My friend Wesley Hill has a new book out, Spiritual Friendship: Finding Love in the Church as a Celibate Gay Christian. As the subtitle suggests, the book takes his own position as a jumping-off point: the position of a gay man who accepts the teaching of his church that marriage is a union of a man and a woman. I’ll give the book a real review later—I read an early draft and it was fantastic—but for now I want to look at the relevance of Hill’s approach for those who don’t fit the description in his subtitle.
Hill depicts a cultural landscape in which romantic and filial relationships are the only ones we treat as life-shaping. We consider devotion, commitment, and intimate sharing of thoughts and emotions appropriate within marriage, for example, but creepy and clingy within friendship. We think choosing where you live and therefore which jobs you can take based on the needs of your spouse, your kids, or your aging parents, is ordinary and admirable. Choosing where you live based on the needs of your boyfriend is a bit risky, but understandable if you guys have been together for a while and are “serious about each other.” Choosing not to take a better job far away, choosing to stay in your hard-luck hometown, because your friends are there—that’s loserish and a little crazy.
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