Loving God and loving my (gay) sister are not mutually exclusive

When my sister Lynn was born, I loved her as fiercely and profoundly as a two-and-a-half year old was capable of loving.  I cannot remember life before Lynn; in my earliest memory, I am folding a diaphanous cloth nappy with my chubby fingers and handing it to my mother, who navigates a safety pin around Lynn’s kicking legs. 

Lynn and I shared tricycles and tracksuits, picked fussily at the same meals, took turns thumping out ‘Three Blind Mice’ on our Yamaha piano, and comforted each other if one of us awoke from a nightmare.

We were a tiny team tethered together by our hands and hearts.  If our mother smacked one of us, the other wept.  When she was five, Lynn was cradling an armful of stuffed toys when she tumbled down two steps and snapped her humerus.  I cried for the whole drive to the hospital and, on our arrival at Emergency, the nurses were confused as to which of the wailing children needed medical attention.

When I learned to drive, Lynn was laughing in the backseat as I manoeuvred my shuddering hatchback emblazoned with L-plates into a bay in an empty car park.  After I passed my driving test, I got Lynn a job at a Chinese take away place, where we donned grease-stained aprons and squashed honey chicken into plastic containers.

One summer evening, when crickets stalked the streets and a sultry breeze meandered through fragrant eucalypts, I bought Lynn her first gin and tonic.  We swirled the ice in our tumblers as we watched men leering at tanned girls in billowing maxi-dresses.  From first drinks to first hangovers and boyfriends to breakups, my sister and I have rubbed each other’s backs, offered tissues, shared tubs of mint choc chip ice cream and huddled under blankets to watch Love Actually.   

When Lynn told our parents she was gay, I was sitting beside her at our parents’ dining table.  Our flustered father spilled a whole tin of panda-shaped biscuits, leapt wordlessly from his seat and locked himself in the bathroom. 

The church-sanctioned petitions about marriage laws that land in my inbox, the inflammatory news headlines I read and the robust dinner party debates about ‘gay rights’ I hear do not change these two truths in my life: I love Jesus and I love my sister.  

I want my sister to be happy like I want to take my next breath.  If Lynn’s visions for her future include exchanging vows with someone, pushing a pram, reading Hairy McClarey picture books and volunteering at the school canteen, then that is what I want for her.  In the meantime, our lives remain entangled like dreadlocks on an old hippie.  I laugh when she recounts giving driving lessons to her girlfriend, who, in return, suppresses her vegetarian sensibilities to cook lamb for Lynn.  They hold hands on Ferris wheels and help each other to assemble Ikea bed frames.  They are too entranced watching Disney’s Beauty and the Beast together to be (as some may suggest) threatening the moral fabric of society.

People sometimes seem to think that being a Christian means I can only love part of my sister:

But I think that God is bigger than our prejudices, fears and misunderstandings.