This guest post is by an anonymous person. Even though he is not ashamed of whom he is, he has chosen to remain anonymous to avoid embarrassing family members who are still evolving on these issues. This post was condensed from interviews with our anonymous poster.

This is Part 3 of 4 Blog Posts from this person. Please also read Part 1: I Am Queer, Part 2: Don’t Hate Me for Being Queer, and Part 4: An Open Letter to Christians from a Queer.

Whether you agree or disagree with what he says, please be gracious in your comments below.

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Most of us are not stupid. We can spend a few hours reading the New Testament Gospels and get a pretty good idea what Jesus is like. It’s also pretty clear that people who call themselves Christians (I read somewhere that means little Christs) should look and act like Jesus.

Why don’t Christians look more like Jesus? They cut me off on the freeway with Jesus stickers and church stickers all over their car and give me the finger for being in their way. My sister decided to try going to church and got screamed at because they thought her shorts were too short.

Some guy came into my business, cursed me out and got very ugly because he said an employee of the business had given him incorrect information on a previous day. Guess who was sitting on the platform the next Sunday when I tried out a new church? He was introduced as the assistant pastor. Guess who never went back to that church?

Who is the Freak?

Many of my friends think that is how most Christians behave. But when I tell them that I am a Christian, they think I am a freak. Isn’t that interesting? Because I am queer, Christians think I am a freak. But because I am a Christian, my LGBT friends think I am a freak.

My friends think Christians are (I’m trying to think of nicer versions of the words they really say)… not nice, nothing like Jesus. They think I’m deluded, because, although I claim to be a Christian, I like LGBT people. They are my friends. I’m nice to them. My LGBT friends have never met a Christian who was nice to them before. Therefore, in their minds, I can’t possibly be a Christian. Christians have never been nice to them.

When I march with my friends, Christians scream at us and tell us we are going to hell. When we try to attend church, Christians (mis)quote Bible verses to us, don’t accept us, hope we’ll stay away. When Christian coworkers learn of our sexual orientation, they try to get us fired from our jobs, spread lies about us, and usually hate us.

We’ve been threatened, hit, thrown out of our homes and families, and told “You’re dead to me.”

Such behavior does not look like Jesus to me.

Am I Queer or am I Christian?

People like to ask, “Can a queer be a Christian?” My friends and I wonder why many Christians are so queer. They claim to follow Jesus, but look nothing like Him? Isn’t that odd? Isn’t that… queer?

My friends and I have discussed all of this. Their conclusion is that either this “Jesus thing” is a crock or these people who bear his name aren’t Christians. We’ve all read about Jesus in the Bible, and these “Christian” people don’t look anything like him. Maybe he was a one-of-a-kind and it’s not possible to be anything like him.

My conclusion: Most people who call themselves Christians are chasing religion instead of following Jesus.

I believe that Jesus is real. I believe it truly is possible to follow him. It is possible to look and act like him.

My friends are LGBT. I am Q. That stands for Queer. I love Jesus and I like who I am. I am who I was created to be. I am not a mistake. My friends are not mistakes. We are created in the image of God.

Jesus had nothing to say about LGBTQ. He had lots to say about divorce. How many Christians do I know who are divorced? – Probably about half of them. I don’t treat them like crap. Where did Jesus tell me to do that? – He didn’t. He told me to love them. So I do.

Do you have questions for me? Do you want to hear more of my story? There will be one more post this week in which I will share more about me, and if there is enough interest, we can do a Q&A in a future post.

This guest post is by an anonymous person. Even though he is not ashamed of whom he is, he has chosen to remain anonymous to avoid embarrassing family members who are still evolving on these issues. This post was condensed from interviews with our anonymous poster.

This is part 2 of 4 blog posts. See Part 1 here: I am Queer, Part 3: Queer Christians, and Part 4: An Open Letter to Christians from a Queer.

Whether you agree or disagree with what he says, please be gracious in your comments below.

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The people many of us have the most difficulty loving are the people who hate us. Please don’t make it difficult for me to love you because you hate me for who I am – for being queer.

Even if you disagree with who I am or what I believe, don’t hate me. I don’t hate you. We probably don’t agree on many things, but I don’t hate you because of that. We can disagree, but still love each other with the love of Jesus who lives in us.

Jesus loves all of us. That’s why he became one of us. If he loves us, and became one of us to show his great love for us, then is he not the one to tell us to love each other? Did he make a mistake when he told us that?

Are you young or old, fat or thin, Democrat or Republican? Are you for or against a certain issue? Are you rich or poor? Do you go to church or synagogue or nowhere? Are you straight or gay? Do you live in a big house or under a bush? Do you smoke marijuana? – Regardless of your answers to these questions, I can still love you because Jesus loves you.

If I hate you, how can Jesus and his love live in me? – I don’t think it can.

A friend told me he murdered someone when he was younger, for which he was sent to prison. Another cheated on his wife. Another divorced her husband because she got tired of him. Another divorced his wife so he could live with his boyfriend. Another abused his wife and she left him. Yet I hate none of these people, but love them, even though the stories I’ve described were choices they made.

Even if I think the Bible seems to condemn certain actions, I do not hate someone because they did those things. So how could I hate you for who you are? How could I hate you for how tall you are, the color of your skin, your age, your gender or for your sexual orientation?

I don’t hate you, no matter who you are or what you have done. Please don’t hate me either. Please don’t hate me for being queer.

Do you have questions for me? Do you want to hear more of my story? There will be two more posts this week in which I will share more about me, and if there is enough interest, we can do a Q&A in a future post.

This guest post is by an anonymous person. Even though he is not ashamed of who he is, he has chosen to remain anonymous to avoid embarrassing family members who are still evolving on these issues. This post was condensed from interviews with our anonymous poster. This is Part 1 of 4 Blog Posts from this person. Here also is Part 2: Don’t Hate Me for Being Queer, Part 3: Queer Christians, and Part 4: An Open Letter to Christians from a Queer.

Whether you agree or disagree with what he says, please be gracious in your comments below.

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I am male and I am queer. Neither was a choice. I was born the way I am. I don’t feel a need to try to prove that to anyone. I know and always have known who I am.

I am Queer

I am Queer. What does that mean?

Some of the older generation may consider it derogatory, but most of my generation does not consider it derogatory. I think of it as a catch-all term. For me, it describes people who don’t exactly fit into the usual categories.

I am male, married to a female, and a Christian. For the purposes of this discussion, I don’t know any other labels that fit. I am not straight, gay, or bi.

I like women. I like men. I’m attracted to some women and to some men, but not to most women or most men. I married a woman because it’s easier to merge with the masses. I love my wife, and plan to stay married to her. I could just as easily be married to a man, though it would depend on the man.

The day the state I grew up in made it legal to marry someone of the same gender, I cried. If that had happened before I got married, I wonder if I might have married one of my boyfriends instead of one of my girlfriends.

Am I the Only One?

Are there other people like me? Lots of people aren’t attracted totally to the opposite sex or to the same sex. Think of it as a sliding scale, with all the totally heteros at one end and all the totally same-sex attracted on the other end. Lots of people aren’t at one end or the other of the scale. How do I know this? I know some of these people and most of them know more of us.

We are related to you, live next door to you, work next to you and may even be married to you. That doesn’t mean we are or are not attracted to you, whatever your gender.

I think a lot of people are suspicious that there are more LGBTs and others like me than the statistics say. When the stigma attached to being anything other than one hundred percent straight is gone, they may find out how many of us there really are. Are they afraid they might be outnumbered?

I Am A Christian

It might surprise you to know that I also consider myself to be a Christian. How is that possible? I agree, it is difficult, given all the unkind, nasty, unloving, ignorant, stupid, wrong things some Christians say about LGBT people. Those comments also hurt people like me. Why would anybody want to associate with angry, mean people who say things like that?

But I am not a Christian because of Christians. I am a Christian because of Jesus. The Jesus I know isn’t like most Christians I have met.

Jesus is kind, loving, and gentle. He created all of us, wherever we fall on the straight to gay scale. It makes me wonder: If Christians are supposed to be like Jesus, why are so many of them not like Jesus?

A few days ago I read about the sixteen year old boy in Oakland California who set an eighteen year old young man on fire on a city bus because the eighteen year old was wearing a skirt. Such hatred for something that had nothing to do with the sixteen year old! The sixteen year old attempted to murder someone else simply because they are different, revealing his hatred, bigotry, ignorance and more.

I do not know if that sixteen year old boy was a Christian or not, but I do know that many Christians want LGBT people to burn in hell. Is that really any different than setting a person on fire for wearing a skirt?

Don’t hate me for who I am. I don’t hate you for who you are. Love others because Jesus loves you as well as others. We are all created in his image. Let’s try to look like him, and that looks like love, not hate.

Do you have questions for me? Do you want to hear more of my story? There will be three more posts this week in which I will share more about me, and if there is enough interest, we can do a Q&A in a future post.