I get it, you’ve believed that being gay is a sin for a long time. You’ve believed that all gay people are going to hell and all the other things fundamentalist pastors have told you about them. But this year, something different is going to happen:

You’re going to Pride.

Yep. You. And everyone is going to be surprised.

It’s not going to be because you had a sudden theological breakthrough. Not because you want to post a selfie in front of a rainbow balloon arch. Not even because your progressive cousin finally wore you down.

You’re going because people are dying.

When religious families reject their LGBTQ+ children in the name of faith, those kids are more than twice as likely to attempt suicide.

This isn’t abstract. This theological position kills children.

And it’s keeping an entire community out of the church because they’ve been traumatized by your religious beliefs and what those beliefs have done to the mental health and physical health of their friends.

This year, you’re going to go to Pride. But I understand this whole time you’ve been basing it on the Bible, and so you probably need some biblical reason to go to Pride. I got you.

The Bible Says You Need to Go to Pride

We’re not going to go into the Old Testament because generally your community dismisses Old Testament laws saying that Jesus has fulfilled them, soo we’re just going to make this easy. We’re not going to go into that though I have verse-by-verse on my TikTok channel and in my book, and they don’t apply to homosexuality 

Let’s talk about the New Testament.

 In general, talking about the sexual ethic of the New Testament is problematic because you don’t follow what they did in the New Testament. In other words, you don’t buy your wives from their fathers, stop wives from owning property, etc. 

Trying to map that way of thinking about sex and sexuality just doesn’t work (and you don’t do it anyway, so we can move on from that argument).

Then there’s Romans chapter 1.

It says that people gave up their natural desires for unnatural ones, and that was a sin. 

When you talk to your queer friends (or if you don’t have any, the queer people that will discuss with you) they will tell you that they have felt that way from the beginning.  That their natural desire is the one that aligns with their 

This isn’t something they chose. This isn’t rebellion. It’s who they are and who they’ve always been.

So if Romans 1 condemns abandoning your natural desire, then forcing yourself to be straight when you’re not would actually be the sin. Though, IMO, the real sin is how conversion therapy kills people.

Then there’s this: “Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. 2 For the judgment you give will be the judgment you get, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. 3 Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye but do not notice the log in your own eye?” (Matthew 7:1-3)

And of course Luke chapter 4:18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed”

One of the groups that is oppressed today? The LGBTQ community. 

It’s time for you to work to free those who are oppressed.  

Pride Is a Protest 

Remember when Jesus flipped over the tables in the temple? He was engaging in protest Did you know that’s the roots of pride?

Pride began as a protest against police raids on a gay bar called the Stonewall in in NYC in 1969. I wish that was a thing of the past, but it happened again this year.

When you go to Pride this year you’re going to be engaging in that protest. You’re going to be doing exactly what Jesus did. You are going to be standing against systemic injustice and fighting for freedom for an oppressed group of people.

And when people ask you why you’re going to go to Pride? You can tell them about the Bible, of course, or you can tell them that you’re just trying to do what Jesus did (which is love and accept people). Or, maybe just invite them and see how loving and caring your friends actually are.

But you you’re going.

And you know what? Even though you have been really unwelcoming for a long time, when you go to Pride, you engage, and you support that community, you are going to be welcomed. I guarantee it.