Mirror, Mirror : A Journey in Imagination for the Heterosexual Christian

 

Welcome, straight friend, to Mirror-World.

Your imagination has brought you here, and your imagination will enable you to experience what Mirror-World has to teach you.  So set your imagination free.

While here you can be – and indeed must be – completely yourself. It is only the world around you that will be different. It will be a mirror image of the real world, and everything will be reversed, but if you dare to open your heart and mind, it is an image that may give you a new insight into the lives and experiences of others, and perhaps even to understand yourself in new ways.

You are yourself. Your sexual desires and drives remain as they have always been. If you are in a committed relationship, that person remains the absolute focus of your desires and love. (I bet that’s a relief, isn’t it?)

But you need to know that here in Mirror World, physical and romantic attraction to the same sex is the norm.  You will be left in no doubt about this. From the earliest years of childhood every popular song will be about same-sex love.  Your own family and those around you will all be based on same- sex relationships. Most TV programmes and soaps will be full of gay and lesbian relationships. Occasionally there may be a straight character - or maybe even a straight couple - but the scriptwriters will seldom allow them to live ordinary lives, still less happy and fulfilled ones. The message will often be that heterosexuality is a route only to loneliness and unhappiness.

You are yourself. As you grow up, you will be aware of your developing sexual identity; your instinctive attraction to those of the opposite sex will be as strong and as undeniable as it is in your usual world. But it will also frighten you. Deep down you feel that this is surely not right.  You feel different and don’t want to be different. Your feelings confuse you and feel instinctively wrong. Indeed, you will frequently hear these feelings described as ‘sick’ or ‘perverted’ even by people you love, perhaps by members of your own family. So you will increasingly ask yourself, ‘Am I sick? Am I a pervert?’.

You are yourself. At school all your friends are very clearly attracted to, and often already exploring relationships with, members of the same sex. They talk about it all the time. They also make cruel jokes about heterosexuals. You join in with the jokes, just to make sure that they don’t rumble you. But some of the other kids have their suspicions and they start to tease you calling you ‘straight’. You desperately deny it, and feel strangely conflicted as you do so.  The school bully starts to pick on you and beat you up. You’re miserable, lonely and depressed but there’s no-one you can talk to.

You are yourself.  You try desperately to think about members of the same sex in an erotic way. It doesn’t work; (actually,be honest, the thought is quite repugnant). Try as you might, your thoughts keep going back to members of the opposite sex. (Pervert!) You are full of self-hate and start to wonder if you would be better off dead. Actually, you heard someone say the other day (and not for the first time), “I’d rather my child was dead than heterosexual”. (Maybe they’d got a point.)

You are yourself. You have opposite sex friends, some of whom you are starting to find sexually attractive.  You must hide those feelings. You’ve no idea how they might react if they find out. You value and need their friendship, but being with them can sometimes be agonisingly difficult. One of them eventually asks if the rumours about you are true. At first you deny it, then you break down and tell the truth. They’re shocked. They don’t understand. They tell you they don’t want to be your friend any more.

You are yourself. Now in your late teens you start to attend church. You’re told that God loves you because God loves everyone. But the preacher doesn’t know your dark secret. That’s maybe as well, because on other occasions (s)he preaches about the ‘evils’ of heterosexuality. So maybe God doesn’t love you after all, or maybe he loves most of you, but not that vile, disgusting pervy heterosexual bit. (You see, even God doesn’t really want you. Not as you are anyway.) In desperation you confide in a couple of your Christian friends. They’re shocked. Really shocked. They pray with you that God will heal you of your heterosexuality. It doesn’t work. Maybe you don’t have enough faith. Maybe you need to be exorcised. Maybe you need conversion therapy.

You are yourself. Having had such bad experiences of your church, you find another church that is genuinely inclusive and welcoming. You feel safe there. Here the focus seems to be on the inclusive, radical, generous love that Jesus shows in the Gospels rather than the ‘clobber verses’ you’re used to hearing. At last you can be yourself without the fear of being judged or excluded. Here the love of God does genuinely seem unconditional, rather than conditional. But you know that this church is treated with suspicion. It’s labelled by some others as ‘dangerously liberal’ and ‘unsound’. There are still lots of messages from the wider church that signal your unacceptability.

You are yourself. You decide that you want to live with integrity and so you decide to ‘come out’ as  straight. To your pleasant surprise, many people, especially outside the church, don’t bat an eyelid. Some don’t quite get it and ask stupid questions like, “When did you decide to become heterosexual?” The trouble is, whenever you meet new people they often ask you if you have a same-sex partner. You’re embarassed and uncertain of what to say.  The homo-sexist assumptions that people tend to make mean that you’re constantly having to weigh up whether or not to ‘come -out’ at each new encounter. (It’s emotionally exhausting isn’t it?)

You are yourself. You have met someone - a person of the opposite sex - who is very special. (If you have a spouse or partner in the other world, here in Mirror-World it will be that same person). You love them. They bring you true happiness and make you feel complete. When you’re with them the world is a different place. Being with them helps you to be a happier, more giving, fulfilled person. Experiencing their love makes you more aware of the nature of God’s love. Your sexual intimacy brings you joy. That relationship here in Mirror-World is as wonderful, as special and as transformative as in your usual world. (I bet that’s a relief too!)

But don’t ever forget, there are many in the church who will tell you  - sometimes with a cheerful (or pitying) smile - that your relationship is wrong. You can remain close and enjoy companionship, but you must be celibate within the relationship. You shouldn’t celebrate your love physically because that is sinful. As for wanting to marry this person or even just to have your relationship blessed – forget it!  (Hey come on, the church can bless lavatories and nuclear submarines, but not the love that you’ve found.)  You see, whilst it’s true that ‘God is love’ and that those who live in love live in God - your love is at best second-rate and at worst disordered. And never mind all the cruelty, greed, violence, hatred, hunger and poverty in the world,  what you and your beloved do or don’t do in the bedroom is of much greater concern to God. That’s why it has to be the church’s most important concern. So it’s a ‘red line’ for lots of your fellow Christians. This issue could even lead to the church being split. (See, surely that proves how awful you really are?)

You are yourself. The church will constantly talk about people like you. It will commission reports. It will embark upon listening processes, time and time and time again. It will invite you to talk about yourself and your heterosexuality, to ‘tell your story’ time and time again. It will ask probing questions about you and your desires, and it will enquire, in a quite intrusive way about that most special person in your life and the relationship you have;  but somehow you will go along with it in the hope that maybe, just maybe, telling your story will make a difference and the church may begin to understand and respond differently to straight people like you. But be patient. You MUST be patient. It will take years – decades probably – before anything much changes. (There’s too much at stake, you see. Political expediency is so much more important than your disordered love.)   

You are yourself.

So, as you return to your usual world, here are two questions for you:

How do you now feel?

What, if anything, have you learnt from your brief visit? 

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