Dan Savage provides a solid (if maybe overly generous…from the sound of it – I haven’t read the book*) review of Jeff Chu’s Does Jesus Really Love Me?: A Gay Christian’s Pilgrimage in Search of God in America. Here’s part:
…In the most moving chapters, Chu profiles gays and lesbians who are struggling to reconcile their faiths with their sexualities, some more successfully than others. Particularly heartbreaking is Kevin Olson, a “homosexual but not gay” man living in Minnesota. Olson chose a life of celibacy and community musical theater. He’s never had a boyfriend. He’s never had sex with anyone. But Olson’s honesty about his sexuality makes his Christian friends uncomfortable, so he no longer attends Bible study, and he stopped performing in musicals because of questions — “voiced and unvoiced” — about his sexual orientation.*I do hate that Savage includes a remark to the effect that Chu's more callous and uncompassionate statements show him at his "least Christian." Argh. No.
“Sometimes, I do feel cheated because I haven’t been able to experience certain things in life, but then I remember that it’s not about me,” Olson tells Chu. “As a believer in Christ, you accept that this isn’t all there is to life. There’s a life to come. That will be a happy time.”
Olson attempted suicide in 1997 after his twin brother died and he developed a crush on a male co-worker — two events that Olson seems to view as similarly traumatic….
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