I wore a tie to church for the first time last Sunday, and the super-hot soprano I sing alongside in the choir spontaneously reached out and tousled my hair.Whoa. Wow. Who knew?

It was a moment of no emotion, a degree zero of well-being, an unlooked-for reconciliation with all the sisters I've felt estranged from since I first felt different. I was anointed by a sexy straight girl in the eyes of God and my fellow choristers. The memory of her hand in my hair makes me want to go re-tie my Windsor knot. There couldn't be a clearer sign from Heaven that She approves my twisted, sartorial proclivities. Amen. P.S. — Dear Goddess, nice choice of earthly messenger.

I've been so distracted by solipsistic, gender-bending theatricals like the above that I nearly missed some recent fascinating intersections of science and God, science and state, state and sexual persuasion and God.

First up is a news item that, at first glance, might seem a celebrity-obsessed triviality, even a frivolous financial excess. On May 15, Bloomsbury Auctions in London sold a letter handwritten by Albert Einstein to a philosopher friend in 1954 for just over $400,000. That's a lot of money for a single piece of correspondence, even in quaint, old-school, flowing script. Why, you ask, did an anonymous fan of physics pony-up 50 times the estimated sales price? Probably so she or he can peruse at leisure Einstein's sentiment (in German in the original): "The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive, legends which are nevertheless pretty childish." Is it any wonder fundamentalists hate all things science? For more details, see the Guardian.

Speaking of irreverent, über-brainy, German scientists, May 10 was the 75th anniversary of the burning of the library of the Institute of Sexual Science in Berlin. Magnus Hirschfeld, the Institute's founder and director, was out of town for the event, which was the Nazis' first big, nasty foray into public book-burning. Could there be a more stunning back-handed compliment? Alas, the pioneering sexologist and gay rights activist died two years later, a broken and seemingly defeated old queer. But the spirit of his work lives on. Hirschfeld, in his own kinky, German-Jewish, obsessive-compulsive, encyclopedic, medical-methodological way, brought compassion to the study of those weirdos dubbed the third sex.

I first encountered Hirschfeld's theory of the sexual continuum 10 years ago when the Goethe-Institut of San Francisco celebrated "100 Years of Gay Activism," the gist of which is in Berlin's Archive for Sexology. The period photographs were perversely sexy and the tense Teutonic take on marginalized proclivities unexpectedly liberating. My little mind was totally blown. As a doctor, a researcher and an activist, Hirschfeld had catalogued, cared for and fought for freaks. His work established the fact that far from being binary, sexual identities are spread across a spectrum, and each point along the way is worthy of respect and legal protection. Rejecting the binary masculine-feminine, butch-femme model, he posited an infinite variety of sexual expressions, or Zwischenstufen (tvi-shin-shtoo-fen). A hundred years later, his radical rainbow approach is still too much for any, save the most enlightened, to hold in our heads 24/7. But the occasional whiff is intoxicating.

Although none of the four California Supreme Court justices quoted Hirschfeld when they went to bat for the sanctity of sexual orientation last week, they were all breathing cultural air conditioned by this pioneering sexologist. More importantly, they behaved like the secular institution they are and not some rancid tentacle of theocracy. By pronouncing us all potentially wife and wife, the Cali Supremes implicitly ignored the argument people always reach for in times of doubt: God. What exactly are the Judeo-Christian God's childish views on marriage? Mary-Ann Grenier in the Boston Phoenix, celebrating Massachusetts' de-heterosexing of marriage in 2003, provides an ick-inducing catalogue of the relevant Biblical citations.

Meanwhile, intersex freak that I am, I'm still wearing my tie. No one's asked me to marry her. Although I've pretty much given up on God, I'll be in church Sunday. Hell, I'm even singing a solo.