I am aware that this is an age old issue and that I'm probably beating a dead horse by posting this, but unfortunately there are people who only see through the eyes of hatred and are turning a deaf ear to the truth. Homophobia does, without a doubt, exist. People who call themselves Christians and stand up and celebrate spreading God's love, yet refuse to acknowledge the fact that the LGBT community are human as well in the eyes of God and are deserving of the exact same lov...e regardless of how different their lifestyle may be, exist. And that's a sad, sad thing.

Before anyone goes berserk on me and starts trying to give a sermon on the subject, please get your facts straight: yes, the Bible speaks against things like this, but think of all the other things that it speaks against (Judging, Hatred, Gluttony, Adultry, etc.) Be honest, how many of us are guilty of all of those things? I know I can name a few things that I have done that are spoken against, even though I'm certainly not proud of them. My point here is that we shouldn't shine a flashlight on what someone else has done, when we have a spotlight pointed down at our flaws.

My second point is that we should focus on what the Word of God says as a whole instead of only picking and choosing parts of it that we like best. I think of the Bible as being like a pie-people take the slices that they want to digest and use and leave the ones that they don't want to pay attention to. We can't do that. If we focus on where the Bible says that "man shall not lay down with man", we should also pay attention to where it says that "God is love: whoever doesn't love, doesn't know God" or "it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven." The Bible is mean to be taken as a whole, not picked apart when we see fit. We can't be lukewarm Christians who only apply God's teachings to part of our lives-either we're totally in, or we're completely out.

Like i said before, I know this has been repeated a thousand times and no one wants to listen to a broken record. But it hurts me to see people, especially individuals of whom I am close to, have this kind of attitude toward the LGBT community. I may get a lot of negative feedback when these people see this post, but Jesus said that his followers will be persecuted for being like Him. And if that's what it takes for me to do what I think is right, then so be it.