Peace came to Michael Shackelford last year inside a psychiatric ward. He was 16 and his mother had just discovered his relationship with another young man. Feeling alone and frightened, and unable to imagine his future as a gay teenager in rural Oklahoma, Michael bought 10 packets of ephedrine-laced powder from the mini-mart and swallowed them all, which is how he landed at Laureate Psychiatric Clinic and Hospital, his belt and shoelaces confiscated.

At first, in group therapy, Michael was withdrawn. He'd never discussed being gay with anyone. After a few days, he uncrossed his arms and began talking. No one laughed. No one threatened him. No one said he was going to hell. On discharge day, Michael didn't want to leave. But he couldn't stay forever because real life was waiting beyond the double doors.

[...] Janice Shackelford worries about Michael's eternal salvation, but the truth is, she's embarrassed to have a gay son. She imagines the small-town speculations of those who might wonder where she went wrong as a mother. Janice grew up in Sand Springs but has told only two friends about Michael. She thinks her secret is contained until her pastor approaches her one Sunday before church. "Now, Janice," she recalls the pastor gently saying. "I'm going to talk about something this morning and I want you to know that it's not directed at you." He preaches against homosexuality and same-sex marriage. Janice sits through it, wondering how many others know.

She is in her own closet. A teacher at Michael's old high school suggests Janice find a meeting of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG). But Janice believes going would send the wrong signal to Michael that she's condoning his behavior.

The thing you have to realize is that the bashers, the pastors, the vandals - they're typically not hate-filled knuckle-draggers (though some, like Michael's main tormentor, probably are). They've just been told every damn day for twenty to thirty years that God hates gay people, and that He wants you to change them into straight people, no matter how many baseball bats it takes.

The ones who are doing the teaching are the ones who know it's false and teach it anyway to get the offerings and the political power. There are no more commies to hate, so the fags will have to do.

I live here, I grew up here, and I know these people. They're not evil. They look to religious and political leaders for guidance, and they've been failed by these hate crusades. The more who come out of the closet, the more that even people like Michael's mother are faced with the choice of believing what the TV preachers tell them or believing their own eyes. The anti-gay crusade gets more desperate by the year because these losers know that once they lose it, they're gone - they'll never get re-elected, they'll never sell books, they'll never be leaders of men and women again. There is no limit to the number of kids like Michael they will consciously and willingly destroy to preserve their power for as long as possible.

That's why, due to their afterlife beliefs, there is an extra-crispy section of Hell waiting for every last one of them, and for everyone else who hit a poor kid across the face with a Bible instead of reading it, starting with Thad Balkman of Norman for his hate-filled quest to increase his political power by oppressing God's children. He'll have plenty of eternity to commisserate wtih James Dobson, Jerry Falwell, and Jimmy "I'd kill fags and lie to God about it" Swaggart about how God must really hate God to tolerate gay people like He does.

The filters are slowly but surely breaking down, and the people of Oklahoma are seeing these evil men for who they are, despite hundreds of millions of dollars spent to keep any contrasting message from reaching anyone. It's not working. The anti-gay marriage amendment may pass in November, but it won't stop Jesus' radical message from breaking out of the deathgrip of Balkman and his ilk who try to suppress it.

People who claim Jesus' name to enforce a puritanical set of laws have done lots of damage in the past two millenia, but in the end, they never win. Never. The transforming power of Jesus and the Cross can't be contained forever by those who use it to preserve their own power. When these frauds offer their public prayers to marshal the faithful, you'd better believe they already know that God will hold them accountable for each and every Michael Shackelford they damage or destroy on their quest.

Why do you think they're so terrified? They talk as if acceptance is a war because they already know they're war criminals, and they know they've lost. They're just postponing the inevitable and taking out as many innocent people as they can until they get their spiritual instant-suicide pills perfected.

If they really believe in an eternal torment of hellfire, they're gonna have a long time to get familiar with it. Godspeed, Michael Shackelford.