(Pictured above: Which is more perverse? – I’d much rather hang out with two guys wearing black rubber body suits than step inside that church.)

Over the past thirty-something years, I have attended the Gay “Pride” Parade in San Francisco (the largest such gathering of the LGBT community in the world) several times – first, as an actively “gay” participant in the “celebrations” and then as a Christian evangelist. Over the years, despite the often self-deprecating and self-destructive behavior on display, I rarely (if ever) perceived an overwhelming presence of malice. However, when I had the unfortunate experience of being in close proximity to certain Catholic priests and prelates – I was quickly overwhelmed by their palpable evil. In my opinion, the obvious excesses in the gay community emerges from a wounded place of confusion, desperation, and an overwhelming need to belong and to be loved; for example, accepting the “born gay” theory grants an immediate answer to the numerous childhood questions which haunted us: Why did I always feel different? Why did the other boys reject me? Why did I never relate to my father? Suddenly, it made sense. And our long suffering is rewarded when we find a community of men just like us. In our shared histories – the pain and trauma of the past doesn’t seem that bad or unusual. Everything that happened before is overshadowed by the euphoria from believing that we found a home – “somewhere over the rainbow.” The evil in the Catholic clergy emerges from a much darker place – not from confusion or hopelessness, but from pride.

Should Catholics celebrate Gay “Pride” at a Parade or at any other venue? Certainly not. Should Catholic priests and prelates speak out against fellow Catholics attending such events? Yes. But there is a far greater evil (than any “Pride” Parade) that goes largely unchecked and mostly unchallenged in the Catholic Church: the ongoing problem of priests and prelates and their lay subordinates who openly disseminate a somewhat unique version of LGBT propaganda. What makes their actions grossly evil – is that they do so in the name of God. From my experience, for the most part, the LGBT community is a largely irreligious lot. After a usually ineffectual upbringing in a watered-down or overly judgmental form of Christianity, many now choose to be spiritual rather than religious. Their belief in being supposedly “born gay” is a biological truth for them rather than a matter of faith. However, wicked men within the Catholic Church have been openly disseminating, at least since the 1970s with the Jesuit priest John J. McNeill, that God made certain people “gay.” Therefore, our homosexuality is not only a birthright, but something good that was ordained by God. While an undeniable amount of anger exists in the secular LGBT community against those whom they perceive as attempting to deny their identity, among those men and women who have fallen under the influence of gay-apologists priests, I have come across a whole new level of vitriol because they think that their homosexuality is not only a part of their genes, but also an indelible and integral part of their soul. To disagree with them, is to disagree with God.

A lie is a lie, yet believing in the lies of the gay community often carried with it a peculiar set of consequences. In the age of AIDS, I saw “gay” men suffer unbearably for their own recklessness. But my heart went out to them – and still does. For, like me, a number of these men arrived in the big city as wounded boys in need of a little understanding; they believed they had nowhere else to go; many were ignorant to the dangers that awaited them. In San Francisco, a local Catholic parish that should have been a beacon of understanding and truth, instead, flew the rainbow-flag and sent a yearly contingent to “Pride.” In a show of solidarity, they buried our dead when no one else would – only, these priests were partially responsible for the deaths of those same young men.

But if I had to make a choice – I would rather see a Catholic go to “Pride” than to an event sponsored by the numerous Catholic Churches in or near the gay-ghettos of San Francisco, New York, or LA. As a “gay” man, I saw the bodies and minds of once beautiful and talented young men destroyed and corrupted. Now, I have finally reached a profound level of forgiveness for those inside the LGBT community who misled us all. Although I am still alive, my health (physical and mental) was taken from me. But I cannot look back in anger. For those who deceived us – were themselves deceived – and in the 1980s and 90s, they all paid a heavy price for their collective delusion. I have a much more difficult time trying to forgive the feckless Catholic prelates who have stood by in silence as the most vulnerable members of their flock are lured away by false shepherds. They have blood on their hands.

The perversities that are on display at “Pride” are clearly evident – yet they are strangely pathetic and sad; it seems to mirror the late-phase of Madonna’s career – when the ability to shock is all we have left – and then that’s gone too.

As a “gay” man I delved into almost every conceivable fetish – at times, it was horrifying. But my fellow practitioners had traveled down the same road. In a vain effort to erase the past, we recreated the trauma. In our desperation, what we became was almost a type of burlesque or caricature. But among so-called “gay” Catholic circles there is something deliberate and truly disturbing about what they advocate and believe; for instance: “queer” saints, sacred gay sex, and even a homosexual relationship between Jesus and the apostle John. In the “gay” community, over the years, I have gotten to know, and visit with several members of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence; I genuinely like those whom I have met; while their schtick is clearly sacrilegious and insensitive to faithful Catholics, in my opinion, they lack the culpability that belongs to Catholics (primarily priests and their complicit ordinaries or superiors) who knowingly deny Catholic teachings, twist the Scripture, and profane Christ, His Mother, and the Saints. I am far more fearful of a professor at an elite “Catholic” college who tries to justify homosexuality than I will ever be of a drag queen.

I hand-out rosaries at San Francisco “Pride” – and I talk to a lot of people. Many of them are confused, but the most lost are those who have come into contact with the Catholic Church as an LGBT person. They have been deceived. Most have been told that one day – they will be able to marry a same-sex partner in the Catholic Church. Many of them see through this charade and quickly move on; they want the possibly of same-sex marriage inside a Church – right now; not in the distant future. They look with skepticism upon priests who claim: “…but you must stay in the Catholic Church, or it will never change.” Like everyone else, those who identify as LGBT – deserve to hear the truth.

When our Dear Lord Jesus Christ looks at the LGBT community – I think He might utter these words:

“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

On the contrary – this was Christ’s warning to those who would mislead others:

“It is impossible that scandals should not come. But woe to him through whom they come! It were better for him that a millstone was hanged about his neck and he cast into the sea, than that he should scandalize one of these little ones.”