Last week’s interchange was the final one between V and myself. However, after additional consideration I decided to write one more email to him, which appears below. I received no response.
Dear V:
I’m curious about something you sent last week–where you indicated that you believe that homosexuals deserve the death penalty. I’m curious about when you think that should occur.
I realized that I was gay when I was in the second grade. I didn’t know another gay person, nor did I have a name for it, but I did know that I was crazy about the little girl who sat in the front seat in my second grade class in school. An obvious death-penalty offense, right?
Had I come to you and shared with you my secret as my pastor then, would you have told me that I deserved the death penalty for what I felt? As a matter of fact, I did grow up in total fear that I would be found out and executed. Do you believe that is what seven-year-olds should experience because they were born with the “sin” of being homosexual? Do you believe homosexual children should grow up in pain and shame and with feelings of degradation for something they had nothing to do with? Do you believe homosexual children deserve to experience the hatred and animosity they see and hear from church pulpits for the simple “crime” of being alive?
Do you believe homosexual children should commit suicide because of their “evil” inclinations? Throughout my teenage years, I believed that God wanted me to commit suicide because I was such an evil person for the feelings I had, but then I also knew that committing suicide was also a grievous sin, so I was stuck. I was damned if I did, and damned if I didn’t.
See, you just can’t say to the homosexual to refrain from their homosexuality. Because it is about who we are, not what we do. Didn’t Jesus say that to look with lust on another was just as sinful as actually engaging with them? In my case, that meant to me that the only “safe” thing I could do would be to cut myself off from the entire human race and go live totally alone in the mountains somewhere, since I had no desire to be around men and I couldn’t be around women lest I be tempted and “sin” in my mind.
By the time, I was 22 I had resigned myself to the fact that there was no way I could escape going to hell, since I couldn’t live the life of a hermit. I came to the conclusion that the only chance I had was: if there was no God, then there’d be no hell.
So for years I tried to become an atheist. Instead, I became an alcoholic. When I finally went to AA at age 35, I again found myself facing the “God” issue, but by then I had found Metropolitan Community Church, and I heard about a loving God–a God who created me just as I am–a God Who looked at (His) creation and called it “very good.” Oh, I didn’t just accept what MCC told me. I’m more intelligent than that. I wasn’t going to “just swallow a bunch of lies” just to make myself feel good. I tested everything they told me. I researched everything they told me. And then I went off on my own and researched and researched and researched. I learned my subject inside and out, downside and up. The deeper I dug, the more I found that taught me that what MCC had told me was true. I researched so long and so hard that God finally called me to the ministry myself. That’s why today there isn’t anything you can tell me that I haven’t researched and dealt with many, many times before. That’s why I know my subject so well.
If the God you worship tends to be angry and vengeful, then I’m sorry for you. If the God you worship hates the very people (He) created for simply living in truth to that creation, then I’m sorry for you. My God knows the very number of hairs on my head; my God sent Jesus to free me from my sins; my God sent the Holy Spirit to be my Advocate–my Counselor. My God offers me grace and forgiveness when I make mistakes; and my God would never ask me to live in opposition to the life God gave me to live. My God would expect me to trust in (His) Love for me. My God would expect me to cling to (Him) in spite of what anyone might say to malign me or to despise me. When I am despised, I can remember that Jesus was despised first–just for being Who He was–and not hiding in the closet about it.
You’d have a lot to learn from a God like that, V. I hope and pray that you will find (Him), as I did.
God bless.
Rev. Yvette
Freeing the Spirit Bible Commentaries
A Ministry of the Universal Fellowship
Of Metropolitan Community Churches