The perils of writing LGBT Christian fiction
Other than the funny looks, and trust me, I get those.
Paramount is the risk of offending both Christians and the LGBT community at the same time. Which is a sort of two-for-one deal, but not what I’m after.
The other ever-present risk, and the one I’m actually inclined to worry about, is that I’m getting it wrong. That someone will read my work and say to themselves, “No that’s not my experience, and what on earth has that writer been smoking?”
While I like to think my faith informs everything I do, I also write plenty of stuff that’s not overtly religious, some of it very light, and some of it more serious. So why bother?
Part of the reason is that I believe very strongly that being gay, or bi, or trans, or whatever, is NOT a sin, but part of God’s plan, and just some of the ways he makes us in infinite and wonderful diversity and that God has opened a way for me to share this with other people.
Some of the rest of the reason, and the one that’s more selfish, is that every now and then I’ll open a pm or look at a review, and realize that someone else got exactly what I was trying to say. And the last part? The hope that someone, somewhere will read one of my books and not only understand what I mean, but gain comfort and self-acceptance from it.
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I really appreciate what you're doing--we hear so much about attacks on the LGBT community in the name of religion that we tend to forget that there are versions of faith that are not exclusionary, are not apologies for hate, and that there are plenty of LGBT people who are people of faith themselves and want to share that part of their life with a community.
Lilia wrote: "I really appreciate what you're doing--we hear so much about attacks on the LGBT community in the name of religion that we tend to forget that there are versions of faith that are not exclusionary,..."Thank you so much for your really wonderful comment. I'm always a little self-conscious when talking about faith.
