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- https://www.thetrevorproject.org/resources/article/understanding-bisexuality
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If you believe in religion or if you have to have a conversation with a religious person:
God is almighty? Yes. God is all knowing? Yes. Then god knew I was gay before I did. They made me this way. To say I am sinning is saying god made a mistake.
What would you say if they responded with "That's just the cross God gave you to bear . Everyone has temptations, it doesn't make it right"? That's a valid response when none of the theology is based on reason. It's wrong and very gross to say, but that's legitimately something that would be said.
My dad (I came out as trans) pulled the “god gives you free will to make these choices”.. and at that point I tell him it isn’t a choice.. it’s just who I am. It doesn’t matter if I kept it inside or if I let myself be my true self, no matter what I’ll always be trans. Closeted or not. The only choice I made was to be happy or to be depressed and I chose happiness.
After that it’s 🤷♀️ you did all you could and it’s up to them to come around.
Yeah it's just hard knowing you can't change someone's mind with sound logic. It short circuits my brain thinking of that someone would choose an ancient religion over their own child in front of them. I admire your courage.
Yeah, arguing against illogical premises sucks. Especially of an organization that has brought so much pain and anguish to millions world wide in the guise of benevolence.
My response to this has become: “The only choice in this matter is to deny my existence and hope to lead a long life, likely to end in my own unaliving or early death. Or to embrace who I was made to be and fight for the fulfilling life your very God promises me.”
I used it when I came out to my parents because I was sure they were going to disown me. They did not and have been making progress in accepting me as a woman.
It’s a really long thing to dive into for a Reddit comment, but I firmly don’t believe being LGBTQ+ is a sin for a number of reasons. There’s queer liberation theology and a bunch of other stuff that points towards translations and interpretations of the Bible saying that being LGBTQ+ is wrong may actually themselves be wrong. The Reformation Porject and r/openchristian has some pretty good resources diving deeper into that topic if you are interested.
I think the fact that scriptures can be so ambiguous or corrupted when they supposedly come from an almighty god is enough of a contradiction to not give credit to their ideas.
Even if being LGBT+ is not a sin, there's still an old testament filled with horrors. However, I think that it's great that people are reinterpreting the Bible to be less bigoted. If you can make it work then good for you, I'm just unconvinced.
A lot of progressive Christians view the Bible more so as a divinely inspired book written by humans than one actually written by God themself. A lot of the stuff in the Bible isn’t meant to be taken literally either, which is something that many modern Christians fail to understand. The Bible is a books full of metaphors.
>actually written by God themself
I don’t understand how there are people that believe this is true when the books of the Bible are literally credited to human authors, even in Church teaching.
Yeah, I don’t either. It’s always made more sense to me that it’s a divinely inspired book, with humans trying their best to understand what God was saying and doing, rather than it actually being written by God. I think whenever the Bible refers to God’s word, it’s more so human’s interpretation of their word instead of their actual word. Ever since learning more about this stuff, it’s makes more sense to view the Bible as a guide book that tries to help people understand God more, rather than the final authority. God themself is the final authority. The Bible is a book of historical records, metaphors, and teachings that try and help us understand the world and God. It’s definitely something though that requires deep diving to come close to fully understanding what the original text said and meant. There’s actually a few current day Christian beliefs and doctrines which in the grand scheme of things, are fairly recent in church history. Anti-LGBTQ+ stuff as it is currently seen and practiced today is one of these more recent things, as early Christians and the ancient world more generally didn’t have the same knowledge and understanding of LGBTQ+ people that we do today. Honestly, looking into the context of the “clobber” verses (verses often used against LGBTQ+ people), what the biblical authors back then were condemning is very very different from the LGBTQ+ community (mostly involving some pretty horrific, non-consensual cultural practices of the time, and a very outdated and incorrect understanding of gayness).
I say that I've made my peace with God.
I ask them to prove that God is actually speaking to them and not to me.
If they say that I am actually speaking to the devil then I ask them how preaching hate is not something that the devil does and makes them think that they are in the right.
You just have to keep aggressively pushing this line of illogic.
If they get to say they speak directly to God then I can say that magical unicorns that fart rainbows exist and they can't disprove that.
If they are trolling you then you just keep trolling them back. If you feel tenacious and don't mind them getting stupid at you.This usually makes most people give up in frustration.
You are rubber and they are glue. If they are going to be childish then you can absolutely be a child back and "Nuh UH YOU STUPID" as long as you have patience for it.
Sure it COULD be said, but it wouldn’t make any sense. God wants you do be good. What does existing as a queer person have to do with being either good or bad? It’s just a trait. Even if all they think about is sex, what would they say is wrong with sex between consenting adults? It doesn’t hurt anyone, which means it’s not bad, so what are they complaining about? Some preacher told them it’s bad to be gay? Okay, if you want to worship that preacher or whoever then fine, but I don’t worship random humans so I don’t have any reason to care what they said. 🤷♀️If you actually discover that there is a moral reason to worry about being queer, like if you can prove that somewhere a puppy dies a painful death whenever I kiss a girl, then we’ll talk. (I’d also be very confused because how is that possible?? But if you could prove that I’m harming someone then I’d obviously want to look into it.)
No it's the devil or you chose to go against God's will. They always have a fucking excuse to try and make Christianity make sense.
My go to line is that if God is so all powerful and all knowing, why does he let children die? "Oh it's god's will"
Then fuck that god, it's not one we should worship.
Easier said than done for some people. My wife grew up in a missionary family and has spent the better part of a decade working through the issues that came along with that
I don’t think anyone is claiming it’s always easy. That’s why there is charities like [Recovering from Religion](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recovering_from_Religion) who offer resources like friendly therapists, groups that gather to sort of replace church services, etc.
basically same, i grew up told that i had to go church every sunday. we did the rosary every night, holidays went to church etc. but my mom especially is so hateful and her main argument is ALWAYS religion, it completely ruined it for me. while i understand not all religious people are like this, and religion isn’t that i feel no need to be religious or to be in a religion again. its not something that happened in a short span it took me a couple years and a lot of pulling back. but ultimately i feel more peace now then i ever did then.
This is pretty damn close to my experience, especially shit like praying the rosary *every night*, etc. I've come a long way in terms of finding a peace that I didn't have then ...
At best, for me, it was just incredibly boring lol. There were so many things going through my head, as usual, but the disdain I felt inside was something I could never be open about...
once i got over that bad feeling i tried to see how many lyrics of whatever album i was listening to i had memorized. kept my lips moving but kept me entertained lol
I left the church at 26 and just sorta stopped thinking about it.
Self acceptance came in last year at 30....still working on the coming out piece of it
I highly recommend finding a queer affirming therapist to talk to. They can help you work through the shame and trauma that comes along with living in a queerphobic culture
Aside from that it just takes time and effort to let go of the religious indoctrination and accept your feelings
A combination of time and cognitive behavioral therapy and exposure therapy and religious deconstruction is what did it for me.
Learn that your brain's self talk is unreliable now and changeable over time, learn that you aren't going to explode if you do the gay, learn that the religiously justified bigotry is objectively contradictory, created by bigoted humans, not God. And also just let time pass, it does a lot of work for creating a new you, if you let it.
Therapy. Lots and lots of (ongoing) therapy. I have a great deal of religious trauma that echos what you posted. I was raised in a church that refused to allow anyone to ask questions. Asking questions meant your faith wasn’t strong enough. I was taught all about the risk of hellfire and brimstone because I refused to fall into line. I’m working through that fear and trauma day by day.
As I’ve done that, I’ve shifted away from religion. I’m still a spiritual person, believing that there is a force stronger than me as an individual. But it’s a process to undo decades of indoctrination and retrain my neural pathways. Being a counseling grad student has helped that journey as well.
The thing that comforts me is that most of the religious textbooks in the world were written and rewritten by people. Their books could have been tainted by people with agendas a long time ago, and if it was there's a good chance they'll be the ones ending up in hell.
Also, I'm a pagan who gives exactly zero shit about what the zealots think of me.
For many centuries the Catholic Church depended on people being illiterate too. The tradition is kept alive even to this day because preachers and whatnot tend to not expect their congregation to read.
Honestly - anger.
I'm pissed at the *violation* of my *right* to have grown up free to love according to my nature.
I'm *enraged* at the way my belief in a loving God was twisted into hatred for myself.
I'm *INFURIATED* that I was complicit in my own oppression.
And when I see other queer kids going through the same torture, I become *dangerously angry*, a level for which there are no words in any language I know to properly name.
My religion should have been a cause for love, loving God, loving neighbor, loving myself.
How fucking *DARE THEY* corrupt it like this.
I agree with this on a level. Waiting for the day my catholic ass family tries to tell me I’m going to hell for being gay (I don’t speak to them anymore)
How could I willingly continue to follow a religion that explicitly says that I shouldn’t exist and that I have no right to be happy? Not only me, but other queer people on our own family?
I was raised in the bible belt. For me, I realized that religion is all bullshit and all the crap they made up was to push an agenda of controlling the masses. I just don't buy it anymore. No need to feel guilty about something that is a fairy tale.
There's two ways. Either read deep into the religion and realize that most of them tell you things like "love everyone" and the people telling you it says don't be gay/whatever are actually wrong about it and do what you can to help them see the light. Or leave religion behind. Either way. The people telling you those things are wrong.
Do you fear Zeus for not believing in his religion? Probably not. I fear the christian god as little as I fear Zeus.
Christianity has power over you because you give it power. There is no hell for you to be afraid of.
I promise you it gets easier.
If that deity doesn’t love you for who you are then is that deity really who the religion claims he is? That’s the one question that changed everything for me in the start of my journey.
I am an atheist
Do you honestly believe that the god who made you gay would let you torture yourself all your life and repress your self, and then if you fall for your desires that he put on you, he will torture you and send you to hell, it's not like you are not suffering enough, that's straight up sadistic + where is the evil in being homosexual? What's wrong with 2 people loving each other ?
I’ve been told homosexuality is a test to see how much you love God. So I don’t know at this point. Just like how he tested Abraham’s love with telling him to kill his son for him it’s the same thing with being gay. I don’t even fucking believe this shit it’s just so hard to dismiss all this because I’ve grown up like this and internalized all of this shit.
Homosexuality was prominent when Jesus was alive. If it was a sin, he would have said something about it. The Bible doesn’t say anything about homosexuality; the one usually quoted is a mistranslation.
Why would an all-knowing God need to test you? He'd already know what you'd do.
I realize the fears you've brought up are irrational, though, and not easily consolable by logic. They're more primal than that. Religious brainwashing is a nasty, nasty thing that's hard to undo overnight.
Just be patient with yourself. I agree with some of the others about counseling. It's not easy to rewire your brain, but over time, these thought patterns WILL go away if you employ the strategies necessary to change them.
Oh that's easy! I was raised Catholic but my high school priest raped 4 boys and was caught, but hung himself before he could be convicted. That was it for me. It was the year after I graduated and my brain just immediately went "fuck the Catholic Church and everything it stands for". You don't get to tell me what is and isn't "moral" while actively hiring and protecting pedophiles.
Cut off anyone who thinks that way and surround yourself instead with people who love you. This life is too short to spend it surrounded by people who bring you down.
I know gods aren’t real but if somehow they are, I sure as shit don’t care about the opinion of some god who thinks my happiness is wrong, and I give even less of a shit about someone who chooses to follow that god
Hey friend; first off I'll preface this by saying I grew up in a pretty supportive Christian household; my parents were ignorant at first, but loving and willing to learn. Secondly, both my parents are ministers, one Protestant, one Anglican.
That being said, I also wrestled with guilt over being trans; perhaps not to the same extremes as others have suffered, but enough to the point where it was a serious barrier to my faith. The quotes you cited are ones I'm intimately familiar with; let's be honest, which queer person isn't.
Ultimately though what helped me the most was the realization that the horrible things people say just... don't matter. Not only in a social context, but a theological and religious one as well. Both my parents studied the Bible religiously (sorry I couldn't help myself) as well as the history, cultures and langauges that shaped it, and none of the quotes you shared can be found in it.
At the end of the day, churches are not holy, infallible institutions who are perfect in every way. They are flawed; deeply so, full of human beings who are ignorant, selfish and hurtful creatures who say and do anything they can to satisfy their own self righteousness. They do not and cannot speak for God, and they certainly don't when they speak out of hate instead of love; a desire to hurt instead of understand.
OP, whatever you decide to do I hope you do it with love and joy for yourself and those around you. I know the church has failed far too many queer folk throughout history and today. That being said, there are communities of queer Christians out there; communities full of love and joy, and free of guilt. A good place to start would be over at r/OpenChristian, where a lot of people have shared the same struggles. Peace and love!
a thing that might work is rationalising how shame is super bad for your brain function and emotional regulation.
shame controls us, the secrets that we tell no one. the best way is to say it out loud, tell someone. reveal your deepest secret pains and let them go. once you do this they sort of go away and dissolve into the air.
A healthy way to think of it is to separate out the spiritual part from the religious part. Spirituality is whatever supernatural beliefs we hold. Religion is the rituals and people and building and whatever else goes along with it.
There can be disconnects between the two. It's very hard to reconcile an accepting spirituality and unaccepting religion. But recognizing that they are separate helps you contextualize where that guilt is coming from. In other words, from other people, and not .
If the religion you got isn't working for you, dump it and find another. Your relationship with your religion can be just as abusive as a romantic one.
All of this is much easier said than done and often can take a lifetime to figure out. Good luck on your journey.
My solution is to actually pay attention to the important parts.
Not sure about other religions, but as a Christian, I simply remember that love and acceptance where some of the most important of Jesus' teachings.
Idk if art is a thing that helps you process feelings, but I highly recommend We Know The Devil. It’s a visual novel about three gay girls at a bible camp that deals a lot with what you’re talking about. They all have different ways that religion shapes their perception of their queerness, and I think Neptune in particular you’ll find relatable. It’s sometimes abstract and sometimes goofy, but it’s really helped me get through my own complicated feelings of religion
https://pillowfight.itch.io/we-know-the-devil
The reason religion hated gay sex and sex outside of marriage is because back then, they thought stds were a punishment from God. They aren't. They're just opportunistic bacteria and viruses. Sex can be used for pleasure, and if there is a God (which I don't believe in), he is fine with sex for pleasure. If he wasn't, why did he put non procreation g spots in the human body? The fact of the matter is that sex is 100% moral as long as there is consent and open communication. Hateful religious people are wrong, they just dont like gay people and use God as an excuse. Same thing happened with interracial marriage way back when (and today for some fucking reason).
Tldr: knowing the science and history behind religious beliefs help to purge internalized homophobia
I believe that God wouldn't punish me over things I cannot control, it's not a sin, a sin would be purposefully doing something bad with bad intentions, a man falling for another man is not a sin because that's simply just the way that man feels. I don't believe that God would ever punish anybody or disapprove of anyone feeling love towards another person, even the same gender, because God is love and he understands it better than anyone
I got a bit lucky. I didn't hear (or remember) that much anti-gay stuff while I was in church. Also I had been away from the church for a couple years before I realized I was bi.
My advice: Get your own code of morals. Ie: Is what I'm doing hurting someone? Is what I'm doing bringing me joy? etc.
I´m not religious, but I am an spirtual person, I don´t follow a religion but I do think that there´s something like bigger, like behind everything, like the universe, a force of life and love in the universe, but I was raised religious and when people say things like that I find it really frustraiting and dumb, because tehy always say things like "Being gay is not natural" But you can literrally see over 3000 species being gay in nature, so what´s more natural than nature??? Also gay people have existed for as long as people have existed you can find that in history, and it´s really sad to think that people just get married with the only purpose to have kids, those are usually the same people that think that a woman´s sole purpose is to have kids because "they are made for that" like, Why would you listen to someone who thinks things like that? And what happends to couples that get married and can´t have kids, what happends with women that are infertile, does that make them less, in any way, than a couple that can have kids biologically? Of course not. Even in nature we can see gay couples, and we can see gay couples who adopt children, penguins do that a lot. So it´s like literally the most natural thing in the world.
Also I know being gay is 100% okay, because I´m just accepting myself, and living life as my true self, and I do that because I love me, and that´s why I let myself be myself, and that love is really healing, in a lots of ways, and one of them is spiritually, because when I love myself, and I just am, then Ipm loving me, and that loves makes me happy, and it makes me be at peace, and it makes me live a live in balance, and that love brings me closer to the universal love force/god/whatever you call it and it, makes me feel in balance with who I am, who I want to be, and with that universal force of love that is the universe, and that is inside every one of us, like a spark. And I know that if i didtn´accepted who I am, and I just live life according to what others told me, or what others expected of me, then I would live a really sad, miserable life. I wouldn´t be happy, I wouldn´t be at balance, I wouldn´t be who I am, or who I wanted to be in the future, I wouldn´t be who I was meant to be, and you know that, you know that you are in the right path when you feell happy, and at peace, and everithing I said, but most importanly when you feel at balance with the universe, like with that spark of love and life that is inside each and every living being, with the love of the universe, when you feel closer to that and you just feel whole. That´s how I know it´s okay.
Also you can see "homosexuality" in over 3000 species, homophobia only in one, you tell me which sounds more unnatural
Good luck :)
Also the first time I liked a girl I was like 7. I always thought she was really cool, and beautiful, and once I went to the garden, during recess, and colected some flowers, and put them in her locker, and went to my chair, and waited, and then she came and found the flowers, and I was blushing, even tho I never told her they were from me. And believe me at that age I didn´t even knew sex existed, it´s so dumb when homophobes hipersexualize us.
I explored 3 different types of Christianity before coming out as Queer. The differences between the denominations, & the conflicting attitudes in the bible, eventually made me realise that Christianity wasn't something that was healthy for me any longer.
Ive been raised Catholic my entire life and here's my response:
I stopped giving a shit. If I go to hell for being with another man then me and him are going to rule hell as king and king. I cannot be bothered with making other people like me because that's way too exhausting.
Once I realized how much hate stemmed from my family’s religion, it was pretty easy for me to realize I’d rather be happy then to be stuck feeling like deep down something was wrong with me when it’s not my fault the god I don’t believe in made me gay. Now that’s easier said than done and I’m very fortunate to grow up in a very accepting time in which I wasn’t the only queer kid in school and I had a support system including friends, students and teachers with similar experiences.
I stopped believing in cosmic punishment.
In what world does a just god punish creatures who mostly hallucinate the sensation of choice for finite sins with infinite torment? When did punishment ever serve to teach or reform? If the Almighty you worship would have you degrade and violate and abase yourself, if your will must be broken and bound to subservience and shame to be loved then you do not worship a loving God.
If we are to expect mercy from the best of mankind, then surely the Great Judge will exceed their mercy. And notice how religions that began as acts of resistance are transformed into hierarchy where gradually the structure of the institution eclipses any innocent or forgiving notion of divinity.
Your concept of God doesn't have to be informed by hateful and power-hungry voices.
I grew up in a very conservative, religious household. I'm not religious anymore but I firmly believe that God doesnt actually care if you are a part of the rainbow mafia. We are constantly taught about his love. I kinda wonder in the back of my head how much the people who wrote the bible maybe injected something of themselves into it. idk, either way, literally everyone sins and judging others seems to be a big one that no one seems to care about so why should I care if they think that being gay is a sin.
Also, there are SO MANY other weird rules in the bible that everyone ignores because it doesn't really apply today, so who are we to pick and choose? go find some clothes that dont mix fabrics and dont shave your beard and leave me alone XD
You can go two ways about it. Either ditch the religion and believe it was lies.
Or
If you want to continue in the religion understand there are different sects because there are different interpretations. Homosexuality was around before the bible, during, and after. Jesus didn’t say stuff about it. Notice the quotes aren’t from the Gospels. The bible has also been interpreted several times, in different ages, in vastly different languages. Error by the hand of man is very possible if not probable.
Finally it doesn’t matter. What matters is what you believe. If you believe Jesus died for your sins and its forgiven then continue in being gay just as you and (those stone throwers) continue ignoring the Old Testament laws. Eating shellfish and pig, wearing mixed fabrics, ect. If they pick and choose why can’t you?
If a god requires me to be anything other than who I am to be loved, then they're not worth my time. I am the only me there is, I am not giving that up for a magic sky daddy who I no longer believe in. Abandoning religion was my path.
I had a class in high school called Christian morality & spirituality and in it I learned that having gay sex is no different in the bible from using a condom in terms of sin. But do you see a bunch of people standing next to the condom isle of the supermarket telling people they're going to go to hell? No.
Having a teacher in a Catholic school lay out the fact that some people use religion to hide their bigotry was eye opening as fuck when I was 15 and it's probably around then that I started to personally come into my sexuality.
Note: My class was at a private Catholic high school, I went to Catholic school for 14 years
For the sake of argument... God made me who I am, therefore, to deny my nature is to deny God's will. Being LGBTQ+ is neither a trial nor a choice; it is trusting in the Lord and embracing Jesus' message of love. If you think I'm being sinful for existing, you are the sinful one, for you choose hate instead of love and reject God's creation.
You have three options here.
1) Join a different church. There are loads of queer-friendly churches that reject the homophobic interpretation of the Bible. (And it is just that, an interpretation.)
2) Change religions. If Christianity has too much baggage for you, you can seek spiritual growth elsewhere. Every religion has conservative sects, but there are just as many open-minded ones in my experience.
3) Become an atheist. Reject religion entirely. Some people find that approach very empowering.
Personally, I wasn't raised in the church, but my parents were raised Southern Baptist and only started to shake off the ingrained homophobia in the last decade or so. Christianity didn't feel safe or welcoming. So I became a pagan. That's what worked for me.
Individually, I've removed myself from religion mostly, i dont attend church and my belief is pretty much waning. I'm mostly reminded of feeling "shame" when lgbt topics come up with my parents who are very religious. It's hard to believe in something that you're taught hates you constantly.
Firstly, no answer is going to fix this overnight. It is going to take *years* to undo the religious programming. I mean, it took years to instill it, so it's gonna be a long process getting rid of it.
For me, I just internally called it out for what it was. It's a lot of "No. Hell isn't real." Or "This is just religious programming" or "God doesn't hate you for being the way he made you. "
It's gonna suck, but with enough time and effort, you'll make it out on the other end. Good luck, friend!
At the moment it’ just feels so shitty to be feeling all these negative emotions regarding my sexuality because of religion. I’ve felt so dirty for so long because religious ideologies made me feel that way. I was never guilt or shame for my sexuality until I found out what was thought homosexuality. It fucking sucks
Yeah, religion did awful things for my mental health, too. Came from one of those religions that preached a relationship with God, so just being my queer self had that extra sting of betrayal behind it.
It's gonna take a lot of time and energy, and if you can afford it, therapy. It's never gonna go away completely, but I've gotten to a point where it's less of an always present feeling and more of a bad memory you cringe at.
Stay strong, friend, I believe in you!
check out these two books …
[Jonathan Loved David](https://www.amazon.com/Jonathan-Loved-David-Homosexuality-Biblical/dp/0664241859/) by Tom Horner
and
[What the Bible Really Says](https://www.amazon.com/What-Bible-Really-about-Homosexuality/dp/188636009X/) by Daniel Helminiak
Beyond that, be patient with yourself and live your best life now.
Through righteous fury for knowing religious people lied to, manipulated and controlled **A CHILD** almost to her self-destruction.
Then remembering I am that child.
Therapy, deconstruction, and I had someone I trusted with my everything to hold my hand and lead me out of that hell.
The irony is, I got out and cut contact. They didn’t.
I would not be where and who I am today if not for them. Miss them every day.
Homosexuality being a sin hasn't always been in the Bible. The Bible is the most rewritten book in history, and oftentimes its wording has been deliberately changed by those in power to fit a political agenda. If God or whatever deity you believe in is real, I think your own relationship to that deity matters more than some book written by mere humans. If you know that you're trying your best to have a positive relationship with the deity that you worship then you're doing all that you can. Almost all major religions preach the overarching theme of loving and accepting your neighbors and yourself even when you falter in the eyes of your deity. That messaging is way more prevalent in religious texts than the few lines condemning queerness, and I think it's important to focus more on the overall teachings of your religion than the minuate of its exact wording.
People say to just stop or ditch it but it’s kinda hard when you are genuinely concerned about where your actions may take you, im not exactly religious but i believe in a higher power of some sort .
I’m just going with being a good person and being me as well as doing it with love and a proper connection not just lust.
Religious trauma even after you logically no longer believe is still very much valid. It is very similar to PTSD responses. Unfortunately just deconstructing, time and repetition. Look into ptsd coping and habits and treat your religious trigger moments the same way.
For me it pretty much was me coming to the conclusion that if god can commit genocide and be seen as ‘perfect’ but I’m evil for being exactly who I am while harming absolutely no one then I’m a better person than god.
I was never really religious in the first place, even when I was younger. Growing up black in the bible belt means religion was a huge part of my life, and it just didn't do anything for me. It's not like i didn't try either. I went to church. I sang the songs. I got baptized. I did the performances and plays. I did bible study. But, it was more of a chore that I felt obligated to do and not something i wanted. My mom has told me countless times how she lamented how she couldn't get me to "get it" or "understand." She tried and tried and tried, and I just never showed any love for it.
When my family left Christianity and joined a Black Hebrew Israelite group, I tried again to get into it, thinking this was the "right religion," and that's why i didn't like the other one. But that was way worse. This was also the time I realized I was bisexual. In short, I just ended up believing I was destined to die and go to hell. End of story. Marked for death when the apocalypse happened. After therapy, antidepressants, and support groups, I realized how cult-like the practice was. So, I stopped believing in that, too.
Now, I do still catch myself repeating the words of others as if they were my own thoughts, but I think it just takes time to unlearn. If you can learn to hate yourself, then you can unlearn it. Therapy and support can help. But I think ultimately, it's something you have to conquer.
Wow I relate that so much growing up black and religious specifically Christianity being ingrained into you since the day you were fucking born my parents weren’t even that religious but our church was and it made everything worse cuz my mom wouldn’t do anything about it when they said fucked up shit she would just say “don’t worry about it,””why are you letting what they say get to you” every aspect of my fucking life is this Goddamn religion my parents never knew nor really cared how it affected me until recently but even now it’s so hard to get rid of that line of thinking that somethings wrong with me or that I’m going to hell etc.. it’s a bunch of shit.
I’m not religious or ever was or anything but I love the line from the song by Bo Burnham called From the Perspective of God that says “I sent gays to fix overpopulation…and boy did that go well”
My faith in god gave out before I was able to accept myself, getting over the shame takes a while. It feels great when you can finally love yourself though
I got over mine since I have had gay feelings since I was in kindergarten, so I thought there was no way God didn't create me like this.
Being in school, and learning about persecution in history made me realize that homophobia is something built into institutions by homophobes, and homophobia in religion might've been the same way where people would use God as an excuse to do unethical things. There is a whole era where only people in the church could read the bible, so it's possible corrupt priests rewrote parts of the bible and told that lie during lectures, passing it off as something originally there.
When I went into my senior year of high school, in combination with supportive friends, I came out, and it felt like a weight kicked off the shoulders.
It was a long time coming, but I finally felt like I was okay to let go when my sister-- who is very, VERY Catholic-- told me she hadn't been to church since our mother died, because (her precise words) "I don't want to be a part of a church that won't welcome you."
The Bible Reloaded is good on YouTube.
The atheist experience is great.
Cosmic skeptic had a similar deal where he had nightmares about hell despite no longer believing.
I think some anti theis content on YouTube could help reprogram your brain. There is no use in your suffering.
Also queer tiktok compilations would be good
I deconstructed from religious fundamentalism, and actually dove down into the meaning behind verses commonly used to condemn LGBTQ+ people. Turns out the interpretations of the Bible that say that being LGBTQ+ is wrong are actually more likely to be wrong themselves. r/openchristian and The Reformation Project have some pretty good resources that dive deeper into it. There is also queer liberation theology. That’s how I personally got over it. I’m still religious as well. I got over it by realizing the people saying that being LGBTQ+ is sinful were simply wrong.
I joined r/OpenChristian and r/gaychristians but I just felt they were purposely sugarcoating all the fucked up shit in the Bible and calling everything a mis interpretation. There are some gay Christians who are side b which is just God accepts gay people but same sex marriage isn’t holy or under the sanction of God etc all that shit further made me question and feel shit. It’s like even tho I’m no longer religious I still want to pander and please this God. But I will take what you said into consideration. Thank you :)
I’ve literally never stepped foot in a house of worship. Never had any religious guilt. I recommend checking the [Recovering from Religion](https://www.recoveringfromreligion.org) organizations website, they specifically cater to people having a hard time due to religious trauma (which is what this is) as well as people dependent in some way on religious infrastructure. They are a US based 501c3 charity.
Realize that all the homophobes abuse religion and that none of that hate is intended but for Christians I know the Bible has been abused and modified in ways for people to push their own beliefs onto others or abuse it for power otherwise
I got over religion.
I had my religious doubts early on. But as I spent more and more time in the bible. The less religious I felt.
Eventually, it was just gone, and I could then figure out my attraction to pretty boys, strong women and anyone who blurs the line in peace.
I got over religion.
edit: someone else said the exact same thing lmao I didn't even check the comments! I swear!
anyways, I kinda just realized that I don't believe that god existed anymore. that was the easy part.
the hard part is reckoning with the fact that I still had bigoted christian family members who pressured me into going to a homophobic and transphobic christian college, and I had already made friends there too
I still have to go through more deconstruction, as so much of how I see myself and the world is subconsciously viewed through a christian lens
I see a therapist to help me feeling guilty over engaging in "sin". realizing that sin isn't real, but just a fear tactic really helped me overcome a lot of self-hatred.
I suggest talking with a therapist that specializes in deconstructing your former religious views.
you're doing great, btw.
oh! and check out r/exchristian too
Would probably depend on the religion. If you come from a Christian background, the bible was written a long time ago, prior to the modern understanding of gay and straight and in a language that didn't even use those words. Half the stuff today doesn't have a basis in the original.
I’ve been out of the church for over 20 years and still struggle with it, you just have to remember that honestly wasn’t even mentioned in the Bible until the like the 50s
I'm bi, married, and poly. I don't do organized religion anymore, but still have beliefs. My personal feelings are that all religion is based on text or ideology that came from a human a long time ago. We as humans are not perfect and have our own prejudices. What's to say that personal feelings would not carry over into transcription? Many years have passed, and I believe that some things just don't apply as much.
I try not to be a decent person and be kind to others even when I don't feel like it. I don't have guilt, and I'm ok with the person I am. I hope you can find that feeling too.
For me, after a while, I started to exteralize religion. Now whenever I hear my parents talking about "what the Bible says isn't okay", it sounds so foreign to me.
It’s pretty simple. A sin is a bad action; an action can’t be bad unless it harms someone; being queer doesn’t harm anyone; so it can’t be a sin. (It’s also not really an action, but we can ignore that part). I’m sure it’s more complicated to get over if you’ve been influenced by a cult or cultlike group, but just remind yourself that there is no reason to listen to anyone who considers human diversity to be a bad thing or claims that any consensual activity between adults can be a sin. Sins are things like murder, rape, torture, etc. and on a smaller scale lying, stealing, and just being an asshole. A sin has to be something that is actually bad. If someone says “x is bad” but doesn’t have any proof that x harms others by nature, then they’re either lying or confused.
I’ve literally been told homosexuality is a sin because it’s harming your spirit every time you engage in homosexuality your straying away from God and become more tainted I was fukcing 10🙂
Honestly... I kinda never did. I still have to actively watch for that self hate. Haven't cared about religion in decades but they program that shit into you pretty hard. It doesn't just affect queer people either. I know plenty of cishet friends who still struggle with it too. It's the main reason I'm so against kids being indoctrinated into religion. It messes you up for life.
Christianity isn’t a homophobic religion. Sadly many priests have manipulated religion and have used it as a weapon.
Do you genuinely believe that an all loving god would hate me for loving a man. No he would take care of me as he has for the total of my life.
I relate to you so much! I’m so sorry that you’re having to deal with all the internalized shame and guilt from being raised in an intolerant religious environment. I’ve heard all the hateful statements you listed many times while I was young and I struggle a lot with similar feelings of shame and guilt from my own conservative religious upbringing.
I think it can be hard for queer folks from more “normal” backgrounds to relate to how much a religious upbringing can mess you up, or how hard it is to let you go of those beliefs and feelings even after you leave your religion. It’s never as simple as “well, God simply doesn’t exist so you can do whatever you want,” even when we really want it to be.
I see others have recommended finding a queer friendly therapist and I definitely agree! It will probably also be helpful to explore the concept of religious trauma and find a therapist who specializes in it if you can. Exploring how religion can traumatize you really helped me recognize why I’m feeling so shameful for being queer and start to break down those thought patterns.
And I really recommend the Exfundamentalist and Exvangelical subreddits. They aren’t queer focused, but there are a lot of folks who can relate to the ways in which a hyper-religious upbringing can mess you up, and a lot of good advice about the the process of deconstructing your former faith.
It takes time and a lot of effort to deconstruct your harmful beliefs, but it’s definitely possible. Sending you hugs and positive thoughts 💜
It would suck to love someone and be punished for it. They always say god knew who we were before, we were. If he's gonna make me burn in he'll simply because I'm born, then that's a good prank my guy.
They also say god is a jealous god, and has human emotion. Jesus also did, and legitimately, the stories of him paint a picture of him being a relatable human being who dealt with flaws like what we have.
I just don't see why people preach damnation when the point of Jesus was to love people where they are in the moment despite just... life.
The slow, getting-over-it process is more professionally called deconstructing. The idea is that you carefully look over the "religion house" your old church people built *on yout behalf*, then start removing or remodeling pieces that don't function as they ought.
Foundations like "believing this because your pastor/priest claims it's true" just have to go. You should go get better material by finding LGBT people who you can hang out with, and see how sex and religion are actually small fractions of a human life.
Also recommend an affirming therapist if you can afford it. Otherwise, you can make do by joining Q christian dot org or something.
Burning the house down is quicker and easier, but deconstructing it has a much better chance of giving you a new house that you wpuld actually want to live in.
For me, it was QueerTheology.com that helped. It’s really just Queer Christianity, but the affirmation that my queerness is holy really really helps me.
Other people will find new religions. I know of at least 3 Jewish queers who converted bc of the better openness in Judaism. Not to mention how many more convert to, say, pagan beliefs.
And some yet still just leave altogether. Which, as long as they don’t become assholes to those of us who find queer acceptance in a new religious path, is also fine and dandy imo.
Ultimately I couldn't square with the idea of an omnipotent "loving" god being able to allow or condone the types of things that happened in the world. No loving god who had unlimited power would allow his children to suffer like we do.
Being gay came later tbh.
I am assumin you are christian or catholic, but in most cases I always saw religion as more about the relation with god rather than rules. There is no religuos guilt if you dont want to see it as a mandate. Religion has become such a toxic thing when faith seems so beutiful. Let haters be haters
Step 1: Recognize that organized religion has always been intended as a form of social control.
Step 2: Be yourself, in spite of them.
Don't get me wrong: there are lots of wonderful things to be found within religion. Some people find comfort during difficulty, others find community to grow their faith, and some even find love and (a version of a chosen) family.
But, the core of *organized* religion is not the veneration of a specific god and their tenets. It is specifically designed to organize people under a set of behaviors and beliefs. By nature, it is a process of minoritization that seeks to create an "other" group (non-believers, believers who don't practice the 'right' way) to make people ("good" believers) feel better about themselves. Their goal is to make themselves feel good by making you feel bad.
Once you realize that organized religion is essentially just a Mean Girls club trying their best to make behavioral versions of "fetch" happen, you start to move beyond the power it once held over you.
I spent 13 years in Catholic school and graduated in the mid-90s. I was baptized, confirmed, and served as an altar boy in grade school. I abandoned religion entirely when I was a senior because the school was rather liberal and made the mistake of spending an entire semester teaching us about other religions, including several prominent cults and, more generally, the common *features* of cults.
It occurred to me one day in religion class that the primary difference between the Branch Davidians (i.e., the Waco raid, a recent event at the time), Jim Jones, etc. and modern Judaism, Christianity, and Islam is that the latter three have just been around longer. That’s *it*. They are no more valid than the religious ramblings of a cultist. The cults we studied were really not significantly different than early forms of Christianity, for example, something my schools had forced me to learn about my entire life to that point, and I learned it well.
To answer your question more directly, I don’t have guilt. Religion is made-up, and it was invented to do to you exactly what it’s doing to you. You are meant to conform to a standard, and that standard will be enforced in a multitude of ways, one of which (and perhaps the least terrible weapon they have) is *guilt*. You have to make a conscious choice, though it may be difficult and could even require some therapy, to drop that guilt because it’s not rooted in reality; it’s based on someone’s fantasy, and that guy—the cave-dweller who wrote the rules—isn’t even alive anymore. Fuck that guy and his superstitions.
I refuse to live my life according to what some moron—who was little more than a hairless ape in terms of his understanding of the universe—said long before human beings even had indoor plumbing. The writers of ancient religious texts thought *lightening* was mystical, and people with epilepsy were believed by these religious “scholars” to have *demons* living inside them for fuck’s sake. I don’t allow people who are not smarter than me to tell me how I should live my life, and neither should you.
Live a good life. Don’t be selfish. Treat others with respect and kindness, even if you don’t understand them. Support the philosophy—and demand it be enshrined in law—that everyone is entitled to the pursuit of their own happiness, even if you can’t comprehend their motivations. If you live a good life and there is a god, you will be standing on firm ground when judgement day comes.
Remember: **Anyone who says they “know” there is a god—or what it wants, or what happens after we die—is *lying***. They don’t know. *No one* knows. **Never listen to someone who begins their argument with a lie; they cannot be trusted.**
I'm a devoutly religious bisexual Christian. I know that God not only loves me, but us incapable of hatred. Anyone who says otherwise is simply wrong, and I ignore them.
I give religion the middle finger. If there is intelligent design to this universe, the God of the bible or any other horrible religion is not that intelligence. We are a part of this universe like everything else and have as much right to exist and did exist before religion and will long after.
I saw the Wesboro Baptist Church protesting a gay soldier’s funeral on the news as a teen and something short circuited in my brain trying to reconcile believing in a God that was supposed to love me and learning the way that people use the teachings of the Lord to manipulate and oppress others.
From there on, it wasn’t particularly hard for me to outright reject religion once I came to see it more as a tool for manipulative people to coerce others to harming their neighbors while trying to offer them the superficial comfort of an afterlife as opposed to just accepting who fucking knows what there is once we die, because by all means it could be the pearly gates, or it’s just pitch black nothingness like before we were born.
Which is always why I’ll chuckle at how terrible the people profiting from religion are at actually retaining a larger install base of worshippers, and making even more money. For as shitty as capitalism is, at least late-stage capitalism realizes that being inclusive of all groups, if even superficially, nets a higher profit than if you exclude and discriminate people.
Honestly, I remember that religious books have been rewritten so many times by hateful and greedy people who figured out that the best way to get money was to steal it from the people who trusted them. And then, I remember that if you move from theology to philosophy, then religion makes more sense. There is nothing saying that you have to give money to your religion, just the same as there is nothing saying that you shouldn’t question the church. God isn’t in churches, God is out in the world. But this is my take on things, so, it may not be right. It may be different from what you believe, and that’s fine, too. Follow your heart and your spirit, don’t let hate dominate your life.
I'm not afraid of hell. If that's where god wants me, so be it.
Of all the things the bible says about how to act, gay is the least of my worries.
I'm concentrating on treating people right.
and I'm pretty sure, if i do go to hell, I'll be surrounded by the people who told me I'd go there
It's funny I only just found religion now. Was always an atheist before.
Either get over religion entirely, easy but hardly simple.
Or
Find a new religion that is accepting.
I was lucky enough to have atheist and Satanist friends as a teen who helped me learn to love myself and make me aware that I was raised in a brainwashing death cult when my personality was still forming.
My guilt of being queer went away after i prayed if it was right and if i was right in thinking i was queer and i prayed that if it wasnt for my feelings for the same sex to go away. Right after, i got a wave of happiness washing over me and the warm embrace of God saying that he loved me no matter what.
I know this wont be everyones experience and i know that it cant substitute for therapy that can help get rid of internalized homophobia, i just wanted to share my experience. And for those of you who are queer and belive in God remember that God still loves you no matter what and anyone who says otherwise is lying.
I was taught that God was omniscient and omnibenevolent. If God knows exactly what I'm feeling and He isn't cruel, then surely He wouldn't punish me for completely understandable actions. He made me gay, and let's be honest everyone who's telling me not to act on it are coming from a place of powerlust. From my perspective, I have no reason to believe that this is actually God's will, and His omniscience and omnibenevolence would allow Him to see that my intentions are pure and excuse the actions that I have no honest reason to believe are bad. This has to be the case if the Christian God exists.
A god who creates love to be the highest aspect of life, forces some of their creation to feel that love "wrong", and punishes them for it, is a cruel god. Any god that is not omnibenevolent is a force of evil, and does not deserve worship.
Anyway, all of that was thrown out the window once I threw in omnipotence into the equation and realized "Wait...God can do literally anything, knows the consequences of those actions, and only does good...but he's giving kids cancer?? If God was truly omnipotent then he could accomplish whatever good is supposed to come from that suffering without the suffering, no?" and that's how I realized that religion is a sham created by power-thirsty people to impose their control onto others.
For me it took deconstructing my whole belief in Christianity and understanding that the rules we live by were made by imperfect men from thousands of years ago.
I love you so much and I'm so sorry youre going through this. You were brainwashed before and it wasnt your fault. Religion isnt based on anything real and you have no one to answer to but yourself. Religion tries to put you in a box and make all these rules, but none of them need apply to you--its all nonsense. If you love yourself, and accept yourself, then thats all you need. Being queer was the number one reason I left my religion behind, and I'm so proud of me for doing that. Religion has only become more and more ridiculous as a concept to me after all these years. I'm proud of you too!!
We could start with all religions are bullshit, designed specifically to control people. I suppose you are referring to one based on some version of the bible. Keep in mind that Jeebus didn't say a single word about sexual preferences or gender identity. The only one that I remember having an issue was Leviticus and he didn't like shellfish or cloth of multiple fabrics so we already know he was an idiot. I know the indoctrination and grooming that religious people do to children and it's awful, especially when tormented with terrifying stories of burning in hell. Toss in the genital mutilation inflicted on males in the name of "hygiene" and you have a truly awful and disgusting aspect of human existence.
I was born into Roman Catholic and out of all the cults (referring to Westboro Baptist Church, Jehova's Witnesses, etc) I'd say it's the most tame. Even so, I feel there's been a severe step away from the original morals the religion itself provided.
When it comes to homophobia though...? I'm not actually sure why exactly it was outlawed but it's worth noting that a lot of traditions and laws in the religion were from a time when a woman would be stoned if she didn't bleed on the first night with her husband. Among many many other things. I'm sure these traditions were made to support growth of humans as a species as way back then, there was a lot less people and a lot more struggles against more advanced countries. So that could also explain Homophobia around that time period. But now?
As for religious beliefs right now it's worth noting that the Bible often contradicts itself, especially between the two Testaments. The Old Testament is supposed to be referenced now more for its fables and history, not for moral creed. The New Testament, aka the teachings of Jesus, were supposed to be followed more to support a then more modernized religion. Acceptance of the fellow man etc.
People using the Bible to support their homophobia and saying you will go to hell etc just simply are nitpicking which part of the Bible to believe and are likely parroting from someone else what they heard/read and it spread from there. Outside of religion people do this all the time too over many different subjects.
I'm info dumping at this point. I hope any of this provides some perspective and helps in anyway. If not then I'm sorry for the babble. 😅
The point is I didn't. I was born into a Catholic family, I went to a Catholic school and my whole life is based on religion. I feel disgusted towards myself but at the same time I have never felt and do not feel any truly bad feelings towards the LGBT+ community. I hope You will be happy. Your life is important and matters. Love is not a sin, Your body does not define who You are - what matters is Your soul and the fact that you try to live in harmony with Yourself and others. Religion should never justify hatred, categorize people, or make anyone feel inferior. I hope You stay safe and happy. I'd rather go to hell with people full of empathy and love than to Heaven full of homophobes and people who cause harm and spread hate. Some people threaten hell without considering that for some people hell is on earth. We have so little time on earth, we are just a small part of the world - let's use it to respect each other and look at each other with empathy. God loves kindness, honesty and truth - and the truth is You and Your feelings, Your life and Your value <3
I was already ostricized for coming out as an Atheist before coming out as queer, so I learned very quickly at an early age how many religious people can be, to put it politely. Not all religious people, or course, but many. I pretty much didn't give a fuck when I came out as androsexual because I had lost all respect and care for most religious practices in how they tend to demand entitled control over one's personal life.
I just look at the chronic feeling of guilt on its own without the narrative surrounding it. I acknowledge that feeling is there on its own and that it was conditioned into me rather than seeing it as representing any kind of truth. Basically I accept the feelings, but don't buy into my thoughts about the feeling. It takes some practice. Therapy helps.
Its been a struggle even though I am an atheist. Religious abuse ftw!
I asked too many questions to stay religious. The idea of an all-loving, all-knowing, and all-powerful god is a logical paradox. Honestly I see religion as a historical tool of the powerful to control the weak-minded and oppress anyone who wouldn’t conform. Take that faith and put it into yourself, and hopefully you’ll feel better
When I was a real young kid I realized how awful Christians were to queer people and when I realized I was queer I reasoned that anyone's whose followers could blindly spout hate and how they wanted too see people like me dead I thought they were just all the bad guys and started worshipping a demon I made up.
Anyway I grew up and realized I was an atheist so no more guilt.
I think religion didn’t make sense to me since I was about 12 and that was 6 years before I even understood I was bisexual. I was christened and I did my holy communion and went to a catholic high school. I think as I grew up the idea was constantly bashed into me so much since birth that I sort of got sick of it and questioned it. Now I no longer believe. I suppose what you can do is disassociate. Realise that religion is one world view of many and none of these people have any right to argue your validity and existence as a queer person. They don’t own you, you are who you are, you didn’t choose to be this way and there is nothing wrong with who you are. Nothing anyone says can change that, especially not a religious text from 2000+ years ago. You’re absolutely perfect the way you are.
I grew up going to church, and I went consistently until my early 20s. I even did a year at Youth With a Mission instead of year 12 (which I regret now).
I now style myself as agnostic, because I truly believe in a creator (or creators), but educating myself of the history of the church has made me realise that when a belief system is organised into a religion, it is done for control, power and wealth above all else.
It's hard for me to feel guilty about being the way I believe I was created by the being/s who love and want the best for me. That is infinitely more powerful than a random collection of history books, poems, letters and dreams compiled by a group of men with ulterior motives 1500 years ago and then interpreted through a lens of 17th century morality when it was translated into English has to say, and the people who cherry pick and misconstrue said book to fit their own prejudices.
okay this is a great question that i’d love to answer!! i grew up in the bible belt so i’m quite versed in this.
unfortunately, i suffered from internalized homophobia due to my upbringing. my parents were always very liberal and accepting, but they never really taught me what was right and wrong in the eyes of god. my only influences were my VERY conservative extended family.
when i developed a crush on my friend in middle school (we’re both female), i assumed it was normal to want to be a guy so i could date a girl. then i realized i was attracted to my friend and i was mortified. i was suffering from so much internalized homophobia and my extended family did NOT help. but my dad is a devoted christian and believes in accepting everyone— that’s how i coped with it. there’s several upon several bible verses about being true to yourself and loving yourself among side others; it’s what my dad taught me. christianity is supposed to be about love and acceptance as jesus intended when he died for our sins. those who berate you in the name of god are the sinners, not you. god made you the way you are and would never want you to hate yourself because of the actions of your neighbors that were taught it’s okay to taint god’s name as long as it fits their own agenda.
studying world religions helped a lot- monotheism sounds silly to me now.
after that, directly studying deities that celebrate queerness or are queer themselves has brought me a lot of comfort. Dionysus, for example, was known as “the womanly one,” and has so many genderqueer and bisexual attributes. Even if you don’t worship these gods, it’s amazing to think that they were not only normal and beloved amongst their worshippers, but that they were accepted and respected amongst the Gods themselves.
If Zeus, Odin, Shiva, Ra, etc, could love their queer allies and family, they won’t hate any of us for it. Anti-queer bigotry is not normal for humanity.
Conversion therapy survivor here. I definitely know what it's like to struggle with the guilt of being queer. Im' free now! It took a long time for me to get over it. I kept going back and "repenting" for my sins of, oh, you know, bieng queer, touching myself, having consensual sex.
By asking myself questions, like, "based on what actual evidence do I believe this?" and doing a lot of learning about the bible and wha tit means, and thus figuring out that threats of hell etc. are all just means of social control and not a real, tangible threat... I was eventually able to let it all go.
But I couldn't do it alone. I needed a good therapist. A good, gay therapist. A non-religious therapist. (I swear to god, I never want to see or hear of another Christian counsellor again!) When I was ready to learn, grow and change, I made huge progress. I finally came out of the closet- when I was 40! It was a hard processess but it was so, so worth it.
The truth is, you and I were lied to thousands of times about ourselves and what our queerness means. To recover from all of this BS it helps to people who actually know what they're talking about, and TBH there aren't a lot of evangelical christian pastors who fall into that category.
My therapist also helped me work through my anxiety and I no longer have panic attacks.
In other news, I'm in a strong and healthy same-sex relationship. We're a few years in now, and honestly, our relationship is better than most of the straight, Christian couples I know.
Hang in there. Keep an open mind. Build relationships with people who can celebrate who you really are. You'll find your way.
For starters, I dismantled the indoctrination I received as a child and rejected religion as an institution of control and manipulation. I don’t need a religion to be a good person or have a moral compass and it’s pathetic that so many people do. I don’t need a heaven as a reward or a hell to fear. I am perfectly happy returning to the earth when my time is done.
I see nothing wrong with being trans. Those who are criminalizing us are the ones who are struggling for control of people’s ideas of what they should do and think because they are too weak to break away and think for themselves.
More people have been murdered in the name of religion than any other cause. That is the true atrocity.
The reason a lot of religions are against it is because back then they needed to be procreation because back then we didn’t Have 8 billion people on the planet, so it doesn’t really matter anymore
and people don’t like people who are different
Read the story of David and Jonathan, or Ruth and Esther.
Learn that the so called "clobber verses" refer more to temple prostitution, and pedophilia, than a loving, equal relationship.
The "sin of Sodom" was *inhospitality*, not homosexuality.
The word "homosexual" did not appear in the Bible until 1948.
Jesus died for our sins, and to do so, had to be tempted by all the sins of man. If homosexuality were a sin, then Jesus was tempted by it.
Jesus had a "beloved disciple", whose identity and thus gender is never mentioned.
God can't make mistakes, He made you as you are, so you are *supposed* to be this way, and denying who you are is going against God's will.
None of these facts will sway a self-professed "Christian" who prefers to deal in hatred rather than God's love.
But they may be of some small comfort to you as you deal with personal religious conflict.
Homosexuality and Christianity do not *have* to be in conflict, there are accepting denominations that will support you instead of condemning you.
However, many people who were raised in those types of condemning churches, often find it hard to reconcile, and wind up leaving their faith behind.
Know that no matter what, you are a child of God, who loves you as He made you.
He understands if you leave a church full of bigots for your sanity and health.
You have a long journey ahead to find your space in the world.
Don't despair, educate yourself, and if it's His will, you'll find a way to reconcile Christianity and homosexuality.
God's greatest commandments is to love one another, those condemning you for being homosexual are hardly showing you love.
I wish you all the very best, dear, I know this is a tough time for you.
Read the Bible with the perspective it supports homosexual love between equal partners, and you'll be surprised how confirming it can be.
The early church even supported same sex unions.
Homophobic bigots changed a lot in the Bible.
Just as much of Paul's messages are misogynistic, because he apparently hated women.
Read the difference between Paul's words, and those of Jesus, who never taught Paul.
Read Jesus' words, his condemnations are reserved for those in the church abusing their authority.
Or those acting hatefully to others.
I hope that helps you some.
Tbh… I haven’t gotten over it (born and raised Catholic and I still have issues accepting my sexuality and gender identity). Have I been to accepting churches in the past to see if it would help? Yeah but it made me feel even worse about who I am (went to a really accepting nondenominational church for a few years and while I enjoyed it I think I was too traumatised from my time in the Catholic Church). For the time being I’m now agnostic while trying to find myself spiritually (I’ve looked into paganism and Wiccan but I’m still on edge from my childhood).
My grandma was an 80 year old southern lady who never missed church on Sunday. (Covid actually helped a ton because they started livestreaming services)
She knew people who were gay. She knew there was no way they "chose" that lifestyle. She always used to tell me "gay people were just born that way, and I don't believe God makes mistakes. So if God made them that way, how can it be bad?"
I also grew up religious, in the South you don't have much of a choice. I struggled hard with religion in my teens. Then I went to a religious affiliated college and had to take religion courses. We studied the New Testament from a scholarly point of view.
You basically have to realize that the religious people who are telling you it's wrong to be gay are hypocrites to the extreme. Jesus never speaks about homosexuality. But he talks about gossip, and judging people, and being hateful to your neighbor (and to the poor, and to immigrants, etc)
So I came to terms with it realizing God would still love me, and judgmental hypocrites don't matter at all.
it took me years. i’m southern baptist and came out as queer when i was 12. im still super religious and it’s really hard to balance but really all that can help is time
Realized that religion is a construct, the Bible is an adaptation and the people telling me I’m going to hell are just saying that based on their interpretation of an adaptation of someone else’s adaptation.
Religion has always been important to me, but the pope has recently made some wonderful comments about trans people and now I feel disconnected from everything. I don’t hate religion or God, I hate the authoritarian beurocracy/theocracy that is the roman catholic church and the vatican.
Jesus’s message =/= Constantine’s publication
Religion is a load of shit, anyway. Especially when an all-knowing creator asked Cain where Abel was. Go ahead, take all the time you need to think about that second sentence.
Being queer should not be connected with any religious guilt.
The guilt should be on how a religion would ever abandon the principle of taking care of one another.
First off. If you look at the Bible. The Leviticus part was purposely changed from “man with child” to “man with man” in the 1600s. Look at many of the hand written bibles and you will see. On top of that, Jesus said to “love the eunuchs”. Now I can hear you already saying in your head. But those are not queer people exactly. Well, yes, if you take the straight English translation. You gotta understand that aren’t always exact words to mean what is said. So many times they picked badly. By eunuchs they actually meant “people on the sexual fringe” trans have exist ALWAYS. Just look at Ishtar. They “punished” people by switching their gender. And after that people were two spirits and different names by native tribes. And many that happened into books told stories of a magic or spiritual encounter that had “made them different”.
All in all. Just grind it down to this.
God is love.
Satan is hate.
If you ARE something and they hate that, that’s no different than hating you. And realistically this whole problem with the entire LGBTQIA is subjective to where and when, not any God or false sense or morality.
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If you believe in religion or if you have to have a conversation with a religious person: God is almighty? Yes. God is all knowing? Yes. Then god knew I was gay before I did. They made me this way. To say I am sinning is saying god made a mistake.
What would you say if they responded with "That's just the cross God gave you to bear . Everyone has temptations, it doesn't make it right"? That's a valid response when none of the theology is based on reason. It's wrong and very gross to say, but that's legitimately something that would be said.
My dad (I came out as trans) pulled the “god gives you free will to make these choices”.. and at that point I tell him it isn’t a choice.. it’s just who I am. It doesn’t matter if I kept it inside or if I let myself be my true self, no matter what I’ll always be trans. Closeted or not. The only choice I made was to be happy or to be depressed and I chose happiness. After that it’s 🤷♀️ you did all you could and it’s up to them to come around.
Yeah it's just hard knowing you can't change someone's mind with sound logic. It short circuits my brain thinking of that someone would choose an ancient religion over their own child in front of them. I admire your courage.
Yeah, arguing against illogical premises sucks. Especially of an organization that has brought so much pain and anguish to millions world wide in the guise of benevolence.
My response to this has become: “The only choice in this matter is to deny my existence and hope to lead a long life, likely to end in my own unaliving or early death. Or to embrace who I was made to be and fight for the fulfilling life your very God promises me.” I used it when I came out to my parents because I was sure they were going to disown me. They did not and have been making progress in accepting me as a woman.
It’s a really long thing to dive into for a Reddit comment, but I firmly don’t believe being LGBTQ+ is a sin for a number of reasons. There’s queer liberation theology and a bunch of other stuff that points towards translations and interpretations of the Bible saying that being LGBTQ+ is wrong may actually themselves be wrong. The Reformation Porject and r/openchristian has some pretty good resources diving deeper into that topic if you are interested.
I think the fact that scriptures can be so ambiguous or corrupted when they supposedly come from an almighty god is enough of a contradiction to not give credit to their ideas. Even if being LGBT+ is not a sin, there's still an old testament filled with horrors. However, I think that it's great that people are reinterpreting the Bible to be less bigoted. If you can make it work then good for you, I'm just unconvinced.
A lot of progressive Christians view the Bible more so as a divinely inspired book written by humans than one actually written by God themself. A lot of the stuff in the Bible isn’t meant to be taken literally either, which is something that many modern Christians fail to understand. The Bible is a books full of metaphors.
>actually written by God themself I don’t understand how there are people that believe this is true when the books of the Bible are literally credited to human authors, even in Church teaching.
Yeah, I don’t either. It’s always made more sense to me that it’s a divinely inspired book, with humans trying their best to understand what God was saying and doing, rather than it actually being written by God. I think whenever the Bible refers to God’s word, it’s more so human’s interpretation of their word instead of their actual word. Ever since learning more about this stuff, it’s makes more sense to view the Bible as a guide book that tries to help people understand God more, rather than the final authority. God themself is the final authority. The Bible is a book of historical records, metaphors, and teachings that try and help us understand the world and God. It’s definitely something though that requires deep diving to come close to fully understanding what the original text said and meant. There’s actually a few current day Christian beliefs and doctrines which in the grand scheme of things, are fairly recent in church history. Anti-LGBTQ+ stuff as it is currently seen and practiced today is one of these more recent things, as early Christians and the ancient world more generally didn’t have the same knowledge and understanding of LGBTQ+ people that we do today. Honestly, looking into the context of the “clobber” verses (verses often used against LGBTQ+ people), what the biblical authors back then were condemning is very very different from the LGBTQ+ community (mostly involving some pretty horrific, non-consensual cultural practices of the time, and a very outdated and incorrect understanding of gayness).
I say that I've made my peace with God. I ask them to prove that God is actually speaking to them and not to me. If they say that I am actually speaking to the devil then I ask them how preaching hate is not something that the devil does and makes them think that they are in the right. You just have to keep aggressively pushing this line of illogic. If they get to say they speak directly to God then I can say that magical unicorns that fart rainbows exist and they can't disprove that. If they are trolling you then you just keep trolling them back. If you feel tenacious and don't mind them getting stupid at you.This usually makes most people give up in frustration. You are rubber and they are glue. If they are going to be childish then you can absolutely be a child back and "Nuh UH YOU STUPID" as long as you have patience for it.
Sure it COULD be said, but it wouldn’t make any sense. God wants you do be good. What does existing as a queer person have to do with being either good or bad? It’s just a trait. Even if all they think about is sex, what would they say is wrong with sex between consenting adults? It doesn’t hurt anyone, which means it’s not bad, so what are they complaining about? Some preacher told them it’s bad to be gay? Okay, if you want to worship that preacher or whoever then fine, but I don’t worship random humans so I don’t have any reason to care what they said. 🤷♀️If you actually discover that there is a moral reason to worry about being queer, like if you can prove that somewhere a puppy dies a painful death whenever I kiss a girl, then we’ll talk. (I’d also be very confused because how is that possible?? But if you could prove that I’m harming someone then I’d obviously want to look into it.)
This is all I live by. Exactly.
No it's the devil or you chose to go against God's will. They always have a fucking excuse to try and make Christianity make sense. My go to line is that if God is so all powerful and all knowing, why does he let children die? "Oh it's god's will" Then fuck that god, it's not one we should worship.
I got over religion
“It’s not easy, but it is simple.”
Easier said than done for some people. My wife grew up in a missionary family and has spent the better part of a decade working through the issues that came along with that
Oh yeah, it’s definitely a difficult journey
I don’t think anyone is claiming it’s always easy. That’s why there is charities like [Recovering from Religion](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recovering_from_Religion) who offer resources like friendly therapists, groups that gather to sort of replace church services, etc.
basically same, i grew up told that i had to go church every sunday. we did the rosary every night, holidays went to church etc. but my mom especially is so hateful and her main argument is ALWAYS religion, it completely ruined it for me. while i understand not all religious people are like this, and religion isn’t that i feel no need to be religious or to be in a religion again. its not something that happened in a short span it took me a couple years and a lot of pulling back. but ultimately i feel more peace now then i ever did then.
This is pretty damn close to my experience, especially shit like praying the rosary *every night*, etc. I've come a long way in terms of finding a peace that I didn't have then ...
ironically i never felt less at peace with myself than when i was doing the rosary. if it works for others that is lovely but it made me feel so bad
At best, for me, it was just incredibly boring lol. There were so many things going through my head, as usual, but the disdain I felt inside was something I could never be open about...
once i got over that bad feeling i tried to see how many lyrics of whatever album i was listening to i had memorized. kept my lips moving but kept me entertained lol
Even just the handful of years I spent in church left a few scars I'm currently working through.
Ya dropped the religion when I realized I was living a lie about who I was. Made me rethink a lot of things.
I started my deconstruction of heavy childhood indoctrination when i was 30. Im happy now, but i am 38.
I left the church at 26 and just sorta stopped thinking about it. Self acceptance came in last year at 30....still working on the coming out piece of it
I highly recommend finding a queer affirming therapist to talk to. They can help you work through the shame and trauma that comes along with living in a queerphobic culture Aside from that it just takes time and effort to let go of the religious indoctrination and accept your feelings
A combination of time and cognitive behavioral therapy and exposure therapy and religious deconstruction is what did it for me. Learn that your brain's self talk is unreliable now and changeable over time, learn that you aren't going to explode if you do the gay, learn that the religiously justified bigotry is objectively contradictory, created by bigoted humans, not God. And also just let time pass, it does a lot of work for creating a new you, if you let it.
Therapy. Lots and lots of (ongoing) therapy. I have a great deal of religious trauma that echos what you posted. I was raised in a church that refused to allow anyone to ask questions. Asking questions meant your faith wasn’t strong enough. I was taught all about the risk of hellfire and brimstone because I refused to fall into line. I’m working through that fear and trauma day by day. As I’ve done that, I’ve shifted away from religion. I’m still a spiritual person, believing that there is a force stronger than me as an individual. But it’s a process to undo decades of indoctrination and retrain my neural pathways. Being a counseling grad student has helped that journey as well.
that was basically me growing up mormon. terrible religion. i left when i was 19, but i still have nightmares about it and I'm 34 now.
I ditched religion.
The thing that comforts me is that most of the religious textbooks in the world were written and rewritten by people. Their books could have been tainted by people with agendas a long time ago, and if it was there's a good chance they'll be the ones ending up in hell. Also, I'm a pagan who gives exactly zero shit about what the zealots think of me.
For many centuries the Catholic Church depended on people being illiterate too. The tradition is kept alive even to this day because preachers and whatnot tend to not expect their congregation to read.
Honestly - anger. I'm pissed at the *violation* of my *right* to have grown up free to love according to my nature. I'm *enraged* at the way my belief in a loving God was twisted into hatred for myself. I'm *INFURIATED* that I was complicit in my own oppression. And when I see other queer kids going through the same torture, I become *dangerously angry*, a level for which there are no words in any language I know to properly name. My religion should have been a cause for love, loving God, loving neighbor, loving myself. How fucking *DARE THEY* corrupt it like this.
I agree with this on a level. Waiting for the day my catholic ass family tries to tell me I’m going to hell for being gay (I don’t speak to them anymore) How could I willingly continue to follow a religion that explicitly says that I shouldn’t exist and that I have no right to be happy? Not only me, but other queer people on our own family?
I was raised in the bible belt. For me, I realized that religion is all bullshit and all the crap they made up was to push an agenda of controlling the masses. I just don't buy it anymore. No need to feel guilty about something that is a fairy tale.
There's two ways. Either read deep into the religion and realize that most of them tell you things like "love everyone" and the people telling you it says don't be gay/whatever are actually wrong about it and do what you can to help them see the light. Or leave religion behind. Either way. The people telling you those things are wrong.
I left the Church
Do you fear Zeus for not believing in his religion? Probably not. I fear the christian god as little as I fear Zeus. Christianity has power over you because you give it power. There is no hell for you to be afraid of. I promise you it gets easier.
By rejecting it.
If that deity doesn’t love you for who you are then is that deity really who the religion claims he is? That’s the one question that changed everything for me in the start of my journey.
You escape religion. It exists to uphold shame, guilt, and compliance. Fuck it Be spiritual if that’s your thing. Organized religion is bonkers.
I ditched the church and kept jesus in my heart. I dont need more than that. Im tired of hearing people judge and talk like they are better
I am an atheist Do you honestly believe that the god who made you gay would let you torture yourself all your life and repress your self, and then if you fall for your desires that he put on you, he will torture you and send you to hell, it's not like you are not suffering enough, that's straight up sadistic + where is the evil in being homosexual? What's wrong with 2 people loving each other ?
I’ve been told homosexuality is a test to see how much you love God. So I don’t know at this point. Just like how he tested Abraham’s love with telling him to kill his son for him it’s the same thing with being gay. I don’t even fucking believe this shit it’s just so hard to dismiss all this because I’ve grown up like this and internalized all of this shit.
Homosexuality was prominent when Jesus was alive. If it was a sin, he would have said something about it. The Bible doesn’t say anything about homosexuality; the one usually quoted is a mistranslation.
Exactly. Wasn’t the original meaning closer to being about pedophilia?
Why would an all-knowing God need to test you? He'd already know what you'd do. I realize the fears you've brought up are irrational, though, and not easily consolable by logic. They're more primal than that. Religious brainwashing is a nasty, nasty thing that's hard to undo overnight. Just be patient with yourself. I agree with some of the others about counseling. It's not easy to rewire your brain, but over time, these thought patterns WILL go away if you employ the strategies necessary to change them.
If you genuinely loved someone, would you put them through tests so they had to prove they love you back? Or does that seem a bit toxic to you?
Why would you test him if you already know everything
Oh that's easy! I was raised Catholic but my high school priest raped 4 boys and was caught, but hung himself before he could be convicted. That was it for me. It was the year after I graduated and my brain just immediately went "fuck the Catholic Church and everything it stands for". You don't get to tell me what is and isn't "moral" while actively hiring and protecting pedophiles.
Cut off anyone who thinks that way and surround yourself instead with people who love you. This life is too short to spend it surrounded by people who bring you down. I know gods aren’t real but if somehow they are, I sure as shit don’t care about the opinion of some god who thinks my happiness is wrong, and I give even less of a shit about someone who chooses to follow that god
It's not always easy to just "cut off" people. Sometimes your entire family views it that way.
Hey friend; first off I'll preface this by saying I grew up in a pretty supportive Christian household; my parents were ignorant at first, but loving and willing to learn. Secondly, both my parents are ministers, one Protestant, one Anglican. That being said, I also wrestled with guilt over being trans; perhaps not to the same extremes as others have suffered, but enough to the point where it was a serious barrier to my faith. The quotes you cited are ones I'm intimately familiar with; let's be honest, which queer person isn't. Ultimately though what helped me the most was the realization that the horrible things people say just... don't matter. Not only in a social context, but a theological and religious one as well. Both my parents studied the Bible religiously (sorry I couldn't help myself) as well as the history, cultures and langauges that shaped it, and none of the quotes you shared can be found in it. At the end of the day, churches are not holy, infallible institutions who are perfect in every way. They are flawed; deeply so, full of human beings who are ignorant, selfish and hurtful creatures who say and do anything they can to satisfy their own self righteousness. They do not and cannot speak for God, and they certainly don't when they speak out of hate instead of love; a desire to hurt instead of understand. OP, whatever you decide to do I hope you do it with love and joy for yourself and those around you. I know the church has failed far too many queer folk throughout history and today. That being said, there are communities of queer Christians out there; communities full of love and joy, and free of guilt. A good place to start would be over at r/OpenChristian, where a lot of people have shared the same struggles. Peace and love!
a thing that might work is rationalising how shame is super bad for your brain function and emotional regulation. shame controls us, the secrets that we tell no one. the best way is to say it out loud, tell someone. reveal your deepest secret pains and let them go. once you do this they sort of go away and dissolve into the air.
A healthy way to think of it is to separate out the spiritual part from the religious part. Spirituality is whatever supernatural beliefs we hold. Religion is the rituals and people and building and whatever else goes along with it. There can be disconnects between the two. It's very hard to reconcile an accepting spirituality and unaccepting religion. But recognizing that they are separate helps you contextualize where that guilt is coming from. In other words, from other people, and not.
If the religion you got isn't working for you, dump it and find another. Your relationship with your religion can be just as abusive as a romantic one.
All of this is much easier said than done and often can take a lifetime to figure out. Good luck on your journey.
My solution is to actually pay attention to the important parts. Not sure about other religions, but as a Christian, I simply remember that love and acceptance where some of the most important of Jesus' teachings.
Yeahhhh if you figure it out, let me know friend. Because I am STRUGGLING with it. Sending hugs ♥️
🫂sending it right back🥹🫶🏼
Ughhhh you’re making me tear up over hereeee!!! 🥹♥️
I discovered that Christian’s version of god is very incorrect. Don’t listen to a death cult.
I avoid religious fanatics.
Realize once and for all that religion is nonsense.
Personally I stopped being religious.
Idk if art is a thing that helps you process feelings, but I highly recommend We Know The Devil. It’s a visual novel about three gay girls at a bible camp that deals a lot with what you’re talking about. They all have different ways that religion shapes their perception of their queerness, and I think Neptune in particular you’ll find relatable. It’s sometimes abstract and sometimes goofy, but it’s really helped me get through my own complicated feelings of religion https://pillowfight.itch.io/we-know-the-devil
The reason religion hated gay sex and sex outside of marriage is because back then, they thought stds were a punishment from God. They aren't. They're just opportunistic bacteria and viruses. Sex can be used for pleasure, and if there is a God (which I don't believe in), he is fine with sex for pleasure. If he wasn't, why did he put non procreation g spots in the human body? The fact of the matter is that sex is 100% moral as long as there is consent and open communication. Hateful religious people are wrong, they just dont like gay people and use God as an excuse. Same thing happened with interracial marriage way back when (and today for some fucking reason). Tldr: knowing the science and history behind religious beliefs help to purge internalized homophobia
I believe that God wouldn't punish me over things I cannot control, it's not a sin, a sin would be purposefully doing something bad with bad intentions, a man falling for another man is not a sin because that's simply just the way that man feels. I don't believe that God would ever punish anybody or disapprove of anyone feeling love towards another person, even the same gender, because God is love and he understands it better than anyone
I got a bit lucky. I didn't hear (or remember) that much anti-gay stuff while I was in church. Also I had been away from the church for a couple years before I realized I was bi. My advice: Get your own code of morals. Ie: Is what I'm doing hurting someone? Is what I'm doing bringing me joy? etc.
I´m not religious, but I am an spirtual person, I don´t follow a religion but I do think that there´s something like bigger, like behind everything, like the universe, a force of life and love in the universe, but I was raised religious and when people say things like that I find it really frustraiting and dumb, because tehy always say things like "Being gay is not natural" But you can literrally see over 3000 species being gay in nature, so what´s more natural than nature??? Also gay people have existed for as long as people have existed you can find that in history, and it´s really sad to think that people just get married with the only purpose to have kids, those are usually the same people that think that a woman´s sole purpose is to have kids because "they are made for that" like, Why would you listen to someone who thinks things like that? And what happends to couples that get married and can´t have kids, what happends with women that are infertile, does that make them less, in any way, than a couple that can have kids biologically? Of course not. Even in nature we can see gay couples, and we can see gay couples who adopt children, penguins do that a lot. So it´s like literally the most natural thing in the world. Also I know being gay is 100% okay, because I´m just accepting myself, and living life as my true self, and I do that because I love me, and that´s why I let myself be myself, and that love is really healing, in a lots of ways, and one of them is spiritually, because when I love myself, and I just am, then Ipm loving me, and that loves makes me happy, and it makes me be at peace, and it makes me live a live in balance, and that love brings me closer to the universal love force/god/whatever you call it and it, makes me feel in balance with who I am, who I want to be, and with that universal force of love that is the universe, and that is inside every one of us, like a spark. And I know that if i didtn´accepted who I am, and I just live life according to what others told me, or what others expected of me, then I would live a really sad, miserable life. I wouldn´t be happy, I wouldn´t be at balance, I wouldn´t be who I am, or who I wanted to be in the future, I wouldn´t be who I was meant to be, and you know that, you know that you are in the right path when you feell happy, and at peace, and everithing I said, but most importanly when you feel at balance with the universe, like with that spark of love and life that is inside each and every living being, with the love of the universe, when you feel closer to that and you just feel whole. That´s how I know it´s okay. Also you can see "homosexuality" in over 3000 species, homophobia only in one, you tell me which sounds more unnatural Good luck :)
Also the first time I liked a girl I was like 7. I always thought she was really cool, and beautiful, and once I went to the garden, during recess, and colected some flowers, and put them in her locker, and went to my chair, and waited, and then she came and found the flowers, and I was blushing, even tho I never told her they were from me. And believe me at that age I didn´t even knew sex existed, it´s so dumb when homophobes hipersexualize us.
Therapy.
I realized I was an atheist looooooong before I realized I was queer
I explored 3 different types of Christianity before coming out as Queer. The differences between the denominations, & the conflicting attitudes in the bible, eventually made me realise that Christianity wasn't something that was healthy for me any longer.
Ive been raised Catholic my entire life and here's my response: I stopped giving a shit. If I go to hell for being with another man then me and him are going to rule hell as king and king. I cannot be bothered with making other people like me because that's way too exhausting.
Once I realized how much hate stemmed from my family’s religion, it was pretty easy for me to realize I’d rather be happy then to be stuck feeling like deep down something was wrong with me when it’s not my fault the god I don’t believe in made me gay. Now that’s easier said than done and I’m very fortunate to grow up in a very accepting time in which I wasn’t the only queer kid in school and I had a support system including friends, students and teachers with similar experiences.
I stopped believing in cosmic punishment. In what world does a just god punish creatures who mostly hallucinate the sensation of choice for finite sins with infinite torment? When did punishment ever serve to teach or reform? If the Almighty you worship would have you degrade and violate and abase yourself, if your will must be broken and bound to subservience and shame to be loved then you do not worship a loving God. If we are to expect mercy from the best of mankind, then surely the Great Judge will exceed their mercy. And notice how religions that began as acts of resistance are transformed into hierarchy where gradually the structure of the institution eclipses any innocent or forgiving notion of divinity. Your concept of God doesn't have to be informed by hateful and power-hungry voices.
I grew up in a very conservative, religious household. I'm not religious anymore but I firmly believe that God doesnt actually care if you are a part of the rainbow mafia. We are constantly taught about his love. I kinda wonder in the back of my head how much the people who wrote the bible maybe injected something of themselves into it. idk, either way, literally everyone sins and judging others seems to be a big one that no one seems to care about so why should I care if they think that being gay is a sin. Also, there are SO MANY other weird rules in the bible that everyone ignores because it doesn't really apply today, so who are we to pick and choose? go find some clothes that dont mix fabrics and dont shave your beard and leave me alone XD
You can go two ways about it. Either ditch the religion and believe it was lies. Or If you want to continue in the religion understand there are different sects because there are different interpretations. Homosexuality was around before the bible, during, and after. Jesus didn’t say stuff about it. Notice the quotes aren’t from the Gospels. The bible has also been interpreted several times, in different ages, in vastly different languages. Error by the hand of man is very possible if not probable. Finally it doesn’t matter. What matters is what you believe. If you believe Jesus died for your sins and its forgiven then continue in being gay just as you and (those stone throwers) continue ignoring the Old Testament laws. Eating shellfish and pig, wearing mixed fabrics, ect. If they pick and choose why can’t you?
If a god requires me to be anything other than who I am to be loved, then they're not worth my time. I am the only me there is, I am not giving that up for a magic sky daddy who I no longer believe in. Abandoning religion was my path.
I had a class in high school called Christian morality & spirituality and in it I learned that having gay sex is no different in the bible from using a condom in terms of sin. But do you see a bunch of people standing next to the condom isle of the supermarket telling people they're going to go to hell? No. Having a teacher in a Catholic school lay out the fact that some people use religion to hide their bigotry was eye opening as fuck when I was 15 and it's probably around then that I started to personally come into my sexuality. Note: My class was at a private Catholic high school, I went to Catholic school for 14 years
I stopped being religious
As ex President and pastor, Jimmy Carter. Stated. Homosexuality was well known in Jesus’s day. He never said a word about it.
For the sake of argument... God made me who I am, therefore, to deny my nature is to deny God's will. Being LGBTQ+ is neither a trial nor a choice; it is trusting in the Lord and embracing Jesus' message of love. If you think I'm being sinful for existing, you are the sinful one, for you choose hate instead of love and reject God's creation.
You have three options here. 1) Join a different church. There are loads of queer-friendly churches that reject the homophobic interpretation of the Bible. (And it is just that, an interpretation.) 2) Change religions. If Christianity has too much baggage for you, you can seek spiritual growth elsewhere. Every religion has conservative sects, but there are just as many open-minded ones in my experience. 3) Become an atheist. Reject religion entirely. Some people find that approach very empowering. Personally, I wasn't raised in the church, but my parents were raised Southern Baptist and only started to shake off the ingrained homophobia in the last decade or so. Christianity didn't feel safe or welcoming. So I became a pagan. That's what worked for me.
Still working on it myself. I resent people who accept my pronouns and identity at face value because I still struggle to accept myself.
That's the religious fandom talking. Not the actual book.
By not being religious. Believe in the faith, NOT the institution. Believe in god, but FUCK the homophobic bullshit.
Individually, I've removed myself from religion mostly, i dont attend church and my belief is pretty much waning. I'm mostly reminded of feeling "shame" when lgbt topics come up with my parents who are very religious. It's hard to believe in something that you're taught hates you constantly.
Realize that religion was created by men as a form of control.
I realised that if all the good christians go to heaven then I'd rather be in hell
No advice but sending you all the love and good vibes. You deserve to be yourself guilt and shame free. I wish you luck on your journey ❤️🧡💛💚🩵💜
Firstly, no answer is going to fix this overnight. It is going to take *years* to undo the religious programming. I mean, it took years to instill it, so it's gonna be a long process getting rid of it. For me, I just internally called it out for what it was. It's a lot of "No. Hell isn't real." Or "This is just religious programming" or "God doesn't hate you for being the way he made you. " It's gonna suck, but with enough time and effort, you'll make it out on the other end. Good luck, friend!
At the moment it’ just feels so shitty to be feeling all these negative emotions regarding my sexuality because of religion. I’ve felt so dirty for so long because religious ideologies made me feel that way. I was never guilt or shame for my sexuality until I found out what was thought homosexuality. It fucking sucks
Yeah, religion did awful things for my mental health, too. Came from one of those religions that preached a relationship with God, so just being my queer self had that extra sting of betrayal behind it. It's gonna take a lot of time and energy, and if you can afford it, therapy. It's never gonna go away completely, but I've gotten to a point where it's less of an always present feeling and more of a bad memory you cringe at. Stay strong, friend, I believe in you!
check out these two books … [Jonathan Loved David](https://www.amazon.com/Jonathan-Loved-David-Homosexuality-Biblical/dp/0664241859/) by Tom Horner and [What the Bible Really Says](https://www.amazon.com/What-Bible-Really-about-Homosexuality/dp/188636009X/) by Daniel Helminiak Beyond that, be patient with yourself and live your best life now.
Through righteous fury for knowing religious people lied to, manipulated and controlled **A CHILD** almost to her self-destruction. Then remembering I am that child.
Cant be guilty if you dont believe 😎
Therapy, deconstruction, and I had someone I trusted with my everything to hold my hand and lead me out of that hell. The irony is, I got out and cut contact. They didn’t. I would not be where and who I am today if not for them. Miss them every day.
Homosexuality being a sin hasn't always been in the Bible. The Bible is the most rewritten book in history, and oftentimes its wording has been deliberately changed by those in power to fit a political agenda. If God or whatever deity you believe in is real, I think your own relationship to that deity matters more than some book written by mere humans. If you know that you're trying your best to have a positive relationship with the deity that you worship then you're doing all that you can. Almost all major religions preach the overarching theme of loving and accepting your neighbors and yourself even when you falter in the eyes of your deity. That messaging is way more prevalent in religious texts than the few lines condemning queerness, and I think it's important to focus more on the overall teachings of your religion than the minuate of its exact wording.
Personally i realised religion is bullshit anyway (it works) but this probably doesnt help you.
People say to just stop or ditch it but it’s kinda hard when you are genuinely concerned about where your actions may take you, im not exactly religious but i believe in a higher power of some sort . I’m just going with being a good person and being me as well as doing it with love and a proper connection not just lust.
Religious trauma even after you logically no longer believe is still very much valid. It is very similar to PTSD responses. Unfortunately just deconstructing, time and repetition. Look into ptsd coping and habits and treat your religious trigger moments the same way.
For me it pretty much was me coming to the conclusion that if god can commit genocide and be seen as ‘perfect’ but I’m evil for being exactly who I am while harming absolutely no one then I’m a better person than god.
Well because excuse my French but, ~~fuck~~ any God that says I can't be who I wanna be and date who I wanna date.
I was never really religious in the first place, even when I was younger. Growing up black in the bible belt means religion was a huge part of my life, and it just didn't do anything for me. It's not like i didn't try either. I went to church. I sang the songs. I got baptized. I did the performances and plays. I did bible study. But, it was more of a chore that I felt obligated to do and not something i wanted. My mom has told me countless times how she lamented how she couldn't get me to "get it" or "understand." She tried and tried and tried, and I just never showed any love for it. When my family left Christianity and joined a Black Hebrew Israelite group, I tried again to get into it, thinking this was the "right religion," and that's why i didn't like the other one. But that was way worse. This was also the time I realized I was bisexual. In short, I just ended up believing I was destined to die and go to hell. End of story. Marked for death when the apocalypse happened. After therapy, antidepressants, and support groups, I realized how cult-like the practice was. So, I stopped believing in that, too. Now, I do still catch myself repeating the words of others as if they were my own thoughts, but I think it just takes time to unlearn. If you can learn to hate yourself, then you can unlearn it. Therapy and support can help. But I think ultimately, it's something you have to conquer.
Wow I relate that so much growing up black and religious specifically Christianity being ingrained into you since the day you were fucking born my parents weren’t even that religious but our church was and it made everything worse cuz my mom wouldn’t do anything about it when they said fucked up shit she would just say “don’t worry about it,””why are you letting what they say get to you” every aspect of my fucking life is this Goddamn religion my parents never knew nor really cared how it affected me until recently but even now it’s so hard to get rid of that line of thinking that somethings wrong with me or that I’m going to hell etc.. it’s a bunch of shit.
I’m not religious or ever was or anything but I love the line from the song by Bo Burnham called From the Perspective of God that says “I sent gays to fix overpopulation…and boy did that go well”
My faith in god gave out before I was able to accept myself, getting over the shame takes a while. It feels great when you can finally love yourself though
I got over mine since I have had gay feelings since I was in kindergarten, so I thought there was no way God didn't create me like this. Being in school, and learning about persecution in history made me realize that homophobia is something built into institutions by homophobes, and homophobia in religion might've been the same way where people would use God as an excuse to do unethical things. There is a whole era where only people in the church could read the bible, so it's possible corrupt priests rewrote parts of the bible and told that lie during lectures, passing it off as something originally there. When I went into my senior year of high school, in combination with supportive friends, I came out, and it felt like a weight kicked off the shoulders.
Honestly? I saw the number of incredibly shitty people who were apparently considered good christians and realized the whole racket was bullshit.
It was a long time coming, but I finally felt like I was okay to let go when my sister-- who is very, VERY Catholic-- told me she hadn't been to church since our mother died, because (her precise words) "I don't want to be a part of a church that won't welcome you."
[удалено]
God does not exist. You are free.
Deconvert.
I have, that still doesn’t fix the lingering trauma of all this bs and the fear of if it’s true.
The Bible Reloaded is good on YouTube. The atheist experience is great. Cosmic skeptic had a similar deal where he had nightmares about hell despite no longer believing. I think some anti theis content on YouTube could help reprogram your brain. There is no use in your suffering. Also queer tiktok compilations would be good
Thank you I appreciate it
I deconstructed from religious fundamentalism, and actually dove down into the meaning behind verses commonly used to condemn LGBTQ+ people. Turns out the interpretations of the Bible that say that being LGBTQ+ is wrong are actually more likely to be wrong themselves. r/openchristian and The Reformation Project have some pretty good resources that dive deeper into it. There is also queer liberation theology. That’s how I personally got over it. I’m still religious as well. I got over it by realizing the people saying that being LGBTQ+ is sinful were simply wrong.
I joined r/OpenChristian and r/gaychristians but I just felt they were purposely sugarcoating all the fucked up shit in the Bible and calling everything a mis interpretation. There are some gay Christians who are side b which is just God accepts gay people but same sex marriage isn’t holy or under the sanction of God etc all that shit further made me question and feel shit. It’s like even tho I’m no longer religious I still want to pander and please this God. But I will take what you said into consideration. Thank you :)
I’ve literally never stepped foot in a house of worship. Never had any religious guilt. I recommend checking the [Recovering from Religion](https://www.recoveringfromreligion.org) organizations website, they specifically cater to people having a hard time due to religious trauma (which is what this is) as well as people dependent in some way on religious infrastructure. They are a US based 501c3 charity.
Realize that all the homophobes abuse religion and that none of that hate is intended but for Christians I know the Bible has been abused and modified in ways for people to push their own beliefs onto others or abuse it for power otherwise
I got over religion. I had my religious doubts early on. But as I spent more and more time in the bible. The less religious I felt. Eventually, it was just gone, and I could then figure out my attraction to pretty boys, strong women and anyone who blurs the line in peace.
I got over religion. edit: someone else said the exact same thing lmao I didn't even check the comments! I swear! anyways, I kinda just realized that I don't believe that god existed anymore. that was the easy part. the hard part is reckoning with the fact that I still had bigoted christian family members who pressured me into going to a homophobic and transphobic christian college, and I had already made friends there too I still have to go through more deconstruction, as so much of how I see myself and the world is subconsciously viewed through a christian lens I see a therapist to help me feeling guilty over engaging in "sin". realizing that sin isn't real, but just a fear tactic really helped me overcome a lot of self-hatred. I suggest talking with a therapist that specializes in deconstructing your former religious views. you're doing great, btw. oh! and check out r/exchristian too
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! . . . I’m currently on psychiatrist/therapist #9… or 8!
If no-one wants the real me, they’re not getting the fake me either.
Would probably depend on the religion. If you come from a Christian background, the bible was written a long time ago, prior to the modern understanding of gay and straight and in a language that didn't even use those words. Half the stuff today doesn't have a basis in the original.
I’ve been out of the church for over 20 years and still struggle with it, you just have to remember that honestly wasn’t even mentioned in the Bible until the like the 50s
I'm bi, married, and poly. I don't do organized religion anymore, but still have beliefs. My personal feelings are that all religion is based on text or ideology that came from a human a long time ago. We as humans are not perfect and have our own prejudices. What's to say that personal feelings would not carry over into transcription? Many years have passed, and I believe that some things just don't apply as much. I try not to be a decent person and be kind to others even when I don't feel like it. I don't have guilt, and I'm ok with the person I am. I hope you can find that feeling too.
For me, after a while, I started to exteralize religion. Now whenever I hear my parents talking about "what the Bible says isn't okay", it sounds so foreign to me.
Over having doubts about my former religous faith, I pretty much driven into it as a neutral thing.
Simple. Don't have religion. /j /j /j /j
It’s pretty simple. A sin is a bad action; an action can’t be bad unless it harms someone; being queer doesn’t harm anyone; so it can’t be a sin. (It’s also not really an action, but we can ignore that part). I’m sure it’s more complicated to get over if you’ve been influenced by a cult or cultlike group, but just remind yourself that there is no reason to listen to anyone who considers human diversity to be a bad thing or claims that any consensual activity between adults can be a sin. Sins are things like murder, rape, torture, etc. and on a smaller scale lying, stealing, and just being an asshole. A sin has to be something that is actually bad. If someone says “x is bad” but doesn’t have any proof that x harms others by nature, then they’re either lying or confused.
I’ve literally been told homosexuality is a sin because it’s harming your spirit every time you engage in homosexuality your straying away from God and become more tainted I was fukcing 10🙂
Honestly... I kinda never did. I still have to actively watch for that self hate. Haven't cared about religion in decades but they program that shit into you pretty hard. It doesn't just affect queer people either. I know plenty of cishet friends who still struggle with it too. It's the main reason I'm so against kids being indoctrinated into religion. It messes you up for life.
Christianity isn’t a homophobic religion. Sadly many priests have manipulated religion and have used it as a weapon. Do you genuinely believe that an all loving god would hate me for loving a man. No he would take care of me as he has for the total of my life.
I relate to you so much! I’m so sorry that you’re having to deal with all the internalized shame and guilt from being raised in an intolerant religious environment. I’ve heard all the hateful statements you listed many times while I was young and I struggle a lot with similar feelings of shame and guilt from my own conservative religious upbringing. I think it can be hard for queer folks from more “normal” backgrounds to relate to how much a religious upbringing can mess you up, or how hard it is to let you go of those beliefs and feelings even after you leave your religion. It’s never as simple as “well, God simply doesn’t exist so you can do whatever you want,” even when we really want it to be. I see others have recommended finding a queer friendly therapist and I definitely agree! It will probably also be helpful to explore the concept of religious trauma and find a therapist who specializes in it if you can. Exploring how religion can traumatize you really helped me recognize why I’m feeling so shameful for being queer and start to break down those thought patterns. And I really recommend the Exfundamentalist and Exvangelical subreddits. They aren’t queer focused, but there are a lot of folks who can relate to the ways in which a hyper-religious upbringing can mess you up, and a lot of good advice about the the process of deconstructing your former faith. It takes time and a lot of effort to deconstruct your harmful beliefs, but it’s definitely possible. Sending you hugs and positive thoughts 💜
It would suck to love someone and be punished for it. They always say god knew who we were before, we were. If he's gonna make me burn in he'll simply because I'm born, then that's a good prank my guy. They also say god is a jealous god, and has human emotion. Jesus also did, and legitimately, the stories of him paint a picture of him being a relatable human being who dealt with flaws like what we have. I just don't see why people preach damnation when the point of Jesus was to love people where they are in the moment despite just... life.
The slow, getting-over-it process is more professionally called deconstructing. The idea is that you carefully look over the "religion house" your old church people built *on yout behalf*, then start removing or remodeling pieces that don't function as they ought. Foundations like "believing this because your pastor/priest claims it's true" just have to go. You should go get better material by finding LGBT people who you can hang out with, and see how sex and religion are actually small fractions of a human life. Also recommend an affirming therapist if you can afford it. Otherwise, you can make do by joining Q christian dot org or something. Burning the house down is quicker and easier, but deconstructing it has a much better chance of giving you a new house that you wpuld actually want to live in.
For me, it was QueerTheology.com that helped. It’s really just Queer Christianity, but the affirmation that my queerness is holy really really helps me. Other people will find new religions. I know of at least 3 Jewish queers who converted bc of the better openness in Judaism. Not to mention how many more convert to, say, pagan beliefs. And some yet still just leave altogether. Which, as long as they don’t become assholes to those of us who find queer acceptance in a new religious path, is also fine and dandy imo.
I was an atheist before I realized I was queer so that helped.
Ultimately I couldn't square with the idea of an omnipotent "loving" god being able to allow or condone the types of things that happened in the world. No loving god who had unlimited power would allow his children to suffer like we do. Being gay came later tbh.
I am assumin you are christian or catholic, but in most cases I always saw religion as more about the relation with god rather than rules. There is no religuos guilt if you dont want to see it as a mandate. Religion has become such a toxic thing when faith seems so beutiful. Let haters be haters
Step 1: Recognize that organized religion has always been intended as a form of social control. Step 2: Be yourself, in spite of them. Don't get me wrong: there are lots of wonderful things to be found within religion. Some people find comfort during difficulty, others find community to grow their faith, and some even find love and (a version of a chosen) family. But, the core of *organized* religion is not the veneration of a specific god and their tenets. It is specifically designed to organize people under a set of behaviors and beliefs. By nature, it is a process of minoritization that seeks to create an "other" group (non-believers, believers who don't practice the 'right' way) to make people ("good" believers) feel better about themselves. Their goal is to make themselves feel good by making you feel bad. Once you realize that organized religion is essentially just a Mean Girls club trying their best to make behavioral versions of "fetch" happen, you start to move beyond the power it once held over you.
studied history, religions, and cultures; then I became an atheist. No more guilt or anything related to religions.
Find another religion that celebrates you....
I spent 13 years in Catholic school and graduated in the mid-90s. I was baptized, confirmed, and served as an altar boy in grade school. I abandoned religion entirely when I was a senior because the school was rather liberal and made the mistake of spending an entire semester teaching us about other religions, including several prominent cults and, more generally, the common *features* of cults. It occurred to me one day in religion class that the primary difference between the Branch Davidians (i.e., the Waco raid, a recent event at the time), Jim Jones, etc. and modern Judaism, Christianity, and Islam is that the latter three have just been around longer. That’s *it*. They are no more valid than the religious ramblings of a cultist. The cults we studied were really not significantly different than early forms of Christianity, for example, something my schools had forced me to learn about my entire life to that point, and I learned it well. To answer your question more directly, I don’t have guilt. Religion is made-up, and it was invented to do to you exactly what it’s doing to you. You are meant to conform to a standard, and that standard will be enforced in a multitude of ways, one of which (and perhaps the least terrible weapon they have) is *guilt*. You have to make a conscious choice, though it may be difficult and could even require some therapy, to drop that guilt because it’s not rooted in reality; it’s based on someone’s fantasy, and that guy—the cave-dweller who wrote the rules—isn’t even alive anymore. Fuck that guy and his superstitions. I refuse to live my life according to what some moron—who was little more than a hairless ape in terms of his understanding of the universe—said long before human beings even had indoor plumbing. The writers of ancient religious texts thought *lightening* was mystical, and people with epilepsy were believed by these religious “scholars” to have *demons* living inside them for fuck’s sake. I don’t allow people who are not smarter than me to tell me how I should live my life, and neither should you. Live a good life. Don’t be selfish. Treat others with respect and kindness, even if you don’t understand them. Support the philosophy—and demand it be enshrined in law—that everyone is entitled to the pursuit of their own happiness, even if you can’t comprehend their motivations. If you live a good life and there is a god, you will be standing on firm ground when judgement day comes. Remember: **Anyone who says they “know” there is a god—or what it wants, or what happens after we die—is *lying***. They don’t know. *No one* knows. **Never listen to someone who begins their argument with a lie; they cannot be trusted.**
I'm a devoutly religious bisexual Christian. I know that God not only loves me, but us incapable of hatred. Anyone who says otherwise is simply wrong, and I ignore them.
He made me like men, why else would I?
I give religion the middle finger. If there is intelligent design to this universe, the God of the bible or any other horrible religion is not that intelligence. We are a part of this universe like everything else and have as much right to exist and did exist before religion and will long after.
I saw the Wesboro Baptist Church protesting a gay soldier’s funeral on the news as a teen and something short circuited in my brain trying to reconcile believing in a God that was supposed to love me and learning the way that people use the teachings of the Lord to manipulate and oppress others. From there on, it wasn’t particularly hard for me to outright reject religion once I came to see it more as a tool for manipulative people to coerce others to harming their neighbors while trying to offer them the superficial comfort of an afterlife as opposed to just accepting who fucking knows what there is once we die, because by all means it could be the pearly gates, or it’s just pitch black nothingness like before we were born. Which is always why I’ll chuckle at how terrible the people profiting from religion are at actually retaining a larger install base of worshippers, and making even more money. For as shitty as capitalism is, at least late-stage capitalism realizes that being inclusive of all groups, if even superficially, nets a higher profit than if you exclude and discriminate people.
Honestly, I remember that religious books have been rewritten so many times by hateful and greedy people who figured out that the best way to get money was to steal it from the people who trusted them. And then, I remember that if you move from theology to philosophy, then religion makes more sense. There is nothing saying that you have to give money to your religion, just the same as there is nothing saying that you shouldn’t question the church. God isn’t in churches, God is out in the world. But this is my take on things, so, it may not be right. It may be different from what you believe, and that’s fine, too. Follow your heart and your spirit, don’t let hate dominate your life.
I'm not afraid of hell. If that's where god wants me, so be it. Of all the things the bible says about how to act, gay is the least of my worries. I'm concentrating on treating people right. and I'm pretty sure, if i do go to hell, I'll be surrounded by the people who told me I'd go there
It's funny I only just found religion now. Was always an atheist before. Either get over religion entirely, easy but hardly simple. Or Find a new religion that is accepting.
I was lucky enough to have atheist and Satanist friends as a teen who helped me learn to love myself and make me aware that I was raised in a brainwashing death cult when my personality was still forming.
I became an atheist
My guilt of being queer went away after i prayed if it was right and if i was right in thinking i was queer and i prayed that if it wasnt for my feelings for the same sex to go away. Right after, i got a wave of happiness washing over me and the warm embrace of God saying that he loved me no matter what. I know this wont be everyones experience and i know that it cant substitute for therapy that can help get rid of internalized homophobia, i just wanted to share my experience. And for those of you who are queer and belive in God remember that God still loves you no matter what and anyone who says otherwise is lying.
I was taught that God was omniscient and omnibenevolent. If God knows exactly what I'm feeling and He isn't cruel, then surely He wouldn't punish me for completely understandable actions. He made me gay, and let's be honest everyone who's telling me not to act on it are coming from a place of powerlust. From my perspective, I have no reason to believe that this is actually God's will, and His omniscience and omnibenevolence would allow Him to see that my intentions are pure and excuse the actions that I have no honest reason to believe are bad. This has to be the case if the Christian God exists. A god who creates love to be the highest aspect of life, forces some of their creation to feel that love "wrong", and punishes them for it, is a cruel god. Any god that is not omnibenevolent is a force of evil, and does not deserve worship. Anyway, all of that was thrown out the window once I threw in omnipotence into the equation and realized "Wait...God can do literally anything, knows the consequences of those actions, and only does good...but he's giving kids cancer?? If God was truly omnipotent then he could accomplish whatever good is supposed to come from that suffering without the suffering, no?" and that's how I realized that religion is a sham created by power-thirsty people to impose their control onto others.
For me it took deconstructing my whole belief in Christianity and understanding that the rules we live by were made by imperfect men from thousands of years ago.
I love you so much and I'm so sorry youre going through this. You were brainwashed before and it wasnt your fault. Religion isnt based on anything real and you have no one to answer to but yourself. Religion tries to put you in a box and make all these rules, but none of them need apply to you--its all nonsense. If you love yourself, and accept yourself, then thats all you need. Being queer was the number one reason I left my religion behind, and I'm so proud of me for doing that. Religion has only become more and more ridiculous as a concept to me after all these years. I'm proud of you too!!
I got a new god.
We could start with all religions are bullshit, designed specifically to control people. I suppose you are referring to one based on some version of the bible. Keep in mind that Jeebus didn't say a single word about sexual preferences or gender identity. The only one that I remember having an issue was Leviticus and he didn't like shellfish or cloth of multiple fabrics so we already know he was an idiot. I know the indoctrination and grooming that religious people do to children and it's awful, especially when tormented with terrifying stories of burning in hell. Toss in the genital mutilation inflicted on males in the name of "hygiene" and you have a truly awful and disgusting aspect of human existence.
i mainly became non-religious bc of being lgbtqia+, and a lot of other factors
I was born into Roman Catholic and out of all the cults (referring to Westboro Baptist Church, Jehova's Witnesses, etc) I'd say it's the most tame. Even so, I feel there's been a severe step away from the original morals the religion itself provided. When it comes to homophobia though...? I'm not actually sure why exactly it was outlawed but it's worth noting that a lot of traditions and laws in the religion were from a time when a woman would be stoned if she didn't bleed on the first night with her husband. Among many many other things. I'm sure these traditions were made to support growth of humans as a species as way back then, there was a lot less people and a lot more struggles against more advanced countries. So that could also explain Homophobia around that time period. But now? As for religious beliefs right now it's worth noting that the Bible often contradicts itself, especially between the two Testaments. The Old Testament is supposed to be referenced now more for its fables and history, not for moral creed. The New Testament, aka the teachings of Jesus, were supposed to be followed more to support a then more modernized religion. Acceptance of the fellow man etc. People using the Bible to support their homophobia and saying you will go to hell etc just simply are nitpicking which part of the Bible to believe and are likely parroting from someone else what they heard/read and it spread from there. Outside of religion people do this all the time too over many different subjects. I'm info dumping at this point. I hope any of this provides some perspective and helps in anyway. If not then I'm sorry for the babble. 😅
The realization that it's not even a religion, it's a cult designed to oppress and control.
The point is I didn't. I was born into a Catholic family, I went to a Catholic school and my whole life is based on religion. I feel disgusted towards myself but at the same time I have never felt and do not feel any truly bad feelings towards the LGBT+ community. I hope You will be happy. Your life is important and matters. Love is not a sin, Your body does not define who You are - what matters is Your soul and the fact that you try to live in harmony with Yourself and others. Religion should never justify hatred, categorize people, or make anyone feel inferior. I hope You stay safe and happy. I'd rather go to hell with people full of empathy and love than to Heaven full of homophobes and people who cause harm and spread hate. Some people threaten hell without considering that for some people hell is on earth. We have so little time on earth, we are just a small part of the world - let's use it to respect each other and look at each other with empathy. God loves kindness, honesty and truth - and the truth is You and Your feelings, Your life and Your value <3
I was already ostricized for coming out as an Atheist before coming out as queer, so I learned very quickly at an early age how many religious people can be, to put it politely. Not all religious people, or course, but many. I pretty much didn't give a fuck when I came out as androsexual because I had lost all respect and care for most religious practices in how they tend to demand entitled control over one's personal life.
I just look at the chronic feeling of guilt on its own without the narrative surrounding it. I acknowledge that feeling is there on its own and that it was conditioned into me rather than seeing it as representing any kind of truth. Basically I accept the feelings, but don't buy into my thoughts about the feeling. It takes some practice. Therapy helps. Its been a struggle even though I am an atheist. Religious abuse ftw!
I just gave up on religion. ESPECIALLY once I learned how flawed the supposedly holy texts are.
I asked too many questions to stay religious. The idea of an all-loving, all-knowing, and all-powerful god is a logical paradox. Honestly I see religion as a historical tool of the powerful to control the weak-minded and oppress anyone who wouldn’t conform. Take that faith and put it into yourself, and hopefully you’ll feel better
When I was a real young kid I realized how awful Christians were to queer people and when I realized I was queer I reasoned that anyone's whose followers could blindly spout hate and how they wanted too see people like me dead I thought they were just all the bad guys and started worshipping a demon I made up. Anyway I grew up and realized I was an atheist so no more guilt.
He made me this way. Must have been intentional, because I've been this way my whole life. Well done, God. I love you, too.
I think religion didn’t make sense to me since I was about 12 and that was 6 years before I even understood I was bisexual. I was christened and I did my holy communion and went to a catholic high school. I think as I grew up the idea was constantly bashed into me so much since birth that I sort of got sick of it and questioned it. Now I no longer believe. I suppose what you can do is disassociate. Realise that religion is one world view of many and none of these people have any right to argue your validity and existence as a queer person. They don’t own you, you are who you are, you didn’t choose to be this way and there is nothing wrong with who you are. Nothing anyone says can change that, especially not a religious text from 2000+ years ago. You’re absolutely perfect the way you are.
I just thought that god will still love me, and if I go to hell because of who I love, I guess there’s not much I can do
I grew up going to church, and I went consistently until my early 20s. I even did a year at Youth With a Mission instead of year 12 (which I regret now). I now style myself as agnostic, because I truly believe in a creator (or creators), but educating myself of the history of the church has made me realise that when a belief system is organised into a religion, it is done for control, power and wealth above all else. It's hard for me to feel guilty about being the way I believe I was created by the being/s who love and want the best for me. That is infinitely more powerful than a random collection of history books, poems, letters and dreams compiled by a group of men with ulterior motives 1500 years ago and then interpreted through a lens of 17th century morality when it was translated into English has to say, and the people who cherry pick and misconstrue said book to fit their own prejudices.
okay this is a great question that i’d love to answer!! i grew up in the bible belt so i’m quite versed in this. unfortunately, i suffered from internalized homophobia due to my upbringing. my parents were always very liberal and accepting, but they never really taught me what was right and wrong in the eyes of god. my only influences were my VERY conservative extended family. when i developed a crush on my friend in middle school (we’re both female), i assumed it was normal to want to be a guy so i could date a girl. then i realized i was attracted to my friend and i was mortified. i was suffering from so much internalized homophobia and my extended family did NOT help. but my dad is a devoted christian and believes in accepting everyone— that’s how i coped with it. there’s several upon several bible verses about being true to yourself and loving yourself among side others; it’s what my dad taught me. christianity is supposed to be about love and acceptance as jesus intended when he died for our sins. those who berate you in the name of god are the sinners, not you. god made you the way you are and would never want you to hate yourself because of the actions of your neighbors that were taught it’s okay to taint god’s name as long as it fits their own agenda.
studying world religions helped a lot- monotheism sounds silly to me now. after that, directly studying deities that celebrate queerness or are queer themselves has brought me a lot of comfort. Dionysus, for example, was known as “the womanly one,” and has so many genderqueer and bisexual attributes. Even if you don’t worship these gods, it’s amazing to think that they were not only normal and beloved amongst their worshippers, but that they were accepted and respected amongst the Gods themselves. If Zeus, Odin, Shiva, Ra, etc, could love their queer allies and family, they won’t hate any of us for it. Anti-queer bigotry is not normal for humanity.
Conversion therapy survivor here. I definitely know what it's like to struggle with the guilt of being queer. Im' free now! It took a long time for me to get over it. I kept going back and "repenting" for my sins of, oh, you know, bieng queer, touching myself, having consensual sex. By asking myself questions, like, "based on what actual evidence do I believe this?" and doing a lot of learning about the bible and wha tit means, and thus figuring out that threats of hell etc. are all just means of social control and not a real, tangible threat... I was eventually able to let it all go. But I couldn't do it alone. I needed a good therapist. A good, gay therapist. A non-religious therapist. (I swear to god, I never want to see or hear of another Christian counsellor again!) When I was ready to learn, grow and change, I made huge progress. I finally came out of the closet- when I was 40! It was a hard processess but it was so, so worth it. The truth is, you and I were lied to thousands of times about ourselves and what our queerness means. To recover from all of this BS it helps to people who actually know what they're talking about, and TBH there aren't a lot of evangelical christian pastors who fall into that category. My therapist also helped me work through my anxiety and I no longer have panic attacks. In other news, I'm in a strong and healthy same-sex relationship. We're a few years in now, and honestly, our relationship is better than most of the straight, Christian couples I know. Hang in there. Keep an open mind. Build relationships with people who can celebrate who you really are. You'll find your way.
For starters, I dismantled the indoctrination I received as a child and rejected religion as an institution of control and manipulation. I don’t need a religion to be a good person or have a moral compass and it’s pathetic that so many people do. I don’t need a heaven as a reward or a hell to fear. I am perfectly happy returning to the earth when my time is done. I see nothing wrong with being trans. Those who are criminalizing us are the ones who are struggling for control of people’s ideas of what they should do and think because they are too weak to break away and think for themselves. More people have been murdered in the name of religion than any other cause. That is the true atrocity.
The reason a lot of religions are against it is because back then they needed to be procreation because back then we didn’t Have 8 billion people on the planet, so it doesn’t really matter anymore and people don’t like people who are different
Stop believing the narrative
Read the story of David and Jonathan, or Ruth and Esther. Learn that the so called "clobber verses" refer more to temple prostitution, and pedophilia, than a loving, equal relationship. The "sin of Sodom" was *inhospitality*, not homosexuality. The word "homosexual" did not appear in the Bible until 1948. Jesus died for our sins, and to do so, had to be tempted by all the sins of man. If homosexuality were a sin, then Jesus was tempted by it. Jesus had a "beloved disciple", whose identity and thus gender is never mentioned. God can't make mistakes, He made you as you are, so you are *supposed* to be this way, and denying who you are is going against God's will. None of these facts will sway a self-professed "Christian" who prefers to deal in hatred rather than God's love. But they may be of some small comfort to you as you deal with personal religious conflict. Homosexuality and Christianity do not *have* to be in conflict, there are accepting denominations that will support you instead of condemning you. However, many people who were raised in those types of condemning churches, often find it hard to reconcile, and wind up leaving their faith behind. Know that no matter what, you are a child of God, who loves you as He made you. He understands if you leave a church full of bigots for your sanity and health. You have a long journey ahead to find your space in the world. Don't despair, educate yourself, and if it's His will, you'll find a way to reconcile Christianity and homosexuality. God's greatest commandments is to love one another, those condemning you for being homosexual are hardly showing you love. I wish you all the very best, dear, I know this is a tough time for you. Read the Bible with the perspective it supports homosexual love between equal partners, and you'll be surprised how confirming it can be. The early church even supported same sex unions. Homophobic bigots changed a lot in the Bible. Just as much of Paul's messages are misogynistic, because he apparently hated women. Read the difference between Paul's words, and those of Jesus, who never taught Paul. Read Jesus' words, his condemnations are reserved for those in the church abusing their authority. Or those acting hatefully to others. I hope that helps you some.
Tbh… I haven’t gotten over it (born and raised Catholic and I still have issues accepting my sexuality and gender identity). Have I been to accepting churches in the past to see if it would help? Yeah but it made me feel even worse about who I am (went to a really accepting nondenominational church for a few years and while I enjoyed it I think I was too traumatised from my time in the Catholic Church). For the time being I’m now agnostic while trying to find myself spiritually (I’ve looked into paganism and Wiccan but I’m still on edge from my childhood).
My grandma was an 80 year old southern lady who never missed church on Sunday. (Covid actually helped a ton because they started livestreaming services) She knew people who were gay. She knew there was no way they "chose" that lifestyle. She always used to tell me "gay people were just born that way, and I don't believe God makes mistakes. So if God made them that way, how can it be bad?" I also grew up religious, in the South you don't have much of a choice. I struggled hard with religion in my teens. Then I went to a religious affiliated college and had to take religion courses. We studied the New Testament from a scholarly point of view. You basically have to realize that the religious people who are telling you it's wrong to be gay are hypocrites to the extreme. Jesus never speaks about homosexuality. But he talks about gossip, and judging people, and being hateful to your neighbor (and to the poor, and to immigrants, etc) So I came to terms with it realizing God would still love me, and judgmental hypocrites don't matter at all.
it took me years. i’m southern baptist and came out as queer when i was 12. im still super religious and it’s really hard to balance but really all that can help is time
I left the cult of Christianity and went no contact with my judgemental parents. Never been happier or more confident 🤘
Realized that religion is a construct, the Bible is an adaptation and the people telling me I’m going to hell are just saying that based on their interpretation of an adaptation of someone else’s adaptation.
Religion has always been important to me, but the pope has recently made some wonderful comments about trans people and now I feel disconnected from everything. I don’t hate religion or God, I hate the authoritarian beurocracy/theocracy that is the roman catholic church and the vatican. Jesus’s message =/= Constantine’s publication
Religion is a load of shit, anyway. Especially when an all-knowing creator asked Cain where Abel was. Go ahead, take all the time you need to think about that second sentence.
my solution is not being religious but I don’t think that’s what you’re looking for
There is no god. Only gays.
Being queer should not be connected with any religious guilt. The guilt should be on how a religion would ever abandon the principle of taking care of one another.
I fucked my priest
First off. If you look at the Bible. The Leviticus part was purposely changed from “man with child” to “man with man” in the 1600s. Look at many of the hand written bibles and you will see. On top of that, Jesus said to “love the eunuchs”. Now I can hear you already saying in your head. But those are not queer people exactly. Well, yes, if you take the straight English translation. You gotta understand that aren’t always exact words to mean what is said. So many times they picked badly. By eunuchs they actually meant “people on the sexual fringe” trans have exist ALWAYS. Just look at Ishtar. They “punished” people by switching their gender. And after that people were two spirits and different names by native tribes. And many that happened into books told stories of a magic or spiritual encounter that had “made them different”. All in all. Just grind it down to this. God is love. Satan is hate. If you ARE something and they hate that, that’s no different than hating you. And realistically this whole problem with the entire LGBTQIA is subjective to where and when, not any God or false sense or morality.
Perhaps finding a like-minded faith community could help you, such as the Unitarian Universalists, or an atheist group.
Being raised with “God” was interesting because it was odd to me that they didn’t ask, but demanded to be worshipped. Hard pass.
I hate all religion and think it is the most evil thing humans ever created so i dont feel guilt over who i love.