My love for Frank surpassed the normal friendship-level love. I secretly decided that if someone was going to burn him at the stake, I’d swap places with him because I felt the world needed him more than it could use little me.

Frank was 14, going on 34, and his ingenuity and breadth of knowledge always overshadowed and embarrassed the teachers. I felt honored just to know he considered me his friend because I was just “normal.”

Frank always listened to me cry over my latest boyfriend saga, usually because I’d just seen my junior boyfriend flirting in the lobby during passing time.

It’s funny how close we were because we were so different. Yet some kindred strand connected our hearts. He would appall me with his “mature” stories and intellect that I knew I probably shouldn’t be listening to, and he just enjoyed watching the nice little Christian girl’s eyes pop out of her skull.

One day Frank was helping me study for a history test, and he began shaking. I’d never seen him so jittery or nervous, and then he said something I’ll never forget.

“April,” he said, “I think I’m gay.”

My heart wedged any words I might have thought of deep in the back of my throat.

“I’ve never told anyone,” he continued, “but I’ve known for a long time now.”

I thought to myself, “Oh, God. God, please. Don’t let it be true.”

I asked Frank how he knew, if he was absolutely positive it was true, and if he thought he could ever change. I knew somewhere in the Bible that God said, “Homosexuals will not inherit the kingdom of God.”

“But God,” I pleaded, “surely Frank gets to go to heaven. He’s one of the greatest people on earth.”

It just didn’t seem fair. My soul ached with sorrow, and my mind raced with confusion.

“How could someone as cool as Frank not get to come?” I thought. “God, send Frank instead of me. Let me go to hell in his place.”

I never told anyone his secret, but a year later Frank decided to “come out,” making a statement in our high school newspaper that he was “bisexual.”

I still love Frank to this day more than I love myself, and I still hold him in the highest respect, even with all his mood swings and funny quirks. I don’t see him as much as I once did, though.

When we saw each other again last semester, those looking on thought they were witnessing the embrace of a “long lost brother and sister” as we held each other tight for minutes.

God doesn’t “hate fags” as that liar with the picket signs proclaims.

However, homosexuality deviates from the perfection that God intended; anything that is outside of His holy plan is not of Him.

I’m not a better person because I strive to serve God. I’m just as deserving of God’s wrath as all of you reading this are.

The thing that makes Frank and me different is I’m begging for mercy, and Frank doesn’t think he needs any.

Frank knows where I stand. He doesn’t know I plead for God, with tears streaming down my cheeks, to have mercy on his soul. He does know that I fear for his salvation because of what the Bible says.

And that’s all I can do — love him enough to let him know what I believe, but love him even more to not force him to adopt my beliefs.

Manipulation and control are satanic. Freedom and liberty are heavenly.

Some would claim that Christians are not known by their love, but by the way they aggressively convert and how their actions are ideologically militaristic.

Unfortunately, I have to agree that this is too often the case. We don’t give people the chance to seek the truth for themselves, and by the time some of us are done with them, they don’t have much incentive left to seek.

Christians should be recognized by their love, forgiveness and compassion, not their dogmatic stuffing of truth down disinterested throats.

We need to start leading by example and earning respect with our loving attitudes and actions.

As Christians, our demeanor should resemble that of Christ Jesus, “Lord, have mercy on them, for they know not what they do.”

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April Goodwin is a junior in journalism and mass communication from Ames.