Discerning Self-Censorship

So i'm here at the Marriott Hotel in Indianapolis, Indiana. Yep, that's right! I'm here for the CCDA (Christian Community Development Association) National Conference. I'm way excited to be away! For starters, having lived in Southern California for the past 15 years or so, i've never been past Arizona or any of California's neighboring states. We took the red eye and left out of Los Angeles at about 11:00pm Pacific time Wednesday night, arrived in Charlotte, North Carolina at about 4:15am Eastern time (saw lots and lots of trees), then went on to Indianapolis at about 6:30am and arrived here at about 9:00am Eastern time and saw actual snow falling. I discovered what "jet lag" is. Goodness, i'm so disoriented...what time is it really?

I've been to conferences before but this is my first trip representing my public ministry and it's awesome. I've met lots of other people who are doing similar community development type work. Major trading of the business cards going on... =) Anyway, good conference so far...

I met a guy at one of the workshops on "City Blogging" yesterday . . . who seemed to be a great guy. I found myself reluctant to tell him about Two World Collision - I guess i'm still pretty hesistant to be completely "out". It's complex - as you can pretty much gather if you're following along on my journey. I don't want to be "out" to everyone in every context because I don't really think that I have to be. I mean, my identity (and allegiance) is first and foremost in Christ. Being gay, or even just journeying through this process, is simply a context. But it's not who I am nor do I want it to be all about who I am.

It just sucks that I didn't feel comfortable enough with myself to be free to talk about Two World Collision. It was relevant to our conversation about blogs and the way "community" develops over the blogosphere. He seemed like a nice guy too. It would have been great to naturally talk about something i'm excited about and to talk about all of you that i'm getting to know and praying for. This is a dynamic I experience of living in "two worlds" - filtering conversations to make sure certain details about certain topics are censored. Censoring myself causes this feeling for me of not being completely known. I think that's one reason why it's pretty lonely at times - not because of others not wanting to know me, but because I don't feel safe enough with some people to be fully known. I know - i've always owned up on the fact that i've got issues, haven't I?

It happens when i'm in the city talking with mainstream pastors and I don't yet talk about the other pastors that I've met from the inclusive churches in the city. It happens when I'm at a prayer meeting with people from different churches throughout the city and they start praying "against" those homosexual people and their "agenda". It happens with some friends when he comments about an attractive girl but I happened to notice the guy she was with. It happens when I refrain from talking about an exciting topic that i want to blog about because the person i'm talking to doesn't even know about the blog. (Disclaimer: I hope you don't get the impression that i'm some basket-case non-socially functioning closet case. I'm not. Really, i'm not.)

I was talking with another guy from Chicago yesterday who works with a ministry that reaches out to male prostitutes. He noted that the majority of those guys weren't gay. Somewhere in our conversation we began talking about gay Christians and he believes that, though he hasn't actually known any homosexuals outside of the context of male prostitutes, being gay is a disorder from some kind of emotional lacking in their early childhood and that even if they say that they haven't been abused, he thinks they just don't realize the abuse that caused the brokeness. See, now here's a situation where he really didn't need to know that I was gay. He just wouldn't get it. He admits not knowing gay people (outside of his ministry) but he forms a conclusion about how they became gay based on his limited exposure to them. Now, I do have some friends that are trying to be a bit more informed about this stuff, but I also know that there are people like him that believe what they believe for reasons not completely logical. I used to be one of them.

So there's a bit of that fear in telling someone about my journey because I'm not exactly sure where they're coming from and how they'll react. Are they open-minded enough to be informed about the subject? Are they decidedly hostile for illogical reasons? Will they invite me to coffee or throw me out of the building and start throwing rocks?

Is this kind of self-censorship a self-imposed prison? I don't think so - not completely at least. Sure it's refreshing to be free to talk about certain things with trusted people. However, I think a degree of discernment is needed. On this blog, i pretty much lay out my heart - and it makes me vulnerable to have this kind of honesty. At the same time, i can get pretty devastated if someone attacked me with harsh words.

So people don't need to know what they don't need to know. In the mean time, i'll have to discern my own self-censorship.