Raj, I can’t even pretend to understand religious condemnation of LGBTQ people.

All I can do is keep telling stories. All I can do is keep being real.

We know that LGBTQ people are simply ordinary but minority variants of human beings. Nothing about us is harmful or damaging. We’re guilty of nothing but being different from most humans.

Yet religious leaders continue to use Bronze Age and early Iron Age texts to justify their stigmatization of us.

You see it right here on Medium. In comment section after comment section, conservative religious people like Catholics and evangelical Christians practically froth at the mouth as they quote from texts of ancient religious condemnation.

They’re often quite public about it.

There’s something about religion and faith that particularly disposes people to evil. I suppose it’s that since they’re convinced that a magic being in the sky hands down all morality, that they aren’t bound by common decency and humanity.

Or maybe that isn’t it. I don’t know.

I do know for sure that organized religious faith in the United States is a powerful force that works to preserve and perpetuate persecution of innocent queer people.

And this boy paid the price. With his life.

Jim