Opinion: Religion is good for your health, unless you're gay

Decades of research reveals attending religious services is good for your overall health. That is, unless you’re gay. To be gay and in the church often means unfettered abuse and psychological torture so harmful doctors say it’s better for a gay person to have never attended church than to have attended and left.

A recent study found that religious involvement actually increases the risk of suicide for our LGBTQ+ youth, and the more one is involved in church the more likely they are to "harbor higher levels of anti-gay prejudice," according to research in the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry.

As a pastor witnessing the tragic outcomes of bathroom bills, genital checks and decades of discrimination toward our LGBTQ+ siblings, I have to question how much the church’s theology has informed (directly and indirectly) the polices doing great harm to our LGBTQ+ community. Author and activist Bridget Eileen asks, "How is it that going to church would keep straight people alive but push gay people to death?"

There are a handful of churches (and other religious organizations) that celebrated with our LGBTQ+ community at the Pride Parade on Saturday, including ours. But it wasn’t always that way.

One of the principles our church in Oakley has historically followed when reading scripture is: The best way to discern whether you have properly interpreted a passage of scripture is to put it into practice.

However, for too long we abandoned this principle when it came to the violence done to our LGBTQ+ neighbors, afraid of the fallout from parishioners, and badly misinterpreting what our scriptures reveal is one of the greatest commandments: Love your neighbor as yourself. Pride Month, which exists because some folks are told they’d be better off dead than being themselves, would come every June and our church would remain silent, too worried about offending those inside the church rather than those that had been cast out. Yet outcomes don’t lie: our interpretation of scripture left a trail of physical and psychological damage in its wake.

Dr. Miguel De La Torre writes, "If your biblical interpretation prevents life from being lived abundantly by a segment of the population or, worse, brings death, it is anti-gospel."

We are affiliated with a denomination that recently passed a resolution confessing our policies have done violence to LGBTQ+ folks "…by failing to affirm their full, God-given identities and by restricting their full participation in the life of the church," and making seven commitments for full inclusion moving forward.

We are thankful to not be the only church or religious institution in Cincinnati celebrating our LGBTQ+ friends, but an overwhelming majority of churches hold what they call a more "traditional" view, which means gay folks can sit in church, contribute to the offering, and sing about God’s love, but the "all are welcome" mantra it markets has an asterisk, along with an invisible barrier kept hidden for fear of being "outed" as anti-gay. I know, because I used to pastor a "welcoming" church.

I’ve since learned regardless how subtle or straightforward a church’s message is about its exclusion of the LGBTQ+ community from full participation, the psychological damage stemming from bad theology, and the physical and emotional abuse directly and indirectly endorsed by the church, leaves permanent scars on God’s beloved children. However, there is good news. When our LGBTQ+ neighbors attend a welcoming and affirming church, all health indicators rise.

As politicians write homophobic and transphobic laws that discriminate against the LGBTQ+ community, may courageous religious leaders rise up and reveal the wideness of God’s love, whose embrace truly welcomes all people, and together may we drown out the anti-gay rhetoric coming from pulpits and policymakers across the state. Let’s take pride in God’s gift of the LGBTQ+ community to our city, and let’s practice what it means to love your neighbor as yourself.

Brian Moll is the pastor at Cincinnati Mennonite Fellowship in Oakley and author of "The Only LGBTQuestions That Matter" (coming this fall).

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Opinion: Toxic theology puts asterisk on God's love, harms LGBTQ people