#i'm talking churches that literally say being lgbt is a sin against god

[bandedbulbussnarfblat]

i used to make my sunday school teacher so angry back when my mom forced me to go to church, bc i would question everything. and point out how this one part of the bible contradicts this other part of the bible. and the response i usually got was the rules in the new testament were the ones that counted. so i asked why we still had to follow the ten commandments. and they did not like that. and the thing was, i wasn't actively trying to be malicious or anything. i was a kid trying to understand why so many people worshiped this god, that to me seemed jealous and petty and cruel. bc i never actually believed in any of it. i pretended to, bc my mom did and the way church would talk about non-believers made me not feel like it was safe to admit that to her. american christianty is a cult. a very popular cult, but it's a fucking cult.

[furiousgoldfish]

i saw you were opening this up!! i have a lot to say-

first of all, thank you for this blog. it's literally helped me so much in figuring out what abuse is like and helped me realize the kind of household i really live in.

my whole life i thought i was exaggerating or making shit up , that my experiences werent valid or crazy enough to be considered abuse. i literally forgot so many events in my life because i repressed them and because of that i feel like i cant explain my situation that well.

my parents and brother are incredibly homophobic and transphobic, theyre super fucking toxic to me and its horrible. when i was younger and was having a hard time in school because of a group of bullies, i called them to pick me up and when i explained what happened they told me it wasnt that big of a deal and it wasnt something to cry to them about.

when i was in seventh grade i had a panic attack at this church thing my mom was going to, and she took me outside while i was trying to calm down. i repeatedly told her "im sorry" for dragging her out and wasting her time, and she looked at me frustrated and said "you should be."

when i was questioning my sexuality they told me it was the devil lying to me and putting things in my head. they brought me to several pastors and churches so i could talk to leaders about it and they all told me that it was sinful and against god.

i came out as nonbinary last year, and my brother found out because he looked through my things, and then outed me to both my parents after i told him to not say anything. they said they refused to send me to any kind of therapist that wasnt a biblical one or a pastor and that im only looking for people who tell me what i want to hear.

my dad placed 30 minutes of screen time for tiktok, discord, and snapchat. he once brought me to a restaurant because he said he wanted to hang out, but when i got there he pulled out literal charts of bar graphs depicting how much time i spent on each app. then he told me he was going to either take away all my social media and online friends, or he was going to interrogate them. and i had to choose.

once in a family therapy session my mom said she would rather kill herself than let me join an lgbt support group. another time my brother came to my room and told me my mom was suicidal and that it was my fault. he said, "you think you have problems? you think youre depressed? mom is literally suicidal because of this whole thing with you. this is a wake up call. grow up."

another time, he (my brother) told me that i was a woman, that i couldnt change that, that its what it said on my birth certificate and no matter how much i called myself nonbinary it wouldnt change that im a woman.

recently, i talked to my mother about getting a new therapist. she gave me the phone number to one she found. and it was a conversion therapist. she was about to send me through a conversion program. this was a few days ago.

my parents constantly tell me that what they do is because they love me and want whats best for me and i constantly make a problem because i dont appreciate them or i get mad at them or i dont talk to them or i push them away. and it makes me feel like its my fault.

again, thank you so much for your blog. its helped me ground myself so much. keep doing what youre doing- seriously its amazing. <33

Yeah, all of us think we're exaggerating and making stuff up, it's incredibly sad we all get to not just get hurt, but constantly second-guess ourselves about it. Repressing and forgetting events is also extremely common too, it's out only means of defense against a too-painful reality.

I'm so sorry you had to deal with homophobia and transphobia at such a young age, and from your family members as well, it's devastating. You should have gotten support from your family members when you were bullied, being picked on and hurt by your peers is enough bad, without anyone acting like it's a no big deal.

It's so painful you were apologizing for having a panic attack, even in the worst pain you still had to think about what others might think and whethere you're an invonvenience. It's hateful they tried to stop you questioning your sexuality, you if anyone have the sole right to figure it out for yourself. Even to involve religious authority to shame you, that's sick! I hate every single pastor who had the fucking nerve to tell to a child their sexuality is sinful or against god, sexuality is something so natural and positive and you should have been celebrated.

It's incredibly hateful to expose you to religious abuse just because they found out, against your consent, that you're non-binary. They used religion as a threat against you, and as a way to control who you are, and are not allowed to be, and this is a crime. Your choice has been taken away and given into the hands of people who only had control and force in mind.

Your social media time is your own business, I can't imagine anyone punishing a grownup for something like that, the entire world is on the social media without any self control! You've done nothing wrong.

Your mother is awful. Die rather than for her child to have a healthy support. I'm so sorry you had to hear something so hateful, from your own parent. You didn't deserve that. It's not your fault. You can't control your sexuality, you can't control people's hatred. I wish you had more support during this. Nobody is allowed to blame you for hatred that's directed at you.

I'm so sorry that your family members refuse to accept your identity, and that they would do something so horrifying as conversion to you. That is not only dangerous but deadly, and it has never been done out of love. I hope you never get sent to a conversion program, because that is devastating and dangerous, I want you to stay safe, to receive love and support for who you are.

I hope in the future, you will meet people who will find you natural and delightful just as you are, who will share the same mindset and approve of every bit of who you are. You deserve so much support in dealing with this. I'm with you, and I bet a lot of people can relate to this and want to offer you community.

[screenchart]

Ricky Dillon: I'm Gay

I am gay.

I'm gay. I've barely said this out loud so I'm saying it several times to normalize it to myself. I am gay and I am finally OK with it 'cause it's been a long journey to get here.

I don't know where to start but,  I just wanna talk about myself.  Let's start with how inauthentic and disingenuous I have felt on YouTube for a long time. I started to slowly realize that I'm gay a couple of years ago. I would say 2017 and ever since I've slowly realized it more. Fast forward to this day, I am 1000% sure that I'm gay and the more I realized that, the more inauthentic and disingenuous I felt with my online persona. My YouTube videos. Me being on camera 'cause it's something that I've hidden and have felt the need to hide for so long and I've still been playing this role of the YouTuber Ricky Dillon when in reality I haven't been that guy in a long time and I've had the hardest last couple of years of my life.

I just probably had the worst a couple months of my life. January was horrendous and this month until now. I've been in a very very dark and scary place in the past couple of months and it's really hard because I've accepted myself but  I grew up in a family environment. I grew up Christian, very religious. I grew up in Alabama and I was taught that being gay is a horrible thing. It's so bad. It's the worst thing you could be. I mean it was drilled into my brain from an early age that being gay is one of the worst things that can happen. I don't want to bash Christianity or church. I don't want to bash any religion 'cause there's a lot of people out there that are great Christians and accept people and stuff. I just was taught at a very early age,  being gay is wrong. You're not gay. You can't be gay. It's wrong so therefore it was ingrained in my mind that being gay is a sin. It's wrong so therefore I can't be gay. There's no way that I'm gay because I'm a Christian. It's wrong and it is no way I could be gay. I love my family very much. I love them so much and the hardest part about all this right here, from this video, is hard. It's very out of my comfort zone 'cause I'm saying things out loud I've never said before. This is all really hard and I'm able to do it but telling my family is going to be by far the hardest thing I'm ever going to do in my life or have ever done so far. I haven't told them yet, I am going to tell them before this video is uploaded, I just wanted to get my thoughts out and then tell my family and then post this and I'm mortified. The crippling anxiety I have gone through the past couple of years and especially the past few months has been because I am just terrified to tell my family that I'm gay because I'm so terrified they're not going to accept me for being gay 'cause I know their beliefs.

They've made it clear to me and it's so hard to talk about. I don't want to bash my family, I love my family so much, but I just don't… I don't agree with what they believe in this scenario. I have gone through a lot of stuff in the past couple of years, this being one of the biggest things obviously, but also I've gone through some really bad financial issues and my family has helped me out. My parents have been there for me. They've helped me very closely. They are great parents. I had a great childhood. They raised me very well but, the fact of the matter is I'm gay and it's something they don't believe in. So I've just been… I guess I've been terrified for so long. I mean I realize that I was gay probably three years ago. I would say 2017.

I started to like slowly come to terms in 2018. That's when I completely realized it and I wanted to come out years ago. I'm not scared of telling you guys. I mean one of the great things it's 2020. The support for gay people and the LGBT plus community it's incredible and because of that and seeing other creators come out online has really, honestly giving me the strength to do this. I don't think I would be doing this if it wasn't for so many other brave people coming out honestly. That being said there's still so much of the world that is very homophobic in hate and thinks that being gay is a lifestyle or something you choose. I did not choose to be depressed and have crippling anxiety over this for three years. Do you think I want to choose to have a lifestyle that makes me in the worst state of mind I could possibly be in? When you're taught that being gay is the worst thing in the world and it goes against everything that you were taught? Once you start to realize that "yeah you are gay", it's so hard to mentally break through all of the walls that had been built up your whole life. So it blows my mind that there are still people in the world who think anybody who's gay; chooses this. I literally was created this way. I still do believe in God. I just don't necessarily agree with everything that is in the Bible. I have been made this way. I can absolutely not control that part of me, trust me, I tried for a long time.  

Photo: https://www.instagram.com/RickyDillon/ Video: “I’m Gay” Transcript edited by screenchart for formatting

[pickledchickenetti]

(pt 1) I'm a woman and am happily married to another woman and I don't understand why everyone was so upset at Krista. She openly supports marriage equality and has defended it. She has close LGBT friends (I know having black friends doesn't make you not racist but in my experience people that have been opposed to my sexual orientation stop being friends with me) and advocates for LGBT persons to be included in the church and conservatives to accept us.

Hi friend, thanks for your thoughts! I don’t know your background, so I hope that my answer doesn’t come across as condescending or rude as that is certainly not my intention. My opinions on Krista’s stance on gay issues are strongly colored by my experiences, which I have no problem admitting. I’m sure plenty of other LGBT folks have different feelings, which is totally fine. For what it’s worth, I saw more people upset with Krista over her posts about abuse victims not remarrying after a divorce than I have over any of the LGBT posts she’s made, but I’m not going to pretend that I haven’t regularly made critical comments about her LGBT posts/stances here. 

In order to be fair to her, I decided to go back through her blog (on Tumblr, not her other blog) and re-read her posts on gay issues in order to make sure that I’m not taking other people’s comments about her or vague memories I have of old posts and projecting my own frustrations with other conservative Christians’ opinions onto Krista.. I’m going to do my best to source anything I reference via links to that post, but I apologize if I miss anything. 

I will also be focusing on issues regarding people who are sexually attracted to the same sex (using the blanket term of “gay”, which also represents bi/pan/etc.) for this post. I am cis myself, and your question references your same-sex relationship and family, so in this case it feels appropriate to stay in my lane and not offer opinions on a cis person’s stances on gender issues as another cis person. I do not mean to exclude gender nonconforming people from the overall LGBT community in any way. 

The oldest about posts I can find from Krista about anything gay-related are anons asking her opinions. I’m fairly sure that this is the first one, where she essentially gives a fairly neutral action that could be interpreted as “I don’t think being gay sends you to hell” or as “I think gay people can go to heaven too as long as they repent of that sin along with the others”. She does not make it clear what her opinion on same-sex attraction specifically is, as another anon then pointed out in this post. Does her tone in addressing the anon bother me? Yes. Does she have the right to call out people she feels are being rude to her? Also yes. 

Early on in the post she says “First, you missed out on a lot of people. It’s actually LGBTQIAAP.” (likely referencing the anon saying LGBTQIA), and it’s just a personal pet peeve of mine for straight people to try to act like they have any authority on things like the acronym, but I realize that that’s just me and she also has no way of knowing the anon’s sexuality so perhaps it was one straight person (sarcastically) informing another straight person of a perceived shortcoming. Perhaps not. She then goes on to defend her refusal to give a “straightforward answer” by, in my opinion, continuing to dodge the question. 

Further down she brags that she “was actually named best advocate at a national moot court competition this past year arguing that Title VII protects against sexual orientation discrimination”. Now maybe I’m wrong, but it’s my understanding that moot courts aren’t typically events where you’re expected to defend your own personal beliefs, but events where you are assigned a stance and have to argue it regardless of what you believe. If that’s the case, mentioning that is irrelevant. If it is not the case and she was able to choose that stance, bragging about it for some sort of ally point is, in my opinion, arrogant. 

She ends the post by saying that her LGBT friends “are entitled to all of the rights, privileges, and safeties that I enjoy as a straight woman. Who you love and who you’re attracted to does not change your place in society or the rights that you have or opportunities you should be able to pursue.” Sure, your sexual orientation SHOULDN’T change your place in society or your rights, but it DOES. It absolutely does, and to say that LGBT folks are entitled to the same rights as straight women is, at best, misguided. Krista is a lawyer who has, in theory, interacted with multiple members of the LGBT community, so she should realize that regardless of what should or shouldn’t be true, LGBT still DON’T have the same rights as her in many states, and even in states where legally we have the same rights we still live with fears she will never experience. 

As for the claim that Krista is “not only tolerant of my family but accepting” and that she “accepts me and defends my rights”, here are my thoughts. I don’t want to be tolerated. If you’re cool with just being tolerated then more power to you, but as someone who is merely tolerated by a number of Christians, it really hurts and feels extremely de-humanizing. I do feel that “tolerates” is an accurate word for Krista’s stances on gay people (with the possible exception of the gay friends she claims to have). I do not feel that Krista “defends” gay people and our families beyond her belief that she is legally obligated to uphold the law. She has said that she is “totally fine with gay couples adopting”, which is a positive. She has also said she feels families with same-sex couples should be treated like “any other couple”, which again, is a positive. I guess I just don’t feel like that’s the same as defending. She recently admitted that she has never voted for a Democrat, and while I understand why someone from Vermont might see third-party candidates as viable (because in many Vermont races they are), she has to realize that voting third-party for president is throwing away your vote in the current political climate. Beyond voting, what is she actually DOING to “defend” gay people? Nothing she has ever said makes me think she’s using her privilege to truly defend us to her conservative Christian circles. Unless proven otherwise, I can’t help but feel that she’s able to talk a (vague) big game about being supportive without actually doing any supporting. 

I have recently said that it is my belief that she thinks gay sex/acting on same-sex attractions is sinful, even if our marriages should be legal. I will admit that I formed that opinion largely based on a private conversation I had with her, and which I will not share publicly without her permission. In going through old posts, I came across this post, which I feel also supports this opinion. An anon says that they can’t see any good qualities to overcome “when the thing they disagree with is gay rights/gay marriage/that being gay is a sin”, and that they’d “say the same about someone who identified as a Nazi or a white supremacist”. In Krista’s response, she literally says “But, by the same token, you and I are talking right now, and hopefully, I’m not reminding you of a Nazi”. That statement seems to imply that she falls into at least one of those categories or else why would she remind the anon of a Nazi? In another post she also says that “I do believe that all people are responsible for their sexual BEHAVIOR”, which seems to imply that there is something sinful about sexual behavior between people of the same sex. 

If we want to get down to it, this is the post that was the cause of my initial feeling that Krista was not a safe person for gay people. If someone asks you if you think being LGBTQ+ is a sin and your answer is to tell them they are trying to “stir division”, it is only fair to assume that you think they won’t like your answer. If I ask someone their belief on that subject, I am asking because I want to know their opinion. This anon echoes the same sentiment. If she’s really worried about “stirring division” she should have just ignored the question. 

To anyone still reading at this point, thanks for sticking it out with me. Honestly Krista’s recent posts (paired with some events in my life offline) have really got me thinking, and I have a lot of things weighing on me. I’m glad that you are able to feel that as long as she believes you deserve the same rights as she does it’s fine. I hope you continue to feel safe in that. Unfortunately, many of us aren’t that lucky. Many of us have lived too much of our lives feeling disgusting and broken and worthless because of teachings that that same God she worships and we were brought up to worship disapproves not only of any relationships we have, but of an inherent part of who we are. The biggest reason that I continue to speak out against Krista’s posts is because I just need any scared or confused young gay teenagers in the church to know that they don’t have to settle for being tolerated, and no matter who thinks they’re sinning, they’re not. 

Krista’s posts (in the context of the rest of the blog) would have devastated me at one time in my life. When I speak out against them, I’m usually saying the sorts of things I wish someone would have said to me then.

[wlw]

So I very recently realized that I'm bi and no matter how much I want to and try, I can't come to terms with it. I grew up in a strong Christian household, and the whole "being gay is a sin, but we can still love gay people" mentality is just so frustrating but it's what I've always been taught and I don't know how or if I will ever be ok with being gay and I'm just so angry and frustrated at myself for not being ok with being me. I'm sorry. I just needed to vent.

I am not religious and I really wish I could help you here but thankfully my reach for wlw of all kinds is vast and I have some religious wlw friends that have some words of advice!!

@leiafemme - i grew up in a really similar situation. and it sucks so much because youre invested in your religion and you dont know how to reconcile it with being gay when youve been told your whole life its wrong. for me personally, it took a long time for me to return to religion after realizing i was gay. but what helped me was realizing that a relationship between me and god is just between me and god. like other people can have their opinions on what is right or wrong or acceptable but if you can, tune them out. and think on it. and pray about it. and listen to what you come across from self reflection and prayer, not what anyone else may say. people have been misinterpreting religion and using it to hurt people since the beginning of time. so dont listen to them. keep it between you and god and accept that they may be wrong. also if i may add: there are lgbt people of every religion. like you do not have to give up your religious beliefs to accept yourself. and you dont have to deny yourself to be a good observer of your religion.

@anakihn - I Too had a huge struggle with this and it took me a long time to come to the realization that people are flawed so naturally they’ll interpret god’s teachings according to their own biases and stuff. What organized religion teaches us doesn’t necessarily equate to god’s truth yfm like all of this shit is human interpretations of a holy text, which was written by humans and therefore can also be flawed. So what your church is teaching you isnt the only truth out there i had to find my own truth with god like there was literally a philosopher who quit organized religion bc he realized that by following some sort of institution you werent truly serving god & others you were only serving the institution’s interests So my advice is to try to find gods truth for yourself like.. dont subscribe so strictly to a church’s teachings. At the end of the day the main message is to love one another and have compassion without judgement, all those other rules are just shit people made up to either 1) help us be better people or 2) maintain some kind of control that benefit those in power

@softsawyer - that’s a really hard struggle, and it’s something i still deal w occasionally. i guess i would say the journey is really tough but one day they can definitely be okay with who they are even tho others may say otherwise. i’m pretty sure jesus never said anything about gay people, it was a big message of kindness and love and if people are against them then they need to grow some compassion.

@crykru - but they’ve only recently realised they’re bi so their journey w this has just started so I recommend they take it slow, do their research and talk to other LGBT Christians and first get comfortable with this new perspective and information of religion themselves before worrying about other people cause there is a lot of relearning to do in terms of their faith. In saying that there is a lot of self loathing that can take years to leave you completely and it’s a lot of work but it’s also a really beautiful experience and you have to trust you’re going down the right road but then you might even be able to change the opinions of those around you