"I have gay friends..."

RichardGarfinkle said:

The problem was that he was a Sunday School teacher and as he grew older and still wasn't married, a certain amount of suspicion grew and he had to give up his position as a teacher, because, of course, an unmarried man couldn't be trusted around children.

As a result his church lost the teaching services of a devoted, caring, smart, and faithful man. And, of course, since he's asexual he's the least likely person to be a sexual predator.

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Because, don't you know, married people are never sexual predators.

So I guess I'm gonna be a weird outlier in the thread. I feel like I (personally) can have a genuine friendship with a Christian who feels like part of my identity is a sin.

It's kind of hard to explain it. All of them are the type of Christians who do the "hate the sin love the sinner" thing, and have varying degrees of how deeply and intensely they feel about homosexuality being bad. Some of them are as far as sort of believing that the US is discriminating against Christians due to recent marriage rulings; others just don't care and don't mind me talking about girlfriends/crushes/whatever.

I was friends with most of them for a long time before I came out (only one of them I came out to willingly, though.) I didn't want to lose those friendships, which were working great on all other accounts, because of something that didn't have a lot of tangible effects on our actual relationship. We come up with ridiculous story ideas, off the wall roleplays, detailed art collaborations, etc--I don't want to throw away all that fun and closeness over something that my friends aren't going to give me too much abuse over. Sure, they think it's a sin, but no one's trying to convert me.

I think two main factors made me keep most of my homophobic friends after I realized I was gay: I was Jewish (I figured they already thought I was going to hell anyway), and I would lose a LOT of friends if I cut out everyone who thought my sexuality was "wrong."

That's obviously a personal thing. I don't expect any other LGBT person to do that--how one decides to keep their friends, or cut them out, on something like that is totally up to them. And it should be. You have to do what is best for you.

C.bronco said:

It's better to refrain from judgement and either agree or disagree with a person's actions rather than their identity.

I have friends who are democrats, and friends who are republicans.

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But what if some of those actions are part of someone's identity? IE. Being gay includes actions such as: Getting involved romantically and/or sexually with people of the same sex (or just being attracted to people of the same sex)?

Last week, I had lunch with a young woman to discuss creating and co-hosting a political podcast. I have known her for 15 years now as we started out as competitors at rival newspapers and became colleagues. My respect for her as a journalist and an astute and savvy political commentator knows no bounds.

I don't know if she's straight or gay or other. I don't know if she's in a relationship or if she's free and single. She's never volunteered Word One about her personal life or sexual orientation and I've never asked. If she wanted me to know, she'd tell me and if I wanted to know, I'd ask.

I haven't asked and she hasn't told.

I've never had any gay friends or White friends or female friends or male friends or Jewish friends or Muslim friends or straight friends or Black friends. I don't have any friends where a prefix to "friend" is required.
I just have friends.

True, though when I talk about my significant other, I refer to him as my "husband," which is a bit of a hint to most people that I'm in a straight relationship (of course, I could still be bisexual or asexual). The hard part (and I know you're not doing this, Nighttimer) is when people say "they don't care about someone's orientation" as a way of criticizing or silencing any and all reference to it in casual conversation (or when talking about characters in a novel as a part of their arc as a character). As a rule, only LGBTQ people are accused of "flaunting their lifestyles" when they don't fiercely closet their personal life and relationships.

Again, I know you didn't mean it this way, and as someone with a mom who always has to mention the race or orientation of people she's talking about when it's not remotely relevant or natural to the conversation at hand, I understand what you're saying too.