LGBTQ-affirming blog. I need your help.

shouldn't god be guiding you?
I cannot see any good intentions about being critical of a persons lifestyle and personal choices. This whole holier than me crap is so condescending the bible is quite clear on their viewpoint of homosexuality, but their is a supposed morality within the dogma that is meant to ensure the Christian has a higher moral ground, which is clearly not the case here.

So the question is as a Christian should I criticise people for their choices and show myself to be a bigot with zero humanity for the choices people make? who is so blameless to cast the first stone I recall is in the bible and here you have a whole pile of nice stones ready to throw!

Being concerned about peoples' choices is just nosey

Roger J Carlson said:

This is looking more and more like a bad idea. Thanks everybody for your candor.

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Is there a venue that would be aimed more directly at your target audience that you could tap into? Could you publish in a church bulletin, ask to address a prayer circle, or... okay, I have no idea about communication tools within church communities! I was about to suggest you visit a quilting bee, so possibly I should stop trying to come up with specific ideas!

The point is that I think your personal journey and reflections are really significant, considering your starting point, and if you can find a way to speak directly to other people who are still back at that starting point (and who might be really resistant to listening to an #ownvoices perspective) you could really capitalize on what's unique about what you're saying. You're an #ownvoice for formerly bigoted evangelical Christians who've opened their minds and hearts, right?

Hmm...I was wondering...
Roger, are you involved with a church? Is the church one of the LGBT-affirming ones?

Maybe you can ask for advice and resources from LGBT-affirming churches? I'm guessing such churches might have some tips, or point out to research, on how to reach out and educate others about this type of topic.

I'm wondering if there are other ways to communicate with church-goers, too. Maybe discuss with a priest-person on sermons or programs?

Roger J Carlson said:

This is looking more and more like a bad idea. Thanks everybody for your candor.

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Have you poked around Patheos? I see conversations of the type you're attempting on that site from time to time. And the audience (seems) to represent a broad spectrum. And, at the risk of being the lone voice in the wilderness, I don't think yours is a bad idea at all.

Captcha said:

The point is that I think your personal journey and reflections are really significant, considering your starting point...You're an #ownvoice for formerly bigoted evangelical Christians who've opened their minds and hearts, right?

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Because this.

I don't want to make you feel any more confused but I agree with Captcha and JohnnyGottaKeyboard. Your journey as someone who had bigoted beliefs due to his religion to someone who is still religious but tolerant is an interesting and valuable one. Perhaps you could blog or write about that? What were the pivotal moments in that change? How did you balance it with your faith?

For me, I was raised Roman Catholic but I'm also bisexual. So it was fairly self-evident to me that there's nothing sinful about being not straight. But I still often don't feel like it's my place to talk about LGBT+ issues because I've only experienced fairly mild biphobia, and I'm straight-passing since I have a male partner. I hope there's a point in there somewhere because I'm tired and I'm starting to ramble.

Anna_Hedley said:

I don't want to make you feel any more confused but I agree with Captcha and JohnnyGottaKeyboard. Your journey as someone who had bigoted beliefs due to his religion to someone who is still religious but tolerant is an interesting and valuable one. Perhaps you could blog or write about that? What were the pivotal moments in that change? How did you balance it with your faith?

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Me, four. I think this could be a better theme and direction for the blog.

(I think I can empathize? sympathize?, because I used to have some various bigoted thoughts and have gotten better over time as well.)

I agree that your personal story is important and you should tell it.

I don't think you're going to get anywhere trying to convince other Evangelicals that they're wrong about the homosexuality rules in their interpretation of Christianity. The thing is, people cling to religious dogma for deep-seated emotional reasons and aren't swayed by facts, logic or reason. The reasons are usually a combination of peer group pressure (more specifically, fear of being rejected or even persecuted by your own community) and fear that death is the end of your individual consciousness and there's no afterlife. This is why I completely gave up on the whole creation-evolution debate years ago and won't touch it with a ten foot barge pole*, in spite of having a human evolution themed blog. People will stop clinging to religious dogma when they want to do so. In the meantime, they'll cherry-pick and twist evidence to fit what they want to believe rather than approach it with a rational, open mind and go with what the evidence actually says is more likely. People who actually take this logical approach don't end up being Evangelical Christians or any other literal bible believing sect or other ultra-dogmatic religion (like Salafi Islam, for example) because they're not logical religions. They're more likely to end up being in a much more flexible and intuitive religion that gives them room for forming logical opinions like believing in Evolution or believing that the Bible is a historical document and Jesus (or Muhammad, or the Buddha or whoever) was a great guy, but they don't have to believe it literally. Or maybe they'll end up agnostic or atheist.

*okay, I have one cartoon on my blog that mentions the debate but it's not there for the benefit of anyone who doesn't already believe in evolution.

On that, I'm guessing that you didn't change your opinion on homosexuality because someone sat you down and showed you how the texts actually don't support homophobia, even though they appear to. Much more likely you connected with someone's story, or you were disturbed by how much gay people were being made to suffer and had doubts about whether a religion that's supposedly founded on love could do such a thing - emotional reasons. Empathy is a vital emotion that should influence our decisions when it comes to the welfare of other humans. That's what it evolved for. So I'm also guessing that upon having this emotional conviction that persecuting people for being gay is wrong, you then went to reexamine the scriptures and realised that they're not actually as straightforward and clear-cut as your community has always made out. Hence the decision to go and tell them this and make them stop persecuting people. And it's probably a bit like banging your head against a brick wall - that's what the creation-evolution debate felt like - as all their ego-defence mechanisms come into play and they cling to their irrational belief tightly, no matter how many well reasons, logical, fact based arguments you present them with.

Because of this, I think you'll do far better with a blog that appeals to emotions. The basic fact that Jesus, who had a message of love for all humanity, wouldn't support persecution of anyone. You also should probably accept that a big part of the problem you're facing with Evangelicals is that it's not a rational faith to begin with and you'll get a good reception with Christian denominations that don't require clinging rigidly to an particular English translation of a book that wasn't even written by Jesus* and with non-religious people and with people of other non-dogmatic faiths. I also think your voice is important for anyone who's LGBT+ and stuck in an Evangelical family/community. It might give them hope that they're not going to have to spend their whole life surrounded by bigots, or having to pretend to be someone they're not in order to not be persecuted.

*King James wasn't a very nice person. He was known for torturing and persecuting people who were the wrong kind of Christian, so it's not really all that surprising that people who believe that the KJV is the literal, unadulterated word of God end up persecuting people based on rigid dogma.

I'd advise not bothering with trying to convince anyone with logic, facts or reason, or pandering to bigots (such as using the same terms they do - as per the previous comments about the use of the word "homosexual" etc) - just stick to the basic fact that persecuting people is wrong and your personal convictions. I think you'll sway more people that way and connect with lots of people who've already been swayed.

Roger, I tried to do something similar playing on the core of Jesus' expressed ideals in my short story "The Compassion", but with a pro-trans slant more specifically:

Here's a link to the library system link to the story:

http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/short-stories/11387419/compassion

In any case, I applaud your efforts.

Roger J Carlson said:

Quite true. I didn't really change my thinking until I had an emotional connection to gay people. But I didn't truly become a gay ally until I resolved my issues with the six "clobbering" verses in the Bible. To reach Evangelicals, you HAVE to address the Bible. There's no way around it.

It would no doubt be easier to reach another group. Unfortunately, Evangelicals are MY people. I'm an Evangelical as are my family and most of my friends. I've got nearly 60 years of experience with Evangelicals and I know how dogmatic and intransigent they can be. But that doesn't absolve me of the responsibility to try.

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I see what you mean but I think addressing Biblical verses is something for further down the line, when other Evangelicals are more emotionally open to it. No one changes their views that radically by pure logic alone. You have to plant the seed.

Anna_Hedley said:

I see what you mean but I think addressing Biblical verses is something for further down the line, when other Evangelicals are more emotionally open to it. No one changes their views that radically by pure logic alone. You have to plant the seed.

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I think I agree with this. Roger, I trust your perception of the Evangelical community. But honestly, I think people are very good at interpreting scripture the way that they want or need to. Even people who say that they take scripture as immutable truth find themselves in positions where they run into conflicts between what scripture says and the realities of modern life, and when that happens, people make judgement calls that are influenced by emotion and convenience, whether they realize it or not.

Some people may be convinced by theological arguments that the Bible is not condemning homosexuality, but people who are clinging to their prejudice can just as easily continue to take those verses at face value.

And Roger, even in your personal story, you weren't solely convinced by theological arguments. The change in your point of view was initially an emotional one after befriending LGBTQ people.

I agree with the people who have said that your own journey is worth blogging about and that this isn't a bad idea. But I think it might help to narrow down what you expect and who you expect to reach. It sounds like your desired audience is Evangelicals who have already started to become more accepting but who are trying to reconcile their support of LGBTQ people with what their faith says. I think that's a good audience to reach out to, but it seems like right now a lot of the people reading your blog, between a few of the comments you received there and all of us on here, are either people who have no real interest in changing their minds or people who aren't that concerned about being in conflict with what the Bible says about sexuality to begin with. So maybe part of the challenge is figuring out how to reach the audience that you want to target.

oceansoul said:

I'm going to say that I think you really need to get an #ownvoices sensitivity reader before you try to put together a resource like this or you need to leave it to someone who is an #ownvoices writer -- by this I mean an LGBT person who is also a practicing Christian. This maybe isn't what you want to hear.

I am a bisexual person who came from a religious family. I wouldn't qualify myself to write this post because while I know the Bible quotes, I have a very cynical attitude towards Christianity. I am happy for you that you've undergone a personal journey.

To me, the post reads in a very offensive manner for a lot of the reasons previous posters have already highlighted:

1) The overuse of the word homosexual. I would argue that if Evangelicals want to argue bible semantics they should also be aware that original versions of the bible say absolutely nothing about lesbians. So in fact, constant use of this term is not only othering, it's also not biblical.

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To be fair, the Bible says nothing about homosexual/gay men or lesbians; these are modern concepts, and entirely extra Biblical and ahistoric.

What the Bible does refer to are sex acts and the people who engage in them.

And there's one very specific reference to sex between two women in the NT; Romans 1:26-27; but it's a tricky passage because of both the Greek and the contents.

Having said that, I believe that Ruth and Naomi were in a loving same-sex relationship. Nor am I unusual in that belief.

Roger J Carlson said:

Quite true. I didn't really change my thinking until I had an emotional connection to gay people. But I didn't truly become a gay ally until I resolved my issues with the six "clobbering" verses in the Bible. To reach Evangelicals, you HAVE to address the Bible. There's no way around it.

It would no doubt be easier to reach another group. Unfortunately, Evangelicals are MY people. I'm an Evangelical as are my family and most of my friends. I've got nearly 60 years of experience with Evangelicals and I know how dogmatic and intransigent they can be. But that doesn't absolve me of the responsibility to try.

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Maybe have the quotes, but not make them the focus. Its not so much about who you target, but how you target them. If you want to target Evangelicals, then focus on emotional arguments. Maybe highlight the suffering that these rules cause. We all have an instinctive sense of right and wrong - Muslims call this Deen ul Fitr, Christians call it a conscience, I'd say it evolved because our ancestors who helped and supported each other survived better than those who didn't give a shit about each other - appeal to that. Present them with examples of how people suffer because of homophobia. Not just LGBT+ people either... how about the suffering of mothers who are pressured to reject their own children? I can't imagine the intensity of peer pressure and fear of burning in hell that would be necessary to make a mother reject her own child. She must go through hell before doing that - and after.

It's also important to highlight the people's humanity. Remember how no-one was particularly moved by the plight of Syrian refugees until pictures of a dead toddler washed up on a beach went viral on the internet. It's very hard to connect with theoretical people. You can say "thousands of people fled the war in Syria" and that doesn't really trigger any emotional response. However tell someone's story like this and it triggers a massive one because we can see her face and identify with her as a person.

I'd also suggest this is something you can bring into fiction writing (if you write fiction that is - most people here do so it's a reasonable assumption ). For example you could write about an Evangelical family, maybe from the POV of the mother or with different POVs, where they have this wonderful son who they love very much, but the son falls in love with a young man and it causes a massive uproar in the community and the boy and his lover are persecuted by the community and the parents are pressured into disowning him. The boy commits suicide and at this point you can choose a sad ending... at his funeral his mother confronts the pastor and calls him a murderer and tells him he's responsible for her beloved son's death and saying all he wanted was to be with his lover and she doesn't care any more, she just wishes she could have him back and let him and his lover be together, because what harm were they doing to anyone, they're both lovely young men.... or the happy ending whereby the same confrontation happens in hospital, and the son recovers and the mother supports him and his lover in being together, while still being an Evangelical and saying that those verses don't mean with the other Evangelicals think they mean.

Something along those lines (the above is just a suggestion and probably not terribly original), that's going to make people confront the issue at an emotional level. Such a book would probably get banned/condemned by Evangelicals, called the work of the devil, accusing it of encouraging homosexuality or whatever, but banning a book is a good way to get people to read it. Even those who condemn it will have to do so after being moved by it.