By Januarius Asongu, PhD, author of Holistic Resilience, Hidden Selves and Beyond Doctrine. 

As Valentine’s Day arrives, love is everywhere—on storefronts, in songs, in quiet gestures exchanged between people who have chosen one another. Yet for many LGBTQ+ believers, love still comes with a warning label. Their commitments are tolerated at best, condemned at worst, and often described by religious authorities as something less than fully human, less than fully worthy of blessing.

This tension became especially visible in the Catholic Church after Pope Francis approved Fiducia Supplicans in late 2023. The document allowed priests to offer limited, informal blessings to same-sex couples while carefully insisting that nothing in church doctrine had changed. For some, this felt like long-awaited progress. For others, it felt like an evasion. In truth, it was both.

Blessings matter. They acknowledge real people standing before religious leaders, seeking God’s presence in their lives. But blessings without belonging raise an unavoidable question: Is inclusion meant to be symbolic, or is it meant to be real?

That question extends far beyond Catholicism. Across Christian denominations—and across religions more broadly—LGBTQ+ people encounter similar patterns of exclusion. Evangelical churches expel queer members or require lifelong celibacy. Orthodox traditions deny full participation in sacramental life. In many Muslim communities, LGBTQ+ identities are framed as moral deviance or cultural contamination. Other faith traditions, too, cloak discrimination in the language of holiness, tradition, or divine order.

The theological arguments differ. The result does not.

At the center of these exclusions is a familiar claim: that same-sex love is “unnatural” or incompatible with God’s design. Yet this claim falters when measured against lived reality. LGBTQ+ couples form families, care for one another through illness, grieve losses, and remain faithful under extraordinary pressure. Their lives are not abstractions. They are moral facts.

Religious institutions already bless many forms of love that do not conform to narrow biological expectations. They celebrate marriages that will never produce children. They honor celibacy as a holy vocation. They praise lifelong companionship and sacrificial care. The problem, then, is not that LGBTQ+ love violates some universal moral principle. The problem is that it challenges long-standing systems that decide whose love counts as sacred.

Fiducia Supplicans unintentionally exposed this contradiction. By permitting blessings while denying recognition, it revealed a pastoral instinct responding to real human need, constrained by doctrines unwilling to follow that instinct to its logical conclusion. You cannot meaningfully bless what you still refuse to fully see.

This pattern repeats across faith traditions. LGBTQ+ people may be welcomed into pews but barred from leadership; invited to pray but denied the right to form recognized families. They are told they are loved by God while being excluded by God’s institutions. Inclusion becomes conditional, fragile, and easily withdrawn.

As a psychologist, I have seen what exclusion does to the human spirit. It produces shame, silence, and fragmentation—especially among people who are deeply religious and sincerely seeking to live with integrity. I have also seen what happens when communities choose affirmation instead. People heal. Families stabilize. Faith stops being a source of fear and becomes, again, a source of meaning.

This is why symbolic gestures, while important, are not enough. Blessings without equality can become a moral holding pattern—an attempt to appear compassionate without confronting deeper injustice. Real inclusion requires more: equal access to marriage, leadership, sacraments, and communal life, without euphemisms or qualifiers.

There are faith-based groups already showing what this looks like in practice. Organizations such as New Ways Ministry, alongside countless grassroots efforts across denominations and religions, have chosen accompaniment over exclusion. They listen where institutions pronounce. They walk with people whom doctrines have wounded. In doing so, they remind us that religious traditions are not static monuments, but living communities capable of growth.

Prayer has a role here—but not as an excuse for delay. We should pray for religious leaders across traditions: Christian, Muslim, Jewish, and others. Pray not that they defend old boundaries more effectively, but that they have the courage to ask whether exclusion itself has become the greater moral failure.

Valentine’s Day asks something simple and demanding: Do we believe love is meant to be rationed, or recognized? Fiducia Supplicans opened a door. The future of faith depends on whether religious communities step through it—or quietly close it again. For LGBTQ+ believers, the end point cannot be partial blessing from a distance. It must be full inclusion.

Januarius Asongu holds a PhD in Psychology and specializes in LGBTQ+ counseling. He is the author of multiple books, including Hidden Selves and Beyond Doctrine.