Hey,

I’m 19 from the UK, grew up in the Evangelical Church here and my Dad is a Reformed Evangelical Pastor. I haven’t posted here before but I wanted to share an encouragement that I had recently.

I’ve never properly discussed homosexuality with my parents, certainly not my own same-sex attraction. To be fair my Dad has only mentioned the issue from the pulpit once, but I grew up in a Church environment where the inerrancy or infallibility of the Bible was highly regarded, and so there was no doubt in my mind that the Bible was conclusive on same-sex relationships, like everything else, they were as wrong, sinful and against God’s plan for creation. I imagined that my parents’ views on this would be the same as mine, and the evidence I had growing up was that they were – the inerrancy of the Bible being decisive.

But this Sunday I had my first proper conversation with my Dad about this. I didn’t actually come out, thought that might be a bit much too soon, but it was such a positive, affirming experience that I wanted to share it. I’d been looking for a way to test the waters and see what my parents actually thought, and we got talking about reason and I said that my reasoned conclusions based on what I saw in the world differed from the Bible’s in some areas, same-sex relationships being one of them. I absolutely expected my Dad to respond with something like ‘Well that’s what the Bible says, trust God not your own reason,’ but instead we had an actual conversation about same-sex relationships for over an hour, him raising some objections and issues that he had, and me giving him the counter arguments. It was a proper conversation/discussion, something I really wasn’t used to on questions of biblical morality. That he was open to discuss the issue was such a surprise to me. I told him I believed in gay marriage, including a full sexual relationship, and that I believed the Church as wrong on the issue as it had been with slavery; that I could do this without him telling me he disagreed/that I was wrong to express these views was so positive. His belief in inerrancy makes my Dad so black and white on many issues, and our kind of churches have always resisted any kind of ‘liberalism’ fiercely. But I get the impression that he’s never really thought through the issues, like so many Christians, and that our conversation was an opportunity for him to start doing this. It made me feel so encouraged that if I do one day feel the need to come out to him, it will be so much easier than I thought, and his response would most likely be accepting and understanding, two words I thought I’d never use to describe his stance on the issue.

Basically I just wanted to encourage anyone who was/is in a similar situation to me that our parents reactions and those of other Christians can be so so different to what we may expect, so many will be loving, accepting and reasonable. My Dad has never known gay people closely since being at Uni and I now really believe that if I were to come out to him the experience would be so constructive for the both of us. Who knows, he may even be vocal in getting the Church here to work out what it thinks, and that’s something I find so unbelievable and so encouraging.

Thanks for reading 🙂

Hi OJ,

That is encuraging- please keep us informed of any further conversations.

Your experience is similar to that of many of us- we, and the people in our churches, make assumptions about what the Bible says- and belief what we think dogmatically. Until something distrurbs that calm aura we don’t think about it.

You may be interested in this ‘different conversation’ that was held recently in Sydney. It’s reported in the discussion page here, under ‘100 Revs…’ but you can also find information at:

http://adc.imagine.org.au/

Ian

Hello OJ!

I’m 18 and I too am a minister’s son, (missionary, not pastor) so I know what that’s like. Interestingly, I too had a conversation with my dad last Saturday that turned out a lot like your conversation seemed to go (which… I haven’t updated my thread in a long time… but yes, that’s something that happened for those of you who are interested in knowing what gettingthere has been up to.) Aside from the fact that I came out to my parents almost three years ago, your description of the conversation sounds eerily like my own conversation with my dad… where you there by any chance? lol. Anyway, you seem to be very mature for the situation you seem to find yourself in… gay guy, I assume closeted, in a staunchly Christian environment… I wonder what made the change for you and made you come to a place of self-acceptance? How did you come to see things the way you do know? If you are looking for another young gay Christian guy to connect with or ever need some support, you can always talk with me. 🙂 I’ll send you my contact details and if you’re interested we can talk more. Thanks OJ! You’re great. 🙂

Hey,

Thanks all for your kind words and welcome. Thanks for the ABC link, will def check it out and maybe share with my Dad. I just found this site a while back whilst searching for gay Christian groups [to see did they even exist???] a while back, and came back here recently. I find the resource really useful and encouraging, also great how many of you get to meet up with each other; any more UK people on here though as Australia’s a bit far??!

To answer what changed my own views on the subject, I basically started questioning my faith last year [quite unconnected to my sexuality I think] and this allowed me to think again about some of the moral conclusions I’d held for so long. Not really sure where my faith is now, on a bit of a journey I guess, but I definitely feel so much happier with where I am at the moment on both counts, beliefs-wise and in who I am.

I think you’re very right about things changing, Anthony, and if a Pastor in as reformed, evangelical and traditional a Church as mine can question the issues then I think there’s a lot of hope.

🙂

hi again OJ……your Dad might also like to hear this message http://www.baysidechurch.com.au/content/view/164/30/

its related to this post http://www.freedom2b.org/topic/441

From my experience the faith and sexuality issues are two very separate packages……although from our worlds we often see them as intertwined. This is not always the case though. Some resolve the sexuality issue but not the faith one.