How long did it take you to realize 'God' doesn't hate you?

[Sapphocrat]

Poll question: How long did it take you to realize 'God' doesn't hate you?

Poll for formerly/current religious LGBTs only, please.

A recent, off-DU discussion prompted me to consider this thought, and put out a poll here:

LGBTs, who were either raised in a religious environment and/or consider themselves religious now (Christian, Jewish, Muslim, doesn't matter), and have since come to the realization that "God" (whether or not you believe in any god now) does not hate you because you are gay:

How long did it take you to come to this conclusion?

Please, do not respond unless you are an LGBT person who was raised in a religious environment, and/or came to the belief that God exists.

Poll result (72 votes)
It took 20+ years to realize that 'God' does not hate me for being LGBT.	(4 votes, 6%)	Vote
It took 10-19 years to realize that 'God' does not hate me for being LGBT.	(2 votes, 3%)	Vote
It took 1-10 years to realize that 'God' does not hate me for being LGBT.	(8 votes, 11%)	Vote
I never, EVER believed that 'God' hated me for being LGBT, no matter how much it was drilled into my head that 'He' did.	(25 votes, 35%)	Vote
I still labour under the belief that 'God' hates me, and that I am condemned to hell for being LGBT.	(3 votes, 4%)	Vote
I have rejected the notions of 'God,' 'Heaven,' 'Hell,' etc., but I'm still kinda creeped out by the idea that I may be wrong, and maybe there is a 'God,' and 'He' hates me, and yeah, maybe, I'm going	(10 votes, 14%)	Vote
I am not LGBT and/or was not raised in a religious environment, but am compulsively obsessed to answer all polls.	(8 votes, 11%)	Vote
I am confused by the question, and am asking for clarification in my reply below.	(0 votes, 0%)	Vote
Something else entirely (please elaborate).	(10 votes, 14%)	Vote
I like peanuts.	(2 votes, 3%)	Vote

[Q3JR4]

1. .....

Mmmm Peanuts.

[L A Woman]

2. I never believed God hated me...

I only wondered why so many people did. But I ALWAYS thought of them as being against God, not speaking for God.

[stonecoldsober]

7. Most people are brain-dead

That's why they go through life repeating the ideas of others without any critical thought of their own. Unfortunately, in our society, the hateful pigs have the biggest voices and the most influence.

[last1standing]

3. You might want to change either the poll or your intro to it.

In the intro you ask that only LGBTs respond, but in the poll you provide an option for those who aren't.

Anyway, I voted that I never felt "God" hated me. But then I always knew those telling me that really did.

[Sapphocrat]

4. Of course I provide an option for those who aren't LGBT.

I'm an equal-opportunity poller -- and I want to soothe the ruffled feathers of those who feel left out/discriminated against. And those who simply like peanuts.

[last1standing]

8. LOL! That's very considerate of you.

Always think of the peanut lovers in the crowd.

[UncleSepp]

5. I never thought that

Not for being queer, anyway... Me and the Big Guy have bigger fishes to fry.

[pinto]

6. Voted other. Never occurred to me that God hated me.

[unsavedtrash]

9. I was raised southern Baptist so I didn't have issues, I had a subscription. I voted 1-10 years

It took some time, talking to folks in various religions, and actually studying religious texts for myself to get over the thought that g-d hated me.

[William769]

10. I never believed God hated me, He made me!

And we all know God doesn't make junk.

[xchrom]

11. i answered 1 to 10 years.

i always knew i was gay -- even before i had words for it.

so for me it was natural.

i came out when i was 18.

i ''struggled'' briefly with some guilt -- was it religion or disappointing my parents? -- i'm not enirely sure i can seperate the two anymore.

but i always knew that variety was the very fabric of the natural world and very, very quickly dropped the notion that god would hate a person for being the way that was natural for them.

and being inquisitive i also knew that animals displayed gay characteristics -- mating, setting up, etc.

being gay has largely been at the root for expanding my ideas re: god and what the church could be.

lastly i will add that i am one of those believes that jesus was a gay man -- and his partner was john.

[lettre de cachet]

12. Morally inferior

I never totally believed gays were morally inferior even before I accepted that I was gay. Still, the idea that we were going to Hell and the Christian God hated us for some reason was in the back of my mind for a while. I can't pinpoint when I got it completely out of my brain, but it was sometime in my early twenties.

I voted in the "rejected God" option, but I haven't totally rejected the existance of God. I just don't think he's like the Pentecostals and Baptists said he was. I don't think anyone living knows for sure what God is like.

If I did get religion again, I wouldn't go the Baptist or Pentecostal route again. They were horrible especially back in the late 70's-early 80's. I have a good friend who was active at Brightmoor Tabernacle in the Detroit suburbs back then. He handed out pamphlets, was active in youth groups and the whole deal. He told the pastor he thought he might be gay. The pastor was with other members of the church. They started laughing and the pastor said,"Not in this church you're not". My friend tried to commit suicide later that night. Gladly, he didn't succeed and he decided not to take crap from anyone after that. He went through stages of Satanism and Paganism and nowadays is a good Pagan. He's also one of the best people I know.

Now churches are saying love the sinner, but they weren't back then. If they are in tune with God, why wasn't he telling them that back then? How can they say their God is changeless when supposedly he's changed his mind since the 80's? How could they read the Bible everyday and still not get that Jesus turned noone away?

[dsc]

13. I put 10 to 19

I went from my college years to just recently thinking I couldn't be both Christian and gay. I had grown up with a fairly literal interpretation of the Bible. When I was beaten up for being gay in college the hospital chaplin told me it might have been God sending me a message. I pretty much lost it. I also lost God.

I admit to still wondering what if I am wrong. It is hard to erase those old tapes.

[L A Woman]

14. me too

I thought I couldn't be both until recently, too, but I met someone about a year ago who taught me that a relationship with God doesn't require anything external - it is a personal and quiet relationship. We don't need to accept anyone else's definition of what God is or isn't and we know in our hearts that being a good person has nothing to do with who we love, but THAT we love.

[TaleWgnDg]

15. How could it be possible that God hate something that God created?

This is one of the positions suggested by Martin Luther King, Jr. as to blacks. Again, how could God hate something -- or consider that human less than -- when it is God who created that human being? Same for gays. Simple really.

Which is why the fundies/Dumbya-crazies/"Christian" rightwingnuts vehemently say that homosexuality is a choice, is not genetic, thus not created by God.

This stuff isn't rocket science.

[Jamastiene]

16. I was 33 years old, oddly enough.

I got into a heated discussion right here on DU because I had decided I was going to hate all Christians right the fuck back. I met a few really nice ones here and changed my tune. I realized that all Christians didn't hate me, just the ones I deal with in real life (red state).

I'm scared of strong winds and bad storms, so I have always prayed through those for safety. So far, so good. So, someone up there doesn't hate me. There have been days when I have just felt better after praying for understanding in life. It seemed to work, albeit slowly at times.

I guess I see it like this officially:
I believe in The Jesus who loved all and basically only taught the do unto others as the most important thing to try to live by. The rest is either manmade bullshit or history not to be taken literally.

I was raised Baptist/Southern Baptist at school and Methodist at home. The Baptist preacher liked to scream a lot. The Methodist preacher talked like the guy from The Simpsons and bored me to sleep. The stark differences between the two taught me something though. Christians who believe in principles of love and have no real denomination, per se, are probably the real deal. Baptists are Christians too, only louder. Methodists are Christians too, only more laid back. I'm no denomination, because I don't feel we should have to choose one. I'm no scholar on the subject, because I feel the real deal is more about simply trying our best in life. One scholar, who had a degree in Theology and is a preacher, once told me that being gay isn't a sin. That part of the Bible is disputed among scholars. God doesn't hate anyone. He made us and sent Jesus to show us that nobody is perfect. He just wants us to try our best. That's all that matters. That's really all we can do.

I think that's what it's all supposed to be about, not that bullshit homophobia and bombings of women's health clinics. That bunch are horrid wretched people who do nothing but hate and tear down the human race. They have no answers, just their hate. The hate will not sustain them though. Evidence of this has already starting appearing. Pat Robertson recently admitted that global warming was real and neither he nor Jerry Falwell had much to say when the recent Republican outings happened. That's a good sign. Maybe they'll wane and decide to shut the fuck up so the loving Christians can come in and help us fix this mess. It's going to take a miracle to undo all the stuff George Bush has fucked up since he took office and started listening to the diabolical, unmedicated voices in his head. It'll definitely take a miracle to rebuild all the things that destroyer has torn down.

[Big Sky Boy]

31. There is a difference between Red and Blue State Christians

I grew up Catholic in a very blue State. I now live in a bible-thumping babtist red state and nothing could have prepared me for the lunacy I am exposed to every day.

Back home a person's faith is a deeply personal thing that most people keep to themselves. Down here it seems the only "Freedoms" these people treasure is the right to carry a gun and the right to force everyone to worship the same way they do. In Texas, you can get a permit to carry a loaded gun in your purse, but you'll get arrested if they find a rubber dildo.

If all christians were evangelicals I would hate and despise every single one of them for that very reason.

Honestly, I have no problem with people of faith who can live and let live--but when they start organizing and influencing the political system to force their rules on everyone... well how is that different from the taliban?

[Meeker Morgan]

17. Something else

There is no "god".

Decenter people have decenter "gods", but it's still a harmful delusion.

[Democrats_win]

18. God never hated me. "Angels in America" shows the role of religion in our society.

http://www.sparknotes.com/drama/angels/themes.html

A "cliff notes" comment about religion in the play, "Angels in America:"

"The play values Mormonism and Judaism for their cultural connotations, the way in which they are separate from the mainstream yet entirely and distinctively American. At their best, they are both caring and valuable communities. But their particular religious doctrines are rarely invoked or examined, except as literary allusions. For all the visibility of religion, this is not a particularly religious play—the secular faith of democracy and civic idealism is ultimately what binds the characters together in the utopian epilogue."

--IMHO, religion is valuable, it can have a place in our lives. Although religion was important to the characters in the play, some of them had to overcome their religious ideas to connect to others in the play. As religious leaders, today, demand to have a greater voice in our society, I fear that for them and for all America, that they may get what they want.

[adamblast]

26. I prayed desperately for God to heal me as a teenager...

...and when he ignored my prayers, I believed he was sending me to hell, and that I must deserve it. That spiral of self-loathing has colored the rest of my life.

I got over it eventually, more or less, but I still believe the Christian God is best viewed as an enemy to gay mental heath.

I'm an athiest today, but am also one who believes the Bible is inherantly sexist, rascist and homophobic, and *not* to be viewed as a blueprint for modern morality.

So in a sense, I *still* believe that God hates all gays. The God described by Christianity is unworthy of worship. (At least, if he existed.)

[dsc]

19. a wonderful story I heard about this today

My Sunday School teacher is a lesbian who is an ordained minister. She was telling us about how in seminary as she was coming to terms with being gay she was angry at God. She was flipping through the channels and caught an episode of Touched By an Angel. She normally hates the show but decided to watch this one. It was the Violin lesson about a man who gets visited by an angel at the time of his son's birth and given a piece of wood to make a violin. He doesn't make the violin after discovering a knot in the wood. Years later his son comes home to tell them he is gay and dying of AIDS. He rejects his now imperfect son. The head angel tells the man he is sinning by rejecting both gifts God has given him. (This is episode 312 if you wish to see it)

[torrentprime]

20. My vote:

Which was "I never, EVER believed that 'God' hated me for being LGBT, no matter how much it was drilled into my head that 'He' did." was the position I held both before and after I came out and realized who and what I was. Even when I really thought I was straight, I knew that religious teaching on homosexuality was BS.

[Jella]

21. I didn't see the position if you don't believe in God...

I've recently come out as a non-believer. I questioned for many years, and was afraid to say, but it's time now. I didn't think it was going to be so hard, yet I feel a sense of relief. I'm doing more research now than I have ever in my life, and it's becoming much clearer. I understand why folks find the need for spirituality, just not religion.

I do want to thank the fundies of late, as they finally pushed me to be honest, once again, with myself.

[Unvanguard]

22. I'm an atheist. But even when I was religious

I never believed for a second that God hated me, or anybody else, for their sexual orientation or gender identity.

I believed in a benevolent deity, not a bigoted one.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

23. i dont believe in god never have. but if there was a god, and he allowed poverty and disease to

continue, while saving his time for hating me..

i wouldnt want him to accept me anyway..

kinda how i feel about the pope..

[Jella]

24. I did vote for

the one that said I didn't believe in any God, but was creeped out that if I was wrong. It was the closes to my true feelings.

I thought of Jesus as this great dude, that went against the religious establishment whom loved and withheld judgment, yet what I'm finding out is completely different as I read further into the scripture. If it weren't for Jesus I would have never held on so long. I was just delusional.

[moose65]

25. Took awhile, but.....

when I began to realize that God is just a made-up, human invention, I saw that the hate was coming from people, not God. They were just using God to hide behind. I grew up in the church. My family was there every time they opened the door. It wasn't a hellfire and brimstone, fundamentalist church, thank goodness. But it was mainly a social thing, and there was very little connection between that church and the judgmental, angry God that a lot of my friends believed in. As an adult, I've come to realize that people create their own concept of God and give him/her/it the attributes that they think God SHOULD have. So if someone says that God hates gay people, that just means that the person himself hates gay people. Christians tend to superimpose their own ideas onto God, and have been doing it for thousands of years.

[Siyahamba]

27. I never heard "God hates gays" until I was in my late teens

I was raised in the United Church of Canada and it came as a complete surprise to me to hear that other religions felt being gay was a sin. The only justification I heard for anti-gay attitudes when I was younger was that it was "weird."

[terrya]

28. I never thought that God hated us.

Never. I have never accepted the idea that God is this omnipotent homophobe.

[donco6]

29. I believe my belief about God is irrelevant.

If God exists, he exists independently of my belief, and since I have nothing trustworthy on which to base my belief of God and his nature, what I *do* believe may have absolutely nothing in common with his reality.

Therefore, I'm just not that worried about it anymore.

[Big Sky Boy]

30. I never believed he hated me and now I just don't believe

Raised in a staunchly Catholic family. I was eleven years old before I discovered there actually are a few other churches. Parochial elementary school. Public high school and a Jesuit university.

I began coming to terms with my identity in my early teens. I never believed that an all-knowing, all-powerful and all-loving god could create me the way I am and then condemn me to eternal hell for it. By the time I was 30, I stopped trying to reconcile the impossibly irreconcilable, opting for the more simple answer that god couldn't actually exist--at least not in any form that I had been taught.

I am not bitter about the faith I grew up in. I just don't believe it anymore. My partner doesn't understand why I still go to mass when I visit my parents at home. I do it because it's important to my mother and it's really not all that difficult a thing to do.

[DarkTirade]

32. I voted 'something else entirely'

because even though I was raised fairly conservative christian, by the time I realized I was bi, I was already well out of church and religion and whatnot. For clarification, my parents weren't actually that conservative christianish, but they had been suckered into Amway, and for those who know the organization, it is very 'christian'. So we were surrounded all the time by other conservative christians.

[ronnykmarshall]

33. I voted for I like peanuts.

God never left me and I never left God.

I am who God created and never had any question about that.

[zonmoy]

34. since he hates me for being gay I hate him right back both for being

homophobic and for his deceiving people into thinking creation science is true as well as many other bad things he has done.

[pro_blue_guy]

35. Why would God create people he doesn't like? God is love!!!

[election_2004]

36. I'm a Pagan (polytheist), so....

I'm not sure how relevant my experience is to what you're asking about.

[Smarmie Doofus]

37. We can't know if there's a god or not...

...therefore, we can't know what his/her/its attitude toward LGBT people is.

I was raised in a religious environment ( of a sort) but don't really remember having any other opinion other than that expressed above.