Religion can make you suspend your better sensibilities. Its success in making the faithful fall in line, no matter how foolhearty a position appeared, was rooted in how great a role faith played in people's lives.

The only insight I could get from the Vatican at this point included shoe recommendations and where to buy one of those bad bitch dresses priests were required to wear while performing mass, if I ever decided to switch up my style.

Her version of Jesus suggested that though he may have loved me, he merely tolerated me. The mantra 'hate the sin, love the sinner' troubled me. Because if you were under the impression that being gay was inherently wrong, you were operating from the frame of mind that I was inherently wrong. You thought I was the equivalent of irregular denim bought at an outlet mall. I was nobody's clearance-ass jean. My packaging was fine.

She didn't want me to go to hell, but couldn't see that to not be wholly human might fit my own version of hell on earth.