Two of a Kind

For my norm violation, I attended church with a fellow classmate. My classmate and I, who are both heterosexual, acted as though we were a homosexual couple who wanted to incorporate religion into our lives. My classmate chose a Lutheran church for us to attend, because she had been raised in the traditions of that faith and she was familiar with their practices. The church that we attended had a very small congregation and was located in Canastota, New York.

While my classmate and I were driving to Canastota, we discussed our plan. We decided that we would hold hands as we entered the church, give subtle cues that we were in a relationship during the service, and then again hold hands as we exited. We also created our story just in case anyone asked. We decided that we had been together for seven years, and that both of us were originally from Kansas, but had moved to Syracuse to attend law school.

After we had our story down, I began thinking about all the possible reactions we could encounter during the services. My primary concern was not offending the members of the congregation. The thought of offending someone was almost enough to deter me from following through with the experiment. However, I chose to go forward because I had never let the possibility of offending others deter me in my ordinary life.

Once we arrived at the church the adrenaline began flowing and we walked into the church holding hands. The service had already started, and when we entered two men handed us hymn books, but because we entered in a hurry I did not have time to see how they reacted to us holding hands. Once we made our way to a pew and began singing the hymn, I noticed that each of us was shaking like a leaf.

As the service continued I found myself beginning to relax and I was able to look around and see how people were reacting to our subtle cues. The biggest reaction came from the teenage boys sitting across the aisle. The boys kept looking at us and snickering and then turning away when I made eye contact with them. Just as I was settling in and beginning to observe the congregation's reactions, the pastor began to prepare the communion. At seeing this, my mind began to race because not only was I pretending to be homosexual, but I was also trying to pretend like I knew what I was doing in a church. I was not raised in a religious family, and somehow before I knew what was happening, I found my self kneeling at the altar receiving a blessing from the pastor. Suddenly my norm violation had shifted from attending church as a homosexual, to being the only person in the room who had never been baptized. For the remainder of the service, I tried to decide which made me feel like more of an outsider: pretending to be homosexual, or never having been baptized.

In reflecting on my norm violation, what struck me most was the congregation's general refusal to even accept as a possibility that my classmate and I could be in a homosexual relationship. Although the congregation was extremely friendly and very welcoming, I felt an unspoken pressure to conform to the church's norms. I knew that their faith did not accept homosexuality, and because I knew this, I could not help but feel uncomfortable because I was pretending to be that which they viewed as sinful and wrong. After completing this experiment, I really cannot imagine the conflicting feelings that homosexuals must feel when attempting to incorporate organized religion into their lives.