The funny thing about a rainbow is that it’s strongly associated with two factions that are frequently at war. A rainbow was God’s promise to Noah, and now it’s also the encapsulation of LGBT+ pride. I’ve personally never been particularly enthralled by rainbows. But I’ve been thinking a lot about them lately because of what they mean to people and what they mean to me.
I loathe to take a definitive stance on issues like LGBT+ people vs. the Church. I think there’s a lot lost in these big controversies, and I’ve always done my best to avoid conflict. So I must beg forgiveness on my silence and lack of noise because I’m coming to the nasty realisation I can’t not have a stance. This is all obvious, really, and I’ve known for some time now that silence can also be violence. But I never had any skin in the game, to put it crudely, until now.
Now I have a good friend who’s transgender, a best friend who’s queer, another who’s ace, and so on. I know more and more LGBT+ people than ever before, thanks to my time and connections at Calvin, ironically enough (this isn’t an angsty post about what’s been happening at our alma mater, though). And whether I like it or not, I now have to also look at myself.
Google recently introduced me to the language of how one can be “visibly” LGBT+ —more specifically, the concept of being “visibly queer.” Now, I could go all Judith Butler on you, but I’ll save that for another rainy day. But my layman’s from-the-hip intellectual take is that there aren’t more queer people than there were fifty years ago (absolute population growth aside), merely more “visibly queer” people.
There’s a lot of delicate ground around when one is something “enough” to take up the rainbow. This is particularly troublesome in the territory of queerness because queerness is meant to be a catch-all of sorts and who’s to say one person is more queer than the other? I don’t know. Do I feel like I could identify as queer? What if I’m just overthinking it and making a big deal out of something that isn’t? People experience these questions ad nauseum.
But back to rainbows. LGBT+ people still need to be loved, yes. LGBT+ people still need to be saved, too. Phil used this really lovely turn of phrase about how Calvin has not made queer people more faithful. I know Calvin and many other religious spaces have done a lot of damage to LGBT+ people. But I also know many LGBT+ people still want to love the Lord. And it is so, so important to accept that, however confounding it may be to Reformed faithfuls.
I believe God’s rainbow to Noah and God’s rainbow to LGBT+ people are the same (albeit conceived through differing interpretive prisms). I know I’m bypassing all those exhausting and heady theological debates, and there are many seminarians out there who would gladly tell me I’m a heretic. But I don’t see the equality of God’s promises as heresy; it’s faith. And a lot of faithfulness isn’t the grand dash to victory as a runner, but rather the slow and painful tedium of trying to pick out an impossibly tight knot (and no, you aren’t allowed to just cut through it).
I trace the rainbow through the rain,
And feel the promise is not vain
