Knowledge said:
The ex homosexual who have found Jesus, have come into a real relationship with God, and they've been changed, and not brainwashed.
I try not to let it bother me - everyone has the right to their own opinion - but I get so frustrated when I encounter the idea that all homosexuals are somehow godless or atheist or irreligious, and that the only reason we're still gay is that we haven't found Christ (implying the only reason we're gay in the first place is that we willfully wish to do wrong).
I was raised in a very Christian family - my grandfather was a minister and three members of my family are church choir conductors. As a child I would beg my parents to go to church early so I could go to Sunday School before service. The day I was confirmed was the happiest, proudest day of my life. I used to go to church at least twice a week, knew most of the Bible by heart, sang in the church choir, and attended Bible study groups. And I believed it personally and took it seriously. I even made serious plans to go to seminary myself. All many years
after coming out. My own withdrawal from Christianity had much more to do with my inability to reconcile what I saw as inconsistencies in the Church's attitude to many other aspects of society and history (poverty and the role of women, to name just two). I never saw my homosexuality as a hindrance to accepting Christ's love. He loved tax collectors and prostitutes, who certainly chose their path much more than I chose mine.
Two of my friends, one gay, one bisexual, were both seminary students. Both gifted, caring, intelligent, highly respected by their professors. One converted to Unitarian Universalism and the other dropped out of seminary altogether because the Church and the people in it refused to accept their sexuality. I consider it a loss to the Christian ministry in both cases (by which I am not at all trying to disparage Unitarian Universalism, and that friend, the last I heard, is now doing amazing work within that denomination).
For a while I attended a church where three of the four ministers were openly gay. Never in my life have I experienced a church where the spirit and love of Jesus Christ were so powerfully made manifest, during worship services and in community ministry. Incidentally, all three ministers came out
during their seminary studies.
For all six of us, our devotion to Christ long preceded our realization of our sexuality. Saying that homosexuals are homosexuals because they haven't truly accepted Christ is a copout and an excuse to refuse to look at them as souls worthy of love, as Christ would have done.
