I wrote a lengthy response to a blog entry I just read called “I’m Christian, unless you’re gay.” and I’ve included it below:

I just read your article, Dan, and thank you for writing it. I was raised as a presbyterian by my parents who had all the best intentions. When I was eight years old, waiting in the church library for my parents to retrieve me after sunday school I had a crisis of faith and subsequently lost it completely. Always after that it was just a mechanical pursuit, go to church, go through the motions… the callousness of children. As I grew up I was confused and kind of terrified by gay people. They weren’t anything but ‘other’ and for the most part I didn’t want to know and elected to avoid the subject as much as I could.

When puberty hit me, square in my too-short-jeans (they always seemed to be too short, because I was growing so fast) I discovered that my own sexuality was starting to develop around me. I say this in hindsight as a 36 year old gay man now, but back then, I had no concept at all about sex other than some vague ideas which entertained anyone I asked when it came to sex education. Mostly met with laughter and a shrug, it was uncomfortable for every adult I ran into. Over the years I found myself looking at other males and having feelings for them, females were there but they weren’t anything more than just people. I wanted more with the other males. I tried lots of ways to suppress and destroy what I was becoming. I would masturbate until the feelings I had went away and that was a way to cope for a while, then I thought if I found the right girl, she could save me from being gay. I tried very hard to be what I thought of as normal, and it all culminated in a really uncomfortable attempt at losing my virginity with my at-the-time girlfriend. I was so conflicted and so worked up that I never got to actually lose my virginity with her. A few days after my 18th birthday I was in college. I was online. I met another boy, also 18, another student and we started to talk. It was a few hours after that, sitting in the late-night-nobody-around student union atrium that I made my first overtly homosexual act. I reached out and laid my hand on the other boys leg and it was an incredible feeling. I finally found what I was supposed to be. When years of pain, agony, confusion, and suppression suddenly lift – it was as close to an epiphany as I think anyone can really have. Ever since then my life has felt good and right and correct. That this was what I was supposed to be. That in a very relevant way, this is how God intended me to be. That’s how it felt.

As I said, I lost my Christian faith, but I started to build another around me. Instead of buying into things I could not possibly believe (affectionately called the hocus-pocus of Christianity) I started to read. I read about Christ, about Siddharta Gautama, the first Buddha, about Moses and Mohammed. I wandered and ranged over as many religions as I could get books on – Zoroastrianism, Shinto, Wicca… you name it, I had read at least something about it. Over the years I have synthesized my own faith and it struck me that the core of almost every faith on Earth can be summed up by the Golden Rule. In so far as you would do, do as you would have others do unto you. That was all I needed. I found that every religious “teacher” was basically shaping this one rule into differently shaped and colored packages and selling that to their believers. I felt uniquely good. I knew myself, I knew what Jesus was trying to teach me (along with the others) and I knew I wasn’t wrong for my feelings. Shortly thereafter I had several other epiphanies including one which revealed my purpose in life. So I know why I’m here and what I’m supposed to do. That’s incredibly comforting.

As I grew up I was regularly exposed to a nebulous menace from the established religions. They didn’t want me, they didn’t love me, they thought I was broken. They called what I did with other men a sin and as I got older I started understanding things better and this understanding helped me avoid “Jews” and “Christians” and “Muslims” because they were toxic human beings who were uniquely unpleasant and unhealthy for me to be around. I loved that in America, with it’s secular approach to everything I could deal with people right up until I had to really know who and what they were. I didn’t come out of the closet to them, and life moved along well. Deep down I was filled with a kind of deep sadness. I knew what the teachings of Christ were, but everyone was muddled in Leviticus and completely confused about what the story of Sodom and Gemmorah was really about. It wasn’t about sex. It was about treating guests well and honorably. As I got older and my thoughts and tastes refined through education and experience I came to see modern Christians as hypocrites. I went thru an anti-Christian phase where I actively hated the shape of chuches and the people I saw spill out of them on Sunday mornings. My anger was rooted in my disbelief that people can go weekly and hear sermons of love and tolerance and then when it’s all over, they go back to their mean wretched vile little lives. It was anger at just how meaningless their faith had become. They were the clockwork drones of the Church. They went, they heard, they sang, they got all dressed up and all of that, but they never really listened. Once service was done, they went back to what they really were– Horrible human beings. From my mid-twenties thru my early thirties I actively cultivated a marvelous misanthropy. I hated my kind. I hated human beings. We were monsters. The very worst possible thing ever created. Satan doesn’t have shit on us, we’re so much better at his game than he ever was.

In the past few years I have mellowed on my misanthropy. Most people don’t really care as long as their little lives are not upset. I also got over my sadness that nobody had listened to Christ, or any of the others. We were all so busy killing, cheating, maiming, and otherwise blowing each other up – and that life trudged forward helped dissolve all my sharp edges about religion. It doesn’t matter if religion tries to make people better, they’ll be what they really want to be and life will just keep on going.

Then the gay marriage flap started. Generally I don’t care one way or another, but on a more civics-minded level all I really do care about is equality. I don’t care for tolerance, I’m not looking for love from strangers. I’m just actively interested in them keeping to their own little lives and not trying to hurt me or kill me for who and what I am. I’ve been in a loving relationship with another man for 14, soon to be 15 years. This relationship has lasted longer than my parents relationship did and longer than many straight relationships do. Yet I cannot get married. It’s fine actually. It was a shock to me just how much people don’t really care when it comes to certain things… I was hospitalized recently and the hospital, a methodist-linked hospital at that had no qualms about respecting my partners rights and even went so far as to have a lawyer handy to help me fill out medical power of attorney for the both of us. So, Hospitals don’t give a flying rip. I asked my Credit Union if my partner could have an account based on our relationship and once again, they didn’t care and were fine with it. I could fill out my last will and testament and that would set my wishes after I die, that really isn’t an issue either. Neither is the religious angle of a marriage as I would prefer to have a pagan handfastening ritual than anything else and I have a priestess who’s ready to rock-and-roll if given the word. So what does it come down to? That CONTRACT that you all (the intolerant, so don’t feel upset, if that isn’t you) don’t want me to have access to. That’s all I’m missing. I’ve got 14 years down, all of this other stuff too, everything but equality with the rest of you.

In the end, life will trudge forward. Perhaps the intolerant will die off and we’ll eventually be equals under the law. I will always hold out hope that someday Christians will wake up and listen to Christ. Maybe not be so monstrous and evil and horrible.

And as for you, Dan, and your article. You have woken up and I thank you for what you wrote. I’m sorry that so much pain and horribleness has to be in our world and that you have to be the lone voice of love and compassion that Christ was all about. I try my best to imagine that other people feel as you do and that feeling fills me with hope for the future. You seem like such a dazzling and wonderful gem, and so much a minority, so very alone in being so awake.

Gays are not monsters. We’re just people. We cry and we hurt. We hurt when you ignore your messiahs lessons about love and compassion. And we hurt the most when we can’t celebrate the people we love like you can all because you keep us under your heels. It hurts when you declare that God hates us, it hurts when you deny us basic equality. Next time you look in the mirror I hope you see yourselves for who and what you are and you weep for what you have become. Feelings are everywhere. Step lightly.