Religion and dating: secret interfaith lesbians
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Why do Jess and Sarah have to keep their relationship a secret from their families?
Imagine having to keep your relationship a secret from your family for fear that they would disown you if they found out who you were dating. We received a text a few weeks ago from a lesbian couple who were dating in secret because of their family's disapproval. It's a real Juliet and Juliet story, so I went to find out more. The Hookup
Love
and ******. On Triple J. Warning. Sex and adult themes. I took the train an hour out of Sydney to meet Jess and Sarah. They're a young lesbian couple who spend the majority of their relationship in their car. It's the only place that they can be together because Jess's parents are Catholic and Sarah's a Muslim and neither families know about their relationship.
Growing up in a Lebanese family, especially with girls, your parents always bring their girls up to aspire to marriage, aspire to be the best housewife, be the best wife, have a husband, have kids, have
family. My family is Sunni, which is the most common sect. I consider myself atheist, something my mum's uncomfortable with, something my father doesn't even know about. When are you
going to get married? When are you going to get married? This boy's nice, this boy's nice, this boy's nice, but not so much. run
away
with your secret girlfriend to a random country
and try to
live your life that's a big no you
know but
it's
saying that even if I was male with my background it'd still be hard for us to be together because her family's Christian and my family's Muslim
my parents are here in Australia because of the war in Lebanon you know and the war in Lebanon was between Christians and Muslims you know and they can't seem to get their head around that They're different. There are different kinds of Muslims. They're not all the same. But my parents, you know, they suffered death in the family because of that war.
And even if I was a male Christian Lebanese guy, we still wouldn't be able to have sleepovers or be open about the fact that we have a sex life or anything. So either way, it's not an open or comfortable scenario. It's just we happen to stumble upon the worst combination.
I know people... Plenty, plenty of females, even males who are, you know, bisexuals or homosexual. And not one of them, it's very rare to, for any of them to come out to their parents. You know, it's not accepting whatsoever in our culture and within our religion. They just like to believe that, you know, each of their child, you know, has that idea, no sex before marriage. Whereas plenty of us,
I know both of our parents, both sets of parents think we're virgins.
How do their different religious backgrounds (Catholic vs. Muslim) affect their dating life?
Yeah. With guys or girls. It's hard because we always have to wait until it's quite late because otherwise there's traffic, there's people obviously. And the chance of getting caught is pretty high. So we've had to tint both of our car windows. And we're pretty familiar with the spots where we go. The people that live there, we kind of know even their times that they come home and the cars that they drive and what to watch out for. How often it is. And we're not even like nymphos or anything, but that's just the life. It's just a healthy
sex life, but it's just difficult. We can't have a healthy sex life because... We
have to
constantly
hide it. Even if we're not doing it, we still hang out in the car a lot. Because we
can... Even if we just want to snuggle or, I don't know, just
chill. Just be alone. Be
alone and have our alone time just as a normal couple. The only place we can do it is here in the car because in our area we know so many people. Like you can't exactly hold hands
and... Oh, yeah. Relax. Even then we look over our shoulders. Like today when we kissed hello... We, like, had to do a quick and then a quick peck and then
look again. It's a constant thing in your
mind.
You always have to be careful of who's around.
We're parked in a dead-end street. It's an industrial area near the highway where they've spent a lot of time together. It's dark, there are no houses around. It was where they used to go to have sex until it became dangerous.
So we were in the back seat and we were still undressed and it was probably like 2.30, 3 in the morning on like a Saturday night or a Friday night and we were just hanging out and then some cars rocked up and immediately like we scrambled to like cover our chests.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
Why do Jess and Sarah have to keep their relationship a secret from their families?
0:00–2:49
2
How do their different religious backgrounds (Catholic vs. Muslim) affect their dating life?
2:49–4:49
3
Why do the couple spend most of their time together in a car?
4:49–6:45
4
What happened during the frightening car‑park encounter with the stranger?
6:45–9:50
5
How does Jess’s upbringing in a Lebanese Muslim family shape her view of love and marriage?
9:50–10:42