‘I’m a gay Christian woman: I don’t believe there are genders after death’

Betty Harper is a gay Christian who has struggled to feel welcomed in a church, so she’s made it her mission to find a place of worship where everyone is accepted.

Harper, from Llanddulas, in Conwy, North Wales, told PinkNews she was brought up in a household where queer people were “very much frowned upon”, and when she revealed her sexuality to her father, he refused to accept it.

“When I got to the age where I realised I [didn’t] feel the same way as most of the other girls in my year – I don’t like boys – I decided to tell my dad,” she recalled, adding they got into a screaming match where she insisted she was gay and that it was not a phase.

“He was a pastor of a chapel. He’d go on a rant about how [being LGBTQ+] was an abomination, the devil’s work.

“I realised how bad the discrimination against LGBTQ+ people was in a church.”

Harper “never felt comfortable in a church setting” and feels it is “much more important to have a place where you can feel loved and accepted and not be told you are going to hell”, and that’s “the main reason why I started this endeavour”.

And she does not believe there are genders after death.

“When you go to heaven, you don’t go in your body, your soul goes to heaven,” she said. “Your body is the shell that your soul lives in. All that’s needed to go to heaven, is to believe Jesus died on the cross for you.”

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