{"id":2999,"date":"2021-06-10T15:15:09","date_gmt":"2021-06-10T19:15:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/gracecoloredglasses\/?p=2999"},"modified":"2021-06-10T15:15:09","modified_gmt":"2021-06-10T19:15:09","slug":"my-u-turn-from-evangelical-to-lgbtq-affirming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/gracecoloredglasses\/2021\/06\/my-u-turn-from-evangelical-to-lgbtq-affirming\/","title":{"rendered":"My U-turn from evangelical to LGBTQ+ affirming"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

In my<\/span> previous life<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0as an evangelical Christian, I had what I considered a healthy apprehension about gay folks. It was for the sake of my kids (or so I told myself) that I preferred to avoid discussing \u201cthat subject,\u201d and sidestep any acknowledgement of the existence of \u201cthose people.\u201d Like so many other awkward issues, it was invisible.<\/span><\/p>\n

Actually, it was more normal in our evangelical world to avoid awkward\u00a0subjects than to discuss them. In all my years of Christian education \u2013 K-12 plus 4 years of college \u2013 and<\/em> Sunday School, and<\/em> youth group, I don\u2019t remember the subject of sexual orientation coming up anywhere, ever.\u00a0 Nobody wanted to admit its existence, I guess \u2013 maybe we thought if we acknowledged it, the power of suggestion might cause someone in our community to be lured into that world.<\/p>\n

One thing was somehow clear, though: sexual orientation was all about sex. And shame culture demands that you don\u2019t even think or wonder about anything in that realm, so we never moved beyond that one aspect \u2013 nor did we suspect that there was anything else to know.<\/p>\n

So \u201cdon\u2019t ask, don\u2019t tell\u201d was the name of the game. I didn\u2019t want any information about what went on in people\u2019s bedrooms. If someone was gay, it meant one thing: their bedroom was a place of abnormal behavior.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
\u201cU Turn Permitted Sign\u201d by Saunderses is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

My about-face<\/h3>\n

One day after my children were off to college, I was scrolling through Facebook when I came across a photo of one of my kids\u2019 best friends \u2013 call him Danny.\u00a0<\/span>This young man had spent many days in my home, and I loved him like a son. Danny was one of my favorite people in the world.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the photo, he was in a non-platonic embrace with another guy. I was stunned. I didn\u2019t know how I felt.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I called my child and asked immediately, \u201cIs Danny gay?\u201d My child hesitated for just a moment, and then said, \u201cyes, he is.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Immediately, I knew how I felt. I said, \u201cI love him so much. That\u2019s all. I just love him so much.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In a flash, all of my evangelical Christian judgment of all the theoretical gay people in the world melted away. Why? I think it\u2019s because for the first time, I realized that gay people are just <\/span>people<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In that moment, I realized that my evangelical upbringing had led <\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/span>me astray.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Gay people are people exactly like me or my kids \u2013 or anybody else \u2013 with favorite foods, favorite shows, interests, hopes, and dreams. Like us, they are works in progress. In fact they\u2019re not \u201cthey.\u201d They\u2019re <\/span>us<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

The realization was instantaneous, but internalizing it was neither\u00a0quick nor easy for me. After that moment of awareness, I retreated again and again to my original evangelical Christian anti-gay paradigm, the one I\u2019d been comfortable with all my life. <\/span><\/p>\n

But now that I knew about Danny, it wasn\u2019t so comfortable. I couldn\u2019t accept that, just by being true to himself, just by being who he was, he was anymore flawed than anyone else. God loved and celebrated him as much as anyone else.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I know the Bible well, and I have grappled over and over with the verses that you might be thinking about right now, and the teachings we\u2019ve all heard about them. And bottom line, Jesus\u2019 mandate to love our neighbor<\/a> as ourselves resonates with more authority and holiness than all of those other verses put together. After all, it\u2019s one of the Greatest Commandments. That other stuff \u2013 that\u2019s all interpretations of verses (some of them very obscure and problematic) that have nothing to do with God\u2019s love.<\/span><\/p>\n

We all know that the Bible doesn\u2019t always have the last word. As much as we revere it as the Word of God, we know better than to accept its position on, for example, slavery. I\u2019m going with the possibility that the human writers of the Biblical texts simply presumed that God held the same biases they did.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll share with you more of my journey throughout Pride Month. If you find yourself (or someone you know) struggling like I did with this issue, I encourage you to allow yourself the freedom to think for yourself \u2013 through a lens of love \u2013 about those among us who love differently.<\/p>\n

(Also, consider signing up for my newsletter<\/a><\/span> \u2013 I promise it will make you think for a few minutes every now and then!)<\/p>\n

\n

OTHER POSTS YOU MIGHT ENJOY:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Can we learn to love our trans neighbors?<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Evangelicals, you have some denouncing to do<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Conservative Christians need to outgrow binary thinking<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Pro-birth, Pro-life, Pro-choice, Part One<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

FEATURED IMAGE: \u201cU Turn Permitted Sign\u201d by Saunderses is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In my previous life\u00a0as an evangelical Christian, I had what I considered a healthy apprehension about gay folks. It was for the sake of my kids (or so I told myself) that I preferred to avoid discussing \u201cthat subject,\u201d and sidestep any acknowledgement of the existence of \u201cthose people.\u201d Like so many other awkward issues, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4414,"featured_media":3004,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[251,515,292],"tags":[529,674,686],"class_list":["post-2999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-becoming-progressive","category-exvangelical","category-sexual-orientation","tag-exvangelical","tag-lgbtq","tag-sexual-orientation"],"yoast_head":"\nMy U-turn from evangelical to LGBTQ+ affirming<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In my previous life\u00a0as an evangelical Christian, I had what I considered a healthy apprehension about gay folks. 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