galadriel1010 | I am a christian. This doesn't make me evil.

"Sorry, you're wrong. The Christians have set this agenda – they want to maintain their ‘ancient’ right to discriminate against gay people.

They also want to get their hands on as many impressionable and vulnerable young people as they can to pervert them with their corrupt ideologies.

When they renounce their discrimination and stop indoctinating our young with their hurtful oppression we can all be friends again. Simple."

If you know me, you're probably aware that I'm a gay christian. The full deal is gay christian, pro-choice up to a point (if it's started kicking and responding to your voice, then I think that that point has been reached), pro-science, believe in intelligent (and sometimes unintelligent) design, and think that God has very little impact on my daily life. My relationship with God is a little bit like the one I have with my brother - he's just there, and I don't neccessarily like him all the time, but he's still there.

The comment I opened with, directed at me, by the way, was hurtful enough as it was. What made it worse was the fact that it was a reply to me saying, in reply to someone else, that some liberal christians don't feel that they can stand up for gay rights because they feel like they're not welcome. My actual quote was:

"We’re doing what we can, and you’ll probably find christians in the counter protests, but there’s a horrible wave within the gay rights movement that thinks that gay rights have to be gained at the expense of religious rights; I don’t just mean in the B&B and fostering cases, either, but from people who think that christians shouldn’t be allowed to foster children full stop, even if they’re the most tolerant, brilliant parents in the world. It can be quite threatening at times."

And the reply I got was "christians are just determined to discriminate and to bring children up to do the same".

So why don't liberal christians speak up more often? Would you speak up for someone else's rights if they thought that they could only get their rights at the expense of yours, and you knew they were going to give you verbal abuse for being you?

And yet some do, because that's what christianity is, at the end of the day. There's churches doing their best to welcome gay people in (which is hard, because they don't want to come), there's christians showing up to gay pride marches to apologise for the batshit parts of our faith family and to add their support, there's christians working in shelters and as counsellors, as MPs voting in support of gay rights amendments, and as foster parents who give their full support to gay children.

But they don't count, of course, because they believe in the "sky pixie" and so their actions and views are invalidated.

So if you think that I'm worth less because I'm a christian, in the words of Woopie Goldberg as Sister Mary Clarence, "bless you".

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I'm pretty much atheist, but I've only EVER felt attracted to Christianity when it's been explained to me by LGBTQ Christians, or Ally Christians. I find it difficult to take people seriously when they talk about a loving god who nonetheless rejects love between same-sex couples (or triads, etc). When people talk about an all-loving god who does embrace love between everyone who loves each other, however, that makes sense.

In short: I take your faith FAR more seriously than I would the faith of anyone who says that god justifies bigotry.

I don't know if I've linked you to this before or not, but just in case: My Heart Goes Out is a blog by Carol Boltz, ex-wife of Christian singer/songwriter Ray Boltz. They divorced after Ray came out as gay a few years ago, and Carol is now a fierce Ally -- and a fierce Christian.

I sometimes wonder how people can worship a god like that. Because he told them to? The Incas would point and laugh; at least their gods had monkey-demons and regular sacrifices to keep them in order. All the christian god has is a vague threat that you might or might not go to this big fiery place that someone dreamed about on an acid trip before acid was invented, when the whole point of that god was, kinda, that that place didn't exist any more.

So... they're telling gay people "you're going to Hell, which you don't believe in, but this guy you also don't believe in broke the doors down, so really the doors you don't believe in wouldn't trap you in the place you don't believe in anyway"

And the fact that I watched nearly 20 hours of satirical comedy instead of sleeping last night kinda shows

I am a christian. This doesn't make me evil.

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