LGBTQ Christians

[Samof94]

What is everyone’s opinions on them as an idea??? I am also referring to organizations that support them(in contrast to the fire and brimstone pastors) like that church Julien Baker(a gay singer who found out she liked girls as a teen) goes to in Nashville.

[muon2]

FF. My pastor is one.

[If my soul was made of stone]

Setting aside personalized views on the aesthetic nature of kitsch and the relationship between queerness and radicalism, firmly FF practice, and probably key to the survival of the church at this juncture. When I lived in Mount Vernon in Baltimore, a neighborhood with the rare distinction of being both a hub of historic architecture and a gayborhood, I'd always smile at the pride flag hanging from the giant, quasi-Gothic Mt. Vernon Place United Methodist Church in the shadow of the Washington Monument. It's nice to see ancient institutions get along with problems personal identity that are far more ancient, and in some cases tied to spirituality, than many think.

[afleitch]

What is everyone’s opinions on them as an idea I am also referring to organizations that support them(in contrast to the fire and brimstone pastors) like that church Julien Baker(a gay singer who found out she liked girls as a teen) goes to in Nashville.

I think they exist as more than an idea

I'm strongly supportive of affirming and self affirming LGBTQ Christians. Those who are non affirming but use identifying as LGBTQ as a means to access LGBTQ spaces to flag wave but promote 'traditional sexual ethics' (heteronormativity) I pity but are damaging to the community.

Queer spirituality is a powerful thing that organised religion struggles to understand or seeks to subvert or gaslight. Some faiths and churches uplift it and affirm it. Others not so much, even if it's clearly in their aesthetic.

Catholicism is gay as f-ck.

[If my soul was made of stone]

Queer spirituality is a powerful thing that organised religion struggles to understand or seeks to subvert or gaslight. Some faiths and churches uplift it and affirm it. Others not so much, even if it's clearly in their aesthetic.

Anyone who's seen any of my posts in this forum will know that my path is about as un-Christian as it comes in many ways, but I don't think that power that you speak of and that I've become in touch with through my practice is exclusive to any one faith. I feel much more in touch with my identity through my faith, and I would hope and imagine that the Greco-Roman galli, the Sumerian gala, or the gender-bending shamans of numerous Siberian tribes felt the same. I don't see how Christianity inherently lacks any of the spiritual or ritual intensity that can evoke that power, as long as there is a space made for it.

[afleitch]

Queer spirituality is a powerful thing that organised religion struggles to understand or seeks to subvert or gaslight. Some faiths and churches uplift it and affirm it. Others not so much, even if it's clearly in their aesthetic.

Anyone who's seen any of my posts in this forum will know that my path is about as un-Christian as it comes in many ways, but I don't think that power that you speak of and that I've become in touch with through my practice is exclusive to any one faith. I feel much more in touch with my identity through my faith, and I would hope and imagine that the Greco-Roman galli, the Sumerian gala, or the gender-bending shamans of numerous Siberian tribes felt the same. I don't see how Christianity inherently lacks any of the spiritual or ritual intensity that can evoke that power, as long as there is a space made for it.

That was my point; if space is made for it. And queer spirituality is caged if it is subject to restrictions placed on it by a heteronormative sexual and relationship ethic.

I'm not in anyway special but I do think my love of men extending to the sexual and my love of women devoid of the sexual is powerful and it's my grounding; I've not seen the world without it. The fact that gay boys, separated by geography and even generations and thinking they are the only person like that in their world find and are drawn to the same icons; people, ideaa, aesthetics etc as others like them is a 'spirituality' in itself. There's the ability to find yourself without guidance. The queer community may lack the historic hierarchy, the 'storytellers' of our lives and gifters of legacies, the givers that the non-queer community have. Yet we seem to find it anyway in many different ways.

[If my soul was made of stone]

I'm not in anyway special but I do think my love of men extending to the sexual and my love of women devoid of the sexual is powerful and it's my grounding; I've not seen the world without it. The fact that gay boys, separated by geography and even generations and thinking they are the only person like that in their world find and are drawn to the same icons; people, ideas, aesthetics etc as others like them is a 'spirituality' in itself. There's the ability to find yourself without guidance. The queer community may lack the historic hierarchy, the 'storytellers' of our lives and gifters of legacies, the givers that the non-queer community have. Yet we seem to find it anyway in many different ways.

Even before I understood my place as I now see it in the great sociocultural, psycho-religious morass that we as a species decided to call "gender" I always felt most grounded by feminine principles and the feminine presences in my life, and guided by myself alone in my long and painful process of self-discovery. If anything, sexuality was my first and most precocious spirituality in terms of the inviolable, sacred qualities that I ascribed to those who I loved in my teenage years and the degree of my parasocial devotion, and I still view the spark of that desire as a key part of the manifestation of divinity. In part, my developing my own spirituality was intended to compartmentalize that urge away from actual people and into a more abstract, archetypal, ritualized form, that is my Goddess. I mentioned above several pagan traditions that have welcomed gender non-conformity as part of the divine, but even in that field associated now with very progressive folk there is much that exalts exclusively the heteronormative; I have known many queer Wiccans in my time, which is frankly baffling to me given how much the doctrine of Wicca is built on a strictly binary understanding of sex and gender and the exaltation of human fertility, not to mention general historical revisionism. My infertility as a woman without a womb is the source of great longing and discomfort to me, yet it is part of what makes me the queer being that I am, and in some capacity I must take pride in that, as my aforementioned predecessors did, in feeling at one with them and with the fabric of spirituality.

Which is a long way from Christian queerness, but this is strictly my experience of the intersection of these impulses in the mind.

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

Shocking Episcopalian take: LGBT Christians should be accepted, affirmed, and allowed to take leadership roles in the church.

The liberal mainline churches need to reach out to these people. As this thread shows, spirituality is still important for queer people. But converting people who were abused by the church is a hard sell, and understandably their experiences with Christian religion inevitably morphs their views on Chistianity as a whole.

The best way to evangelize, any people, is to brng people to Jesus and not religion. Counsel to those who were abused by the church and offer an alternative to be accepted as they are and follow their spiritual path towards Christ.

[Former President tack50]

Question for LGBT-friendly Christians: how do you square those positions with the various verses on the Bible that condemn homosexuality?

I can certainly buy "separation of church and state" arguments on those verses to say, make civil unions (or possibly gay marriage) legal and what not; as well as possibly other policy implications in politics. But that still does not touch the religious side of things.

How would you square the various verses that condemn homosexuality (pretty sure there are lots of them; though I can't name them since I am not a practicing Christian myself ) with being an actively practicing Christian?

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

Question for LGBT-friendly Christians: how do you square those positions with the various verses on the Bible that condemn homosexuality?

I can certainly buy "separation of church and state" arguments on those verses to say, make civil unions (or possibly gay marriage) legal and what not; as well as possibly other policy implications in politics. But that still does not touch the religious side of things.

How would you square the various verses that condemn homosexuality (pretty sure there are lots of them; though I can't name them since I am not a practicing Christian myself ) with being an actively practicing Christian?

Simply put: the "clobber passages" do not apply to modern, consensual same-sex relationships between two people who are of age. Some of the early churches displayed bizarre, often sexual, rituals that included idolatry and dressing up like birds and reptiles (Romans 1:23).

Being a Christian really doesn't require more than believing that Jesus was God and His death cleans us of our sins. Of course there is more to that, but Christians are a diverse group. Theologians have disagreed with each other since the beginning.

[ilikeverin]

I happily consider myself a gay Christian. My faith enriches my life and gives it purpose, but I don't consider it (either my particular brand nor having faith at all) to be a necessity to accomplish that. The rector at my Episcopal church in Maryland is a lesbian and the assistant pastor at my UCC church in Connecticut is gay, and, hot goss, the senior pastor at my CT church divorced her husband last year and later moved in with another woman.

It's interesting to me how few queer people realize that this is even an option, and shows how awful mainline Protestant churches are at evangelizing our mission. The response I get most often on apps and the like ranges from apathy to curiosity, and most are shocked by my history of queer pastors sketched above. This is particularly true for those who were raised Catholic, who do not understand what a "denomination" is and have sometimes asked me if, say, Episcopalians are Christians. More than a few have clearly seen it as a bit of a turn on, with sort of a "despoiling the innocents" vibe.

Meeting another queer Christian in the context of the apps is like meeting a long-lost friend. Interestingly, many who consider themselves Christians were raised nondenom, so their relationship to their faith is strained... when I recommend finding a mainline church, they rebel against the idea of a denomination, but know the idea of a nondenom that's affirming is, uh, rare, to say the least. I haven't met very many like me who were raised mainline and stayed put.

I've found that most earnestly spiritual folks of any stripe (usually pagan in queer circles) are excited and happy to find someone else willing to ask big questions once I reassure them I'm not the scary kind of Christian. A handsome pagan cub I enjoy flirting with once complimented me by saying, "you're more sacrilegious than me!", which I was delighted by. You can't be an earnest gay Christian without understanding the ironies and the humor and the camp in all of it, as afleitch alluded to.

It would be great to find some guy someday I could go to church with, but I'm not holding my breath. I'd have no problem dating someone who wasn't religious, although I'll admit it's a plus. Still, my faith helped ensure I had my ex's mom's strong approval. When we'd visit his parents over weekends, I'd go to church with his parents while he stayed home and slept in. I'm delighted to have a trait that makes me popular with many moms

[Tintrlvr]

Question for LGBT-friendly Christians: how do you square those positions with the various verses on the Bible that condemn homosexuality?

I can certainly buy "separation of church and state" arguments on those verses to say, make civil unions (or possibly gay marriage) legal and what not; as well as possibly other policy implications in politics. But that still does not touch the religious side of things.

How would you square the various verses that condemn homosexuality (pretty sure there are lots of them; though I can't name them since I am not a practicing Christian myself ) with being an actively practicing Christian?

So, I'm not a practicing Christian, but the short answer is that there actually aren't that many explicitly anti-homosexuality sections of the Bible. Those that are there are in Leviticus, which is pretty much anti-everything and contains many, many prohibitions that quite strict and conservative Christians ignore (mixing fabrics, eating shellfish, etc.), and so is easy enough to simply write off as irrelevant and superseded by New Testament law, in the tale of Sodom and Gomorrah, which is believed by many to be best interpreted not to be about homosexuality (or sexuality at all), or in the Epistles of Paul, which many Christians consider part of the Bible but not the "Word of God" in the strict sense that the rest of the Bible is, more reflecting Paul's own opinions.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     Should be called to repentance with love and charity, same as the rest of us.

[Samof94]

What is everyone’s opinions on them as an idea I am also referring to organizations that support them(in contrast to the fire and brimstone pastors) like that church Julien Baker(a gay singer who found out she liked girls as a teen) goes to in Nashville.

I think they exist as more than an idea

I'm strongly supportive of affirming and self affirming LGBTQ Christians. Those who are non affirming but use identifying as LGBTQ as a means to access LGBTQ spaces to flag wave but promote 'traditional sexual ethics' (heteronormativity) I pity but are damaging to the community.

Queer spirituality is a powerful thing that organised religion struggles to understand or seeks to subvert or gaslight. Some faiths and churches uplift it and affirm it. Others not so much, even if it's clearly in their aesthetic.

Catholicism is gay as f-ck.

I agree with you on this!!! The “fire and brimstone” image seems to be what most people think of and what people like Putin promote(a lot of evangelicals like him).

[Oswald Acted Alone, You Kook]

Question for LGBT-friendly Christians: how do you square those positions with the various verses on the Bible that condemn homosexuality?

I can certainly buy "separation of church and state" arguments on those verses to say, make civil unions (or possibly gay marriage) legal and what not; as well as possibly other policy implications in politics. But that still does not touch the religious side of things.

How would you square the various verses that condemn homosexuality (pretty sure there are lots of them; though I can't name them since I am not a practicing Christian myself ) with being an actively practicing Christian?

They either don't apply or had malicious translation behind them.

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

What is everyone’s opinions on them as an idea I am also referring to organizations that support them(in contrast to the fire and brimstone pastors) like that church Julien Baker(a gay singer who found out she liked girls as a teen) goes to in Nashville.

I think they exist as more than an idea

Can confirm. I'm fer them/us.

I'm strongly supportive of affirming and self affirming LGBTQ Christians. Those who are non affirming but use identifying as LGBTQ as a means to access LGBTQ spaces to flag wave but promote 'traditional sexual ethics' (heteronormativity) I pity but are damaging to the community.

I know quite a few wonderful, and, yes, well-adjusted LGBT Christians who don't pursue relationships and sex for one reason or another (my personal favorite is a close friend of mine who describes herself as "Side C for Celibate-but-not-for-moral-reasons"), but, yes, people who actively push for that within the LGBT community do come across as fifth columnists more often than not.

Catholicism is gay as f-ck.

Yep. "Simultaneously gay and homophobic" is the peak Catholic mood, just as it is, in many ways, the peak mood for Western cultural and artistic traditions as a whole.

[RINO Tom]

FF.  It's in our nature to try to make sense of the Universe and reality, and that's all religion has ever been.  Some people take religious texts literally, some interpret them figuratively and some people put barely any stock in them other than appreciating that they're trying to achieve that fundamental quest for ultimate knowledge.  There is, and needs to be, plenty of room for diverse thought among religious groups, and the presence of LGBTQ Christians helps further that goal.

[progressive85]

LGBTQ people in reality have always had extremely important roles in pretty much all religions.

[If my soul was made of stone]

LGBTQ people in reality have always had extremely important roles in pretty much all religions.

As I mentioned above, it always reassures me of my identity to be reminded of all the ancient/precolonial societies where transfeminine people served as priests or shamans.

[Rosethecommie]

Being LGBTQ and being Christian are both aspects of identity that can exist simultaneously. There are LGBTQ people from every religious, ethnic, and cultural background so the idea that someone must forego their religion in order to come to terms with their LGBTQ identity is not the case. Personally I’m bisexual and an atheist, so I cannot speak on the subject as I’ve never had to deal with religious discrimination for my sexuality. But I know many people who are both religious and LGBTQ, and I think that however they come to terms with their religion and their sexuality is their process to go through, and it should be respected.

[Erebus9]

Let's be brief and say that Christians should accept everyone for who they are, it was the pride and joy of Jesus' ministry to find sinners and ask them to follow him.

[All Along The Watchtower]

the idea of a nondenom that's affirming is, uh, rare, to say the least.

This is something that still kind of baffles me. Maybe there's something I'm missing. Is it just that nondenom = aggressively evangelical Protestant (with all the socially conservative/reactionary stuff that comes with that)?

You would think there'd be a lot more room for diversity and radical inclusion among non-denominational Christians!

[All Along The Watchtower]

     Should be called to repentance with love and charity, same as the rest of us.

Repentance from what, specifically?

[DC Al Fine]

the idea of a nondenom that's affirming is, uh, rare, to say the least.

This is something that still kind of baffles me. Maybe there's something I'm missing. Is it just that nondenom = aggressively evangelical Protestant (with all the socially conservative/reactionary stuff that comes with that)?

You would think there'd be a lot more room for diversity and radical inclusion among non-denominational Christians!

Not 100% (as BRTD's existence proves), but generally non-denominational Protestant = Evangelical.

It's not as surprising as one might think. Low church Evangelicalism has always tended very decentralized, and progressive factions won most of the major intra-denominational struggles of the 20th century, so progressives have less reason to eschew denominations in the first place compared to conservatives.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     Should be called to repentance with love and charity, same as the rest of us.

Repentance from what, specifically?

     In this case, the issue at hand is acting on sinful sexual inclinations. Christians should be clear and uncompromising in rejecting the validity of same-sex relationships, but also avoid the pitfall of singling it out as being especially worse than other forms of sexual sin that tempt heterosexual individuals or of hating those who are tempted to it. We fool ourselves if we think that we are better than others who are also struggling.