Dear Straight Christian Friends,
These are the voices of your Christian Lesbian friends who have recently entrusted you with the information that we are in fact attracted to other women and still Christians. What we want when we entrust you with this information is for you to remind us that our friendship is still valued and that you won't abandon us - because that is our fear. We are afraid that if we tell anyone this secret we have tried so hard to pray away that we will be left alone in the desert wasteland of indifference, good intentions, and/or harassment. We want to know that we are not any different than the person you knew before we told you, and that you support us in the way we feel God has led us, even though it is different than the way God is leading you or if you disagree with our discernment. Your love will cultivate our growth during this vulnerable time for us, and we NEED this. We have starved ourselves of love because we have spent most of our lives in self hate because we could not naturally be attracted to men - believe us, we have tried. We want to be like you, but we can't, so please love us like you always have so we can relearn how to better love ourselves. What we don't want is for you to treat us differently because of this information. We do not want you to "hate the sin and love the sinner" because the way we love is part of who we are. Please don't harass us by showing us Bible verses that you think is evidence that being gay is wrong. We have read them and whipped ourselves raw with them for long enough and have learned to hate ourselves because of them. You make us feel less human when you tell us our love for another woman is evil or sinful instead of legitimizing our courage and validating our seeking to embrace ourselves just as we learned from our Creator. We do not "choose"this lifestyle just for sex. We have grown up just like you have hearing that sex before marriage is bad, and we would not endure harassment, terror of someone finding out and abandoning us, and being excluded from social, familial, and church communities just for sex - no, we seek love, just as you do. So please, love us for who we are and who we are becoming. We have told you because you mean a lot to us and we trust you. Thank you for being our friend and we hope we can still be an important part of your life, you certainly are to us.
