Q: Why do I stay in the Catholic Church? - Richard Rodriguez

The policy of affirmative action, however, was never able to distinguish someone like me (a graduate student of English, ambitious for a college teaching career) from a slightly educated Mexican-American who lived in a barrio and worked as a menial laborer, never expecting a future improved. Worse, affirmative action made me the beneficiary of his conditions.

The Indian refuses civilization; the African slave is rendered unfit for it. But cher Monsieur: You saw the Indian sitting beside the African on a drape of baize. They were easy together. The sight of them together does not lead you to wonder about a history in which you are not the narrator?
These women are but parables of your interest in yourself. Rather than consider the nature of their intimacy, you are preoccupied alone with the meaning of your intrusion.

A priest visiting my parish preached a sermon wherein he referred to homosexuality as a “lifestyle.” By which he meant a choice. So, too, my beloved Father O’Neill (to whom I confessed as a child) said to my sister, a few months before he died, that he disapproved of “Richard’s lifestyle.” Homosexuality requires cubism to illustrate itself, perhaps. But homosexuality is not a lifestyle. Homosexuality is an emotion—a physiological departure from homeostasis.