Friday, two weeks before the election, I was in the Atlanta airport, boarding a flight to Salt Lake City to perform at the National PFLAG Conference. Hint: The Cheneys were not scheduled to appear. In fact, on a scale of one to PFLAG, the Cheneys are, to quote the Vice Cusser, “Go f**k yourself.”
I was sporting my “John Kerry: A Stronger America” button even though it had been deconstructed by the Swift Boat Font-Makers for Truth as clearly weak on defense. The plane was being boarded by zones and I was beginning to think they were putting Kerry supporters in the ozone of steerage, when a couple came up to me, eyed my button and without a hello, how are you, intoned, “A vote for John Kerry will hasten the second coming.”
For a moment I thought they were dissing the new boarding system ‚Äì first class, second coming, etc. I said, “Excuse me?” They smiled and repeated their mantra slower and louder as if I did not speak their language.
In a moment I now believe was divinely inspired, I smiled and replied, “Does that mean you will be leaving soon?”
We all have our belief systems. I believe there was voter fraud. I also believe that anti-gay marriage initiatives, which we did not put on swing state ballots, were used to get out the vote. We were so used. We were the wedgie, the butt thong between the cheek of church and the cheek of state. That’s the bad news. Supposedly four million christian fundamentalists pulled the lever for W stands for War. So much for reversing the curse. In those damnable exit polls, they whined that liberals had made them feel guilty about their faith. They were not values voters, but victim voters. That a 35 year old gay identity movement can threaten a 2005 year old Christian identity movement is, I believe, the good news.
Besides the obvious protest strategies of not paying taxes, suing to tax churches, refusing to sit on juries, refusing to serve in the military, caterwauling at family weddings, starting impeachment proceedings for an illegal war, snapping down your yoga mat five times a day wherever you are and loudly dahvining for democracy, or driving the wrong way down one way streets dragging Terry Macauliffe face down for a couple blocks, I’ve got an idea. No, I’m not moving out of the country. I already live in the tiny island nation of New York City. Nor am I going on some four year gay cruise setting sail down the Potomac on January 19th, 2005.
Since we are in the midst of a religious war, tricked out as a cultural war, I want to do a religious reality show called “The Spirit is Willing” a weekly show on religion and sexuality. The GLBT community is a deeply spiritual community. After all it takes quite a leap of faith to come out. Faith in ourselves, faith in others, in individual freedom, in divine justice. The set would have the familiar christian broadcast look ‚Äì gray industrially carpeted stairs, large potted palms, and lucite pulpits. But the message is completely different ‚Äì Gay is Go-d, Om is Homo, the Golden Lame Rule.
We’d draw from our rich tradition of gay spiritual leaders, sing those old time gay spirituals, feature a religion of the week ‚Äì Islam, Buddhism, Wicca, Catholicism – and their position on gays and gays in that religion. The show would have weekly features: a panel going soul to soul to counter textural anti-gay teachings; five minutes of world religion news ‚Äì “The Pope Watch”, “You Say Moolah, I say Mullah”, “The Gism Schism”; each week long snaking lines of people coming forward to witness and be welcomed and blessed as they come out ‚Äì a little pop on the forehead and they fall backwards in the welcoming arms of other gay people.
I have pitched this idea to both LOGO, and Here! I dare them or any other of the triune networks to produce it.
It’s time for a Second Coming Out of gay people.