Hell must be a fabulous place

When I was ten my father sat me down in his bedroom, closed the door, and told me that one of the most horrible things a man could be was a homosexual.

I looked up at him from my spot on the floor, towering above in so many ways, and said, "What's that?"

"You know that man who tries to act like a girl on Extreme Home Makeover?  He's one.  He's a gay.  That means you're perverted and have sex with boys instead of girls.  It's horrible and awful and the Bible calls it an abomination.  And if you try it, you'll get AIDS."

A year before that I waded into the knowledge that I had crushes on boys and girls.  I accepted it into my life like the discovery that I needed glasses.

So about the same time I learned there was a word for what I felt, I learned that I was supposed to feel guilty for feeling that way.  So I stayed quiet.  I grew up, and as I grew up the only further education I received about LGBT people was derogatory slang.  Whenever there was a fight over what I was wearing or listening to my mother would stare at me with tears in her eyes and ask me are you gay?  Is that why you're doing this to us?

I went to college and I met wonderful people, many of whom identified differently than I was told the children of God look like.  But children of God they absolutely had to be, as they showed me that love comes in so many different shades and patterns.  One night I pulled a pastor aside and whispered to him my story, in the allegory of a "friend" of mine I was worried about.  I asked him if he could tell me why I could love boys and girls equally, why the Bible said it was so horrible, and what I should do.  He put on his serious but compassionate face, one I'm sure he'd practiced a lot.

"Bisexual people are just gays who aren't willing to admit it," he said, gently and lovingly.  I mean, I think that's the tone he was using.  He read some isolated verses about 'the sin of homosexuality' without any context.  It couldn't have been more than six verses, since there are only that many that remotely deal with the issue in the Bible.  He told me, like any sin, I needed to surrender it and plead forgiveness.  If I was truly sorry, God would take it away.

"Oh," he patted my knee conspiratorially.  "Get you a girlfriend.  You'll be too distracted to worry about boys."

It's been four years since that night, and you know what I've learned?  I've learned that abomination looks very different than having a boyfriend.  Abomination announces from your home church pulpit that you've turned your back on Jesus the weekend after coming out.  Abomination wears a $300 wig dug out from the trash and prances around the house in mockery, asking 'am I beautiful yet?  Do you find me attractive?'  Abomination is calling your treasured belongings satanic and throwing them in the dumpster the night you come out.

Abomination is being screamed at until spit runs down chins 'You're flushing your life down the toilet!'

Abomination doesn't wear a rainbow flag, it wears a crucifix and says thus saith the Lord.

So yes I'm bi.  Yes I'm a Christian.  Yes I absolutely adore Jesus and want to live for Him.  And you know what the Bible says about that?

It says that LGBT relations deserve the same safety and protection from leaders that cis relations do.  (Genesis 19)

It says that ALL relationships should be consensual, and that men forcing young men into relationships is wrong.  (1 Corinthians 6:9-10 and 1 Timothy 1:10)

And finally, it says how we handle sex says a lot about how we see God.  (Romans 1:26-27)  I think how we see sex in Christianity is fucked up, and I think it shows in how we see God.

You may not be a Westboro Baptist Church sign screaming GOD HATES F**S, but if you're worried about abomination when one person loves another person your heart has more roadblocks than the gates of heaven. And that is an abomination.