OK, as a queer person who grew up in a genuinely loving, caring, utterly wonderful, and still deeply homophobic Church, let me try to fill in what youâre not understanding about this whole âLove the sinnerâ deal.
When we refer to people like you as âHomophobicâ I want to be clear what weâre saying here. This is not a judgment of your intent. We are not describing you as a hateful person, as an aggressive or violent person. But we are saying that your actions and your attitudes participate in and reinforce a system of rhetoric that encourages violence against LGBT people, and, far, far more importantly, that forces millions of LGBT people to live in shame.
Thatâs really what this comes down to. Not hate. Not violence. Shame.
Consider the point purely theologically. Jesus tells us that to desire a sinful thing is as bad as to act on that desire. My lusting after another mans wife is as bad as actually sleeping with her. My genuine desire to hurt someone is as bad as actually hurting them.
So when you tell me that loving another man is a sin, youâre not just talking about physical acts of intimacy. You donât get to draw the line there. You donât get to pretend that I can be bisexual so long as I never actually physically act on it (which is already a terrible burden to place on someone). Youâre saying that every time I look at a guy and imagine how soft his lips would be, or think about how beautiful his eyes are, I am sinning. I am a sinner every time a dude walks past me with a tight sweater on that shows of his arms. Every time he has nice hair or a nice smile.
My love, according to you, is a sin. That is the burden you are forcing people to live under. That burden forced me so deep into the closet that I didnât even know I was there. It forced me to repress every genuine feeling of sexual attraction for other men, and to live for years with those feelings straining to get out, whilst I struggled with the constant guilt and shame that came from having those thoughts.
And I am one of the lucky ones, because Iâm alive to have this conversation. Because for many, many LGBT people that guilt and shame manifests as self-harm, substance abuse, low esteem that leads them into abusive relationships, and very often suicide.
You tell yourself that youâre one of the good ones because you donât hate us. You only hate what we âdoâ. But what we âdoâ is living. Itâs being alive and whole and a part of this world, and if you genuinely believe that we canât have that then you might as well put the gun to our heads and pull the trigger. Because youâre already doing that, you just donât have the guts to admit it.
