On changing your mind
I remember vividly when the petition against gay marriage showed up on the counter of the Christian book store I worked at in 2004. I felt SO proud that there was something I could do to protect the sanctity of marriage. Every day when I would come in to work I would check the signatures and see how many had been gathered while I was gone. Unlike my coworkers who kept the petition on the other side of the counter, I always made sure to set it right next to the register so that customers would see it. If they didn’t notice it, I made sure to point it out and ask them to sign it.
I don’t know who dropped off the petition form, but I was working when it was picked up. “I got a whole three pages filled,” I bragged to them. They were ecstatic. They gave me more sheets so we could keep gathering signatures and rewarded my hard work with a pile of “Yes on 36” stickers. I proudly put one on my backpack. I’ll never forget the look of disgust from the kid who sat next to me in my Shakespeare class. I didn't care. Jesus was scoffed at, so it was ok if it happened to me too.
I was elated when it passed. I voted for it, I gathered signatures, and it was now a constitutional amendment. I had protected marriage as my church and their interpretation of the Bible had told me to do. It felt like such a win. At least if parts of the country were going to go against God, here in Oregon, we were safe.
I imagine that is a similar feeling that many evangelicals have felt over the past couple of days as the news of the leaked Roe v. Wade opinion has spread. Deep relief and gratitude that deeply held beliefs are being upheld by the government. The long game has paid off and now the rules will return to the ways of God.
I really miss the days in high school and college where I felt so sure of what was right. We had even completed a course of study in our youth group about absolute truth and how we can know it and live by it. It was so easy and reassuring to just do what you were told. God’s rules, according to the Northwest Conservative Baptist Association and our white male leadership, were pretty straightforward. Don’t be gay, don’t have sex outside of marriage, and definitely don’t have an abortion. The rest of it, like caring for the poor or racial justice (I didn’t even know what that was), was unimportant.
Do you know how nice it is to be SO sure? If ever in doubt I could just ask my pastor and he would have a clear answer. One that let me know exactly how things were and why.
At some point, I think before the Oregon gay marriage ban even, I had gotten tired of paying attention to politicians and their beliefs. It was too complicated to keep track of everything. I became a single issue voter and that issue was pro-life. Killing babies was really bad, like makes God really mad bad, so it was easy to say I will vote for the person who believes we don’t do that. Who cares if they cared about the alive babies, or the not yet grown ones had raise the ones they were forced to have, or the fully grown ones with no means to care for their little ones because the system is built for them to fail.
Mercifully, one of the only constants in life is change and somewhere along the line, my beliefs began to shift.
My family (hi mom and dad if you are reading this!) likely blames the fact that I was unequally yoked. For those of you not raised in the church let me translate that- I married someone who wasn’t as passionate about God as I was and he dragged me down. Heavens know we would never blame him. It was my fault for picking that relationship. I mean, my then fiance was pretty clear in premarital counseling that he would absolutely teach our kids about evolution instead of creationism. I should have known better.
Or it could have been my liberal public university education. That University of Oregon has a lot of liberal faculty brainwashing college students day in and day out.
To be honest, it absolutely was both of those things and many more. Being in a long term relationship and an higher education institution that saw the absurd rigid belief systems for what it was and called it out had an impact. Little by little I started to see that what I was force fed was a tad crazy. But only a tad.
Ultimately there were three “WTF/hell no” moments that were the start of me changing my mind:
First I was told by a woman in our church that I was a disappointment because I was prioritizing marching band over being at church for a discipleship group. Mind you, I was still there for the later in the evening activities for other activities such as mentoring children in memorizing Bible verses (yes I am referring to AWANA)
The day my mom told me that God calls us to be obedient, not happy
And the long conversation I had where the other party emphatically concluded that God would indeed condemn someone to hell if they had no means of articulating the name Jesus nor knew that he died on a cross. My image of a good, loving, and just God didn’t jive with that. How can someone be held liable for something they have no way of knowing?
For years, I let my beliefs stagnate. I wasn’t on one side or the other. I didn’t vote for McCain because it didn’t sit well with me but I certainly didn’t vote for Obama because Jesus might hold me liable for dead babies. Eventually, in the winter of 2010 I got pregnant. And all of a sudden what I believed mattered a lot.
While pregnant, I would think about my kiddo and I couldn’t reconcile how to teach him to hate others. It felt so very counterintuitive to the love and compassion messages the church had taught me so often. I never really moved one way or the other until he was born and I forged friendships with the most inclusive and loving community of women my little hippy town had to offer. They became my role models and it was thanks to them that I felt brave enough to teach Link the things I believed in my heart to be true.
Over the course of the last ten and half years of Link’s life here are some of the things that I have taught him that go directly against what I learned growing up:
You get to love whomever you want
Sex is something that happens between two people who love each other. Marriage is not part of that necessarily
Sometimes girls have penises and sometimes boys have vaginas
Evolution is real, even if we don’t completely understand all the science (yet)
No one else is more important than your beliefs. Ever. Value what they believe as long as it doesn’t harm anyone. It’s ok if you believe differently. No one needs to agree on things that aren’t fundamental rights
People with uteruses have the right to choose if and when they carry a pregnancy. Only pregnant people get to make that decision and they don’t have to explain anything to anyone
Women, minorities, and people of color belong in leadership and it is your job as a future white man to recognize them and elevate them. We are not colorblind
I want to offer you two things. First, to those of you who have always been on the side of inclusion and choice, people can and do change their minds. I don’t want to be trite, in light of the likelihood of Roe v. Wade being struck down, but I do want to offer this as encouragement. I used to count the people I had converted like precious medals I would be awarded someday. And now I’m here to say I was wrong, and it’s none of my business what other people do.
Second, to those of you still holding on, I see you and I understand why you are there. I appreciate your place of security and understand the deep fear you feel. However, I hope you maybe have that same speck of discomfort that I had and that someday you too can change your mind. Also, I’m here for you. Not to convince you otherwise, not to brainwash you, but to listen to you as you make your way through.
Changing my mind has given me space in my body, heart, and soul. The space that used to be filled with certainty, worry for others salvation, and concerns of the evangelicals is now simply open. For understanding, for compassion, for capacity to see both sides, and for love. Always love.
