Pews, Prayers, and the Price of Being Gay

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." - John 3:16

.. Except if you’re gay or same gender-loving. In that case, this doesn’t apply to you.

That, unfortunately, is what many religious institutions want us to believe.

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Recently, Cam (my wife) and I began our search for our forever church home. The puzzle of our life feels about complete, but the one glaring thing that’s missing is community and fellowship. We went into our search optimistic and excited. We both were confident that finding an accepting and affirming church home would be easy considering the progressive times we live in. I mean, that only makes sense right? Wrong. Our experience (so far) has been nothing short of eye-opening, disappointing, and heart breaking.

Cam and I agreed to be very intentional and thorough with our search. So much so that we vet each of our potential churches before visiting. We call them up on a weekday and ask this simple and direct question, “Is this church affirming and accepting of the LGBTQ community.” Of the two churches we’ve pursued, both have all but said, “you are not welcome here.” This is a FAR cry from what we expected.

I stumbled across (what I thought was) an amazing church one late night while doom scrolling on Instagram. The congregation was diverse, the music was uplifting, and the Pastor preached in a way that was true to the Word, but also very relevant to the times. I immediately wanted to visit, but I knew we had to pose the question first. On January 21st, 2025 Cam and I dialed them up. I affectionaly refer to her as being the mouth piece of the relationship so naturally I had her do the talking. The polite and soft spoken secretary answered the phone and Cam presented her with “the question.”

Crickets followed.

The secretary was clearly taken aback. She told us that she had never been asked this before, and assured us she will send our inquiry up to the proper channel and then reach back out. One day passed, then two, then seven. Finally we got our response:

Response From Raleigh North Christian Center

Reading the response caused so many emotions to well up within me. Waves of anger, sadness, disappointment, and frustration rose up and it took everything to not let them spill out in the form of tears. Cam immediately fired back an email expressing our feelings and outlining all of their hypocritical ways. In hindsight, we probably should have waited a bit for the emotions to wear off before responding, but what’s done is done. I do, however, feel it is important for churches to know and fully understand how harmful this is to all communities. I’m almost certain there is at least one gay person (closeted or otherwise) in every black church. And I’m even more confident that every black church is home to someone who has a loved one belonging to the LGBTQ community. How would those members feel if they found out that their church took a similar stance? Where does this stance even come from? Sure - there is scripture that can be quickly riddled off to support the “gay is bad” argument, but what about people who eat shellfish? Or wear mixed textiles? Even more importantly, what happened to the belief that one sin is no bigger than the other and that we should all love one another?

I know our church home is out there, and it is my sincerest hope that we find it (or it finds us). I will admit, however, that this experience has triggered my fear of rejection in a big way. I owe it to my family to push past my fears and continue this search. My family deserves to feel welcomed, loved, accepted, and affirmed. We will not settle for merely being tolerated.

If you’ve stumbled across this post and know of an accepting and affirming church in the Raleigh area, please drop a line in the comments. Of all of the words you could’ve read today, you chose mine. I appreciate that. Until next time..

Notoriously Yours,