In a New Book, a Straight Male Christian Fakes Coming Out as Gay

The movement is not for turning, because anyone who doesn’t sing with the choir is the enemy. That said, I do think it needed a straight person to write this book, to bypass the disregarding of anything said by GLBTQ people with the dismissal that anything coming from them must be wrong because they “live in sin”.  It might reach past the prejudice in some minds that way, you never know.

Just what I was thinking.

That sounds like something to check out.

” it bothers me that the author had to masquerade as a gay man in order
to do so. Was that the only way to learn what it’s like to be a gay
person in a Christian environment?”

It’s not the only way, but it’s probably the best way.  Sure he could have interviewed a bunch of actual gay people, but this way he has first-hand experience of how his peers treat gay people.  He’ll also have a far more graphic understanding of how his own previous beliefs and behavior harmed gay people.  

The writer must have played the part well.The book is probably an interesting read. It will make for a good discussion group.It is going to be interesting to find out which Flock he is part of.’end human bankruptcy”an idea whose time has come.

The message also says to kill disobeying children, that women should STFU and that’s it’s ok to be a rapist as long as you marry your victim.

I wonder if this impacted his (widely-held christian) belief about whether being LGBT is a “lifestyle choice” vs something you’re born with.

it bothers me that the author had to masquerade as a gay man in order to do so. Was that the only way to learn what it’s like to be a gay person in a Christian environment?

It’s not the only way, but it sure as hell is a braver and more raw way than merely reading about it. You can read about the poverty in Africa, or you can live amongst its people for a year, trying to survive the way they do. It’s not dishonest to read about it, but the person experiencing it will have a much more visceral understanding of the suffering.

This aspect of things doesn’t bother me in the slightest. Though I may disagree with him in many ways, I commend his bravery and his willingness to voluntarily go from the position of bully to the position of bullied in order to gain a true understanding of how that feels. Of course I’m sure much of the religious language would drive me  up the wall, but I suspect the book is not for us. If this book, presented by a white, Christian, heterosexual male with a conservative background can get other people from that community to question their stance on homosexuality, I say amen.

First off, that BS phrase is nowhere in the Bible. Second, being gay is a not behavior. It’s an integral part of someone’s self. Not the most central part maybe, but not something that can be turned on and off at will. You can’t claim to “love” someone and then condemn an intrinsic part of the personality and deny them any and all rights.

 Another problem with “hate the sin” is the “love the sinner” part is often ignored.  If you really do love someone, you don’t treat them like a second class citizen, period.

You haven’t said anything about the conclusions he drew from his experience. If he actually learned something about the real lives of LGBT people and the bullying & discrimination they experience, and that Xtian hatred is wrong and anti-Xtian, then I think his stunt is awesome. He really walked a mile in the shoes of people he was taught to despise, and nothing teaches better than personal experience.

My sister, a very liberal Christian, was told by a right wingnut that it is not possible to be liberal and Christian (because no real Christian would support gay rights, for example). So she went on FB and related that, asking her friends if it is possible. One person said yes (and apparently began signing his post “Bob Smith, liberal christian). Nobody else replied at all.

He could have easily chosen to pretend to be an atheist. Just ask one of the former pastors we’ve heard from in the last couple of months. But he chose to “fake” being gay. Did he take the easier option?

 I, too, immediately thought of Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin.

You take issue with his experiment and feel he should have just talked to people? Did you even read your own excerpts from the author? You can have sympathy, but to truly get it, one must walk in another’s shoes. Maybe someday you’ll finally get the whole “research before you write” concept.

Was that the only other option?

“Hate the sin, love the sinner” is a crock. Right off the bat you are presuming to stand in judgement over the other person, labeling them a sinner, and claiming to hold the moral high ground over them. That’s not love, it’s condescension.

Really?

You can’t love someone while openly advocating for them to be treated badly. If you love someone, you welcome them as they are, get to know them, walk a mile in their shoes.

You don’t say they should be killed, or deny them rights, or judge/bully them, then say “God said how you are is wrong, and all these actions are because I love you.” That doesn’t work. 

Sounds like “Black Like Me”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Like_Me

Well perhaps just confronting the homophobia head on with the members and heirarchy of his church. Reaching out to gay members of his church. Agitating for change within his church.

These might have been better approaches I don’t know. It would be good to get some feedback from gays once the book does come out. Perhaps what he did was a really good thing, but who knows how the nut job homophobes in the church will spin this. But then again maybe it won’t matter hos they spin it maybe young Christians will read his book and be less homophobic as a result.

But I do believe one thing, he definitely would have learned as much if not more about how it feels to be a gay man coming out in the church by talking to gay men who have had that experience. Their stories would have been just as powerful an experience.

So at the moment I think it’s more than a little ambiguous but it will be interesting to see how this plays out. Also I’m not knocking Tim’s courage in any way, just wondering if this was the best way to express it.

In addition to what everyone else has said here in repsonse to you, I’ll add that I wouldn’t mind so much if you could manage to disapprove of someone else’s behavior without believing they deserve to be tormented for all of eternity.

I’m gay, and I’d be curious to read the book. I suppose knowing that it is just an experiment really wouldn’t give him a true sense of how actual gay people feel. Still, it would be interesting to see what he has to say about his experiences.

I’m sorry I don’t get your post. Gioing by your statements you seem to be agreeing with me but theyre presented as if you’re arguing with me. Did I misinterpret you?

i’m turned off by the fact that he’s asking for money to publish this book. i’m a writer too, and this seems a lot like a ploy or a canard to raise money, a sort of gimmick. and frankly, well, i won’t even go there. it just doesn’t strike me as a legit project. 

It reminds me of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Like_Me

 Try this: “Love the black person, hate their skin color”.
Does that show a lack of bigotry, or is it an excuse to indulge in bigotry?

Would you accept the argument “I don’t dislike black people, it just pisses my off when they, you know, act black!  They should quit acting black around me, and I’d have no problem with them at all!”, or would you see that as total bilge?

 It is not bloody brave to pretend to be gay!  This is just plain insulting.  He also did certainly not gain a true understanding of what gays face in their lives.  He was pretending and had an escape should he need it.  There is no escape from the life of a gay man. 

If he had instead decided to take the stories of gays at face value and have some empathy, he would have learned just as much.  Instead, from his privileged position as a straight man, he considered the only way to validate the experiences of gays was to pretend to be one so that he could sort-of know what it’s like for himself?  That’s insulting and patronising.

It’s also insulting to think that people consider a bigot who has chosen to examine his beliefs and try to change as brave for pretending to be gay.  He has been the kind of person that makes being gay dangerous at all; the kind of person who perpetrated and perpetuated a culture of hatred against a significantly diverse group of people based only on who they had sex with.  He’s not brave.  Gays are brave for living in his world open and proud.  What he is is a misguided straight man who couldn’t just believe what gays would have willingly told him about the realities of living in the world he, for so long, perpetuated.

He doesn’t get cookies for pretending to be like me and he certainly doesn’t get to be called brave.  I’ll give him a cookie for no longer being bigoted, but I, and gays, shouldn’t have to applaud people for being decent, empathetic human beings.

I’m gay too …

I explained at length why I don’t think it’s brave.  I don’t doubt that he can relate his experience to educate people.  He certainly intends to do that with his book.

His privilege (why the scare quotes?), is that he is a straight white male and he could go back to that after pretending.  His privilege is what allowed him to believe that his exercise in faking gay was the only way he could believe gays about what they face in their lives.  I care about that; I give a shit about it.

You know, the people he’s going to be educating with this book can totally believe him about what it’s like to be gay because he is a straight man.  He couldn’t believe gays until he faked being one and now he thinks he’s in a better position than gays to describe what it’s like being gays because of who he really is.

That’s insulting.

Consider him brave all you want.  And withhold shit about his privilege too.  I won’t.

There’s an amazing book called Prometheus Rising, by Robert Anton Wilson.  Wilson describes all of the boxes that people put themselves into and provides exercises for escaping them.  

Those of us who are straight have grown up in a society that is organized around straight people.  The default position is that everyone is straight, and that people recognize at some point in their lives that they might be gay or lesbian.  

Some of us have an inkling of what it is like because we are atheists in a Christian-dominated society.  But for most of us, the fact that we aren’t Christian isn’t readily apparent.  You go to an outdoor concert with your spouse and sit with your arms around each other.  It would not be immediately apparent were you atheist, but it would be immediately apparent were you gay.  Atheists can marry in all 50 states and in every nation in the world.  Atheists can adopt children in all 50 states.  No one ever questions the right of an atheist to bring an atheist date to the prom.  No one cuts off the Jumbotron feed when two atheists celebrate a home run with a kiss.  And so on and so forth.  

Several people have mentioned the book Black Like Me.  I think this is an important comparison.  Many Blacks wrote books about the Black experience prior to its publication, but no other book could speak as strongly to Whites.  To be able to say, “I felt like this when I was part of the norm, and I felt this different way when I was no longer part of the norm,” is a powerful message, and one that needs to be heard.  

Blacks didn’t gain full civil rights because they became the majority and voted themselves the rights they had been denied.  Blacks enlisted the help of members in the majority to grant them the rights they should have had all along.  Similarly, if gays were the only ones who cared about gay rights, they would never change the laws that restrict them.  Gays are a small minority of the population.  Fortunately, the straights who support gay rights are slowly becoming the majority.  If this book helps that, it’s a good thing.

That was a Regan-era invention, by the way. Prior to the SBC fundamentalist takeover in the late 1970s, conservative evangelical Christians were encouraged not to vote.

Check out The Power of Nightmares if you haven’t seen it before.

PZ recently made a post about this book, and his commentors reacted extremely negatively. In fact there seems to be a lot of dislike there directed towards Hement’s blog and the people who comment here. Maybe it’s not surprising, they’re half the reason that I migrated from there to here a while ago.

 “I’ve pretended to  be gay/bisexual to extract information to confirm or
piece together information that one would not find in psychology texts.”
Lying and manipulation in order to benefit yourself? What a shitty thing to do.

 Interesting point. I hope he suggests further readings at the end of his book, or otherwise lets readers know his experience/perspective is just the tip of the iceberg. That big rainbow lgbtqia iceberg.

 No one even noticed you had gone. So you are not much of a loss are you ?

And what is wrong with reacting negatively ? There seems to be very little that is positive to say about this book. It is not as though real gay people have not being telling us about the discrimination they face within Christianity.

It would seem to the type of book that will be read by those who do not like the idea of reading something written by one of those nasty genuine gays. Are you one of those people ?

Wow, the failtrain is huge right from the get-go;  no, gay /= trans* .
This does not bode well for the ‘learning-experience’ of the author.

 You know, if you want to know more about Timothy Kurek, there’s this thing called Google.  You could use Bing or Yahoo if you’re desperate.

I’m not interested in a conversation with him about his motives.  I’m happy to take him at his word regarding those.  I’m fairly clear, I think, on why his motives don’t matter at all from my perspective; it should be obvious that I’m talking about his actions.  Did you just gloss over the part where I describe his actions as insulting and patronising?  It doesn’t matter what he intended to do, what he has done is use his privilege as a straight white man to tell the story about what it’s like to be treated as a gay person by people who act like he used to.  And he should be believed about the experience because he’s a straight white man and most importantly because he’s Christian.  Well, there are Christian gays out there, millions of them, and their stories are real.

And what I didn’t even mention is that he is focusing only on a narrow and superficial aspect of being gay -being persecuted by American Christians.  He can never understand internalised homophobia, for instance, by pretending to be gay.  In fact, he would learn lots by listening to the tens of millions of gay people across the world who could tell him what it’s like to e persecuted by the religious, let alone by American Christians.

I really wish people would stop suggesting that basic human empathy is not enough, that someone has to pretend to be like someone else before they can understand or believe what that person has went through.  That’s insulting, as I said, to the experiences of actual gay people.

It’s as though you, and people like you, aren’t thinking this through and it is exactly like you just don’t care to listen to an actual gay person with a particular perspective on this man’s actions.  Listen to me and trust me, like Tomothy Kurek doesn’t.  And drop that patronising lecture about what scepticism and critical thinking are, as though I don’t have a clue, in the future, or do your suggestions about making less assumptions not apply to you too when you disagree with someone who has otherwise not shown a propensity toward uncritical thinking?

 And what else, it’s insulting to empathy itself, to the real empathy that people feel for others when they listen to them and share their pain and hope or work to alleviate it.  His pretending is not a decent expression of empathy and it shows, I believe, that he was devoid of it and that he expects others are.  That’s reprehensible and, for the love of me, unchristian.

Is anyone else more interested in Kurek’s friend’s story than his?

I will grant that his experience may gain him a better understanding of one aspect of being gay that he couldn’t get second hand through his friend’s experience, but all we can get from his book is a second hand account of his experience, which we know is atypical.  I’m stuck asking “Why does his book even exist?  What is it offering that I can’t find in a thousand other books”  and in that light, Kurek’s experience seems to be more a gimmick than a way for me to gain anything from reading it.

This is exactly the case, having personally Been There and Done That in a conservative Christian community, one I’m thankfully removed from.

 “You can have sympathy, but to truly get it, one must walk in another’s shoes.” It would appear then that we must have different ideas of what the phrase truly getting it means. Either that or your first comment is different from the second.

I would advise against assuming what others can and cannot grasp. Doing so sounds very jerky.

If we’re going to go all tu quoque on each other, I might as well ask you why you’re not listening to his story. But I’m not going to, because that would be a cheap shot.

To this kind of Christian, homosexuality is completely alien and foreign. It’s like Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. He had to experience it to “get” it. I completely understand this.

One of my closest friends (and I’m a nerd, so I have a very small group of close friends!) came out within the last year.

Now I was brought up in an ultra-liberal church. It had an openly gay Moderator of the Synod when I was growing up. I’ve always believed that being gay isn’t wrong, and all that goes with it. I’ve had plenty of gay friends (two of whom were also transgendered, and in a relationship together), and we’ve talked about what it was like coming out. I knew all the stories, and I got it. I really did.

But this is the first time in my life that I was there during the process of coming out. And I have to say, it was definitely a new experience that changed by life in subtle ways.

Maybe that’s why, even though I’ve never been a religious homophobe, this story resonates with me. I can’t help but read my own experience into it. I didn’t seek out this experience. And I still can’t say that I know what it is to be gay, to come out and so on. But I think I’m a better person for it nonetheless.

Final thought:

I know what Australia is like. I’ve lived there all my life, after all.
Life is different. We do tend to get a raw deal in international
relations some times. It’s harder in some respects and easier in others.
It’s a beautiful place, and we’re all pretty happy here.

What, you visited Australia once? How could you
possibly know what life is like in Australia by only
spending a couple of weeks here? Had you actually
listened to my description, that should have been
enough for you! It’s like you don’t even trust my descriptions! How
insulting!

Yes, I know there are differences in the analogy. All analogies break if you bend them further than intended. But I think it works here.

I guess that gays don’t count as “someone.”  And their first-hand experience isn’t enough.

The bible never actually says “hate the sin, love the sinner.”  That’s a Mahatma Gandhi quote.

That’s not exactly what I meant by taking one for the team.

It’d be nice if this sort of thing were unnecessary, but that’s politics for you. What I don’t understand is why people in this thread are going after this guy. It’s the people he’s trying to persuade who are the ones who don’t listen to first-hand experience from homosexual people.

@3352d7b7b661c84c5b888312397efc76:disqus  (I replied up because of text space)

I like your point that many people would only listen to him because he’s straight and Christian. That is exactly what he needs to be sure to bring up. People critique this guy because these objections need to be talked about. Because we care enough about changing the minds of his target audience that we want it done /right/ and accurately. In doing this he needs to make it very clear what this experiment cannot teach him, what kinds of things he still does not know, and where a reader could go next to learn about a group from actual group members’ voices. He needs to call his readers out that they didn’t do so in the first place, and question why they thought he would have better things to say about it. (Hint: It’s because he’s straight, male, Christian, white, etc…)