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If you are queer, and still hold to some faith

Of whatsoever christian sect, then I

Have no desire to undermine with doubt

What must remain a precious source of strength,

And must have been most difficult to keep.

So please do not regard what I must say

As aimed at you in any sense or way.

If you are straight and christian, then the work

Of grappling with this doubt is all on you.

I do not care what soul-dark nights you search.

I will not lift the first finger thereto.

I was taught, all my life, that God was love,

So loved the world He gave His Only Son,

Infinite, Inexhaustible, and pure.

I was told, also, that He hates me: not

Me in particular, for those who taught

This catechism knew not I was gay,

But that He hated those I could not help

But one day come to count myself among.

Of course there were a thousand actuallys.

I haven't searched them all, but I have searched

Enough of them to call them all dead ends.

They all boil down to: "God does not hate you

He only hates the part of you we hate!

He only hates whatever part of you

Without which you are not yourself! If you

Would only not be you, but someone else

Who we imagine that you should have been,

Why then, you would receive the love of God!"

But rationalizations are worth naught.

There's not a one of us who does not know

The contradiction cannot be sidestepped.

They claim God does not hate us. And they act

As if God hates us. What to do with that?

Perhaps God hates us. Very well, what then?

Why, very little. If God's as they say:

Omnipotent, Eternal, in control

Of all there is to all the universe

The same way that a writer weaves the ways

Of fate and freedom for his characters

Then what is there for us to do? We are

As fully foredoomed as would satisfy

The loftiest of Calvin's self-regards.

What purpose, then, to worship such a god?

No prayers will change that I am gay. I tried

For score and sixfold years. Nor no more will

The finite prayers of finite mortals weigh

For anything against infinite hate.

If I were God, and there were some I loathed

Why, prayers from them would likewise loathsome be.

A word of dear affection that from one

You love is sweet and precious, does turn rank

And vile when it is sent by one you hate.

So in this case, it would be for the best

To live as do the beasts that perish. Love

As long as I am able. And at last

Face God and walk me backward into hell.

Perhaps the contrary is true, and God

Does not hate us. What happens to the claim

That those who us have persecuted sore--

For there is no one point of christian thought

More durable, more unanimous than

Their phobia, it is the legacy

Their faith has left on world history--

Do love Him, that they His commandments keep?

Is not the point of christianity

That those who live it faithfully become

Like God? Like sons of God? What sons are these

Who hate what God their Father hateth not?

For if God does not hate us, then the faith

That follows Him seems plainly not to work.

What purpose, then, to keep to such a faith?

To congregate with those who, if they saw

My true face, would it excommunicate?

Far better, then, to strike out to the wilds

That they call 'hell,' by which they mean 'the place

That lies outside our walls, and must therefore

Be all the same, and nothing but torment'

And go whatever way I find me there.

So. On the one hand, deity quite deaf

To pleas for mercy that I shall not send.

And on the other, faith incompetant

To know the first thing of its deity.

Perhaps Divine Omniscience sees a way

Out of this contradiction. It may be.

If so, I beg He keep it to Himself.

It is long decades past the time when it

Ought to have been presented, when it could

Have still preserved efficacy of grace,

Have done my achilean soul some good.

I have my pagan gods. I have my place

Beside them in some afterworldly wood.

I have the faith I built me to embrace

My soul as is, not as it ought to be.

Go you your made-straight way. For I am free.