An excellent writing by John Pavlotvitz. There are so many valuable and worthy lines in his article, I’ll paste a couple but the only way to appreciate the fullness is to read it on his site.
Distorted Love: The Toll Of Our Christian Theology On The LGBT Community
This is the cost of our religion to the LGBT community. More accurately, it’s the cost of our religion to LGBT human beings. This is the painful collateral damage that comes when we see principles and ignore people; when we refuse to give them the dignity they deserve.
Apparently Love does hurt; really, really badly.
The most common defense I’ve heard over the past 14 days from Christians who believe that being gay is both chosen and sinful, has been some variation of the supposedly well-meaning, “Well, we’re just loving people by being honest with them, by giving them ‘the Truth’. Telling people the truth is loving them.”
Really?
Theology is NEVER a truth … yes, I said NEVER a truth, divine or otherwise.
Original sin is not and never was a real thing … nor was the consequential need for redemption and atonement … none of that is any kind of truth.
Theology is merely a righteousness tool most frequently used as a cudgel by people who want to FEEL morally superior in any desperate way to someone to whom they are in fact not superior in any way.
Then there are those who do passive/aggressive ostraciscm of friends and loved ones who doubt or stop believing their societal or cultural “truths.” This from John Shore:
Is this fundamentalist mother’s letter to her daughter loving, or horrible?
Or as John Pavlovitz expressed it: “actively and passively driven from faith, by people of faith.”
Curmudgeon at Work 