The voluntary bondservant

If you buy a Hebrew servant, he is to serve you for six years. But in the seventh year, he shall go free, without paying anything… If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the woman and her children shall belong to her master, and only the man shall go free.

But if the servant declares, ‘I love my master and my wife and children and do not want to go free,’ then his master must take him before the judges. He shall take him to the door or the doorpost and pierce his ear with an awl. Then he will be his servant for life.

(Parshat Mishpatim, Exodus 21.2-6)

Like many of the laws set out in the Torah, this one has long seemed strange to me. The bondservant is forced to make what appears to be an impossible choice. If he values his freedom and wants to enjoy the reward of his years of labour, he must abandon his wife and young children. If he cannot bear to be parted from his family, he must give up his freedom for good. He is to declare that he loves his master, but suppose his love for his family is so deep that he cannot bring himself to leave them despite his master?

Is liberty to be valued even more highly than family? Or is family so precious that it is worth the price of liberty? According to Jewish tradition, the servant who gives up his freedom has chosen a human master over God, and the piercing of his ear is a sign that he has lowered himself in this way. But in the Christian tradition, the servant who devotes himself to master and family is commended and his devotion is seen as foreshadowing Jesus’ devotion to God.

Recently it occurred to me that my own situation is in some ways parallel to that of the Hebrew bondservant. In finally coming to terms with my sexuality and fully accepting myself for who I am, I have experienced a strong sense of liberation. More and more, I feel free from the oppression of shame and self-condemnation. But long before I began to approach that point, I married a wonderful woman and we had two beautiful children. So how can I reconcile my love for my family with my new-found freedom and self-acceptance? Can I fully embrace that freedom and still have my earlobe nailed to the doorpost?

Mixed marriage

We had been a couple for over two years. We had flown back and forth, written enough letters to fill a room, and run up scandalously high telephone bills. She had crossed a continent and a border to be with me. Yet when we announced our engagement to her parents, after a stunned silence, her mother’s response was, “But it will be a… mixed marriage.” Little did she know.

My wife and I had both been fortunate to grow up in racially diverse, relatively tolerant communities, where children from a kaleidoscope of ethnicities, cultures and religions learned and played together, and to a large degree, saw these differences as no more important than differences in hairstyle or eye colour. We had both tended to be drawn to children from other backgrounds, and to us, ideas of racial superiority or segregation seemed as bizarre as belief in a flat earth. I can remember being dumbfounded when a tawny-skinned member of the Nation of Islam at a New York subway station shook his head at us and said, “It’s too bad people don’t know the Word.” Seeing our puzzled expressions, he added: “Don’t you know you’re not supposed to mingle the seed?”

Needless to say, there was not the same tolerance in our communities when it came to sexual diversity. Not only was there severe pressure in society at large to conform to gender-based expectations, but in our religious community, these expectations took on a moral dimension. There, any sexuality outside marriage was anathema, and homosexuality was so far beyond the pale that it hardly merited a mention. It went without saying that such a thing did not, could not exist within the church.

Having experienced the pain and dehumanization of hiding my own identity in such a hostile environment, I have become extremely wary of orthodoxies of all kinds. Clearly we need to stand up against injustice and oppression of all kinds. At the same time, I have come to believe that to a large extent, what is important is to be sure of one’s own values and to try to be true to them, while respecting and trying to understand those of others. To me it may seem quaint or odd or silly or just plain wrong that my neighbour adheres to strict dietary laws or doesn’t participate in politics or remains celibate. But so long as she isn’t trying to force me to live as she does, as we get to know each other, we can be enriched by our differences. That’s the kind of world I’m hoping for.

Coming out of the closet and staying in the house

I have been inching out of the closet for a long time now. I came out to my wife in a moment of crisis eight years ago, and her loving support and empathy were amazing. I think we both thought at the time that simply removing that secret from between us would strengthen our relationship and everything would be fine. We settled back into our life together with little change. But as time went on I began to realize that I needed to do more. As I became more anxious and my low moods more frequent, my wife saw the connection and urged me to see a therapist. Typically, I procrastinated, but finally last December, my wife gave me the name of a therapist recommended by her counsellor, and I made an appointment.

Although I had already begun the process of shedding the sense of shame I had been carrying so long, the experience of talking freely with the therapist, a gay man himself, was incredibly liberating. At the first session, he asked me where I wanted to go with the therapy — what my goal was — and I realized that I didn’t know. I said at this stage what I needed most was to have the opportunity to talk, to share my thoughts and experiences. I explained that I felt fully committed to my marriage and that this was about my inner journey of accepting myself.

Suddenly, I started allowing myself to explore a part of me that I had severely repressed for over twenty years. I began devouring gay-themed literature, discovering E.M. Forster, Gore Vidal, James Baldwin, Jamie O’Neill, Christopher Bram and Shyam Selvadurai. Soon I felt an irrepressible urge to come out to my close friends. I started with a couple my wife and I have been very close to since we were first married. Their response was overwhelmingly supportive, and they showed great insight into what I have experienced. Since then, I have come out to two other couples who have also shown tremendous acceptance, love and generosity. The fact that this has come from members of my generally conservative religious community has been especially gratifying. What was also important about this experience was that I was able to express to all these friends my acceptance of myself as a gay man – that not only am I unable to become something else, but that I see no need to.

I’m under no illusion that I have completed this process. I know my self-acceptance is fragile and I need the constant reinforcement provided by those who are close to me.

Strangely, though, in parallel with the sense of exhilaration I have felt as I have begun to be freed from the burdens of guilt, shame and self-doubt, I have also felt an increasing sense of isolation and loneliness. For various reasons, I have been reluctant to find opportunities to meet other gay men. Yet my need to do so is like a lead weight on my chest. This feels like another barrier — another closet door.

When most gay men come out of the closet, they are making a statement not only about who they are, but also about who they love and how they live. For me, though, it’s really just about what goes on in my head. And that seems somehow less significant and more private — not the sort of thing you share with most people.

So, is it possible to come out of the closet and stay in the house? I think so, but I’m still trying to work out how.