I keep thinking about how when #ChurchToo started Christian media outlets and Christians with large platforms didn’t want to touch it with a ten foot pole even while secular news media could not get enough. For the couple of months it was just crickets in Christian world.

Then it started getting bigger, and they couldn’t ignore it. The headlines started popping up, “Evangelicalism’s #MeToo Moment” and “ #MeToo comes to church” etc. but they didn’t want to say #ChurchToo. They actively avoided it. And we all knew why.

#ChurchToo became a thing when an unapologetically queer and thriving woman who could speak the language of evangelicalism fluently came forward with her story. And they wanted nothing to do with that. A queer person calling out their sexual abuse was their worst nightmare.

Queerness is constantly compared in evangelical thought to rape, incest, bestiality, pedophilia, and more. It’s all just “sexual sin,” & that’s how violence against LGBTQ+ folks in a Christian circles is justified and ignored. So a queer person calling out evil? Couldn’t be

There is zero doubt in my mind that the reason more evangelical Christians are not speaking up about Menlo Church and the Ortbergs’ failure to protect children is because @daniel_m_lavery and @graceelavery are trans. They cannot look like they are on their side. #ChurchToo

I just want to name that because there’s a lot of “why aren’t more people speaking up” going on right now and we have to be clear that a huge reason why is the homophobia queerphobia and transphobia that is enshrined as orthodoxy in these communities. #ChurchToo