I didn’t just wake up one day and decide not to be a Christian anymore. It actually came about by accident.
I was born into the evangelical religion and like most everyone who is born into Christianity it becomes a part of who you are. It is the center of your life. Indoctrinated from birth the religion becomes impossible to separate from the real you. You are a Christian. That is what you are. Not a human. Not a man. Certainly not a gay man. A 100% total Christian.
As a born again southern evangelical Christian I was of course taught that homosexuality is a sin. Homosexuals burn in hell. Homosexuals choose to give into Satan and reject Jesus. Jesus is the cure for homosexuals. Homosexuals are the way they are because no one has told them about Jesus. Jesus turns homosexuals into heterosexuals. This is where the conflict begins. I was born and raised in the evangelical Christian church and I am gay. I am full of Jesus and I am gay. I know Jesus and I am gay. I didn’t choose to be gay. I was born gay and I was a gay evangelical Christian full of Jesus and still gay. We have a problem.
I hate to admit it but I didn’t learn until late in my Christian life that the bible wasn’t originally written in English. What is even more sad is that my mother found out at the same time I did. I had come to the conclusion that the problem had to be in the interpretation and or translation of the bible.
I focused my research on the handful of key scriptures that Christians use as proof gay people are evil. I found out that indeed there were mistranslations in the bible. I found scholars without a religious backgrounds interpreted these key scriptures completely different then scholars with religious backgrounds. So there you have a conflict that can’t be resolved. At least in the eyes of Christians. To me it was complete proof that homosexuals were not evil or sinful. Who would be better at translating then unbiased non religious scholars? The Christian scholars were obviously biased by their upbringing to believe that homosexuals were evil and sinful. So I floated this around the evangelical community and of course no one was buying it. No amount of evidence was going to change any minds at all.
Since the mistranslating thing didn’t work I went after the interpretation part. I though I would have the best luck with the Sodom and Gomorra story because I had learned a lot about that story during my mistranslation research. I found out that Sodom and Gomorra were not the names of cities but rather Hebrew words that mean a burnt pile of ruin. I also realized that the bible says there were boys and widows involved in the story and homosexuals don’t produce boys and widows. There were a number of other things but it really didn’t matter at all because the idea that the two towns were destroyed because everyone was homosexual was too engrained in the religion to have any chance of changing any minds.
The whole time I was doing this research I am finding a lot of other information about Christianity that was never taught in Sunday school. Things that are blasphemous just to consider. I am still under the brainwashing power of the religion so I haven’t put it all together yet but I am becoming more and more comfortable with reading things that are totally contrary to my religious upbringing. I am doing a lot of comparative religion reading and come to realize that Judaism, Islam and Christianity are more closely related then I was taught. Then I meet a witch.
I was in Las Vegas for New Year’s Eve with my husband of that time and we meet up with his friend from school. She is a fiery black woman that hates white people. She looks me up and down with all kind of attitude and says I’m a witch deal with that. Being a southern evangelical Christian it scared the holy shit out of me. I was sure that I was in the presence of Satan and that my eternal soul was in jeopardy. After a few days of getting to know each other she realized I wasn’t a typical racist southern cracker and I realized she wasn’t the devil.
When I got back home I started researching paganism and Wicca. I found out that it was a legitimate religion that had nothing to do with devil worship or Satan. I also found out that much of Christianity is plagiarized right from paganism. This is where I find the one thing that for me rocked the very foundation of Christianity. The virgin birth story in the bible was taken right out of paganism. The concept of the white blond haired Mary and Jesus come from paganism. Then I realize that virgin birth stories are common everyday stories and every bodies got one. Hundred of virgins giving birth to 100’s of sons of God. Now if they were all written after the virgin birth story in the bible you could say that Jesus was the first and only virgin birth son of God but the reality is that it was actually one of the last. So 100’s if not 1,000’s of virgin birth stories are written BEFORE the virgin birth story of Jesus. Things are now beginning to smell a little fishy.
So now my mind is open enough that I can see the whole Adam and Eve thing is bullshit and evolution is real. Noah’s arch, get real. Revelations, in the bible by accident. I read the secrete gospels of Mark. I find out that Mary Magdalene was not a prostitute and may have been the wife of Jesus. The Holy Grail may actually be the child of Jesus. I read a story about Jesus having a homosexual relationship with a Roman soldier. I find out that men have manipulated the religion and shaped the religion to fit their needs. I am now almost completely over Christianity.
What sealed the deal for me was the long well documented history of Christian atrocities. I was lead to believe that Christians have always been persecuted. The truth is that Christians are the persecutors. Except for a brief time during the beginnings of the religion Christians have been persecuting the non believers every since. There is overwhelming evidence to show that Christianity is the most destructive force every created by man. So at this point I am now a total non Christian.
I am angry and bitter. I feel betrayed and lied too. I feel like I wasted a huge part of my life. This is where I really ramp up my gay activism. I am hard core, in your face, totally militant toward the Christians who are the barrier to gay equality. I am aggressively confronting southern preachers head on. I get a lot of publicity. I make the national scene. I’m doing radio and TV. I’m talking to reporters for all the major newspapers. I become well known in the south for being anti-Christian and I am confronted with a huge backlash from the gay Christians. Gay Christians are coming out of the woodwork to oppose everything I do. They are showing up at fundraisers and raise hell. They are supporting the very preachers I am railing against. Worst of all they are supporting Bush. I become disillusioned and retire from the whole gay activist scene.
I now devote much of my free time working to free gay Christians from the slavery and bondage of the Christian religion. As long as the majority of gay people are Christian there is no hope at all for equality because Christianity is the sole barrier to equality.
I am now completely convinced that there is no hope for America. We are doomed for total destruction. Society will completely degrade because Christians allow fascist and corporatists to stay in power and wage perpetual war until there is nothing left.