People Ask Me Why I Bother Engaging With Evangelicals Online. The Answer Is Surprisingly Simple.

I’ve lived many lives. This includes an enthusiastic (and very earnest) half-dozen years of my adolescence and young adulthood as an energetic Daytona Beach, Florida-dwelling born-again Christian. I participated in activities such as going to church four times a week, asking strangers on the bus if they had accepted Jesus Christ as their personal savior, and giving out Gospel tracts on the beach.

These days I’m an enthusiastic (and truthfully, equally earnest) nonbinary large-city-dwelling queer. My activities now include things like making triple-threat art as a comedian/writer/nurse, chatting with patrons at my neighborhood coffee shop about ethical nonmonogamy, and attending protests, some of which also happen on the beach.

So when I receive a social media friend request, the potential connection could come from Column A or Column B, and one Column B friend describes me as having an “accept ’em all, let God sort ’em out” strategy.

Some of my Column B friends don’t love my social media friend anarchy, especially when interactions about a presumably neutral topic go deeply and bizarrely awry.

“Um, why am I arguing with some guy you went to high school with about how 5G and scripture prove the Earth is flat on your post about finding a home for a three-legged kitten?” my friend will text on a random Tuesday afternoon.

These interactions can be surprising and deeply troubling, it’s true. But mostly, my friends don’t love my All Friends Aboard policy because they love and worry about me.

The ongoing painful struggle of a queer adult who came out of a rejecting, evangelical Christian past is, unfortunately, a common experience. But it’s not my experience. I was not out as queer or genderqueer in high school. Perhaps I