Evangelicals are Killing LGBT Youth from the Inside Out — Soul First

I am very hard on evangelical Christians who I view as a toxic element in American society.  They blather endlessly about personal responsibility yet they close their eyes to the deliberate harm they cause to others by clinging to what one blogger friend describes as relying on Bronze Age anonymities versus knowledge and scientific data.  Why?  First because they have been brainwashed since childhood. Second, because it is easier for them to cling to lies fed to them as children than it is to think for themselves.  Thinking for these folks is a terrifying prospect. With the Internet, knowledge is at one's finger tips unlike during the years I grew up closeted and thinking I was some lone, sinful freak.  The worst among the evangelicals are their often self-anointed leaders who not only cling to ignorance, but do so to retain power over their though free followers but also to line their pockets with money. These "leaders" - who I refer to scamvangelists - care nothing about the harm their cult of ignorance and Bronze Age beliefs  wreak on the country.  Among the favorite victims of the posion they disseminate are LGBT individuals. Surprisingly, a piece at Baptist News makes the argument of why science and data should have greater influence over society's thinking.  Here are excerpts:

This week, a group of the country’s most prominent evangelical figures released a document condemning lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and those who affirm them in what they called the Nashville Statement. Read the list of signatories and you’ll recognize the names — presidents of some of the country’s largest seminaries and pastors of burgeoning evangelical churches.

I spent three years writing a Ph.D. dissertation on the religious and spiritual dimensions of suicide among LGBTQ people, and aside from the interesting nuances of the research and the elegance of the theory that developed from that work, there’s one cruel fact that became clear: this type of theology is brutalizing the bodies and berating the souls of LGBTQ youth. In fact, it is literally killing many of us.

Take a look at a few recent statistics:

• In 2015, GLSEN surveyed 10,528 students and found that 57.6 percent of LGBT students studied felt unsafe at school because of their sexual orientation, 43.3 percent felt unsafe because of their gender expression (an increase from 2013).

• 82.5 percent experienced verbal harassment at school because of their sexual orientation or gender expression (another increase from 2013).

• 57.6 percent of LGBTQ students who were harassed or physically assaulted at school didn’t tell a staff member because they thought it would not help or would even make the situation worse.

• LGBT youth represent about 5 percent to 7 percent of the total youth population, but comprise up to 45 percent of homeless youth in the U.S. (Seeking Shelter report)

• The Surgeon General reports that around 30 percent of LGBT adolescents report attempts at suicide compared with 8 percent to 10 percent of all adolescents. And the National Transgender Discrimination Survey shows a 41 percent suicide attempt rate for trans people.

But those are cold statistics, facts on a page, representable in a flat pie chart or bar graph. I spent hours upon hours sitting face-to-face with LGBTQ people who have attempted suicide in their past and survived — people for whom suicide became a thinkable option largely because of theologies that suggested that living as LGBTQ people in their churches and families and communities was impossible.

The signatories of the Nashville Statement see this as a fight for the soul of evangelicalism. But in reality, this is a struggle for the souls of our LGBTQ family and friends and neighbors. The souls of LGBTQ people have been assailed for far too long by the largest and loudest Christian leaders in the U.S. while so many progressive churches with scads of LGBTQ people in the pews have contented themselves to affirm LGBTQ people but “not make a big deal about it” — debating whether to display a rainbow flag on their sign or state their affirmation on their website or consigning their celebration of LGBTQ lives to one week in June.

The statistics and the voices of LGBTQ people are enough to convince me that the Evangelicals are still succeeding in killing LGBTQ from the inside out — soul first. If those of us who stand in contradiction to the theology represented in the Nashville Statement are going to make any lasting different, we must stop being content to affirm in subtlety and silence or with once-a-year celebrations.

It is not enough to denounce the theology represented in this heinous statement on social media, convincing ourselves that “most people know this doesn’t represented mainline Christianity,” or contenting ourselves with the small, affirming bubble we’ve created. Churches that seek to cultivate the abundance of life for LGBTQ people have work to do, and that work will be lifesaving.

The reluctance of non-hate-filled Christians to challenge the hatred of others disseminated daily is why I fault "good Christians."   Their silence and/or deference to the Tony Perkins, James Dobsons, and Franklin Graham - not to mention the entire Southern Baptist Convention leadership - allows the denigration and assaults on LGBT lives to continue.  I grew up Roman Catholic rather than Southern Baptist, but the damage done to me was very similar.  No child or teen should grow up hating themselves and believing that suicide is the only option to them.  As a teen and young adult, I thought of suicide almost daily as I tried desperately to "pray away the gay."  When I came out, it literally took years of therapy to undo the psychological and emotional damage my religious upbringing had done to me. Indeed, there were two serious suicide attempts along the way during my coming out journey.  Lives continue to be ruined and/or loss because of evangelical's fear of thinking for themselves and letting go of writings of ignorant Bronze Age anonymities that fly in the face of modern knowledge and science.   Being LGBT is not sinful and there is no more choice in the matter than being born black, Hispanic or Middle Eastern.  Decent people need to condemn both the "Nashville Statement" and each and every one of its signatories.  Indeed, go a step further and stop giving them money and stop attending their denominations.