Ace Week 2021 – Religious Aces

The theme of Ace Week 2021 is “Beyond Awareness” so we wanted to focus on the struggles and issues of specific parts of the ace community – people who are often overlooked by mainstream allosexual people talking about asexuality and even hidden within ace communities.

Religious asexual people exist, but are not usually heard from or seen, so we wanted to highlight some of their voices. Thank you to all who volunteered their time and shared their experiences.

Introductions

My name is Aley O’Mara (they/them). I identify as ace, queer, bi, and sapphic. I’m an agnostic Catholic.

My name is Casper, and I am religious and ace – raised Baptist and currently practicing witchcraft.

My name is Eljay (she/her). I’m grayromantic and asexual. I’m also Roman Catholic, and I attended Catholic schools until senior high school.

My name is Jenna DeWitt, and I am aromantic asexual and a progressive and affirming United Methodist. (Affirming means all queer people are fully equal to non-queer people, and there are no restrictions or rules based on orientation or gender identity.) You can find more resources at my blog: https://invisiblecakesociety.com/

My name is Joshua Godfrey and I am an aroace Seventh Day Adventist.

My name is Justin, and I’m asexual. I identify as an Eclectic Christian with an interest in spiritualism, and a Roman Catholic background.

I’m Lari, I’m aromantic asexual, and I’m Christian.

How does your religion intersect with your orientation?

AOM: It took me so long to even wonder if I was asexual because I was good at being chaste! I owe a lot of friends my apologies for thinking they were just bad at being Christian.

Casper: I was raised Southern Baptist (in southeastern Indiana) and I was expected to be a cishet allo woman to grow up, marry a man, have kids, etc. Now I practice solitary witchcraft, and in doing so I have full control of my own magics and whatnot. That did help me reclaim my sexuality as well!

Eljay: We are taught to keep our virginity for the person we marry. So back then I thought maybe I wasn’t sexually attracted because the Catholic teachings were ingrained in me. Maybe I’ll experience sexual attraction if I get married and try sex. I asked myself those when I was still discovering.

Jenna: Both my faith and my orientation are important parts of my identity. I love the ways affirming Methodism and its openness parallel the openness of queer community. Aromantic asexual people and Methodists both take friendship seriously, especially cross-generational relationships and how we can go beyond the amatonormative expectations of society.

JG: My church, to my knowledge, has not done anything for or against aspecs, specifically. But is not affirming of other LBGTQ identities. 

Justin: At first, my religion set me up with toxic personal expectations of sexual behaviour that inflicted a lot of lasting damage. Now, a rethinking of my religious beliefs has led me to feel more at peace and be more honest with my sexual self.

Lari: That’s a complicated question I’d need a whole paragraph to answer. 

How is your experience in ace communities impacted by your religion or your experience with other religious people impacted by your orientation?

AOM: When I was rigidly observant, I had a hard time interacting with married Catholic aces, because Catholic doctrine does not recognize the validity of sexually abstinent marriages. In my desperation to reconcile orthodox Catholicism with asexuality, I really rubbed people the wrong way. I’ve had a hard time interacting with straight Catholics, too, because my worldview is so fundamentally queer that we’re not on the same page with our relationship to Catholic doctrine.

Casper: The amount of hetero-normative allo-sexual leaning nature of popular modern witchcraft can make the view of asexual & aromantic people as… not great. At least in my experience? It’s been hard to connect with other witches when the ‘sexuality’ was supposed to be the first thing… I’m a divination and healing magics witch, sex doesn’t play into that.

Jenna: It often feels like being caught in the middle. Outside of my specific group of queer Christians, Christianity as a whole has been really hostile to queer people, obviously, and understandably, it can be difficult trying to find queer people who have good associations with religion and want to hear about that part of my life as part of our relationship. In the past, I have had to keep things separate because neither side wants or understands the whole, real me.

JG: My religion is not queer affirming but there is an online group called SDA Kinship that is.

Justin: I feel a great deal of solidarity with other queer people of faith, because of the long-held perception that queerness and religious belief are usually mutually exclusive. With other religious people, I often find myself feeling largely unsafe to discuss my sexual identity.

Lari: Sometimes queer communities can be very hostile towards religion, and while I understand there’s a lot of history there, it makes me feel I either need to hide my religion or have to justify why I am religious. 

Does your religious doctrine or community have a specific stance on asexuality? If so, what is it and how do you interact with it? 

AOM: At the doctrinal level, Catholicism does not recognize the existence of asexuality. Heterosexual attraction is considered to be part of natural law, and all deviations from it are deemed “disordered.” Asexuality has not been explicitly named as a disordered attraction, but it falls under the same logic as homosexuality. According to current Catholic doctrine, all humans are sexual, and that sexuality should be contained in reproductively-oriented heterosexual marriage or vowed celibacy. This is a huge part of the reason that I am no longer an observant Catholic.

Casper: The amount of hetero-normative allo-sexual leaning nature of popular modern witchcraft can make the view of asexual & aromantic people as… not great. At least in my experience? It’s been hard to connect with other witches when the ‘sexuality’ was supposed to be the first thing… I’m a divination and healing magics witch, sex doesn’t play into that. 

Jenna: United Methodism doesn’t have a stance on it, and my churches have been welcoming, though usually new to the concept. Outside of that, I feel like I’m making that space and community with other queer Christians, especially on Queer Christian Twitter, a Twitter list that has more than 400 members. And I’m part of a project specifically for affirming Wesleyans (which Methodism is a part of) called Yet Alive Magazine. It’s important to me that these are in part aro ace created and led, so no one has to wonder if queer identities like ours are included in that welcome.

JG: There is no official stance on aspecs. I have met with misunderstanding. One man seemed to think it was a dangerous denial of sexuality.

Justin: My religious background doesn’t have an explicit stance on asexuality, but it does have one generally on queerness. Identifying as queer myself, I’ve come to largely ignore and disregard it. I don’t let it be a barrier to my spiritual experience.

Lari: Neither of the two main Christian communities I am part of have a specific stance on asexuality, but one of them is very open to queer identities and I am confident that asexuality would be seen as another way God made us all different. The other community is…not like that.  

How could ace communities better support you?

AOM: I no longer need religious support, but it would have been amazing if folks recognized that, although “acting” upon asexuality is not explicitly forbidden, there is no recognized place in Catholic doctrine for aces — especially aces who are not called to religious vows, ordination, or having children.

Casper: I would just like to tell my fellow ace witches- whatever your relationships with sex, sexuality, and romantic stuff are: we are still witches. And beautifully powerful ones. <3

Jenna: Show up and be visible in your own religious spaces as your full self, if it’s safe and healthy for you to do so. Asexuality activism is about making your own seat at the table because you can be sure that seat didn’t exist before you got there. My work is to show up and be the representation I want to see. If you want to see more acceptance of asexuality in your religious or nonreligious spaces, you can’t wait to see someone else do it first. Speak up, be the first ace someone knows, and you get to define the terms as a member of the community. Make your own seat, and even your own table if you aren’t welcome at theirs. I promise there are more of us out here.

JG: I would like to see less anti-Christian rhetoric. Not all of us are anti-LGBTQ and I feel that those are have good intentions. They want you in heaven and not hell. In their minds, this means you cannot be LBGTQ. 

Justin: A greater discussion on the intersection of spirituality, religion and asexuality would be a good start, followed by more efforts on the parts of both queer-affirming faith traditions and the asexual community to reach out to each other and establish more dialogue.

Lari: Accept that one, religious and queerphobic are not synonyms; and two, pressure to have sex definitely exists in religion, even if it might look different.

What do you wish ace people knew about you or other religious aces?

AOM: Asexuality is not coterminous with celibacy, but asexuality is not mutually exclusive from celibacy. For some aces (today and historically), celibacy does offer a respite from compulsory sexuality.

Casper: A beautiful thing about being asexual and/or aromantic is that we actively examine our relationships with these parts of ourselves. We can also do this with spirituality and religion: whatever your relationships with these things are, it doesn’t change one’s validity as being asexual and/or aromantic.

Jenna: Don’t assume all religious people are conservative or nonaffirming or that they are all straight or harmful or whatever you grew up with. Speaking more specifically, Christianity is a lot bigger than what you’ve been exposed to, whether in a church as a kid or on TV or from the evangelicals in the news. Queer Christians are out here living full, vibrant, whole lives, and it’s not easy, but we don’t have to compromise either part of our identity. Often that faith looks very different from the one we were raised in, but we don’t let that limit us or drive us out of what is rightfully ours if we want to claim it. You don’t have to choose between your religion and your orientation, but you may have to have some hard conversations, learn a lot from those who have come before you, find online community, and reevaluate your assumptions. It’s work worth doing.

JG: I wish aces knew religious does not always mean aggressively dogmatic.

Justin: I wish people understood that there is plenty of room for religious and spiritual asexuals/aspec folx – especially those from religious traditions that have historically been seen as queerphobic – at the table of discussions of asexual issues.

What do you wish allo people knew about you or other religious aces?

AOM: Ditto the above!

Casper: See above

Eljay: I mainly just want allo people to understand that marriage will not let us rethink sex.

Jenna: We are not just celibate straight people, straight people who couldn’t find a partner, or waiting for marriage. We’re not secretly gay and just trying to get by easier. We’re not gay people who have chosen not to “act on it.” Besides the fact that some aces do have sex, regardless of marital status, it’s about attraction, not action. We are not “just straight” (alloheteroromantic alloheterosexual) because we don’t have the required attraction that would make us straight. We aren’t afraid of sex or commitment or intimacy or anything like that. We aren’t trying to be pure or holier than anyone. In fact, purity culture hurt us in really unique ways because it told us we had to be waiting for marriage, that attraction was mandatory, and that we had to want sex so badly that we’d need to sign pledges and engage in lots of rules to prevent us from having it. I wish allo people would listen to our experiences and teach their churches, in all ages, that it’s okay to not have romantic or sexual attraction. 

You can find more resources at my blog: https://invisiblecakesociety.com/

JG: I wish allos knew we exist. I thought I was straight until I was 37 because my kink involves women. I tried to force romantic and sexual feelings on myself. If more knew about us, less people would have my experience.

Justin: Allo people need to understand that asexuality has nothing to do with one’s religious traditions. It isn’t about celibacy or chastity. It is about liberation from the same restrictive norms that force toxic sexuality on everyone – allos, queer folx, and ace folx alike.

Lari: The main one is simply that we aren’t asexual because we’re religious, or vice versa. It also doesn’t make me a better Christian just because I’m asexual.