Jessica Alba Quit Christian Church Over Homophobia

Jessica Alba

Actress Jessica Alba turned her back on the Christian church she attended as a teen because elders didn’t approve of her crush on a bisexual dancer.  The Sin City beauty was raised a Catholic but converted to Evangelicalism, where she quickly realised she didn’t agree with the Church’s firm stance on homosexuality and premarital sex.  The “Sin City: A Dame to Kill For” star, 33, recalled her experience in an intimate new interview with Marlow Stern of The Daily Beast.  Alba recalls upsetting her friends and leaders in the Christian youth group she was involved in as a teenager.  She reveals, “It was very twisted. I fell in love when I was 16 and had this major crush on… I guess he was a drag queen. He was bisexual and a ballerina, and this was while I was at the Atlantic Theater Company in Vermont.  We used to go to this gay club and I’d dance with him all night, four nights a week. I was so in love with him and thought, ‘There’s no way this guy’s going to hell,’ because in my church, it was, ‘Anybody who’s gay is going to hell’ and ‘Premarital sex is evil’, and I thought, ‘There’s no chance! This guy is amazing!’ So that went right out the window.”  [5] [8] When asked about criticism she encountered over playing a teen with an STD on TV series Chicago Hope, she said: “That was actually my born-again Christian friends that didn’t approve of that one, and yeah, that was my born-again Christian youth group I was in. Very twisted.” [2] Another factor that prompted her to leave Christianity was the church’s treatment of women. “Older men would hit on me, and my youth pastor said it was because I was wearing provocative clothing, when I wasn’t,” she said. “It just made me feel like if I was in any way desirable to the opposite sex, that it was my fault, and it made me ashamed of my body and of being a woman.” [6]

Alba has previously spoken out on behalf of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community. The actress reportedly appeared at the GLAAD Media Awards in Los Angeles in both 2006 and in 2009. [9]  She shared similar sentiments in a 2006 interview with Elle magazine, saying that she was bothered by the church’s stance on both premarital sex and homosexuality, as well as the lack of strong female role models in the Bible. [12] “I thought it was a nice guide,” she said at the time. “But it certainly wasn’t how I was going to live my life.” [3]  Alba has previously stated that her experience in both churches led her to abandon organised religion all together in favour of a more spiritual experience. [4]