Why Conservative Christian Should Oppose Conversion Therapy - Pieter Valk (LPC)

Yeah.

Well, I definitely in my life and work have a lot more conversation with the first half of that.

And by that, I mean, like, that's kind of my day job is to kind of like work with churches and pastors and parents who would like to avoid this stuff if they could and to help them face the fact that they really can't, even if they would like to avoid this.

I mean, because at least 10% of the kids in our churches are queer by no choice of their own, by no fault of their parents.

And there's no way to make them not queer.

That's just like what the mix of nature and nurture is handed to them.

And so at least for those 10% of kids in our churches, we need to know how to like offer Jesus's love and wisdom to those kids.

Like they're not, they didn't do anything wrong to be queer.

That's just like, you know, at least from my historic Christian sexual ethic perspective, like that's just a particular way that the fall has impacted them.

The fall has impacted all of us in a variety of different ways.

They didn't choose it.

We need to come alongside them.

But even beyond that, like 10% of people in our churches who are queer by no choice of their own.

I don't know.

There's lots of surveys still that show that like one of the number one reasons that people who don't identify as Christians aren't interested in giving Jesus, Christianity, the church a chance is because of their perception of how the church treats LGBT plus people.

So like what I say to pastors is like LGBT plus topics is not the gospel.

But right now, your church's witness on LGBT plus topics is the number one reason why most where a lot of people are not interested in the gospel.

So like it is a gospel issue.

It's a it's a it's a wedge issue, you know, that some would argue, you know, if you believe in kind of heaven and hell and some of these spiritual things that Satan, the enemy is using to keep people away from Jesus is how ugly our conversations about LGBT plus topics are.

Um,

so that's that side of it.

And then I would say from the other side, you know, and I have plenty of queer friends who, who aren't people of faith and are sometimes like, gosh, Peter, can you just like, can you just like stop making your life so difficult? Um, and just kind of come on over, um, is that there are some of us, uh, who just like can't give up the faith.

You know, we just for one reason or another, either we're stubborn or there is some God out there that's holding on to us.

But we're going to continue to be Christians and we're going to continue to be queer.

And I would really love the help of my like queer friends who don't believe in Jesus to like that's something that's important to me to help me hold on to that in a way that's healthy for me.