Ask a hundred different people what true Christianity is, get a hundred different answers. I don’t have any way of knowing which one of these answers might be somehow objectively true. I don’t know that there is an objective truth. Christian is after all an identity. Identity is what people say it is.

The only thing I know factually is the vast majority of people who identify as Christians behave like assholes towards LGBTQ people.

And one almost never hears other people who identify as Christians objecting to that.

I write on LGBTQ issues for a living, so I know what I’m talking about. When I say almost never I really objectively mean almost never. That is a true fact.

What do I almost always hear instead? People who identify as Christians ask for tolerance of other people who identify as Christians who have intolerant views. They defend the right of people to hold those intolerant views. Even if they themselves are not intolerant, they ask for tolerance of homophobic bigots.

Or … people who identify as Christians deny that homophobic bigots are true Christians, which is simply a way to avoid facing up to a real problem.

Look how that works in this thread. Someone who identifies as a Christian posted that people who are not Christians are headed for destruction. The author of the article did not condemn his viewpoint. In fact, she posted quite kindly to him while posting an angry response to me for objecting to his evil statement.

Yet she identifies as a Christian. She is presumably someone you believe is a true Christian.

Well, his kind of value system abhorrent. Her tolerance of it is equally abhorrent.

This is why so many non-Christians think so many people who identify as Christians are assholes.

Christians get angry at me for making that observation. But it’s a true observation. Many people don’t like people who identify as Christians because most people who identify as Christians behave like assholes much of the time.

So instead of people complaining that Christians are getting a bum rap, perhaps more people who identify as Christians should be urging other Christians to stop being dicks.