LGBT+ People and Religion (not a debate)

I'm writing an essay about the relationship between LGB+ (my paper is on sexuality, not gender; I don't really have time to unpack all of that).
In my research, I found that generally, people in the LGBT community have a smaller percentage of people who are Christian and a higher percentage that are Agnostic/Atheist/don't know, or are not part of the most mainstream religions in the US. I expected this set of statistics, but I'm currently trying to dig into why that is, so I would like to hear some stories of LGBT individuals to understand religious background and lack thereof. I'm just very curious. I can't use it as evidence for my essay, obviously, but I though it would be interesting to discuss.

Some of my guesses:

• Irreligious individuals are more likely to come out as LGBT and NOT be stuck in the closet, given they were not raised in a religious family. It is more likely that they will be accepted by family who they know won't consider them sinful for who they're attracted to. Therefore, there may be a lot more gay religious people than we think.
• LGBT people often leave their religions because of discrimination.

My story: So I started identifying as Agnostic at the age of 16. I was raised Christian protestant (Methodist specifically). When I broke off from the church, I didn't realize I was bi yet. I just saw a lot of fakeness among church members, and honestly, the religion as a whole stopped making sense to me (and at this point, I have done extensive reading of actual scriptures and stand by that). I felt like I'd been spoon-fed other people's interpretations of the Bible, and I felt there was a ton of blind faith involved. I'm also extremely prone to guilt, and every church I went to used guilt as a tactic to bring people to God (which imo is bad practice).
I was raised pretty homophobic tbh, so I didn't realize I wasn't straight until the age of 17 or 18, and I've only put a label on it within the last couple of months (I'm 20 now).
So I wouldn't say there's a direct relationship between my sexuality and religion, but since I don't follow all of the values that were laid out for me when I was younger, I definitely feel more free to be myself.

(To reiterate: this is NOT a debate chat. It's exclusively to share stories so we can see the relationship between sexuality and religion in various people's lives.)

Oooh, I can contribute!
I was raised Catholic and my mom works at a church. LGBTQ+ stuff wasn't really ever discussed at my home, as a positive or a negative, and my parents (or at least my mom) seem to be very "it's fine to be gay, but you shouldn't flaunt it". I realized that I was queer when I was 13, and I have yet to come out nearly 3 years later, apart from to a close friend (I'm biromantic and asexual, for context). Currently I'm not super religious, I pray but I'm not exceptionally faithful and I struggle with it a lot, and I make it to church maybe once a month. I went through the confirmation process this spring. Guilt was never a big factor for me in religion (which is surprising given that I usually struggle with guilt a lot), and I never struggled with feeling like I wasn't supposed to be who I am.
I agree with both of your guesses as well, that's definitely what I think!

Thanks Jynnie! I wish you good luck with figuring out your faith and everything!

Thanks Jynnie! I wish you good luck with figuring out your faith and everything!

Thank you!

Thanks for sharing! And don't worry about it being too long or anything. I'm really interested in hearing all of this.