Sin and I is a poetry collection that delves into the themes of identity, faith, and the complexities of the human experience from your perspective as a queer man. Why was this an important book for you to write?

It’s important because people still very often equate homophobia with God, to the point that they feel like you can’t believe in God without believing in homophobia. That pains me to witness people acting as though bigotry is some kind of sacrosanct deity on the same level as God himself. It felt vital to me to draw attention to the fact that homophobia is a part of religion (hopefully a dwindling part) but not a part of God. Religion is a human institution that exists to commune with and worship the divine, but since it’s made up of flawed human beings, it unavoidably encapsulates human failings. But people are led to believe that God shares those failings when they think that God would ostracize them and “other” them because that’s what human beings who have presented themselves as emissaries of God in one way or another are in the habit of doing. I want to make sure, at the same time, that people…LGBTQ+ people in particular…are shown also that religion isn’t JUST it’s failings…that there’s a diversity in Christianity, and that more and more, it’s those forces that have oppressed gay and trans people that are being recognized as truly being something other than God. Time after time, Jesus is proven to stand up for the people in society who are looked down upon and abused when they’re in need of and deserving of being embraced without reservation. Jesus would never stand AGAINST those people. The fact that LGBTQ+ people keep being born the way we are, and that all the various forms of attacks and abuse our community absorbs haven’t been able to “minister gayness out of existing” more or less proves that we’re right with God. It’s God fortifying our resolve to be honest about who we are, and our knowledge that this is just who we innately are no matter how many people try to convince us to lie about it is God given wisdom. Ultimately, “Thou shalt not lie” is one of the 10 commandments, but “thou shalt not be gay” or “though shalt not be non-binary” is not. So Christianity, even with all the faults in how its been lived out, is still on the record as being in favor of gay people being themselves and opposed to the lie that there’s even any other option. We could lie about it, but we don’t want to, and luckily for us, God would never want us to lie about it either. It’s very important not to cede Christianity or religion in general to the voices that use fear-mongering and bullying to argue in favor of dishonesty and oppression. Stuff like that has nothing to do with God and I believe God is hurt by and angry about that sort of thing so often being laid at His doorstep.

I appreciated the candid nature with which you told your story. What was the hardest thing for you to write about?

Some of the more graphic verses, such as in “Hunger Under Cover”, even though they’re necessary to tell the story, are challenging to employ. I want to make sure I’m being clear, for example, when I’m talking about men who are fully grown and can’t rationally admit any gayness in themselves even while they’re acting exactly according to the definition of what the word “gay” means, but I don’t want to descend into “sexing it up” just for shock value. So it’s just a challenge I try to be sure to rise to when it comes to being graphic enough to leave no doubt about the level of denial I’m depicting but not employing blunt descriptions of gay sex beyond whatever levels clarifies the message of the poem instead of distracting from it. However, when something’s been maligned and banned, like any depiction of gay sex has traditionally often been, it’s also important, in some ways, to have it be freely and openly elucidated on to the same extent that straight people’s sex lives always have been, whether the rest of us care to hear about them or not. So there’s also the aspect of not allowing myself to be censored just because certain readers might be squeamish about sexual content, especially if it’s gay. I write for adults, and sex is part of adult life, but it’s not ALL of adult life. Anytime I encounter poetry or song lyrics that either steer completely clear of sex or get hung up on JUST sex, I feel like that’s a very immature form of self expression. Sex should be addressed in love poems and other places when relevant to the themes of the poem. And since LGBTQ+ people keep getting discriminated against for reasons that ultimately are about sex…the kind of sex we’re actually having and the kinds straight people obsessively imagine us having and then look down on us for…it’s challenging in an overly onerous way for gay writers to address sexual themes in organic ways while still being tasteful, mature adults, and also having to face down the possibility that some heterosexuals who feel like their squeamishness should be deferred to will certainly vocally, excessively trash anything that depicts homosexual acts without giving them what they feel is a proper trigger warning somehow. And of course, some people think the only appropriate level to depict gay sex at is none at all. Gay people have been made responsible for straight people’s hang ups about gay sex for so long that it’s hard not to consider hetero sensitivities even when we really shouldn’t have to. So that’s difficult, for sure.

What were some ideas that were important for you to share in this collection?

In the poem “Things You Can’t Have” there’s the line about God’s OCD making everything “tic”. That detail was important to me; the idea that we have so often misappropriated and misread and misjudged God that, at this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if we have given this imperfect, infallible being mental health issues to match our own. The question of whether we can actually do harm to God when we present Him as being eaten up by human bigotries that run contrary to the fact that we’re called upon to love everyone. And then God has to keep going to greater lengths to reach us with that indispensable part of His divine truth. How frustrating that must get even to an infinitely patient being, I imagine. How can God not have some kind of visceral reaction to the petty, bigoted, small ways so many of His own followers insist on seeing Him no matter what He does?

Then in the poem “Always Within Us”, it ends with the line “You know your rights, what’s the law got to do with it?”, and that sentiment is important to get across, too: the fact that even in places where the law hasn’t caught up to the reality of human rights, gay people still absolutely DO have the right to live and love freely and safely, with full equality, even though the law may incorrectly think it has any right to outlaw that. That sort of thing has never actually been something the law has any right to ban. Laws stem from people, so to my mind, on a basic level, laws that steamroll over our fundamental autonomy render themselves null and void. Ultimately, law gets a lot wrong and when laws don’t serve certain essential functions that make things better, we have the right and maybe even the obligation to disobey those laws. Human rights are not something the law ever has the right to take away from anyone even if the law is able to get away with it for a time. It’s important to make the distinction that LGBTQ+ people aren’t just advocating equality, we’re demanding it, because it’s already ours by rights anyway.

What is one thing you hope readers take away from your poetry?

God will not hold it against you if you actually conceptualize and embrace His sweeping, radical, unflagging love for and acceptance of you. God will not create you just the way you are and then expect you to lie about being that creation. What dismays God is when we try to convince ourselves and each other that God’s love and acceptance is difficult to attain and easy to lose. God isn’t shallow and petty, and He actually knows what His purpose is for each of us being who He made it us to be. He knows why LGBTQ+ people are just as important as anyone else. He doesn’t want to be rid of us. If God had a choice between people transgressing against religion or transgressing against love, He would rather us transgress against religion. Because a love that defies human understanding is God’s whole mission statement, and religion has a track record of being so poorly lived out that people can’t even tell it was ever even supposed to be based on love in many cases. And that’s not to minimize the very real fact that a lot of religious people absolutely do live out their faith in the right way, in accordance with God’s vision, to the best of their ability. But religion has also failed God’s children in innumerable ways, and will continue failing them if we can’t acknowledge that. And when religion fails God’s children, it fails God, too. Never conform to religion at the expense of loving each other and yourselves, because that’s the same as failing to love the God who made each of us in His image. No exceptions. There’s no one God is in favor of oppressing. Oppression is hostility towards God.

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