A Message to Conservative Christians from a Gay Catholic

Processing why conservative Christians always seem to delight in being cold-hearted and harsh.

“There’s no such thing as a practicing gay Catholic (or Christian)” — is a sentiment that’s been shared with me innumerable times in my life.

Over the years, I’ve worked hard to process and understand why conservative Christians always seem to delight in being, what I can only describe as, cold-hearted and harsh. Recently, after an A.A. meeting I’d recently started attending, an evangelical Christian approached me to suggest that I “should beat homosexuality the same way I’m beating alcoholism.” He went on to quote Leviticus 18:22, when I had simply gone to A.A. to continue focusing on my sobriety goals.

Throughout my life, conservative Christians have seemed eager to share many of their strong-willed opinions with me, as a product of my outspoken nature. Although I am a genuine centrist moderate, I am very transparent in saying that I do not feel comfortable with my sexuality being collectively franchised. I am a person, not an acronym — and I certainly do not believe or support absolutely everything that the LGBTQIA+ movement supports.

It is a violation of my autonomy to ever feel “spoken for” and I should not have…