But trust me. I lived through it, and I know what I’m talking about. Evangelical Christianity is a force for darkness and evil.

Evangelical Christianity is not all of Christianity, nor does it represent the majority of faith-based thinking. Evangelical Christianity is exactly what I mean when I say ‘religion is politics’ (and it was explained in the link). These are people who have a very specific set of politics, who arbitrarily interpret specific translations of the Bible in politically-motivated ways.

There are churches that are not homophobic that use different translations and interpretations of scripture, whose members do not subscribe to the same odious set of politics as evangelicals. That is my point. If one set of Christians behaves deplorably toward the LGBTQ community, but another set is entirely accepting of and inclusive toward the LGBTQ community, complete with pastors and majorities of an individual church’s congregants drawn from the LGBTQ community, then it stands to reason that homophobia is not endemic to Christianity, or to religion as a whole.

That, and there are plenty of homophobic atheists with terrible politics.

I know that for a sure certain fact, because I grew up in it.

You are projecting your experiences with one of the most immoral brands of religion onto religion as a whole. I am personally no fan of faith-based thinking or Christianity in any form, but I am also able to concede that there are material differences between the retrograde evangelicalism you grew up in and other systems of faith-based thinking.