In my church here in The Cities, I have a lesbian pastor. You always see these things on the news or on the Internet when you look up things like, “What are some things about gay marriage?” and stuff like that. And you always see people protesting. “Oh, it’s against the Bible. God hates gays. Um-, you know, you’re going against God’s word.” And I think it’s a nice slap to the face to them that my pastor’s a lesbian. And I’m pretty proud to have her as a pastor.

I always go around bragging, “Yeah. You should come to my church sometime. We’re pretty great. I mean, everybody’s welcome. Our pastor’s a lesbian. She’s pretty cool.”

I mean, it’s one thing to have a woman as a pastor these days. But it’s another thing for her to be a lesbian. I just think it’s really cool that we have that, you know, around here in The Cities.

And, I don’t know. At a young age, I was kind of exposed to gay people. Around fifth grade, my friend, who’s like two years older than me or something, she came and told me, “Hey, I, I think I’m a bisexual.” And I didn’t know how to react at first. I mean, how do you react to something like that? I was young, and I didn’t really know a lot about it. It was just sort of always, like, there, but never really, like, prominent in my life. Um—. Yeah. So, I was always afraid, like, “Oh, well, what if she tries hitting on me? What do I even do?” And stuff like that.

But, you know, over the years I kind of became more accustomed to it, like, “OK, it’s a thing. That’s pretty rad. I can accept that.” And through the years, I’ve been meeting more and more people and finding out more about myself. I think I’m slipping that way, too. I feel a lot more comfortable around chicks. And guys always, like, make me nervous. I’m never really comfortable around them. And girls, I—they’re  pretty. OK. So, I guess that’s really most of what I have to say.

Back to my pastor, when we were choosing pastors, like, cause one of ours was retiring. So we were choosing, like, who our new pastor would be. And there were a few people who were like, up to plate, and my dad, he was sort of against it. He’s like, “A woman as a pastor. I don’t think she’ll do it right. And even, worse, you know, she’s a lesbian.” I mean, you always hear lots of mean words said about people like that. Like um-, I’ve heard people refer to her even behind her back as “fish breath” and “carpet licker,” and I never really appreciated that. And I would always think to myself, “You’re, you are an ill-informed uneducated swine.” And, I mean, if that’s what they want to do, and that’s how they want to live, then you should accept that.

But she’s, she’s a pretty good pastor. I like her. She makes services nice and fun, and I like the openness and, like, just how everyone is truly welcome. And everyone can just be who they are.

I participated in the Day of Silence a few weeks ago, or something. And that was pretty rad, too. I liked that, a Day of Silence to honor those who had committed suicide because they were bullied because they were gay. And I guess, yeah, I’m cool with it. I really love how it’s so greatly accepted these days. And, it’s just really—it’s a cool thing.