It’s an epic mindfuck to tell children that their desire to connect with other people owes to malevolent spirit beings stalking them.

But the whole human race has been plagued by this theological invention, and I wonder if gay people weren’t primarily helpful in dismantling it. I think of Michelangelo, whose early “Torment of Saint Anthony” reminds me of your nightmare, as shifting history with celebrations of human eroticism.

I’d like to reflect on gay artists and speakers as working on the larger problem of human self-loathing, and articulating a vision of the human as free and beautiful.

This becomes Pride, a theological statement that it’s good to be human and that we are created purposefully, and belong. It seems natural that God might ask 2% of the population to remind the lower 98 of these basic facts.