I was scrolling through Twitter and came across a post about USPS’ Operation Santa, a program where you can “adopt” letters from real children and families and be able to make their Christmas wishes come true. The main post had four screenshots of letters that were gut wrenching, with kids asking for basic needs and money to help their family. I could not believe I had not heard of this program before and kept in mind that it officially started on December 4th. I was about to keep scrolling until I saw someone reply with one of the letters from last year. It absolutely shattered my heart.
This was the letter:
“Dear Santa, do you support the LGBTQ community and if you can speak to god can you tell Him I love Him, and if He loves me for being gay
thank you Love Will”.
As a questioning woman who grew up in a religious, Christian background, I always felt like the mere thought of deviating from anything that is cis or straight was a sin in of itself due to what was taught at church and just the overall conditoning. I feel like I grew up in denial or was outright oblivious to any possibility that I did not fit into the ideal image of a heterosexual, Western Christian, basically like I was closeted and didn’t even know I was. But more so this letter hit home because it made me think of my brother.
My brother is gay and has known since he was a kid. He was never afraid to be who he was until he grew old enough to learn and understand the societal label he fell under while at church. This is why I had brought up the discussion of how coming out is a western concept that can especially be harmful to the (childhood) experiences of poc in the LGBTQ+ community.
My parents are accepting of him but my brother is very much a Christian himself. So though on one hand he knows that he is gay and he is proud of that, on the other hand he is still unlearning the homophobic rhetoric that is preached at a majority of Western churches and has been set into him since he was little. Loving God but being taught that who is he is a sin that must be confessed and cleansed away? Definitely creates an inner turmoil that makes self love so confusing. My brother and I are very close and have been able to talk a lot about this. I actually gave him the “You Can Tell Just by Looking” book because Myth 10 delved into this topic. I personally do not believe that any religion at its genuine core enforces any homophobic ideals, but rather that people have taken their interpretations as ultimate truths. So I have deviated from being religious to being more spiritual, and that has helped me so much on my path of self-acceptance and understanding. I know that a lot of people in the LGBTQ+ community leave religion for the exact same reasons as well, but I also know a lot of people in the community still find lots of love and hope in religion. So I just hope that soon my brother will unlearn the Western/societal conditioning and be able to freely be his authentic self with no fear. That he’ll soon fully believe as a Christian, or whatever religion he ends up practicing, that he is loved and is worthy of love exactly as he is and always has, and that being gay has nothing to do with it.
Unruly Bodies 
Being raised Jewish, this is a big thing for me that is very close to my heart. It is important to remember that modern Christianity is actually wrong to their doctrine for being “against LGBTQ+ people.” First of all, how can you think a person in inhuman or a sinner for loving someone? But that is me digressing. The verse that everyone states for gay people being sinners is actually mistranslated. It should say “Man shall not lie with boy,” meaning it is against pedophilia instead of homosexuality. Also, this is in the old testament, and Jesus died for everyone’s sins so the old testament is not even relevant. For example, Christians don’t eat kosher, but the reason for that is Jesus dying on the cross. I hope this will help your brother in his religious journeys.
I appreciate this as someone who grew up in the church. I realized that I might be bisexual when I was in middle school/beginning of high-school. It was hard for me because I was struggling with OCD with obsessesions about religion and sexuality. So I had a lot of paranoia about if I was bisexual and if I would go to hell and would do a lot of mental compulsions to try and feel better. I also had homophobic parents and went to a church run by a homophobic republican who then go on to work with Trump. While we were at this church my parents went to an anti gay marriage march and this made it even harder. After going to church for years and feeling guilty about everything I did my relationship with God just dwindled and disappeared. I’m now an atheist for many reasons. But it really did start out that I was feeling like I didn’t deserve a relationship with God and it felt uncomfortable to be in church with people who would hate the real me. But I do believe its possible to be religious and gay. Based on my experiences though I just have a hard time.