I hope Discernment comes back, because I want him to hear my story...
I am the son of a Fundamentalist minister and still consider myself a strong Christian and a person of deep faith. I knew from puberty that I was attracted to men, and as I got older I saw my older brother come out and deal with all of the repercussions -- which included my father, who had just concluded a year-long-affair with a parishioner, telling my brother that he was going to get AIDS, die, and burn in Hell. (As opposed to Dear Old Dad, whose sin was at least, in his words, "normal" and subject to forgiveness by God).
I thought I was lucky: even though all of my sexual fantasies were about men, I liked women, too. I figured that marrying a woman would work out fine, and I could just continue to suppress my desire for men. My thinking was, monogamy is monogamy, and if you get married you're not supposed to have sex with anyone, no matter what gender, so everything would be fine. So I got married as a good, Christian, 27-year-old virgin. The good news is I ended up with three terrific kids. The bad news is, the marriage ended up being a disaster.
So we finally got divorced for reasons that were unrelated to my sexuality (which my ex knew nothing about). I finally started living my life as the person God created me to be, and to my mind, doing anything differently is blasphemy. I have been in a relationship for the last year with a man whom I truly consider my soul mate -- which I never felt about my wife, even in the best of times. We have an honesty, a commitment, and a channel of communication that far surpasses anything I ever experienced in my marriage. The kids love my partner and look to him as a second dad, and as a family we could not be happier. We go to a gay-friendly church where we are all welcomed and loved, and where I can hold my partner's hand during services and bask in God's love.
I say all this for a few reasons. Yes, with some gay people there is an element of "choice." But the choice, where it exists, is just whether or not to live an honest and fulfilling life -- not whether you are gay or straight. My brother could not be with women at all; I could, but that was not something I was designed to do or have any interest in. My "choice" to try to live straight hurt many people, and I have lost friends not because of my sexuality, but because of what they perceived as my deceit. Second, my first sham marriage was more of a threat to marriage as an institution than my current relationship could possibly be. Third, I understand the belief that homosexuality is "wrong" -- I believed it and internalized it for years, which plunged me into self-hatred and depression. I don't think it's homophobic to have a personal moral belief that homosexuality is a sin. But there needs to be some perspective. Jesus didn't say a word about homosexuality, much less gay marriage. He did, however, preach against divorce, and in fact limited the acceptable grounds for divorce to adultery. I don't hear a lot of rhetoric from the Right Wingers about how the Constitution should be amended to prohibit divorce except in the case of adultery. Why not?
At the end of the day, it's about respect. Jesus said the only two commandments were to love God and love others. And for all the talk about Sodom, the reason it was destroyed had nothing to do with sexuality: it was about the mistreatment of, and lack of hospitality towards, others. (Exekiel 16:49-50: Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had arrogance, abundant food, and careless ease, but she did not help the poor and needy. Thus they were haughty and committed abominations before Me. Therefore I removed them when I saw it.)
Discernment, I didn't "choose" to be gay, and you didn't "choose" to be straight. What we can choose, however, is whether to treat everyone -- even people who are different from us, even people with whom we have strong disagreements -- with dignity and respect.
