I believe that Jesus Christ died for me. Neither sarcasm nor science will change this sanctity in me. I believe that Jesus Christ hung and bled and life (not pride) crept from his side and though the church continues to crucify men like me and denounce my lifestyle as being a by-product of paedophilia, pederasty or some other pillar of perversion, that one day I will see my father who art in Heaven (not the superclub in Charing Cross but the place where Jesus Christ ascended to after he was crucified on Calvary's cross).
I believe that the strait and narrow (way) is not solely available to the straight and narrow (minded). I believe my sins will be forgiven but since sexuality is not a sin it does not require the father's forgiveness. I believe I will be delivered from the tormentors who terrorise men like me with their terrible tales of eternal damnation. I believe my own thoughts will always torment me deep down inside far more than any shallow outsider will. I believe, that despite my appetite for the unlearning and undoing that make us all wise, there is a side to me that will always hunger for self-destruction because I see safety when I take such risks. I believe, though earthly faith has left me fatherless, being gay does not mean I must be God-less. I believe that prayer changes all things but that there are those things - like the simplicity and severity of my mother's love for me and my father's hardness - that will never follow the signposts that point in the direction of change. I believe homosexuality is neither a choice nor some congenital condition that can be cured through constant prayer. I believe that faithless men have made every effort to steal my faith for themselves and failed. I believe faith is fair but the faithful often aren't. I believe that favour is deceitful, that beauty is vain and that pain is neither. I believe pain is beautiful.
The beautiful are regularly defined by other people's ugliness. The beauty of pain is a terror. The height of some sacred evil. It scares and saddens me synonymously. It requires endless effort. It carries within its walls no threat of extinction only evolution. It is not as poignant as people suggest, this pained beauty. It is a punishment. To preserve it is to persecute oneself, for this painful beauty - like the brilliance all beautiful boys are born with - never fades, but it is not a beauty that can save. It is a beauty that can only slay. Unlike physical beauty it does not die with each passing day. This beauty is a stubborn and childish stain. Some unholy ruin.
I believe the Passion and persecution of Jesus Christ were episodes of painful beauty that religion has made only nightmarish and ugly to scare our souls into salvation. I believe The Holy Bible, like any great work of literature, is a beautifully written combination of fable, fantasy, fiction and fact that has been so consistently manipulated through time and translation that it has unintentionally become (in the original sense of the word) a beautiful pervert, turning people "aside from a right [religious] belief to a false or erroneous one." I believe that as long as man continues to create God in his own image, for his own greed and his own gain this beautiful and brutal perversion of the human mind towards homosexuals and homosexuality will continue in the modern world. I believe, though many consider me and my musings on faith nothing more than an eloquent corruption of Christ's love, that He loves and believes in me.
Whether deafening ignorance or divine inspiration; in spite of personal experience and all evidence that tells me to do otherwise, I believe.
Only God knows why.