My Life in the Slow Lane

From: Dan
To: Dad
Time: 7:15 PM
Message: I have a serious question for you. Would rather talk in person but as i’m on a train can’t do that. But then i’m not good with confrontation so maybe its better this way. Does it bother you and mum that j stays the night with me at home? Be honest.

From: Dad
To: Dan
Time: 7:19 PM
Message: It does not bother me one bit…want me to ask mum privately.. Love you…dad

From: Dan
To: Dad
Time: 7:21 PM
Message: Yes please. Sister said to me last time that j and i “showing affection” makes her uncomfortable. I still had a fever at the time so i said “i’ll see what i can do” but frankly i don’t know what to do. We held hands and that’s it. Anyway yes can u see what mum says. Might be an idea to SUBTLY warm sim that he’ll be staying on friday night. Thanks dad i love you too.

From: Dad
To: Dan
Time: 9:56 PM
Message: Mum has no problem either…maybe just cool the “affection” in front of Sister….

From: Dan
To: Dad
Time: 10:09 PM
Message: Well i’m glad you and mum are cool with it. The thing is that as i say we were quietly holding hands during the movie not fucking no the coffee table. I don’t see why i cant hold a simple hand in my own home. I’d like to know why she feels uncomfortable exactly but as i said i hate confrontation.

From: Dan
To: Dad
Time: 11:08 PM
Message: Dad i’m not tryig to be difficult, like i said i don’t really know what to do. Everyone has conflicting advice. Anyway i’m a little stoned so should probably finish this discussion later. Good night, love you. X

From: Dad
To: Dan
Time: 11:13 PM
Message: Ok….chill now and we can tail later….you should take my advice when here…anyway, go get some munchies

From: Dan
To: Dad
Time: 11:15 PM
Message: I already walked to shops for caramelo choc the only prob is that “tone down” is really subjective. So we’re going to have to define it. I need to talk to sister during the week… And i really don’t want to. Anyway i’ll deal with it later. X

Immediately after The Unpleasant Experience of Food Poisoning, Janek drove me up to Mum & Dad’s place to rest and recuperate. Despite the fact that it was coming from both ends, that I still had a fever the next day, and that I felt like death warmed up (slowly), Mum was still very pleased that I had come up for a little visit.

Anyway, on Monday as I lay on the lounge, totally zapped of energy from not eating (due to vomiting still) and not keeping down what I could eat (from the other thing), I asked Sister if she’d like to watch a TV show or two on DVD with me. We agreed on a show, she put the disk in and it loaded up. As we sat watching the main menu, I looked at her to indicate she should click “play all”. She placed the remote on the coffee table, looked me in the eye and spoke: “Um, before we do, and I don’t want to open a can of worms, but I want to talk to you about Janek.”

I was so not in the mood for this. I was still a little feverish, and totally not up for a theological battle with her. “Uh, ok…” I said at length. “Well it’s not him personally,” she hastened to add, “it’s just, well, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t show affection to each other in my presence. It makes me uncomfortable.” What the fuck!? “Ugh, Sister,” I groaned. “Well I don’t think it’s unreasonable,” she said, “it just makes me uncomfortable.” At this point I gave up, I knew there was no point fighting with her in my present condition so I narrowed my eyes, and in a tone of voice that would make even a hardened drama queen weep said, “Whatever, Sister, I’ll see what I can do. Put the fucking show on.” And that was that.

If I had been a little stronger I would have asked her exactly what it was we’d done that had made her so uncomfortable; was it the quiet hand-holding while watching TV with my parents last night (who were also hand-in-hand I should add)? Was it the way we hugged in the hallway after I had just emptied my bowels for the fifth time that night? Was it the chaste kiss on the lips (no tongue) that we shared as he was leaving? The irony is that unlike other times we’ve stayed at my parents’ place together, there was no sex whatsoever happening.

I spoke to Mum about it, and asked her if Sister had ever said anything to her about Janek and I. She said no and I told her what had been said earlier in the day. “Oh,” Mum said, “That’s a tricky one. I don’t know what to advise on this one.” “Yeh well I don’t know what to do!” I said. “I mean it’s not like we were fucking on the coffee table in front of her!” “Well if you want to be crude about it, I suppose not…” she said with a half smile on her face.

So. Sister thinks that I’ve agreed to her ridiculous mandate, and I think she’s dreaming. If I get a chance I’m going to ask her exactly what it is that makes her uncomfortable about Janek and I (apart from the simple fact of his existence at my side). See, the thing is that I recognise that she shouldn’t be made to feel uncomfortable in her own house, but she has to recognise that I will not be made to feel that my relationship with my boyfriend is inferior in my own house either.

So what now?

Janek sent me the link the video below, an anti-prop8 video (Prop 8 – The Musical) with an all star cast including John C Riley, Margaret Cho, Alison Janney, Kathy Najimy, Neil Patrick Harris and Jack Black (as Jesus).

This one is also amusing: Protect Marriage, Protect Children, Prohibit Divorce.

I have a lot of half finished posts that I’ll be uploading in the next few days; hopefully now that I am no longer food-poisoned, exam-stressed or holiday-bound, I can write a little more reguarly.

For the last three months I have been fighting an uphill battle to get the WYD sexuality forum happening. Cardinal Pell has done his level best to silence us and stop the forum. I’ve avoided venting about it on my blog because I didn’t want the two connected; I didn’t want to give Pell and his lackies any ammunition to use against us should the link be made. But now I don’t care. Now I’ve had enough of this theocratic censorship.

What has stuck out during all this is that it’s so sad that the church powers-that-be need to resort to such extreme measures to get its message across rather than letting them rest on their own merits.

First, the cardinal instructed our host to cancel the event, forcing us to find a new venue. Next, I started a group on the “official” networking site, www.xt3.com, for gay Catholic youth. Apparently it offended someone out there in xt3-land because in 48 hours it was deleted for being a “protest” group and anti-church with no warning and no explanation. I’m not that surprised, considering reports that the site has stifled debate on homosexuality in its forums. In one particular thread I read, every second post had been deleted so the entire “discussion” was just a one-sided anti-gay diatribe by the same few people.

What is the church afraid of? That its members have their own ideas? Make their own decisions? Have a grown-up discussion that might just contravene church doctrine? It seems to be the case that only conservatives and doctrinal extremists need try to participate in World Youth Day or the church. How sad is that?

On the one year anniversary of coming out to Sister, I received a letter from her… it contained a two page hand-written letter and a printout. The letter covered many topics, but the one that was most salient, considering the date, and most upsetting was this:

I have enclosed the reading which I told you about—email correspondence between Fr P [her parish priest in Melbourne] and a same-sex attracted Catholic woman—give it a read and pray about it, and maybe if there’s further questions more than answers speak to [our home parish priest].

The printout was an eleven page collection of emails, back and forth between Fr P and this woman; he explained Church teaching, she argued it, he replied to the arguments with more teachings and she replied to the extra teachings with more arguments. No resolution, no moral, just a back and forth argument between two people.

To say I was upset would be understating it in a big way. I wrote a reply to the letter that night, but I kept it aside for a few days because I didn’t want to send something off in anger and the letter was very raw. I wrote a second letter, while stoned, but decided against sending that one because it was very angry. A few days after that, I wrote the third and final reply and, feeling a little like Goldilocks (this letter is too raw, this letter is too angry, this letter is just right) I mailed it to her. Here are some excerpts of the letter I finally sent:

Hey Sister…

I got your letter on Tuesday but I couldn’t talk about it on the phone. It’s not that I don’t have things to say, it’s that I don’t know how to say them, or if I even want to say them, at least not verbally…

So here’s the thing. I thought we’d reached a détente, like an agreement to disagree or something. I know full well what you believe and you know what I think. Fr P’s emails won’t change that… I actually checked out his website and found another page of his about homosexuality so I know what he thinks about it all. Frankly I don’t see what the big deal is. I mean, why are so many Catholics hellbent on demonising, curbing and “fixing” homosexuality? What did gay people ever do to them? Is it any wonder our young gay Catholics are either leaving the church or worse still, committing suicide?…

You [and Fr P] don’t know anything about being gay, or the gay community, or the homophobia, hate and prejudice that we face each day. So it’s like all these people are talking, but they don’t know what they’re talking about…

The point of this letter is that I don’t want to fight. I don’t have the time, energy or strength. You will always win because you’re stronger than me, and I always hold back and let you [win] a little because I love you more than I hate your homophobic beliefs. I don’t think you realise the power you have over me. You’re one of a very small group whose “approval” (for want of a better word) means the world to me. Everyone else can go fuck themselves for all I care but it you that matters to me… I don’t want us to devolve into one of those siblings that never speak… but I can see it happening unless we come to some kind of accord…

This has to stop. I love you Sister. Despite what you think of me, and of what I do or believe. And I know you love me just as much as I love you. But I’m never going to be the man you want me to be, I can’t, so you’re going to have to love me as I am, for WHO I am and WHAT I am… I’m gay, Sister, just like God made me. Please try to accept that.

Te quiero,
Daniel.

It will be intersting to see what comes next.

On Wednesday night, the night after The Talk, I had dinner with the parish priest. It wasn’t as a result of The Talk, it was actually organised just before Easter. Despite some disagreements on some fairly fundamental things, homosexuality chief among them, it was a great night.

He’s known me since I was fifteen; he has this uncanny and often totally inconvenient knack for being able to look at a person and surmise what is wrong and then manage to get them to spill all. And I cannot lie to the man. True, I cannot really lie convincingly to many people, but to him it’s impossible.

When I got in the car he asked how I was. “Frazzled.” I answered. Before I knew it I told him about the previous night’s confrontation. As I said the words I thought “What the fuck are you doing!!??” but he didn’t blink. I knew that whatever doctrinal issues he may have, he’d understand where I was coming from in terms of the overwhelming sensation of being sideswiped. “You know Dan,” he said “that whatever disagreements we have you know you can just say ‘I don’t want to talk about this further’ and we’ll move on to something else and it won’t affect our friendship.”

With that caveat in mind, we went over most of the issues that I had discussed with Sister and found, to nobody’s surprise, that he agreed with her on nearly all of them, yet strangely it was nowhere as hard to talk about it with him as it was with Sister. The one disagreement between his view and hers was that Fr said that being gay in and of itself is morally neutral and that any kind of sex (straight or not) outside of marriage is wrong, whereas Sister referred to being gay as a “sickness”.

All in all he seemed to treat me much more gently than Sister, and certainly with much much more of a sense of humour about things. But then he already knew; he knew I was gay before I did. I asked him, point blank, “you knew back then didn’t you?” He replied “Yes, I strongly suspected it. And I gave you so many opportunities to confide in me but you never fucken took any of them!” I laughed. The thing is I can remember a few occasions when I’d been on the cusp of telling him, but something always got in the way to prevent it. But what’s done is done.

Ultimately it was a very cathartic evening in which I was able to get off my chest a day’s worth of frenzied, pent-up frustrations. I was going to go into a bit more detail, but there isn’t really much point… it’s the same old topics, all of which I mentioned in the post about The Talk, so you can use your imaginations.

In the last week there have been some new developments which I’ll write about tomorrow…

My nephew, Lance, was asked by his teacher to do a drawing about what he did over Easter. He drew an image of a young man being brutally bashed by four men, complete with lots of blood, while onlookers and police stood and did nothing. His caption read:

My friend is innocent. He was walking alone. He was badly hurt by four bad men who have no conscience. I am so sad that I didn’t even feel happy about Easter. My Uncle is gay, what if this was him??

The event to which he refers was the bashing of a young gay man by four cowards while onlookers watched. The police treated him like a criminal, telling him that “his kind” belonged in the park beat. The crime was never reported in the newspapers, and to my knowledge few questions have been asked and no arrests have been made.

Lance constantly floors me with his compassion and maturity. It makes my mind spin to think that a child of seven—very mature for his age, I grant you, but seven nonetheless—understands that gay people are not immoral, dirty or deviant, but deserving of the same level of respect and dignity as everyone else, when many adults don’t understand that.

Understandably he’s now very worried about my personal safety. Kate told me that he made me a special rainbow sword to keep in my pencilcase to fend off would-be attackers.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is why Lance is my hero.

The honourable Brendan Nelson, MP, federal leader of the opposition, has made public his thoughts on queer rights. He states that:

We believe … in relation to people, that families are the foundation of Australian society, I make no apology for saying that a man and a woman is a marriage and that forms a family. I don’t support gay marriage, I don’t support gay adoption and I don’t support gay IVF. But I sure as hell believe very strongly that no Australian should pay a dollar more in tax or receive a dollar less in social security by virtue of his or her sexuality and I will do everything I possibly can from opposition to see that those and other things are delivered.

Effectively he is saying:

“I believe that same-sex couples should be denied social recognition in the form of marriage, adoption of children or access to IVF; in these areas it is acceptable to discriminate on the basis of sexuality. This belies my belief that same-sex relationships are inferior to opposite-sex relationships. On the other hand, I don’t believe that there should be discrimination on the basis of sexuality in the areas of taxation or social security. This belies my belief that although same-sex relationships are inferior, it is my hope that they will be placated by this concession. Furthermore, it shows I am not homophobic, nor is my party.”

I wonder what exactly he was trying to achieve in such an incongruous statement. Yes, it is a breath of fresh air to read this coming from the leader of the liberal party after eleven dark years of having John Howard at the helm, but does he really expect it to hold any water with anyone? Who exactly was he was trying to please with such a blatant compromise?

It can’t be the Christian Right, who will criticise it for giving same-sex couples any kind of recognition, even if it is only in the legal-financial arena and not social recognition—remember that this is a group who want to raise the age of consent for male-male sex and/or reintroduce sodomy laws. It can’t be gay and lesbian lobbies or voters, who will criticise it for denying full equality to same-sex couples in the social recognition arena and family arena.

Now if this is actually what he believes then I think he’s a tool because it makes no sense to discriminate only some of the time, but at least he stands up and says so. If, on the other hand, this was contrived to make both sides happy, then it still shows he’s a tool because it just won’t work.

And so the drama continues. This is the remaining part of the converstion I had with Sister on Wednesday night. As I said in the other post, I’ve basically constructed a dialogue based on memory fragments, so this isn’t quite how it happened but it will give you the idea…

“Look, God created man and woman for each other… it’s a question of complementarity.” She said.

“Sister, honey, I don’t disagree.” He thought that perhaps he shouldn’t call her honey, since she would consider it a gay thing to do, but then he thought fuck it. “God created man and woman for each other, I totally agree, but as I was saying earlier Sister, don’t confuse normality for ‘the norm’.” He paused, then added, “You see marriage as a union designed for one man and one woman, they are the key players right?” She nodded. “I see it as love and commitment make a marriage, not a man and a woman.”

“Well yes, of course they do, but marriage is also about procreation,” she countered. He was happy she had gone down this path, in a way, because he had a smart answer. But he knew this battle would not be won using smart answers to nit-pick his way to the finish line.

“If procreation is a key element of marriage, then old people shouldn’t be allowed to marry if they’re over child-bearing age. Even younger couples who are known to be sterile shouldn’t be able to marry.”

She didn’t really have an answer to this, but he knew that in her mind he had only ‘won’ this round on a technicality.

“What shits me about the marriage debate,” he continued, “is the way everyone says it will destroy the family. I don’t understand why people don’t see that the family comes in different forms and that the nuclear family is but one of them.”

“I don’t deny that, but marriage is a special institution between a man and a woman. Gay couples are like heterosexual de facto couples.”

“But they’re not. In some ways they are, but the Human Rights Equal Opportunities Commission did a report that found fifty-eight federal laws that discriminate against same sex couples. Rudd promised to remove the discriminations as an election promise but the problem is he also appears to have promised the Christian lobby that gay marriage would not go through, yet the Marriage Act 2004 is one of the fifty-eight. Anyway the attorney general found another forty or so more so the Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby and all kinds of organisations are fighting to have them all removed.”

She mentioned at this point that sometimes discrimination is acceptable, especially when it comes to matters of conscience. She brought up the case of a Catholic adoption agency in the UK that was forced to close because denying service to gay couples was now illegal under new anti-discrimination laws.

He lay dumfounded, croaking “Do you really think it’s better to close up shop and have all these children not receiving placement than to give a child to a gay couple.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Right.”

“Lets move on shall we? There’s no point discussing politics tonight, it’s not what you came here to talk about.”

She asked him if he had ever sought counselling with the parish priest. He said no, but he was a part of a group for gay Catholics. She asked about their doctrinal beliefs, whether or not they were at odds with the Church’s teachings. He said they were and explained he had found out about them because he’d seen them marching in the Mardi Gras parade.

Her eyes widened. “You went to the Mardi Gras?”

“Yes and no… I went to a friend’s place on Oxford St and watched the parade from his balcony. So I was there, I watched the parade, but I wasn’t down on the street with all the punters. I’d never have survived; I’ve never seen so many drunken people in one place.”

“What did you think of the whole thing?”

“It was amazing… so many people, so much positive energy. And yes, lots of drugs, lots of alcohol.”

“What kind of people were there?” she asked.

“You mean who was marching?”

“Yes.”

“Well there were ten thousand people marching… Each group or float has however many marchers, sizes change, but there were community organisations, political organisations, religious ones, PFLAG and all that… just about everything.”

“There were no, like, paedophile groups marching were there?” she asked, wincing a little. He couldn’t be sure if she winced because she was thinking about paedophiles or because he looked like he was about to hit her.

“What?” he stammered, incredulous. “No, Sister, there were no paedophiles, no necrophiles, nothing like that. How dare you lump me in the same box.”

“Well you know there are groups in Scandinavia that do that sort of thing. Sorry but I’ve never been before so how am I to know.”

“Use some fucken common sense.”

The conversation moved to the way in which he had told her he is gay. She resented the fact he had done it on the phone and basically dumped it on her while she was away at the leadership camp. She told him she was angry at him for a while for doing it that way, even though she understood why he did it. He explained that in hindsight, yes, could have been handled better but he had planned on doing it in person while she was home for the weekend but by the time he had psyched myself up for it the opportunity never presented itself.

“Did it really take that much psyching up?” she asked, sounding a little offended.

“Can you blame me?” he asked, gesturing around him. “Look I was scared of telling everyone, even the ones I knew would have no issues. But when I came out to Mum & Dad I always knew they’d never kick me out or anything horrible like that, and even though I was shitting myself about telling you I knew that you’d never stop loving me. Ever.”

“Oh good. I’m glad you know that.”

She asked how their parents had taken the news.

“Good. Dad didn’t give a shit, Mum took a little longer but it’s pretty good now I guess,” he answered.

“I don’t know if Mum is as ok with it as you think she is.”

“What makes you say that?”

“I dunno, I think she feels guilty… she’s made comments about whether she caused it or not.”

“But I don’t care if she caused it. What’s done is done. I mean I believe we’re born gay anyway, but you know what I mean.” He recounted the story of his discussion with their mother in which he told her that if she did feel guilty for not picking up on it, he was over the teen turmoil so there was no need to feel guilt anymore as it was no longer an issue.

“Well that’s important that you said that to her.”

Soon after this the summit ended: “It’s late, Sister, it’s like 4am and you have to be up in three and a half hours. We’re going to have to agree to disagree on this shit. You can send me the articles you mentioned if you want, and I have one to send you, and I’ll even read them with an open mind. But like I said it took me twenty one years to work it out and I don’t want to take steps backwards. Besides, I am about to piss myself.”

The following story happened to me late last night. It is not necessarily a true account of what happened or what was said; it is my interpretation of the drug-addled, sleepy memories of last night. It is not fiction; more an amalgamation of two hours’ worth of memory fragments, interpreted into narrative form.

The phone rang in the lounge room as Dan lay reading in his bed; he’d recently started a new novel and was finding it difficult to put down. He looked at his watch and read the time: half past one in the morning. He emerged from his room and hobbled to his parents’ room, knees aflame with pain, to check the call was not the herald of some horrible emergency. Sister joined him, sitting on his parents’ bed as their mother spoke on the phone. The call was for their father, who was away; a lady in the States who has miscalculated the time difference.

He returned to his room and resumed his novel. There was a small knock on the door.

“Yes…” he called out.

“Are you awake?” the knocker asked.

“Yeh, kinda.”

The door opened and Sister entered; her demeanour tentative and unsure. “Can we talk?”

“Umm…” Dan stalled, trying to decide if he wanted to talk to her at this late hour. He glanced at his watch and saw it was nearly two o’clock. “Fuck it, what’s on your mind?”

“I’m worried about you,” she stated, sitting on the edge of his bed. “I’m worried about you and I want to talk to you about it. We have been avoiding this for nearly a year now and I really think we should discuss it.”

“Is this a gay thing?” he asked wearily, “It’s two in the morning.”

“Yes,” she answered with a nervous laugh.

Dan sighed. “Ok then, shoot,” he said as he tried to get his knees comfortable. He took some pain killers and waited for her to continue. His mind was reeling. He’d been waiting for this conversation for ten months, rehearsing it in his head. He had done reading, formed arguments.

After years of internal turmoil they all fled his head in the wake of the advancing attack.

“Well,” she began, choosing her words carefully, “I guess I’m worried about you reading those novels and watching movies and TV shows that show homosexuality as normal. I’m afraid that it’s going to normalise it for you and that you’re going to ultimately end up unhappy.”

“Right. Tell me, what do you think of it? How do you think homosexuality, or any non-hetero sexuality for that matter, fits into reality?”

She exhaled. “I think that man and woman were created by God to marry, have children etc…” She took a breath. “I don’t like the word ‘gay’ anyway—”

“Well ‘gay’ is a political distinction, I’ll give you that, it’s more than attraction or orientation… it’s an affirmation of identity.”

“That’s what worries me about you. You’re reading these books and seeing it as normal, identifying as ‘gay’ and I don’t want you lead down the wrong path. I don’t think that being gay will ultimately make you happy and I don’t want you to end up unhappy.”

“It is normal, Sister.”

“But it’s not. Same sex attraction, which I think is a better term for it, it’s…” she thought for a second, “it’s intrinsically disordered. That’s what the Church teaches.”

His heart sank.

She explained her reasoning. Catholic teaching holds that having desires for the same sex is ‘disordered’, but that the simple fact of them isn’t sinful or morally wrong. Acting on them, on the other hand, is. He listened, trying to formulate a rebuttal, but the late night and the pain killers were wreaking their havoc on his ability to form a convincing argument. He lay there, nodding, as she spoke. When she finished there was a silence.

“It’s easy for you, Sister, to tell me that same sex attraction and being gay, or not being straight for that matter, is intrinsically disordered. You’ve never lived it. You’ve never thought you were dirty or sinful or wrong or disordered.” He took a breath and steadied his voice. “All I’m saying is that it’s easy for you to right me off as disordered and accept the Church’s prevailing wisdom in this area, but let me tell you about my life growing up…”

“Ok.”

“When I was five, I remember having a crush on the male school captain. It was a childish crush, it wasn’t overly sexual but I remember looking at boys and being attracted to them.”

“Yeh, but—”

“Please let me get this out in one go. It’s not easy to talk about so I just want to get it said.” She nodded and he continued. He explained that at age five, he didn’t think it was wrong (he used air quotes around the word) or right for that matter, it just was. By the time he was in upper primary school, everyone said he was gay and they were merciless in their taunting and bullying. He was called horrible names on a daily basis and it began to chip away at his self esteem. By the time he was in high school he was still being called a faggot on the playground. She winced at the word faggot but after all these years of being called faggot, the word didn’t phase him at all.

“I didn’t realise it was that bad.” She said, quietly.

He continued that in eighth grade he had a crush on a girl and his world of internal turmoil plunged further into chaos. Then he got sick. At the time, he thought it was some divine punishment for not being ‘normal’. All this time he never could admit the possibility of being gay… but deep down he knew he wasn’t normal, not like everyone else. He went to the Church youth group camp and his health went downhill really really quickly. He didn’t understand why he felt closer to God yet got sicker and sicker, and these feelings about boys didn’t go away. He got very depressed. It started out just a black depression, like nothing mattered and nothing would ever be fixed again. He developed a crush on a friend of his, a guy, and that confused him even more. He didn’t see it as a crush at the time but the benefit of hindsight is 20/20 vision, isn’t it?

The depression deepened until he just wanted to die. Death was so much more desirable than the confusing life he found himself stuck in…abused on the outside by people at school, and on the inside by himself. It got to the point where he cut his wrists and arms to bleed the sin and dirtiness out of himself. He didn’t want to bring up these things, they are not something he enjoys discussing, but he wanted her to know how desperate he was back then…to know that he thinks about these times every time he showers and sees his scars. Her calling same sex attraction ‘intrinsically disordered’ did not affect him, but others were saying it to him at the time, and he didn’t want her to be one of these other people to someone else.

He summed up by saying that by the age of twenty-one he realised it wasn’t sinful, nor dirty, and that God loved him… he had been desperate for God’s love and acceptance throughout his teenage years and had finally gained it.

“Yes but just because God loves you doesn’t mean that everything you do is acceptable.”

“I agree.” He said. “My point is, Sister, that it’s easy for you to tell me that my sexuality is intrinsically disordered because you’ve never had to deal with discovering the hard way that it isn’t.”

At this point in the proceedings, he explained his stance: that sexuality is a God given gift to us all, that homosexuality and bisexuality are natural permutations of human sexuality (and as such are not ‘disordered’), that just because something is not the norm does not mean it is not normal, that Jesus never said anything against homosexuality in the gospels, that the Church’s teaching is damaging to so many souls and that it has fed hatemongers’ discriminations and vile actions, that love between two men or two women has the potential to be just as deep and fulfilling as that between a man and a woman, that love and commitment make a marriage not the genders of the participants.

They argued the points in terms of the Church’s doctrines; he was tired and couldn’t form very convincing arguments to counter her points.

“Look Sister, it’s late. I have a better explanation than ‘it feels good therefore it’s ok but you’re going to have to wait until I am more awake, ok?”

She agreed and changed tack.

There is more to this story, but I am exhausted. Emotionally and physically, so it will have to wait for tomorrow.