Christian and an Ally | Why Being Gay is Okay ✓

Wait . . . What?

Though it may come as a surprise, I was raised in a Christian household that was accepting of the LGBTQ+ community. (Yes, they exist!) My parents were married in an LGBTQ+-friendly Presbyterian church, I have an aunt and an uncle who are both gay, and my mother had gay friends throughout my childhood. As a result, I grew up blissfully unaware that a large number of Christians believe that being gay is wrong or sinful.

By middle school, I had a couple of gay friends, and the number grew as I reached high school and more people came out. I didn't even think about it, except to be supportive of them; to me, their sexuality was just another part of who they were, not their only defining characteristic, much less a flaw in their behavior. As a result, when the US Supreme Court ruled in June 2015 that gay marriage was not only legal but a constitutional right, I was ecstatic. In my eyes, it was a proud time to be an American.

However, it was during the following fall semester of high school that I began to realize that I was in the minority of Christians celebrating the Supreme Court decision. My most vivid memory of this comes on a nighttime bus ride back from a marching band competition, where I was sitting with one of my now ex-best friends. I don't remember how we got on the subject, but somehow we began talking about current events, and she mentioned the Supreme Court ruling.

"Oh, yeah!" I said. "I know, isn't it great?"

There was a moment of silence before she said, "Wait . . . what?"

We both looked at each other, our foreheads wrinkled in confusion. And then it dawned on me. "Oh . . . ohhhhh."

Now that I think about it, her tone of voice hadn't been exactly cheerful when she said it, but it hadn't occurred to me that we could be on two totally different pages.

"You don't support same-sex marriage?" I asked, feeling shocked, disappointed, and confused at the same time.

"No, do you?" She sounded just as shocked, disappointed, and confused as I was.

"Yeah."

We sat in silence for a few minutes, trying to process what had just happened. I don't know what was going through her head, but my thoughts were going a mile a minute. I had no idea what to do. I had thought of her as being one of the nicest people I knew, so I couldn't wrap my mind around how she could be anti-gay. Sure, I knew about the typical "clobber passages" used to target same-sex relationships, but somehow, those hadn't seemed so important to me. After all, the Bible also had casual mentions of slavery, murder, rape, and the subordination of women, and I sure as hell didn't give any weight to those passages. My mother had always explained to me that the Bible was written by flawed human beings and not directly by God, so it should be interpreted within the appropriate historical contexts. Didn't all critically-thinking Christians do the same?

The answer to that was no, apparently not.

We spent the rest of the long bus ride having a theological discussion about whether or not being gay was a sin, but neither of us changed our opinion. From there on, we avoided the topic because our discussions always ended up going round in circles. After junior year, she started hanging out more often with her other Christian friends, and by the time we went our separate ways for college, she didn't even bother saying goodbye or replying to any of my texts even though she was still in town.

I had far too many of these moments in high school. It seemed as though every time I turned around, I was figuring out that yet another Christian friend was anti-gay, even though they had seemed so accepting at first. Meanwhile, more and more of my non-Christian friends were coming out. The result was that I ended up spending more time with my atheistic and agnostic friends than my Christian ones, which then further isolated me from my old tightknit Christian friend groups. It was extremely frustrating, to say the least.

One of worst things was that my anti-gay Christian friends were unwilling to listen to my arguments for same-sex relationships because I didn't have any "biblical proof." I didn't matter if I quoted scientific studies, or used logic and reason, or even talked about how I didn't think God would create a person to be gay just to punish them for it; their response was always, "But the Bible says, 'blankity blank blank.'" Every. Single. Time.

So, in an effort to back up my opinion, I turned to the Bible.

And Google.

And scholarly articles. It's always nice to get a professional opinion, right?