Some of my earliest memories,
I just always remember feeling a bit different.
I couldn't put my finger on it at the time. I didn't know because I was so young
but there was just something.
I remember daydreaming about what it might be like to be a girl.
I remember thinking about what it might be like to dress up in the girl's clothes.
I remember cross-dressing from my earliest memories.
Earliest memories.
I had these inclinations to these things. I just didn't feel comfortable with my own body.
Sometimes, I wanted to be somebody else.
In school, I remember playing with the girls all the time at recess.
I got really good at skipping. I was probably the only grade two boy who can skip really good. (laughs)
You know, all these things adding up, the kid starts to wonder like,
You know, why don't? Maybe I don't fit in with these boys.
Maybe I'm not supposed to be with these boys. All these boys are like this and I'm like that.
I just wanted to belong.
The first time I was exposed to pornography, was around the age of 9.
Now this wouldn't be what you think of pornography today,
but just I would say lighter stuff. It was on regular television on an after-dinner program,
and I remember seeing these images on the television and they just burned into my mind immediately
and I never forgot.
And I remember trying to relive the high that I caught that moment
and I tried to relive that high in ways of exploring my sexuality for a number of years,
always re-envisioning that and trying to find replacements to that image
because I could never resee- I could never see that television program again.
So I found things like, you know, like lingerie flyers in the newspaper and things like that
and I used those sorts of materials.
And I remember one day being bored of it. I was probably again like 9 or 10 or around that age
and already being bored with it.
I just knew that I had this question now to wrestle with on my heart,
like if I'm not attracted to the ladies on the page, then
what else does it mean other than I'm gay? I must be gay.
A few years later, I'll never forget this.
I went down into a building in downtown of my city
and the short story is that
in this building, I got sexually molested
by a man.
And I was in my teens.
I just remember being scared to death.
And then it ended and I remember walking up those stairs back outside of this building
and then the sun hit me. Boom!
I just knew my life would never be the same.
Because the moment that he was molesting me, that it began, my body had a physiological reaction
and immediately again, I'm thinking, "Oh my God, I must be gay."
I mean, I look what's happening to my body right now.
I remember using gay porn and transgendered pornography
and just
saying, "I can't run anymore. I can't run from who I am. Obviously, this is who I am.
How can I escape this? This is like, all the evidence is on the table.
I mean, look what I'm doing right now, you know?
And so, that was the moment when I came out to myself again
and I said, "You know what?
This is it. You got to face this.
This is who you are."
I'll never forget that moment because what immediately followed that
was a complete loss of hope
because I realized
in my mind at the time
all my hopes of being a father and a husband one day
were gone
because if I was gay,
then I couldn't have a family, like with the female wife to have natural children,
that just wasn't possible.
How could God be so cruel to me?
What did I do ...
to--
to be THAT kid?
The kid that people talked about,
that would be the gay kid?
And be deprived of all these things that, you know, straight people get to do all the time:
get married, to have families, and stuff like that.
That was the hope that I had lost immediately.
It was such a dark place to be in.
But I also knew I was amid a journey back to my faith.
You see, I kind of wandered away for a while
and I was coming back and now the other question is
How could I fit in the Church?
Like, we all know the Church says this, this, and this about sexuality.
How on earth could I ever find a home in the Church?
So as it were, I was re-entering, you know, trying to discover how the Church could be a place for me.
I go to church on a following Sunday and I'll never forget this.
It's way up north. There's only like seven people in the church
and Father Joseph, so beautifully from the pulpit, goes on to invite us
to understand more about the topic of homosexuality.
And I was like, "What?!? What?"
Just blew my mind. I had never been invited to learn about the topic before.
And what I did, I went back home and I remember reading everything I possibly could about the topic,
like from all sides: like from Church's side to social commentary sides and all kinds of things.
I wanted to find out more about what was going on
like what the Church had to say, what people had to say
and what I saw real clearly was this:
the world was trying to get me to say, "This is who I am."
The world was trying to get me to say this is my identity,
all on account of attractions
that I'd never specifically chose to experience
and that drew me to realize
that out of my own conviction to greater self-honestly, out of my love for Christ,
I need to to see myself through the lens of Christ
as a beloved little "s" son of God,
a beloved brother of Christ.
That's who I am first and foremost.
And all the while, completely honest with myself
about the reality of the attractions that I experience.
Today, because I have continued to grow in my pursuit of truth,
I've come to know about Christ in more profound ways.
Ways that I had no idea beforehand.
I was worried I could never fit in the Catholic Church.
What I found was completely the opposite:
the Catholic Church is my home. It's where I belong. It's the last place the world taught that I should ever look
but that's where I belong and I found the love of Christ in the most profound way in the Catholic Church,
especially through the sacraments and I love that and I love him and I want
to share that love, that even if you experience same-sex attractions or transgender inclinations or anything
or there's something on your heart that might think that you're not worthy of his life,
like listen, he died with his arms outstretched for all of us.
You know, all of us. The wholeness of you, the wholeness of me.
He accepts us all.
That's what I want you to remember: It doesn't matter who you are or what journey you've been on.
You know, just like me, we could find Christ
and we could find Christ and he can just
he can fill our hearts the way that he said that he would. He promised and he does.
Ah,
praise God!