In a recently published piece for “Spiritual Friendship” author Wesley Hill posted a picture which depicts Saints Sergius and Bacchus in icon form. In the accompanying article, Hill discusses the topic of “vowed” same-sex friendships with the clear implication that Sts Sergius and Bacchus were one such example. As a graduate of UC Berkeley (1994) with a degree in Art History, and, as a former active homosexual, I understand what he is trying to do here; Why? Because I used to do the same thing. When you self-identify as gay - you tend to automatically see gay everywhere, even where it never existed. In the early 90s, I gravitated towards a group of like-minded individuals who, like myself, started radically reinterpreting everything from high art to pop-culture: the rather overly-sweet words of affection commonly used by actor Laurence Olivier when addressing other men we construed as a sign of latent homosexuality; the admiration novelist Jack London had for hyper-masculine heroes was another; we followed this rational back to Michelangelo and eventually to Christ Himself - with early depictions of Jesus and St. John serving as a homoerotic symbol. At that time, our favorite book was John Boswell’s then landmark work “Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe.” In it, he made a weak argument that an archaic Byzantine rite, which according to Orthodox theologian Patrick Viscuso* merely facilitated a type of adoption ceremony between two heterosexual men, was actually a form of same-sex marriage. Part and parcel along with this bizarre revision was a contemporary movement in the gay community to appropriate Sts Sergius as Bacchus as “the patron saints of same-sex marriage;” hence, the continued production of gay “icons” (see above - right) representing the Saints as homosexual lovers. -This whole project is rather sad, a desperate attempt to twist religion into something which authorizes the gay orientation; it’s doomed to failure. And, tragically, John Boswell, one of its most articulate and forceful adherents ultimately became a symbol of its futility: dying of AIDS in 1994 at age 47.