This is the second half of the section aimed at the straight christian who has to deal with non-straight christians in any kind of way. Also, this might turn into a bit of a rant. You have been warned. I can be a perfectly pleasant person but some things need to be addressed. My latter slash rant is divided into four sections. Please read them.
You have no idea
First and foremost, you need to accept that you have limited authority on this. In two ways: You don’t know what we know and you don’t feel what we feel.
You don’t know what we know refers to the basics. There are homosexual people, there are bisexual people, there are transgender people and there are a lot of people in between. These people have not chosen to be “this way”. It simply wouldn’t make logical sense: Why would people take time to figure out what they are if they could simply pick and choose. Why would it take me years to realise why I’m different and unable to have the same emotions most other boys have towards girls, if I just chose to be gay? Also, why would people choose something that’ll get them bullied, insulted and ostracised? Why would the children of Christians who know that their lives will get so much harder possibly choose anything but a straight orientation? I would have loved to be bisexual or simply straight but I’m not. I had to deal with that and now you need to deal with it in the sense that we share a religion and I’m not leaving anytime soon. In case you genuinely think one just chooses their orientation, I am not sure what else I can say to you. Maybe you should just give it a try and see if it works that way? Don’t worry, what happens during your hour of being gay stays in your hour of being gay.
My second point is that you don’t feel what we feel. Most people who think they have to argue about LBGT+ issues in church and write fancy essays about it are straight. They say smart sentences like “everyone is tempted”, which is at best a weird statement.
John Shore wrote about this:
Evangelicals are positively enamored of this new argument. If I’ve heard it once, I’ve heard it ten thousand times. We all have. You whisper “gay” into the ear of a sleeping evangelical, and there’s an excellent chance that he or she will start murmuring in their sleep, “Just like any other sinful temptation. We’re all sinners. Must resist temptation.”
Why is this a weird argument? Besides the fact that it normally comes from someone with a spouse and kids? Someone who also most likely married rather early lecturing me about how great celibacy is?
When the straight christian is tempted, the answer is likely to be “not now” or “not her” or “not like this”. Resisting sexual temptation normally comes in the form of a temporary inconvenience. That’s what I mean when I say that you don’t feel what I feel! If I believe more traditional interpretations of the bible, the answer I get is just “no”. If I genuinely subscribe to conservative evangelical theology, which many gay Christians do, there is no plan B. So stop acting as if you are tempted in the same way I supposedly am. You simply aren’t. I’m not trying to look ultra-holy by proving to you how non-tempted I am by women either. Accept that you don’t know what it feels like and open your mind ever so slightly. Don’t worry. Your brain won’t fall out.
Love means love means love
The second part of my letter/rant to straight Christians comes in the form of a definition: Love means love. Means love. If Jesus calls us to love, he means exactly that.
And yes, I can hear some of the arguments in my head already, so let me do you a favour: Sometimes, the pro LGBT+ crowd makes it too easy on themselves. “Didn’t Jesus tell everyone that love is great or something like that…?” Those arguments are ridiculous. Point taken. I don’t use every ridiculous argument every anti-LGBT+ Christian ever made (example) against you, so don’t do that to me either.
Also, on the exact same level of the ridiculousness scale as the “isn’t God love or something like that”-argument we can find arguments like “I am loving my child by not accepting them and throwing them out of the house”. No! Just no. If Jesus meant that when he called us to love, he would have said so. Biblical literalism and stuff… The Gospels keep talking about the unconditional love of Jesus. Unconditional love comes without buts. That’s the point.
You simply don’t get to redefine love until it fits your purposes the same way I don’t get to redefine love to fit mine. Christians are called to love their neighbour as themselves. We are called to love our enemies. We are called to love our children. Love, love, love. Simple, pure love. God loves you as much as he loves me and as much he loves the worst mass murderer ever. That radical love is the foundation of the Christian faith and we are called to imitate it as closely as humanly possible.
The doctrine of speaking the “truth” in “love” has caused immeasurable harm. Christian parents are afraid of simply loving their LGBT+ children because if they love them too much, love could look like affirmation and that could send everyone straight to hell or worse: It could get you thrown out of your church. For decades now, Christian parents, friends and leaders have chosen to err on the side of disapproval and the cold shoulder in order to avoid looking as if they affirm something they could get in trouble for. I know, precedence isn’t evidence, but this article is pretty sad. My church friends (at least the ones of my generation) have been amazing to me, but some appear to have grown very cautious. All of a sudden, what you say to me has a different gravity than before, because it could look too affirming.
But there is always hope. There are those people that aren’t afraid of looking too affirming. There is the church friend who when I finally said the words “I’m gay” answered “that doesn’t matter” and couldn’t have cared less. Please, join the ranks of these people. You don’t need to change your opinion if you don’t want to, but you can change your behaviour. Jesus was never afraid of looking too approving. He ate with tax collectors and sustained conversations with prostitutes and it never looked as if he only ate with that tax collector to immediately start speaking the “truth” in “love”. He simply started by having a meal. If Jesus does that with a tax collector (at the time that was a horrible thing to be) he has never met before, shouldn’t we give it a try as well? If Jesus can do it, you can. Let’s have coffee and talk. About something else than how wrong I am and how to fix me.
You’re sinning
We all are. Constantly. Unrepented sin doesn’t get you into hell. Imagine being cut off by another car and thinking “a**hole” just before that car runs into you and you die. Does this mean you go to hell because you had no time to repent? Of course not. We all are constantly sinning (simply because sin is more a description of a state than an action) and are forgiven by God through Jesus. God remembers our sins no more. They’re literally gone. That’s the cool part. So is this it? Let’s just keep sinning?
No! There are some things that anti-LBGT+ christians do qualify as sin. No matter if the person we act against is wrong or right, our actions towards them can be worthy of God’s judgement.
You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things. Romans 2:1 NIV
Welcome those who are weak in faith, but do not argue with them about their personal opinions. Some people’s faith allows them to eat anything, but the person who is weak in the faith eats only vegetables. The person who will eat anything is not to despise the one who doesn’t; while the one who eats only vegetables is not to pass judgment on the one who will eat anything; for God has accepted that person. Who are you to judge the servants of someone else? It is their own Master who will decide whether they succeed or fail. And they will succeed, because the Lord is able to make them succeed. Romans 14: 1-4 NIV
I’ll use the favourite sentence of anti-LGBT+ christians: The bible is clear on this.
We’re dying
Just because we are LGBT+ that doesn’t mean that we have forsaken our faith. It often means the opposite. We’re desperately clinging to each little scrap of it. If you push me out of the church, out of the community of believers, you push me into darkness. Even if you’re right and acting on any LGBT+ orientation is a sin, wouldn’t we be the ones who therefore need to be included even more? So many LGBT+ children are driven into suicide, I can’t even look at the statistics since the last time I was suicidal was only about eight months ago.
Jesus himself said:
If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them if a large millstone were hung around their neck and they were thrown into the sea. Mark 9:42 NIV
Please read as much of this website as you can: http://justbecausehebreathes.com is one of the best things ever.
Thank you for reading until the end. We, the LGBT+ christian community thank you. We are amongst you. We love you, love Jesus and want to share our lives with you. If any of this post seemed angry, that’s the anger of years of rejection combined with my sinful human nature. I’m not trying to be personal and I pray that God forgives me if I sound too angry!
God bless you!
Does God hate me? 
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