THIS CHURCH IS HOMOPHOBIC.
I went to The Foundry regularly for about three months or so, and stopped going about half a year ago. The reason I stopped going was a sermon titled "God and the LGBTQ+ Community" that was the culmination of a sermon series on "Love, Sex, and Relationships." I had an inkling that this church might be homophobic BEFORE this sermon, but it was difficult to get a clear read on it. Part of that might have been because it was a church with a younger congregation and had a more relaxed vibe than other churches I had been to. So if you are queer and hoping that this church will be different, maybe I can help save you some pain by telling you about my experience.
The sermon was mainly based on two sections of the Bible, the beginning of Genesis and Romans 1. Pastor Leedah's thesis was that the beginning of Genesis was a picture of humanity in its perfect state, and therefore that the relationship between Adam and Eve was a picture of the ideal "marriage." Then, after the original sin, humanity was corrupted and sins such as homosexuality were introduced to human nature. Which is a cool way of reconciling the "born this way" doctrine of mainstream gay culture with the American Christian doctrine of wanting to hate gay people no matter what. Then, without ever mentioning conversion therapy, Leedah made it clear that acting on any homosexual feelings was against God's will, as laid out in Romans 1. According to Leedah, Paul is clearly condemning homosexuality in this chapter of Romans, and because Paul is the ultimate authority on all things, there's nothing to be done, probably God himself couldn't go against Paul's writings. He compared the sexual sin of homosexuality with his own problems struggling with a pornography addition, implying that being gay was something you could and should overcome. Then there was an appeal to science that made Leedah look like a total idiot, talking about how science agrees with the Bible in this instance, because according to the theory of Survival of the Fittest it's not advantageous for anybody to be gay.
After the sermon I got the opportunity to talk to Leedah about my concerns, and I told him that the sermon was hateful and violent and shouldn't have been preached. I said the thing I was maddest about was that on this day some young kids had been invited to sit in on the sermon, and that it was a horrible thing to teach children. I brought up the statistic that children who heard authority figures like preachers condemn homosexuality were much more likely to commit suicide, and asked him how he would feel if he was responsible for one of the kids in the audience committing suicide. He replied that he was aware of that, and if that happened it would break his heart and that he would take full responsibility for it. Then he launched into an analogy about taking a kid to the doctor and the doctor telling him that the kid has cancer. Leedah said that the cancer diagnosis would be so serious that he wouldn't try to spare the kid's feelings by lying to him, it would be his responsibility to tell the kid he has cancer. In the same way, if somebody is gay, it's Leedah's responsibility to tell them that it is against God's will, because hell is very serious. To Leedah being gay is such a serious sin that if there's even the slimmest chance of him getting a gay teenager to repent of it and follow God's will then the risk of a gay teen committing suicide is a risk worth taking.
Pastor Leedah is a bigot and EVERYBODY at that church who heard that sermon and didn't condemn it is complicit, which as far as I could tell was everybody. If you are reading this and think this is no big deal then you're a bigot too. So if you're queer think twice about attending this church. I've only talked about this church's stance on gay issues, and that's because that's the only thing this sermon was about. Despite titling his sermon "God and the LGBTQ+ Community" Leedah seemed entirely unaware of any other part of the queer community even existing besides gay people. So I couldn't tell you what he or the rest of the church thinks of trans people, for example. I have gotten a few inklings that the church might not be accepting of trans people, but nothing so explicit as this sermon. I have to assume, though, that any church that's homophobic is also going to be transphobic.
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