Parents forcing a christian convention on me - how to keep sane?

[Norman Humann]

Well, then you're reading way too far into my statements.  I've done nothing but advocate that a 16 year-old needs to assert themselves to parents about who they truly are.  I even said explicitly that how that was done was up to the OP.

Sure, my household was only semi-religious, but that doesn't mean I didn't experience over-bearing parents that had my life planned out for me.  By the time I was sixteen, however, I had asserted myself enough that I was able to be who I wanted to be without them feeling like they had the right to tell me who I was going to be.

All I've been saying is that 16 is the age where it's time to assert who you are, and you're going to have to ruffle a few feathers to do that.

I agree with that. I was under the impression you meant that they should come out to their parents. In your earlier statement responding to his comment saying coming out as gay being a bad idea you said that being proud of who you are is not a bad idea. Those two things are not mutually exclusive. You can be proud of who you are and still decide it's better for you to hide it from your family until they don't have as much power over you. Not out of shame, but for practical reasons.

Sure, asserting who you are is important, but with devout religious parents it's not an easy or sometimes even possible thing to do. I don't know the OP's situation and I can only speak for myself, but any attempt to present beliefs contradicting those of my mother resulted in her telling me I'm wrong and lecturing me about it. It's really hard to argue with these kind of people so I chose not to discuss some things with them to save myself the negative response. But still, while it's important to assert yourself there's really not that much you can do at 16 and some people don't take kindly to disagreements. It's good to draw the line, though. I just don't think there is a universal age for that.