"I can’t explain what kind of damage that does to an eleven-year-old’s psyche."

I can imagine, because it happened to me. Chick tracts were very popular in the mainstream Baptist churches I attended as a boy. Stunningly or not, when I review the website, many of their popular offerings from years ago are still in circulation today.

You know the ones – they depict gay people as ugly and diseased, then later as screaming in hell wishing they had repented while still alive.

They show well scrubbed church children recoiling in horror from the presence of disgusting LGBTQ people.

The tracts do one thing very well. They show people that they should feel disgusted by gay and trans people and that they should hate gay and trans people.

They pull no punches and make no apology for that.

By the time I was 12, or perhaps just about to turn 12, I can't remember exactly, when I finally realized the word gay applied to me, I was sitting in church. Listening to a very political anti-gay sermon, mental lightning struck and I knew the preacher was talking about me.

I had to bolt out of the pew, squeeze past my family and rush to the restroom to vomit out my breakfast.

Were visions of Chick tracts running through my head? Betcher ass they were.