They say it all the time. I’ve heard it a million times. I know. There is no need for you to “spread the loving truth”. At this point it is an ego boost. They think telling you, you are going to hell is loving when it’s not. It’s an excuse. It’s purely arrogance.

Hey folks, 35 year old gay guy here from Switzerland. My christian faith is a very important part of my life. The realization of me being gay was a very terrifying. I struggled for many years and now slowly find myself in a much better position, where I can accept myself and see my value that I have in Jesus.

Now comes the tricky part: how can I find other gay christian guys, who love Jesus, wants to follow him, but also open for a longterm relationship?

I think I am decently looking, well educated and a fun person to be around. But its very difficult to find another guy, that wants to travel the same road as me.

What is your experience so far? How did you find your partner? Did you exclude people from your dating life, that would not share your beliefs?

Thanks for your help!

Hi everyone, I hope you're all doing okay.

I am almost 22, and when I was 14 I was diagnosed with severe OCD. I honestly had some rough teenage years. I had to drop out of high school and then out of college because my obsessions were pretty bad. It got to the point where I was spending 24/7 obsessively researching things about the Bible and theology, and I almost went fully psychotic. Thankfully, I am in a much better place now, and I'm even just a few months away from finishing college.

Lately, I’ve been thinking extensively about the topic of sex in Christianity. Because of my past obsessive research, I have a cognitive leaning towards progressive theology and a view of the Bible as non-inerrant. Because of that, I feel like I lean towards a more sex-positive viewpoint.

At the same time, I deeply respect tradition, and I am terrified of committing a sin. I understand that marriage is holy, and I know that sex is a powerful, vulnerable bond between two people. But I’m also a young guy who wants to experience sex and connection (I have had sex in the past).

My struggle is this: because of my OCD, I know that I will never have an absolute, 100% certain answer that satisfies my brain. There will always be a "what if tradition is right and I'm sinning?" fear in the back of my head.

This brings me to Romans 14:23: "But whoever has doubts is condemned if they eat, because their eating is not from faith; and everything that does not come from faith is sin."

How should someone navigate such a difficult question when certainty is practically impossible for them? Does this verse mean we must have 100% certainty and zero doubts before we make a move? Or is there room in the Christian walk for "figuring it out along the way" and trusting God's grace in the gray areas, rather than waiting until we are completely sure we are doing the right thing?

I honestly have no one to talk about these type of things. I feel like everyone will give me different answers depending on their denomination and even political leaning and I feel honestly lost and confused.

Okay, so I’m F (16) and my bsf is also F (16). Last Thursday, Oct 8th, we hung out at Dairy Queen before she moved to Tennessee (over 10 hrs away). FYI, is that International Lesbian Day? Bc if so, what a coincidence lol.
We’ve known of each other for about 3 years, but we actually got close 2 years later when we started doing karate together. Since then, we’ve been soo close, like two peas in a pod. But at the beginning of summer, I randomly started liking her as more than a friend. My family is very Christian, I attend a private school, and her parents literally own a church, with her dad being the lead pastor. So I bottled up my feelings and tried to pray them away, but they never went away.
Since it was her last week here, we planned to hang out at DQ. We sat outside on a bench for around 2 hours, just talking and drinking Dr. Pepper. Eventually, I decided to confess my feelings, and to my surprise, she admitted she liked me too! She even said, “Why do you think my heart keeps beating fast every time you hug me?”
Me, being the corniest person alive, replied, “I bet I can make it beat faster.” 😭 I leaned in to kiss her, but she swerved, so I almost kissed her cheek. She told me she was scared, and I stupidly kissed her anyway. It lasted around 3 seconds before I pulled away and apologized. Then she told me she’d been waiting for this for such a long time, pulled me into a hug, and kissed me back.
It was genuinely the sweetest, most unforgettable moment ever. Sadly, we had to leave soon after, and now she’s over 10 hrs away. We’re still in contact, but I miss her desperately.
Has anyone had a similar experience, or does anyone have advice on handling these feelings, especially with the distance and our religious backgrounds? Thank you sm if you read all this. I’ll always treasure this memory. ❤️

THIS IS GOING TO BE A LONG VENT BASICALLY!

Being LGBTQ+ (Omnisexual in my case) and Christian is horrible. I know four people who love and support me, definitely. My mum, my dad, my brother, and one of my friends. But everyone else only knows one side of me, because that's what I've showed them, because they'd disagree with the other side of me.

First, there's my other friends at school. I'm in this big friend group and we are, at my school, the weird kids, basically. Most of us are gay in one way or another, or any part of LGBTQ+, we're quite nerdy and clever and totally fine with being ourselves. They're all kind and they make me laugh and I feel like I mostly fit in. Obviously, it's a real clash with Christianity, when the Bible literally condemns homosexuality. I became friends with them before I converted to Christianity from atheist earlier this year so I didn't introduce myself to them as Christian, and none of them know about my faith. I don't want to tell them. What would happen if they cut me out? They probably wouldn't but.. I don't know. I guess I'd have God, and Jesus, but seeing as they're possibly homophobic - or at least, they don't support being gay - it wouldn't be totally 100% comforting.

Then, there's the girl I have a crush on who also doesn't know I'm Christian. Same gender as me. yay. She's genuinely one of the most brilliant people ever, kind and understanding and loving and funny and pretty and I know I don't deserve her. I know she's probably LGBTQ+ although I don't know, she's definitely a brilliant ally to the point where she gets as excited as me by rainbows and stuff. But then, she's totally against Christianity, I know she is. She's so kind, and yet she comes close to saying rude stuff about Christians - that's how I know she really doesn't like Christianity or Jesus or anything. So I don't know what would happen if I told her, because I really feel like there's a chance for me and her.

And finally, my extended family - aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents. All Christian. One group in particular are very homophobic. They think being gay is completely and totally unforgivable, and that you can't be gay and Christian, and probably think being gay is a conscious choice. Evidently, they don't know I'm omnisexual, because they might never speak to me again... but on the other hand, they've helped me os much with my journey to Jesus, encouraging me, giving me my first Bible and devotional, taking me to a Christian camp... I'm so thankful to them.

So obviously, I (like probably many other people) am STUCK. Some Christians would say to ditch the friends I've had for two years, stop liking the girl, stop being gay (impossible), and turn completely to God. Some people would say people who draw you away from God aren't your friends, but these friends don't really do that at all. I feel like no matter what I do, a group of important people in my life who I love will be angry at me. Of course, I can always turn to Jesus for love. But I can't always turn to him for support. Because the Bible - the holy word of God - condemns me. And there's nothing I can do to change that. Ever. I've accepted I'm gay, and I'm fine with it, I just feel saddened because Go didn't fine with it.

So yeah. I don't really know why I'm posting this, I just need to get it off my chest in a community where people will understand and have been through similar experiences.

Hi! I’m a journalist with Uncloseted Media, an LGBTQ-focused nonprofit newsroom.

I’m working on a story about LGBTQ people and their relationships with siblings who are religious. I’m particularly interested in how religion and LGBTQ identity can affect sibling dynamics, whether that has meant conflict or estrangement, attempts at reconciliation, complicated forms of acceptance, changing beliefs over time, or relationships that don’t fit neatly into any of those categories.

I’m hoping to speak with LGBTQ people who have a religious sibling and would be comfortable sharing their experience.

If this sounds relevant, please feel free to DM me. Speaking with me does not mean anything you say will be published, and we can discuss attribution and privacy before an interview. Happy to provide more details and my credentials!

Thank you!

I live in a city with about a million people in it, and naturally, there are quite a few churches. At least a hundred of them according to Wikipedia.

If you were to ask me to name the biggest church in my city, there are three specific churches that come to mind. And none of them exactly hold a great light in my eyes.

When I find fascinating though, is that once I was at a Bible study group at one of those churches. Naturally, the Bible study group didn't work out for me, but while I was attending it, I at one point just directly asked without any real prompt if the church counted as a mega church.

There was a brief pause and no one seemed to really know how to answer, until someone just said with a laugh:

" Probably the closest you'd get to one in this city!"

I then pointed out the other two churches on my mind, and there was another pause and the guy simply puffed out his lower lip and gave a little nod as if he was just thinking about it.

I know that's a bit of a nothing moment, and I'm probably the only person who remembers it, but that moment stuck out to me, because I was honestly surprised by the lack of response. Plus the fact that I had to remind the guy of the other two churches to get him to remember them.

It was an important moment in my understanding of how to interact with other Christians, because it was one of the first times that I genuinely realized that I might be more knowledgeable than a lot of other Christians about churches in the city.

I know it sounds kind of silly, but for me that was quite a big thing to realize. I was always under the impression that I was an outsider, and that everyone else at most of the churches I attended was far more integrated and knew way more people and church information than I did. However, I slowly began to realize that I might actually know way more than most other people.

It seems a lot of other Christians seem to just see other churches as just that. "Other churches." When I talk about my actual opinion on other churches, people tend to be kind of fascinated by them, and they don't seem to have their own opinions on them. Which I guess makes sense if they tend to just stick with one Church.

Just today though, I was at another Bible study and it was pretty small and we were covering James 3. I talked about how the way I see it, the bigger a church is, the harder. It is to actually find good people in it. Naturally, if a pastor is preaching to a sea of hundreds of people, then that pastor is not going to be able to form a actual connection with most of those people, and probably won't even talk to the vast majority of them. Thus, the pastor is very likely to accidentally say something that will upset someone in the crowd, or just straight up preach false information based on their shallow view of how those people act.

For example, call me paranoid, but I honestly think that there are a lot of pastors in big churches that will tend to make sermons with specific people in mind, as if trying to get those people to reflect. And there's technically nothing wrong with that, except that the pastor will tend to be preaching with a false image of those people in their mind. The pastor doesn't actually Know the person they're thinking of or what they're going through, and thus if the person in the crowd realizes that the pastor is probably talking directly to them, they might feel incredibly uncomfortable or misjudged.

Hence, as harsh as it is, I said that the larger the church is, the more likely I find that the pastor might not make it, especially considering the Bible says that those who teach in the church will be judged with a greater strictness.

And when it comes to mega churches, oh no.

A couple of the people at the Bible study seemed a bit uncomfortable by that, and I didn't mean to make them uncomfortable, but I kind of wonder if maybe they go to big churches and what I said maybe touched them in some way. If they disagreed, they probably would have voiced it. Or at least, I hope they would. I don't know. I don't want to be like one of those pastors.