By Nathaniel Peters and Julia D. Hejduk, Public Discourse
Human history is a long, messy love story that culminates in the eternal marriage between God and his bride, the Church.
In this month’s Q&A, our own Nathaniel Peters interviews Julia Hejduk about her most recent book, co-authored with Gregory Coles: Sexuality Beyond Sex: An Unexpected Conversation on Embodiment, Identity, and Desire.
Nathaniel Peters: It’s rare to find two authors with such different backgrounds—Catholic/Protestant, married/single, straight/gay—coming together to write a book on sexuality. How do you define sexuality, and what prompted the two of you to embark on this project?
Julia Hejduk: Our definition of sexuality is the one most ordinary people would accept: the desire and capacity for sexual union. How we got into this project is a bit of a longer story.
In 2018, my sixteen-year-old son Nathaniel came out to me as gay. As a faithful Catholic who was (and is!) convinced of the truth of the traditional sexual ethic, I had no idea what to say or do, aside from assuring him of my unconditional love. For the next four years—which were deeply painful, and also a time of much growth in my relationship with God—we didn’t talk about his sexuality any more. Then a friend gave me a book called Tenderness: A Gay Christian’s Guide to Unlearning Rejection and Experiencing God’s Extravagant Love, by Eve Tushnet, a Catholic convert who embraces the Church’s teaching and identifies as a (now celibate) lesbian.
I apologized to my son. He gave me the biggest hug he ever has. And I dove into researching this strange new Christian community I hadn’t known existed.
In October 2022, I went to the annual conference of Revoice, an organization for LGBTQ+ and same-sex attracted Christians who believe in the traditional sexual ethic. I went around introducing myself as “a prodigal mother of a gay son.” There I met Greg Coles, one of the most radiant lovers of Jesus I know. We started sharing our writings, and eventually we realized that God was calling us to take our conversations public—that the two of us “gathered together in his name” could unleash God’s grace and glory far more powerfully than either of us could do on our own.