The Gay Teen Suicide Rate and the Christian Condemnation of Gays

Last updated on: September 28, 2021 at 12:38 pm by John Shore

The Gay Teen Suicide Rate and the Christian Condemnation of Gays 2021-09-28T12:38:11-08:00 John Shore

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It’s a fact that gay teenagers are about thirty percent more likely than straight teenagers to take their own lives.

It’s a fact that the vast majority of Christians believe that being gay is a profound moral failing, a foul aberration, a repelling, unnatural offense against God that fully warrants as punishment an eternity spent in hell.

Asserting that those two facts have no relationship cannot possibly be anything but intellectually dishonest. It’s like someone who sews robes for the Klan asserting that they personally don’t contribute to the harming of African Americans.

I love being Christian; I am forever humbled by what God as Christ did for humankind on the cross; I understand and experience the Bible as divinely inspirational. I pray every morning. Contemplating the majesty and mercy of God is part of my everyday life.

So what? That has zero to do with the fact that gay teens are thirty percent more likely than straight teens to shoot themselves in the head, to let their blood flow out until they’re white, to hang themselves from their neck until they stop twitching. Nor has it anything to do with the fact that the vast majority of Christians passionately hold that living as a gay person is a contemptible disgrace to God, and a blatant, willful offense against everything that’s decent and honorable.

We Christians can say that we’re only trying to follow God. We can say that we personally would never do anything to hurt a gay person. We can say that we love the sinner, but hate their sin. We can say anything.

But let’s not insult ourselves and anyone listening to us by saying that we don’t understand the relationship between the gay teen suicide rate, and the common, absolute Christian condemnation of gays. We deserve better than that.

God knows LGBT folk do.

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