There are so many kinds of hate. 

But the most insidious is the kind that hides behind a smile and an open hand.

The first I knew of it was a boy in my class. 

He said something once that rubbed me wrong, so I corrected him. 

And the next day he brought his Bible to school. 

Before him, I'd only known outright disapproval, 

The kind that glared at me in the street and from across the dinner table. 

That kind made it's feeling known, and that feeling was hate. 

I didn't know how to fight fake love. 

He approached me that day with big puppy eyes, 

A pristine King James, 

And his Christ camp T-shirt, 

With a cheap tin-plated cross around his neck like proof of his divinity, 

And proceeded to wear out every possible version of the phrase, "Turn or burn."

He read me Scriptures, chose key verses, pointed out every time they used the word "sin."

But all this, he insisted, he was doing for me. 

It wasn't part of his agenda,

Or out of a desire to add me to his list of gays converted...

He was doing it because he cared. 

What was I supposed to say to that? 

How was I supposed to turn down loving support without looking like the bad guy? 

Like I said, I didn't know how to fight fake love. 

After we talked I ran to a dark corner of the auditorium and cried. 

Later I yelled at him, 

Screamed and threw a middle finger in his face, 

And the rest of the class applauded me. 

But it didn't feel like a victory. 

Something was still missing. 

He was wrong, and I knew it, but I couldn't prove it. 

It took me years to figure it out. 

And this might be the world's worst case of wit of the staircase, but buddy?

Fuck. You. 

Christianity isn't found in the faces of people like you, 

Wearing your faith on a cheap T-shirt and backing up shit-brained celebrities who parrot your bigoted bylines, 

It's found in those who do everything they can to help people, regardless of who or how they like to fuck. 

I learned from the woman in my bed that Christ is about love and forgiveness, 

The only thing you taught me is that high school is a really shitty place to make friends. 

You might love me and hate what I am, 

But "queer" is an adjective, not a noun, 

You cannot separate a personality trait from a person. 

You cannot love a body and hate the person inhabiting it. 

I don't need you to tell me how to believe, 

Because I've had a spiritual journey bigger and bolder than you ever will, 

And I wrote my own Bible with my experiences. 

When I found out the truth about myself I ran and hid for such a long time, 

Eyes closed and ears blocked in a corner, 

Whispering that it couldn't be me, I've got it all wrong,

Please, there must be some mistake. 

But time went by and my dark little cave was slowly filled with light as the burning bush caught fire in my chest, 

My scared, queer heart saying "I'm here, I exist, 

And I will love you even when nobody else does.

Know me."

So I carried it with me, even though it was heavy, 

Even though I sometimes hid it like Jacob with his hairshirt, 

Pretending to be something I wasn't just so somebody would love me.

But with you, boy, I wore it proud on my sleeve and refused to deny it, 

Because sometimes love is worth being crucified. 

You were the snake in my Garden of Eden,

But your forbidden fruit wasn't self-enlightenment as much as it was self-hatred, 

Because I taste it, bitter as black coffee when I think of people like you, 

And my hands start to shake, 

And my queer heart is pounding, 

And my breath - is stuck - in my chest, 

And if this is how it feels to die I wish I could just get it over with already!

Every word out of your mouth is another blow to my faith. 

People like you are the reason I doubt, 

When the love I worked so hard on gives way to doubt and questions, 

Questions that wouldn't exist if not for holy boys like you:

Is it better to be holy, celibate, and unhappy, 

Or in love and destined to live in sin? 

Would I rather die broken and bleeding on the street, 

Or hanging from my own ceiling fan? 

If one day a man decides it would be easier to hold me down and "fix" me, 

Instead of talking to me for a minute and finding out that I still like guys, 

Is that because of a bad choice that I made? 

What you don't understand is that this is no more under my control than the beating of my heart. 

If this was something I could change, 

Don't you think I would have by now? 

There were days when I really, really wanted to. 

Of all people, Christians should know that the right path is not necessarily the easiest. 

My faith has faltered, but it has never broken. 

I will be queer until the day I die, 

And if that is at your people's hands, so be it, 

Because so many people have already died for what they believe in. 

I don't care if you're just trying to save me - 

I don't need saving!

In my religion, happiness and security are the only things that matter, 

And we will fight like warriors for the right to feel worthy. 

My idea of Heaven is a place where any woman, man, or variation thereupon can scream their existence from the rooftops, 

A place where the friendly poison of people like you will never touch us again, 

Where you're not even a distant voice in the background. 

I don't need your Bible, I'm writing my own!

And for my first commandment? 

Mind your own fucking business.