The Truly Revolutionary Promise of Our Founding Sinners

This book, Skipping Toward Gomorrah, has been on my night stand for about 2 weeks. It looks lonely.  Maybe I should sprinkle salt on it? I’m sure that would cause the raising of an eyebrow for conservatives who are fingering through my personal items while pretending to want to buy my home.  It would be the first whammy!, coupled with the Hindu-Buddhist-Muslim-Goddess-Christian altar that is in the bonus room immediately above the master.  Near it is a framed pastel of my guardian angel and a 4 foot oil of the prophet Isaiah. Otherwise, I’m sure my realtor would have instructed me to put the silliness away (so that I don't offend) for the sake of a sell.

I’ll need to return the book, so I thought I would skip church and read a few chapters.  Within the first, I’m uneasy and don’t know why.  I like that the author, Dan Savage, is pounding the social conservatives, and I kind of like the tongue-in-cheek angle that he’s taking.  (And, I liked him and the things he said in his NPR interview: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=186926890). But then, he summarizes with a sentence:

There are millions of ethical, fully moral sinners in America, and I’ve grown sick of listening to the right wing bitch and moan about them while the left wing refuses to defend them.

Again, I'm surrounded with my own agreements.  I like that he differentiates between ethics and morals.  Theses words are different but are often used interchangeably in debates. The slight-of-hand switch allows scold mongers to skew the conversation just enough that you're no longer talking about what you were talking about. Savage calls out this tactic:

        By successfully framing the debate as virtue versus sin, and not the laws versus your freedoms,
       the virtuecrats have succeeded in silencing their political foes...

And, I like that he calls out the left for not defending the American/God-given right to pursue peculiar happinesses. But, I know why I’m gradually letting my fingers loosen from the box car on his runaway train. It's the word ‘sinner.’ Up to this point, this author defends the right of (American) humans to pursue happiness, but then he acquiesces to the enemy’s position that homosexuals and other happiness-seekers are sinners.  What happened during the 8-10 pages of defending the right to follow one's own pleasure principle?

I look back to the opening sentences:

The truly revolutionary promise of our nation’s founding document is the freedom to pursue happiness-with-a-capital-H. Unfortunately, this promise is considered problematic by some Americans. The very pursuits that make some Americans happy (some very happy indeed) are considered downright sinful by social conservatives.

The opening position seems to contradict the concluding one. Did Mr. Savage convince himself that the “moral scolders” were right, or did he always secretly accept that homosexual interactions are sinful? If my guy is in flux, I don’t want to depend on the fire-spitting protestors who stood at the doors of the casino (where the Baton Rouge PRIDE event occurred yesterday).  Those people were certain in their beliefs even though they were unbelievable.

I might have found my answer at the thinking church.  I intended to go because all ages and models of Unitarians came out to support our gay rights march to and up the Capitol steps. But—, I checked the sermon topic—I can’t make it on Father’s Day.

I tried to remove this holiday from my “smart phone” calendar, but it kept coming back! I haven’t spoken to my paternal-DNA donor in about twenty years, and it’s been longer than that since I believed his unbelievable truth.

“You’re going to hell,” he had said with delusion.

He was (and possibly still is) an uber-conservative prison-preacher who has the audience that he always demanded—a captive one.  (That’s a slow-rising joke). 

In high school, I had wanted to be a missionary, but God did all he could to steer me away—save coming down, wrapping flesh around his holy spirit, and pointing a big fat waving finger, “NO!”   So, after funding couldn’t be allocated for my mission-field training, I opted for a student loan and landed on a college campus with 20,000 pagans. 

“She just needs to get to the ‘Psychology of Women’, and then all will fall in place,” God must have said. 

I can attribute my gay awakening to this undergraduate class, and my spiritual awakening to a ‘Bible As Literature’ class in graduate school.  The latter was conducted in the most conservative part of the south that I’ve ever perpetuated in.  (To give credence to this claim—I’ve lived in Texas, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, and Louisiana.) So, I found it surprising that an atheist who was also a lesbian would replace the local Southern Baptist preacher and be this university’s chosen professor.  

On the first day, she had us bring a Bible—the only required text.
“Which version,” many of us asked?

“Whatever you like,” she said.

So, we all show up with everything from KJV to The Living Bible versions. The class unanimously agreed that one guy’s bible was paraphrased by rappers. 

The prof would review a book (of the bible) and point to someone to read a verse.  Then, she would point to someone else to read the same verse.  And then, she would point to someone else to read it.  The most amazing revelations would occur when comparisons were made because within the English language the meaning proved to be inconsistent.

“’Man’ wrote this book,” I finally had to accept.

Biblical scriptures have been translated from Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic and/or Greek, and then carelessly documented into English, reflecting social prejudices of the 17^th Century.  I had learned from a Rabbi (when I was young) that the word ‘homosexual’ (as it is used today) didn’t occur in ancient scriptures.  Early communities accepted same-sex couplings except where older men had sex with young men. This act, rightfully, would have been viewed as pedophilia &/or rape.  This caused me to have an "ahh-ha" moment, realizing that the woman who turned around in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah was an example of the "salt of the earth" because she had so much compassion for the people who were burning that she couldn't not look back and save her own life. 

It was difficult for me to write the required papers for that class.  I offered topical treatments of the subjects that had little to do with the Bible and more to do with socio-political struggles that the allegorical figures, in their hypothetical communities, were presumed to have participated in.  Throughout the semester, I tried to process how all of my pre-college positions had foundations in something so unbelievable.

Knowing that the words can be so easily replaced with words that appear to be synonymous, I can’t place my spiritual faith in man and his static words.  When I hear the fire-spitters reference the Bible and claim that I am a sinner, I want to ask, “Do you believe in the Holy Spirit?” I imagine the conversation will go this way.

“Do you believe in the Holy Spirit?”

“Of course, I do!” the spitter would spit.

“Then, you believe in the spirit of the Law?”

“Of course, I do!” the spitter would spit and maybe stomp for emphasis.

“How do you believe in the spirit of the Law and the letter of the Law?  These contradict each other.”

At this point the spitter would spit, quoting Bible verses that defend hatred.  In response, I would not offer all of the verses that represent God’s (inspired) love.  With love and logic lost, I’d be wasting valuable energy on this hate monger. I’d rather channel it toward people who understand Christian charity. 

On my way past the fire-spitters, I’m in step with a girl who is walking toward the entrance. 

“Grab my hand,” she commands.

It takes me a minute to understand her words, but I follow her inviting smile.

“Good call,” I say when we release and reach for the doors of the PRIDE party. 

She smiles.

“It’s always surprising to me that prisoners get care and compassion, and we get that.”

She smiles and shrugs, heading toward a group of girlfriends who are reaching out for her sweet embrace.