I am homosexual and I was born homosexual – don't homosexuals have the right NOT to be hated and persecuted by the church?

Yes, and the fact that the question has to be asked is an indictment of us: no one should be hated, mocked, or thrown out of a family for being gay, and where churches have done that they have sinned. No qualifier belongs on that.

1. Hatred is sin, with no exceptions. Jesus said his disciples would be known by their love (John 13:35), and John writes that anyone who claims to love God while hating his brother is a liar (1 John 4:20). Whatever a person believes or does, contempt is not a Christian option. The church's record here includes cruelty, and pretending otherwise costs us the right to be heard.

2. Dignity is given, not earned. Every human being bears God's image (Genesis 1:27), which means worth is not conferred by moral agreement or withdrawn by disagreement. The second great commandment is to love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:39), and that command has no clause about agreeing with the neighbor first.

3. Temptation is not the same as sin. Christ was tempted in every respect as we are, yet without sin (Hebrews 4:15), and James locates sin in desire entertained rather than desire felt (James 1:14-15). This distinction is not a loophole; it is the difference between being attacked and surrendering. A person is not asked to hate his own longings, only to bring them under God.

4. The moral question does not depend on the cause. You say you were born this way, and the science is genuinely unsettled: twin studies show moderate heritability with substantial non-concordance, and no single gene decides orientation, so 'born that way' outruns the evidence on both sides. But grant it entirely for argument's sake. A predisposition toward an act does not make the act right; we do not reason that way about temper, greed, or addiction.

5. The rule is not aimed at one group. The New Testament calls married people to faithfulness and single people to chastity, without singling out same-sex attraction (1 Corinthians 7:1-2), and Jesus commends celibacy as a calling (Matthew 19:12). Heterosexual desire outside marriage is equally excluded. Whatever this ethic is, it is not a special penalty invented for gay people, and framing it that way misdescribes it.

6. Opposition is not persecution, but do not hide there. Losing an argument is not martyrdom, and being criticized is not persecution; that distinction is real and worth defending. But it can become a shield, and Christians must not use it to license contempt or to dodge real harm when it happens. Jesus warned his followers they would be hated (John 15:20); that warning judges hostility, it never authorizes it.

7. 'Do not judge' assumes what it denies. The intuition that you must not be treated as worthless is a moral absolute, and it is not one naturalism delivers easily; it is a theistic premise operating under protest. The same is true of the demand for justice in the church's treatment of gay people. That demand is right, and it is right for reasons the gospel supplies.

8. Grace is offered to everyone in the room. Paul lists sexual sin alongside greed, drunkenness, slander, and swindling, then says 'such were some of you' (1 Corinthians 6:9-11). The church is a hospital for the sick, not a club for the impressive. Any presentation of Christianity that makes one group feel uniquely filthy has misrepresented the message at its center. Christ’s invitation is to the weary and heavy laden (Matthew 11:28), not to people who have already made themselves presentable.

9. Christians genuinely disagree, and you should know it. The historic view, held by the great majority of the global church, is that all same-sex sexual acts fall outside God's will, and it rests on texts like Romans 1 and 1 Corinthians 6 read in their plain sense. A minority of scholars argue those texts target exploitative or idolatrous forms rather than a covenantal same-sex union. Pretending there is no disagreement would be dishonest; pretending the majority view is a fringe position would be worse.

10. What is required is costly love, not slogans. Bear one another's burdens (Galatians 6:2), weep with those who weep (Romans 12:15), and be present with people rather than lobbing verses from a safe distance. Whatever you conclude about the ethics, the manner is not optional, and it is where most of the church's failure has actually happened.

So yes, you have the right not to be hated, and the church is commanded to give you far more than that. Whether the moral question goes the way you hope is a separate argument, and it deserves to be made by people who have already shown they love you.

Sources: Sam Allberry, Is God Anti-Gay?; Rosaria Butterfield; Alan Shlemon, Stand to Reason; Wesley Hill, Spiritual Friendship.

Related challenges:
• What does it mean to be a Christian? There are over 30,000 different groups, all of which answer this question differently. If agreement cannot be found on THIS issue, can the claims of Christians themselves be taken with any degree of seriousness?
• ALL sins are forgiven if you ‘accept Jesus as your savior’, right? What about the non-forgivable sin of blaspheming the Holy Spirit? We have a little CONTRADICTION problem here?!
• Why do arrogant Christians think they’re right about everything?