How I Became LGBTQ+ Affirming

a brief narrative of one winding Christian faith journey

Because it has become shorthand in our culture for what “kind of Christian” you are, I’m usually aware of whether or not a fellow Christian is LGBTQ+ affirming. But I rarely know details of the thought processes and experiences that led them there.

A few months ago my husband and I listened to Faith Unraveled by Rachel Held Evans, and I appreciated hearing the narrative of her faith trajectory, and the ways it felt both similar to and different from my own journey. It made me long to hear more of these stories, because how we think about these things as a Body matters, because how we think impacts how we act (and vice versa). So to that end, it felt like a good step to take a stab at publicly sharing a condensed version of my own story of how I’ve traveled with this issue over time. This is redundant to say, but I share this only as my story and not as some template or argument. I’d love to hear other people’s thoughtful reflections on their journeys too.

Before anyone told me I was supposed to think they were sinning, gay people just seemed normal to me. I remember the first gay couple I met (Bill and Roger). They were my dad’s friends, and we’d go to baseball games or go over to their house sometimes when I was a kid. Somewhere along the way (maybe as a tween?) I was informed they were romantically involved, and not just friends. It felt surprising, since I didn’t realize that I’d met any gay people before, so it felt new, but it didn’t feel like a big deal. They were still just Bill and Roger! And I remember during my childhood when Roger died, my sense of empathy for Bill felt exactly how I would feel when a straight person lost their partner.

Though I was baptized Orthodox, I grew up and was confirmed in a mainline church (ELCA), and don’t remember hearing about anything related to being gay at any point in that church. It wasn’t until high school, when I became involved with an Evangelical parachurch organization, that some of these issues were talked about more openly (and definitively). At one point I told a leader I might like to become a pastor one day, and she said she’d like to “take me out for a Coke” after school the next day to talk about it. During that conversation, she showed me where the Bible said women being pastors was not allowed. So, you can see how this group formed me to view scripture.

I then proceeded to go tell the female pastor at my church that she was going against the Bible by being a pastor. (I know, super cringe.) She listened patiently, affirmed my earnest engagement with scripture, and then gave me a couple articles and book chapters showing me other ways people interpret those passages, as well as examples of female leadership within scripture. I don’t remember what the readings were, but I found them helpful; and I realized there were multiple ways Christians could faithfully interact with biblical texts while drawing different conclusions for today. This moment no doubt planted a seed for things to come.

In college I was in another Evangelical parachurch community, different from my high school fellowship. My high school group tended to be focused around how as Christians we needed to take a strong stance of separation against “The World” (basically meaning: don’t drink, smoke, swear, have sex, or listen to nonChristian music; and say the words “God” or “Jesus” a lot when talking about everyday life things). But my college fellowship was really into the Jesus of the Gospels and God’s love for people on the margins and wanting to love the poor and stuff like that. For example, my neighbors (who were also in the fellowship group) had an unhoused man in the neighborhood come live on their couch. This group was hardcore about following Jesus in “radical” ways, which often involved stretching out of our comfort zones, self-denial, and spending a good amount of time in activities with the organization. We actually spent a LOT of time studying the Bible, which I loved, and I was transformed by this deep engagement with scripture done in community. 

I don’t remember a lot of specific conversation around gay issues in that fellowship, though I do know that the leadership of the organization considered gay romantic relationships to be sinful. But what formed me more was an undercurrent of: “what scripture calls you to - if you are reading it right - will usually challenge you and make you uncomfortable.” It was the idea that REAL TRUTH would be a truth you don’t prefer (this is the companion idea to: whatever path feels harder and less appealing is what God wants you to do, which I talked about here). 

So even though in my heart of hearts I was always predisposed to not thinking of gay relationships as inherently sinful, this idea that biblical truth should feel bad or difficult made me think maybe my own inner sense of things was wrong. And instead, maybe God’s way was actually only for people to be straight - since that way of reading the text felt more challenging and difficult for me to accept. I didn’t take a super hard line on the idea that gay stuff was sinful, but at this point I continued to think that perhaps it wasn’t “God’s best plan” for people’s romantic lives.

After college one of my closest friends came out to me, and for about a year I was the only one who knew he was gay. This meant that for that year I was the only person processing this with him and thinking through issues of how to tell his family, how to tell other friends, what it meant for him to live as a gay man, how to pursue dating, etc. This sent me into a really difficult internal spot because I loved my friend so much, and wanted to support him - but I got confused about what supporting him really looked like. Actually, I knew that my instinct told me that loving him meant to listen, journey with him as he wondered and explored, and remind him what a wonderful and loved human he was.

But then there was that other voice. It was the voice that anyone who has spent time in Evangelical spaces knows well (I call it the Evangelical peanut gallery). This time it was saying that in this case, loving and supporting my friend actually looks like telling him that he’s doing something wrong. 

We have all heard this analogy:

Imagine your friend was running full speed toward the edge of the cliff. Would it be loving for you to simply encourage them and assure them that what they’re doing is fine? By no means! What would actually be loving would be for you to yell “DANGER!” so that they would stop before they met their destruction.

I think we all know how people apply this analogy to this topic. 

So with my friend, I decided to love him by listening and journeying with him, but (initially) decided to draw the line at going with him to gay bars, just in case I was encouraging him to run off a cliff to his destruction. 

From here on, there wasn’t really any other key event that contributed to my evolution. I continued to pray, explore the biblical texts, and did a lot of reading from scholars on both sides of the argument: those who read the biblical text as saying God is not in favor of gay relationships today, and those who did not read it that way. This theological scholarship was certainly part of the equation, but none of these decisions are made in a contextual vacuum. 

After learning the biblical languages (as we had to in seminary) and realizing even more deeply how complicated translation is between languages, not to mention between cultures, the biblical texts just got more and more (appropriately) complex. And I noticed that people in good faith made thoughtful, reasonable arguments to interpret the biblical texts in different ways around how we should consider queer relationships today (by “queer” I just mean outside of heterosexual norms). 

So then I thought, okay, there’s clearly some theological ambiguity around this issue, and whichever way I go with it, there’s a chance I’m going to get it wrong. So if I’m going to err, which side do I want to err on? And, as I think about Jesus’ character as I’ve come to know it in the Gospels, which side feels more in keeping with who I’ve come to know Jesus to be?

This was not a difficult question for me to answer. And this was the point of no return.

It also made sense that it was not up to me to go around pointing out someone’s sin (whatever that sin is, unless it’s directly hurting me or others), since convicting us of our sin seems to be the domain of the Holy Spirit. And I rarely saw any good come out of someone just randomly telling another person that the way they lived their life was wrong. So even if gay relationships were sinful (which by this point in my journey I suspected they were not, but still wasn’t completely sure), it didn’t feel like my job to declare that. 

Besides, I am typically a much less Jesus-y version of myself when I take on the role of evaluating other people’s lives and actions. The log in my own eye is enough to worry about. Honestly.

From there, no other really clear moments of demarcation happened. I suppose it was just a gradual slide into becoming fully affirming - which seems to have happened over the past many years of living into my chosen perspective, working alongside lots of queer siblings in the faith in various capacities, and honestly - simply acknowledging the truth that was in my heart all along: that God created and loves my queer siblings in the faith (and outside the faith), and that their romantic and sexual relationships have the potential to be as messy and holy and sinful and redemptive and healing and weird and wondrous as everybody else’s. We’re all bumbling along together, reliant on the ongoing grace and wisdom of God, being mundane and magical humans. 

So yeah, we’re all the same!!! Except, well, no one is writing a reflection about how they used to think my romantic inclinations were against God, and how then they changed their mind about me. So, yeah, there’s that. (For anyone who struggles with identifying subtext: This paragraph was said in a playful tone to underscore a mental/emotional/spiritual load queer folks have to contend with that us straights do not.)

I love you my beautiful and beloved and truly glorious queer comrades. I’m grateful for who you are in my life, in the Church, for those of you who knew me in my younger days and were gracious with me in those theological iterations, and I’m glad that we get to exist in this world together as the people God made us to be. Thank you for being you, even when it’s hard. I will keep trying to be a part of making it less hard.

**Note: I welcome sharing areas of resonance, or comments, particularly sharing your own narrative or details from your life around your journey. I will not engage in any theological or biblical debate. I will not respond to every comment.