The mistake that straight people made was imposing the monogamous expectation on men. Men were never expected to be monogamous.

I waver between a cop-out agnostic and principled atheism

I don't think that gay and lesbian relationships are identical to heterosexual relationships. I do think that heterosexual weddings, or at least most of them, are sort of camp pantomimes about male and female sex roles, even if the couple is marrying as individuals and equals.

Outing is brutal and it should be reserved for brutes

every relationship you are in will fail, until one doesn't

Natural isn't something I get called a lot in Texas.

I always kind of divided the gay guys I met up into two groups when I first started coming out. There were the guys who thought there was something fundamentally wrong with them and hated themselves and were so burdened with shame and internalized homophobia. It just really paralyzed and shredded them. And then there were guys like me who thought, "I'm fine, everybody else is crazy. My church is sick and the family's crazy, but me? I'm fine."