Denver Student Responds To Archbishop: “I Am Catholic, And I Am Gay… I Do Not Need To Be ‘Healed’”

Johnny Hultzapple, a seventeen-year-old high school student in Denver, Colorado, boldly responds with his truth against the archaic and misguided beliefs of the Roman Catholic Church about the LGBTQ person.

I’m sharing this because 1) Johnny is amazing and 2) the book series I’m working on, Love Grows in Honest Places, features LGBTQ characters who must stand up to their conservative and oppressive Catholic high school faculty and assert they are good and made in God’s eyes just like their straight peers. I am so happy this happened in real life and not simply on the pages of fictional books.

Johnny’s article begins below.

It is with a very enraged and dismal heart that I write this post today. 

This past Saturday, the Archdiocese of Denver sponsored an anti-LGBTQ event at the John Paul II Center led by an anti-LGBTQ activist and proponent of conversion therapy named Andrew Comiskey.

There was a highly false and insulting banner hung on the fence of the John Paul II Center. It is important to note that a representative from the Archdiocese said that the Archdiocese themselves did not hang the banner although they sponsored this event. The banner is a quote from the leader of the event, Andrew Comiskey, and reads, “There is no such thing as a ‘gay’ person…. That is a popular myth.” “Satan delights in homosexual perversion.” 

As a young, gay male, I was infuriated when I read this sign and an article [in the Colorado Times Recorder about the event]. Not only is the sign overtly offensive, it is so, so, so very wrong.

Continue reading Johnny’s article at the Colorado Times Recorder.