So I’m scanning Andrew Sullivan’s blog, and come across his latest Malkin Award nominee…

"Last June, a "500-year flood" ushered millions of gallons of water through eastern Iowa. In Cedar Rapids alone, more than 25,000 individuals were displaced in one day. Hundreds of millions of dollars in property damage was done. The Flood of 2008 is arguably the most destructive disaster that the state of Iowa has seen — at least, that is, until last Friday… Flood waters erode the soil. "Gay marriage" erodes the soul. A flood impacts for a decade. "Same-sex marriage" destroys generations. A flood draws a community together. "Homosexual marriage" tears the family apart. Communities recover from floods. The promotion of un-natural unions has an eternal consequence," – pastor Eric Schumacker, Baptist Press.

I’m 55, and single, and it’s looking now as though that is how my life will always be.  And I blame hatemongers like Schumacker for that.  The ones for whom hating gay people just isn’t enough.  The ones whose cheap bar stool hatreds have to be shared by everyone for them to feel good about themselves.  The ones who teach gay kid like the one I was once upon a time to hate themselves, just as much as their haters do, driving their knives deep into hearts only just learning what it is to feel desire, and glimpse a world of romance, trust, and tender joyful companionship.  The ones that drive a knife deep into a kid’s capacity to love themselves, let alone anyone else, and who do it, with a smile in the name of God, and once again in the name of Jesus, and then one more time in name of love.  I might have found a love of my own by now, were it not for gutter crawling human hating maggots like pastor Schumacker, who had to make me, and other human beings like me who mate to our own sex instead of the opposite, into their scapegoats for all the cheap failures of character within themselves.  We had to be monsters, so he could be righteous…and monsters aren’t allowed to love.

It isn’t that I reject the theology, although I do.  Somehow, all the little rules and regulations that come along with being a Christian as the kook pews percieve Christianity to be, don’t translate into loving your neighbor.  Or rather…love consists of sticking a little dagger with Jesus’ name engraved on it into your neighbor’s heart and praising God.  The earth was not created in six days…the rocks in the ground say different, and if God is that which created all that is, all that was, and all that will ever be, then the rock, not the word, is the testament of God, the original manuscript, God’s own handwriting.  But even the word means only what the reader says it means, and it seems, especially so when it’s telling you to love your neighbor.  Ah yes…love…   Feel the love for their gay neighbors in this life here: "Gay marriage" erodes the soul.  No.  Hate does.  And I have fought so very hard to keep it from eroding mine all my life, and especially whenever someone tries to put their Jesus dagger into my heart in the name of love. 

We love you…stab stab stab…  Can you feel our love?  Stab Stab Stab…  You may never know how hard that personal inner battle has been for me, or the cost.  I get angry.  Livid.  And I am all alone with it, with no companion of the heart to talk to, no smile to look for whenever I need reminding that life is good, and that the haters, the bigots, the human vampires who suck the love out of everything they look at aren’t important.  No hand to put into mine.  No companion of the soul to put my arms around for a little while, and feel that life is good and the world makes sense after all.  I put my head down on the pillow every night it seems, just a little bit angrier then the night before, just a little bit angrier then I thought it was humanly possible to be angry.  And I am all alone with it.  Alone with it, and the memories of all the near misses I’ve had in my life, when love seemed like it might just be possible after all, only to have that chance snatched away from me once again, in the name of love.

The promotion of un-natural unions has an eternal consequence…  But murdering another person’s ability to love, and accept love from another, apparently does not in his bible.  I would give up everything I have to have had the love of my life beside me.  I would wash dishes for the rest of my life, dig ditches, clean pigsties, live without anything but the clothes on my back to have had his smile to look at, and his hand to hold every now and then.  I would spend forever in Hell, knowing that even an eternity of pain could not touch the love I had shared once.  I could survive in Hell forever with that smile to remember, those moments spent in the arms of the one I loved.  If you don’t know what I am talking about then you have never loved and I feel sorry for you.

Homosexual marriage" tears the family apart…  All the gay children who were thrown out the door like they were so much human garbage.  All the gay sons and daughters who will go to their grave remembering the sound of their parent’s voices as they told them to burn in hell.  All the grieving parents who will go to their graves remembering how they drove their own children to suicide for the glory of God.  All the lonely people, bearing the wounds on their hearts that keep them from reaching out to another in trust, and then in love.  I dated one of these once and naively thought that if I loved him wholeheartedly I could heal that wound.  But even love can’t heal a wound that someone blames their own existence for.

Un-natural unions…  I know what Jesus would want me to do.  I have to forgive him.  I understand it.  I understand the necessity of it.  Jesus, whatever you think he was, was absolutely right about this one thing: we must love one another.  This poor world tears itself apart a little more every day with hate.  He would tell me I have to forgive this man, and all the others like him, who put all those knife marks on my heart.  And I can’t.  This world is so much poorer, and meaner, and smaller for the likes of him, and all for nothing more then so Schumacker can imagine the monster he sees every morning in the bathroom mirror is some other person, some other convenient scapegoat.  So many broken hearts, turned into someone else’s angel wings.  So many lost dreams of love and peace and joy, turned into other people’s stepping stones to heaven.  They say God never gives us a greater burden then we can bear, and some days I think that what I am being spared is that I will never know how, I will never know why, some folks can walk to heaven on the broken hopes and dreams of their neighbors with little tears of joy in their eyes.  It’s not that I reject the theology, it’s that I can’t forgive.  I just…can’t.  And that is why I am not a Christian.

Instead of loving your enemies, treat your friends a little better.
-Edgar Watson Howe 

[Edited a tad…]