Once upon a time, animals were sacrificed to the gods and to the spirits of nature. Priests honored the animals as they cracked their necks, stabbed them, roasted them, and ate them. With smoke from the burning flesh rising to heaven as a mediator, the wall between human and divine was rent open for a moment.People sacrificed to overcome the separation they felt from God.

Today, we consider ourselves much too civilized to sacrifice other living beings. Instead, we treat animals as "wildlife," which means they are considered part of the scenery and inessential to the ecosystems and natural resources on which we depend; as "pets," which means they are ours to lavish attention on or neglect in a cage, as we see fit; and as "meat," because the fact that animals taste good is proof that God intended them to be Big Macs.

But, though these paradigms may seem to us to be more civilized than ritual killing, we must not pretend the absence of animal sacrifice in our culture has removed the psychological need to sacrifice. Everyone sacrifices in some way. It's just that our scapegoats aren't goats-they're human.

Gays are one of the victimized groups.  Members of the Religious Wrong get their spiritual highs by condemning us to make themselves feel more righteous. They interpret their ecstasy in doing so as God's forgiveness of their sins and His approval of their choice of scapegoat.

A scapegoat doesn't really cleanse away your sins, of course, but it feels like it does. Slaughter can exhaust you so you don't have energy to wallow in your old sins, or it may give you new guilt to contend with so you forget about the old guilt. This creates the illusion that one's sins have been forgiven by God simply because one has forgotten about them.

But this psychological trick is centered on relieving personal guilt and doesn't cure the social effects of the wrongs that were committed. In a culture that pathologizes sexuality and glorifies violence, the challenge is to transform how we treat people. How we treat animals is an indicator of how we treat the naturally beautiful bodies and wild, free personalities of our neighbors.

A lot of gay men are vegetarian because, I think, they are sensitive to how animals feel as scapegoats. In factory farms and on clear cut rainforest, animals die by the billions for the insatiable hunger of human inadequacy trying to fill itself. Just as many people are obsessed with reviling gays to make themselves feel more straight, many people eat meat every day to make themselves feel more human. A large number of gay men have stepped out of that paradigm.

The concept of sacrifice can help us understand the root of our drive to control animals and people. Sacrifice is motivated by guilt, the conviction that we aren't worthy of our possessions, companions, or worldly status, and reverence, the desire to consecrate those other things and beings we love so much.

Where does this universal desire come from? Maybe it's a condition of social groups. We can't always have what we want. Only by being willing to live without the people we desire most do we become worthy of them.

We sacrifice ourselves, and are sacrificed, for others. We've had brushes with death, given care and consolation, have loved and lost and loved again anyway, have given up family and career for the sake of transparency about ourselves and the principles we value. Using satyagraha (nonviolent soulforce), we channel our sacrificial drive by offering up ourselves to do the work that will heal the conscience of the world.

If God is in the sacrifices, it's because God is in the what-is-it beyond the binaries of mortal-and-divine, living-and-dead, possessed-and-given, man-and-woman, holy-and-profane. If God is in the gays, it's because we, as sacrifices and self-sacrifices, shatter the same binaries.

Sacrifice is ritualized "otherization" that takes place in a safe, controlled space. To be a sacrifice is to be an "other" and thereby strip away fear and hatred of the other. Sacrifice is mediation between split worlds-man and woman, straight and gay, old and young, religious and secular-and it can become a way of life. Gay men have a unique opportunity to stick our heads through these doorways and invite people to come back to each other.

We can begin with our treatment of other gay men. Just as we reduce animals to the inadequate modern concepts of wildlife, pets, and meat, so do we treat other gay men as purposeless and disposable scenery, as dependent and obedient children, and as tasty commodities. Our attitudes toward animals and toward people reflect each other. As we create a more just world, willing to sacrifice our time and energy to break the walls that keep us apart, we will simultaneously elevate our treatment of animals and people.