If the metaphors in the bible were useful at helping people be good, there would be good catholics. Instead, there arent. If you join a group that is outright destructively hostile to queer people, you dont get to complain when people are wary of you. You've chosen to identify with a political structure that wants to do harm to them - you DO identify as a threat.

Saying something broadly like “there are no good Catholics in the world” immediately shows me that this isn’t meant to be a rational discussion but one that’s likely stemming from past pain, and for that I’m really sorry. I would’ve agreed with you once. Reality, like any topic, is more complicated.

Like I’ve mentioned before, organized religion can and should be critiqued - especially Catholicism. Blind faith or dogmatic worship raises a million red flags for me. I was treated horribly by the church as a young queer kid growing up in catholic school due to religious zealotry, and it led to a long period of atheism and lashing out at religion. In my specific case though, I slowly realized this was because of how religion as a whole made me feel about myself and my community rather than it being because I didn’t believe in God, and so I was reacting in anger. While in an LGBTQ organization, I ended up working with a Lutheran pastor on several events she was hosting - specifically one called the shower of stoles, showing the stoles (those fancy-looking and colorful shoulder wrappings priests have) of LGBTQ people in faith who’ve been silenced or removed from the church in order to highlight the enormity of the issue and to “bear witness to the huge loss of leadership that the church has brought upon itself because of its own unjust policies.” Things like this made me slowly start to realize I’d been treating Christianity as a one-sided villain, and with time and repeated programming from this Lutheran pastor that was embracing LGBTQ life, I began to feel as though there were some religious people I could let my guard down with (warily).

Once I felt comfortable with who I am and around religion, I ended up switching to the best university in my town, which was a private catholic one. I expected hatred and repeated bigotry. Instead, what I found was a community genuinely eager for my presence and excited for what I had to say. Younger millennials and gen z in the Catholic Church, in my experience, overwhelmingly abhor homophobia (and often transphobia) and are vocal against it in the church. Within a year in that environment, it became crystal clear that everyone just… didn’t have a problem. There was still the administration though, right? Well, the administration went out of their way to spend hundreds of thousands on building an LGBTQ center while I was there, and leading priests on campus actively sought out queer voices and uplifted them. I eventually became president of the LGBTQ group on campus, and priests would once in a blue moon come to meetings just so they could stay informed on what issues need their support - and our faculty advisor was a lesbian faith leader in the community. For my senior event, I even got this catholic university to use its money to put on a raging drag show in the center of campus, and had the pleasure of seeing the Vice President of student affairs along with a priest slip drag queens some dollars during business hours lol. My commencement speaker, Fr. James Martin, has written EXTENSIVELY on how unfairly the LGBTQ community is treated by the church, and meets with bishops (and even the pope) about how the church needs to modernize and embrace queer and trans members of the congregation. He went from being an influential catholic in the church to dedicating his entire career solely to embracing the LGBTQ community, and is repeatedly attending speaking gigs throughout the country to spread this message.

I used to earnestly believe all Catholics - and all Christians generally - were horrible people because of how I was initially treated by the church. As I was re-exposed to religion as an adult, however, it became clear to me that like any organization, judging the people for the leadership lacks nuance. Ever since warily re-entering Catholicism, I’ve been radically embraced by my churches and congregations, and have been exposed to countless fellow members and leaders who are just as concerned about homophobia and transphobia in the church as I am and are actively working to try and change it. Rather than maintain distance and write off Catholicism outright, I feel glad to have a chance to use my experiences to make the world a little brighter for kids growing up queer - by being a part of the church once more, I can serve as a representation that being queer doesn’t contradict believing God loves you, and I can also lend my support to any events or issues I come across that seek to further counter harmful stances the church takes since hurtful messaging no longer hits me the same. By all means, there will always be sects of Christianity and Catholicism that are focused more on hatred and causing pain, but there are so many more that really do take the metaphors in the Bible to heart and genuinely try to do their best to achieve it, and by painting in such a broad stroke, you run the risk of not getting to see that little touch of beauty in the world.