Nathanial Green
I’m Nathanial Green. I’m living in Nashville, Tennessee, working on staff at GracePointe Church having recently completed my undergraduate degree in music and worship studies at Liberty University, of all places. I grew up in a conservative, evangelical family in a farming town in Michigan – yet, as fate would have it, I’m gay.
After a year and a half of asking questions, undergoing a deconstruction of my faith, and losing everything I thought was secure, I’m writing about my experiences and thoughts from my weird little perspective. I’m caught between seemingly opposed realities, trying to make things better for LGBTQ people like myself in spaces where they may not be welcomed. I recently married my husband Elliot who I had met at Liberty, and we’re living the life we’d hoped to build for ourselves: out and happy with an affirming church home.
by Nathanial Green
I’ve been intending to write about my sex-positive beliefs for some time, and this post has been precipitated and sponsored by STDcheck.com, an organization dedicated to safe and healthy sexuality by providing private, affordable tests for sexually transmitted diseases. Their work is important! Furthermore, anything I write here is a personal position and recollection of my experiences–not a reflection of my employer(s).
Sex.
It’s wonderful, gross, beautiful, entirely underwhelming, and pretty fucking great.
Up until a certain point in my adolescent development, I prided myself on my relative “purity” to that of my classmates. This, of course, was complicated by my confusing thoughts and feelings directed at male peers, late-night internet searches, and varied experiences throughout my pubescent years–still, I’d never slept with a girl nor provided myself any opportunity to.
My virginity was in tact, whatever that meant.
When my awareness of my queerness expanded in college through the painful introduction of that nebulous concept we call love, I realized things were pretty dang complicated for me. And after I began dating the boy who would become my husband, the hard truth made itself known:
I spent my whole life guarding myself from experiences I would never have nor want.