DO PARALLEL LINES MEET? There’s a scene in David Lodge’s novel How Far Can You Go?–published in this country, unfortunately, as Souls and Bodies–in which a gay character and a straight character confront one another, and have a conversation in which neither one of them ever allows the subtext to become text. Because the subtext is, At least you don’t have to–!

I thought of that scene last week, when I heard about a young pregnant woman whose parents told her that if she did not abort, and this is verbatim as far as I can tell, “You’re dead to us.”

And I remembered how many gay people have heard this from their own parents–I need both hands to count, just for people I know personally–and it was hard to avoid vertigo as the sweet Christian women around me talked about what an awful thing this is to say to one’s child. And I thought about the immense, shocking, unacknowledged suffering occasioned by both heterosexuality and homosexuality in this culture, and I wondered whether anyone could do justice to both… since I can’t think of anyone at all who ever has.