When he shall die, cut him out in little stars, and he shall make the face of heaven so fine that all the world will be in love with night, and pay no worship to the garish sun ~ William Shakespeare
I am one who is gay and who considers himself a Christian. I see no contradiction in the two. I often think of the Great Command to love God with all your heart and soul and to love thy neighbor as you love yourself. As for the "love your neighbor as you love yourself" part of that command, I find that it cannot be exercised without one quality and that quality is empathy.
Empathy is the crux of all morality. If you don't have it you can't be moral. You can be a rule follower, but you can't truly be moral. Think of the problem with being a rule follower as opposed to following your empathetic instincts. A rule follower gets so conditioned to following rules that that is all he does. He will succumb to following all rules -- right or wrong. This is the person who will "just follow orders" of the Third Reich.
This Wednesday, I lost my fifteen year old miniature dachshund named Pompeii. I and my partner of 24 years have mourned him deeply. We've shed so many tears over him the last couple days (I am fighting back tears as I type this). Pompeii was the sweetest of dogs (unless you were a big dog then he'd want to fight you because he thought he was even bigger and he wanted to protect his Daddy Bobby and Daddy Lee from you). He wasn't much of a rule follower. I could never get him to do what I wanted. When we walked and I wanted to go one way and he wanted to go another way he'd squat down and dig in his 11 pounds and low center of gravity on his end of the leash to bring everything to a halt, and he wouldn't budge. So, I always wound up going the direction he wanted. Pompeii was no rule follower.
But Pompeii had strong empathetic instincts. If you were sad, he'd come to you climb up on your lap and gently lick the tears away (I wish he could lick my tears right now). If you were happy, he'd jump up and down, and spin around and happily whimper to get your attention so that you would pick him up so he could join you in your celebration by licking your face at a ridiculous furious pace -- probably a hundred kisses a second. He may not have known English, but when I bent down and said in a sing-song voice "daddy Bobby loves you" he'd turn his head and lick me gently as a thank you. You could tell by the look in his eyes that he loved you, and best of all you could tell that he knew that you loved him.
Pompeii followed his empathetic instincts.
I think that's the crux of morality. Pompeii was a moral dog. I know he is now with St Francis in Heaven.
That's what the great command calls on us to do. To have empathy. You can't love your neighbor as you love yourself if you do not have empathy.
So, here's how I read the Bible -- with empathy for my fellow human beings not as a rule follower. I figure a life lived like Pompeii's can't be wrong.