Growing up in the black church, I had been around gays before, but we never talked about them being gay. The black church has historically functioned as if it made an oath to itself to never get rid of its own for any reason, no matter how socially unacceptable it may be. We just never talked about it. So when I entered Bible college, I came as a blank sheet of paper, never having been biblically formed about how to engage people who were same-sex-attracted. I never took a class in my conservative