On Wednesday in a story written by Patrick Strudwick in The Independent, British Christian rock singer Vicky Beeching came out as a lesbian. It's a harrowing story that tells Beeching's secret history, from her religious childhood (at 13, she confessed that she was attracted to women to a Catholic priest; his response was to pray for her absolution) to her teenage years where she buried her preferences deep inside and focused on her studies at the expense of a social life to her experiences as a popular singer performing at anti-gay rallies in California churches back in the Prop 8 days. Eventually, the secret that tore her up inside for most of her 35 years manifested itself in the form of a spontaneous scarring on her forehead. She went to her doctor, expecting a mundane diagnosis.

"They said, 'You need to sit down. This is really serious. It's an auto-immune disease called linear scleroderma morphea, and a form of the disease called coup de sabre.' It's a degenerative condition where soft tissue turns to scarring. At that point they didn't know if it was just localised or whether it would affect my whole body." In the worst cases, one's whole body can turn to scar tissue, including internal organs. It can cause epilepsy, blackouts, and can kill.

Beeching was told she would need extensive chemotherapy and to expect hair loss, weight gain and exhaustion. She went home to her apartment where she lived alone, and looked up pictures online of sufferers, many of whom lose parts of their face.

Doctors suggested that the disease was caused by intense stress, and Beeching has no doubt that her life in the closet was the source of that stress. This is an incredible story that could inspire many of Beeching's fans to become more tolerant.

And then there are the bigots. I found this story while trawling Glenn Beck's Huffington Post rip-off aggregator site, and the comments couldn't be more un-Christian. Commenters have three basic opinions: 1. Gay people can't be Christians. 2. Gay people can be Christians as long as they never act on their desires. 3. I wish gay people would stop coming out of the closet because I'm tired of reading about them. Beeching addresses the wrong-headedness of all three of those opinions in the Independent piece, but the Blaze bigots don't care. They're too busy loathing the person they've created in their heads to worry about the truth. I guess that's the definition of bigotry. In the shadow of Beeching's story, their little internet natterings look petty and small. As the last decade has proven, these people are losing their power; they're getting weaker by the minute.