Are gay people evil, hell-bound sinners?

Hmmm…

If I cross my eyes for a long time, will they stay that way? Does my ass look big in these jeans?

The answer to each question depends on whom you ask.

The quote above is an excerpt of an email I received in response to my last column, “Choosing to be Gay.” The woman who wrote it is a poster child of a school of thought that has taught her she is weak, helpless and an abomination.

I can’t stop thinking about her. She’s somewhere right now trying desperately to balance her self worth, Jesus, and her love for a woman on the same stick, all while carrying the weight of 2000 years on her conscience.

I wonder if the people who dump all of their righteousness on her feel lighter afterward, like dancing on her tormented head. I wonder how long she’s prayed for permission to worship Jesus without the negative energy, the degradation, and The Weather Channel.

I heard there was a tornado in Indiana last weekend. I suspect she’s gotten a lot of shit for it.

All that this woman wants is to believe that she isn’t evil, she isn’t going to Hell, and that Jesus loves her despite the choices she has made. She loves Jesus, that’s clear, and she wants a safe place to pour her faith in Him. But no one close to her has provided her with what she needs. So she wrote to me, a stranger.

Why me? I’m no theologian. I don’t have inside line to Christ. I probably came to her through Google, not God. I have no idea if she’s made the right choice to be a lesbian or not. I don’t know if her love for Jesus trumps her love for a woman. I don’t have a clue if she’s going to Hell, or if there even is a Hell. What did she think I could offer her?

The best answer I can come up with is that she must have known I would confirm what she probably already suspects — that no one really knows what God wants from her, or from anyone else. No one.

Yeah, I know I’m always crashing the Christian party with annoying facts. But maybe if more people were honest with her we’d have better weather. Or maybe, if she found the strength to trust in what is and not what might be, she’d have a higher opinion of herself and of the group of which she is a member.

I’d bet she’s more than halfway there. She’s probably already discovered that being gay is absolutely nothing like what she’s always been told it’s like. I doubt she feels like a monster or that she’s a child molester. I doubt she’s booked the honeymoon suite at the Bellagio in Vegas for herself and the first beagle that ever nuzzled her. She’s confused and insecure, that’s for sure — anyone who’s been similarly subjugated would be. But is she evil?

Probably not. The odds of her being evil are only slightly greater than the odds that Jesus will book his return trip to Earth on Expedia.com.

While I doubt the dreadful people who are causing this woman so much torment will ever pull their heads out of their ascensions and crucifixions long enough to acknowledge that we all live in the here and now and not in the Garden of Gethsemane, there are more pleasant Christians who manage to balance their faith with their modern day lives, sans fire and brimstone, and function very well in our extremely diverse society.

Those people might be less vocal than the others, but they love Christ just the same. They know that there will always be Christians who look for the Virgin Mary on a slice of pizza, but that there are many more who are looking for parking spaces. And it’s those folks that I hope this woman can put her trust in, because they realize that faith in Christ is a joyous experience — one that isn’t dependent on crippling others on their way to eternity.