Religion should not be a synonim of homophobia.

They are not extemely religious but homophobic. Sadly in modern times, with the doing of many high profile "religious" figures, this has overlapped.

I know people that were in the same as you... You may need to just ignore your parents here. Sometimes people do not want to understand. The other option is calmly discussing it with them.

I am from a very catholic family. Before I knew what or who I was, I had family members use religion as abuse to belittle and degrade me from the age of 6 onward. My home life was awful and extended family piled on to make sure I really had nothing left for myself to cling to. I was kept on a cycle of love bombing (with church approved rewards only) when the constant insistence on my selfishness and awfulness would periodically succeed in breaking me. It made life entirely unenjoyable by design. Yet the programming they instilled also came with heavy guilt designed to keep me trapped by "faith."

I understand the fear of knowing you need to leave. The abuse ramped up every time I even remotely suggested I be able to live without the church. But my only regret is that I wish I had done it sooner. Religion doesn't stop you from coming out. The toxicity that it bakes into the community and your family does. They make it very hard and painful to stand up for yourself and advocate for life to be the gift it is. As with many such things, the cruelty seems to be the point.

I'm always tempted to say: Fuck them, it's your life, not theirs. Come out. If they love you, they'll accept you...

But... that's a huge if to take into consideration. Any descent parent should love their child, but we're in no shortages of awful stories. That'd be one hell of a way to find that out. Ignorance can be bliss and all that.

It comes down to this: Do you feel as if your parents love you? Care about you, who you are, what you do and what you want? Are they interested in you in general? If yes, then... would it make you feel better for them to know? If it's again yes, well, try?

These are tough things to decide and it's fully up to you. If they're religious, they may react badly but come around soon after, as you're their child. But that depends on how deep they are in their religion.

I'm trying to help because there is little engagement in this thread, but I'm always really uneasy about things like this. I don't know anything about you. There are so many factors from the gender you were assigned at birth, to which country you live in, and assuming you're American, which state, and so on.

I guess, one last question to ask is: How "pissy" would they get if they were to find out, you know? Are we talking big argument pissy? Or disowned pissy? Would they try conversion therapy? Also, if they're really religious, take into account how their religious peers will react and how they could influence them.

There's a lot of angles to this, and those are ultimately yours to figure out. Still though, I hope I didn't scare you. I want you to be safe, first and foremost. I'm trying to help to the best of my ability, hopefully, that was worth something.

Take care of yourself. And, keep us posted!

🩷💜💙

that is honestly devastating to read.

I sadly can't speak from experience, but I still want to try my best at helping, so I'd like to ask: how comfortable are you with living somewhere else? In many countries there are ways to pretty much leave your family behind given they actually affect your mental health.