I've been writing about this for years. In the United States, people often have the opinion that criticizing religious belief is off limits. I profoundly disagree.

In the 1990s, my gay partner and I lined out almost half the names in our very large address book, names that represented friends, some of them very close, who died of AIDS.

I was a member of Act Up at the time, fighting to try to force our government to give a shit and prioritize fighting the epidemic.

That they did not wish to do so owed directly to religious beliefs, to elected representatives and their constituents who believed homosexuality was a sin and that gay people are less than other citizens as a consequence.

We fought the Catholic Church tooth and nail in New York City as they spent Church money to fight against safer sex education and condom distribution. They fought those life-saving measures because of their obnoxious religious beliefs.

By the way, many Catholic bishops in Africa still fight against condom distribution, even though condoms are critically necessary to stop people there dying of AIDS today.

Those bishops hold obnoxious and disgusting religious beliefs. They are doing great evil in the name of religion, and they need to be called out for it.

I'll never forget how a few months ago a woman on Medium replied to one of my stories telling me that she felt great pain because she is a Catholic and I'm criticizing her religious beliefs.

She told me that believing homosexuality is sinful is something she has a right to believe in that it doesn't make her a bad person.

I told her it makes her an evil monster, that it makes her disgusting and obnoxious. I told her if she feels pain because I criticize her disgusting religion, that's just further illustration of how cruel and evil she is.

She continues to insist that she should be free from criticism because her moral condemnation of people like me is religious and therefore off limits.

That's such bullshit.

We LGBTQ people are the moral equal of anyone on earth, and anyone who disagrees with that can kiss my ass.

Unfortunately, my opinion on that is not shared by very many people. Many (even on the progressive left) directly or indirectly suggest that religious beliefs, even when they cause great harm, should be treated with kid gloves.

Those people can kiss my ass too. And if they don't like it, I have an address book to show them.