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I examined the claims of Christianity and came to the conclusion that as a faith system it best fit the world around me and explained my personal experience better than any other option- including the rejection of religion all together.

Did your personal experience cover the whole of Church doctrine (i.e. in the case of a fundamentalist church, biblical doctrine), or was there a point where you thought, "Hey, really quite a lot of this seems to fit the world around me; let's just assume that the rest of it does"? In particular...

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Think of an episode of Star Trek where they're force to violate the Prime Directive and take people away from their homes to save them from some danger.

...did your personal experience cover this whole idea that everyone -- not just those in the middle of personal crises -- is in "danger" if they're not "saved"? Earlier on you were talking about intangible but clearly grave harm that gays were experiencing and indeed causing for others; was this idea of harm one of the things you gained personal insight into, or did it kind of come along for the ride with the rest of Christianity? It's very clear how helpful all the "God is love" part of Christianity can be to those who are down (which, with that "it's my only hope" comment, sounds like it's sometimes you), but it's never very clear to me how some of Christianity's other ideas got popular.

The harm thing is important because it represents the limit of tolerance: it shouldn't matter to anyone else what your ideas are, unless you're using those ideas to harm others. The real deadlock here seems to be that one side genuinely believes that not affording gay people equality under the law causes harm, whereas the other side genuinely believes that being supportive to them causes harm.

Peter

PS. I'll echo too the sentiment that it's really great to be able to have this discussion in such a civil manner... I hope you aren't feeling too "ganged up on", or at least not in a hostile way. I hope I'm not coming across as combative; the fundamentalist position is one I don't understand well, and I'm only being tenacious in asking you about it because I'd like to understand it better...