Originally posted as a Facebook comment. Published with the author’s permission. Anonymous to protect the young person in the story.

Now imagine that you’re a 9 yr old CHILD trying to figure out what it is about yourself that seems a little different; and the priest you love, as you would love a family member, goes on a homosexual rant for an entire sermon that summer during Liturgy.

Then, it happens again when you are 12 yrs old. Except now you know for sure that the sermon is about people “like you.” And, it is the first time that you think about killing yourself.

As a teen at age 15, the same priest does a combo clobber sermon comparing homosexuals and pro-choice persons as one-and-the-same. Both evil. Both abominations. You leave the service angry and sick to your stomach. This is the second time that you really think about killing yourself.

If you’ve read this far, you’ve just been introduced to my daughter. She came out to us less than 18 months after that last sermon. I wish it had been sooner. As a child/teen she didn’t know, or didn’t think, she had the right to walk out & flee.

See the Fifty Years after Stonewall and Sexuality and Gender sections in our Archives.

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