I was never raised in a church going household. My mother and father are Catholic, married outside the church and divorced. My stepmother is Episcopalian. I don’t know the last time either of them went to Mass or even stepped into a church. Meanwhile, my sister is a born-again Christian who really introduced me to God. I was about 10 years old.
I remember getting on my knees one night after reading the Teen Study Bible I got for Christmas and asking God to forgive me. I accepted Jesus as my savior and then began a fairly brief Christian life.
I went with my sister to church on occasion and pestered my mother or father to go to church as often as I could.
But for me, it was a short-lived Christian life. However, it was not because I ever stopped believing. Rather, it’s because I came to understand my sexuality. Being gay and Christian in today’s political atmosphere is nearly impossible.
I say this because I’ve experienced it. I have never stopped believing or thinking about God, but I have stopped going to church because of how political churches have become.
Being gay and wanting to get married, I have taken a great deal of interest in the politics involved with propositions, like Proposition 102 in Arizona or Proposition 8 in California. When so many churches asked their assembly to donate to the passage of the propositions, I felt personally betrayed. The same God I pray to, the same God I know, the same God I love, had been turned into a weapon against me.
I know the various forms of the Bible state that homosexuality is a sin. But the problem is we aren’t supposed to judge; God is. I have spent a great deal of my life healing spiritually and working to understand God. I certainly don’t think I have the answers, but I’m comfortable with my relationship with him.
I am comfortable with being judged by God. I am not comfortable being persecuted, however, by the people who pray to that same God.
Churches shouldn't have ever gotten political. If gay marriage was up for a vote, I think they should have remained neutral on the issue. But instead, certain ones didn’t, they asked their people to donate and vote against it. The church my sister was “born again” in donated to the campaign in favor of Proposition 8. When did God become a bullet?
This sort of action pushes gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgenders away from church. It severs what could have been a very sincere relationship. The question of homosexuality within churches isn’t new. In fact, just Wednesday, theological conservatives estranged from Episcopal Church announced that they had formed a province of their own.
This comes after a great divide within the Episcopal Church that started in 2003, when openly gay Gene Robinson was made Bishop. A CNN report states that about 100,000 people will be taken into this province.
And gays will once again be told that because of them, religion suffers. Meanwhile, churches will suffer because they will continue to lose out on a population that would have been so good for them.
Ray invites you to join the “iREADray” Facebook group. For questions or comments, e-mail him raymond.ceo@asu.edu.
