your-god-is-too-small May. 2016 | Page 92

class lent credibility to the foundations of the narrative from the Religious Right. Watching national leaders contort abstract social constructs made me realize that their ridiculous insipidity made most people think that while the last hurricane, terrorist attack or tsunami was not caused by enjoining of male couples and female couples, it could have serious repercussions to the social fabric of the country. As opposed to the disingenuous politicians and media as I was, I was also touched by the sincerity of the genius and talent of persons that I found out were gay. Comic actors like David Hyde Pierce, Nigel Hawthorne, Stephen Fry, John Inman and Jim Parsons made me laugh during the most troubled times of my life. They were not only sources of “entertainment” — they helped bring of a true sense of happiness. These were sincere, genuine, wonderful people who understood the power of love through humor. It could not be that their faculty of love and happiness could be “unnatural.” If this were so, then all it meant was that our “natural” capacity for love was insufficient. The matter reached final clarity when I discovered in the writings and speeches of the late, legendary Christopher Hitchens, the simple assertion that homosexuality was wrought of the same love that heterosexuality was. It's not that homosexuality is an “equal” of heterosexuality, it is actually not even separate. It is rendered of the same essence, which is the search for love. Pursuit of Love In his memoirs, “Hitch-22,” Hitchens further clarified the competing influences in the evolution of our civilization: “... to a conflict that dominates all our lives: the endless, irreconcilable conflict between the values of Athens and Jerusalem. On the one hand, very approximately, is the world not of hedonism but of tolerance of P a g e | 92