If you've seen the story about the Dallas megachurch that kicked out a member for being gay, you may be feeling some indignation.

Last weekend, Jason Thomas posted a candid observation of a painful anniversary to his Facebook page: It was one year, to the day, since Watermark Community Church had sent him a letter revoking his membership in the congregation to which he had belonged for years.

Thomas' account has gone viral, and with good reason: A lot of people are upset that an institution that professes love for all its members would exile someone because of his sexual orientation. Jason Thomas, they say, didn't deserve that treatment from Watermark.

As far as I can tell, Watermark didn't deserve Jason Thomas. I don't know the guy, but from a quick look at his FB page and the testimony of his friends, he's a kind, generous man; a civic volunteer; a spiritual person who cares deeply for others and community.

A church that doesn't welcome a member like that is a church that doesn't deserve him.

Different churches, different rules, different interpretations, of course. Watermark, like other evangelical churches that practice "loving discipline" require members to sign a form indicating they will submit to the decisions of church elders regarding their behavior.

To some people, this is a routine means of enforcing good group behavior in the congregation; to others, it may sound like the Big Church of All Up In Your Business. You get to choose, I guess; nobody's making you join.

Thomas, according to his own account, was a faithful member of the nondenominational church, which has more than 10,000 members across three Dallas-area campuses. He tried for years to conform to church requirements that he alter his essential nature, "repent" his sexual orientation, undergo a form of "conversion therapy" that research, as well as mainstream psychologists and counselors, have denounced as harmful and pointless.

"I spent years in your church battling against my homosexuality. I believed with all my heart that God would change me; I prayed for change almost daily," Thomas wrote in an open letter to Watermark. "But when I wasn't able to change, you turned your back on me."

Leaving aside the science-based consensus that trying to "change" someone's sexual orientation is about as useful as trying to turn a turtle into a duck, these have to have been extraordinarily painful years for Thomas. When this witch-doctor alchemy predictably failed to work, the church blamed him — and revoked his membership.

Not in person. They mailed him a letter.

Try to imagine how that felt: The church you have attended for years mails a letter saying, You're not one of us, you're a sinner, we don't want you anymore.

"[Y]ou are no longer a member of our body at Watermark. We are praying that ... you do not continue choosing a path of destruction that leads you away from the authority and care of the church," said the letter, which a church spokesperson confirmed as authentic to The News.

I would not care to speculate on the motives of the almighty, but surely it's possible that a church that chooses a path leading it to harass and condemn its own blameless members isn't doing itself any favors, either. Running around trying to change turtles into ducks seems out of step with established science and enlightened interpretation of Scripture.

The memory of this cruelty is obviously still painful to Jason Thomas. Yet he sounds as if he is a more confident, comfortable man today than he was a year ago, when that letter arrived.

"That you for removing yourself from my life," he wrote. "I am who God made me to be. I cannot change my sexual orientation and nor would I want to. I now have internal peace and happiness unlike ever before."

Thomas, who lives in Carrollton, told the online Lake Highlands Advocate he has since attended two other churches that welcomed him warmly. He said he posted his open letter in the hope that "people will at least know what they are getting into" if they choose to join Watermark.

"I'm still deeply wounded" by the experience, he added.

That's understandable. But I hope he's mindful every day that the loss wasn't his. It was theirs.