For me this is painful.
I became a born again christian in my first year at University. I thought I'd found god...
Of course there was slight problem. I knew I was gay, and wondered what to do about it.
Nothing seemed to work, whatever I did, I was always gay.
Then it blew up in my face, and an incident occured at University. Shortly afterwards I walked away unable to reconcile what happened and being gay. I just wanted it all to go away and leave me alone.
Eight years later, I had the opportunity to sit down with a therapist and discuss what happened. She helped me through it, and I found an answer that made sense.
I stopped fighting being gay and came out.
My therapist was paid for by the company I worked for, who believed in gay rights. The company closed a long time ago, but they were called Digital Equipment Co. Ltd, a branch of Digital in the UK.
Yup. If religion solely informed what people did themselves, I'd have way less of an issue with it. You can't have bacon because your god says so? Carry on. I can't have bacon because your god says so? Now we have a problem.
I would likely still take some amount of issue with the way it encourages anti-empiric thought as a defense mechanism, and think that it's not good for people, bit I generally don't go around complaining about people smoking at home or overeating.