I was on the road to reconciling my gayness with the hate spewed from the bully pulpits of my childhood ... I learned early on that questioning religion garnered two abrupt responses: shaming and/or banishment. I had already been shamed and banished for asking a question about the reach of God's love in Sunday school class when I was ten, and wearing a green afro wig and singing an Aretha Franklin tune at Kennywood park when I was fifteen, so there you have it -- no love lost. I actually enjoyed the unspoken exile. I count myself as one of the lucky ones, one of the ones who broke free from what very often can be a life's worth of debilitating stagnation. I've seen it. I felt it happening to me. The Christian othering, the soul-salvation bullies. The shame that keeps one bound up in a prison of their own mind for a lifetime. The hypocrisy of church folks was dangerous and deadly to me, and I could see that fact plain as day.
-- Billy Porter, Unprotected, p. 101
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