Q&A: How Do I Bring Peace Between My LGBT and Religious Friends?

I myself am gay. I have friends and family  who are of the LGBT community and friends and family who are of the religious community. Both sides in my eyes are equally amazing but both sides can’t seem to stop hating/resenting the other to the point where they both want me to pick a side. How can I best try to bring peace or at least ease the tension between both sides without making a difficult choice?

It can be very difficult to be in the middle of something like this and unfortunately there's no easy answer here. It's going to be up to you to do one thing and use that to decide how to pick sides. You have to acknowledge that all people are equal and deserve to be treated fairly and respectfully. What this means is we choose our values in life and those values we choose inherently come with positive and negative potential. For example, all religious people choose their religion and then they choose how much they'll abide by the rules. If at any point they're talking down about another human being as if they're less than they are or they're "sinners" etc. that is a failure to respect equality and respectful treatment and this person themselves is showing they don't deserve respect. The same goes the other way. If an LGBTQ person puts someone down just for being a certain religion whether the person exhibits bigotry or not, well that's equally close minded.

I believe it's all of our responsibility to demonstrate respect towards each other and we give people the benefit of the doubt. However, once someone has shown that they don't respect equality and fairness across all people, well, it's up to you to decide how you want to interact with them. I will warn you though, it may seem safe taking the middle stance and telling everyone "you're all good people!" but the truth is, the friends and acquaintances who actually are working at being good people will see you as giving a free pass to people who aren't. So my advice is you develop your own set of strong morals you believe in and live by and if others fail to respect that, try talking to them. If they still refuse to accept equality, well maybe they don't deserve to take up too much space in your life.

I know this is an incredibly sensitive and complicated issue, but honestly that's the way life is. My advice comes from years of finding my own way through dysfunctional and toxic family and learning how to take care of myself first. Once you know who you are, it's honestly much easier to see who's trying to do better and who isn't. Always gravitate to the people who are. <3