This week it came out that at some event Trump made an off-hand joke that Pence wanted to hang all the gays. Now some probably will and may argue that it’s just a joke (a shitty one) and that it was intended not to be taken seriously, but the essence of what makes comedy good is that one can always find a nugget of truth. That’s what makes it comical. But no matter how you look at it it’s not funny. At all. 

The main reason it’s also not funny is because Pence believes that conversion therapy works. He’s a proponent for it. His picture even graced the wall of the pretend conversion camp that Jack’s son Elliot sent his son on this weeks episode of Will & Grace. 

When I was younger and confused about my identity, I quite literally made statements that all the gays should be killed. (Or get their own island. And the problem would “solve” itself. I was such a douche.) From my stilted Christian perspective, I thought that they were vile beasts destroying the world and felt that the only way to cleanse this planet was with their elimination. Some may say that this is just hyperbole or that I’m making it up but I unfortunately am not. I was filled with so much rage and hate because I believed that if I hated it enough at others it would go away in myself. 

Today my mother asked me if I knew that I was gay in Christian school. To which I told her yes, but I never would admit it. Instead every night I would pray, in tears, that god would make me normal and take away these thoughts and feelings, but it never happened. The fucked up christian part of my brain pipes up some times and says, “that’s because you didn’t want it enough” or that “I just didn’t believe enough.” At the time I did. I pretended as much as I could to be straight but it’s not me. I want to be friends with women and never see their naughty bits. 

Soon after that, my mother also began to make a statement about how we choose our sexual identity and I stopped her right there and told her that it was that wording or idea that is completely wrong. Why would anyone deliberately choose to be ostracized from their friends and family just for some gay sex? It’s ridiculous. I should have followed up her comment with a question asking when she made her choice to go after men and not women. 

When I told my husband this he said, “ it’s funny because this kind of thinking comes from religion which is the only thing that can be changed.” 

I sometimes wonder what if I had told my parents that I had wanted to go to a conversion camp, would they have sent me. It pains me to say it but I’m sure they would have. They didn’t know any better. Religion makes and keeps people stupid. And being gay eveidently goes against everything in the faith, however they’ve changed their minds about premarital sex, tattoos, liquor and smoking. 

If someone believes that faith can somehow curb your sexual desires all I can think is that person is hiding themselves in a lie. Which makes me convinced that Pence is gay. It’s because of that idea that it’s a choice that in my life I have encountered a great many married men looking for man on man action. They have their fun (because it can’t be denied) and then they beat themselves up and say “never again.” And I know because I was there once too.