The Church Taught Me to Hate and Fear Gays
But Jesus showed me a better way
“Homosexuality is an abomination to God.”
That’s what I was taught.
For the first five and a half decades of my life, I was immersed, baptized, and embedded in conservative culture, and I didn’t question the fundamentals. I had no reason to because life, by and large, worked for me. I was comfortable and certain in my knowledge of what was right and wrong, good and evil, truth and lies. I had it down pat.
And that worldview included the idea that homosexuality is an abomination to God and that members of the LGBTQ community were hopelessly lost and wicked.
I was so immersed in this culture that I didn’t meet or know a single person who identified as gay until I was well into my forties. Imagine having your head in the sand for that long!
Then I met someone who not only rocked my boat but rudely tipped it over.
My first experience
My first ever encounter, the one that rocked and tipped over my boat, was with a friend I had known for some years — I was her mentor and guide. She was an amazing young woman who had weathered a cult-like experience in a church, wrestled with her faith, was open about her shortcomings — and was generally a great person to be around. She also presented as a cis-gender woman, married to a man. So, during our time together, I never had to question my assumptions.
Over the years, we kept in touch, so it was no surprise when she asked me to meet her for lunch. However, she seemed nervous, and I wondered why. Then the bombshell announcement: She was leaving her husband and coming out as gay. For some reason, though, I was not as shocked as I should have been. I knew her. I trusted her. She had a strong faith and a commitment to truth — and to the Bible, which was very important for me at the time.
I was just…. confused.
She asked me what I thought, and my parting words to her were, “I don’t know right now who is right or who is wrong — maybe I am wrong — but I am confident the Holy Spirit will guide us into truth.”
(Notice my obsession with who was right and wrong… Christians are sometimes like that.)
The next encounter was with a respected colleague and fellow therapist, and she and her partner were expecting a baby. She graciously agreed to meet me for coffee so I could ask her questions about her sexual orientation because, well… I genuinely wanted to clear up any misconceptions I had.
But what became painfully clear to me was that my assumptions — the ones I had picked up in the conservative church — were too embarrassing to say out loud: Things like, “Don’t gays tend to be pedophiles? or “Isn’t being gay one step away from bestiality?” or “Aren’t all gays promiscuous?”
It seems ridiculous now, but these were the things that were drummed into me somehow. I had no close lesbian friends that could take the strain of the stupid, hurtful, ridiculous and generally asinine questions.
Stuck in my shame, I didn’t know how to overcome the general disdain and false assumptions I had toward homosexuals. Yet, I wanted answers. I wanted to figure out what was right and wrong. I neeeeded that for my faith to survive. Or so I thought.
But then she asked me a question.
“Did you choose to love men?”
Ummmm. “Yes? No? Is this a trick question?” I had to think a minute about what she was asking me to consider: that my attraction to men was not a “choice,” as if I was choosing between vanilla and chocolate ice cream, but rather something that was just part of my makeup.
She said, “It’s the same with me. I did not choose to be attracted to women. It’s just part of who I am.” Then came the clincher: “Do you seriously think I would choose to live with all the pain and heartache that being a lesbian brings?”
Dang, it! I had no answer! No witty repartee!
Up to that point in my faith, what the Bible said on this topic was the final authority. I thought, “What about all those Bible verses that say homosexuality is wrong? Now what?” I was feeling a little dizzy.
What to do?
Walking away from that conversation, my choices became clear to me. Either:
- I threw those Bible verses out
- I took the Bible verses at face value
- I realized God made a mistake by having them in the Bible
- I believed God was mean
- Or, I decided that the interpretation I had been handed was wrong.
Two worlds collided for me, and I gotta tell you, it was disorienting. It was more than “Is homosexuality right or wrong?” Rather, it struck deeper, more at the core of how I understood truth, where to find it, and who had it.
I had to figure out the answer because if the Bible was wrong about that, where else was it wrong? If I threw out those verses, then where did I stop? But if I kept them, what did that mean about my friends and the impact it had on their identity?
What about those Bible verses?
There are certain Bible verses that Christians use as proof texts to support their views about homosexuality. But now, I was left wondering what to make of them.
True to his promise, the Spirit began to give me answers. First in bits and pieces, then in a flood. But it wasn’t until I found the answers to “What about those verses?” in The Lost Message of Paul by Steve Chalk that I finally found a semblance of peace.
In case you don’t know what “those verses” are, I list them below with an interpretation that honors the context.
Genesis 19:9, on Sodom and Gomorrah:
The men surrounding the house answered, “Get out of our way!” They said to themselves, “This man Lot came to our city as a visitor. Now he wants to tell us how we should live!” Then the men said to Lot, “We will do worse things to you than to them.” So the men started moving closer and closer to Lot. They were about to break down the door.
This is abusive behavior with gang rape in mind. To use this passage as “proof” that homosexuality is wrong would be comparable to saying that heterosexual relations are evil because a man raped a woman. We can see how ludicrous that assumption would be.
The prophet Ezekiel had something to say about the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah:
Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.
Homosexuality was not their sin. Rather, arrogance, greed, and being self-centered.
Apostle Paul, writing to the Romans about godly living:
Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped the creature rather than the Creator.
For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving the due penalty for their error.
This passage refers to the Isis cult in the city of Rome, where prostitution and abuse were rampant and not about a loving relationship between consenting adults.
1 Corinthians 6:9–10:
Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God.
A couple of things:
This is a list of people who harm others or themselves — thieves, greedy, drunkards, swindlers, etc. Isn’t it interesting, though, that while Christians feel free to use this verse to condemn homosexuals to hell, they don’t apply the same rubric to the rest of the list?
Also,
The word “homosexual” was not used in the English translation until the mid-1940s. It is not in the original language. It could be better translated as “pederasty,” meaning men abusing young boys. It is not about a committed, loving relationship between two consenting adults.
Final thoughts
My wrestling match with Scripture around this issue opened my eyes to the problems inherent in Biblical translation. Scholars, no matter how righteous, honorable and thoughtful, still come to the table with their own biases, fears, and assumptions. It is unavoidable and should be acknowledged with a big bite of humble pie.
My faith didn’t die but instead became enriched by my freedom to question everything. Many of my beliefs had to die because my view of God, who I was, what being human meant, and why I was in this world had become untenable.
Instead, I found that there is a rich Christian tradition of faith outside the protective walls I had built to keep all the “baddies” out. When those walls came down, my life became freer, more joyful — and, to be honest, more Christ-like.
The further I progressed through life, the more people I met who are part of the LGBTQ community who destroyed my former notions of what those people were like. Instead, they are decent, kind, loving, caring, and productive members of society. They loved and stuck by their partners despite all the stigma and pain.
They fought for love.
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