In the original foreword to his book Christian Faith and Same-Sex Attraction: Eastern Orthodox Reflections, Fr. Thomas Hopko recounts a story about a gay man he received into the Orthodox Church and with whom he became friends. On reading a manuscript for Fr. Tom’s book, a memory came to the man. As a child, he and a friend had frequented a park where they hand-fed peanuts to the squirrels. One day, older boys took their peanuts from them and proceeded to feed the squirrels with one hand and beat them with sticks with the other.