When I came out as queer to my family, I wrote a letter about how important it was to my faith to be out. That it was important for my identity as a child of God, as someone made in imago dei, God’s image, that I reflected the queer aspect of God into my life and among my family, friends, and church.
When I make big life decisions, usually I find that it comes from a series of discerning moments, time where I think about what I know about something, like LGBTQ+ people and Christianity, or what it means to be called to be a pastor or serve as a missionary for a year. Along with these discerning moments are a lot of questions: what should I do next? Where can I be useful? What will grow me into loving God’s community even more? Where is there suffering in the world that I want to be part in mitigating? I find that it is not really me making the decision to go do something on my own volition but listening to the Spirit calling me toward a certain path. There were others I could have gone down, but mission work was the answer, not going into field biology research which was my undergrad degree. Coming out was a faithful decision, and so has going to seminary to be a pastor.
I have been doing a lot of personal discernment recently, thinking about my family. As a queer woman of faith, I have been sitting with questions like: What does it mean to be a wife to a woman who is also a wife? Is that something we want? Should we get married? Can we get married? Who does what around the house? Who is the ‘head of the house’ and their word is the rule? How can we have kids? Do we want kids? Which of us would actually get pregnant, or is that even something we want? What are all the many ways women can get pregnant without a cisgender man present (unless it’s the doctor)? What are other ways to become parents? Is adoption something we would want, and is it possible near us? How much does adoption cost or fertility treatment cost? Will we be discriminated against for being queer?
There are so many questions that I am constantly asking myself or have asked myself in the past. I do not have answers, and I cannot answer these alone, but I think there is still something in here I can answer for myself that might be helpful to other queer women of faith, or who have been influenced by cultural Christian upbringings.
Fertility is an incredibly difficult issue for many people. Women who have been steeped in American Christian culture who are told that maybe being a mother is her sole purpose. This is a difficult reality to unpack, and in particular for queer women of faith. As a queer woman of faith myself, it has been a nightmare to think about.
I am still discerning what it might mean to be a mother one day and thinking about that with my spouse who is my number one partner and teammate in the conversation and life choice. When we know more, I am sure we will tell the world. For now, this is more about me, and what I have learned about these topics and want to make sure I rethink to make the best, faithful choice going forward. Having these thoughts and answers might be helpful in my future ministry one day when people who face similar issues bare the hurts of trying to grow their families.
I am writing this blog post to unpack some of the harmful, learned ideas of what it means to be a wife and hopeful-mom in America today. These are not things that I have necessarily learned directly from church or any specific person, but the swirling of ideas that are out in our general culture or steeped in nearly every book in the Christian section at Barnes & Noble or easily referenced on television shows.
My relationship with God is ongoing and ever evolving, and that relationship influences my relationships with my family. I have known God as a father figure, as the Spirit being my constant companion through some hard mental health years and the one urging me on into young adult mission work and now seminary. I have known Jesus in my suffering, and the suffering in the world and have prayed for it to end even if I have been thankful for the company in the meantime. I have also known God as a loving mother. As the mothering hen who gathers her chicks up and keeps them safe with her. I have known God as Love in the world, and the Word made flesh, living among us and reminding us that as God turned to us with grace after Jesus’ death on the cross, so we can turn to a suffering world with grace. And I have known God through my neighbor. We are all made in God’s image. That includes you, reading this, and that annoying person we all work with or the stranger we pass by on our way. I have known God most as I came out as queer, and I met God in my queerness more authentically myself than I ever had before.
So, for all the people out there, particularly women and queer folk, here’s some of my thoughts on what it means to be a spouse and building a family with your partner through a queer faith lens.
First, it is important for me to think about what a family looks like at church. There are so many healthy models of what a family can look like, and not all of them are with a mother, father, and two point five kids. Families come in all shapes, sizes, and iterations. The Holy family included Joseph’s adoption of Jesus, and the other children Mary and he had. There are examples of queer family like Ruth, Naomi, and Boaz or David and Jonathan. There are important family relationships like Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. And the importance of people who are a family of one person whether they are widowed, divorced or have remained single throughout their life. As a church, we need to continue to be open to the many expressions of family, and not essentialize our image of family to a cookie cutter mold. For my purposes, I am exploring what it means to be in a lesbian couple when approaching spouse roles and considering growing a family with children.
There are a lot of restrictive ideas of a woman’s place in her family, particularly cisgender women in heterosexual relationships. One of the biggest unhelpful role setting pieces of scripture is Genesis 2:18: woman being created out of Adam’s rib to be his ‘helper’ – and many translations lack the partner language that the NRSV includes. Often, in church teachings, women’s roles in life are essentialized down to how she interacts with her husband, father, and sons. But I know I am much more than that, and so is any woman who I know. We can be the head of household (someone has to be in our household, and often we joke that it is the cat), and we can choose not to have a hierarchy idea of our household and rather think of it as partnerships with different domains. We share tasks equally, we split our finances equitably, and honor one another in our work and rest.
As a queer person, marriage is sometimes difficult to think about. Marriage equality was denied to us for so long, and it made us question what the purpose of marriage was. Gay marriage is still restricted around the world, and there are whole swaths of countries that I can never visit because my very presence as a queer woman is illegal and punishable. But where marriage equality has been secured, there are a lot of legal benefits that come with being married, along with tax cuts. Yay government reasons! But what does it mean personally? For me, marriage was about finding someone who I wanted to be in lifelong partnership with. Who I could see building a life with. Who would support me in my faith and vocation (call to be a pastor) as much as I would support them in their life and goals. When my spouse and I announced our engagement, some people asked us if it was because we had a timeline for wanting children. The automatic assumption was that marriage and moving inn together preceded getting pregnant and having children.
Is the purpose of marriage for having children? I do not think so. I know there are some theologies that support that idea based on Genesis 1:28: “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” There are heterosexual people out in the world who cannot create children at all due to their medical history; does that mean that they should be denied lifelong partnership? Sometimes, getting pregnant takes more intervention than just one man and one woman deciding they want a family. Is it okay to get medical assistance for family growth? For same-sex couples, getting pregnant takes more than just two willing partners who can do it on their own.
Queer couples have a lot to consider when they desire to have children. First, they should involve medical professionals and figure out what’s realistic if someone in the relationship wants to get pregnant to have a child. This is not an option for all queer couples, and I will talk about things like adoption and fostering later down.
One way to get pregnant would-be intrauterine insemination using a donor, and if it works then the pregnancy proceeds as (complicatedly) usual (is a pregnancy ever ‘usual’?). On top of multiple doctors appointments and fertility treatment to figure out when in someone’s cycle it would be best to try, there is also a huge cost to each attempt at creating an embryo. According to WebMD, each intrauterine insemination treatment can “cost between $300 and $1,000 per try, and the chances of getting pregnant each cycle are just 15% to 20%, even when there are no fertility issues involved.” That is a lot of effort and money for very low odds without fertility issues. If a woman is like me and 1 in 10 other women in the US of child baring age , or lives with any other number of issues, the effort to get pregnant gets that much more expensive. Suddenly the physical treatment to try and get pregnant compounds with the mental, emotional, and spiritual insecurities that come along with not feeling like our bodies are ‘good’ or ‘working right’ to do this thing that humans have been doing for four hundred generations.
The other option is in vitro fertilization (IVF). An embryo is created outside of the body, and then transferred into the uterus using a series of complicated procedures (more on the Mayo Clinic website). IVF is used when there are genetic issues, or the added assist is needed for conceptions, or the couple desires to use an egg not from the person who plans on being pregnant. IVF treatment can cost anywhere between $12,000 and $15,000, not including medicine that might cost up to $3,000 , all of which is usually considered elective by health insurance agencies and not always covered by the agencies. In a lesbian couple, this might mean that one woman donates genetic material to their child, and the other person carries the pregnancy. There are even complicated and not widely used procedures that can turn any type of cell from a donor into a potential sperm or egg cell, and maybe one day a same-sex couple can both be the genetic parents of their child if they wished. Scientists can even pinpoint certain markers on chromosomes to eliminate genetic disorders, or even make ‘designer genes’ to influence certain physical traits.
Okay hold on now, all of this sounds scientifically really cool, but we have all seen the 1997 film Gattaca and know how morally corrupt genetic manipulation can start to get when we start selecting for the ‘most athletic’ traits, or ‘intelligence’ or ‘creativity’. So when thinking about these scientific breakthroughs, how do we approach the moral issues of genetic manipulation from a place of faith? As a member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, I go to some of our social statements and messages to see if we have any writing on those topics. Here is an exert from their Social Statement on Genetics:
“The ELCA’s concern for benefit or harm, however, is not focused perse on any particular scientific or technological development. The concern, rather, focuses on the just and wise use of genetic knowledge and technology. For instance, the ELCA does not reject the use of genetic technology such as genetically modified organisms, prenatal diagnosis or pharmacogenetics. Like other gifts of technology, there are reasons for both encouraging their use and for cautioning against certain means of applying them. This church believes the use of any technology should be subject to moral assessment.”
If I understand that we are all made in God’s images, including the things that people might consider as flaws, then I feel like I can start, in good faith, to consider the extent that genetic manipulation is permissible when looking into IVF and other fertility treatments. Scientific breakthroughs such as IVF treatments and prenatal genetic treatments might make us seem like we are ‘playing God’ with human life. I try to keep in mind that God is the ultimate creator, and we are participating in God’s great loving creation. So I ask myself, how is interacting with treatments like that helping to be part of God’s loving creation? I think when it comes to fertility treatment, as little changes as possible are preferable, and only as much that would help with conception, minimize suffering, and allow life to flourish naturally.
For couples where neither person wants to or is able to get pregnant, surrogacy is an option. The cost of surrogacy can be prohibitive, somewhere around $150,000, and then there are the fertility treatments.
Unfortunately, another hurdle amongst all the strains of fertility and family growing is discrimination against queer people in the medical field. Doctors are legally allowed to discriminate against patients in some states still, and when someone is willing to see us they are not always on the up and up on how to take care of queer patients. And any children I might have could potentially face discrimination because of their parents.
Another avenue toward parenthood is adoption. There are many types of adoptions. Adoption of a child from foster care, private agency adoption, independent adoption, and intercountry adoption. If going through the federal government, couples might only face up to $2,000 dollars in adoption fees. Going through an independent adoption procedure could cost up to $45,000 . Again, could be cost-prohibitive for families who are looking to expand. And for queer families, we face a lot of discrimination from widely used faith-based adoption agencies.
Another aspect of adoption that has to be considered is that even within couples where they go the route of IVF or intrauterine insemination is that the other partner has to legally adopt the child still. And matters get more complicated if the egg used for the embryo in IVF is donated, and not from the person who intends on carrying the pregnancy, then the carrier has to adopt the child. There is very little in way of protecting queer families in these types of cases, and consultation with a family attorney would be helpful when moving forward with family expansion.
There are other ways for families to form and grow. Families can be based on blood ties, and very commonly in the queer community, close knit bonds that form over common lived experiences. These were a few of the considerations that I have, and have been thinking about for my family, and continue to be in conversation with my own spouse, plan for if necessary, and always pray about. No answers yet, but helpful considerations abound, and I hope some insight for you too.
Bibliography
Ball, Philip. “Reproduction Revolution: How Our Skin Cells Might Be Turned into Sperm and Eggs.” The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, October 14, 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/oct/14/scientists-create-sperm-eggs-using-skin-cells-fertility-ethical-questions.
Burns, Katelyn. “The Trump Administration Will Now Allow Doctors to Discriminate against LGBTQ People.” Vox. Vox, April 24, 2020. https://www.vox.com/identities/2020/4/24/21234532/trump-administration-health-care-discriminate-lgbtq.
Gattaca. DVD. United States: Columbia Tristar Home Entertainment, 1997.
“In Vitro Fertilization (IVF).” Mayo Clinic. Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research, September 10, 2021. https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/in-vitro-fertilization/about/pac-20384716.
“LGBTQ+ Family Building.” Shady Grove Fertility, October 8, 2021. https://www.shadygrovefertility.com/lgbtq-family-building/.
“Planning for Adoption - Child Welfare.” Child Welfare, November 2016. https://www.childwelfare.gov/pubpdfs/s_costs.pdf.
“Polycystic Ovary Syndrome.” Polycystic ovary syndrome | Office on Women's Health, April 1, 2019. https://www.womenshealth.gov/a-z-topics/polycystic-ovary-syndrome.
“A Social Statement on Genetics, Faith and Responsibility.” Chicago, IL: ELCA, 2011.
Watson, Stephanie. “The Fertility Issues Same-Sex Couples Face When Trying to Conceive.” WebMD. WebMD, December 16, 2020. https://www.webmd.com/infertility-and-reproduction/features/same-sex-couples-pregnancy.
