LGBTQ, Love, Faith, and the Meaning of Life
By: James Finn
Tags: This Happened To Me, Mental Health, LGBTQ, Equality, Religion

LGBTQ teens are adolescents who are different. They experience gender identity or sexual orientation differently from their peers, and they often feel alienated and isolated for it. More and more often today, being a member of a gender or sexual minority isn’t a big deal. Some people even claim that the fight for equality is over, but appearances can be deceiving.

Being LGBTQ is often not as stigmatizing as it used to be

Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people sometimes find themselves represented in popular culture. They occasionally see themselves on the small screen and the big screen in TV shows, YouTube videos, movies, and more. Even a few country music stars and rap artists are openly gay.

But many of us forget that progress is patchy

Despite popular culture, LGBTQ people suffer disproportionately from family, social, and religious rejection. Rejection often leads to poor mental health. According to the Williams Institute, LGBTQ youth are five times more likely to attempt suicide than straight/cis youth, and their attempts are significantly more likely to result in death.

Faith is strongly predictive of suicide among LGBTQ teens

According to the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, the more religious an LGBTQ kid is, the more likely they will be to try to kill themselves. I understand this problem powerfully and intuitively, because as a teen, I flirted with becoming a statistic.

My own experiences with suicidal thoughts as a gay teen —

While I grew up in a strictly evangelical Christian family, I never tried to kill myself, but I wanted to and I thought about it seriously. For at least a couple of years in my youth, suicide felt like a rational response to a world that had no place for me. A world where spiritual and religious authorities taught that I was evil or disordered.

I remember one day standing at the top of a winding stairwell, 10 or 11 stories up in a big office tower. Or was it my university? The moment is vivid, but the details are hazy.

I might have been 16. Maybe I was 18. What I remember for sure is clutching the safety railing and whispering fiercely to myself. “Jump! It’ll be so easy. Just climb up on the rail, close your eyes, and let go.”

“No! I’m too scared. It’ll hurt.”

“Coward! It’s not really jumping. You’ll never feel anything. Just let go! It’ll all be over. Nobody wants you, anyway. Life has no meaning. God doesn’t exist, but the people who think he does hate you. Why put yourself through all this? It’ll be so easy. Climb up on that railing and let yourself fall. Stop the pain!”

Religion protects straight/cis teens from suicidal ideation

Faith is usually a source of strength for believers, especially during times of struggle and sorrow. Data indicate that church-going people are happier and more mentally healthy than other people. But a new study suggests that traditional religion has the opposite effect for the bulk of LGBTQ people.

Teens are the hardest hit, which shouldn’t be surprising at all. Adolescence is the period of our lives when the search for meaning can be at its height. Adolescence, identity and spirituality go hand in hand, according to mental health expert Kenneth J. Doka, writing in the Huffington Post.

The search for spiritual identity becomes toxic when spirituality centers on religions that condemn people for who they are and how they’re wired to feel and be.

It’s hard enough to be a teen coping with the tough realities of life — leaving home, facing up to the the mortality of loved family members and friends, struggling for independence, searching for existential meaning. Imagine having to cope with all that without the support of traditional spiritual and religious institutions.

Imagine learning that you’re depraved, disordered, sinful, or an abomination.

All of those words are ordinary religious descriptions of same-sex attracted and gender-variant people. All those words of condemnation are words that many religious teens begin to encounter just as they’re discovering how different they are from their peers.

So, instead of experiencing religion as a haven or sanctum, they often push it away, rejecting it as it rejects them. Some kids find alternative spirituality. Many others never do.

According to Gallup Polls, LGBTQ people count among the least religious of all groups in the United States. According to the Pew Research Center, most lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) adults feel that major faiths are unwelcoming. Religiously affiliated LGB adults are much less likely to be Christian than the general public and are more drawn to smaller, non-Christian denominations.

My path to self love and sanity involved rejecting religion

I did not, however, entirely reject spirituality, though perhaps not in a form that religious people would understand or relate to. I’m much more of a materialist than philosopher/author Jack Preston King, who posits that all religions contain core truth, and who willingly invites more mysticism into his worldview than I feel comfortable with.

But in some important ways, Jack and I are on the same page. We both understand that much about the universe is unknown and forever unknowable, and that spirituality is a quest to accept the transcendent, or even to embrace the joy of the ineffable.

I often wonder how my spiritual development would have progressed if I’d fallen in love with girls instead of boys when I was a teen. Would I have embraced my evangelical Christian faith? I suppose I’ll never know. I rejected it because it rejected me. I felt I had no choice.

Christianity is a healthy path for some LGBTQ people

Christian artists, writers, and clergy like Esther Spurrill-Jones, Clay Rivers, and Emily Swan represent a minority of LGBTQ people, but perhaps a growing minority. Organized Christianity, despite some recent setbacks, seems to be slowly accommodating itself to new understandings and new realities.

It’s often difficult for queer people to find Christian congregations that fully accept and affirm them, but it’s not impossible.

I wrote this article after corresponding with Clay and Sam McKenzie Jr. about LGBTQ activism. If we’re working toward full inclusion in society, doesn’t that inclusion have to mean spiritual and religious inclusion? Can any minority group be fully equal if they’re religiously segregated? Even if that segregation is in some sense self imposed?

I don’t know answer to the question, and I don’t anybody can know the answer. IS and OUGHT are seldom in sync. I do know one thing. If LGBTQ Christians are ever to enjoy religious equality, then LGBTQ Christians are going to have to come together and raise their voices up together.

LGBTQ kids attempt suicide in direct proportion to how religious they are

Nobody should feel compelled to kill themselves because of religion. That’s intolerable. No healthy society ought to feature religious ideals that result in minorities suffering.

I remember that safely rail and the seduction of the fall. I remember knowing that dying offered me more comfort than living. I remember I felt that way because of and not despite religion.

Something has to change —

As a gay man and passionate Christian, Clay Rivers raises his voice to invite LGBTQ people to join him at Christ’s table. That’s his answer to the problem, and while it can’t be my answer, I respect his views and love his humanity.

Are there other solutions? Other answers equally valid? I’m sure there must be. I’m waiting on all of you to tell me what they are.