What If Queer Christians Need More Than Affirmation? (at Berry College)
These responses were prepared for a public dialogue at Berry College in February 2026 about Christian faith, human sexuality, Scripture, and the life of the Church. They reflect my personal story, theological convictions, and hopes for how Christians can approach difficult disagreements. My goal was not to minimize our differences, but to speak with honesty, humility, and love while treating one another as people made in the image of God.
1. What is your story, and how have your experiences shaped your vocation and convictions?
Before college, I was ashamed of being queer. I was afraid people would discover my attractions and treat me poorly because of them. From the ages of thirteen to twenty-three, I tried everything I knew to make those attractions go away: hundreds of prayers, extensive counseling with a therapist who believed he could change my sexual orientation, and even time in a ministry devoted to “praying the gay away.” Nothing changed my sexual orientation.
What crushed me most was not simply the attractions themselves, but the loneliness. I did not think there was anyone else like me. The broader culture had handed me distorted stereotypes of queer people, so I did not imagine that I belonged there. At the same time, the Christian world in which I grew up communicated that faithful Christians were straight. I lived in an in-between space where it felt as though I belonged nowhere.
In college, I finally began sharing my story, and the results were mixed. I had devoted myself to a campus ministry, led Bible studies, and served faithfully. I had every reason to believe I might join the ministry’s staff after graduation. Then, without warning, I was told not to apply anywhere because the organization “didn’t know what to do with me and my attractions.” That rejection struck one of my deepest fears: if people truly knew me, they would push me out.
God also surprised me during those years. When I shared my story with the members of my Christian fraternity, I expected awkwardness and distance. Instead, brother after brother lined up to hug me, share meals with me, and know me more fully. Their love kept me going. It also opened the door for other men to share that they, too, were queer and trying to follow Jesus.
As we began doing life together, I noticed two recurring gaps. None of us had parents or pastors who knew how to care for us well, and all of us feared that following God’s wisdom would leave us alone for the rest of our lives. Much of my vocation since then has been an effort to address those two needs.
In 2014, I founded Equip to help parents and pastors better minister to queer people. In 2017, I helped establish an intentional Christian community designed to offer family to single Christians, and I still live in that community today. Sally has also been part of my journey. She encouraged me over the years, and when my mother was learning how to love me more faithfully, she attended one of Sally’s parent weekends and found it genuinely helpful.
It is therefore an honor to participate in this dialogue. Sally and I will not agree on everything, but Jesus said the world would recognize his disciples by the way they love one another. I have experienced that love from Sally, and I want that same love to be evident here even as we discuss matters that are personal, difficult, and consequential.
2. How do you understand Christian Scripture, and how does it inform your beliefs about sexuality, marriage, and human flourishing?
The Church has consistently taught that God gave us the Scriptures so that we might know the story of his relationship with his people and understand how he invites us into that story. Scripture reveals God’s work to make the world right again and shows us how to experience fullness of life with him. Christians have also recognized that the Bible was not written to answer every possible question and that it requires human interpretation.
Before leaving his disciples, Jesus entrusted the responsibility of teaching God’s wisdom to the apostles and, through them, to their successors. That did not mean Christian leaders would interpret God’s word perfectly in every instance. It meant that the Holy Spirit would guide the Church together in a distinctive way. My own confidence in this approach came only after a long and difficult journey.
I grew up hearing that every Bible-believing Christian interpreted Scripture in essentially the same way, including on LGBT+ questions. Then I arrived at a highly selective university and met intelligent, Jesus-loving Christians who read the same Bible and reached different conclusions. The apparent simplicity of a self-evident Bible crumbled. My sexual ethics were disoriented, but so was my entire understanding of God’s wisdom. I began asking whether I could truly know God’s will, and even whether God was real if sincere Christians disagreed so profoundly. Those doubts nearly destroyed my faith.
Some people suggest that we can simply trust what the Holy Spirit appears to reveal to each individual. But what happens when two Spirit-filled Christians reach mutually exclusive conclusions? At least one person is mistaken, and sincerity alone cannot tell us who. A friend once summarized the interpretive dilemma by saying, “It is either a pope in Rome, a pope in the mirror, or something in between. Choose your pope.” I was not Catholic, but I also did not trust my private interpretation more than everyone else’s, so I began exploring the “in-betweens” in Christian history.
As I studied, I became convinced that Christ promised to give us the Church, led by the apostles and their successors, to teach Scripture and guide his people. I was surprised to learn how many Christians throughout history have regarded leaders who can trace their authority to the apostles as our most trustworthy human interpreters. Most Christians have not believed that these leaders teach perfectly. But if my personal interpretation differs from the strong consensus of the apostles and their successors on a theological question, I should begin with the assumption that I am probably mistaken.
This is why I think disagreements about sexual ethics are rarely only about sexual ethics. They usually reveal disagreement about three more basic questions: Does God exist? Does God know what is best for me better than I do? And do I come to know God’s wisdom by reading Scripture with the historic Church? I have yet to encounter someone who answers yes to all three questions while reaching a meaningfully different conclusion about Christian sexual ethics. These foundational questions are often more productive and less emotionally charged than beginning with an argument about LGBT+ topics.
When I read the whole of Scripture with the historic Church, I find far more evidence for a compassionate historic Christian sexual ethic than for either ex-gay theology or a revisionist sexual ethic. I have tried to convince myself of both alternatives, and I have attempted to live within both. In my experience, neither extreme works over the long term.
I believe God’s invitation to every Christian is either vocational singleness or Christian marriage. By vocational singleness, I mean a lifelong vocation of abstinent singleness undertaken for kingdom work with undivided attention. By Christian marriage, I mean a lifelong marriage between one Christian woman and one Christian man, open to raising children for the sake of God’s kingdom.
I do not believe people choose the pattern of their attractions. I also understand the scientific evidence to suggest that sexual orientation develops through a complex mixture of genetic and environmental influences rather than a single cause. People do not choose to be gay, but the language of being simply “born gay” is also too reductive.
God is not demanding that queer people pray their attractions away. Sexual-orientation-change efforts have been found to be both ineffective and harmful. The source notes cite research reporting that 96 percent of participants experienced no change in sexual orientation and that those who attempted such change experienced doubled suicidality. Whatever faithful pastoral care requires, it cannot be a return to coercive or harmful change efforts.
At the same time, I do not believe that same-sex attraction was part of God’s original intention for me. None of us is exactly as God intended humanity to be. We are affected by the Fall at every level, formed imperfectly in the womb, and wounded by a broken world before we exercise meaningful agency. I understand my same-sex attractions within that larger brokenness. Experiencing temptation is not itself a sin, however, and neither disagreement on these questions nor entering a same-sex relationship should be treated as an automatic verdict on someone’s salvation.
Three years ago, I made public, lifelong commitments to vocational singleness in a church ceremony. About one hundred people attended in suits. There were floral arrangements, pastors laying hands on me in prayer, a brass quintet and organ, a reception with cake, champagne, and jazz, and even a “bro-moon” with close friends. The celebration gave public, communal form to a vocation that churches too often leave private and unsupported.
I recognize that many queer Christians have attempted celibacy without the support, community, or positive sense of calling that I have received. That is a privilege I must acknowledge. Scripture teaches that God’s people should recognize and confess their collective sins, so I want to apologize for the ways the Church has failed and harmed queer people. Too many churches have taught homophobic ideas that are not biblical, participated in or excused violence, forced people into the closet, and maintained a double standard of sexual stewardship. If the conduct of Christians has made someone unsure about Jesus, I am deeply sorry. I believe Jesus is grieved and angered by that mistreatment, too, and I hope those who have been wounded find believers who love more like he does.
3. How do you understand sin and salvation in the biblical story, particularly in relation to your queer identity?
When Christians speak about sin, it is important to begin with what God invites us to say yes to. The God of the Bible is more concerned with showing us the path to fullness of life than with compiling a list of prohibitions. God’s warnings matter, but his wisdom is not arbitrary. God did not intend for me to be queer, notice that I would desire gay sex, and then create a boundary merely to test me.
I believe God made the world good, gave human beings genuine freedom, and allowed humanity to choose disobedience. That rebellion bent everything: our hearts, desires, bodies, relationships, and even creation itself. God then looked upon an imperfect but still good world and saw what would bring us harm in the short or long term. Like a loving parent warning a child not to touch a glowing stove, God warns us because he wants to spare us unnecessary pain.
God does not only tell us what to avoid. He shows us what to pursue: life with him, belonging among his people, self-giving love, care for the poor, and lives poured out for the kingdom. That larger yes is more central to Christianity than any list of warnings.
Some Christians argue that the Bible’s sexual ethic reflected only its original time and place and is no longer binding. I do not think that is how the first hearers understood Scripture, how Jesus and the apostles treated the Old Testament, how most Christians across history have read the Bible, or how most Black and brown Christians around the world read it today.
I have also watched this interpretive change affect the faith of queer Christian friends. Many friends who adopted a revisionist sexual ethic eventually concluded that Scripture could no longer reliably reveal who God is. Some then realized that the God they worshiped increasingly resembled the God they preferred to imagine and began to question whether such a God existed at all. Many eventually left Christianity. This is not everyone’s story; there are thousands of queer Christians, including Sally, who have adopted an affirming ethic and retained a serious Christian faith. Nevertheless, in my own relationships, deconversion has been much more common. I therefore believe we must speak honestly about the damaging fruit of both ex-gay theology and revisionist sexual ethics.
Several common objections deserve a direct response. First, some argue that the biblical authors lacked modern concepts of sexual orientation and identity, so they could not have prohibited gay sex. It is true that sexual identity is a relatively recent concept. That distinction matters because biblical texts address same-sex sexual activity rather than a modern orientation category.
Second, some argue that biblical authors could not have imagined modern same-sex marriage and therefore addressed only exploitative relationships. I do not believe God’s revelation is limited to an author’s full conceptual understanding; Scripture sometimes communicates truths beyond what an individual author could have exhaustively grasped. In addition, scholars have shown that the ancient world was aware of some committed and enduring same-sex relationships.
Third, some compare the question to slavery and women’s leadership, arguing that Christians once misread the Bible on those matters and are doing so again. Christians have certainly misused Scripture to defend slavery and oppress women. Yet Christian movements also played a central role in abolition and women’s rights, and the biblical narratives treat slavery and women’s leadership differently from same-sex sexual activity. Scripture displays a developing trajectory concerning slavery and women’s leadership, while its treatment of same-sex sexual activity remains consistently negative. For that reason, I do not think the comparisons establish that historic Christian sexual ethics are mistaken.
Fourth, some reason that because people do not choose to be gay, they must have been born gay and God must therefore intend gay relationships for them. I agree that people do not choose their attractions. But because every person is affected by the Fall in ways they did not choose, the absence of choice does not by itself establish God’s intention.
Fifth, some argue that it is unfair for God to require gay people to be celibate. Christianity does not, however, reserve abstinence for gay people. Every Christian is called to abstinence unless and until entering a Christian marriage, and some Christians are called to lifelong vocational singleness. The Church has often made that calling far lonelier and less sustainable than God intended, but ecclesial failure does not change the substance of God’s wisdom.
Sixth, some argue that traditional sexual ethics lead to suicide and should therefore be discarded. Change-oriented theology has indeed been associated with profound psychological and spiritual harm. But I have also witnessed revisionist theology contribute to loss of faith. I believe a compassionate historic Christian sexual ethic can reject attempts to change sexual orientation while helping queer Christians pursue psychological health, spiritual life, and meaningful belonging.
Seventh, some argue that if marriage is fundamentally about commitment and companionship, a same-sex couple can fulfill its design. Historically and biblically, Christian marriage is about more than companionship. Christians are meant to discern both marriage and vocational singleness. Christian marriage is a covenant between a Christian woman and a Christian man, intended to be lifelong, radically faithful, and open to sacrificially raising children for God’s kingdom. Many opposite-sex marriages also fall short of this vocation. Commitment and companionship are indispensable, but they are not the whole of Christian marriage.
Finally, some observe that Jesus never directly addressed gay sex. Jesus also did not speak directly about many moral questions. In Matthew 19, however, he offered a positive vision that points back to the creation of male and female, lifelong marriage between a man and a woman, and an alternative vocation of abstinent singleness for the kingdom. I understand that teaching to be mutually exclusive with same-sex marriage.
These questions are not simple, and people who disagree with me have often thought and prayed deeply. Making sense of a broken world is difficult and heavy work. Even where I am convinced of God’s wisdom, I believe the Church has frequently failed to embody it in ways that produce undeniably good and beautiful fruit in queer people’s lives. Many churches have lost the credibility to call queer Christians to difficult things. Before they teach these convictions forcefully, they need to do the work of earning trust again.
4. Why is “love the sinner, hate the sin” inadequate, and what would faithful Christian care require instead?
I do not believe hate, fear, anger, or sadness is an effective long-term motivator. Jesus eventually challenged the people he encountered to make different choices, but he first met them where they were. He recognized that human beings do not sin because they are simply monsters; we make short-sighted choices as wounded people living in a broken world. Jesus responds with compassion and then invites us to trust him so that we may experience greater fullness of life.
The phrase “love the sinner, hate the sin” is especially ineffective when used by churches that hold a historic Christian sexual ethic. Queer people are not necessarily abandoning that ethic or the Christian faith because they hate God. Many tried harder than most from a young age to follow God’s wisdom and make Jesus happy. They were often the children who attended youth group most faithfully, memorized the most Scripture, and were most eager to learn, pray, and worship. Many left because the Church failed them in five identifiable ways.
First, churches remained silent about LGBT+ topics or spoke about them in careless and harmful ways. Second, that silence and rhetoric forced young people experiencing same-sex attraction or gender incongruence into the closet for years, contributing to shame, loneliness, anxiety, depression, unhealthy coping, loss of faith, and suicidality. Third, when those young people finally disclosed what they were experiencing, parents and pastors often did not know how to care for them and sometimes sent them to harmful change-oriented counselors or ministries.
Fourth, queer Christians were held to a high standard of sexual stewardship while watching straight Christians minimize biblical teaching about divorce and remarriage, discerning celibacy, openness to children, and other demanding aspects of sexual discipleship. That double standard made it easier to wonder why queer Christians should take Scripture seriously when straight Christians appeared unwilling to do the same. Fifth, churches seldom taught about vocational singleness, honored it as a calling, supported people living it, or provided the kind of durable family that makes lifelong singleness sustainable.
Those failures also reveal a constructive path forward. Churches do not need to discard Scripture or abandon the wisdom of the historic Church in order for queer Christians to thrive. They can turn each failure into a practical commitment.
Churches can teach publicly about Christ’s love and wisdom for queer people with both compassion and clarity. They can ensure that children hear this teaching before puberty, so that a child who notices same-sex attraction knows it is safe to speak with parents and never needs to enter the closet. Parents and pastors can learn to offer empathetic, one-on-one pastoral care. Churches can raise the standard of sexual stewardship for everyone, eliminating the double standard and helping every Christian pursue God’s demanding but life-giving wisdom.
Most importantly, churches can become places where anyone called to long-term singleness can thrive, regardless of sexual orientation. They can teach Jesus’ vision of vocational singleness, help young adults discern it, raise up celibate leaders, publicly honor vocational commitments and kingdom work, and accept responsibility for cultivating intentional Christian community in which single people find lived-in, lifelong family.
If a church claims that God offers queer people something better than same-sex marriage, it should stop relying on the slogan “love the sinner, hate the sin.” It should invest the time, money, energy, and shared life necessary to embody its convictions in ways that produce undeniably good and beautiful fruit in queer Christians’ lives.
5. How do you navigate disagreement with other Christians about human sexuality?
I understand why some people abandon a historic Christian sexual ethic. I know how difficult singleness can be in many churches today—not because God intended it to be less good, but because churches have often failed to teach and embody the biblical vision. That failure does not change God’s wisdom or make something harmful good for me. In my experience, ignoring God’s wisdom only makes a painful situation worse.
Because I understand the pressures involved, I do not generally initiate arguments with queer Christians about sexual ethics. If someone else initiates the conversation, I am willing to listen, respond respectfully, and even absorb some anger. But I would rather discuss the three deeper questions beneath our disagreement: Does God exist? Does God know what is best for us better than we do? And do we know God’s wisdom by reading Scripture with the historic Church? Beginning there makes the conversation less about winning a culture-war dispute and more about the foundations of Christian faith and discipleship.
6. What is one thing you want affirming Christians to understand about you and your convictions?
Sally may not make these assumptions about me, but I encounter them often online. People assume that I have not seriously considered affirming arguments, that celibacy has been forced upon me, or that I hate queer culture. None of those assumptions is true. They may describe the experiences of some Christians, and those stories deserve to be heard, but they do not describe all of us.
Some queer Christians genuinely find the historic Christian sexual ethic more convincing and coherent. Some of us experience celibacy as a positive calling and believe we might have pursued it even if we were straight. Some of us also enjoy queer culture: we paint our nails, listen to Troye Sivan, and appreciate queer characters in television and film.
My question is simple: Would you believe me? What might change in your understanding if people like me are real? I am not asking anyone to pretend that our disagreements do not matter. I am asking that queer, celibate Christians be allowed to describe our own lives and convictions without being reduced to someone else’s assumptions.
7. What has vocational singleness made possible in your life?
I am a proud godfather, blessed with the responsibility of helping parents raise their children as faithful disciples of Jesus. I am a licensed professional counselor, and I have the privilege of helping people make sense of profound questions involving faith and family. I am humbled that God has used me to begin a ministry that equips pastors and parents to teach churches and children about the very questions discussed in this dialogue.
I am also grateful to help build an intentional Christian community that offers family to people who are lonely. My availability through vocational singleness has made each of these forms of service possible. Every day gives me new reasons to thank God for his call on my life.
