I've chronicled the experience of the mother of a transgender child who got attacked by the Ku Klux Klan in Tennessee, and that of a transgender woman who was asked to deliver a sermon at her Montana church and got a standing ovation from her congregation. The idea that Christianity is a blanket term that encompasses both of those attitudes seems ludicrous to me.

When I remember how unhappy I was in adolescence - about the fact that, though I wasn't really using the term to or for myself, I knew that I was gay - I think, "Oh, if someone then could have shown me just an hour in the life that I have now, I would have made it through all of that misery and despair just fine." The pain lay in thinking that I had a desolate future.

The strengthening of faith, I think, is the ultimate goal of organized religion altogether.

I tend to find the ecstasy hidden in ordinary joys, because I did not expect those joys to be ordinary to me.

I believe that organized religion is an ornament to the truth, and that aesthetics are part of its power.

I'd had a vaguely Jewish upbringing, but no deep connection to faith.

I believe very deeply that this beauty I call the soul is not a random occurrence. I don't know what its meaning is at some larger level, but I know that it has meaning.