Butt Demons and Climate Denial
Peterson Toscano
I know a thing or two about denial. I am gay, very happily gay, but I spent seventeen years denying this reality. At age 17 I confessed to Pastor McAndrews, “I am struggling with homosexuality.” He put his hand on my shoulder and said, “In Christ you are a new creation!” I felt relieved. He then added, “Besides there is no such thing as a homosexual. All homosexuals are actually heterosexuals who are misbehaving.” I clung to his words. I was not gay. Sure I indulged in gay sex and my sexual fantasies were exclusively about men, but in my truest self, I wasn’t what I desired.
Over the next five years, in spite of the vast and ever growing evidence that I was indeed gay, I doubled-down on my denial, yet I repeatedly ran right back to gay sex and all male sexual fantasies. In an Uptown Manhattan store-front church, cluttered with books and gospel tracts, another minister, Pastor Willy, offered his theory as to why my spirit was willing but my flesh was super gay. “You are possessed by evil spirits of homosexuality.” He explained the demons must have entered me through a variety of possible doorways. “It might be a generational curse,” he suggested “An ancestor behaved badly, perhaps a great-great uncle who was a sailor. He may have had sex with men then picked up a demon. This demon got passed down through the bloodline.”
In my early 20s I began attending a weekly support group for men and women who wanted to “leave the homosexual lifestyle.” We gathered each Saturday night in Midtown Manhattan, first for a spaghetti dinner, then for an evening of Gospel singing, testimonies, and sermons. I left jazzed up for Jesus and heterosexuality, but the rest of the week I walked around the city feeling lusty for other men. I asked Joanne, the leader of the ex-gay group, for a private consultation, so she invited me up to her apartment.
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