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Goodbye Jesus

What Was It Like To Be Gay And Christian?


J.P.

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Hi,

 

After reading through the post on people talking about what it was like to be Christian and female, I thought I'd post this and see what it was like for other gay people who were Christians and have since deconverted.

 

I'm gay myself and being gay and Christian was a complex experience. When I first realized I was gay around 13, I felt like God I was some sick joke by God. I had religious OCD and the combination of that and being gay felt like a exceedingly cruel combination to put on a kid just managing to regain a sense of normality in life. After pulling myself through some bad depression, I thought I could pull the two things together and be a gay Christian, though stayed away from the Bible for a couple years afraid to see what it said. When I did upon entering college, I spent several months of intense study and struggle (and again, depression), before I finally felt I had reconciled the two. Never went to Church and so college was my first experience with other Christians. I wasn't about to join any youth groups or open up to any of them. I labeled them as 'unsafe' to open up to. However, I met some really nice Christians, as well as some pretty homophobic unfriendly ones.

Upon transferring to a far more liberal college (think Berkeley liberal, and then some . . .), I joined the Christian group there and was openly gay. They were overall very respectful of me and were great people. However, I knew there was difference of opinion about homosexuality within the group, I couldn't let my guard down completely. Overall though, I think it was a pretty great group for me to have been in if I wanted to stay a Christian. Thing was, my intellectual doubts took over and after realizing my questions about Christianity didn't necessarily have answers, I began down the path of deconversion.

 

For other gay people here, how was it for you being gay and Christian? I'm really interested to hear your experiences.

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Guest Babylonian Dream

It was hell. It was denial, depression, and seeing yourself as an abomination if you saw a guy and had tempting thoughts. I almost took my own life. That was what it was like for me to be gay and christian.

 

Being gay in a christian family, meant that when I did come out, even though I accepted me, my mother still hasn't. things haven't been the same since.

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I didn't know I was gay/bi until after I deconverted. It was just inconceivable to me, so I misinterpreted all the things that should have been clues. Like I was taught that only men are turned on by visual things, so when I saw sexy advertisements featuring women and started to feel all weird, I assumed I was feeling that way because I wanted to be that woman so that men would like me. I think I did briefly wonder if I was a lesbian, but since I sometimes thought pictures of guys with muscles looked nice and didn't know that bi was an option, I assumed I must have been hetero. Then I got terrified of my own body, because if I, as a completely straight non-visually-aroused woman (ha!) would feel that strongly towards sexy pictures of other women, it must be overwhelmingly awful to be a man and have to see any woman looking the slightest bit attractive. I purposefully wore baggy clothes for years (puberty until mid/late 20s) because I was terrified of what the sight of my body would do to other people.

 

In high school (a christian school) I was mostly asexual. This confused the other women in my class when they'd pester me to talk about which guys (in our class or actors or whatever) I had a crush on, and I never had an answer. But I got lucky, and they were just confused and mostly left it alone.

 

I think, if I was male, it would have been a lot harder. The impression I get is that lesbians are something to be scandalized about and to gossip about, whereas gay men elicit a more... violent hatred. And it's easier for girls to display affection physically without scaring people than it is for boys.

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I want not raised in the church and my parents were only nominally Christian. I too recognized I was gay at around the age 13. At age 16 I decided to find some crazy-assed conservative Christian Church so I could be cured. I chose the Mormon Church for sole reason that I could get a ride from a neighbor.

 

I spent the next two years in a living in hell of my own making. Being gay and an active Christian in a non-accepting church is the epitome of self-loathing. Until I joined the church I have never experienced any OCD symptoms, but after I joined I spent the next two years obsessed with light switches, clocks, and doorknobs. I left just a week before high school graduation in June of 1978. I was so depressed and miserable on my last trip to church that I had to stop in a parking lot to cry. Something snapped that day in that parking lot. I was suddenly convinced that NO ONE including me had every communicated with god or knew why they hell we were here. I still don’t know and don’t care in the least.

 

Looking back I have no hard feelings against the Mormon people I grew to know during that period. The Mormons are conservative but they don’t have the Evangelical kind of Hell to send people to. I lied to them when I joined about my reasons for becoming a member and I must take responsibility for that. Most of the people were very nice. In fact my favorite co-worker is a father of five and a Mormon and we get along just fine. (He knows I am gay) Even my twin brother joined six months after I was ex-communicated in 1980. I framed the document; it is still hanging on the wall, a testament to thinking for myself.

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