I grew up religious. My mother is Catholic and my father was baptized Mormon but considers himself generically Christian. I was baptized Lutheran when I was eight at the extended private elementary school I attended from pre-k through 6^th grade. My friends were girls I’d met playing recreational soccer, nearly all of whom had followed the Mormon coach from his church. I grew up entirely shrouded in religion. And I believed it, wholeheartedly and irrevocably, until around the age of 14.

Having been raised in a religion-centered home and gone to a private Christian school, it’s no wonder I inherently believed it. While the family never went to church save for Christmas and Easter, I had chapel at school every Wednesday and we had an hour dedicated to learning about Lutheranism on a daily basis. I’ve read the Bible, though not in quite a while, and had always learned that God was a kind and forgiving being. I don’t know now if that’s true or not, but it’s what I believed then.

I was in eighth grade at a public school when Proposition 8 was being voted on. Prop. 8, as I’m sure most of you are well aware, was a proposed law that would allow only marriages between one man and one woman to be considered legal in California. It was a huge topic of discussion at my middle school, and my friends had me convinced that voting yes on Prop. 8 was a good thing, that “gays” were horrible and did not deserve to get married. I was suddenly drowning in anti-LGBT+ rhetoric and I was breathing it in easier than pure oxygen. It physically pains me to remember how ignorant and uninformed I was, but it needs to be said. The law passed, and gay marriage was made illegal in California. It wouldn’t dawn on me how horrible this was until a year later.

One Sunday, in my freshman year of high school, I went with my friend to her Mormon Church. It was an entirely anti-gay sermon. I have no idea how long I sat there, how long homophobia poured from the bishop’s tongue and flowed around me. It felt like hours. Despite all the logical, seemingly understandable arguments I’d heard about Prop 8, this was different. This was aggressive, antagonistic, and emotional. I spent hours listening to one man, one mortal, “moral” man preach about why other human beings, other men, women, mortal people, just like me, just like him, shouldn’t be given the same rights every other human being has.

In the Bible, Mathew 7.1-2 says “Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.” Yet here this man stood, demeaning the name of God and condemning to Hell people who merely wanted the same exact rights and respect the rest of society has been given. I chanced a peek at the ward. Everyone around me was nodding along to the discriminatory speech of the bishop, unquestioningly accepting his words, his venomous and cruel rhetoric, as inherent truth. Nowhere in the Bible does it say a man should condemn any other human, and nowhere in the Bible does it grant any man the right to do so.

It hit me then and there that it was total bologna. The anti-LGBT+ rhetoric was bad, and the wordless agreement of the ward was worse. I haven’t been to church since. It’s not for me. I don’t want to sit and listen to someone tell me what my religion believes in and why. I want to have discussions, arguments, and debates about it. I still respect and support those who practice religion differently from me, so long as their actions and words are not violent, and I always will.

While coming into my own as a teenager, I discovered two very important beliefs that I’ve kept with me ever since; everyone deserves the right to love and marry whomever they choose (provided that informed consent is freely given), and organized religion in the form of sermons are not my cup of tea. I’ll stick to discussing it with my family instead.