The Lines Between Church And LGBTI+

Time to spoil the tea, or more like coffee in my case, I never Googled so hard for a post’s content as I did for this one, because I have been at it for more than a week, so I told myself today, if I don’t find what I’m looking for today I will move to something else. I was looking for uplifting LGBTI+ stories when I saw an article with Nomi’s story, and in some aspects, it hits pretty close to home since I was secretly worried about who would become the new pope will be.

Nomi starts with this quote: “The thing about growing up in a world where the only thing that matters is whether something pleases God is that you forget to ask questions. Actually, you’re taught that obeying and praying are the only things you are really allowed to do.” This is a thought I struggled with as a teen quite often, and it labelled me as a rebel, no matter how hard I tried. She speaks about how, around the age of 12-13, her world came crashing down when she started crushing on a girl.

When I reached this point in the story, I had to take a break because it was too close to home, and I became overwhelmed. She said that the religion she grew up in taught that being gay was a worse sin than doing drugs or committing adultery. Luckily, when she moved to college, things looked up for her when she found the freedom and no longer felt on the spot all the time. She came out as bisexual, which sent her into crisis, the same kind I felt for the first few years of coming out, that I’m going to hell.

Nomi closed the article with this message: There is always hope beyond a cult mindset community like that, and if anyone is going through it thinking they’re alone, they’re not. Something that my dad told me, even after I came out. Which, I won’t lie, angered me with time. I reasoned that this was all he knew and believed to be correct, if not for all, at least for most of his life. Like Nomi, I attended a church school. The bishop at that time was the same one who was told to be on the list of names to become Pope, and he’s known for his dislike for the LGBTI+, among other things, and in my opinion, the world doesn’t need a person like that in power; there’s enough hate as is in the world.

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