And yes, anger at being gay, being deprived of the world of not questioning, being deprived of and excluded from the world of power. No matter that almost all good that has happened to me (including my lover) has grown from that exclusion, human nature will want what it cannot have (Buddhism’s First Noble Truth . . .), and what I want is the comfortable sense that the world ‘belongs’ to me, even as in my heart I know the idea is preposterous. The poor and oppressed do not have to labor for the gift of understanding that the world does not ‘belong’ to them; that is the nature of their reality. To the extent that being gay has given me access to that wisdom, I am blessed.Which, as my anger makes abundantly clear, is not to say that I accept and embrace that wisdom.
Fenton Johnson, Keeping Faith: A Skeptic’s Journey (Boston/NY: Houghton Mifflin, 2003), pp. 152-3.
