Gay Husband, Gay Wife

January 1, 2006

As we are all still living, our stories are ongoing. I would like to tell you how I came to accept that God does not ‘damn’ us for being gay.

As a child I was brought up going to church every Sunday. I went to a Christian Day school for first through sixth grades as well. One teaching that was always present at any church I have ever attended was that homosexuality is a sin.

My family is homophobic, meaning they are frightened of what they don’t understand and therefore look down upon those who call themselves gay. For many years I was homophobic too. I had learned to think what I was taught to think and not to think for myself. Especially if the thoughts I would have on my own were of women. I choose to ‘close the curtain’ on those feelings and forget they were there. I also choose to believe that the feelings I had did not mean I was gay. For various reasons I went through a period where I did not go to church or even pray. I had turned my back on God.

A couple of months after I turned 20 I married my very best male friend. We had been married for about 8 or 9 years when I met a lesbian woman, who was a friend of my husband’s from work. Right after meeting her, the feelings buried deep inside of me burst to the forefront of my mind. For quite some time I rarely had a thought without seeing her face smiling at me. I kept these thoughts to myself. Then one day I had a serious thought. ‘You can’t have those kinds of feelings. You are married, and it is not ok to have feelings like that for a woman.’ I did all I could not to think of her again. I made sure that I didn’t talk to her anymore. I let thoughts of her drift away.

About three years later, my husband and I were having problems in our marriage. We had been having these problems for quite some time. This is when everything came unglued. Up until then I was living life the way I thought I was suppose to live. Not happily, but comfortably. One night my husband and I sat down and had the biggest talk we have ever had. He confessed to me that he was gay and that he was indeed in love with a man. He apologized for ‘messing up’ my life. My comfortable little life, though not happy, was coming to an end. I was also concerned for his eternal life. ‘He is gay, and that’s a sin’. At this point I had been going to church again for about a year, I had invited Christ into my heart and had been baptized. I had become a Christian. I prayed and prayed for God to ‘change’ my husband. I couldn’t imagine him living his eternal life in hell. He did not change. Then I prayed for understanding. That is when God gave me the most liberating wonderful thought. It is not a sin to be gay.

One way I think of it is that I don’t believe God looks down on the people of this earth and says ‘Let’s make her gay so she will go to hell, or let’s make him gay so he will go to hell’. God loves us all and all he asks of us is to ‘Love one another as I have loved you’ and ‘Judge not lest ye be judged.’ He did not make us all the same. Life would be too easy if all people were the same. There would be no lessons to be learned. God has a purpose for all of us, even if we do not open ourselves to Him as early as we should.

After having been given the realization that God doesn’t hate gay people, he helped me to remember who I am. I like women. I love women. I am attracted to women, and it’s ok. He will not make me to spend eternity in hell just because I am attracted to women. He wants me to be me, the way He made me.

Also, I have to believe that the divorce I will soon have will be ok in the eyes of God for a couple of reasons, one of them being that my husband and I were unequally yoked.

Now that I have sought the answers to my questions from God and believe that He has answered them, I am happier than I have ever been.

This personal story of faith and reconciliation comes from the archives of www.christianlesbians.com and was originally posted in 2004.

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Posted in Personal Stories