“gay people are going to hell?” what it’s like to be Christian and queer - YouTube

I for the longest time, just thought that  other girls were pretending the way I was  

and were acting the way I was. You know, I just thought that this was,  

you know, some kind of secret agreement  that all the women had to act feminine  

because this was godly. You know, talk about  their crushes on boys, because that's what  

we do, but I didn't know what a crush was,  but I would just say, sure, I like him. 

Bridget's Twitter, bio reads,  lesbian celibates, and Christian  

three words or three categories that seem  uncomfortably impossible to reconcile.  

Scroll a bit further down on our feed, and  the discomfort only gets more palpable.  

When people say that I'm a sinner and degenerate  because I'm gay, I say that I'm made in the image  

of God, and proud of it. The first time  I read those words, I felt uncomfortable.  

Bridget was challenging my prejudices and  my assumptions about LGBTQ people of faith,  

and I wasn't quite sure what to make of it. So,  in typical I'm listening fashion, I hopped on  

a plane and made a visit to New York city to hear  from her firsthand on what life is like as someone  

whose very existence seems category breaking. I actually, I had one experience when I was  

at a Christian summer camp where the girls  were all talking about their crushes. Like  

their crushes on the camp counselors, the guy camp  counselors. And I really did not have any kind of  

interest in any of the guy counselors. I  didn't even know what they were talking about. 

And so they finally turned to me and they were  like, "You know, what's your crush, Bridget?"  

And I like, I had so little understanding of how  they selected their crushes. I was just like,  

it's probably just a random thing. And so I just  pointed to the first guy counselor that I saw and  

I was like, "I like him!" And they like all turned  and they saw him and then they looked back at me  

and they just looked so confused. And they're  just like, "You like him?" And I was like, "Yeah,  

He's got good hair."  

That was all I could really say. I didn't really,  I like could not really follow the conversation  

or understand what was going on. Like I just didn't have the  

feelings that I was supposed to have. Was a crisis for you, was that difficult? 

I wouldn't say it was a crisis. It  was just more, this thing that was  

lingering in the back of my mind, where I in  college started realizing that there were feelings  

that other girls had that I did not have. And, finally in my sophomore year,  

I called my mom up. I remember this conversation  very well. I was, walking around the soccer field,  

just kind of like pacing and doing, doing like  a circle around the soccer field, and I just  

finally asked my mom as like, "So what is a crush?  What am I supposed to feel when I feel a crush?" 

"Can you just like, explain it to me? Like just,  you know, Tell me what I'm supposed to feel?"  

And so my mom, like kind of walked me through  some of the, you know, emotions that coincide  

with having a crush, you know, butterflies  in your stomach. You know, maybe your heart  

starts beating a little faster. You get little  nervous, your Palm starts sweating a little bit. 

You got kind of like giddy or smiley or  whatever. And so she kind of like walked  

through those feelings, and that was like an  "aha" moment for me, where I was like, "Oh shoot!  

I have totally had those feelings  before, but not for a guy." 

How did... , how did your family, how did your  church, I guess the general community around it,  

how, how did they talk about gay people, or  was it even a topic of conversation at all? 

So, can't really say that  in my, context growing up  

,homosexuality was really a specific topic of  conversation. It would more come up in passing,  

just in reference to different things. In such a  way that like, it's never explicitly talked about  

in like, as being the topic of conversation,  but you hear it referenced enough in, you know,  

side comments that like you start  to build a knowledge base about it. 

Just based on those comments. What was your, what was your sense from, from  

those comments? You hear things like? Y Yeah. One of the first sermons that I  

remember hearing where homosexuality was brought  up, was the pastor preaching a sermon series  

on vessels of wrath. And... That's such a great title. 

I don't know if it was the tie. I don't know if it was the title  

and I shouldn't say it wasn't, it wasn't a  sermon series. It was a sermon that was part of  

a sermon series, but the sermon itself was  on the passage vessels, the vessels of wrath,  

prepared by God for destruction. He, Talked about  LGBTQ people as an example of vessels of wrath  

that were prepared by God for destruction. And he referenced Romans 1, and he explained  

that LGBTQ people are an example of the type  of person where they were so sinful, and  

so were rebelious against God, that God gave them  these unnatural desires as judgment against them.  

And so the the very fact that they had these  desires, was a sign of God's judgment upon them,  

because they were so sinful that God  chose to give them over to destruction. 

That sermon really planted it's really planted  itself in my mind, really strongly. And... 

You didn't even have your  realization till till years later. 

No, I didn't have my realization of my own  experience of sexuality until years later. But  

that sermon kind of cemented the  way I thought about queer people,  

which, for me meant LGBTQ people are inherently  sinful. They, you know, maybe at one point  

weren't inherently sinful, but they chose to  sin and they chose to rebel against God. And,  

as a sign of God's judgment against them, God  gave them these unnatural desires and they are,  

you know, going to hell. They are vessels  of wrath prepared for destruction. 

So that was how that really cemented in my  mind, how I thought of queer people that kind  

of became the locusts and, you know, throughout my  childhood, people would talk about, homosexuality,  

LGBTQ people. Always in reference to sin, always  in reference to, the gay agenda, trying to destroy  

the family, . Just always in reference to these  very negative things, with an assumption that  

these people are hell bound, you know, as evidence  of that, you know, God chose to, send AIDS to rid  

the earth of them. And you know, there was never  any, like explicit moments where these things were  

all laid out back to back, it was just referenced  here and referenced there a comment here,  

a comment there where it builds this kind of  conception in your mind of who queer people are. 

And so, unbeknownst to me, I was building a  conception in my mind of the person that I was. 

Were there ever any kind of out deviant, opinions  on this? Were there ever people in your life that  

said, you know, "Maybe this isn't a healthy  way to approach things? There's an alternate  

way of looking at some of these passages."  Or was, was it all just one cohesive message? 

Within the Christian context that I was  in, it was just, it was one cohesive  

message for me. There was, there was no  differing opinions on this. This was just,  

you know, the Bible's clear truth. You know,  when I was 16, I got a job working as a cashier,  

and, I, you know, went out shopping with  a coworker and she was one of the first  

non-Christian friends that I had ever had. I didn't really have friends that weren't  

Christian and, you know, while we were out  shopping, there was a gay store gay store clerk.  

And she wanted to know, because she knew that I  was a Christian, she wanted to know my opinion on  

gay people. And so, you know, I responded with  what I thought was very progressive language  

that, you know, I didn't have anything  against him. I'm sure he was a fine person,  

but you know, I can't condone his sin. It's  not that I, as a Christian hate gay people,  

it's that I hate their sin. And so it's love  the sinner, hate the sin. And that was like,  

you know, my lingo. That was the lingo that  I had been given. For me when I started  

realizing that I was attracted to women, it was a  very jarring experience because I had been under  

the impression that this was not possible, that  this was not a thing that could happen to someone  

like me, because I was a Christian. I had never  like rebelled against my parents. I, I didn't 

Do all the right things. I didn't, you know,  

I tried to do all the right things. I was very  passionate about my faith. I was very sincere.  

You know, I love Jesus. I love the Lord. So it  was like, "Oh my gosh, what does this mean?" And  

like, "Is there a secret?" I started questioning,  you know, myself. Do I have like secret sins in  

my life that like, I've been blind to  this whole time and I'm unrepentant of,  

and like, this is God's judgment on me. So you were more inclined to blame yourself  

than to blame God for making you a certain way. Oh yeah. Yeah. 

Cause if I'm remembering, you're saying that  your view at that point was, if someone finds  

themselves in this position, it's because they did  something wrong. They're doing these things in God  

is punishing, them as judging them accordingly. Yeah. Yeah. So I, I didn't see there being any,  

anything that like was wrong about my view of God.  I just assumed there was something wrong about,  

my, myself and there was something that I had  never repented of and God was judging me for. And  

that was coming out in this, you know, in my life  and it, you know, it was very kind of devastating. 

I felt like in some ways, through my entire  salvation into question, you know, maybe I've  

was never a Christian to begin with. Maybe I was  self deceived, you know, being reformed, I didn't  

believe that I could lose my salvation, but ... You might not ever have never had it. 

I was deceived that whole time.  Maybe I was never really sincere  

in my faith. And so I started questioning  my faith and I, started, you know, really  

wondering and, you know, my lowest  moments, you know, believing that,  

it was entirely possible that I was going to  spend my entire life trying to follow Jesus,  

but reach the end of it and discover  that I was a vessel of wrath. 

It was like a terrifying feeling that there was  nothing I could do to stop that from happening.  

That I was going to hell. No matter  what, no matter what I did. and  

there was no way out of it. There  was one night in particular where I,  

I stayed up the entire night, I'm going to  like cry. Oh, wow. I didn't expect to cry. 

You got a tissue box or something  like that. Kaleb can help us out. 

This isn't the most elegant. Hey, paper towels. But yeah. 

Yeah, there was, one night that I remember  very vividly. I stayed up, the entire night  

and I didn't want to go to sleep, because  I was afraid that if I close my eyes,  

I wouldn't open them again. And, I would  awake in the fires of hell that God was  

going to kill me because he was so angry with  the way I had turned out. And with my sin.  

And he was just so disgusted with  who I was, that he was just going to,  

blot me out from the face of the earth because  that's, what he had created me for any how.  

Because I was the vessel of wrath. I don't know  if I can say, like, I had a moment of being like,  

"Oh my gosh, the truth!" You know, "Jesus  loves me. I'm not afraid anymore. Ha ha."  

Like I can't say there was like a moment like  that, but I definitely did have a, period of time  

where I was like, I can't do this anymore. Like, I can't live like this. I can't do this. 

Now this might seem like an odd place to pause in  our conversation, but I want to encourage you guys  

to stay tuned, because in our next episode  with Bridget, we're planning on confronting  

one of the most discouraging statistics  that I've ever heard of regarding religion. 

There was a study that came out just a few  years ago, that showed religious affiliation  

tends to reduce suicidal ideation. It reduces  suicidal ideation, and almost every demographic.  

But for LGBTQ people, it increases  suicidal ideation. The more committed  

that a gay person is to their faith, the  more likely they are to commit suicide.