Sadly, stories of people losing ties with family due to one of them being a part of the LGBTQ+ community aren't that rare. Some people simply value their unreasonable beliefs over family ties.
This is another one of those stories. In it, a man had a beautiful bond with his sister's daughters, but it started getting complicated when he came out as gay. This complication didn't stem from the girls themselves, but from their dad, who couldn't shut up about how their uncle was going to hell.
More info: Reddit
Sadly, some people put their unreasonable beliefs above their family relationships
Image credits: Vika Glitter / pexels (not the actual photo)
This man had a lovely relationship with his sister's family — a husband and 2 daughters
Image credits: Dziana Hasanbekava / Pexels (not the actual photo)
Then, he came out as gay and everything shifted — the sister's husband started bringing up religion and church any time anything gay-related was mentioned
Image credits: Pixabay / Pexels (not the actual photo)
He also started telling his daughters that their uncle is going to hell, but that they can still love him, which confused them and hurt the man
Image credits: Extension_Olive_7891
He decided to distance himself from the family and when he told his sister he was not going to Christmas, she exploded, so he explained that it was due to her husband's beliefs
When the OP was 25, he briefly lived with his sister and her family – her husband John and their two lovely daughters. During this period, the man bonded with his nieces and enjoyed being the cool uncle.
A couple of years after he moved out, he came out as gay. He told his sister this and she was happy for him. But she also told her husband, and, well, his reaction was a bit different.
Before coming out, the author and his brother-in-law were “bros.” When the “news” broke, John said he was happy for his “bro,” but his behavior changed. For instance, any time the OP would hang out with his nieces, he would bring up church and religion, even though he wasn’t that religious before. Well, it became crystal clear that John was uncomfortable with his brother-in-law being gay.
People bringing up religion, especially Christianity, when it comes to gay people isn’t an uncommon experience. Many religious people believe that the Bible condemns homosexuality, so they base their treatment of LGBTQ+ people on that.
As this Quora answer pointed out, some people choose to cherry-pick the Bible’s text that they want to believe in, for example, denouncing homosexuality, but paying no attention to the fact that the Testament also denounces eating shellfish and wearing clothes made of different materials.
Plus, the matter with passages about homosexuality is kind of complicated. While, yes, some of them mention same-sex eroticism, there is no evidence that they condemn same-sex relationships of love. Plus, certain cultural, historical, and linguistic data shows that the relationships described in the Bible are different than the ones we know today.
Bored Panda's interviewee author, activist, and public theologian, Brandan Robertson, said that there are two main reasons why people turn to religion to justify their homophobia: genuine belief and inherited homophobia.
While the first group of people actually believes that the religious texts condemn LGBTQ+ people as unnatural or abominations: "They fear that transgressing their belief will jeopardize not only the LGBTQ+ persons eternal salvation but their own. Fear is a powerful motivator for all sorts of horrendous beliefs."
At the same time, inherited homophobia means that "if they've never knowingly interacted with an LGBTQ+ person, and all that they know comes from tropes and stereotypes, they are likely to have an internal impulse to view LGBTQ+ people as deviants."
Either way, religion provides a respectable excuse for homophobic impulses, which is fear, and as B. Robertson put it: "Fear of difference, fear of people they don't understand, and fear of God or their religious community."
Thus, it’s beyond sad that LGBTQ+ community members, the OP included, have to suffer from such hate coming from people whose religion preaches “Love Thy Neighbor.”
Image credits: Mental Health America (MHA) / Pexels (not the actual photo)
Coming back to the story, about a year and a half ago, the author’s brother-in-law told him that it was getting difficult to explain to his girls that they can love their uncle, despite the fact that he’s going to hell. Apparently, it’s hard for them to understand such dissonance.
Such rhetoric about hell is just another example of Christian people spreading hate about queer people. After all, people don’t choose to be gay, they are gay from the time they are born, and it just takes time for some of them to realize it. So, technically, God can’t punish people for being who they are, which makes the hell argument kind of invalid. Still, it doesn’t stop people from using it.
Speaking of using this rhetoric to scare children, as our interviewee put it, they are like sponges — they are directly impacted by the communities and contexts they are surrounded by.
He explained, "So if a child grows up in a conservative Christian household where it is very clear that being LGBTQ+ is a sin, a child is likely to take that very seriously, to view that as a black and white reality, and to earnestly believe the consequences of being LGBTQ+ is separation from God or judgement."
So, it might be very difficult for this kid to look at their LGBTQ+ relative without judgement. At the same time, if a child knows this relative well and knows they are a loving person, it might inspire an early skepticism of the theology they've been raised with.
Sadly, the original post doesn't include any details regarding whether the OP's nieces had developed any skepticism or not. Even though, their having a hard time making sense out of dissonance might be a way of doing that.
It also stands to reason why their uncle started emotionally withdrawing from them — it was just too hard for him. From that point on, he only FaceTimed them on their birthdays and spent time during the holidays with other family members present, but no more than that.
Recently, the original poster’s sister asked him whether he’d be going back home for Christmas and he answered that he wasn’t planning to. This made the woman blow up at him about abandoning his nieces and missing out on the rest of the family's lives, so he revealed the stuff her husband had said to him.
He hadn't told her when it first happened, because he was afraid she would be pressured into choosing between her brother and her husband. Yet, now felt like a good time. Unfortunately, this revelation caused a big fight between the couple and made the OP feel bad for not saying anything sooner, along with a feeling of abandoning his beloved nieces.
People online assured him that he shouldn’t feel this way. He didn't cause a fight in his sister’s marriage — her husband’s bigotry did. This dude not only couldn’t sit down and have a conversation with a man he was once friends with, he also decided to weaponize his children against him. Absolute jerk-ish behavior here!
At this point, we can only hope that the OP’s sister will be able to figure out what to do with her insufferable husband, maybe even finding a way to put him on the right path and mend the relationships he destroyed. Or, maybe she won’t and this will just be another sad story of how unjustified prejudice caused a family to crumble.
Check out our interviewee Brandan Robertson's book, "Queer & Christian: Reclaiming the Bible, Our Faith, and Our Place at the Table"!
This caused a fight between her and her husband, which the man felt guilty for, but people online said he shouldn't — it wasn't caused by him — the brother-in-law's bigotry is to blame
