Can the leopard change his spots?

. . . or can the Ethiopian change the color of his skin, God asks in the book of Jeremiah. A divinely rhetorical question: the obvious answer is no, inborn traits can't be changed, and no amount of wishing or praying will make it so.

That's what singer/songwriter Ray Boltz, after 33 years of marriage, 4 kids, and a renowned career in Christian music, finally came to understand and accept about himself. He came out to his family in 2004, and has now come out publicly with an interview in the Washington Blade.

A few quotes from Boltz:

"I believed what I sang but in the back of my mind, I always felt I could never quite measure up. So yes, they were good years, but there was also a lot of pain.”

“It’s there on every single record. That struggle of accepting myself and my feelings. There’s a lot of pain there and it connected with a lot of people. They weren’t struggling with the same thing necessarily but we all suffer with our humanity.”

“You get to be 50-some years old and you go, ‘This isn’t changing. I still feel the same way. I am the same way. I just can’t do it anymore.’”

“It wasn’t something that manifested itself in that we never had sex … but how can you truly be intimate with someone when you don’t know who they are, when they won’t reveal themselves to you … I thought if I can’t say this to the people I love, then what kind of life is this?”

“This is what it really comes down to. If this is the way God made me, then this is the way I’m going to live. It’s not like God made me this way and he’ll send me to hell if I am who he created me to be … I really feel closer to God because I no longer hate myself.”

“I don’t want to be a spokesperson, I don’t want to be a poster boy for gay Christians, I don’t want to be in a little box on TV with three other people in little boxes screaming about what the Bible says, I don’t want to be some kind of teacher or theologian — I’m just an artist and I’m just going to sing about what I feel and write about what I feel and see where it goes.”

Boltz, who is now amicably divorced and living "a normal gay life" in Ft. Lauderdale, will perform in a free concert at Washington MCC on Sept. 21.