"Bridges Across the Divide"

[Diane Vera]

In a thread "On Mel White and Soulforce" which has been deleted on GCN, Justin gave the following history of the terms "Side A" and "Side B":

Side A and Side B are terms first coined by an organization called Bridges Across the Divide.

Unlike GCN, Bridges Across has a much broader focus. They include non-Christians and ex-gays, two groups GCN doesn't cater to. Their definitions of "Side A" and "Side B" referred specifically to your position on the morality of gay sex. Therefore, "Side A" included not only proponents of gay marriage, but also people who support recreational sex. And "Side B" included not only proponents of celibacy for gays, but also supporters of the ex-gay movement.

What Eric calls "Side X" would actually have been considered a subset of "Side B" in Bridges Across language. They defined the sides so that everyone would fit into one or the other, unless you were simply undecided on the issue.

When the terms migrated over here to GCN, we began using them in a more narrowly-defined context. Even though "Side B" as a term would include ex-gays, GCN's policies don't allow for ex-gay support, so a GCN SideB-er (supporting celibacy) is only a portion of the worldwide SideB-ers.

So it would be fair to say that Side B members at GCN support celibacy, not ex-gay therapy. But that's because of who GCN is, not because of what the term "Side B" means.

Does that make sense?

Now, from my perspective, I agree that dividing the world into three categories (A, B, X) makes more sense for us, since the celibacy path is really a very different one from the ex-gay path. But I don't want to redefine "Side B" to do that, since we didn't create that term, and I'm afraid it would cause confusion. When I do public speaking on this topic, I often call them things like "the relationship path, the celibacy path, and the ex-gay path," but if someone has ideas for catchier names, I'm all for it!

In a soon-to-be-deleted thread here on Soulforce, I mentioned that I had found Bridges Across the Divide (http://www.bridges-across.org/) via Google. Looks like a very interesting place, offhand. I would be very interested to hear what others here think of it.

In my opinion the site is a bit overly dogmatic about "Method." However, their rules look like good guidelines for dialogue.

[webpoet1]

I was involved with the "Bridges Across the Divide" forums for a while: several years ago, and found that they were a very nice group of people.
They seemed to have no agenda other than dialogue and learning about each other. For the first time, I, as an LGBT person, was able to talk in a friendly way with people who identified as ex-gay, and meet them as individuals and found it very healing because they weren't trying to accomplish or achieve anything: but just to talk and see each other's humanity.

My lack of involvement with them currently is more a matter of lack of time than anything else, but now that you have mentioned it, I should sign up on their forum again and see what is happening there.



Laurie

[NathanATX]

In a thread "On Mel White and Soulforce" which has been deleted on GCN, Justin gave the following history of the terms "Side A" and "Side B":

In a soon-to-be-deleted thread here on Soulforce, I mentioned that I had found Bridges Across the Divide (http://www.bridges-across.org/) via Google. Looks like a very interesting place, offhand. I would be very interested to hear what others here think of it.

In my opinion the site is a bit overly dogmatic about "Method." However, their rules look like good guidelines for dialogue.

It is my personal, individually-held opinion that there really is no divide needing to be bridged. I think the separation of Side A and Side B into two equally valid paths is an incorrect paradigm. I believe that "most" Side B people are only transitionally Side B. It's a "safe" place to rest while they discover more about their sexuality and it's impact on their lives.

I understand someone needing to be "Side B" and would do my best to encourage them in that only as long as they were truly happy and peaceful doing so.

I worry that "Side B" is merely a step above "ex-gay." I worry about the stress, guilt and pain a "Side B-er" might experience when their desire for love and intimacy begins to outweigh their desire to abide by a very restrictive code.

[scott snedeker]

:D :D pagans have more fun:lol:

[davidb]

Agreed, Scott! Agreed!

And if you want to get all biblical about it, the phrase that comes to mind is "when I was a child, I thought/spoke/acted like a child. When I grew up, I put away childish things."

To me, trying to dialogue with folks who still will throw scripture passages in your face is a pretty pointless exercise. But again, that's just me.

__________________________________________________ _
What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us...
--Emerson

[webpoet1]

It has been a long time since I've visited the Bridges website, but from what I recall of it, the reason for the definitions of Side A and Side B were to avoid using emotionally loaded terms, and/or to avoid using terms that different people would define differently and thus misunderstand when used by someone else with a different connotation, by creating terms that had more precision.

Laurie