Sadly, stories of people losing ties with family due to one of them being a part of the LGBTQ+ community aren’t that rare. Some people simply value their unreasonable beliefs over family ties.

This is another one of those stories. In it, a man had a beautiful bond with his sister’s daughters, but it started getting complicated when he came out as gay. This complication didn’t stem from the girls themselves, but from their dad, who couldn’t shut up about how their uncle was going to hell.

More info: Reddit

Sadly, some people put their unreasonable beliefs above their family relationships

Image credits: Vika Glitter / pexels (not the actual photo)

This man had a lovely relationship with his sister’s family — a husband and 2 daughters

Image credits: Dziana Hasanbekava / Pexels (not the actual photo)

Then, he came out as gay and everything shifted — the sister’s husband started bringing up religion and church any time anything gay-related was mentioned

Image credits: Pixabay / Pexels (not the actual photo)

He also started telling his daughters that their uncle is going to hell, but they can still love him, which confused them and hurt the man

Image credits: Extension_Olive_7891

He decided to distance himself from the family and when he told his sister he is not coming to Christmas, she exploded, so he explained that it was due to her husband’s beliefs

When the OP was 25, he briefly lived with his sister and her family – her husband John and two lovely daughters. During this period, the man bonded with his nieces and enjoyed being the cool uncle. 

A couple of years after he moved out, he came out as gay. He told his sister this and she was happy for him. But she also told it to her husband, and, well, his reaction was a bit different. 

Before coming out, the author and his brother-in-law were “bros”. When the “news” broke, John said he was happy for his “bro”, but his behavior changed. For instance, any time the OP would hang out with his nieces, he would bring up church and religion, even though he wasn’t that religious before. Well, it became crystal clear that John was uncomfortable with his brother-in-law being gay. 

People bringing up religion, especially Christianity, when it comes to gay people isn’t an uncommon experience. Many of these religious people believe that the Bible condemns homosexuality and so they base their treatment of LGBTQ+ people on that. 

As this Quora answer pointed out, some people choose to cherry-pick the Bible’s text that they want to believe in, for example, denouncing homosexuality, but paying no attention that the Testament also denounces eating shellfish and wearing clothes made of different materials. 

Plus, the matter with passages about homosexuality is kind of complicated. While, yes, some of them mention same-sex eroticism, there is no evidence that they condemn same-sex relationships of love. Plus, certain cultural, historical, and linguistic data show that the relationships described in the Bible are different than ones we know today. 

So, it is unjust to judge today’s relationships based on a text that is, in a way, out of date. Thus, it’s beyond sad that LGBTQ+ community members, the OP included, have to suffer from such hate coming from people whose religion preaches “Love Thy Neighbor.” 

Image credits: Mental Health America (MHA) / Pexels (not the actual photo)

Coming back to the story, about a year and a half ago, the author’s brother-in-law told him that it was getting difficult to explain to his girls that they can love their uncle despite the fact that he’s going to hell. Apparently, it’s hard for them to understand such dissonance.

Such rhetoric about hell is just another example of Christian people spreading hate about queer people. After all, people don’t choose to be gay, they are gay from the time they are born, and it just takes some time for some of them to realize it. So, technically, God can’t punish people for being who they are, which makes the hell argument kind of invalid. Still, it doesn’t stop people from using it. 

The OP, after seeing that the girls were having a hard time wrapping their heads around how they can love a person who is doomed, started emotionally withdrawing – it was just too hard for him. From that point on, he only FaceTimed them on their birthdays and spent time during holidays with other family members present, but not more than that. 

Recently, the original poster’s sister asked him whether he’d be going back home for Christmas and he answered that he isn’t planning to. This made the woman blow up about how he is abandoning his nieces and missing out on the rest of the family’s lives, so he revealed the stuff her husband had said to him. 

He hadn’t told her when this first happened, because he was afraid she would be pressured to choose between her brother and her husband. Yet, now it felt like a good time. Unfortunately, this revelation caused a big fight between the couple and made the OP feel bad for not saying anything earlier, along with abandoning his beloved nieces. 

People online assured him that he shouldn’t feel this way. He didn’t cause a fight in his sister’s marriage – her husband’s bigotry did. This dude not only couldn’t sit down and have a conversation with a man he once was friends with, he also decided to weaponize his children against him too. Absolute jerk-ish behavior here! 

At this point, we can only hope that the OP’s sister will be able to figure out what to do with her insufferable husband and maybe even find a way to put him on the right path and mend the relationships he destroyed. Or maybe she won’t and this will just be another sad story of how unjustified prejudice made a family crumble.

This caused a fight between her and her husband, which the man felt guilty for, but people online said he shouldn’t — it wasn’t caused by him, the brother-in-law’s bigotry is to blame

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