Good stuff! Thanks for sharing.

Peterson, I like reading your thoughts, but I still don't get how the hell you (and others) could ever have thought that you could be un-gayed. I didn't come out until my first year of college, but I knew damn well that, if not gay, I was "different".

I grew up with religion as well and I KNOW how much they hate queers. We are the epitome of evil to them. So I don't get how y'all came STAND to be involved with organized religion.

(and yes, I believe in god, but he is MY god, not theirs)

Speaking as one of the "others," I can say two things - 1) Not all churches frame it in terms of hate for queers. My own church - though definitely following a pretty stodgy conservatism - always spoke in terms of love, and I am convinced that the people who believed that homosexuality should be changed honestly believed that "God had something better" and that we deserved to partake of that as well. 2) For those who go through the churches who do the whole fire and brimstone bit, the hate the churches spew is nothing compared to the internalized hate that gay kids learn growing up in such an environment, often without realizing they are "one of those people" until they've had years to internalize it.

15 months ago, I came out at the age of 53 to my wife of 26 years and my adult children. For forty years, I refused to be gay even though I knew the evidence. Over that time frame, I saw therapists, I had laying on of hands, I had an exorcism, I fasted and was largely abstinent. Finally, I had to admit who I am and always have been. If there was a way to stop being gay, I would no longer be gay. If being gay was a choice, I would not be gay.