Dear Pastor Pierce,

I rarely enter the fray on these pages, but since you write as a leader of a Christian church and I am a follower of Jesus, I feel compelled to speak up. As I read your letter last week, I thought I could hear Jesus weeping. We are all children of God, brothers and sisters in our humanity.

I personally know the pain and struggles of gentle, kind LGBT friends trying to live their lives authentically (as God created them) with no intent to hurt anyone. Many love and follow Jesus as well.

You use Isaiah in the Old Testament to support your judgment of people you call perverts with evil ways. As a follower of Jesus, I prefer to live as he taught and demonstrated in the “New” Testament. Jesus broke from the “Old” Testament’s judgmental ways and inhumane behaviors to embrace the “outcasts” (prostitutes, etc.) of his time.

To Jesus, love was an action verb. If you love someone you do not shun and ridicule them. We can leave any judging to God at the pearly gates. My path to living as a compassionate Christian is to use “What Would Jesus Do” as criteria in all things. The commandant to (actively) love my neighbor as myself is not rocket science.

As I continue to happily use Target bathrooms and spend more money there shopping in support of their open-hearted, enlightened stance, I’m confident Jesus will walk beside me smiling.