Episode 70: All About Side B Christianity

What is Side B Christianity? We talk with a Side B Christian to learn about how they came to terms with their sexuality.

I came to terms with my sexuality about 30 years ago when I was in my twenties. Because I was a Christian, it was imperative to me to understand what it meant to be gay from a biblical perspective. One of the most formative books I read was Is the Homosexual My Neighbor? by Virigina Ramey Mollenkott and Letha Dawson Scanzoni. It provided a theological understanding of being gay and it helped me understand that God accepted who I was as a gay man. That led me to ultimately find a good man that became my husband when we married in 2007.

The coming out journey isn’t just about accepting being gay; it’s also about the act itself. For Christians, is same-sex relations okay? What about same-sex marriage? In my own journey, I looked at the scriptures that were used to prohibit same-sex relations. In listening to other’s stories and hearing Biblical Scholars wrestle with this issue, I came to see these passages as misinterpretations or laws that were no longer in force. That didn’t mean I don’t take the Bible seriously. It just meant that some verses that might have had some force at one point, no longer do because of a changed situation.