor is called, in every interaction, to understand the person, their situation, and to help him grow in Christ from where they are. I don’t treat sexual relations, sexual attraction, in any different way. The limits are different, the guidance is different,of course—it is with every issue—but that’s very much the approach: is to hear the person, understand them where they are, and just come at it with all of my radars up, so I can hear what is the source of the longing, what is the source of frustration, how is sin keeping this person from realizing their relationship with Christ in a fuller manner, and entering into a conversation and just drawing them towards that.

Now obviously that takes a lot of vulnerability on the part of the person you’re working with, and one of the issues that you have to confront, right at the beginning, is that there’s a lack of trust by many people, because people assume that they won’t be heard well, they assume that they’ll be judged, and so on. So building that rapport sometimes takes time, and we have to recognize that there are many people who will not get that conversation, who are on the fringes of our community and are not getting that kind of guidance, that kind of pastoral care, because the barrier for entry for that conversation for them seems too high. And for them it is risky, largely because there’s a lack of trust, in my opinion, and perhaps also because we have not shown ourselves to be trustworthy in this conversation to the extent that we have not listened well.

And there’s a difference between listening well and just completely enabling and supporting whatever people come with, but if we can come at it with that kind of all-radars-up, let’s hear this person, let’s figure out how to bring them into a closer relationship with Christ, rather than kind of with a list of “these are the things that you need to do in order to order your life correctly”… We have that list—that’s part of my information set—but the way that you bring that to bear in any individual circumstance has to vary.

Mr. Maddex: When we think about developing these relationships with people who have a same-sex attraction, what are we afraid of? Do we not want to be associated with someone like that? Are we concerned that if we befriend them others will assume that we agree with any sinful activity? Dr. Philip Mamalakis reminds us that listening is not the same as affirming sinful behavior.

Dr. Philip Mamalakis: If I just listen to someone, am I affirming what they believe? Don’t I have to say, “But I don’t believe that…,” “But you’re wrong here…” or “But this is where the Church disagrees…”? Like somehow, just to listen to someone, to hear their story and hear their experience. But it’s easy to say, “Well, I need to correct them!” or something. And what I try to communicate is that this drawing close, this creating a space for someone to be known is like the foundation of Christ’s coming into the world, that Christ comes to us, he comes into the world, and he comes into the world to be intimate with us, to know us. And when that light comes into the darkness, it illuminates. And he doesn’t correct, but he loves, and that love is corrective.

This is the mystery, I think of the sacramental life of the Church, is that when we focus on creating a space and welcoming and inviting someone into our—what we consider is a penitential relationship, a relationship of turning our hearts and minds over to Christ—that process, that penitential process, is healing; it’s transformative; it’s the renewing of our mind. The context for that is love, that we are received as we are. And so the first step is not correction; the first step is this reception. And you know the classic examples in Christ’s ministry. He approached the Samaritan woman. She didn’t approach him; he approached her. And he just created a— He reached out to her, and he knew her story, and he didn’t correct her. He even essentially said, “I know all your stuff”—and he still didn’t correct her! And we know the follow-up is she dropped her water jug, and she ends up becoming a saint in the Church.

And we know the same thing of Zacchaeus up in the tree. He said, “I am coming to your house tonight,” and he didn’t turn to the crowd and say, “And just in the interest of full disclosure, I do not want my receiving of Zacchaeus to imply that I support his thievery, his greed.” [Laughter] And the beautiful example of the woman caught in adultery, where he didn’t tell the crowd they were wrong and he didn’t tell the crowd the rules don’t matter. Essentially what he told the crowd was the rules matter in the context of loving this person; that the beautiful thing about Orthodoxy is that the rules matter—we don’t change the rules; we can’t even change the rules if we want to. You can’t change reality. And so it frees us up just to love someone.

And not everyone is going to want what the Orthodox Church has to offer, but it frees us up, as Orthodox, to reach out and to hear someone, and to welcome them, in a sense, and to find out their story. And it’s in that love, it’s almost like there’s no agenda. We have no conditions. There are no requirements for someone to just be welcomed for the first time, if they’re interested in who we are. And that frees them up, and so many people say, “I already know what the Church is going to say. I already know I’m not welcome there. I already know what you believe.” And I say, “Well, how do you know what I believe? I don’t even know who you are. Tell me who you are!” Because that’s where all the rules find their place.

And you know, you can criticize the Orthodox Church a lot, because there’s different pastoral guidance, and one priest allows this and another priest allows that, and there’s a lot of pastoral diversity in the Orthodox Church, and I think that’s a sign of health, because we find that the guidelines matter, but they matter in the context of a relationship: a relationship between a spiritual father, a pastor, and the unique place that a person is at. So that frees us up, John, just to listen. It frees us up to say, “Tell me who you are. Tell me what brings you here,” rather than commenting on how they’re dressed or what they believe or correcting them.

We acquire that in our own lives. So the second thing that I think really helps a parish be receptive is if the parish is really a penitential parish, that if we hear as normal parishioners—we’re hearing about our own need to reorient our lives toward God, our own need of constantly changing our minds and renewing our minds in Christ, and our own journey of repentance… Because, like many of the Fathers talk about—and I was just reading today—that when we’re preoccupied with our own repentance, and the more we’re aware of our own need for God’s healing in our own lives, the less capable we are of judging other people; that our own journey of repentance frees us up to see ourselves in the other and to free us up to love the other, no matter what they think or believe.

Mr. Maddex: It does take time for people to learn, understand, and then change. It doesn’t happen in short and shallow conversations. Rhys Pasimio is an Orthodox therapist in Portland, specializing in sexual addictions.

Mr. Rhys Pasimio: Yeah, we’re not going to change a person’s sexual orientation or what they’re going to do with it by having one really pointed conversation over coffee hour. If that person is going to change, they will change when they become open to it, and that will happen as they are invited into relationship with Christ, first of all, with the saints, with us, with the community, maybe a better relationship with their own selves.

Mr. Maddex: Several years ago, Fr. Thomas Hopko of blessed memory told the story of a visit from an individual who was convinced he would not be welcomed based on some of his past experiences. He was begging the question about his orientation, but Fr. Tom was more interested in his soul.

Fr. Thomas Hopko: And there was this fellow who was interested in the Orthodox faith, and he was in the Episcopal Church, and he would come to hear these talks that I was giving on various topics. And he would drag with him his friend—I discovered later it was his sexual partner, as a matter of fact. And he would come, and the friend hated me, like, with perfect hatred, like he called me “that f—ing priest.” And he would sit there, and, if looks could kill, I would have been killed a million times. And he would glower and stare, and the other guy is looking, and the people are there. [Laughter] So finally, after a couple of years—and this is in New York City—the one who didn’t like me, to put it mildly, said, “I’d like to talk to you.” I said, “Okay.” So I made an appointment, my church there in Queens. He came, and he said, “You know, I didn’t like all this Orthodoxy stuff, and my friend dragged me here. I’ve been listening to you.” He said, “But now I think I’m really interested in it.” He said, “Maybe I would even like to join the Orthodox Church.” I said, “Oh, that’s interesting.” He said, “Yeah, but I want to tell you something right now, from the beginning. I’m gay, and there’s nothing wrong with it. And that’s what it is, and you have to know that from the beginning.”

I said, “Fine. Good. Thanks for telling me. But,” I said, “tell me a little bit about yourself.” So he started telling me. He couldn’t read till he was 26, was raised on the streets of New York City, got money from New York City cops for doing sexual tricks for them, was homeless for a while because he ran away, hated his mother. He told me once he has an “aversion to the female body,” an aversion, a disgust. He was drafted in the time of the Vietnam War, was shot up twice in Vietnam, was sent home in a bag, was rehabilitated, sent back, killed millions of people. I asked how he could do it; he said, “Well, you get stoned.” He was a drug addict; he was an alcoholic. He was in all kinds of churches. So I said, “Oh, well, that’s quite a story there.”

So I said, “What do you know about the faith? Do you read the gospels?” “Oh yeah, I know, and I’ve been in all kinds of churches.” He said, “But I think, yeah, I think I know it well.” So I said, “Well, we have to find out.” While we’re doing this, he kept interrupting me, which is—you know I like to talk. [Laughter] He said, “You’re not listening to me. You’re not listening to me.” He said, “I’m gay, and there’s nothing wrong with that. And you’ve got to answer me on that issue!”

I said, “Okay, okay, we’ll get to that, but have you read the New Testament, have you read the Old Testament?” And I was even playing with him a little bit, right. But anyway, to make this story short—but I think this is a very important story—that after about 45 minutes, we decided that he would read one of the gospels, that he would come back, we would talk about it, how he understood things and whatever. And so I said, “Okay, let’s make an appointment to talk again.” He said, “You’re not answering my question. You’re not responding to my statement.”

I said to him, “We’ll get to that. I don’t even know you. I don’t know what you believe. I don’t know what your faith is. I’ve only talked to you now for the first time, face to face, alone, in our entire life! So you go and you do that, and we’ll come back and we’ll work through this.”

And so when he got up to leave, he was all red and he looked like he was going to cry—in fact, he cried. And I went to him, I put my arm around him, said, “You know, what’s the matter? Did I offend you? Did I hurt you in some way?” And he said, “I want to just tell you something.” He said, “I’ve been in jail; I’ve been in the army. I know every warden, chaplain, priest, rabbi, counselor, whatever you want to name.” And he said, “You’re the first one I ever met who didn’t say to me one of two things. One would be: Get the hell out of here and don’t come back until you straighten yourself out; we don’t have fags in our church.” He says that’s what normally happens. The minute someone finds out that, you’re out! “Or would say to me: That’s okay, that’s no problem. It’s fine with us.” You’re the first one who didn’t say one of those two things.

Mr. Maddex: And that’s the thing. We have this sense that we need to defend God and put barricades around his Church. The idea of someone different darkening our doors frightens us. Assumptions are made, scenarios play out in our minds, and we secretly wish they had not come to begin with. Fr. Anthony Perkins.

Fr. Anthony: You don’t want to bring them in and then have them—there are two men standing together in a pew, or, if there are no pews, kind of standing together. You don’t want them to be subject to scrutiny. I remember the first time that I went to an Orthodox service with my family. We had a three-year-old son, and we were used to Methodist services, where your children weren’t with you for most of the service, certainly not during the boring parts. So during this service, even though we sat in the back, we felt like everyone was watching us and judging us—and many of them were, to be honest, because he’s a three-year-old. He was a relatively well-behaved three-year-old, but he wasn’t acting like an adult. And people—I think people will hear that and will recognize that experience, if not from personal experience, from secondary experience.

We don’t want to do that. We don’t want to create that kind of stumbling block to anyone attending church. So it’s the same sort of question. So an African-American family moves in; they’re interested in Orthodoxy. You’ve got to make sure that you have a parish that is going to be open to everybody and that isn’t going to make people feel stigmatized because of any of that stuff. And the parish that I’m serving right now, the mission that I’m serving, we are intentionally relating to the community on the fringes, so the people who have been struggling with and continue to struggle with addictions, who struggle with poverty—all these things.

We’re out there, through the work of our members at halfway houses and soup kitchens and 12-Step groups and things. We’re intentionally fostering that kind of culture from the beginning. So you want it to become just natural, because everyone is welcome to worship with us. Everyone is welcome to worship with us. Now, the question of membership, of that deeper participation, that’s part of the growth, but it’s a great question that you’re asking, and there are going to be some parishes where that’s going to be an easier thing, just like it’ll be an easier thing… It’s an easier thing for, I would imagine, an African-American family to go to a parish that has a significant proportion of darker skinned people than it would be to go to one that is all-white, just because you don’t feel as if you’re standing out, at the very least.

So some of it is outside of your control, but creating that sense of welcoming, that sense of joy—and it’s going to be different for every community. So one that is really centered around doing liturgy well, it’s beautiful. And that is also going to be welcoming to many people, to included gays and lesbians who are looking for that deeper experience. So it’s not one-size-fits-all. Having this diversity is fantastic, but it is something that has to be fostered, and it’s something that the leadership… Part of our leadership conversation is… Early on we went through and we said, “This is what the Church teaches on it. This is what is salvific. These are the limits that, if you go beyond them, it is not healthy.” So I shared with them the basic limits and spirit of those guidelines so that we could go over them, so that everyone would be on the same page and recognize what it is that we’re doing and what it is that we’re not doing. We’re not trying to reform the Orthodox Church; we’re helping people who are not otherwise being evangelized to find salvation through Orthodoxy, through Christ in Orthodoxy, without changing it. Of course—why would you come in with an agenda to change the thing that has brought you so much joy?

Mr. Maddex: Dr. Mamalakis agrees. There’s a danger of isolation, of glorifying the nuclear family at the expense of other groups. This serves to encourage community silos, where we can only hang out with people who look like us, believe like us, vote like us, and have kids like us.

Dr. Mamalakis: You know, or we might be afraid if they’re around our kids or something, or we talk about “they” as a “them.” And I think that’s a symptom. That’s a symptom of our brokenness, that when we come to church, we don’t really come to church as family units or clans; we come to church as children of God, and, really, church is our unit, and we need to be attentive to what I call the idolatry of the nuclear family, that we live in a culture that kind of creates this idol of the nuclear family: the mom and the dad and the two kids and the dog and a minivan, maybe, as the icon of the Christian. And, really, number one, that’s an historical anomaly; throughout history that hasn’t been what a family has been. And, number two, we don’t really see that elevated in our tradition. We see elevated in our tradition Christ, and those who seek after Christ, and those who reveal Christ to us.

So if we can break away from the idolatry of the nuclear family, we can then be more aware of those people in our midst who don’t follow that norm, which increasingly in our society is a majority of people. So it’s the single person, it’s the widow, it’s the college student, it’s someone who’s same-sex attracted who may never be married that, with the idolatry of the nuclear family, that creates a problem. But as community, it just makes you one beautiful member of the group. So I think that if we recognize that, let’s say, someone with same-sex attraction… I don’t think being broken is the first thing, because I think, to be honest, John, our brokenness is part of our beauty, that I think God loves us in our brokenness, and, remember, he turns that into something uniquely beautiful. So we don’t need people to be fixed, but if we can embrace the unique gifts of each person, whether they’re same-sex attracted or not, whether they tend to be a little bit OCD or something or whatever, it’s just that when we recognize each person as an icon of Christ and reach out intentionally—at coffee social, bring them into our homes—recognize that each person has a unique and beautiful contribution, and that allows us to live as a community.

Because I do have a wife, and I don’t follow the two-kid formula, but I’ve got a bunch of kids—but because of that, I can’t really offer the Church some of the beautiful things that my single peers can offer. I’m kind of tied down by my family in many ways. So what I realize is that people who aren’t encumbered by the responsibilities of marriage and children are really free to do beautiful things. So I think the more we recognize the beauty of each one of our uniqueness and how the Holy Spirit brings that beauty out and unites us all in Christ, the more we learn about our identities as Church before family, the more we can walk on that path of having communities of openness, so that we can open our homes to people in our community—just because they’re part of our community, even though they might be politically different, ethnically different, culturally different, whatever—because our unity is really in Christ. And I think the Orthodox Church has that invitation that invites us along that path.

Mr. Maddex: Our assumptions about people are often wrong, especially when we don’t invest the time to get to know them and their unique experiences. We like easy answers to tough questions, but that usually is unrealistic. Remember Jennifer from the first episode? I asked her what she would say to Orthodox people who ask about Christians with a same-sex attraction.

Jennifer: Please understand that the nature of same-sex attraction is complicated or it’s complex, and since the issue is so highly publicized and politicized these days, of course Orthodox Christians want and maybe need to take positions and to clarify, to hold a line on what they believe is the moral and godly standard, but, unfortunately, my experience at least, is that in focusing on this, Christians can forget that at the end of the day, it’s not really an issue that’s at heart. It’s about ordinary human beings just like themselves. Everybody’s experience is unique, and it’s sometimes easier to lump people into categories and labels, believe that political and social activists speak for everybody, and you lump us all into a community that not everybody necessarily cares to be a part of. And the Orthodox Church I believe needs to be our true alternative for community, and it’s hard to lay aside partiality. I have problems with it myself, to lay aside it, to be open to listen, to receive, to care for each person that comes your way. And I think that personal care is where the Church has always insisted that we spend the bulk of our energy.

When I came into the Orthodox Church—and I’m a big reader—and I read a lot about spiritual elders, and one thing they show by their example is how loving they are and they were, and they extend warm regard to everybody, not just people they’re comfortable with. So I would say that if somebody volunteers to disclose their orientation, try your best, depending on your personality, not to either admonish them or shun them or close down conversation. That tends to drive people away from the Church and away from their faith in Christ, especially our vulnerable young people. And if somebody with SSA is actually showing up at the parish, I would say: Assume first that they’re there because they’re interested in learning to walk the Orthodox way.

Mr. Maddex: So, no matter how you slice it, it all comes down to love—not compromise, but love. If we love like Christ loves, what would that look like? How much judging and condemnation would be involved versus how much patience, gentleness, and kindness?

Dr. Mamalakis: If we believe that Christ heals us… And you’re right, one of the dominant metaphors of the Church is a hospital, and there are some limitations to that; that’s not the only metaphor. The other image is like an ark; the Church is like an ark. We also use images of light, living water. But that dominant metaphor of a hospital really is dominant because Christ even said, “I came for the sick, not the healthy.” So when we think about judging, the Church really turns judgment on ourselves, that our judging of our brother is actually a reflection of our own lack of Christ-like love. If we see our bishops going theologically in the wrong direction, there’s a real place for the lay people to stand up and speak, but to judge a parishioner or condemn a parishioner because of what they’re struggling with or what they believe, that kind of falls outside of our purview.

And it comes from a place of fear, oftentimes, like: Wait a minute: how can someone believe that and be Orthodox? Or what’s going to happen to us if this infiltrates the Church? And we don’t see that from the saints, because I see that the witness of the saints, they’re so infused with the Holy Spirit and they so live in that light and they radiate that light, that they don’t have that fear, which frees them up to love indiscriminately. They love the Christian and the non-Christian, and it’s just this flowing love. And I think it’s important to know that that love actually is transformative, that if you want to change someone’s mind and teach them that where they’re going is the wrong way, it doesn’t happen by correcting; it happens by loving. And we see that when you’re drawn in, we start wanting more of that, and we become aware of our own sins. That love is the context for our repenting, and it’s really the challenge for us as parishioners to be engaged in our own journey of repentance and to love those around us, which simultaneously heals us and invites the other towards healing.

The only limitation, or one limitation I see, of the healing, that we have this idea of a healing hospital, is that usually you go to the hospital to be cured. And you expect the doctors are going to cure you. Well, that’s true, except in the Orthodox world, it’s not that God cures us from our passions; it’s that we are filled with greater passion for Christ than our distorted passions. That God might allow us to have a thorn in our side, that we might never be cured of some impulse or desire, but no longer will that impulse or desire control us. So when we think about “cure,” we have to think in terms of being thriving, being fully human, being transformed—but not necessarily being healed. St. Paul was told, “My grace is sufficient for you,” which means God allows us to continue to have these struggles in our whole life, that healing becomes fullness of life, not eradication of whatever disease we have or whatever struggles we have.

Mr. Maddex: Loving means seeking to understand first, as Dr. Stephen Covey once said, rather than seeking to be understood. Listening, acknowledging, seeing people as Christ sees them. Remember Gregg Webb from the first episode? I asked him what he wished those of us who are Orthodox and straight would know about those who have a same-sex attraction.

Mr. Gregg Webb: One of the big things that has jumped out at me, particularly in the last couple of years, as I’ve gone through a couple of seasons of heartbreak, as been that often the conversations around gay people are mostly just about sex; they’re mostly just about sodomy or gay sex, and all these conversations, it’s easy to point to lots of the other churches’ teaching about sex, and so sex outside of the context of marriage is condemned, it’s bad, it’s destructive, it’s lust, it’s a passion—all these other things. But for me, often the most difficult things in my own life have centered around heartbreak and falling in love and my desire for that type of relationship, of my desire to be desired, to be pursued in kind of an intense and specific way by another person that I myself desire. So I think it’s easy to talk about gay Christians in the Church and keep it in the context of: “Okay, you’re just struggling with the same passions that we’re all struggling with,” things like that. “So just stay faithful. Go to church and pray,” and all these other things.

But for me, it’s often said people who have the marriage, that have the family, that have the other contacts… That’s not saying that marriage is at all an end-all-be-all or an end of loneliness or not its own arena for martyrdom, but it is often a good and beautiful and wonderful and delightful thing. And that, for me, what I am being told and what I am being called to say no to is that, is that sense of coming home to somebody, living a mundane life with another person that’s witness to creating a family and creating a space and growing old and going through life’s ups and downs with somebody else. So for me that is far more what I struggle with than lust—and that’s not saying that lust isn’t its own struggle, and it certainly is for me and for the people I know, like everybody.

But I think that at the end of the day that’s one of the things that’s easily overlooked, is to just kind of leave the conversation just talking about sex and lust, and you miss the fact that in my experience— People can argue this, but I’ll say it: for me, when I fall in love with another man, it looks exactly when one of my straight friends falls in love with their future partner, and that’s what I have to wrestle with. So for me I can’t put it into its own category as some weird, warped thing. For me, I know. I’ve witnessed it. We see it in the culture. We see it because we have gay marriage. It can naturally lead toward almost the exact same thing, maybe without the natural procreation of children, but that sense of commitment and intimacy that comes from a traditional, straight marriage, can also be there in a lot of gay marriages and gay partnerships. And that’s what I’m saying no to, and that’s what I’m cutting myself off from.

And that is far more difficult and far harder to do and far more unsupported than simply pursuing chastity. So that for me is really where I wrestle a lot with—if there is going to be any oikonomia or anything, it’s there. Most of my friends who left kind of the traditional view for a more affirming perspective have not done so because of an abundance of erotic desire or horniness or whatever you call it, but they’ve done so because they fell in love with somebody, and for the first time in their life, they were loved in return, and that they’d been told for most of their life that that was impossible, that that didn’t exist, that was a freak thing. And then they experienced it, and it was exactly what their parents had. And that is just hard to say no to; that’s hard to forsake or give up. So that is really where the support has to be, not in chastity. Chastity’s important, but that’s not the deal-breaker.

Mr. Maddex: Okay, before anyone assumes that this next section is about blessing gay marriage, put your minds at ease. Gregg isn’t calling for it, and neither are we. But, short of that, what is possible to help meet the basic human need of deep friendship and intimacy without the prerequisite of sex? While a number of suggestions have been put forward on how same-sex attracted people can chastely live in community, the Church as a whole doesn’t have a single, one-size-fits-all prescription. Keep that in mind as our panel reflects on this matter. Dr. Constantinou.

Dr. Constantinou: I think that people used to have very deep same-sex friendships in a way that’s more difficult today, because of this assumption that if they have this very close relationship they must be gay. So unfortunately that should not be what people assume, but they do. But we can—we’re talking about transforming ourselves—transform our culture into embracing and supporting strong friendships. There’s nothing wrong with that; as a matter of fact, it’s a blessing. Aren’t friends great? Friends are wonderful! So this is something which should be encouraged. And, like you said, I think that this is something that we can do to encourage us to be more sensitive to the fact that some people don’t have family or don’t have a significant other, and they would like to be invited to things. And, frankly, they should be told to bring a friend, because sometimes singles, regardless of their orientation, find it uncomfortable to get invited to a barbecue or something like that, because they’re the only single there, and then they feel like a third wheel, and I can understand why they feel that way.

Mr. Maddex: Intimacy without sex. We’ve been programmed by our culture to sexualize everything. The result is an inhumanity or objectification of healthy, normal relationships centered on loving and caring for one another.

Fr. Anthony: One of the tragedies of our culture is that we sexualize everything, when intimacy is the real longing. But this is one of the conversations that needs to be had, and I think we’re best served in the short- to medium-term by trying different things, because the Church— As I understand it, the Church allows two men, two women to live together. We don’t say when you go to college you can’t have a roommate. But on the other hand— So this is what the conversation looks like. That’s—by the way, I skipped a step. That’s one of the possibilities, is to have the intimacy of friendship and that mutual support and that emotional intimacy, but not going in a direction where it would be sexual. Is that sustainable? Is is sustainable for one, on its own? I believe it is. Is it sustainable in a culture that sexualizes everything and says that having sex, having sexual intimacy, is the seal of a real and true relationship? And it’s an open question, honestly. We don’t have the data on it, and we have anecdotal data, and I have talked with priests who have said, “Yeah, I have tried that, and it is just so hard for them that it led to continual frustration and things, so now I don’t even encourage it as an option.”

I’m still at the point of: Yeah, let’s still… Yeah, of course, that’s okay for any bishop, any priest to say, “These are the limits,” but there are still pastoral limits. The Church hasn’t said, “That is not allowed. That is not healthy. That is not useful.” And so if a pastor and a bishop allows it, then that is still part of the option set. It’s one of those ways that you can go. So you look, you have all these options, and you try to figure out which one is going to be the most beneficial. And you work it out; you don’t impose it: you work it out with them. The problem is that that conversation is not being had, because we put each other into boxes. So just by saying that, I get put into this box, that I’m trying to reform the Orthodox Church or I’m just naive… And, you know, maybe I am naive. I’m certainly guilty of many sins, but this is a conversation we have to have, and when we shut it off by demonizing the person who has the alternate opinion, either that “no, this isn’t good and here are my reasons” or “well, I think this is useful and here are my reasons,” we have to hear that. And until we’ve decided as Church that this is not healthy, that this is not useful, then it’s still part of this possible solution set. I just… This is one of my laments, is that we are so quick in today’s society, even in the Church, to assume the worst intentions of others. And it’s hard to have that conversation.

That’s why I was reluctant to come on with you, because just by saying, “Hey, maybe two men should be allowed to live together and to keep sex off the table, but to share their lives and they’re both Christian, they’re both trying to grow in and help the other grow towards Orthodoxy—as it would be in any true friendship—but they are both also committed by contract or by agreement that sex is off the table,” and I suspect that would be a thing that most couples—that most friendship-couple couples would struggle with, but I would treat it then in the same way that I would treat a man who is struggling with pornography. It’s something many men continue, even though they first want it, because it’s available, they still fall prey to it. And, yes, it’s worse, I get it…

Here’s the thing. The challenge here is that it’s double dangerous to engage in sex with a male partner if you’re male, because sex outside marriage is completely unhealthy; it’s detrimental, and so is sodomy. In any case—in any case—sex outside of marriage is detrimental. In any case, sodomy is detrimental. So I understand that the comparison between a man struggling with pornography and two men struggling with celibacy is not quite the same. But you’re still dealing with similar temptations, so that’s what I meant when I said that’s how I would work with it with this couple, is I would encourage them: “Look, of course, deepen your friendship. You’re there to support one another—but here are the limits. You both agree to the limits?” “Yes, we agree to the limits.” “Okay, then I will work with you. Let’s meet regularly and talk about how this is going.”

And that’s the same conversation that I have with—usually it’s men, at least who are willing to talk about it with me—who are struggling with pornography. So: “Okay, are you dedicated and you’re going to stop this?” “Yes, I’m dedicated to stopping it.” “Are you willing to meet with me regularly?” “Yes, I’m willing to meet with you regularly.” “Okay!” And then that’s how it goes. They have to be able to come back to us and say that they failed. Again, as a teacher, you have to make sure that you… A zero-defect classroom, a zero-defect army, in my experience, having seen both, is a way to create just ineffectual classrooms and ineffectual armies. You would have to have standards that everyone is committed to, and you train to that standard and you expect that standard, and you have ways of dealing with it when people fail to meet that standard to get them back up to it. But when you have a complete zero-defect culture, then you hide evidence of back-sliding. That’s completely unhealthy. Then we’re back to the problem of: Stand in the closet, where you’re not having these authentic conversations about spiritual growth. And it’s got to be there. There has to be this relationship of trust.

And so I’ve just described how hard this is. So that gives me a great appreciation for those pastors who say on the front end, “No. No, no, no, this is the way that we’re going to deal with this. If you’re going to work with it with me, this is what I expect. And you are going to live alone and you’re going to be committed to this kind of life.” I get that, completely, and I’m willing to accept that may be the best model for most people who are struggling with it—and yet, I’m still willing to believe that this other option is also a possibility, and not just a possibility. That being in that kind of friendship… Because I know what I experience by my own deep friendship with my wife, with my partner in life. So I’m not saying that they’re complete functional equivalents, obviously, but how much I would miss if I did not live with someone who was as dedicated to my growth in Christ as I am. It’s just a huge benefit.

So another possibility, by the way, is monasticism, but that— If we impose monasticism on people who aren’t called to it, that’s just awful. That’s… I would feel very sorry for the abbot who has to lead people into perfection through monasticism who weren’t called to it. That’s a disaster. But it is also— It’s another part of that solution set.

Mr. Maddex: Dr. Al Rossi speak to the need all of us have for intimacy.

Dr. Al Rossi: As you know, I was a Roman Catholic monk for eleven years, celibate, and in that sense it really didn’t matter, same-sex or heterosexual. If you’re a monk, you’re a monk, and you don’t do anything sexually. But your question about intimacy: all human beings have an enormous need, a deep need for intimacy. God is love; intimacy is an expression of deep love between humans, and whether we’re hetero- or bi- or same-sex attracted, we all need that.

But what’s clear to me is that living in a sex-saturated culture, we actually, to some extent, are taught to derive our identity from our sexual orientation, and of course that’s not the way history has been for these many millennia. So we don’t… One of the 12-Step movements, Sexaholics Anonymous, has the sentence: “Sex is optional.” Sex in marriage between a man and a woman leads to an awareness and a deepening of love, and it’s not the actual sexual act that is important to them; it’s about the meaning. And when we talk about meaning—same-sex persons can get the same meaning of intimacy, which can involve crying and care and real love for the other person—that doesn’t need sex to determine its quality. That could be had with persons of the same sex celibately; that can be had certainly with persons with other sex, although there’s no sexual attraction. I know same-sex persons who have a really very deep bond, intimate bond, with persons of the other sex, even though they’re not at all attracted to them.

Okay, so we all have the need for intimacy, and in a sense we’re all biological—we all have sexual urges—but we don’t have to act on those sexual urges, and they don’t define us. Something much deeper does. What is it that’s deeper? It’s meaning: What does this mean? When I talk to high school students, I’m fond of telling them that… I ask the question, “What is sex?” Sex is a cup of tea. I was a married man. My wife is dead. We have two children, and, as married people do, we made love. Afterwards, my wife would say, “Al, let’s have a cup of tea.” “Sure.” We’d put on our bathrobes, go downstairs, have a cup of tea. Those 15 minutes of silence with a cup of tea with my wife were among the best 15 minutes of my marriage, certainly better than what happened upstairs, because I knew two things. I knew that I was loved; I knew I was loved existentially by what that woman did upstairs with me. And I knew that I could love, because I simply looked at her and I saw a happy camper. That’s all there is to life: to love and be loved. That’s all it is. We root for baseball teams and wear certain styles of clothes as a way of love or be loved, because God is love and all life is about God. So life is about meaning; it’s about that cup of tea. It’s not about simply what occurs upstairs.

I’m reminded of the story of C.S. Lewis who, when married to Joy, wrote that one time they were in bed sexually, and they fell off the bed onto the floor, and he used a lovely word. He said, “We felt like pretzels.” And then he writes, “What did we do? We got back up and onto the bed.” It’s a whole different phenomenon—sexual activity is a whole different phenomenon than intimacy. One can lead to the other, but one is not necessary to get to the other.

Mr. Maddex: We talked earlier about the “sex-saturated culture” today. This has resulted in a false assumption that fulfillment in life is directly tied to our sex lives. “We cannot possibly be happy if we’re not sexually active on a regular basis. Chastity, virginity, abstinence are all off the table and are to be disregarded at every turn.” So what has this done to us? Dr. Philip Mamalakis.

Dr. Mamalakis: What I hear is someone will say, “Am I cursed to be alone?” or “Now I’m forced to be celibate the rest of my life,” which sounds like a death sentence, right? That that’s horrible. It’s like the experience of that message is: “Now you are imprisoning me to a life of aloneness and death.” And I want to respect that, because if that’s what someone is hearing, that is a horrible life sentence, but that speaks to a couple of things. Number one, we live in a world in many ways, of course, that’s disconnected from God. We live in a culture, one of the most—the wealthiest culture, the most comfortable civilization in human history, but really in many ways, really spiritually empty and really spiritually bankrupt. And in a culture that’s spiritually bankrupt, really sex can be the most meaningful thing.

And so if sex, to me, is the place I find meaning and purpose and intimacy and wholeness of life in relationship… Oh, if you’re going to tell me now I can’t do that, you’ve now sentenced me to a prison of aloneness and death, and that’s really actually not the message of the Church, as you can imagine, because we have a tradition of people who choose celibacy, but when you hear them, they actually speak about: “Oh my gosh, what I have chosen is better and more intimate and more full than physical sex,” because what the Church reveals is that this life in Christ transcends even that most powerful act of intimacy of physical intercourse. That the goal of the celibate life is not to abstain from sex; the goal of the celibate life is to pursue Christ fully and that the intimacy and fullness of life that comes from Christ is otherworldly, that the monks—they don’t have to suppress their sexuality; they actually fulfill it in this powerful intimate relationship with Christ. So we’ve got to recognize that when people encounter the Church teaching, again, it’s sort of like we said earlier, there’s such a disconnect between what they think in the world and the Church that it can be rather shocking.

And the second part of that is that we also live in a world that has a hard time distinguishing sex from intimacy, that, really, we were created for intimacy. Intimacy: being fully known and fully loved, deeply known and deeply loved by others. We were created for that.

Mr. Maddex: Can life be fulfilling without sex? Our culture says no. It’s in your face everywhere you turn. We need a transformation here as well. Where do we look for models of this life? The first place, of course, are our monasteries. Fr. Gabriel is a monk at the Holy Cross Monastery in Wayne, West Virginia.

Fr. Gabriel: Well, I think so often when we try to understand various aspects of the Christian life or various teachings of the Church, whatever it may be, of course there are sort of rational or intellectual ways or ways that we can communicate to each other to help us to understand a little bit better, but ultimately I think we need to look, first of all, to the saints, because, as you said, most of us, we don’t really understand what’s possible. That’s certainly true for me and true for the vast majority of people I’m sure that I’ve met, is that we don’t have the experience of God, the experience of the Church and of the spiritual life that the saints did. So for those of us who feel—and all of us, I’m sure, feel this way, maybe more often and maybe simply from time to time—but we might all feel that to go without this sort of more traditional human intimacy, the romantic lifelong relationships with one other human being, we might feel that without that, something is lacking in our life.

And so I think the first thing we really need to do is we need to look at the Mother of God, who is the first person whoever committed herself for her entire life to virginity for the sake of God. That’s something that was unknown before that. Who of us can really look at the icon of the Mother of God and feel that she missed out on something and not feel that, rather, it’s we perhaps who are missing out on something? And so it’s the witness of the saints, first of all, that I think we need to look to, to understand that their obedience—because it was that, more than anything else, that defined the Mother of God: “May it be unto me according to thy word.” That was the essence of her sanctity, the obedience of the Mother of God that overturned the disobedience of Eve and all of the suffering that we’ve undergone since then. As I’ve said, who can really—what Orthodox Christian can look at the Mother of God and feel like her life was not adequate in anyway? [Laughter]

So I think that can help us maybe to put us into the right mindset, that if there’s something lacking in our lives, that there’s a lack of fulfillment in our relationship with Christ, first of all, as you said, that really it’s not that there’s a need that needs to be met in some other way, but rather it’s that our own repentance is not yet where it should be. One of the other—of course, chastity is one of the main vows of monastic life, but another one that doesn’t receive very much attention, but which I think is also very important in general, but also for this conversation, is the vow of stability, that we will remain in the monastery where we made our vows for the rest of our life, unless we’re sent somewhere else in obedience. And really, one of the main purposes of that vow is to combat the very natural tendency for us to think that if there’s something wrong with our lives we need to change our circumstances rather than to change our own hearts.

And so you can’t really separate one aspect of the monastic life from the others. But just as the vow of stability is really given to us as a tool to grow closer to Christ, to really be able to change our hearts, so too is the vow of chastity. It’s not just some arbitrary requirement that we have to do to “prove” something to God. This is something St. Paul talked about on a practical level. It’s simply much easier for us to deepen our relationship with Christ if, in some sense, we’re alone other than that. The word “monastic,” etymologically, comes from someone who’s alone. Of course, this is a mystery. If you just take it at that surface explanation and leave it, you’ll have a very skewed understanding, because really the witness of the saints and the hermit in the desert is far closer to God and to us than we ourselves are. But again, this is a mystery, though.

Mr. Maddex: Even for non-monastics, life as a single does not have to be avoided at all costs. Fr. Gabriel has some good counsel for the chaste and single Orthodox Christian.

Fr. Gabriel: Well, I think first of all, we need to take a little bit of a step back and ask ourselves: What is this life for? If it’s simply, as we can often assume, to try to find as much happiness as we can, perhaps, without disobeying the commandments of God, then we’re going to have one kind of perspective on things. But if we’re of the mind that this life has been given to us not simply in order to allow us to partake of theosis, of deification in the life to come, but to begin that process now and to enter as deeply into that now as we possibly can, then we’ll have a little bit different perspective on it. And we have to keep in mind, too, that every Christian vocation, every Christian way of life is ultimately the way of the cross.

Monasticism is a cross; marriage is a cross. To live a life of service to God as a single person in the world is also a cross. And it’s not supposed to be easy. As I said, I was raised in a Protestant mindset, and I had this idea that the cross was something that Christ did so that we wouldn’t have to go through something like that. And of course, as Orthodox Christians, we know that that’s not true. We know that Christ suffered the cross so that he would fill absolutely every aspect of our life as human beings with himself, from the struggles and temptations that we go through, to loneliness—he was forsaken by his closest disciples immediately before going to the cross. He, while hanging on the cross, he began the psalm that begins, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And ultimately filled even death with himself.

So the loneliness that we suffer, whatever trials and temptations that we undergo in our Christian life, first of all we know that they’re allowed by God’s providence because he loves us and he knows that, through these things, we can attain to greater grace, to greater salvation and greater joy, because, as the hymns of the Church say, “Joy has come to all the world”—not just through the resurrection, but through the cross. And so we can also know that our sufferings are deeply meaningful.

There’s a quote I really love. Before I was given the name Gabriel in monasticism, my patron saint was St. Ephraim the Syrian, and he has this beautiful phrase, and it’s translated, so it’s not exactly right, but hopefully we can get the gist of it. He says, “Patiently endure sufferings in order to avoid the hardship of empty suffering.” His point is that, no matter what the world may promise, we’re never going to able to avoid suffering in this life. We’re never going to have this utopia that the fairy tales of our childhood promise us, that the myths of modern life promise us. We live in a fallen world, and there’s going to be suffering.

Sometimes, as monks, we can look at married people with this kind of “grass is always greener” type of thing, but, as a priest, all you need to do is really hear a few confessions and realize that marriage isn’t all roses, that no matter where we are, there’s suffering and difficulty. But we can take great comfort that, as Christians, whatever we suffer for Christ is far more deeply meaningful than whatever joys we think we might be missing out on, because all of those end with death, and that’s another aspect of the monastic life that’s very important for us that I think can also be used for those undergoing trials in the world. Something that Fr. Aimilianos of the Holy Mountain said: “What am I supposed to do with a success that does not conquer death? This sort of desires for a life of worldly happiness are going to end one way or another,” which is not to say that they’re automatically worthless and that everyone should forsake them, but what we can know is that what Christ is building in our lives, through his providence, whatever that looks like for each of us in our individual lives, this is something that will last unto eternity.

And, as Christ said, in the regeneration, we will be “as the angels in heaven, neither marrying nor giving in marriage.” Marriage is good; it can bring us great holiness if we undertake it for the sake of Christ, for the sake of the salvation of those that we marry, the children that we have, but ultimately what we’re all looking for is that unity in heaven that the angels experience and that we, too, one day experience, of being gathered together to worship before the throne of God and to know a union with him and with each other, that even the closest relationships here on earth can’t even begin to touch.

So a worldly person, to say, “Well, just think about death,” this is going to sound morbid, but to a Christian this is a reminder of the great… Like St. Paul said—we began this segment of a conversation talking about St. Paul—but as he said, “The light and momentary afflictions that we suffer now are not worthy to be compared with the far more worthy and exceeding eternal weight of glory that God has prepared for us.”

Mr. Maddex: Dr. Edith Humphrey sees celibacy as a “lost gift” that needs to be reaffirmed in the Church, and not just meant for monastics.

Dr. Edith M. Humphrey: There’s a lot that we can do to be better equipped, as pastors and as brothers and sisters of those who are struggling with same-sex attraction and even engaging in the activity. I think that, as a Church, we need to go back to a strong honoring of celibate singleness as something that’s absolutely essential for the health of the Church. We’ve lost some of that even in the Orthodox Church today. For us, I think the default is you’re married, and if you’re not married something’s missing.

And with that kind of attitude, it’s very hard to engage in sympathetic counseling, especially if, for example, the priest is married, and the person is being told to be faithful they need to be chaste, they need to be celibate. I think we have to be consistent with regards to the expectations that we have of chastity among not just those who are same-sex attracted, but among males and females as well, and that kind of teaching is not heard very often any more. It’s kind of assumed that our young people will mess around until they get married, and that is a real blight on the Church, and it makes what we say hypocritical as far as I’m concerned.

And I think also the wise pastor will listen to the person who is coming to him and recognize that sexual sin is often the presenting cause for a deeper problem of loneliness or lostness. It’s not just sex. I think that those of us who are on the outside think that it has to do with just sexual attraction. If we actually listen to those who are engaging in same-sex activity or who have or who are attracted, it often has to do with their search to belong somewhere. We can’t approach marriage simply as a voluntary association, as an inviolable covenant, and even I think that it’s helpful for those who are attracted in a same-sex way to realize that things are not all rosy for those who are married either.

Here we have to learn how to express love in good times and in trouble, and so to be celibate and yet to be in a dynamic or a life-giving relationship, with persons of both genders, is an arduous calling. And I think that we need to really recognize that those who are celibate bring great benefit, both to the entire community—they remind us that the sexual expression is not the most important thing of life, though it’s a good thing. So, you know, both godly lifestyles, celibacy or marriage, can be potent expressions of God’s willingness to do something about the hardness of the heart that we have experienced since the Fall. And both faithful marriage and celibacy then can be pictured, I think, for the person who is doing the counseling and is being counseled, as kind of a creative adventure in which God’s grace is enacted, not just an abhorrent or an impossible lifestyle choice that impinges on freedom.

We need to bring the idea of celibacy being a good thing back into the parishes as it is still in the monasteries.

Mr. Maddex: I hope you’ll join us for Part 4 of our series, when we hope to share some conclusions and put a bow on our documentary, and—spoiler alert—it has a lot to do with our willingness to create these better environments and learn together, as Archbishop Michael says.

Archbishop Michael: So we should spend our time maybe less condemning, and going to seminars and discussion groups and continuing ed programs that address this issue with the sincere approach of guiding and loving and saving for Christ persons with same-sex attraction.