I was raised Christian, so anything deviating from the normalcy of heterosexuality was bad. Homosexuality? Bad. Bisexual? Bad. Transgender? Bad. And so on and so on. I learned to look down on those people, I was taught to look down on them. I had teachers and leaders who vehemently spoke out against them who painted a picture of horrible people making conscious decisions to live in sin, teachers and leaders who framed my perception of those people. I often wonder, if I hadn't left home and gone to college in another city, if I hadn't been removed from my familiar little closed off world, would I still be as close minded as I was then? But while my eyes were certainly opened and I became slightly less judgmental, I was still extremely close minded. It wasn't until I actually began to really meet and get to know these people that I realized that they were humans just like you and me, not these entities of evil I'd been taught about. And not a single one of them was claiming to be gay or lesbian or bisexual or trans or whatever in order to snub God, it was simply who they were.
