Orlando

There are so many atrocities every day it seems, but this gay nightclub shooting in Orlando has left me deeply saddened in a way some others do not.  Of course, partly because I am gay and witnessing such powerful hatred of gays, by an individual male, by an adherent to a religious system that certain teaches vilification of gay persons, by the son of a father who can say that it was not a reaction to his religious teaching but because his had seen two men kissing in public and feared for his own baby son who witnessed this.  But I am deeply saddened at the horror of those last moments of shooting and violence in a place, one of the few places, where gays might think they are safe.  But then I suppose those African-Americans at worship in their church in South Carolina must have imagined that their place was a sanctuary.  I am sad for the denatured life I have led where I have walked on the edge of a gay identity, spent unnecessary hours of companionship with uncomprehending straight people for the sake of my career, my children, my wife, oh, yes, all the complications I brought on myself made me a hider not someone who walked in the light.  Yesterday by some kind of cosmic coincidence because my husband was out of town and I had the car all to myself I went to the major Episcopalian Church in Sarasota as a kind of eerie misty remembrance of things past.  When I was a boy I carried the cross, a position known as the crucifer, in the Sunday service, I forget which one, and at another, I guess, the eleven o'clock Communion service, I was the acolyte, almost every Sunday.  I mouthed along yesterday knowing the entire service by heart, and coming up short at the Prayer of General Confession. I could not do it back then in a private meeting with our pastor after he had told my mother that I was a "homosexual" and notorious in the small town for being one.  He wanted me to get down on my knees to pray to god for forgiveness.  But even at sixteen, often mocked and reviled by the tough boys of the town who on the other hand were keen to sample what I could offer them, I knew that I was not committing a sin, I didn't care who thought otherwise.  I left the pastor's study and left the church and that was that, except for my two weddings, my first wife's funeral, and so on and so forth.  Now in my dotage I have the great pleasure and satisfaction following along as my reverend daughter delivers her sermons and conducts her services and reminds me of the goodness of God.  The minister yesterday in Sarasota preached a sermon on our need to have faith that God will forgive us our sins, the true meaning of Christ on the Cross. I am not so sure that I have sinned, or that I need forgiveness.   The Orlando episode reminded me of why the organized religions of the world are forces for evil, threats to the common good, for their very source of power derives from hate--Catholics for Jews being an obvious historical fact, Muslims for infidels certainly a powerful active force in our own time; one could go on and on.  Love is in pretty short supply in religion.