It is sometimes fun, but more often frustrating, to have these supposedly mutually exclusive terms live inside my skin. It is fun to expose these aspects of myself to someone who is unchurched. I have found these labels have been helpful in expressing Good News to people who have pretty much written off the church as a place of bad news, condemnations and shalt nots. Being a gay Christian has given me entree to some conversations that straight evangelists can only dream of. On the other hand, I have been dismissed by other Christians as an oxymoron, as someone who shouldn't exist.
Labels are convenient and confounding things.
With three letters, I can explain why I'm not married and also possibly limit my potential for job promotions. By stating I am a Christian, I can either set folks at ease or arouse suspicions. What is most confounding is that even when someone doesn't have negative connotations of the label, they may still be hearing something I don't recognize as myself. I am caught between the desire to give a succinct list of labels and the need to qualify each label with my own definition. For this reason, I don't always tell new acquaintances that I am either gay or a Christian.