The other day I was chatting with my octogenarian friend. She often asks me questions about the world of being gay. That day she asked if it was ok that she was asking "all these questions" to which I said that it was indeed fine. She then stated that "most people don't like it when you ask them about it (gay stuff)"; I then educated her that a lot of us have been hurt by straight people and don't trust them. She then asked me if I'd ever been hurt. I certainly wasn't going to get into the worst of things, and kept it simple with, "when I first came out my church friends abandoned me because I was an evil sinner who was going to hell." And her response to this thing that had "hurt" me was, "Well, it IS a sin isn't it?" Hmmm, that right there my friend is why we don't like to talk about it. We had a little chat about what the bible really says, and her own admission that she didn't know what it said and that was just what she had heard.
It hurt. It was a familiar hurt, but one I'd deftly avoided for many years by carefully selecting the people I allowed close. And it awakened that original hurt. I knew when I came out I would lose friends; that I'd be judged and I was prepared for it because normalizing being gay in a small ND town became my mission so I (hopefully) would never have to read again about an LGBT person unaliving themselves. I knew, but it still hurt. It hurt and I buried the pain right next to the grief of my father's death a few years prior. And right next to the pain of all the shit my mother had put me through. And right next to the isolation I have felt since I was a young child.
The unforgiveable sin according to many christians. I remember well the conversation in catechism about how all you had to do to go to heaven was to state that jesus died for your sins; hell, you didn't have to even believe it. And anyone who made that statement got a free pass into heaven, didn't matter what they had done in life...robbed old people, murdered, r@ped; just say the magic words and your golden. But then the conversation down the line about hom0sexuality took a different turn...nope they are all going to hell. "What about if they say they believe jeezis died for their sins?" I asked. Nope. H1tler gets in, but none of the H0-M0-SEXuals. Thank the Gods I didn't figure out until much later that I was one of them; I was already struggling to hold onto this life-that was one more thing that I did not need.
