Hi, I'm Marcus I'm a priest but I am also a committed card carrying Goth.
Six to seven years ago I met, by the strangest of coincidences, a Dutch girl called Judith who was a Goth from Amsterdam whilst I was in a monastery in the South of France and she was just wearing a black negligee and nothing else.
We started going out and got engaged and she was very much a card carrying Goth with all the white face powder, the black eye liner.
And twenty four seven – all the time. So I think actually it was through her that actually I started going to Goth clubs and actually meeting a whole new bunch of friends.
In the environment in which I grew up, it was quite macho I suppose, quite materialistic and it was about being popular. And not about being yourself, but actually just being part of the crowd and just buying into that.
I thought when I joined the church actually I could make some difference – to sort of draw along people as they are. And it has helped a lot in that.
But actually I have met quite a lot of prejudice in the church.
There was a complete lack of any sense of integrity about life.
And that is what I think the Goth community has offered, it's a very loving supporting environment in which you are accepted for who you are and not for who you are trying to be.
So many clergy I have met, so many priests I know have such a small mind about so many things they see so many things as being unacceptable because of what you wear or your attitudes and God can't love you for who you are.
One of the things you learn after a while as being part of the Goth community is that there are so many different people who have so many different lifestyles that it becomes very difficult to judge people any longer.
And you have to be quite honest and open and confront your own prejudices.
And I found actually particularly in sexual orientation I was never particularly homophobic but I had some issues of it as a teenager. But in terms of bisexuality or transgenderism or a whole range of sexual orientation issues I've changed radically in my opinion from just meeting other people who have been more honest and more open about them. And not seeing them as a threat.
I guess what makes me a big different from other priests is actually I am quite prepared to be myself and if that means it shocks people or it upsets them or it doesn't fit into the mould then I don't care.
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