To my delight, I found that a great number of people in the pews could not careless to many of the mainline teachings of the church and were more interested in a genuine encounter with God, or something higher than themselves, than they were with whom people choose to love, sleep with, or with being told how to treat followers of other faith traditions, or whether or not practicing safe sex was safe morally. Greater still, I found generally that those who were attracted to the music program and choirs were more accepting even still, often with children, relatives, or they themselves gay.

To be certain, I have had my less than accepting moments. In the beginning when older churchgoers would try to set me up with their granddaughters, I grew tiresome of telling people that I was considering the priesthood and am taking necessary time to discern. Perhaps a shameful and easy answer, I did not feel like coming out on Sunday mornings after only one cup of coffee. Perhaps the most scathing incident was a letter and petition that asked for my immediate removal simply because I was a homosexual and worked with children’s. It was, in his words, an abomination, and I might turn the children into little gay, sexually perverse monsters simply by daring to breath the same air they breathed. (As a side note, that man who called for my dismissal would later ask for my forgiveness for his hateful, intolerant actions). But it was the love of first group I mentioned, and the sometimes impossible hope of the just described conversion, that kept me going.

As to practicing discretion, it became a non-issue. I found people have a way of looking into your eyes that tell you all you need to know, at least people who have come to know in some way the depths of their own selves. There exists a matured depth to their gaze that says ‘I love you just the way God made you.’ The shallower eyes, by contrast, lack that depth and level of self- awareness, being content to simply into ecclesial line, leaving their conscious in a doctrinal box underneath their canonically surveillanced bedrooms.