Thread by @AlexPetrovnia

All the discourse around Lil Nas X “damaging children”, but almost no discourse on how his art is a direct result of the traumatic anti-queer tactics used against our generation, really shows how the majority of Christians in the United States still believe in conversion therapy.

And before 100000000 Christians come at me about how these people aren’t “real Christians”, TELL THEM THAT, not the victims of their abuse. If you’re more concerned with proving your own innocence than helping victims, you’re part of the problem.

Tw Christianity, abuse, suicide discussion

I guess here’s a bit of backstory about me: I grew up deeply Christian (Presbyterian). I’ve read the Bible in its entirety. I was a true believer.
When I was 16 and questioning, the national Presbyterian church allowed...

...their first openly gay pastor. It was a major turning event in my life, because the tiny, unhealthily close knit church that I had grown up in rejected this entirely. I watched as every trusted adult in my life met up and democratically agreed to cut ties with the natl church.

This thrust our tiny congregation (with a crumbling, beautiful church building to maintain) into financial crisis. I watched as every trusted adult in my life was so disgusted at the idea that they could even allow someone like me to exist that they would rather lose everything.

From then on I was drafted to raise protest money against myself, and attend lectures multiple times a week on how I was an abomination who deserved to suffer. I did, desperately, literally try to pray the gay away within myself. I truly believed it would work if I tried enough.

It didn’t work.
Over time, I began experiencing delusions. I was under so much internal stress that I couldn’t “fix” myself that I began believing I was seeing messages from god himself. These messages told me to end my life. They told me every moment I lived caused pain and evil

I didn’t want to die. I was just a kid. I told myself I could fix it still, if I just tried hard enough. It didn’t work.
One of the proudest moments of my life, was when I, fully believing this would be the end, told god that if he wanted me dead, he’d better do it himself.

I lived.
Plenty of people don’t. That isn’t a personal failing.
I lived, but the psychological damage from that time of my life has never left. When too many things go wrong in my life, my anxiety tells me it’s a punishment. I have a difficult time believing I have worth.

I truly believed (and still do sometimes) it was so selfish of me to want to exist that I neglect my own needs. It kept me closeted. It kept me in abusive relationships (I thought that’s what I deserved). It kept me from seeking help for mental illness.

To this day, my parents are devout believers, and I don’t know that I can ever forgive them that. I definitely can’t trust them.

Queer kids are born to plenty of Christian parents. I want every Christian to read this and truly, deeply realize:
Conversion therapy doesn’t make us straight or cis. It just makes us dead, or so afraid of existing that we go silent. We won’t thank you for it.

Christians can’t prevent us because we aren’t an illness. Christians can’t fix us because we aren’t broken. Queer people have always existed and will always exist.

Every Christian who feels guilt at seeing how Christianity has been used to inflict cruelty should take that feeling and use it to fix your community. Leave queer people who have been traumatized and abused in the name of your god out of it. We aren’t responsible for your guilt.

I don’t, and won’t apologize for regarding Christians with wariness. I won’t apologize for distancing myself if you discuss triggering Christian content around me. Christians aren’t oppressed, they’re just angry they’re no longer recognized as universally moral oppressors.

Queer people don’t owe Christians the benefit of the doubt or forgiveness that the vast majority of Christians have never extended to us.