I've started coming out to very few but significant people in my life. However, I haven't come out to my parents yet. I think the main reason I haven't done this yet is because I know their response will be "but the Bible says...," "it's a sin," etc. I'm not as religious as my parents right now but I still believe in God and believe that God made me this way. I don't believe it's a sin. I don't believe that if I marry a woman, remain faithful to her during my lifetime, and continue to love God, that I'll go to hell. But my parents are more conservative and have never been around gay people. How do I approach this with them, knowing that they'll argue against me and throw Bible verses at me?
I'm kind of in the same situation, only my parents are not that devout. Is it possible you can state your age? How you approach situations like these is kind of influenced by that. Can you state their stance on homosexuality? I know you say they might think it's a sin, but have you ever heard them say that? Do they like any gay people? Do they get angry about it? What do you think they would do if they encountered a gay stranger? If you don't know, you probably need to find out these things. Watching soaps in front of them is a great way to test their reaction when a gay scene pops up. Unfortunately there's no easy way to change a devout christians mind on the topic of homosexuality, if they're extreme. Their reaction will honestly come down to who do they love more: you or their religion? And it doesn't always end happily ever after. But in the mean time you could always attempt to challenge them the moment they say something bad about homosexuality like "that's not fair" or "they can't help it". This will make them think twice about being homophobic rather than reinforcing their own beliefs. Although you could also point out that many christians for example like and accept gay people so maybe homophobia is not strictly what the religion is about, and therefore shouldn't use the bible as an excuse. You could research more about what aspects of your religion supports homosexuality and use that to contradict their statements, for example: "love thy neighbour". Or you could even point out what sin they themselves have already committed, but that is probably going to result in more anger. If they're good parents they'll love you more than their status on homosexuality: "I'm your daughter, don't you love me?" But unfortunately like many gay people find out, they don't always have good parents. It's important you get more information out of them before coming out, but don't be too obvious. Hope this helps. Also well done for coming out to a few close people.
I have found there is no way to argue bible versus with someone. My wife grew up in an extremely religious Christian family and went to an ultra conservative Christian college. I was really fearful that they would not take it well and we would lose them. So we wrote them a letter coming out to them and explaining to them that we were a couple and we would be getting married and having a family together with children. We explained to them that we wanted them to be apart of that family and be loving grandparents for those children but if they couldn't do that we would understand and we would miss them. We thanked them for raising Ruth in the Christian faith which in turn brought me into it as well. Because of their love and support we would continue that faith and pass it on to our children. Which ever way they would choose we would understand. We were only going to allow positive supporting influences in our lives influencing our family. If they could be apart of that our family would be fulfilled and complete. We gave them time to digest everything and asked them to call us if they could be apart of our family in a supportive way. They called us within the hour and have been our biggest supporters over the last 20 years.
