It's Sunday

In the expensively educated, ambitiously employed, liberal urban circles I’ve run in since graduating from prep school outside Washington, D.C., coming out as a Christian feels more fraught than coming out as gay.

  Buzzfeed

Really? Being a Christian in America is harder than being gay? Let me suggest this to you: you're an asshole. It's not your religion that's the problem.

It was my atheist family that drove me to Christianity. The first time I went to church by myself I was 25. My brother had just gotten kicked out of his sixth rehab stint, during which all of us had visited him for family week. Supervised by multiple therapists, the visit was an unmitigated, over-mediated disaster that left each of us feeling like his addiction was our individual faults.

I believed my parents had enabled him. My parents, furious with me for suggesting as much, went home to D.C. together and didn’t want to talk about it anymore. I went home to New York, overwhelmed and lonely.

So you found solace in religion. Good for you. You're still an asshole if you think it's harder in this country being a Christian than it is being gay. Now, if you'd said you'd become Muslim, you'd have a point. Nobody's going to beat you up for being Christian in this country.  (P.S.  "anymore" is not a word.)

Once everyone knew, I became the object of friendly ridicule during the 2012 GOP debates and a couple of friends admitted that they pray when they’re very stressed or miss the community from their childhood church days.

When I moved to L.A. two years later, knowing only a handful of people, I repeated the same explanations to new friends and old ones I hadn’t seen in a while. Yes, I’m Christian. No, I’m not pro-life. Yes, I believe in evolution. My friends didn’t care. They were politely interested; nothing changed.

So, let me suggest to you that your family are possibly assholes, too. But "friendly ridicule" is hardly the experience of gays in America. And "a couple of friends admitted that they pray" and "my friends didn't care - were politely interested" sounds like support, not rejection.   Gays coming out over the past decades would have been thrilled with that reaction.

Dating, however, was touch and go. Classy lady that I am, I waited until the second or third date to discuss my faith. The right guys got it and saw the appeal; a good guy at least thought it was kind of interesting.

[...]

Many more guys balked and told me, in so many words, that religion was pretty much a deal breaker for them.

Yes, dear. Now you know something that gays have known since forever...date people of your persuasion, you'll be happier.

Nothing compares, in my opinion, to the sunbeams of positivity and outreached arms of Christianity — the knowledge that, no matter what you do or who you are, God has your back.

Even if you're gay?

Get over yourself, "expensively educated, ambitiously employed, liberal urban, classy lady."

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Much nicer than I was willing to offer, too.