I am always bitterly amused when I hear people say that homosexuality is a choice. I could only imagine, as a prepubescent boy, the relief I would feel when nature finally flipped that hormone switch, when at last I would begin to slaver and tremble over pictures of boobs in dog-eared copies of Playboy, stashed lovingly under my bed. Truly, I looked forward to it.

My childish, playtime fantasy was freighted with a strange power. This was more than playing Batman and punching invisible enemies in the stomach. I wanted in a deeper, more slavishly yearning way to be Sinbad the Sailor.

I have a peculiar memory which must date to when I was 10 or 11 years old. I am sitting daydreaming one afternoon, and it occurs to me that I will never get married. Simultaneously with this realization comes the recognition that I have always understood that marriage was unlikely for me, and that today is merely the first time I have said so, to myself, "aloud."

As a former hottie I didn't know I was continuing the lineage that was already cast before me.

I admit that I was totally clueless until I got hit with the gay stick at age 15. I knew I was different. I knew I didn't want to wear dresses or get married, but I didn't get the memo that the way I liked boys wasn't the way that other girls my age felt.

Chick-fil-A is a direct insult, and treating it as anything else requires that gay people either in some way say they're not gay, or consent to a belief that heterosexuals have the right to insult us.

Today you'll see in any bar, gay or straight, young people of every sexual persuasion being themselves with friends who may or may not share their orientation. I can't help but wonder if we've lost something, namely the joy of walking into a gay bar as the member of an exclusive club.

At one point in my life, being gay might have contributed to the bitterness I had toward religion and the religious, but now it informs my desire to be deeply and personally invested in active religious pluralism.