I just made an account here, and I wanted to share my story. It's pretty long, but I would appreciate if you'd read it. I, like many people in the United States, grew up in a Protestant home. For the record, I have two siblings: an older brother who’s off in college, and a younger sister. My parents are both theologically and politically very conservative. My dad was a pastor at my old church, and is now an elder at the church we currently attend. I accepted Jesus into my heart when I was five years old, and to this day he is my personal lord and savior. I know that for many gay people who have been hurt by the church, a gay Christian is a bit like a Jewish Nazi, but for me, Jesus’s unconditional love is stronger than the hatred that is spewed from by some Christian congregations. When I was little, I was definitely different from my peers. I was very heterosocial (preferring to be friends with people of the opposite sex), and all my friends were girls until I was about ten years old. I didn’t have any gender identity issues (I’m a cisgender male and I always have been. End of story), but I was always a little bit effeminate. I didn’t like sports, or other typically masculine pursuits, and instead like to play with girl’s toys. Not because I was attracted by the feminine theming, but because they were often much cooler than boys’ toys from a purely mechanical standpoint. For example, one of my friends had a machine that could automatically clothe a naked Barbie doll. Mechanically cool and interesting. For another example, when I was little, Disney released a series of double-sided books based on their movies. On one side, they would tell the story from the hero’s perspective, while on the other side, the villain would tell the story and try to justify their actions in the plot. Most, though not all, of these were tied to the Disney Princess brand. But either way, I thought it was a cool idea. My dad wasn’t too open to the idea of me playing with girls’ toys, however. He would often scold me if he found me with a girls’ toy, and once, when I painted my nails at a friend’s house purely for the hell of it, my mom had to frantically help me get the polish off before Dad got home, because we both knew he’d go ballistic if he saw me wearing make-up. I also began to see other boys as visually pleasing, especially when partially clothed. I’m autistic, however, so I didn’t connect the dots and suspected nothing. I first learned about homosexuality in the lead-up to the 2008 election, when I was nine or ten years old. If you lived in California at the time, you’ll probably remember that this was the year when Proposition 8, a ballot initiative intended to amend the constitution to ban same-sex marriage, was on the ballot. It was in the context of Prop 8 that my parents first discussed gay marriage with me. I was appalled. How could someone defile marriage like that? At this point I was too young to fully comprehend human sexuality (I don’t think my parents had had "the talk" with me at that point), so I didn’t understand the concept of sexual orientation fully. Because of this, I thought that gay people were just godless rebels who delighted in breaking the Bible’s commandments. Although I never hurt anyone based on their sexual orientation, I was, in the literal sense of the word, a homophobe. Every time I saw two adults of the same sex walking by, I suspected them of being married, and I was disgusted. It didn’t help that I was inundated with anti-gay rhetoric by my family and political speakers like Rush Limbaugh. It was never anything violent or extreme, but I was consistently getting the message that gay people were ungodly, that the “biblical” definition of marriage was sacred, and that if marriage was redefined, it would be very bad for America’s future. When I was about eleven years old, there was one incident that seemed trivial to me at the time but, in hindsight, was incredibly important. At this time, my older brother and I had both created historical fiction countries (because we’re weirdos like that). One day, when my brother was in the mood to be cruel (he was in that mood a lot when I was little, come to think of it), he began describing to me how he was going to kidnap the president of my country and take him to a Guantánamo Bay style prison in his country, where he would be raped by men from his country. My parents had, by now, had “the talk”, so I was understandably confused. Didn’t sex require a vagina, which men don’t have? So my brother explained that the poor fictitious president would be sodomized, or, as he so eloquently put it, “butt-raped”. This totally grossed me out. I didn’t realize it then, but the fact that I was first exposed to the idea of anal sex in such a violent and personally humiliating context made me fear it and find it disgusting for the next several years. One day, when I was thirteen, I suddenly became very curious about sex. I knew that the penis goes into the vagina, but I wanted to know more details. Through online research on my iPad, I found out about the sexual response cycle. I also learned about masturbation, and I, like many thirteen-year-old boys, became obsessed with it. It felt so GOOD! I couldn’t wait to have my own wife so I could experience the real thing. But something disturbing started happening. In all the softcore porn I saw, the men were very pleasing to the eye, while the women were just...there. When thought bubbled up from my subconscious once when I was fourteen, I was worried I might be gay. But I was able to console myself. After all, I didn’t want to have sex with these men, I just wanted to have that kind of body (at that time I was overweight). And as for the women, well, I was only fourteen. I would be attracted to them soon enough. Or so I thought. In my freshman year of high school, there were a few girls that I thought I had crushes on. In retrospect, I really only wanted to be friends with them, but since I had swallowed the lies that A) If you’re not straight, you’re a sinner, and B) If you don’t date in high school, there’s something wrong with you, I misinterpreted my feelings for these girls. By the end freshman year, I had started having fantasies about other boys in my school. I clearly remember fantasizing about one particularly cute boy masturbating. But again, I was able to assuage my fears. I didn’t want to have sex with this boy, I just enjoyed imagining him experience sexual pleasure. In the middle of my sophomore year (December 2014 or January 2015), I discovered asexuality. It seemed to fit me so perfectly! I wasn’t attracted to either gender! I didn’t have any feelings for women, and although men were visually pleasing, my aversion to gay sex cancelled that out. I came out to my friends, and then, a few months later, I came out to my mom. I was ace, and I was proud. But from the beginning, my new-found label didn’t fit me very well. I couldn’t deny that a hot guy could make me tight in the pants. Nor could I deny that while anal sex sounded terrible, I wouldn’t necessarily mind a blow-job or hand-job. Ever since I started identifying as ace, there was a little voice in my consciousness that kept saying I might be gay. Every time I heard that voice, I would run through the arguments as to why I was ace and not gay, and voice would stop, only to come back louder the next time. But no matter. I wouldn’t be gay. I couldn’t be gay! That would make me a sinner! Over the past few years, my position on homosexuality had been gradually softening. I eventually came to the conclusion that to deny a gay person the right to marry solely because of the teachings of a religion they didn’t follow was a violation of the first amendment. “When Jesus comes back and establishes his kingdom on Earth, then we can have a theocracy and ban homosexuality, but until then, we need to honor the separation of church and state,” I thought. But one day, I stumbled onto the Gay Christian Network Website. I found it very intriguing. They made seemingly solid scriptural arguments claiming that homosexuality wasn’t necessarily totally prohibited in the Bible. The next Sunday, I was pondering these arguments in church, and I was suddenly sad and afraid. I wanted to please God by obeying his word, and yet I didn’t know what his word really was. I could have asked my dad, seeing as how he went to seminary for three years, but I wasn’t very comfortable doubting a doctrine that he was so adamant about. So I started texting my bi, atheist friend, with my concerns. I had previously told him my position on homosexuality (it similar to believing a false religion, technically a sin, but not something that deserves bigotry or to be illegal in a secular democracy), and he had been OK with it. He was very supportive, and though it was probably not a good idea to consult an atheist for Bible counsel, I didn’t feel safe going to anyone else. As all this was happening, the gay voice was getting louder and louder and louder, until one day, it was just too loud to ignore. Although I still identified as asexual, I was identifying more and more with the gay community. The idea of taking a husband started began sounding more and more appealing, and while masturbating, I began fantasizing more and more about having sex with a boyfriend/husband. So, two weeks ago, I decided to tell my youth group about it. Now, for context, my church is really small, and our youth group is just seven kids, under the direction of a young married couple who, for convenience sake, we’ll call Derek and Natalie (not their real names), studying the Bible on Sunday mornings before the service. This particular Sunday, Natalie was absent, as were three of the kids. I knew from some comments they had made previously that Derek and Natalie were tolerant, if not affirming, of homosexuality. So when we were playing “high-low” (a “game” where we go around the table and share the best and worst parts of the previous week), I told the group that I was questioning my sexuality. I told them that I identified as ace, but I actually might be gay, and I’m mortified to tell my parents. It was really good to get that off my chest, but I still didn’t want to be gay, and I still kept trying to get rid of the gay voice via the usual method. I envisioned what it would be like to have to announce to my parents, or worse, my grandparents, that I was engaged to a man. But yesterday, November 25, 2015, I read a Bible passage that changed everything. In the nineteenth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus explains to the Pharisees that if a man divorces his wife and remarries, his second marriage is adulterous unless the first wife has been unfaithful. He then goes on to say that divorce is not contrary to the biblical definition of marriage. But none but the most fundamentalist Christians teaches that a remarried person must divorce their spouse to achieve salvation. In fact, remarriages are often performed in churches, and are condoned by both clergy and laypeople. So, even if we assume that homosexuality is sinful, is there a difference between a person in an inherently sinful gay marriage and an inherently sinful remarriage? At around the same time, a family friend and her fifteen-year-old son who were going to spend Thanksgiving with our family stopped by our house. The son, who I hadn’t seen in several years, turned out to be rather attractive. It was at that moment I knew. I’m gay! I’m gay! How liberating it felt to say that, even if I could only do so in my head. Throughout the rest of the evening, I was ecstatic! I was filled with joy! I was free! And that leaves me here, as I am today, November 26, 2015. My plan is to call my previously mentioned bi friend and come out to him tomorrow, and then tell my whole friend group in person tomorrow. I also want to tell my youth group, or at least Derek, the next time I see them. As for my family, they’ll have to know eventually, but not yet. I might tell my little sister, since she’s much more accepting of homosexuality than my parents, but I don’t think I’ll tell my parents until I move out of the house for my junior year of college (I’m a junior in high school now). I hope you don’t leave thinking that all ace people are secretly gay, because that’s a stereotype that’s really hurtful to actual ace people, of whom there are plenty. But for me, I’m just so much happier now than I was two days ago, because now, I’m honest with myself, and I’ve worked up the confidence to come out to the most important person in the whole coming-out process: myself. If you have any advice as to how I should come out to my family, please share it below. And if you are an LGBT Christian struggling to reconcile your faith with your sexuality, or with hatred and abuse within the church, please share your story below, and I’ll keep you in my prayers. Remember Jesus loves you unconditionally, and that he loves you even when it seems like no one else does.
