I grew up in a half Christian home, my Mother a devoted Christian, my Father, over it. Sometimes I look back and hate the anger and fights in regards to myself and my brothers religious lives. But I also look back and thank God for the opportunity to see the world through both eyes. My Father has a rational way of seeing the world, he believes things because of what he knows and has lived. My Mother believes things blindly because the man in the Pulpit has told her so.

I grew up being distant from my Father, mainly because of how I could see my Mothers hurt when he was against us attending church. I was next to my Mother, teaching Sunday School, talking about God, and sharing this with others.

Now I am 23...I see my Father still a little distant, but I trust him, because I know what he believes, and I know he will talk about his truth. I see my Mother with fear, her faith has taught her some things that have affected my life so adversely. I feel my Mother hates me, but she doesn’t know it yet.

You see, I am in a same sex relationship. I am a Christian, she is a Christian. But I don’t believe what my Mother believes, I see the world like my Father, and in that I know God, not because I have been told of such an existence, but because I have lived it, and felt it.

But why am I telling you this..?

Because I need to. I need to express to people who are in positions of power how it feels, to let you know what is going on in our homes and our churches.

So the Church...As a physical building, amazing, I feel so in touch, it is a spiritual home. As a people...Not my favourite place.

There are three levels of safe for a church my partner and I can attend, we have experienced them all.

1) We can attend, some will never speak to us, we must hide our public relationship. The people see us there as brought by God, so they can ‘save us’ or ‘fix us’. We also cannot take part in ministry or membership.

2) We can attend, but we must tell everyone of our relationship and let the people decide if we are welcome.

3) We are welcome.

Do I need to mention the unsafe churches..?

So that was the church on a whole, what about the individuals..?

I have lost many friends in the church since coming out. I haven’t lost any outside of the church, and this is where I know that something is going wrong in the way the Church teaches. There seems to be a large amount of clauses to Gods Love, depends who you meet, depends which ones that have chosen to be strict on. These friends I have lost have done an array of things, slowly stopped associating with me, publicly humiliating me for the world to see ‘Gods Disgust’ and just disappeared. I mustn’t forget to mention those who have stuck by me, and said ‘I must hate the Sin and Love the sinner.’ Meanwhile I say, ‘I am my Sin and you are yours.’ I am not too sure what this means, but I feel it describes their... for absence of a better word...HATE.

Some of my friends, I would like to tell them to stop associating with me, for their future in ministry is being tainted. A close friend was recently ‘marked’ for associating with me, and in turn is finding it difficult to retain her position teaching English overseas with a mission agency. This same agency spent 3 months humiliating me, and lying to me so they could save face if anyone ever found out that I was in a same sex relationship. This experience ended with them stating...’you are being removed because you are mentally ill and unstable to attend this overseas experience’. With the sadness, I farewell my group at the airport as they head to complete what they came there for. I was then offered to attend another position overseas, one that had no connection to the agency, more a friend of a friend. As the face saving for the agency continued, I, the mentally ill and unstable heads overseas, alone.

This was the most humiliating experience of my life. This happened 2 years ago, and gives me great sadness today. Enough that I have distanced myself from all service and ministry within the church, I did not send in my enrollment to study Theology, even though my heart was set on this. I look at the church with great pain and fear, because all I wanted to do was to serve, but I have been stripped of everything.

And with nothing left, I still need to face my family...

August 2009