Earlier this morning, someone shot up a gay club in Orlando. A bunch of people died, as you’ve probably heard. It seems that the shooter might have jacked off to ISIS pamphlets, which only makes this whole tragedy more nebulous and exotic. What a day to be alive.

But let’s think about the people, and there are lots of them, who will see the headline saying that it was a gay club and think, “Well, at least it wasn’t normal people.”

The first gay person who ever entered my orbit was named Lyle. This was Cando, North Dakota, population roughly 1,500, in the year 1988. Basically, this wasn’t a great time to be gay, and definitely not a good time to be Lyle.

Right out, “Lyle” is a terrible name. It’s shocking that someone saw a newborn baby and thought, “Well, this looks like a ‘Lyle.’” Then, there was his unignorable mustache, which I only saw at church on Sundays, over my shoulder and out of the corner of my eye. It was a really noteworthy mustache, not quite Snidely Whiplash or Rollie Fingers, but more than your typical fireman. It was memorable.

But then there was this: Lyle was also a flasher. He’d sometimes ride his bike in the nude, or wearing blue briefs in front of God and a judging public. Honestly, we were probably right to judge.

It took years to realize that a creepy flasher who rode his bike naked didn’t represent what it meant to be gay. It took years to realize that there’s much more to the story. And, thankfully, that they don’t all have mustaches.

Before we go any further, let’s agree on one thing: homosexuality is not new. The early Christians knew about it, the Greeks loved it, and even the most rigid among us are getting used to it. One of the only WWII jokes I remember my late grandfather telling happened to involve an obvious nod to GIs getting friendly, in fact. But it’s only recently that it’s been received the way that it should be: being gay isn’t a choice, these are our friends, sons and daughters. If there’s one unassailable benefit to the overall liberalizing of culture, it’s that a good portion of our population can stop living a senseless and obvious lie.

But what does the Good Book say about it? The Bible mentions homosexuality, by my reading, only four times.

In Genesis 19, Sodom is being destroyed, and there’s a lot of gang-rape going on. “Sodomites” is entered into the general lexicon. In Leviticus 18 and 22, homosexuality is equated to eating shellfish and not paying loans on time, and a death penalty is involved. In a related story, if I could take a butt-dicking and have my student loans paid off, well…. In Romans 1, the only mention of lesbians is made. And, if you know the book of Romans, you know that it has a lot more on its mind than a couple of scissoring chicks in its first chapter. In 1 Corinthians, there’s some old Greek language — “Malakoi” and “Arsenokoitai” — that are loosely translated as “old guys with feely fingers who like to get down with younger dudes.” Again, Corinthians has more to do.

That’s really it. That’s the totality of what we’ve got for biblical rebukes of being gay, and they’re all vague and shrug-worthy. But please, don’t tell that to anyone with skin in the game.

From a purely societal standpoint, it makes sense that being gay (or trans, a whole ‘nother conversation) took generations to get its soapbox, and it’s kind of coincidental that religion had anything to say about it whatsoever. As it’s so often said, we’re a melting pot, and much of that was built on the fact that families counted on each other to breed and multiply. Your kids worked the farm, they took over the corner store or butcher shop, etc. Being gay didn’t do a whole lot to help the family business, if you get my meaning.

So why, in the end, does religion (and evangelical Christianity, in particular) have such a weird stake in the whole thing? The first time that homosexuality was referenced by the organized church was in the year 390, and it had nothing to do with consenting sex between two people of the same gender. It was (like the actual meaning of Sodomite) a reference to forced sex on an unconsenting person of the same sex. Basically, equating a gay person with a rapist is nothing new. Over centuries, the net got wider, pulling in everyone from forced eunuchs to consenting gays and lesbians. And that led us to where we are today, where humans can actively speak for God to define another human’s value. Again, what a time to be alive.

And so I asked my dad, a man of love and virtue, a simple question: “What if I’d been gay?”

He laughed. “Ohhhh, man.” He was obviously thinking about the ramifications of such an admission. “I’d probably have just killed you.” And we both laughed again.

Now, let’s be certain: he wouldn’t have killed me, or have had me killed. He’d have loved me, the same way he loved my brother who had a child out of wedlock. But his response wasn’t dishonest. Having a gay kid, as a pastor, would have been a professional and spiritual failure. Grounds for dismissal from his pulpit, and probably for a lifetime of therapy for me. There were actual “Pray Away the Gay” camps that were supposed to fix this. In this case, the child out of wedlock is definitely preferable to a gay kid.

So, I thought, who was the first gay person I knew who wasn’t a mustachioed flasher? And that would have been the older brother of my first and best friend, the son of a rancher, and about the last person you’d hope to be gay in a town like Cando, ND, population 1,500. I asked his mom how she felt about his coming out.

“Most people just felt terrible that he’d held it in for so long. Even his grandparents, who are old-school as they come.” And what about his hard-knock, rancher father? “I think he’d have felt differently if it wasn’t his kid. But it was Justin. It took a little bit of getting used to, but I don’t think he ever loved him less.”

When I was in tenth grade, Lacey Armstrong told me I was gay. Not gay, in the sense that I was a douchebag (which I certainly was), but in the sense that I was attracted to dudes. Her dossier on me was pretty compelling: I was well-dressed, I had lots of platonic girlfriends, and I hadn’t proven that I wasn’t gay by putting good use to my working manbits. And so I thought, Fuck, maybe I am gay?

It took just one belted hard-on to know that this wasn’t the case, but it was worth asking the question of my neurotic, self-obsessed teen psyche: What would I tell my parents if I was?

The answer became immediately obvious: that I would get as far from North Dakota, and as far from any small town as I could. That’s the answer for most gay people, and with good reason. And that’s why a lot of us don’t have a working example of “being gay.”

The big evolution for Christians, for my parents, and for people like my friend’s parents, has nothing to do with gay marriage or civil rights legislation. It’s finding out that your kid or that your best friend is gay. It’s realizing that someone you respect just so happens to like dudes. Just this week, a prominent Christian musician came out. Ray Boltz, the Christian musician who sang the gayest song ever, “Thank You,” is also gay.

A lot has been made of so-called “hate speech,” which is the general description of any talk that isn’t accepting of the oncoming reality that our gay friends are everywhere. I’ve heard it from my parents, I’ve heard it from friends. But it isn’t hate, really. It’s ignorance, and it will go away. It will evolve from “disgusting” to “icky” to “whatever, live and let live.” It’s the natural progression, especially if it’s someone you love unconditionally.

Soon enough, we’ll all have a kid, or a friend, who is gay. And we’ll have to choose, like my dad hopefully never has to, do I love this person, or do I just kill them?

(I’m joking, Dad. And I kinda hope it’s your grandkid.)

It’s weird that there are ambassadors for things that don’t fully make sense, like Tim Allen pushing horsepower or the movie Finding Nemo making a bunch of people search out clownfish. But for my parents, and for lots of parents probably, Neil Patrick Harris has acted as something of an avatar for the family-friendly gay dude. How I Met Your Mother was a passable sitcom, and it made a legend out of Barney, NPH’s character. My parents loved him, so when I told them he was gay, it was a blow to all they knew to be good and true.

“Oh, he’s gay? Really, Barney?” And then, Mom deliberated for a beat. “Well, I like him anyway.”

That’s how we all feel, and how we all will feel, in good time.

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