God loves all: Dispelling the myth that God hates the LGBTQ+ community

God loves all: Dispelling the myth that God hates the LGBTQ+ community

Commentary by Mia Gallegos | FāVS News

The deep-rooted hurt that the many members of the gay community experience stems from the widely-held belief that can be summarized in one simple statement: God hates the gays. I’ve had several friends throughout my years who have shared that sentiment with me, citing it as the primary reason they hadn’t set foot in a church for years. As a Catholic, I always found this statement highly disappointing and disheartening. 

The God I know and believe in does not hate his children, so why do so many people within the homosexual community feel like that is his defining trait?

This idea has been perpetuated for years and years by members of the church who hold acrimony against the LGBTQ+ community within their own hearts. They preach their own ideals along with their judgment as though that judgment is God’s, something that has recurred for decades and calcified the idea that the church and the God it worships seeks to condemn. 

Revisiting Genesis

This perspective is based on misinformed interpretations of the Bible. Some verses from the NRSV translation of the Bible are more direct in their messages, others are more ambiguous. These more opaque verses have contributed to false conclusions about God’s distaste for gay individuals. However, we need to look at them in context to create a more well-rounded idea of what God intended for all of his beloved children, gay or straight. 

It’s necessary to go back to Genesis for a reminder of the origins of God’s creation, and his mindset for whom it is that he chose to create.

Genesis 1:27-29 explains that God created a man and a woman, namely Adam and Eve, in the Garden of Eden. Most of us are at least vaguely familiar with this story.

“God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth,’” verse 28 reads. This line explains God’s purpose for creating two complementary sexes, that being to share the privilege and joy of creating new life. He created man and woman to be in fruitful accord with one another, as is stated within this verse. 

The gift of free will

In addition to the ability to procreate, God also gave human beings the gift of free will, which gives us the ability to choose the path we take, whether that’s chasing a dream, doing drugs, moving far away from home, getting married or even ending our own lives. Though some of these are far more grim than others, they are all things we are completely capable of accomplishing if the idea so possesses us. 

Though the words “you have free will” are not explicitly spelled out in the text of the Bible, this is a power that we exercise daily, every moment of every day in fact. The choices we make in our adult lives, in small and significant matters all the same, are a testament to this God-given freedom. 

One of the biggest choices we can make in our lives is who we pick as our spouse or significant other. A man may opt to have an intimate relationship with another man and a woman may do the same with another woman, as provided by free will. 

The unconditional love of God

An analogy may be useful here to explain the relationship between God and those within the gay community.

Many parents raise their children with the hope that they will go up through the typical schooling system, starting in preschool or elementary school and ending with a college degree. However, many high school aged students realize that college isn’t for them. They will choose a different path like trade school or decide to immediately enter into the workforce rather than going through the additional years of schooling. This may be slightly disappointing to their parents, as this was not the path that they had expected or hoped that their children would take. However, this divergent path does not make the parents love their child any less.

I believe that this is the way in which God views his children who have freely chosen a different path from the traditional relationship he defined in the creation story. His love for us doesn’t ever change, for any reason.

Examining the epistle to the Romans

There are Bible verses that are not subtle in the message that they are delivering. Chapter 1 of the letters from St. Paul to the Romans describes a situation in which the men and women of society began straying from their traditionally-accepted relationship standards. 

“Their females exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the males, giving up natural intercourse with females, were consumed with their passionate desires for one another. Males committed shameless acts with males and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error,” Romans 1:26-27 reads.

Paul, the follower of Christ who wrote this letter to the Romans, was simply reminding them of the consequences of going against the actual first commandment that God gave to humanity long before the Ten Commandments were given to the people of Israel on Mount Sinai: be fruitful and multiply.

What was likely understood back then (which has contributed to ideas now) was that if you rejected the purpose God intended for sexuality when he created Adam and Eve, you were sinning against him and, furthermore, if you sin, he naturally hates you. 

God’s unconditional embrace for all his children

God is love as the First Letter of St. John declares in the Bible (1 John 4:16). He is not a being or entity of hate, especially not toward someone he created. Sin can be defined in many ways. Here, I will define it as something that is not in line with God’s original design for human nature and procreation. He may hate or strongly disapprove of the sin that a person commits, but that action is not equal to the person whom he formed. He created each human in his own image and likeness, all with the desire that those he created would love him in return. 

This love that God wishes all of us to give to one another and back to him, is another instance of free will we have the right to exercise. This love is not something he compels or forces us to give. What he does give us is the ability to choose to love. Second Corinthians 9:7 explains this desire God has for each of us to make this decision out of our own merits.

“Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not regretfully or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver,” the passage reads.

God’s love never diminishes based on our choices

God is not one to force anything upon us that isn’t for us. Furthermore, he doesn’t want any of us to give ourselves to something that we aren’t doing so cheerfully and within the desire of our free will. This is because he loves us. 

As soon as we realize that love is at the forefront of his being, all doubt or skepticism of the provisions of this love need to be vanquished. His love is not conditional. We lose sight of this within these claims of God not having love for those who identify as homosexual. This couldn’t be further from the truth. We are all his children, and his love for those whom he created does not shift nor diminish based on the different paths that we’ve taken.

The views expressed in this opinion column are those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the views of FāVS News. FāVS News values diverse perspectives and thoughtful analysis on matters of faith and spirituality.