Ellen and Portia got married when I was in fourth grade. I was at the hairdresser’s with my mom when I asked her why two girls were getting married on the magazine cover in the corner. Before she could answer, her stylist laughed and said, “Good luck with that!” Nine years later, I finally know what that luck was for. I only wish it had been directed not toward my mother, but toward the nine-year-old dyke with the lollipop in the chair next to her.

My Catholic education and Nicole the haircut lady’s snarky comment left me confused for years. Only adding to it was my head-first, excited but nervous tumble into the contemporary Christian church when I was a freshman in high school. I loved going to church and listening to sermons at a casual service that made me feel welcome and occasionally made me laugh. I could not help, however, but to feel a guilty pang in my chest every Sunday and every time I tried to be religious on my own time. I to this day have had few internal deliberations more complicated and ongoing than the one that forced me to choose between praying to the Virgin Mary and taking her virginity myself.

I am not alone in this. There’s a whole network of gay Christians bouncing questions off of each other about if it’s even biblically possible to follow Jesus and be out as anything LGBT+. While there is no shortage of pastors and congregations that will tell me I’ll burn in Hell and my children will be born with two heads if I don’t repent, I have found that most modern churches ignore the idea. Many services I’ve been to preach about marriage exclusively to traditional couples, but allow their words to be applied to anyone’s marriage. I have yet to go to church and blatantly hear the Leviticus passage we’ve all heard and hated. If I had heard that verse, however, I would have felt compelled to remind the pastor that the book of Leviticus also condemns the shrimp he ate last week, his lack of sideburns, and his red wings (Leviticus 11:12, 19:27, and 15:19-33, respectfully). Being pick-and-choose Christians is what turns people into hypocrites and bigots. If you want to ignore the rest of the Old Testament law code, you should lay off the hating. That’s addressed separately in the Ten Commandments which some people are off and on about too, so I don’t know where we want to start with that.

My most devout Christian friends tell me they hope that the traditional interpretation of the Bible’s teachings on homosexuality is wrong. I also meet some people that tell me they’ll “pray for me”. Thank you, I guess. I will never tell anyone to not pray for me. I accept your thoughts. I will also definitely pray for you if you ask me to. I had a girl ask me once if my “people” prayed at all. This same girl pestered me for an hour about what my religious beliefs could possibly be if I have a girlfriend. Did I not understand that I could not be saved if I was actively committing a mortal sin? I don’t know who that girl’s God is, but I know mine has not stopped listening to me even since I stopped going to church because I am too afraid to ask if I’m allowed.

The scary thing about gay Christian culture is that I know in my heart that Jesus is still for me; I see it every day, but I can never be sure if the person or church I want to be with knows that, too. I sometimes get too excited to get into a new community and hear new testimonies and share mine and get to know people on a spiritual level, but feel the need to hold my tongue and not share what is currently one of the biggest parts of me because I am not sure of everyone’s personal beliefs. I hate having to choose. I am not a fake Christian and I am not a fake lesbian because I haven’t found a way to be out as both at the same time. Why don’t we just love everyone and not ostracize anyone for loving differently than ourselves? In this centuries-long crucifixion of my community and others hated by ungodly "Christians", Luke 23:34 tells us to forgive them because they cannot possibly understand.

While I have not been the Virgin Mary nor will I be her as a mother, understand that that is not what God intended me to be. Generalization of the Christian community has led to nothing but blurred definitions of what it means to follow Jesus and be a spiritual human. I do not go to confession like the nuns taught me in second grade. I also do not run around sodomizing innocent churchgoers. My marriage will not be any less loving or any more lustful than the pastor and his wife’s. 1 Corinthians 13:4-8, pasted on my wall at home, is all anyone should need to understand what we, as loving, compassionate, human beings should base all of our relationships upon. These relationships include ones with those who persecute you. I understand that you might not agree with my “lifestyle”. I might not agree with yours either. You’re in my prayers.