It usually starts with a name. Your nephew, your college roommate, the woman who sang beside you in the choir for ten years. Or it starts with your own body and the slow realization that the life the church describes might mean decades of going home to an empty apartment. Either way the confusion sounds the same when you finally say it out loud: if the Bible reserves sex for the marriage of a man and a woman, what am I supposed to do with the people I love, and with my own longing to be close to someone?
The answer the sources support is both clear and demanding. Jude 3 Project holds the historic Christian sexual ethic, that sexual intimacy is reserved for the marriage of one man and one woman, and it holds that conviction together with genuine welcome. Why those two belong together is clearest in the people who have thought hardest about it: a celibate gay Christian, a biblical scholar who pastors a church, an apologist, a scientist and Jude 3 Project's founder. Starting from different places, they keep arriving at the same uncomfortable finding. When the church hands people the ethic and nothing else, it does real damage, because Scripture surrounds that ethic with deep friendship that is not sexual, an honored single life, and a God who promises a name to people who lack what others have. Many churches have quietly stopped offering any of it.
So the work ahead is less about defending a conclusion than about undoing a few assumptions that sit underneath it. The first is that the conversation begins with the position. The second is that intimacy means sex. The third is that a single life is a smaller one. The fourth is that holding a conviction means you cannot really hear someone who disagrees. Each assumption falls more easily once the one before it is gone, so the order matters. Keep a notebook if you are reading alone. If you are reading with others, agree before you start that every personal question is optional, that no one will be asked to state their orientation, sexual history or family situation, and that a named friend or relative will never be turned into a case study. If someone shares something heavy, thank them, keep it in the room and follow up privately. If anyone is being harmed at home, the National Domestic Violence Hotline is available at 1-800-799-7233. If anyone is thinking about ending their life, they can call or text 988, the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. A good counselor here is a gift, not a sign of weak faith.