I currently do not have a home church, so I spend most of my Sunday's visiting new churches and if I find one that seems comfortable, I always make a point to stick around or at the very least maintain some sort of presence. A few months ago, I visited a church (the name of which will remain anonymous) that seemed like a church I could come to like. This was a few weeks before June 26th, 2015, the day the Supreme Court ruled that same-sex marriage was now the law of the land which consequently overturned several state constitutions prohibiting those marriages. The church I was visiting, in its seemingly infinite wisdom, introduced a series of lectures and subsequent programs called "Love One Out." This made me laugh at first, until "Love One Out" turned out to be nothing but window dressing for what is popularly called among religious conservatives as "reparative therapy." This wasn't the only institution that has introduced such a concept. In the past, popular institutions such as the Family Research Council, what was the Moral Majority, and Exodus International all worked toward the same goal: to "fix" people that weren't like them.

I wasn't the only one as hundreds of people stood up from their seats to walk out. If there was ever a time I saw blatant division in the Church, it was in that moment. They said their aim is to prevent, or treat, any "non-hetero-normative behavior," which I assumed was a catch-all phrase for anyone who identifies with the LGBT community. There are so many things wrong with this.

The idea that "non-hetero-normative" identity is a preventable disorder is completely misguided. There is no real or tangible scientific research to back it up and it's not a disorder any more than heterosexuality is a disorder. These programs are telling parents that if your child tells you that they are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender (whatever the case may be) then you should say that it is not okay, that you shouldn't try to accept them, and that you have a responsibility to try and get them changed. That is the exact opposite of what you should do. That is the way to devastate your child, or any person for that matter. I don't think the Church yet understands how frustrating it is for someone (after what seems like a lifetime of self-denial) to finally be open and honest and then to be rejected. I also believe to call it "reparative" is a misnomer, simply because there is nothing to repair.

Now, these programs will tell you that they know many people who have been through these programs and that they have stopped (my favorite is "has been delivered from") being LGBT. Well, by instilling fear, shame, and rejection in a person, you can get them to suppress any feelings that they have. That is world's away from changing someone's sexuality or gender identity. You would be surprised how many people are willing to give up an essential part of themselves only to hold onto that sense of community they have in a church. That is dangerous. If you suppress that part of yourself, it's not without consequences and usually those consequences are very serious, suicide and feelings of isolation being chief among them.

For LGBT people, it is a reality. Science and technology has been used by both sides of the issue to stake a claim. But there is one thing LGBT people hold onto: experience. No matter how many books you throw our way, no matter how many sessions, no matter how much prayer is given, we know the reality of ourselves because we live it everyday. Our experience is the best proof that we have. We did not discover this truth in a textbook or a lecture, but instead we know this to be reality because it is part of our story. Period. End of story. For us, it's not even an argument.

A good friend of mine (who happens to disagree with me on virtually everything) once told me outside a coffee shop "I think you're just elevating your experience above Scripture." This is all based on the very sorry assumption that LGBT people cannot be Christians and that they are inherently "lost."

I'm not going to roll out a biblical argument. I do want to point out the irony in his sentence: for me and most other LGBT Christians I've met, the profound disconnect between our beliefs and our experience drove us to a much deeper and more heartfelt engagement with the Scriptures. That's why most of us can't help rolling our eyes violently whenever the phrase is trotted out because we certainly don't need to be reminded what the verses say. We've spent uncounted hours agonizing, praying over, and studying every single one of them: the exact wording, the translation issues, the cultural and historic context, how they relate to broader principles, how people on both sides of the issue read them.

Obviously we haven't all come to the same conclusions. There is side A and side B and the whole spectrum of nuances of beliefs. But It's much easier to read something at face value and assume you understand exactly what's being said when it doesn't apply to you on such a deeply personal level.

If there is one thing I can tell you it is that none of us have come to these conclusions casually, as the "easy way out," without profound struggle and soul-searching.

Instead of working to divide each other, let's work together. There are so many actual issues that need to be resolved: the Church's deafening silence over the outrageous rate of poverty and homelessness just to name a few. Conversion therapy is the blatant, if not passive-aggressive, denial of another human being and that is something that should have no place in human community.

So, Church, leave us be. By the Grace of God, we are what we are.

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