I am bringing up this topic of the Christian and the LGBTQ community once more because opposing LGBTQ people, along with abortion, are the two major banners under which the American conservative Christian church marches, including evangelicals and many Catholics. It defines them and calling themselves “Biblical” is a code name for meaning that they hate LGBTQ people, and they believe all abortions are murder. These two issues are also the fodder of the cultural wars in which the conservative churches are willing participants. As I’ve mentioned before, these two issues (abortion in 2016 and transgender issues in 2024) were the two main reasons that conservative Christians gave for voting for Trump, thus making these issues the gateway drugs into Trumpism, in which the conservative churches are now fully immersed. Trumpism, ironically, is the exact antithesis of the teachings of the historical Jesus.

The stance of much of the church against LGBTQ is also the third reason that people are fleeing from Christianity, the first two being the church’s unwillingness to ask hard questions or give rational answers to the questions when asked.

I have described what the Bible says about these two issues before, so I won’t repeat that, only to mention that the Bible is silent on abortion and gender dysphoria. The higher teachings of the Bible are silent on homosexuality (Jesus never mentioned it). Paul briefly refers to homosexuality, which can be interpreted as against homosexuality, but with a fair reading, it can also be about uncontrolled sexual passions. But that’s another story.

There is something curious about why Christians find homosexuality the chief of sins when it is a mere footnote in Biblical texts. The same passion is not shared for the higher teachings of the Bible, the Ten Commandments, the pursuit of justice, the mandate to love, and the failure to care for the unfortunate. There should be culture wars over injustice. Maybe that’s what BLM was, of which the conservative churches vehemently opposed.  Why do you never see Christians protesting adultery or bearing a false witness (lying) yet you will find protests against abortion and same-sex marriage? There is something unique, psycho-socially that provokes hatred for the LGBTQ community, and you find it in many cultures with various religious orientations.

My Gay Rooftop Experience

As I’ve shared, I grew up in the Bible Belt. Our world was typical that gay people were the most hated, maybe second only to the mythological Satan worshipers. The worst name a boy could call a boy was “queer.” I suspected some boys of being gay, who never came out until adulthood, and for good reason.

Then, as an eighteen-year-old, I officially entered the evangelical world full throttle. Besides holding the idea that the gay person was the evilest human, we were awash in conspiracy theories. “The Gay Agenda” was often spoken of. We believed that the gay community was in cahoots with Satan himself, with an organized agenda. I remember one of our discipleship group leaders explaining that the leaders of the “gay movement” meet once a year to lay out their plan to entice and convert children to becoming gay. Barny the purple cartoon dinosaur was one of their instruments. We were taught to hate gays. We would never use the word, “hate” as we pretended, we loved everyone but contact with a gay person would make us want to vomit (sounds like hate to me). We would grasp our pearls in glee as we shared how we discriminated against gays, not allowing them to rent rooms from us, not hiring them for work, etc.

I’ve shared my story of how in 1990 while serving as a missionary to Muslims, I had a crisis of faith and returned to the US. There I worked in a clinic with two other PAs, both men. One was a gay man, I will call Rob, and the other an evangelical, I will call Dan.

Rob was kind, personable, and caring. Dan was arrogant, self-righteous, and condescending. Dan, in ways, was like holding up a mirror to the old Mike, the evangelical Mike and I didn’t like what I saw.

Dan loved to quote verses, often condemning anything I said or did. For example, I shared that I was working through some serious doubts, and responding with a smirk, he said, “Who are you to doubt God? God never doubts you.” What the hell did that mean?

On the other hand, Rob was very interested in my story and my journey without any judgment. Rob would switch shifts with me so I could be home with my wife (she was having our fourth child) but Dan never would, citing, “It’s your fault that you need that time off.”

Dan had a huge persona as an evangelical. He won “Father of the Year” in our city because he and his wife had seven children, three of them were adopted handicapped children. Once I got to know Dan’s family better, I observed that his wife did almost all the work with the children as Dan pursued personal interests, like spending the evenings in the gym to look buff.

I found myself wanting to be Rob’s friend. I started seeing Rob as the good guy and Dan as the creep. What was going on? Aren’t gay people of the devil?

I also observed how Rob had fought so hard, as many gay people of that period did, to be heterosexual. He even married a nice girl. Once they figured out Rob’s orientation, they decided to divorce but to continue living as roommates, because they adored each other.

Sadly, to say, Rob was my first gay friend. One of many to come. Everything I had been taught about gays as an evangelical was wrong.

A year after I left that job, I had a call from Dan’s wife. Dan had abruptly left her and their seven children so he could move in with our clinic’s young, pretty nurse, whom he had been sleeping with for years.

Peter, the first “Biblical” Christian

Many know of the Apostle Peter as the emotionally liable fisherman, who followed Jesus. He reminds me of myself at times. He was impulsive, famous for being the first disciple to recognize Jesus as the Messiah and the first to deny knowing Jesus. He was also a Jew who was devoted to the Torah’s teachings. He knew that in Jub. 22.16:  it said, “Keep yourself separate from the nations, and do not eat with them; and do not imitate their rites, nor associate yourself with them.”  He also knew the Leviticus laws about diet, where it says in chapter 11, The LORD said to Moses and Aaron, “Say to the Israelites: `Of all the animals that live on land, these are the ones you may eat: You may eat any animal that has a split hoof completely divided and that chews the cud. “`There are some that only chew the cud or only have a split hoof, but you must not eat them. The camel, though it chews the cud, does not have a split hoof; it is ceremonially unclean for you.

Peter was passionate about his beliefs, wanting to follow the written law and the culture precisely. Therefore, I call him the “First Biblical Christian,” Yet, he was quickly becoming a stumbling block to the new Christian movement, while beginning in a Jewish culture was spreading to the Greeks and others.

In the book of Acts, chapter Ten the following story about Peter is told:

9 About noon the following day as they were on their journey and approaching the city, Peter went up on the roof to pray. 10 He became hungry and wanted something to eat, and while the meal was being prepared, he fell into a trance. 11 He saw heaven opened and something like a large sheet being let down to earth by its four corners. 12 It contained all kinds of four-footed animals, as well as reptiles and birds. 13 Then a voice told him, “Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.”

14 “Surely not, Lord!” Peter replied. “I have never eaten anything impure or unclean.”

15 The voice spoke to him a second time, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.”

16 This happened three times, and immediately the sheet was taken back to heaven.

You can feel the tension within Peter’s heart. He had a strong conviction since childhood that it is wrong to eat certain animals and to associate with gentiles. But here was God telling him directly, that He had made those things clean.

There is a difference between the Jewish dietary rules and the LGBTQ community. For one, avoiding eating such unclean animals was written as law. In the case of the LGBTQ community, there is no such law. Our biases and hatred are cultural. Yes, if you hate someone, you can scan the scriptures for tangential language which you can use to deflect your hatred onto God.

A few years ago, I was talking with an old evangelical friend. He mentioned several times how gays and transsexuals make him physically sick. I commented that it appears that he hates them. He immediately responded that he loved them, but it was God who hated them. Really? I would like to have invited Freud to psychoanalyze his comments.

Yes, we heterosexual, non-gender dysphoric people, especially those over age forty, carry the baggage of hate toward people who are different from us. Different nationalities, and different sexual orientations. I assert that this hatred is built upon our issues of self-esteem. The fastest way to build up your confidence that you are good is to believe that those who are different are bad.

In these days, I have more empathy with the Christian gay community. It must be difficult that a primary part of who you are is seen as morally repugnant by your fellow Christians. Based on what they have told me, I can assume that there are a few people within my present church, and certainly in my old evangelical churches who see me as morally repugnant because I, like Thomas Aquinas, see human reason as a gift from God, love philosophy, love science, and now, because I have a great fondness of the LGBTQ community.

During my formative years in the early 1990s, as I was deprogramming from my years as an evangelical, my opportunity to work with Rob and Dan was my rooftop experience, for which I am so grateful.

Mike