Warning: Some of the content in this text may be triggering for some who have been hurt by the church or who are struggling with their identity. Know that I only have love for you and that these feelings I write about do not reflect my feelings or beliefs now.

When you are a 15 year old Baptist evangelical living in the Bible belt in a ministry family and your parents divorce because your pastor dad is gay, it hits you like a ton of bricks. Being gay was the one huge, super big sin that evangelicals like me got all feisty about when brought up in conversation. I don’t even know how I learned what “gay” was because I was pretty sheltered. Probably from friends or tv because I know there was never a conversation about it at home. I just knew it was wrong, disgusting, and definitely a choice like all sins are. I even remember families in our faith community boycotting Disney because Disney celebrated gay pride month or something...Thankfully we were die hard Disney fans and we never had to give up our movies. I mean, we were a part of the Disney movie club and my sister and I lost our minds when the Disney channel was added to our cable package!

I was so very angry with my father when he came out. I couldn’t believe what was happening. I wrote him a profound letter with strong words letting him know how ashamed I was that he was too weak to stand up against the devil’s temptation. I was young and angry but to this day, I feel sick thinking about that letter.

I shut my dad out for a while. I told him I didn’t want to speak to him ever again. Thank God for forgiveness, right? Unfortunately, the counsel I was getting from adults in my faith community made me feel valid in my feelings and they even supported my hate filled letter. We didn’t talk for some time. My dad would still call and leave me voicemails. Eventually I let him back in a little at a time and we started occasionally getting lunch. I didn’t want to talk about anything having to do with his lifestyle so we just kept things pretty shallow. It wasn’t until around the age of 18 that I started feeling like I should know more about my dad’s life. Probably around the time I had started attending the church I wrote about in my last post. I knew it was time to forgive my dad and I was ready to start mending the relationship. When we’d get together, I’d ask questions about the more personal side of his life. Just one or two questions each time. I was slowly getting to know this new dad of mine.

We’ve all heard that atrocious saying, “Love the sinner, hate the sin.” Barf. Whoever came up with that was faking it something hard. You can wish someone well and not want them to die but that doesn’t mean you love them. You can’t truly love someone if you hate what they do or who they are. If I walked up to you and said, “Hey, I hate your sin, but I love you.” How much warmth would you feel from me? Would you feel like you could confide in me? Seek counsel from me? Be accepted and truly loved by me? Absolutely not! Your knee jerk reaction would be to feel offended first. Remember that verse about not worrying about the speck in someone’s eye when you have a plank in your own? Exactly. We are not meant to be the sin police with our heads held high, ready to point out the sins of others with our “love.” I always heard this phrase in a positive way. Quite frankly, I thought it was genius! That’s what I would do with my dad! I could love him and let him back into my life but I could constantly make sure he knows I am not ok with his lifestyle.

I felt like it was my Christian duty to show the love of Jesus to my dad and his partner at the time. I needed to meet my dad’s partner, not because I wanted to and not because it was important to my dad but because I didn’t want to look like a hypocrite. Also, I felt like the only thing that would change my dad was to show the love of Jesus to him and his partner. Basically, I didn’t have a genuine love for people like Jesus does, I just wanted to keep my image clean and do my Christian duty of trying to change people. I met my dad’s partner, went to their house, did the whole thing. Check. Now I’ll just sit and wait until my dad realizes how awesome I’ve been and realizes how right I am and that he needs to change and be straight again. That will work, right?

Eventually I realized that I wasn’t loving my dad by building up a tolerance for his lifestyle in hopes of changing him. That’s not love. To love him would have been to listen and to try to understand. Whether we know it or not, we fear what we do not understand. Therefore, different equals wrong. That’s just how our human minds work.

After having many personal talks with my dad and taking the time to listen and try to understand, I found a very broken man who’d lived a very painful life. I saw a fragile, sad, hurting, human who was longing for love and acceptance from his family. After hearing some stories from him that I'd never taken the time to hear before, I found myself broken hearted for the man who’d broken my heart. I knew I needed to go back to the Bible and re-read these anti-gay verses for myself and see if maybe there was something I was missing.