Answer

Can I Love Someone Who Identifies as LGBT and Still Stand for What Christ Taught?

Someone you love has told you they are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender, and you are trying to work out whether you can stay close to them and stay faithful at the same time. It can feel like you are being asked to choose, and that whichever way you go you lose something.

Yes, you can do both. The sense that it is impossible usually comes from thinking of these teachings as the Church’s rules rather than Christ’s. If they are positions an institution holds, then holding them costs you a person you love. If they are what Jesus taught, you are not choosing between Him and them. You are trying to love the way He did.

Eternal Truths

Christ was full of grace and truth at the same time. John 1:14 describes the Savior that way. Not grace balanced carefully against truth, with each one kept from upsetting the other. Both, at full strength, in the same person. That is the pattern you are copying, and it is harder than either half on its own.

Loving God and loving your neighbour are not in competition. President Dallin H. Oaks spoke to exactly this in “Two Great Commandments”, teaching that we do not set aside either commandment because of the other. Where the two seem to pull apart, the answer is not to let one go.

Charity is what separates clarity from cruelty. Mormon taught that charity is the pure love of Christ, and that without it we are nothing (Moroni 7:45-48). A true thing said without it does not reach the other person as truth. It reaches them as rejection.

What Can Make This Confusing?

Both of the wrong turns look like love from the inside. You can go quiet and call it kindness, and the relationship slowly becomes one where you cannot be honest. Or you can make agreement the price of closeness, and they learn they are a project. The second is easier to spot from outside. The first is far more common, and it costs the relationship its honesty a little at a time.

Questions to Think About

• Am I staying silent out of love, or out of fear of the conversation?
• Have I said what I believe once, plainly, and then let it rest?
• Would this person come to me if their life fell apart?

What You Can Do

Ask a question this week instead of making a statement, and be genuinely willing to hear the answer. Not every conversation has to become a doctrinal one, and someone you love does not need you to restate your position at every dinner. Most of loving them is turning up, remembering things, and being the person they would call at two in the morning. The essay behind this Answer goes further into the scriptures and the accounts of people who have done this well.

Jesus Christ can hold you to what He taught and to the person you love at the same time, and He can teach you how to keep both without letting either go.