When her emerging identity as a lesbian became known, Kristy DeWall was kicked out of a conservative Christian high school and out of a conservative Christian foster home, DeWall said.

In her next foster home, she added, she was embraced - accepted and loved, as is. There, too, she said, the foster parents were conservative Christians - one Catholic and the other a nondenominational Protestant.

For all the debate through the years, Christ-followers remain conflicted.

The range of Christian responses to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender issues illuminates the faith's diversity and division rather than unity.

The United Church of Christ encourages its member churches to affirm and welcome gays. The Southern Baptist Convention expels churches for affirming them.

Come out to Pentecostal preacher Larry Taylor, at Center for Hope Ministries in south Bloomington, and expect a hug. He hasn't dealt with gay teenagers but he has ministered to gay adults.

"I'd hug him man to man, to tell him I'm not afraid," said Taylor.

"We've got to quit condemning all the time," he said of Christianity. "Pull back and love first."

That's a long, long way from accepting the situation, let alone affirming it as natural.

Taylor's church is among those that believes the Bible is true as written, inerrant, overseen during its writing by the Holy Spirit. Because that Bible, in old and new Testaments, says homosexuality is a sin, it is a sin, said Taylor, which means he puts it alongside adultery, viewing pornography and the array of non-sexual sins.

Theologically, moderate and liberal churches have room for interpretation. A liberal church may teach that the Bible is meant as a guide for living and contains truth but that every passage isn't meant to be translated for practice in society today.

But mostly mainline leadership remains at a point of indecision on gay questions.

For example, the United Methodist Church states that homosexuals are to be allowed into congregations. But in April, the United Methodist Church's General Conference rejected a proposal to remove from its book of rules a statement that homosexuality is "incompatible with Christian teachings." The issue remains under long-term study.

Most mainline denominations - Methodists among them - have stalled, rejected or decided on further study of the two hot issues: Same-sex marriage and ordination of practicing homosexuals. They are benchmarks on levels of acceptance of same-sex relations.

A decision or non-decision doesn't automatically translate to a following by clergy, congregations or individual members.

w Pope Benedict XVI has remained steadfast in denouncing homosexuality, while DignityUSA operates openly as a pro-gay Catholic group.

w The United Church of Christ is an exception in its pro-gay stances, deciding to affirm members and gay ministers and supporting gay marriage. But many United Church of Christ congregations aren't affirming and none is required to do so.

w After the recent Methodist vote, a lesbian Methodist couple defiantly held a commitment ceremony across the street from the General Conference meeting hall in Fort Worth, Texas. The Associated Press estimated that three dozen ministers attended the ceremony, though none presided.

Back in Normal, youth director Michael Pitzer, at Calvary United Methodist, would be loath to repeat the Christian cliché "love the sinner, hate the sin" when counseling a young person about sexual orientation. The phrase insults gays.

"That is their identity; they don't separate the 'sinner' from the 'sin,'" said Pitzer.

While he said he cannot condone same-sex relations, he said he also wouldn't champion an effort to change a person's stated sexual orientation.

Nor would Associate Pastor Cynthia McBride, at First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Bloomington, turn to conversion attempts. Of this she is sure: She'd tell him or her to reject promiscuity, just as she would tell a heterosexual teen.

But McBride said she would want to know more about the individual. Some teenagers have questions about their orientation and some people know with absolutely certainty, she said.

In the secular medical community, where theology and the Bible aren't consulted, the momentum is toward support of homosexuals. The American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality as a mental disorder in 1973.

Writing for the Journal of Clinical Psychology, psychologist Gerald Davidson of the University of Southern California notes that much of the effort in treating gays used to be toward changing them. He replaces the question of "can orientation be shifted?" - the answer is no, he says - with whether it should be.

But a segment of the profession believes sexual identity can and should be shifted.

Statistics are elusive for conversion therapies. Studies that do exist are met with questions, such as how many of the reported conversions are of bisexuals who are repressing the same-sex nature of their identity?

Faith tells many outside the medical professions that orientation can change.

"There's choices to make, and we can be different," said Mike Baker, pastor of the evangelical Eastview Christian Church.

Conversion advocates like Exodus International produce testimonials from "ex-gays."

But there also are testimonials from those who are sometimes called ex-"ex-gays," DeWall being one of them.

She said she tried counseling and prayer, enrolled in Lincoln Christian College and thought she might be called to an ex-gay movement like Exodus.

Now 30, living in Bloomington and working as a counselor, she considers the conversion therapies harmful - non-remedies that, for her, merely increased confusion and self-loathing.

Ultimately, she said, her freedom came through leaving the counseling, transferring to Illinois State University, coming out as a lesbian and learning to love herself as she is.

Today, she has mixed feelings about the faith.

"I believe in Christ," she said, "but it's really hard to reconcile with followers."