Psychological Suffering
Jonathan Rowe on Jun 29th 2008
Most folks understand that homosexually oriented people are more likely to be depressed at some point in their lives. Different sides in the culture war interpret the phenomenon differently (obviously). Gays and their allies say it’s because of societal mistreatment. The religious right and their anti-gay allies try to blame gays themselves, citing social science that shows the same higher rates of depression in modern gay friendly Scandinavian countries, places that longer than most have had gay friendly cultural environments. Hence chosen homosexual practices must cause the psychological trauma, not hostile antigay environments.
Mistreatment is relevant to “sexual orientation as a legitimate civil rights category.” Such is a traditional criteria for enhanced “civil rights” protection; we protect things like race, gender, religion, ethnic origin, etc. in large part because of a history of mistreating these various social groups. No one doubts why “race” should have such protection. But there is controversy regarding “sexual orientation.” And social conservatives often play “race” against “sexual orientation,” trying to rile up blacks to indignation about gays having the “gall” to make civil rights arguments.
While I caution the pro-gay side against trying to make too close an analogy to race, I also remind folks that we do not live in a world where race is the only recognized “civil rights” category. If it were, then perhaps gays would have no business trying to make civil rights arguments. Rather we live in a world where it’s race, gender, ethnic origin, religion, age, disability and many other categories that receive “civil rights” protection.
Yes, gays, like every other social group, haven’t suffered slavery or Jim Crow as blacks have. But, that doesn’t mean gays haven’t suffered. In one of my most widely read posts I noted:
Homosexuals historically have been subject to sodomy laws which led to imprisonment or worse, being banned from government jobs, institutionalization with a whole slew of sadistic treatments like electroshock therapy, reputation ruining, all which have led to at worst suicides like that of World War II hero Alan Turing. In short, if mistreatment is a criterion for being a civil rights victim, homosexuals easily pass that test.
I write all this as a preface to what I see as a profound example of what’s probably a typical example of human suffering related to homosexuality. It comes from an unlikely source. Ryan T. Anderson of First Things writes about a friend struggling with his homosexual orientation, yet at the same time who wants to remain “chaste,” true to the Roman Catholic Church’s teachings, perhaps one day live a normal functional heterosexual life. Anderson writes this with the opposite worldview that I argue for here and tries to score the opposite “political points” that I would. I want to ignore all that and instead focus on the human suffering, the real psychological trauma about which his friend testifies:
He came out to me in an email. I’ve known him for years, long enough that I can’t remember when we first met….Over the past three years, “Chris” (let’s call him) has experienced a pronounced attraction to other males-for one old friend from high school in particular….
Chris’ situation is sad, but it seems to be moving somewhere. He told me how he had cried daily for the first two years of his same-sex attractions, knowing that he was becoming someone he didn’t want to be.
Mind you, this isn’t, from the information we’ve received a person who has chosen to act on his homosexual orientation (also keep in mind that both Anderson and his friend are relatively young, in their early 20s). But someone who is merely struggling with an unchosen sexual orientation. Indeed, someone who is attempting to “do the right thing” according to his own religiously conservative conscience:
A crush, maybe, or an infatuation. Whatever it was, he knew it wasn’t healthy. And though he had never acted on the attraction, he explained, it led to fantasies and lusts he didn’t want. So he made a resolution never to embrace them as essential to his identity or accept them as permanent or untreatable-a resolution he has kept practically alone, without the support of community, family, or friends. Over the course of many phone calls and emails, he shared with me his reflections on what he thought had created his problem of same-sex attractions.
I don’t want to politicize this moving article too much. I just want readers to appreciate the following facts: 1) This is someone who presumably never chose to do what religious conservatives consider “immoral,” that is engage in homosexual behavior (indeed, he appears to be one such conservative); but also 2) someone whose suffering over his blameless, unchosen sexual orientation led him to CRY daily for over two years.
I think we all know what it’s like to be sad; but crying daily for two years…just stop and reflect on that. That illustrates the psychological trauma from which homosexually oriented people suffer simply because of their blameless, unchosen orientation.
Hopefully this sheds light on why younger homosexually oriented folks more likely attempt suicide. And also consider the many who may take their lives without revealing why they suffer. Indeed Anderson notes
[o]ther than his confessor and therapist, I’m the only person who knows. His parents would be devastated-his mother wondering whether she had caused it, his father fearing he had failed his son. His roommates and friends wouldn’t know how to take it.
How many young people actually do take their lives because of their unwanted, unchosen, sexual orientation? We may never know.
However we properly resolve this divisive culture war issue, just stop and realize that many people really do suffer profoundly for their unchosen, blameless sexual orientation.
Filed in The Belfry, The Boudoir
“How many young people actually do take their lives because of their unwanted, unchosen, sexual orientation? We may never know.”
That’s been a question in my mind for a long, long time. I think the answer is: many, many - but not so many as at one time, thanks to God.
It really is unfortunate that one side effect of the lessening of the social taboo against homosexuality generally has been the tightening of the religious taboo in some subsets of society, as in this case. In some ways it was easier in the 1970s when sexual mores were changing for everybody, actually - but there were suicides in those days, too.
These poor kids have the shame reinforces a hundred times, because of the culture wars. Being openly homosexual now means, these kids believe, going against the will of God. It means having to give up their faith - a choice between love and salvation that no heterosexual ever has to make.
Actually, if that heterosexual were an adulterer, he would be in exactly the same position theologically and in regards to social stigma within conservative religion.
“Actually, if that heterosexual were an adulterer, he would be in exactly the same position theologically and in regards to social stigma within conservative religion.”
Not a valid comparison at all. An adulterer already has a partner to love, and has made promises to do so.
Gay people in this position are told never, ever to even think about finding love.
I don’t think heterosexuals really understand the implications of this taboo.
It really does mean, from the time a person first understands his or her orientation - which for many comes before puberty - that s/he will never date, never have a “first kiss,” never hold hands with a beloved, never marry.
Never enjoy in his or her whole life enjoy the simple pleasures of happiness with another human being s/he loves. It’s a very bleak existence.
The Bible starts out with God’s understanding of the solitary Adam that “it is not good for the man to be alone.” Christians now teach the very opposite: that it is indeed good for these particular people to be alone.
No one doubts why “race” should have such protection.
Not, strictly speaking, true, and not only because there are those whose irrational racial animus leads them to deny that such protections are a legitimate function of government but see nothing wrong with using state power to oppress. There are still those of us out there who continue to believe that equal justice under law is a principle that properly precludes the use of state power to redress historical injustices beyond merely eradicating the historical use of state power to effect those injustices.
(And not only that: gay people are taught that ever finding this love and expressing it physically is a deep and dreadful sin - for which they must repent.
Imagine that! It’s psychologically horrifically damaging; we’re told that good is evil and then that evil - repenting for one’s love - is good.
It’s really very sick, matter of fact.
Anyway, the prospective adulterer can - these days - at least divorce the wife he no longer loves and marry his beloved; lots of Christians have been divorced today. Catholics can resort to the polite fiction that the marriage never actually existed in the first place, if they have enough sway with the church.
Gay people are simply told: Gosh, sorry about that. You make us uncomfortable; acknowledging your existence means we might have to revise what we’ve been teaching all these years - meaning, Whoops! No infallible Magisterium or “literal” Bible - so you’ll just have to sacrifice your life and any hope of finding somebody to love.
Tough luck, kid.)
DA,
Do you believe that government (as opposed to private entities) should be bound to some kind of antidiscrimination rule regarding race?
Government should certainly be completely nondiscriminatory among its citizens (and generally among persons, although that gets a bit more complicated), but beyond that it depends on what you mean by “anti.” I’m not generally opposed to government remedies for specifically government caused prior injuries any more than I am opposed to, say, a private tortfeasor being responsible for the damage he causes. If, however, you mean (as I think given your parenthetical you do not, but just in case) do I support using government to punish or prohibit private discrimination, no I do not.
Of course, this line of reasoning can, I am aware, quickly lead to endless arguments about what constitutes adequate or appropriate contemporary government remedies for historical government created injuries, and that’s fair enough. What I originally meant to note, however, is simply that our equal protection jurisprudence with its suspect classification / strict scrutiny and rational relationship / lowered scrutiny case law, however well meaning, continues to miss the point of equal protection under law.
I agree in theory. I think what gets us into troube is re public discrimination you are going to have to adopt a rule that says: government can’t discriminate on the basis of…and then fill in the blank with those categories which traditionally have been discriminated against by the state. When I meant we all agree…it was all agree that “race” would be the first blank to fill in.
Well, my preferred solution to that is to keep government so small and doing so few things that its opportunity to discriminate hardly ever occurs in the first place.
First off, great post, but isn’t the “suffering” that you refer to a consequence of this person more-or-less chosen morality or religious/political identity? Of course it derives from their sexuality as well, but it seems to me that the difference between this person and more self-respecting homosexuals is the larger issue of identity and acceptance. This in no way invalidates the spirit of your post, but I think it is an interesting point to consider.
Next, I’m with D.A., for the most part, on the race issue. That race comment tripped me up originally to. Perhaps it would just lead to a nebulous ineffectual clause, but I’d be more likely to end it without filling in the blank than to try and list all the protected characteristics, or perhaps fill it with a very vague, and likely ineffectual phrase like “non-germaine attributes.” Ultimately, I think that D.A. has a point in regards to the breadth of government action being directly correlative to available opportunities for discrimination.
Additionally, aren’t there times when racial discrimination might be condoned? If a government review board is picking a new principal for a public school in a 95% African-American community, and they have two finalists equal in every respect except one is black, the other white, would we really discourage the hiring of the black principal in this case? Similarly, if the next Supreme Court opening results in two equally-qualified finalists, and one is a man, the other a woman, couldn’t a case be made that the woman should be given the spot in order to make the court more representative of the nation? Whether we like it or not these characteristics do play into our characters, and we can’t ignore them anymore than we can make them go away. (For the sake of argument you could even make a case to hire the black or female finalists even if they were slightly less qualified than their counterpart.)
Lastly, I have to respond to bls’ “a choice… no heterosexual ever has to make” comment, because I’ve heard similar comments before, on this blog and elsewhere.
First off, it isn’t necessary to “give up their faith,” or abandon hope for “salvation.” Obviously they may have to switch churches or communities, but this doesn’t necessitate that they must can their personal relationship with faith, or surrender any chance at salvation.
More importantly though, heterosexuals (if we’re going to buy in to the whole gay:straight dichotomy) absolutely face a very similar decision in a variety of situations. Mr. Babka is right to mention adultery, and I should point out that there are still many faiths that disdain divorce, so that isn’t always (and certainly has not always been) an escape. Even in communities that accept the concept of divorce, the specifics are sometimes less acceptable. Of course the decisions are not always acceptable in the first place either, many communities look down upon wide age disparity, including statutorily underage attractions, mixed race couples, even differences in social status. I won’t even get into other cultures where arranged marriage is dominant, nor will I delve into similar concerns by asexuals, transexuals, transvestites, or any of the other groups that don’t neatly fit into this false dichotomy.
In life everyone has to make choices based on what is important to them, in this case the individual is weighing their urges for affection with their acceptance in a particular community… by all accounts an immensely tough decision, especially for a person coming of age, but by no means is this unique to the homosexual experience.
[Please excuse the lack of concision here and above]
DA, no mater how small you keep it, they’re still going to have to hire a few people. So do you prefer that those people be hired under the non-discrimination policies that we have today or not?
Ok, some heteros have it bad too, with the arranged marriages, etc. But I’d have to say homos have it worse. The arranged marriage can sometimes work out ok, at least.
And it’s not just the enforced chastity - nobody’s telling, say, hetero priests “your kind of love is evil, it’s not really love, just some kind of perverse fetish at best. like necrophilia. Ick.” At least with hetero priests, they take a vow of chastity, but the understanding is that they are giving up something that has value, but for a higher purpose. No, the homos have it worse in every instance.
Not that there’s a contest or anything. Clitorectomies are still bad. Can’t all of it be bad?
Hi Greyson:
I think (not meaning to answer for Jon) that you are correct in some ways. But I think perhaps you also underestimate the psychic and social power of faith and religion - and also the fragility of the young psyche, especially of young people who live inside certain religious systems.
For this young man, his religion - which offers him many good and powerful positive things - keeps him from accepting his orientation as a positive. Catholicism teaches that homosexual orientation is “disordered”; not (as I once thought) in the sense of a “mental disorder,” but in the sense that it is not in line with God’s purposes for human beings. (Obviously I don’t agree with this teaching.)
So it does lead him to reject something in himself that he hasn’t chosen and can really do nothing about; here, the Catholic Church is at least more sensible than the evangelical approach and teaches that a “not negligible” number of people are deeply homosexually-oriented and that the orientation itself is blameless and unchosen. But he also believes that it is something he cannot act upon, because he believes it to be wrong. (There are some rather well-know gay Catholic bloggers who also take this position, BTW, but do not suffer on account of it: Eve Tushnet and John Heard, for two. But they both accept their orientation, which it seems this young man does not, yet.)
Religion is a very powerful motivator - and of course, people are different in how they react to this conflict. Most gay people in the past simply left the faith of their childhood, if they had any; faced with the choice between God and love, they chose love. Who wouldn’t, really?
But many now are not leaving. Why should they, if they believe the teaching on this subject to be wrong?
“First off, it isn’t necessary to “give up their faith,” or abandon hope for “salvation.” Obviously they may have to switch churches or communities, but this doesn’t necessitate that they must can their personal relationship with faith, or surrender any chance at salvation.”
Until about 10-15 years ago, this simply wasn’t true, I’m afraid. And I don’t think you understand how strong this taboo is even today in many places.
And you haven’t actually read what I wrote above, or else you haven’t digested it. Gay people are not supposed to ever find partners at all. They are to live as lifelong celibates; that is the exact teaching of the Catholic Church.
Heterosexuals do not face this, ever. Really, think about it.
(I have spent the past 30 years arguing about this topic with religious people and others. Believe me, I know what I’m talking about.
It’s not a matter making “decisions in a variety of situations.” It is a flat-out rule: no intimacy for gay people, ever. It’s right there in the Catechism:
“2359 Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.”
Celibacy for a person’s whole lifetime; that is the demand being made. The reason you’re making the comparison you are is, I’d guess, because you can’t even imagine having to comply with such a rule.
Furthermoe, homosexuality is against the law in many countries in the world even now; the President of Ghana recently to threatened to kill all gay people in his country. Homosexuality was illegal until 1993 in parts of the United States, too.
(Sorry, that should be: the President of Gambia.)
(Furthermore, it is not safe in most of the world for gay people to do what heterosexuals wouldn’t think twice about doing: hold hands or kiss in public. People get killed for this sort of thing, even in the United states.
And yes: transsexuals have it worse, even; they sometimes get killed simply for breathing. I haven’t denied that.)
Just for the record, there is no evidence that Alan Turing intentionally killed himself. He died by eating an apple which contained poison. He ate an apple every day, so it would have been easy for anyone who wanted him dead to poison it. As a someone with access to defence secrets, there may have been many people who wanted him dead.
DA, no mater how small you keep it, they’re still going to have to hire a few people. So do you prefer that those people be hired under the non-discrimination policies that we have today or not?
I wasn’t aware that the federal government did, in fact, hire on a nondiscriminatory basis. It certainly does not award procurement contracts on that basis and, as far as I know, it pushes the currently Constitutional notion of diversity as strongly as the law permits in favor of affirmative action hiring policies. Moreover, I believe this to be the case in many state and local governments, as well.
So when you say “policies that we have today or not” my answer is no, I would prefer genuine nondiscriminatory hiring, procurement, etc.
um, sodomy was still a felony in many states in the U.S. until 2003, not 1993, with Lawrence v. Texas. by definition, gay people were felons in the government’s eyes. that’s a good enough reason to cry every day for two years.
You are a high-ranking criminal by the way you were born. And nothing you seem to do can keep those thoughts from coming to your mind.
when people finally get that grace is about us all being in this together rather than finding ways to tear each other apart, the need for laws protecting some people from other people will be gone. But that’s like waiting for the day laws against stealing will disappear. People know they shouldn’t fire people for being black and they know they shouldn’t steal. And yet they still do.
Are we advocating the end of all laws because people “shouldn’t” do it and know better?
Wow! I can really relate to this. I attended an inner-city all boys Catholic school, and literally *FOR YEARS* I would wake up in the morning with a gnawing terror that someone would discover my orientation. Though I was celibate and closeted the entire time, I feared that I would “slip” somehow and go to hell. One time my gym teacher called me a fag and I was convinced that people had “found me out.” There was a term for suspected homosexuals at my school. It was called “under suspicion.” I remember this very clearly. I was terrified of being “under suspicion.” One guy in the class ahead of me was often whispered about and he shot himself in the head one year.
Crying almost every day was standard for me. Fear, self-loathing, and alienation were emotions that I was very comfortable with. I didn’t realize until much later that I wasn’t supposed to be feeling like that all of the time. I was a very bright, sensitive person, but I escaped into heroin (all too easy to obtain where I lived.) After some legal problems, I eventually got clean and was diagnosed with PTSD. To this day, the psychological stress that shaped my brain during my most formative years has made me very addiction-prone and somewhat neurotic.
To be honest, I never talk about these experiences to ANYONE - gay or straight. Also, I think a lot of well meaning straight people do not really get it, to no fault of their own.
My uncle, now in his eighties, always fey and effeminate, has probably been a deeply closeted gay catholic his whole life. Not that he ever did anything about it, other than be sad. But his non-masculine mien was constantly publicly belittled by both my parents for “not being right.”
My mother started beating on me as early as I can remember (2?) every time I sang, danced, or otherwise acted in a way that she thought looked gay, or effeminate. That was her duty as a good catholic, as she saw it.
So my childhood was one of regular abuse, maltreatment, and neglect, none of which was visited on a man-jack of my straight brothers, who all feel they had picture-book loving childhoods, while I was so depressed I needed psychiatric care by age 10.
It was so bad the pedophile next door played on my parents’ bigotry to administer his beatings if I tried to duck his thrice weekly rapes.
Imagine the disconnect of being born to people (and like all children, loving them) who hate you because of who you are, but genuinely love and parent all the rest of their other children. Think what lessons you learn about self-worth from the age of 2.
Hatred and bigotry exercised as child abuse, all in the name of Jesus Christ.
And, naturally, when I got married, my parents called _us_ the perverts and told us we would never be welcome in the family. But it was worth it, now they can’t keep my husband away from me in hospital should I fall ill, or worse.
My husband, whose (francophone) parents are very accepting, still took years before he’d so much as hold my hand in front of his sister or her husband.
Imagine being afraid of showing any affection for your spouse in the bosom of your family, much less walking down a public street.
I’ve been hospitalized by bored bigots out on a random violence spree through the gay ghetto. Local police have been convicted of coaching fag-bashers sitting in the back seat of the squad car to accuse their victim of attacking the group of them!
Gay people suffer because of the powerful hatred of the people around them, be they parents, siblings, school-mates, clergy, police, scout leaders, or teachers, all of which is visited on them starting often as very young children, and lasting for their entire lives.
I have a comment on the government’s apparent role to protect its people from its people in regards to discrimination or injustice:
The effect of a law to protect an element is as discriminatory as the law that discriminates against it, simply because it enacts legal action recognizing a racial or bigotry-oriented aspect of social structure over others. I do not think this is possible to ignore. One either has a government that recognizes NO BIGOTRY, or otherwise recognizes ALL BIGOTRY, in order to equalize all people.
That fact is, laws on the books to give homosexuals position equivalent to heterosexuals creates a state wherein homosexuals can be accorded rights under which heterosexuals cannot be covered (with some exceptions, such as civil unions). Similarly, giving heterosexuals rights not held by homosexuals is just as discriminatory. The effective solution is to remove all laws that can be argued as favoring one group over another, or enact laws that give the same rights on paper to each group for each effect one desires, equally.
“2359 Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.”
Celibacy for a person’s whole lifetime; that is the demand being made. The reason you’re making the comparison you are is, I’d guess, because you can’t even imagine having to comply with such a rule.
This is in keeping with John’s teachings in the Bible. The problem is that heterosexual parishoners are not held to this ideal, and there are arguments that neither should priests or pastors.
Jonathan, excellent post! I want to expand on what bls said about stigma and the culture wars. I completely agree with bls’ assertion that the rising acceptance of homosexuality has caused a similar increase in discrimination within certain communities (perhaps “conservative Christian communities”?) What’s less apparent but just as interesting is the language these communities use to discriminate. It’s almost as if there’s a finite number of tropes that are used to make their arguments.
Case in point: Ryan T. Anderson’s retelling of his friend’s “struggle with same-sex-attractions” in the article Jonathan has cited in the above article. Anderson characterizes his friend as being overtly attached to his mother and estranged from his father. He contends that this has resulted in estrangement from other men, and that his ‘SSA’ is a result of that estrangement. Anyone who has been following the “reparative therapy” meme will immediately recognize that this is a core tenet of this school of psychotherapy. I get along better with my father than my mother, and I turned out gay. I’m sure others here can attest to life experiences contrary to reparative therapy tropes. However I would say that that does not matter to certain segments of the population that desire restigmatization of homosexuality, as discrimination requires stereotyping that artificially narrows the wide range of human experience into cariactures.
BTW Matt, I’m a veteran of Catholic boys’ high school myself, and I totally understand. However I was able to carve a niche in the community where I could discuss my feelings openly. But I also experienced the slurs and intimidation. Thanks for the post.
“um, sodomy was still a felony in many states in the U.S. until 2003, not 1993, with Lawrence v. Texas. by definition, gay people were felons in the government’s eyes. that’s a good enough reason to cry every day for two years.”
You’re right, sorry. I’m not sure what I was thinking of when I wrote that, actually; chronological typo, I guess.
“This is in keeping with John’s teachings in the Bible. The problem is that heterosexual parishoners are not held to this ideal, and there are arguments that neither should priests or pastors.”
This requirement really comes as a result of the Catholic teaching on sexual intercourse - that each “act” must be “open to the possibility of life.” That’s the same argument used against birth control - and of course the great majority of Catholics worldwide ignore that prohibition.
Some people have made a good point here: that homosexual people are often disliked or hated by their own families.
This is happening less and less these days, too, thank God - but it’s not negligible when considering “psychological suffering.” And of course, it happens to a frightening degree in “religious” circles. Gay kids are sent to ex-gay programs to be “cured.” (One interesting side effect of this is that many of ex-gay “survivors” remain religious. So we have a new generation of religious gay kids today, rather than a group that has rejected religion completely. And there are a few places for religious gay people to go now - but that’s a fairly new development.)
Many good things have happened over the course of the last 40 years - but as we see from this story, people still suffer. Most gay people still have to be careful about where they go and what they do, simply in order to avoid being harassed or worse. But at least we can have some semblance of a normal life now.
It still amazes me that anyone living in the western world at the beginning of the 21st century could possibly think, much less say, that sexual orientation is a choice. As the product of an evangelical home (my father is a minister, in fact), the only choice I would ever had made was the choice to be heterosexual. Instead, life presented me with something very, very different and something I fought against for 20 years in every possible way - prayer, fasting, exorcism, ministerial counseling, Christian therapy. Nothing changed who I was. Of course, like the young man who has spent the last two years crying, I did all of this without my family knowing and without their support. Why? Because every homosexual from a Christian family knows just how deep the loathing of homosexuality is in fundamentalist Christianity because it is instilled in us on every level, by the subtle comment to blatant condemnation from the pulpit. No one born into a fundamentalist or evangelical home could possibly choose to be gay. It would mean choosing to be rejected by God (as you were raised to understand Him), choosing to be rejected by your family, choosing to be rejected by your friends. To come out of the closet to others, including non-fundamentalists, for most of us also means putting ourselves at risk for being fired from our jobs because of our orientation, thrown out of our apartments for our orientation, to being rejected outright by some people, and assaulted or even killed by others. To top it all off, for years fundamentalists and evangelicals spread the lie that homosexuals were all so horribly promiscuous that God sent His wrath on us in the form of AIDs. Yet, as soon as homosexuals demanded that our relationships be treated with equality and respect, somehow our desire for monogamous matrimony was a threat to heterosexual unions! I feel for the young man who is still trying to live by an interpretation of Christianity that despises his very existence. As someone who knows how deeply homophobia based on this type of Christianity sinks into the very bones of a child, he will die a thousand deaths before, maybe, he’ll be able to love himself as God made him and be freed from the chains of fundamentalism. Unfortunately, it is very unlikely it will be with the help of his family or church friends.
It’s amazing to hear stories like James’. Amazing, because I didn’t have this kind of experience. I knew I was gay when I was about 8 years old (although I didn’t know what this meant, of course; it was the 60s and still completely taboo even to speak aloud of it anywhere).
I was raised as a mainstream Protestant - Methodist - in a home with good and modern-minded people. I was lucky that way - but I can assure you that the prohibition is still alive and well even in the modern-minded, reasonable church I grew up in. Christians have the option, if they needed one, of pointing to Leviticus and the Epistles - but it’s very much a culture wars issue at this point, too.
All that is to say that gay people are NOT welcome in Christian churches in almost every case, except for a very few places. The very opposite, in fact, no matter how much people claim they “love the sinner but hate the sin.” Truth is, they don’t want us in their churches AT ALL. Which is why most gay people, for their own sanity, leave the church. But that leaves us without any spiritual support, except from one another - and it leads most gay people to loathe the Christian church (and most religion) - with good reason, I’m afraid.
Very sad, for a faith ostensibly build around love. The hatred for homosexuality is very, very intense in the Church - ironic, especially, in the case of the Catholic Church, where it’s estimated that 50% of priests are gay themselves.
I can identify somewhat with the struggle of the person you mentioned. But fortunately, I’ve come through all that. Homosexuals do suffer, but a lot of that is self-inflicted. True, we’re “trapped” in a culture that says discriminating against gays is still ok. But the winds are changing. Gays really do have a “choice” to make–not of orientation but a choice to live with integrity and to live happy. To me, that’s the most Christian thing one could ever do.