/u/CaughttheDarkness on I just came out to one of my pastors

Thankfully, I've rarely felt religious judgement for my asexuality, but I've been very vigilant for it and as an ace Christian who's always been super pro LGBT rights even before I knew I was ace, I have long been extremely intentional about finding Christian spaces that don't care what people are.

In this case, whether or not you want to cut them out is up to you, but I have to ask a hard question - if you brought them a partner who was a nonbinary or trans or a woman, what do you think they would say or do? If your partner told you they were uncomfortable around these two and they didn't want to see them again, how would you respond?

As for what you can do, if you want to try and reach them still, you can look into resources for progressive Christianity and all of the mountains of evidence that no one chooses to be gay. There are a lot of churches with scriptural stances on this that aren't just "All gay bad." Maybe do some research into those and come to them armed with that knowledge. I don't know all of them, but I do know that among some circles, it is believed that the Leviticus verse that people usually use as a gotcha is a mistranslation - where modern translations refer to homosexuality (And specifically only male homosexuality - even in our versions of the Bible, I don't think there's any taboo on female homosexuality or transgender people. Which still sucks, but is worth noting next time someone tells you all gay people are going to hell - which hell is also barely in the Bible and pretty ambiguous in what it actually is and what it's for, but that's another rant for another time), the original language is specifically about Greek practices around pedophilia. Which there was a lot of pedophilia in Ancient Greece.

I know for me, the reason I rejected the idea that homosexuality is a sin was also because given what we know, it's illogical. If we are to accept both our modern knowledge about LGBT identity - i.e. that it's not a choice, that it's inborn, which we definitely should because even if the science had proven it, why would someone choose to experience attraction or gender in a way that risks intense discrimination? - we arrive at an impasse. If homosexuality isn't a choice, it must be something that is part of God's design for us. So we are left with three ideas. One, I am ace and many of my friends are bi or gay because God made us that way. Two, God is love - this is explicit in the Bible. Not just that God loves, that God is love - love and God are inseparable from one another as a concept. And third, we have the idea that God hates homosexuality. You may notice that there is no way to logically hold that all three are true. If God hates gay people, but God made people gay, then how is it an act of love? God would essentially be condemning those people to hell by their sheer nature. That is an act of cruelty, incompatible with the idea of a loving God. And I choose to believe that God is still love and the people who tell us that homosexuality is a sin are the ones who are wrong. Partly because I want that more for the world, but "God is love" is much more central to our faith than "Gay is bad."

Unfortunately, someone as deep into this ideology as they are is gonna take a lot to change. And I hate that reality. Sometimes, truly compassionate people can still hold harmful views. So the above grafs are in case you want to try. But the first question is...well, the first question is a litmus test if you fail for whether you should keep them in your life. Because it's a real possibility. Better to answer that question now than before it becomes a reality. It'll inform your final choice.

December 17, 2023 at 11:11PM