Appearing on Britain’s Channel 4 News, recently out Christian singer Vicky Beeching slapped down patronizing attempts by an anti-LGBT activist to shame her over her sexual orientation.

The British-born Beeching, a popular Christian singer in both her home country and in the U.S., came out as gay this week in an interview with The Independent, stating, “I’m gay. God loves me just the way I am.”

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The 35-year-old singer said she has know she was gay since she was twelve, but kept it tucked away, saying that being raised as a Christian made her feel “embarrassed and ashamed” over her feeling towards women.

“I increasingly began to feel like I was living behind an invisible wall. The inner secrecy of holding that inside was divorcing me from reality – I was living in my own head, ” she said. “Anybody I was in a friendship with, or anything I was doing in the church, was accompanied by an internal mantra: ‘What if they knew?’ It felt like all of my relationships were built on this ice that would break if I stepped out on to it.”

Stating the her faith “is stronger now than it has ever been” since coming out, Beeching swatted away comments from homophobic anti-gay activist Scott Lively who asked her, “Don’t you care what God thinks, Vicky?”

“I’m very sorry that she has given into the lie that she is a homosexual,” Lively said. “Instead of trying to overcome the challenge that is in her life.”

Asked by the host if she has been living a lie, Beeching responded, “That is very much what I was raised to believe. Psychologically that’s very damaging for people because it make you feel like you’re fighting against yourself.”

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Beeching went on to say that we need to “accept our sexual orientation as a God-given gift.”

Lively replied, “There is no such thing as a gay person. It’s this identity you adopt.”

“I believe God has made me the way he’s made me. It’s taken me thirty-five years to come to terms with that, and I believe that’s it’s part of my God-wired identity,” Beeching retorted.

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After Lively said that God has the ability to help her “overcome your sexual inclinations,” Beeching replied, “That kind of thinking has been so damaging to me and it damages so many people.”

Watch the video below courtesy of Vicky Beeching