It's 4am here and I can't sleep. I have a knot in my stomach and a sick feeling in my heart over the news that voters in Maine passed Question 1 on the ballot, which repealed a law to allow same-sex couples to marry, albeit narrowly.

I want to scream my frustration and sadness over this. I want to rage against this latest (narrow) victory for intolerance, hate and ignorance.

Instead, all I feel inspired to do right now is share a personal story with anyone who cares to read it.

It's about the day I found God.

I was seventeen and had the opportunity to go on a short tour of Europe with a music group to play in various countries. We stopped in Paris where I had the pleasure to go to one of the largest, most majestic Catholic cathedrals I've ever seen. The name of the church eludes me after all these years, but I was eager to attend a mass because I was feeling spiritually confused. I was born and raised a Catholic but I was beginning to doubt the teachings of the church. "Rebellious" alternatives, like declaring myself agnostic or atheist, didn't seem to fit either. I even took a glance at the Church of Satan, but that's a story for another day.

In the end I attended this mass in France, but truth be told I wasn't really there. I was in my own head, knelt in prayer as I took in the pious majesty of my surroundings. I found myself doing something very cliche... looking up with my hands folded and asking for answers, albeit in my own head.

I said to myself, "I want to pray, but I don't know who to pray to any more. I want to believe in something, but I don't know what to believe in. The only thing I believe in is love."

And just like that, the answer came to me.
"God is love."

My heart swelled with joy. To this day I can't describe the happiness and relief I felt with this revelation. This was something I could grasp. This was something I could believe in. This was something I had been taught in my childhood and could easily take it with me all through the years. God, my God, is Love. Screw all the other teachings from all the other sources. God is Love is my religion, and I live that to this day.

I earnestly believe in God, though I don't refer to God as Him or Her. I can get behind a being who is full of unconditional love and compassion. I can easily worship a deity who loves all its creations equally. I can stand firmly behind the feeling in my heart that I received that day in the church because I feel it still in the presence of my family, my dearest friends, my beloved girlfriend and even from the readers of my webcomic who come and say such wonderful things to me, a total stranger, when I'm out at conventions. That is Love... unconditional and all-encompassing Love, and that is my God.

/>It saddens me greatly that not everyone sees God that way. It breaks my heart to see people standing up for hate and intolerance in God's name, claiming that God's love is not unconditional and all-encompassing. To deny others the right to express their love for one another in all its glory and uplifting wonder is, to me, a sin against the joy that God gave us.

I guess I'll just have to pray that some of that glorious Love will spread sooner than later, and all this needless hate will be nothing more than a regrettable memory one day.