Sometimes Church is Child Abuse

LGBTQ teens and religious toxins

Image licensed from Adobe Stock

When people debate LGBTQ equality and religious liberty, we often focus on issues that revolve around adults. We talk about people being free to choose belief systems and worldviews.

LGBTQ advocates often argue that belief systems that foster toxic homophobia are intrinsically defective, and while that’s a provocative position and a debate worth having, it’s a debate about adults.

Often, we forget that toxic faith systems don’t start hurting LGBTQ people only when they reach the age of majority. Homophobic religious doctrines may do the most harm to young people who are not yet free to choose.

Parents, educators, and community leaders would do well to keep that in mind. To illustrate, I want to share a letter a gay teen wrote to me last year in my guise as an LGBTQ advice columnist. I think his question and my answer may help people understand what’s at stake.

Dear Aunty Jimothy,

I told my dad I was gay when I was 13. He doesn’t care at all, and he even talks to me about guys I might like. But I’m 14 now, and I have to stay with my aunt on weekends because of Dad’s work. She makes me go to church where they say terrible things about gay people. It makes me really mad to sit there and listen to that, but Dad…