Novelist Anne Rice says gay rights, in particular gay marriage, challenges the Christian faith.

Last summer Rice created a firestorm of controversy when she quit the Roman Catholic Church. She said at the time that she was driven out by the church's anti-gay rhetoric.

It wasn't the first time she had shunned religion. At the age of 18, Rice, who had been raised Catholic, became an atheist.

But in 1998, she returned to the church after experiencing a religious awakening and for the next decade she devoted herself to write exclusively Christian-themed novels, such as Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt.

“Today I quit being a Christian,” Rice announced on her Facebook page. “I'm out.”

In a videotaped conversation with her son Christopher Rice, an openly gay novelist, posted on the website of The Advocate, Rice said Christians were challenged by the notion that gay and lesbian people could lead healthy, productive lives.

“I think the main reason Christians and Catholics are going through this crisis with gay culture is they cannot face the reality that they are seeing before their eyes. The reality is that good, wholesome, productive gay people exist in all walks of life in our country and in other countries,” Rice explained. “They are at war with information.”

“They cannot bear the thought that two good gay people could have two adoptive children and get up before an altar or a judge and exchange vows and live a good family life.”

“These Christians now have to face the fact that this information is just flooding in. Gay people are people. Gay people are good people. Gay people are wholesome people.”

“It calls into question everything they believe about sin and salvation. That the narrow way is to Jesus Christ and that anybody who doesn't take it and who is a sinner is going to hell.”

“They have to face the fact that all these good people are not living as degenerate sinners… They want gays to be sinners. They want you to be a sinner and they want you to behave like a sinner and they want you to fail like one. And it's driving them crazy that you're not doing that.”