Part One: Introduction

In January of 2023, Pope Francis of the Catholic Church gave an interview in which he called for Christians and Catholics around the world to oppose laws criminalizing homosexuality. As you can imagine, some people supported that statement, and others were outraged. 

Beyond the grabbable statement, there was a moment right after where he supposedly reaffirmed that acting upon queerness is still a sin. There seems to be some nuance that may have been lost in the translation. More may have come from the Socratic questioning he seems to have been putting himself through. Yet even through the “nuance” I’ve seen people point out, all Pope Francis did was reaffirm the Catechism of the Catholic Church. 

He is saying that gay people, by the right of our births, are people. We are deserving of respect and protection, of the joys and freedoms of life enjoyed by our cishet counterparts. Being gay is a state of being—a human condition. Yet acting upon it, he said, is a sin. That is the position of the Catholic Church.

St. Thomas Aquinas is a Catholic Ministry at the college where I completed my undergraduate studies. Several of the friends I made my freshman year found, refound, or reinvigorated their relationship with Catholicism over our four years together. 

I visited St. Thomas a few times, though never during a service, accompanying one of my friends for a variety of random reasons. I liked the space. It was a pretty building. The outside had a sleek, modern design, and it was delightfully spacious on the inside. 

I want to talk about the Sins of St. Thomas.

Part Two: There’s Something About Mary

One of my friends was a Baptist before college. We talked a lot about his interest in Catholicism. One of his family members, who was Catholic, told him how it seemed to be less judgy, politically speaking. She said there was liberation in that. What might have drawn him even more to the religion was its consistency. He liked the structure Mass promised him. He knew what to expect whenever he went to Church. 

I was happy for him that he was finding something that made him happier.

Later on in our collegiate career, I befriended a young man who was struggling with his sexuality and his religion. I knew someone else whose boyfriend, in the midst of completing some  90-day “masculinity in Christ” program that was going on through St. Thomas, broke up with him. That boyfriend, at the time, seemed to be rejecting his own sexuality.

I’m not religious. I didn’t feel entirely qualified to talk to them about the harms they were inflicting on themselves and others.

So I approached a mutual friend between us all, let’s call her… Mary. Mary was almost like an idol among some in my freshman friend group, and she definitely played a large, joyful, welcoming part in guiding them into Catholicism. 

I liked Mary well enough. We’d had fun discussions about art and doubt. She was a very odd, though bright, person. 

I approached her with my concerns. At the time, I assumed she could help the two of them from a spiritual perspective in a way that I was unequipped to do. We saw each other briefly in one of the campus cafeterias, and I asked for her help. 

When asking for it, I said something along the lines of, “I know you’re not one of the ones who think you have to be celibate to be gay and holy.”

But she corrected me. 

My assumptions based on my mostly positive feelings toward her were wrong. She already knew about their struggles. And she agreed with them, with the Church, that celibacy was the correct, holy choice for them. She would encourage it in them. She would discourage them from embracing their sexuality. From finding love.

That angered me.

Over the next day or two, I drafted a text. I wanted to call her out for being homophobic. But I am no good with confrontation. It’s not my realm of expertise by any means. I was worried, so I sent it to my formerly-Baptist friend. He helped me tone down the language. After all, no one enjoys being attacked. I’m glad he did. 

Only, he didn’t want me to send it at all. One of the things he said was, “Everyone is entitled to their opinion.”

That stuck with me. It hurt. Perhaps it wasn’t fair of me, but it put distance between him and I.  

I sent the text.

When Mary responded, she thanked me for “holding her accountable,” or something along those lines. She said we should meet up and discuss it. We scheduled a meeting for a few days later. 

I started searching for religious arguments against being gay, something I swore I wouldn’t do again after I finally came to terms with my own sexuality back in high school. I wanted to understand her position as much as possible before we talked. That would make for a better talk. I read the section of the Catechism that goes over it. I asked her if she had anything to recommend. She told me to look into Father Mike Schmitz. He was, in her words, one of the most loving and kind voices she knew. I think she heard him speak at a SEEK conference. 

So I did.

I looked him up.

Schmitz posts on a website called the Bulldog Catholic. In posts arguing against the legalization of gay marriage, he compared gay relationships to incest. His boiling down of the pro-gay argument was, “I have a sexual desire for X, so X must be good.” He puts it that way so he can engage in the bigoted classic: the slippery slope argument for why gay people are degenerates who don’t deserve the same rights as our fellow humans.

I listened to him give a talk where he went on about loving a gay person does not mean affirming that their love is good. This is because he was anti-gay. I don’t know if his views have changed. Frankly, I don’t really care to go digging to find out. For my own mental health, I can’t. I can’t spend time scrolling and listening to anti-gay bigotry out of curiosity as to whether or not the bigot has grown as a person.

He was the “loving” view, according to Mary: Someone opposed to my ability to get married, who found the potential legality of it a threat to the concepts of family, morality, and church, and who compared my ability to find love with another man to the incestuous bond that might be shared between a brother and sister. 

To his credit, he’s not the worst you can get. He doesn’t advocate for conversion therapy. I would call him Side Y.

A quick vocabulary lesson is in order. In broad strokes, there are four categories of belief about sexual orientation in Christian circles. 

The first, Side X, is your dyed-in-the-wool homophobia. Being gay is a sin. Experiencing any queer thoughts is a sin. X believes in conversion therapy. 

Take a step away, and you get the second, Side Y. Being gay in and of itself isn’t a sin, but you should either be celibate or get into a straight marriage anyway. Also, don’t identify as gay. That’s where you get all of this constant use of “those who experience/struggle with same-sex attraction.” They’ll use SSA instead of gay or queer. “You shouldn’t identify in sin,” they’ll say.

For the third, you’ll find Side B. Side B believers view gay sex and relationships are sinful. For them, all us gays ought to be celibate. Some of them think mixed-orientation marriages can be the right call instead of celibacy, but not all of them. The biggest difference between Y and B is that on Side B, you can call yourself gay. You can say you’re a gay Christian, and there’s nothing wrong with that. 

Finally, you have Side A. On Side A, you can be gay. You can get gay married. God made you that way. If you’re called to celibacy, cool. If you’re not, cool.

TL;DR: Side X is for EX-gay. Side A is for affirming. Side Y is for Y-dly terrible. And Side B is for bullshit.

The Catholic Catechism calls homosexual acts “intrinsically disordered.” It presents homosexuality as a trial. The inclination towards it is “objectively disordered.” I’m inclined to believe the official stance of the Church leans towards Y, especially given how many Catholics use the SSA acronym. Part of the Church leans toward Side B. Individual members might be A or X.

Mary, when I first met her, was Side A. By the time we had our falling out, she was a homophobe. I don’t know which flavor of homophobe she was, and I don’t particularly care. Those distinctions are mostly made to make the Bs, Xs, and Ys feel better about themselves in comparison to the others. At the end of the day, though, they’re all just homophobes.

We met at night in my car, parked at the top of the hill, overlooking a beautiful view of the city. She was late because she was playing on a nearby playground. Mary had a wonderfully childlike heart. 

We met. We joked. We sat in silence. 

Neither of us wanted to be the one to bring it up. I think we both knew that when she left my car, we would no longer be friends.

We were right.

Mary had talked to her priest before our talk. It was her way of preparing. I suppose the idea of losing a friend weighed heavily on her. Supposedly, he told her that it would be a difficult conversation, and all she could really do was listen to my pain. He knew there would be a lot of hurt.

He was right, too.

When I told her my understanding of the Catechism – that my love is wrong and, therefore, I, on some level, am wrong – she angrily insisted that my reading was incorrect. But she refused to tell me the correct reading. 

We talked a lot about my past with homophobic Christians who believed they were acting out of holy love when they injured me over and over. We discussed LGBT suicide rates and how non-affirming beliefs influence that. 

We both cried. 

We cried and cried and cried. At times, between the tears, we talked. 

It became clear to me that there was hidden advice in what the priest told her: She was to listen to my pain, but not to consider it. Not to understand it. Not to examine how her beliefs and her words contributed to that pain. She was just to listen to it. Nothing more.

Mary made it clear she would remain non-affirming and continue to believe the only holy route for LGBT people was to live in eternal singleness. I told her it’s a horrible belief to have. 

We talked about mental health. I complimented her joy; it was something I wanted to emulate. My mental health was terrible at the time, and it had been for a long while by then. She told me I could be dancing in the flower fields. I could be happy. Anyone could be. She had her own struggles with mental health, but being Catholic brought her joy. If only I were Catholic, I could be happy.

The underlying statement was never said out loud: If I stopped being gay, or at least embraced Catholic celibacy, I could be happy.

Suffering, in her mind, was something holy. To struggle, to suffer, and to deny oneself is to be close to God. It brought to mind the masculinity program those other two friends of mine were involved in. They took cold and short showers. They weren’t supposed to watch TV or be on the computer if they could help it. There were some dietary things involved. One broke up with his boyfriend as a form of self-denial. 

Ascteticism. 

Pleasure found outside of God is wrong. And suffering is holy.

She left my car. We would both occasionally talk in a group chat with our other friends. I never spoke to her directly ever again. The friendship ended. Neither of us made an effort to mend it. Every now and then, I would antagonize her and the others under her influence by making some smarky pro-gay, anti-Catholic comment in the chat. 

I no longer have any idea what’s going on in her life. Her social media has been dead for a long while. She handed our friends an email or perhaps a physical address to send her things. Of the few friends from that group I still converse with, no one ever reached out to her. She never reached out, either.

Speaking of social media…

Part Three: Prayers for Bobby

I was on friendly terms with another Catholic in my year. We didn’t really share any social circles or classes, but we ran into each other every now and then. He was dorky and excitable. I found him oddly endearing, and I always enjoyed our brief interactions. For my purposes here, let’s call him Bobby. Bobby was also friends with Mary. She seemed to attract people like him.

Bobby, much like Mary, was a rather bright person. Studious. Well-read. Generous and kind. He wasn’t nearly as wild-hearted as she was, but he had his moments of mania. Like with her, I think that drew people in. He was fun to watch.

Sometime between my talk with Mary and a year after graduating college, I can’t quite recall when, Bobby made a post on social media. It was a short status update, along the lines of, “I’m gay.” There was a bit more to the message, but I can’t recall what, and I don’t want to invent anything. 

I was happy for Bobby when I saw that. How could I not be? Coming out can be hard and scary. It’s always brave and wonderful when someone finds the courage to do it.

When I got back on later that day, he’d deleted the post. He claimed someone hacked his account. Maybe someone borrowed something he’d forgotten to log out of. I don’t know. I won’t speculate. But Bobby deleted the post, and he posted an update. He let us know he was pranked and that it was gross, which it was. No one should be outed against their will, and no one should be ascribed a sexuality that isn’t theirs. If he was hacked, that was a cruel thing for the hacker to do. 

But Bobby went a step further. He clarified that he was “a good Christian.” He said either Christian or Catholic, I can’t recall.

That stuck with me. He didn’t say he was straight. He didn’t say his sexuality was his own business. No, he called the post gross and said that he’s a good Christian as a rebuttal, as a reassurance to everyone that he would never post that. He would never be so disgusting. So un-Christlike.

Because, in his eyes, identifying as queer would be shameful. Sinful. Against God.

It made me think of Mary and the college kids she was ushering towards this self-hatred, this Side Y nonsense that claims even calling yourself gay is wrong. You “experience same-sex attraction.” “You are not gay. Being gay is wrong. Being in a gay relationship is doubly wrong. It is gross.”

When I was committing acts of self-harm as a preteen obsessed with reading homophobic arguments, that was the thought I came across the most, double entendre not intended. Being gay, they said, wasn’t just wrong. It wasn’t a malfunction. It wasn’t a trauma response. It wasn’t confusion. It was gross.

Part Four: Hallowed be His Name

“Gross.”

Of the two people I brought up to Mary, one was my age. As I gathered from mutual friends, this wasn’t the first time he’d struggled with this debate. He’d eventually make it out the other side, once again believing in himself. He’d come around to seeing that it is perfectly possible to be queer and Christian. Eventually, he did. It just took a while. And he harmed some people in the process. Such is the way of homophobia.

The other of the two was a few years younger. He was sweet, talented, and fun to be around. We liked to talk about writing. We’d make music together. He’s a good guy. For this video, let’s call him Hallowed.

I won’t share the details of Hallowed’s story. That’s his to tell, not mine. But suffice it to say, he struggled. And Mary, the “good” person that she was, was there to talk to him. The priest was there to talk to him. The Catechism was there to talk to him. 

He and I got into a fight once. We’d seen a day of theatre together. He came to support me and some other people who were performing in our own pieces. Some of Hallowed’s friends from St. Thomas were there to support a girl that we’ll call Joan. After he left, one of the pieces was about being trans. I sat behind those girls from St. Thomas. I don’t remember the details vividly, but I know they laughed and giggled. They whispered about it. 

It was a good piece in both the writing and acting, but it wasn’t funny. A friend and I knew they were St. Thomas girls. But we weren’t confident in our interpretations until we talked after the show. It angered us both. How dare they be so cruel? How dare St. Thomas continue to export cruelty? 

In our anger, we called up Hallowed.

In a way, he was a strand-in. It was he, not those snickering girls, whom we had access to, whom we could complain to. And so we did.

On some levels, I regret that night. On others, it had to happen. 

Hallowed promised to talk to the girls. He assumed it was a misunderstanding, but would check for us. Either way, he’d mention theatre etiquette to them. They eventually apologized, I believe, though for what I don’t recall.

During the talk with Hallowed, we ranted about St. Thomas. We complained about their non-affirming ways toward both gay and trans people. We told him that wasn’t love. They were hurting him. 

I think, in some ways, it was too much. It was too blunt. It was cruel. It was a hard conversation. Everyone said harsh things. We all hurt each other. 

While we talked, he defended the idea of St. Thomas’s love. Being non-affirming could be loving, he insisted. He had to believe that, because people important to him were that way. He said that his Catholic friends, his St. Thomas friends, might have found parts of him disgusting, but they still loved him. 

He said they found parts of him disgusting. Parts. The gay parts. The queerness. His ability to love and form relationships. They made it clear to him they found that “gross.”

And he called their disgust, “Love.”

Bobby called it a disgusting lie. Hallowed said those who portended to walk with him found his gayness disgusting. 

Maybe it was a St. Thomas thing. 

Maybe calling the “act” intrinsically disordered led to a view of the person as separable, as a thing to be chopped into pieces to be easier to swallow and discard. 

When you hate the sin but love the sinner, you can only ever end up hating both.

Part Five: The Side B of It All

There’s this trend among homophobes, transphobes, and racists where they simply hate to be called what they are. They will use their moral judgment to pass their hatred, but they cannot stand to be judged in turn. Calling someone a homophobe is calling them wrong. Bigoted. Cruel. They don’t mind people thinking that they’re wrong, but being seen as anything but loving is a horrid blow that must not be allowed. 

We tend not to be able to see our own cruelty. We cannot swallow being evil. So we play semantics. “I am not scared of gay people,” they will say, “so I do not have a phobia.” That person knows what homophobia means. They know they’re being obtuse. But they have to be. Because otherwise they will have to accept a label that paints them as cruel, and that would be intolerable. “I do not hate gay people; I think being gay is wrong. Homophobia is hate/fear/disgust. I love gay people. So I tell them the ‘truth.’”

My friend said people are entitled to their opinions.

Now and then, I’ll go on Twitter, and I’ll search up “Side B Christian.” Most people who identify as Side B are queer, and they’ll readily tell you that. They are gay. They did not choose to be gay. They have no belief that one can be ex-gay, and they oppose conversion therapy. They accept queer identity and push for a certain level of acceptance amongst their religious, non-affirming fellows.

The true crux of Side B theology is their belief in a traditional sexual ethic. In other words, gay sex is wrong. Gay people are called to celibacy by the nature of their existence, not through any self-discernment. Some will allow for a chaste partnership. Some will not. Some believe that some gay people will, rather than celibacy, be called to enter so-called mixed-orientation marriages. Those who believe in and push mixed-orientation marriages as viable, loving options for gay people, as the only possibility for loving romantic and/or sexual relationships for gay people, are conversion therapists by another name. They are ex-gay ministers who can’t bear to be looked at with the same scorn we give their more honest counterparts. 

If you tell a gay man that they can only marry a woman, you are a terrible homophobe. You may call yourself Side B, but you are Side X, and I will treat you with the scorn that warrants.

There is a split amongst Side B people. Some feel a personal calling to celibacy based on their understanding of scripture, and some believe that all gay people are called to celibacy based on scripture. I don’t personally understand the underlying philosophical difference that causes that schism, but I think it more or less boils down to political advocacy and whether or not you’re okay with secular people getting into relationships or getting married and the like. The former think gay marriage is fine for a secular culture. The latter do not.

The uniting belief, though, is that gay sex is sinful.

Side B people often receive a lot of hate. There are those of the Church who are more conservative-minded and view them as disgusting queers, same as the rest of us, even if they don’t have sex or get into relationships. Many of them have a lack of support in their journey with celibacy. It can be difficult. Then, on the other side, you have Side A and secular affirming people calling these Side B people self-hating homophobes.

When the Church of England announced its rather limited movement towards acceptance of queer people, some Side B Christians cried out. If their church becomes affirming, then what did they suffer for? If they allow marriage, then their call to celibacy will be challenged. They’ll face temptation. They feel, in a way, abandoned. 

I think those who felt that way faced a crisis more terrifying than some debate over sexuality: If their church embraces and accepts queer joy and love, then there was no reason for them to suffer. If they don’t feel the personal call to celibacy in an affirming congregation, then maybe they were never called to it. Maybe it was time wasted. Maybe the suffering was not holy struggle. It was only pain. And if it was only pain, then suffering isn’t holy. Joy is.

What are you meant to do when you learn that joy and love were always the better options?

Rather than deal with that pain and crisis of faith, they would rather stop queer acceptance. Call us all to celibacy. Fight against our rights to marriage and adoption. Fight against pride and affirmation. At the same time, they’d fight more extreme versions of homophobia. You might catch on that I said more.

Side B theology is a deeply homophobic ideology. 

If you are Side B, even if you are queer, you are homophobic. If you believe you are called to celibacy, not because that is your personal discernment, but because scripture commands it of you, then your beliefs are homophobic. You did not make a free choice. You were coerced by a homophobic belief system that views you and your love as lesser. 

No amount of sweet words or avoidance of the f-slur can take away that bitter taste. 

I’m not making a theological argument. I will not have one with you. But the core of your beliefs about queer identity and behavior is unaffirming homophobia.

Hate the sin, love the sinner only results in hating both, regardless of whether or not you have blinded yourself to your hatred.

Side B theology, like all un-affirming ideology, leads to the only place it can: shame. Dune got it wrong. Shame is the mind killer. 

Shame is what builds the closet, and it is what hangs the noose. The shame engraved upon queer people by the unaffirming is what causes high rates of mental illnesses and suicide attempts. 

What are the fruits of your teaching? Side B, Side Y, and Side X can only bear a single fruit. That fruit is self-hatred. It is a corpse hanging from a tree.

Homophobia and transphobia are wrong. They are deadly. They are shameful.

The Catechism calls for celibacy. The Catholic Church calls for celibacy. St. Thomas calls for celibacy. Mary called for it. And in their teachings were the seeds of shame felt by Hallowed. They preached the disgust expressed by his friends and by Bobby. 

It is wrong to spread the pain they spread. It is a sin.

The Pope called for the decriminalization of homosexuality. That’s great. That is a win.

Yet His Church still bears bad fruit. And he tended to the poisoned garden.

Calling same-sex sexual activity a sin, even in loving marriages, is a teaching that walks people to the stakes, and it has them set themselves on fire. While they burn, the Church and its asceticism say, “To suffer is to be closer to God.”

Part Six: Joan d’Arc

Joan was another one of those people filled with the sort of joy that makes you stop and wonder if religion might be worth looking into. She had a sort of graceful innocence about her. Her smile never failed to lighten my day. We worked together a few times. She was smart, talented, a hard worker, and a pleasure to be around. 

For a long time, I quite liked her. When we first met, she was intimidated by me. That went away when we got to know each other. In a way, we were friends.

Joan went to St. Thomas, of course. The girls who snickered at the solo show about being trans were her friends. They were there to support her. If they hadn’t come, Hallowed and I wouldn’t have hurt each other.

She never openly talked about politics, but she hung out with people in MAGA hats. I didn’t want to draw conclusions based on that. She never said anything to me, after all, and I was clearly gay. It was well known. I thought, perhaps, in her innocence, she was simply being. She was sociable and kind. Maybe this was an extension of that. I didn’t want to ascribe any beliefs to her. 

That was, in a way, quite belittling of me. Of course, she had agency. Of course, she was aware of what she was doing, who she was accepting, and who she was rejecting. She was smart, after all.

After I graduated, I texted back and forth with Joan a couple of times. It was always brief. We talked about life, checked in on each other, and chatted about art. Any comments I made about my love life would be entirely ignored.

Before I graduated, I wrote, composed, and directed a theatre for young audiences musical called Three Wolves Howling. I wrote Three Wolves because I wanted to put on a musical, and I wanted it to be queer. I didn’t know about New Play Exchange at the time, and the sites I did know didn’t have anything that matched what I wanted. So I wrote my own musical.

And we put it on. 

The script was available before auditions. I’d talked about it with people. Everyone knew it was gay. Two wolf siblings set out to restore a wolf prince to his forest throne. When they first meet him, he’s asleep. He’s woken up by the brother delivering onto him a True Love’s Kiss. At the end, they’re married and have adopted a family. 

She auditioned. I almost cast her.

She never said anything to me about it. As far as I knew, there was no homophobic murmuring or protest amongst anyone. This was in 2019. I wonder if people now would be labeling me a groomer for making that show. Would there be complaints made to the university? Would people send me hate mail?

So, fool be to me, I didn’t think she was homophobic. Perhaps it was wishful thinking. I thought it odd she glossed over anytime I brought up my love life, but maybe she was just… I don’t know.

After I graduated, I heard of several instances of bigotry that came from Joan. I won’t share the details. There’s no point in that. Those stories are other people’s to tell. 

But it turned out she was homophobic. She was against gay marriage, gay expression, and trans identity. From what I gathered, she was perhaps the most St. Thomased of all the people I’d met in college. 

She decided to be bold in her faith and beliefs after I graduated. That meant she harmed many people. I haven’t talked to her in a long time. I don’t foresee that ever changing.

It was ironic, I think, to proudly label oneself pro-life whilst spreading an ideology that results in queer graves.

Part Seven: The Sin

I’m going to end on dramatic terms. I am a man of the theatre, after all. That is the charge that will be levied at me for these statements, so I’m going to go ahead and agree with them. I am being dramatic. This is a form of theatre. Life is performance. 

That does not mean it is not true.

The sin of St. Thomas, of Joan and Bobby and Mary, of the Pope and Sides X, Y, and B, is that of murder.

May they repent.

Bibliography

Catechism of the Catholic Church. https://usccb.cld.bz/Catechism-of-the-Catholic-Church.

Schmitz, Mike. “Defining Homosexuality.” bulldogCatholic, October 17, 2015. https://bulldogcatholic.org/defining-homosexuality/.

Schmitz, Mike. “Why Don’t Same-Sex Couples Have a Right to Marry?” bulldogCatholic, November 14, 2015. https://bulldogcatholic.org/why-dont-same-sex-couples-have-a-right-to-marry/.

Winfield, Nicole. “The AP Interview: Pope Says Homosexuality Not a Crime | AP News.” AP News, January 25, 2023. https://apnews.com/article/pope-francis-gay-rights-ap-interview-1359756ae22f27f87c1d4d6b9c8ce212.