I’m obviously not Christian, but I do have a horse or two in this race. For starters, I’m weary of seeing my LGBTQ siblings who *are* (or more often, *were*) Christian suffer terrible emotional, spiritual, and sometimes physical abuse in the name of Jesus Christ. It’s even an obstacle sometimes as a polytheist pagan in my interactions with folks who follow Christ, as decades of being told by the Christian media that I’m a disgusting, horrible person, whose quest for equality will lead to the down fall of society – and Jesus says so, has left me with an impression that the Christian god and messiah is a hateful, vengeful being who offers hope only to those that fit into a narrow category of existence. That’s such a radical difference in perspective from that of many of the Christians that I know personally that it is hard sometimes to find common theological ground on which to have a discussion. It’s like the opposite of the (probably apocryphal) Gandhi quote: I loath the Christ that I’ve been shown, but quite like some Christians, who are as the saying goes, quite unlike their Christ.

But leaving all of that aside, I’m hoping that more LGBTQ affirming Christians will “come out” so to speak, simply because as a person of faith, I’m dead tired of being painted with their brush. I was raised in an LGBTQ affirming faith, and I belong to a *different* LGBTQ affirming faith, yet simply by virtue of being a religious gay person I’m assumed to be self-hating and/or contributing to a system of oppression, because so many LGBTQ people’s ONLY understanding of religion and faith is that to be a person of faith is to be filled with vileness and hatred towards LGBTQ people. That’s been their experience, both of their milk religion of Christianity, and of how faith is portrayed in American public life by the outspoken Christians whose faith is inseparable from both political activism and their hate of anyone who is different from themselves.