Why are Christians quick to say that there are a lot the gay Christians that exist NOW and use that to pretend that Christianity is just loving to gays when the last 40 years of my life they been horrible?
08.06.2025 07:47
Done? Let's proceed.
Melissa, are you born again? You wouldn't go against God's word if your were a true Christian and were born again.
I grew up largely in the 1980s and 90s when awareness and protection of human and civil rights for gay people was both increasing and facing a backlash. The ultimate insult a boy could lob at another boy when I was in school was, “You're gay.” I still heard this when I started teaching. At a Catholic school where I taught, when I learned that one boy was very upset one day because another kept calling him gay (it took a while to piece everything together), I sent the offending student to the principal’s office for an investigation into bullying and harassment to begin.
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Melissa, you're bringing people to hell where I'll enjoy the smell of your burning flesh!; and
If you, OP, as well as any other reader wonder if there are Christians who advocate for gay people in our offline lives, the answer is yes, yes there are. I'm one of them and I'm not unique.
Comments in the line of:
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It's generally easier to be open and out to peer groups now than it was before, although still generally more difficult in rural areas than urban, but social media sometimes helps with that.
I've been participating in our pastorate's synodal listening sessions as part of Pope Francis’ Synod of Synodality and LGBTQ Catholics has been a topic of conversation at each of our sessions. There are strong opinions on both sides, but there's tremendous support for LGBTQ Catholics from about half of us. I've also voiced my continuing disappointment and anger about the Catholic Church's failure to fully love and accept gay people in an address that I delivered to my entire congregation.
More recent data shows that the majority of American Catholics support gay marriage than oppose it and that support is generally stronger among younger Catholics , just like the rest of society.
There are still plenty of societies organized this way and it leads to personal and systematic abuse of women. In traditional Indian families there's another economic component. Parents of daughters lose a laborer and money in the form of a dowry whereas parents of sons get the dowry and gain a laborer. Sons are so preferred that states have had to limit ultrasounds to try prevent staggering numbers of female abortions and in some places, infant daughters are commonly abandoned, both of which have led to a disparity of women. Consequently in some places, girls are kidnapped and forced to become brides.
You, for example, have removed Christianity from the culture at large. Religion is but one factor, and maybe not the most important one.
In the general but non-Jewish region even today, women who are childless are pitied and stigmatized, and women who only bear daughters are stigmatized, too. Some societies want to be so sure that girls and women remain pure that they resort to female genital mutilation (FGM). There are cultural layers and values about sex and purity, but the foundation is economics.
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A few weeks ago, I was chatting with one of my friends after church. She's in her seventies and she recounted her experience of her son coming out to her. What hurt her is that until that moment, she didn't know about the bullying he had endured at school and it pained her heart that she hadn't been able to help him. She wasn't disappointed or upset that he's gay. She dearly loves him, his husband, and their children.
The homosexual practices mentioned in the Hebrew Bible were all pagan practices and some of them exploitive. Fast forward centuries to Paul, and not only did he inherit this mindset of gay sex is part of paganism and therefore bad, the homosexuality he witnessed or knew about was also in the context of pagan practices, including religious practices. What he described in Corinthians sounds rather like a Dionysian orgy.
That a woman was at the well alone at that time of day indicates that she had a poor reputation and women, held at a double standard and judged by their religious puity, sex lives, and having sons (not so much daughters, more on this later), were taboo conversation partners for unknown men.
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Now the official teachings is that being gay isn't a sin, but acting on homosexual inclinations is. That's the official teaching created by men who mostly aren't allowed to marry and who's knowledge of healthy relationships and sex is sometimes pathetic (especially looking at you John Paull II and Benedict XVI, and Paul VI has the distinction of setting women back generations with his travesty that is Humanae Vitae).
The ancestors of the ancient Jews were once one people with the polytheistic Caananites. The ancestors of the Jewish sect separated, but they weren't monotheistic. They were henotheistic and their head god was better than the Caananite gods. Eventually, these proto-Judeans became increasingly monotheistic until we can can properly consider them to be Jews, and their leaders didn't want their people mixing with their Caananite pagan cousins, though many did. Much of the Hebrew Bible is about this tension and efforts to cement Jewish identity.
Think about why SSM isn't even in the Bible and what kind of homosexual acts are condemned and why. Think about how you all condemn slavery, yet slavery was permitted in the Bible and don't give me that Oh, but it wasn't chattel slavery so it wasn't that bad excrement. It was still slavery, but you know better now, don't you?
Why are American university students fine with sharing a room?
But you're in love! You clandestinely have a child with your lover, but since you are naturally unsuited to be a parent and because you broke the law, the Department of Child Welfare for the Stability of Society removes your child and places it with a proper family.
You're in love? Too bad. You need to live a life void of that kind of loving relationship, and demanding that you do this isn't cruel or inhumane, of course, because your birth date is simpy your cross to bear and we all have our crosses, right? After all, some of us voluntarily choose a life of celibacy and your lack of choice and our free choice of course amount to the same thing. There's no false equivalency here, readers. None at all.
What's your birthday? Be honest.
Given that you speak of 40 years experience of being gay and that two-year-olds don't have much awareness of their sexual orientation, I'm going to deduce that you're at least 50. Often by the age of 10, we have some awareness of our orientation, though not necessarily in depth understanding.
Over the past five years, I've heard it in my classroom twice and I seized the teaching moment to talk about why it's wrong and hurtful to use that expression. I could have chosen to write an instant referral, but I preferred the verbal assailant to understand how they were hurtful. In both cases, the students were repeating something that they had heard, but didn't really understand.
Those ancient Jewsih women needed to bear sons and only for their husbands. For widows, there was the levirate system wherein she married her brother-in-law, all because of patrilineality. Economics.
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As a less controversial example, take the Samaritan woman at the well. Jesus talks to her, finds out she has a questionable sexual history, and sends her forth to spread his word. Whoopee, right?
That association of homosexuality being unnatural, sinful, and an abomination carried forward, and some Christians are still fully invested in it, but by no means all. Read the earlier sections of my answer if you're still unsure. Unfortunately, homosexuality = really bad is quite common in large scale societies, at least until recently. Religion is just one factor, and once again, economics plays a huge part in that attitude.
All Christians are evil;
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Globally, support among Catholics is greater in the US and Europe, particularly Western Europe, than in Africa. That's not a Catholic thing, that's a larger cultural thing. Context and perspective. Religion is only one factor.
So where did all of this leave consensual same sex marriage (SSM)? Not even conceived of, that's where, because such a union would not have produced sons. None of the verses about homosexuality were about SSM.
There are multiple organizations that support gay Catholics such as Outreach, founded by Jesuit James Martin, and New Ways Ministries, founded by nun Jeannie Gramick.
Read his letter.
The Methodists just schismed because of LGBTQ acceptance and this story has been in the news quite a bit.
Warning about comments
Your awareness of evils perpetuated on people has grown. It's time you stop perpetuating hate on LGBTQ people.
The Ten Commandments and other Levitical laws were a consequence of identity politics mixed with morality. Many of them boil down to Don't be like those pagans over there; we have a higher purpose. The homosexual practices the ancient Jews knew about were from pagan cultures and were sometimes pagan religious practices. No idolatry.
I wish there were some way to have Christians, and possibly some atheists, take a few cultural anthropology classes. They'd understand the Bible differently and for the better.
Before you read my answer, read Peter Green's excellent summary on how views in Christianity have changed.
But correcting them is loving! Throwing Down the Gauntlet
Ancient Jewish society was patrilineal, meaning property was inherited through the male line, and patrilocal, meaning the wife moved in with the husband's family.
There are Churches that have gay married clergy.
Fifty years ago puts us in 1974. In the UK, private (not public) homosexual acts were decriminalized just seven years previously in 1967 and convictions weren't overturned until 2012.
If you're married or in a committed relationship, take a few moments to think about how much you love your spouse/partner.
This, my fellow Christians, is the exact same argument some of you make against SSM. You condemn gay people to a life of loneliness and internal torment because your holy book says so, a holy book you don't even know how to read in an anthropological context. Your actions aren't loving. You attack human dignity and inflict tremendous harm on gay people.
Bryan Massingale, an openly gay African American priest and also a Catholic ethicist, advocates for sacramental gay marriage and he delivered a powerful address.
Marriage is mergers and acquisitions at its foundation. In large scale societies, love marriages only become popular once women have generational opportunity for economic independence, and gay marriage more permissible when the economy is no longer based on patrilineality.
The Catholic Church and Gay Marriage, Context and Perspective
Original question: Why are Christians quick to say that there are a lot the gay Christians that exist NOW and use that to pretend that Christianity is just loving to gays when the last 40 years of my life they been horrible?
Marriage at its core is about economics and social stability. One aspect is children, but there are a variety of family structures other than the two straight parent households that provide stability, even one where the mother and her brother are the primary parents, not the mom and dad. Circumstances of war, pandemics like AIDS, chattel slavery, and systemic racism that results in a disproportionate incarceration of men from particular ethnic groups creates even more variety of family structures.
For far too long, the Catholic Church taught the supposed evilness of homosexuality. There have been incremental improvements, although official Church teaching still falls far short of protecting and respecting human dignity in this area.
There's nothing in the Bible about SSM because of both the patrilenal economic system and because the practices mentioned were pagan practices, and to the Jews of the Bible and the early Christians, paganism = idolatry plus unrighteous people and is therefore bad.
So many things can be better understood when placed in a larger context and perspective.
Play a little hypothetical game with me. I'm the ultimate dictator and you live in my country. Naturally, my power is ordained by God and my holy book says so, of course.
John D. Whitney is a priest in San Francisco and formerly of Seattle. He's marched in Pride parades and advocates for LGBTQ rights, including marriage.
This is all the loving thing to do.
So before you make vast generalizations about all Christians and forms of Christianity, do a little research, OP.
Gay people are an abomination;
There are Methodists who are so adamant that LGBTQ Methodists should have full rights and membership in their Church that they have been willing to allow their Church to be pulled apart. Think about that, OP.
Yet Jesus spoke to her. He broke all social and moral conventions by having a meaningful discussion with this lowly, impure enemy woman, and then he sent her out to teach/tell others. She was an apostle. All of this has major theological implications, but unless you understand the cultural context, most of the meaning and implications are lost. The Bible isn't enough for understanding the Bible.
Many of my LGBTQ students are open about their sexual orientation and gender identity. Some of them have full support from family, both religious and non-religious. Some face trauma because of parents, both religious and non-religious. A few months ago when one of my students turned 18, his dad kicked him out of the house because the dad no longer had to legally support his queer son. Fortunately, one of the kid's friends who also happened to be one of my students took him in and she and her family provided a much better living environment.
Fair warning, I'm likely about to piss off some of my Christian readers, including perhaps some of my Catholic friends.
After the Babylonian exile, the Jews doubled down on preserving and protecting their identity. Indeed, approximately 80% of the Hebrew Bible was written after the exile in an effort to formalize and purify Jewish religion and society.
I work in a city of 66,000 people. I don’t live in Podunk, Midwest, but I'm not far from it. (In about a month's time, I'll definitely be in Podunk.) There's an ELCA Lutheran church and a Congregationalist church that have pride flags and welcome signs outside.
The purpose of women was to bear their husbands’ sons who would then inherit property. This was the backbone of the economy. Thus rape was a crime of theft against the husband because a possible future son would “steal” the family’s property, transferring it to a different line. The punishment for rapists or men who slept around wasn't as severe as for women because women were conduits of theft and there were no paternity tests at that time. Women had better stay pure until marriage and then only have sex with their husbands whatever the circumstances.
Other Churches
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Let's talk marriage.
Read his words.
In the 1950s US, gay men were expected to either stay completely closeted or seek barbaric conversion therapy. Discrimination was the norm and so rampant most Americans didn't even notice it or notice that they participated in it. Awareness increased, however, after the Stonewall riots of 1969.
Why did you go and have sex? Why did you pursue a relationship with someone you can't marry?
This sentence of loneliness that we impose on you is not at all unreasonable and because we love you and care for your well-being, we'll make sure you stay chaste. We'll preach about how your union is unnatural and that you just want to groom children. We'll make sure that you can't get married.
If you were s righteous and moral person, you'd dedicate your life to chastity and celbibacy knowing that's what God wants and that's what the state demands. My holy books commands this, and my interpretation is what counts, not yours.
The Bible in the Context of Anthropology
Since your actions and ideology are the opposite of loving, shall we describe them as hateful?
Awareness, understanding, and acceptance continue to increase, at least in the West. The situation has gotten much worse in Russia and in several African countries, with lobbying to criminalize homosexuality led by a contingent of American evangelical Christians in a few places, and while things have gotten better in parts of Asia like India, India and other Asian countries aren't all that gay friendly. India also has a Christian minority, not a majority. Being gay in several Middle Eastern countries, countries that are predominantly Muslim, can be lethal. Religion is only one factor.
If the date of the month is an even number that is also a multiple of 3 (6, 12, 18, etc), you are not allowed to get married or have children because you are obviously unfit to be a parent and we need those proper two parent households. Our society depends on them.
Let's get into some more anthropology.
But let's get back to marriage in Biblical era Judaism, which all has to do with the topic of gay marriage. Bear with me, I'm getting there.
That very may well be the correct word.
Now consider that Jews reviled Samaritans for reasons of identity politics - the two peoples were once one people. Women at that time and place in both Judea and Samaria had low importance, status, and regard. They were locked out of political and economic power (thus all the teachings to care for the widows - they were denied the means to fully care for themselves) and they were denied positions of teaching men in any, or at least most, capacities.
Disclaimer: I'm Catholic.
So despite official Church teaching, as a proportion more Catholics supported gay marriage than non-Catholic Americans, even before it became legal.
Think about that.
Gay marriage was legalized in the United States in 2015. Yet even before that, support for gay marriage was greater among Catholics than the rest of the population.
Context and Perspective
One of the first schools I taught in was a Catholic school and the child of one of my colleagues was trans. Both she and her priest at the time, who was a family friend, loved and supported her daughter through her transition.