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 Growing up fundamentalist Baptist, I was always taught that homosexuals were terrible sinners who would find their day in hell. But for some reason, I never bought into that. As a student at Cedarville, I spent a Christmas in San Francisco with my best friend, his gay brother, and his gay friends. How could these people, who respect family and love, be sinners? It just didn't add up.
Upon moving to Houston, I've become close friends with several homosexuals, and despite their religious upbringings or beliefs, most of them told me the same thing: we tried so hard to be straight. We didn't want to be gay because of the ridicule and harrassment it brings. Most of them left the church or were asked to leave the church, which is the real crime. Being gay is not what you do, it's who you are. And who you are cannot be a sin.
I currently work for a church that supports equal rights. We don't try to fix homosexuals because we don't think they're broken.
God tells us so many times: LOVE ONE ANOTHER. There are no exceptions, no clauses, no conditional statements. Everyone deserves our love because God loved us. I'm reminded of a passage from the book Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller: "God never withheld love to teach us a lesson."
Lori (Skillman) Carr
Class of 1997
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