I am writing in plea of help. I am in a committed relationship with a woman for 2 years. She has a son who goes to a fundamental Bible college. He has told her he cannot have a relationship with her any longer until she repents for her sin as living the life of a gay relationship with me. He will have no relationship until she repents and when she does repent through what he says the Bible teaches about disciplining other Christians only then will he have a relationship with her. He feels being gay is a choice not genetic and has been very cruel in his disownment of her. He told her he will not go to any family gatherings…threatens to tell her father about our relationship. She has been going through such turmoil and has become very fanatic with her views now. Today she told me she can be with me but not in a sexual relationship any longer because she and I are not married. When I said to her but we planned to marry, she said the Bible teaches only man and women can be married, and even so 2nd point is we both were married to men prior and are divorced and divorced can not marry. So sex is lust and she feels God is using her son to speak to her. She says she loves me very much but last time we made love was not right. She felt in her heart it was sinful. I do not know how to be in a relationship with her and not have the intimacy. God gave those feelings to me just as he made me who I am — Gay. Please respond with suggestions how to handle this as I love her dearly but this is too much to bear. I am hoping she will realize how wrong the stance she has taken is. She behaved like this when her son took this stance. Prior to this she was very loving and sexually intimate. Thank you.
Dear Gentle Child of God,
Leave. Leave now. Do not pass go. Do not collect two hundred dollars — just leave. I know you and the readers may be thinking that I am being harsh here, but after two years with you for her to have this kind of switch in attitude means something is wrong — very wrong. I understand that you may love her, but if this woman’s son is controlling her then this has all the makings of a horror movie where the son saves the mother by killing the purveyor of sin.
I am saying this to you because this is very drastic stuff after being with you for two years. The son seems to have found a way to control his mother by using radical fear. While you may love her and love her deeply, do you really want to spend your life with someone who allows their child to control them, regardless of the circumstances? She was with you for two years. She knows in her heart what you have shared is not wrong. She knows your heart. She knows that you accept and love her.
I think the only way this relationship can be saved is if your partner can find it within herself to stand up to her son. She needs to know that her homosexuality is not some freaky cosmic mistake or cruel act of humor on God’s part. The divorce she is worried about doesn’t matter since, first, it is based on a culture and understanding of marriage that doesn’t even exist anymore and further because she is gay. The marriage to the man was a fraud to begin with. Even the Catholic Church would grant an annulment, which means the marriage never happened in the church’s eyes.
Suddenly after two years sex is lust? Since when does the child have anything to say about the parent’s private consensual sex life? He is certainly entitled to his opinion and can cut himself off from his mother, but that would be HIS choice, not God’s choice or the mother’s fault. Your partner needs to be reminded that she is the Mom and he is the son — she is the adult, he is the child. Her connection with God is just as valid and sacred as his connection with God. This child ought to be praising God that he was even born, given his mother is a lesbian. He ought to be praising God that she has fed, protected, taught, nurtured, provided a safe home, provided cloths and loved him for all these years. He ought to be praising God that God has given his Mom a special person to love — a person who will not hurt him, beat him, or abuse him. He ought to be praising God that his Mother has found a way to express her love that is uplifting and real. He ought to go back and re-read the 10 commandments: “Thou shall honor thy Father and Mother.” There is nothing in the commandments that say the child gets to disown or otherwise disrespect their parents because they don’t care for the way they express their love.
If your partner can stand up to her son then stand with her and support her. If she can’t and won’t then shake the dust from your feet and move on — as hard as that is to do. For if your partner is going to live her life in fear of her son’s threats then the two of you have no life and you owe to yourself to get one.
God Bless,
Pastor Paul
Editor-in-Chief of Whosoever and Founding and Senior Pastor of Gentle Spirit Christian Church of Atlanta, Rev. Paul M. Turner (he/him) grew up in suburban Chicago and was ordained by the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches in 1989. He and his husband Bill have lived in metro Atlanta since 1994, have been in a committed partnership since the early 1980s and have been legally married since 2015.