Love is Most Important

By Jackie Riley 6/8/25

When my daughter Heather came out, it was more than just her coming out. There were so many examples of horrific violence happening to queer people in the news and I was just so fearful that something like that was gonna happen to her because Heather doesn't do anything half and I could see her standing up for her rights and having someone take exception to that. She wasn't even in the house then. She was off at college. I couldn't protect her in any way at all. Heather was and has been very patient with me. She's just really given me the time to grow. She knew that I was raised a certain way and had very little exposure to people from the queer community. She knew that I had biases, but I think she also knew that I was the type of person that with the right facts would come to the right conclusion. I think she had a lot of faith in me. My relationship with her was the most important thing over anything else. That was the one thing I told her when she came out was that it wasn't going to affect our relationship at all, but if I wouldn't have accepted her, it would have affected her relationship with me. 

It's very confusing because most churches teach that being homosexual in itself isn’t a sin, but if you act on it and you're in a relationship with someone, then it's a sin. That's still mainstream Christian theology. When Heather came out I looked back on other teachings of the church. I thought about slavery and how recently the church supported Christian families having slaves. There's not a church around that would say that that's okay now. That was a misinterpretation of scripture. I think queerness being sinful is another misinterpretation. The more the queer community becomes mainstream and people have more contact with queer people, they’ll find out that all these stereotypical assumptions are wrong. They're just people who love who they wanna love. 

The word "love" is written over a thousand times in the Bible. So, that's the most important word in the Bible. Right? To me, the most important instruction as a Christian is to love other people. Doesn't matter if they're queer or not queer. It doesn't matter if someone has the same beliefs that I have. I think I'm still called to respect them. I don't see how you could be a person of faith, and make broad distinctions about what people are either in or out and your willingness to allow them to be part of your life or interact with them. If I did that and lived a life of division, I wouldn’t be true to my beliefs.

I would love to go to an affirming church, but what good would that do? How would that help the people that I'm in community with? It wouldn't help them at all. It would take me out of the picture. I would no longer have any type of influence. And that's how things are going to change. Things are going to change from within. My opinion is going to mean so much more to them than someone who doesn't know anything about them.  I really believe that they will change and that more churches will become affirming. I truly believe that, in the end, they will make the correct stance. It's just going to take a long time, because it's been that way for so long. We need people that are willing to stand up and go against bad teaching because if they don’t the church will just die. 

I care so much about these people that I go to church with. When I was going through my divorce, they really took good care of me. Heather explained to me when she first came out and she was not being accepted by her extended family, how horrible it made her feel to love people that didn't love who you love. Now, I know exactly what she's feeling like, because when you love someone and you see this hate in a person that's otherwise very loving and caring, it's hard to watch. It's just hard to see. I have such faith in them because the more exposure that they have, I think they're going to come to the right decisions. To change, to go against what you've been taught as children and young adults; it can be really hard but I know it's possible because it happened for me.