I just look at my own life, which is full of error as all life is. I have done plenty of things that I am not proud of.

I believe that words are strong, that they can overwhelm what we fear when fear seems more awful than life is good.

I hope the Church will examine what is good and what is ill, and what good could be achieved by getting the suicidal, self-destructive, possibly carnal, or celibate to move toward this experience of love.

At the end of the day, will God be interested primarily in whether I have been kind and helped others, or in whether I was baptized and how?

When you banish the dragons you banish the heroes.

There is also somehow the idea that this gay thing is all just about indulgence in carnal pleasure. When I was twenty and felt that nobody could know I was gay, I was having sex with strangers in public parks. I don't think it was evil exactly, but it wasn't so great either. There was nobody particularly benefiting from it, except, I suppose, to the extent that it gave some pleasure to me and perhaps whomever I was with.

I spent years thinking I had to make a choice between being true to myself and being with a man and not having a family, and trying to live something of a lie and being with a woman and having children.