"If God is love then why is his love so limited and conditional?"

Late Bloomers Share How Their Journey Impacted Their Christian Faith

Photo: Ty Beaver

This is Sitting Queerly, a newsletter focused on the late blooming queer experience, the lofty goal of opening up conversations and celebrating those who embrace their full selves.

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These narratives all come from men I’ve met via one of my online support groups for queer men who are or were married to a woman. Each of them grew up in a Christian denomination.

That’s where the similarities end. 

They were gracious enough to share their stories with me so I could share them with you. All names are pseudonyms.

I would love to share more stories such as these, especially from those who grew up in a non-Christian faith. If you’d like to share your story, reach out via sitting_queerly@yahoo.com to find out how.

Calvin

I was deeply religious prior to accepting myself. Growing up evangelical taught me many things that I did not question because questioning it would be sinning. This led to a diminished self-worth and internalized homophobia…which was out of control. It still affects me, but I am working on limiting that as I embrace who God created me to be.

I still believe in God, but I don't associate with the church or Christian folks very much. They have to prove themselves to be safe people before I let them into my life. With this being said, I do pray and read my Bible. My "church," if you will, is serving people who need help.

I constantly remind myself that God created me in their image and being gay is a beautiful gift.

I sort of compartmentalize my faith away from the rest of me.

George

I went through a spiritual deconstruction the year before coming to terms with my queerness. My spiritual deconstruction was an entirely separate process of discovery and reframing of my world view but ultimately gave me the ability to accept my repressed sexual orientation. Prior to my deconstruction, I was a committed Christian who attended church every Sunday, consistently contributed my time, resources and talents to the church. I was on the Board of Deacons, and led worship for many years.

Society taught me that to be queer was not desirable. Faith went further and taught me that to be gay was an abomination against God. At some point in early life I accepted this as truth and suppressed any inkling or sign that I might have queer tendencies. I don't recall their being a conscious decision. My Christian faith taught me that humans are fallen and that we all struggle with a sinful nature. I categorized any queer desire to be part of my sinfulness that needed to be resisted and regularly cleansed through the blood of Jesus. Again, I don't know how much of this was conscious and how much was subconscious thinking.

I am about a year post faith deconstruction and about six month post coming out. Currently, I have very limited participation with anything related to Evangelical Christianity. I still have family, including my wife, who are committed Christians. Earlier this year, I officially withdrew my membership from the church I joined in 2022. On Sundays, I listen to an affirming Christian podcast from Middle Church in New York. This church centers itself around a message of love and challenges Christian scriptures and traditions that perpetuate sexism, homophobia, patriarchy and xenophobia.

If I am capable of demonstrating more expressions of love through the act of accepting and affirming others than the "God of love" taught by the Christian church, then I rather not serve that God. If God is love then why is his love so limited and conditional? It does not make sense that I, a mere human, have a greater capacity of love than the God of the Bible, but that has been my experience and so I choose not to serve a God who is limited by the misguided, hurtful, war mongering, racist and other ill human conditions of this world.

This is all new territory for me and I am still figuring it all out. I believe that faith and religion have a place in society and I am not sure where I would be today without my faith experience. However, the Church is an institution that has harmed a lot of people in the name of Jesus and I think that needs to change.

Aidan

I was very religious and it kept me from coming out. I had a faith crisis for other reasons and was only able to truly accept being gay after I lost my faith…(Now) faith inhibits my family members from being able to be supportive and accept my coming out…

I am not affiliated or interested in faith, religion or spirituality now…I (think it is) a cultural phenomenon rather than something from a divine being.

Theodore

I was an evangelical Christian and worked in Christian ministry as a pastor and other roles for over a decade of adulthood…For many years my faith was the central tenet of my values system. It was a foundation for my marriage. I filtered almost everything through that lens/worldview.

As a faith leader it kept me from being what they would call "affirming." To do so would be career suicide. So I tried to stake out a position that was as welcoming as possible without ending my employment. Mind you, I was in complete denial for much of this time, never admitting to a soul the multiple desires I had. Because of my faith I didn't even allow myself to see my desires in the light of an identity.

After an agnostic/atheist season, I find myself drawn back to faith. I think I consider myself some type of Christian Universalist. I've regularly attended and participated in a mainline church for a few years. I enjoy the sacred space and the rhythm it gives to my week. The people are kind and welcoming. The mostly older congregation has been an encouragement to my family. I'm still sorting out where this lands, but recent denominational progress on affirming LGBTQ persons has left me with some surprising (to me) hope for my own faith journey.

Richard Rohr said it best when he said "everything belongs." It's a message that my whole self, every part, last and present, can accept and celebrate.

Cyrus

It was my whole life.  All encompassing, my every action was evaluated in the context of “Will this contribute to my eternal salvation and the salvation of others?”  To the church’s credit, I was rescued from total sublimation of personal identity by it’s beginning spasms of - let’s call it an identity crisis in some ways. There was an as campaign called “Meet the Mormons,” in which they were so loving they virtually forgot to be bigots, a thing they quickly realized, re-learned, and they’ve now scuttled and buried that campaign. Their doctrine at its core doesn’t have to be queer-hating, but their practice is vicious and involved electrodes to zap the gay out of people.  They also have powerful doctrines about free will baked deeply into their conception of Christian mythology, such as “Sex is not ONLY for procreation, it is also for feeling close to your spouse!” It was like being strung along on beads of dew while dying of thirst.

Little things along the way the let me understand that I was more helpful to the kingdom of god when I had an identity, even if queer ones weren’t an option, than if I was a totally blank canvas. But the default in my teenage years was blank canvas Mormonism, “God, paint me into what you want me to be!” - and I evaluated every decision in that light.  The church taught me to be mindful of the “whispering of the Holy Spirit,” which wound up being harmful in that I submitted every decision to this process of trying to “feel,” what God was telling me: “shall I turn left or right at this intersection to get to my destination, given both directions basically lead there?  Should I have peanut butter and jelly or a ham sandwich for lunch?”. It was that fine-grained of a control, and of course those “whisperings,” were simply my well-trained subconscious keeping me as Mormon as possible.

I could hate myself easily, but the church did teach me to love others unconditionally and I took that seriously.  I wanted to love others as God loved them.  That was difficult when it came to queer friends and family.

My early moments coming out were primarily due to loved ones expressing support for queer people and me wanting to help them, save them, “You’re going to get in trouble, queerness is very bad, and I know because I am, what I am is soooo bad.”

But as I talked to other queer people themselves, or even more, read their stories, that got harder to believe.

I could hate myself so easily, but then I had to love the sinner and hate the sin of others when their unrelenting narrative was that They are this sin!  It is a huge part of who they are!

It short-circuited me, and I went quiet. It also sowed the seeds for eventually coming out.

Initially I was going to be the best queer Mormon ever.

Then I learned that Mormon men married to Mormon men were being systemically but slowly excommunicated from the church, slowly because they didn’t want the PR hit of a witch hunt, and after learning that I was pretty much done.  I had been planning on that if my wife didn’t want to keep me, which had been looking increasingly likely at that point.  And then I learned I would just be an excommunication case to be “gotten around to eventually,” rather than an actual agent of change, and I crumpled.

Also, the reason I accepted my queerness was actually that I was “voluntold,” that I would need to be a faith leader in my local congregation, my specific role would have been, basically, Mormon version of volunteer youth pastor.  And notably I would have had to interview teenagers about their masturbation habits.  I came out of the closet to the district president who was “voluntelling” me I would be filling this role, because I absolutely could not do that.  It had been done to me.  I could not do it to anyone else.  Also I was masturbating like a fiend at that point, at least in my mind. Like, once a month at least (that seems like very little now!). I couldn’t be that hypocrite, either  Acceptance of my queerness came as I accepted that I could not do that role, and so much of the rest of my faith unraveled

The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob knows that what I am is innocent, harmless, and even beautiful in its way, and if you can’t see that, then maybe you are the abomination in His eyes.

Jonah

My Christian faith was central in my life when I was growing up and that faith told me that being gay was out of the question. Even though my faith suppressed part of my identity, I had a positive experience with church and with faith. My closest friendships throughout life have been from church or religious settings. I always knew that I "struggled with same sex attraction", but I thought it was just a "thorn in my flesh". I really took that verse from 2 Corinthians 12:7-9 to heart, saying "Lord take it away from me!" For many years I just accepted that it was something I would have to live with in without expressing it: "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."

My beliefs were strongly influenced by the people I surrounded myself with. When I was surrounded by people who rejected gayness as part of God's design, that's also how I felt. It wasn't until I surrounded myself with people who were affirming, that I began to accept myself.

In my late 20s, my wife and I stated attending a more progressive church which eventually adopted an explicitly affirming stance on LGBT people, rights, and inclusion. I was still closeted, and I began to accept that being gay was something okay for other people. It took much longer to accept that being gay was okay also for me.

I now believe that God doesn't make mistakes and I no longer believe that being gay is a form of brokenness.

The deep seeded shame for who I am is still extremely difficult to overcome.