From Condemnation to Acceptance: My Journey Through Faith and Pride

June—Pride Month—is a good time to reflect on my journey.

Today, I am comfortable being a gay man. It took me years to believe that my faith and my identity did not have to be in conflict.

I celebrate Pride Month, advocate for inclusion, and believe deeply that every person deserves dignity and respect.

But getting there was not a simple journey.

I grew up in a church environment where being gay was not just discouraged—it was condemned.

As a child and teenager, I attended church services, youth groups, Bible studies, and Christian summer camps where the message was repeated over and over again: homosexuality was a sin.

Riverside Wesleyan Camp was a place I cherished. I spent my summers there with my friends. I was a camp counsellor. An assistant camp director. I mowed the lawn. I flipped pancakes. And then… I had to walk away from it.

Preachers spoke passionately about it from the pulpit. Guest speakers warned of moral decline. Youth leaders reinforced what we were taught. It was presented as a settled fact, something that faithful Christians simply knew to be true.

And with a father who was a minister in the Wesleyan Church, aunts and uncles serving overseas as missionaries, another uncle who taught at the Bible college my father attended, and a grandfather who sat on the board of directors of that college, I was pretty sure I knew where my family stood on homosexuality: it was a sin. In fact, I once overheard a conversation at my family’s summer cottage where my other grandfather made his views on the subject abundantly clear.

When you hear the same message enough times, especially as a young person, it becomes part of the air you breathe.

The difficult part was that while these conversations were always about “those people,” I eventually realized they were talking about me.

For years, I tried to reconcile what I was feeling with what I had been taught. I prayed. I questioned myself. I hoped the feelings would disappear. And when they wouldn’t disappear, I hated who I was. Like many 2SLGBTQIA+ people raised in conservative religious environments, I carried a tremendous amount of shame and fear. I worried about disappointing God. I worried about disappointing my family. I worried about losing the people I cared about. And worst of all, I worried about spending an eternity burning in hell.

Those fears were not imaginary.

“There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear…” — 1 John 4:18

When I eventually came out at 20 years old, my relationship with my church changed dramatically.

Some people feigned kindness. Others were clearly uncomfortable. Some were openly judgmental and hurtful. Some were hateful while claiming to be acting out of love.

Many simply disappeared from my life, largely because I felt I had no choice but to walk away from those relationships.

The hardest part was not losing a building or an institution. It was losing a community.

Church had been where many of my friendships were formed. It was where I spent weekends, summers, and important milestones of my youth. When I could no longer fully belong in that space, I found myself disconnected from much of my social circle as well.

There is a particular loneliness that comes from realizing you must choose between authenticity and acceptance.

For a time, I felt like I had lost both my faith community and many of the friendships that had defined my life. I also worried about losing my family. I felt like I did not belong… anywhere.

Then something unexpected happened.

A few years later, I became connected with the United Church of Canada.

What I found there was very different from what I had experienced growing up.

Instead of being told that my identity made me unworthy, I was welcomed. Instead of hearing sermons about condemnation, I heard messages about compassion, justice, and love. Instead of being treated as a problem to solve, I was treated as a person created in the image of God.

For the first time, I encountered a Christian community that did not require me to choose between my faith and who I am.

That experience did not erase the hurt of the past. Religious wounds do not disappear overnight. But it showed me that faith could look different than what I had been taught as a child.

It showed me that the church which had wounded me did not speak for all of Christianity. There were other faithful people, other interpretations, and other ways of understanding God’s love—ways that made room for me instead of pushing me away.

There was room for me.

Gay Daniel. Just Daniel.

There was room for me within a Christian church community. There was room for me to sing in the choir. There was room for me to speak honestly about my struggles. There was room for me to be fully myself.

There was room, and there was love. Love without any fine print.

That experience changed me. The acceptance I found shaped my commitment to inclusion and respect for others. In time, that journey led me to become an advocate for inclusion, including serving on diversity and inclusion advisory bodies within the Canadian Cadet Program.

Today, I know there are young people sitting in church pews, youth groups, and summer camp chapels hearing the same messages I heard growing up. Some of them are carrying fears they have never spoken aloud. Some are wondering whether they can ever be honest about who they are. Some believe they must choose between their faith and their future.

If that’s you, I want you to know that there are communities of faith where you are welcome exactly as you are.

My journey taught me that faith and authenticity do not have to be enemies. It taught me that losing one community can sometimes open the door to finding another. And it taught me that God’s love is bigger than the boxes people try to place around it.