“Among other common lies, we have the silent lie—the deception which one conveys by simply keeping still and concealing the truth. Many obstinate truth mongers indulge in this dissipation, imagining that if they speak no lie, they lie not at all … There is no art to a silent lie. It is timid and shabby.” Mark Twain (1882)
WE HAVE LOST the South. Again. “We” are not a political party, but Southerners of all persuasions who happen to be gay; and “The South” is not a geographic region, but a country. It always has been. Seven years into a new century the American South, indistinguishable in hue from the rest of the interior on election night, is still dappled with enough swatches of William Faulkner and Margaret Mitchell to merit another shade of red entirely; something in the maroon family perhaps, worthy of the region’s status as America’s odd cousin, no longer confined to the basement. The ubiquitous bumper sticker, “American by Birth, Southern by the Grace of God,” is stated without irony. Scratch the surface of even our most metropolitan cities, and the scent of your dotty aunt’s mothballs will waft up past the skyscrapers and stucco. After half a century of integration, immigration, and homogenization, the median core identity of the American South is closer to Zell Miller than Jimmy Carter. Furthermore, all of this is okay with most Southerners. Quirky is good here, and modernity has its limits.
I don’t know who decided that we’re the “red” states, but it fits. For red is also the color of blood, and what sounds like only the wind in the magnolias has a bad habit down here of turning out to be the opening strains of Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit.” The fear and loathing of gay men and women continues away down South in Dixie—in too many places, and with too much fervor, to trust that our nieces and nephews will grant us legitimacy by virtue of apathetic default when they have their turn at power. In a secular society, or even in one only slightly less theocratic than exists in this place, the corner might be turned by positive media exposure and the 375th rerun of Will & Grace. In a culture in which fairness was the gold standard, the overall trend towards acceptance of gay and lesbian citizens as worthy of full equality under the law would pull the people, and the legislature, along with it. But it just doesn’t work that way down here. Why is that? you ask. “Because the Bible tells me so,” they’ll answer.
Southerners are bred to respect authority. Gay rights? Let the lawyers up North fight it out! We’ll send a donation to the Human Rights Campaign (but toss the sticker) and concentrate on satisfying our taste for six packs of the cold—and hot—variety. That’s easy, but it isn’t fair to the next generation and not to ourselves. In our hearts, we know that conquering homophobia through legislation and legal action alone is as hopeless as hunting down and killing every terrorist today and expecting to be safe tomorrow. And even if formal equality were achieved by legal means, the stubborn elephant in the room—homophobic attitudes and religious indoctrination—would still be there.
Southern-style homophobia is real. It is learned, and taught, beneath the spires of Christian churches on thousands of moss-draped Rockwellian landscapes, where hate comes with a hug and the End is always near. The escalating demonization of homosexuals from the pulpit, and the growing indignation of normally docile small-town Southern gays, bring to mind a terse bit of dialogue from C. Jay Cox’s film Latter Days, in which a soon-to-be-excommunicated Mormon gay boy spars with his father. “Are you being sarcastic?” the elder Elder demands. “No dad,” is the response, “we’re way beyond that. Now we’re just being mean.” What then must we do, other than fantasize about bitch-slapping Dr. James Dobson? What must we do? We must do the one thing that matters in shaping Southern opinion. We must go to church.
To engage the Southern mind, to appeal to the Southern soul, for better or worse, one goes to church. Not that all Southerners attend, but most pretend they do. The cultural influence of the church in the South is tsunami-like, washing far beyond its appointed shores. No argument, no proposal, no societal change is seriously considered unless it has first walked through the fiery furnace of pulpit and pew and emerged intact. The extent of this obeisance is stunning to outsiders, but it has been a fact of life here since the War of Northern Aggression, when defeat begat defiance. It was then that the South devised that peculiar institution, the fundamentalist, apocalyptic Southern church in all its many denominations and sects.
Except in the largest cities of the South, the normal expectation is that the stranger next to you on the bus is, at the very least, a nominal Christian. Here, snippets of scripture are cut-and-pasted into the vernacular, infusing even the most mundane conversation with spiritual overtones and producing an effect which is either comforting or jarring, depending on the listener’s proclivities. Here, a personal, emotional relationship with an executed Jewish prophet is an experience craved and claimed by millions every Sunday and most Wednesdays. A belief in the literal reality of that relationship informs daily life and decisions for the believer.
And therein lies our reason to engage. Just as the Civil Rights movement spoke truth to power by calling on the American creed of equality, we must call on the Southern churches to make good on Jesus’ own teachings, his philosophy, his very essence. For Jesus was unalterably and indisputably on the side of all marginalized peoples. Regarding gays and lesbians, the Gospels are plain: he speaks no ill of us. He lauds the outcast and lambastes the ostentatiously religious, who accuse him of drinking too much and keeping bad company. He condemns the wealthy and says that the test of a good life is how well one has treated others. To appeal to the words and actions of the authentic Jesus of the Gospels, friend of friendless, is to reveal the rank hypocrisy of those who pat him on the back and leave an “I Hate Fags” sign stuck there.
As Bruce Bawer pointed out so eloquently in his 1994 book, Stealing Jesus, there’s an irreconcilable contrast between the narrative Jesus of the Gospels and the “celestial Christ” of the Rapture favored by many fundamentalist teachers. The primary difference is that we have a written record, however contested its literal truth or scholarly stature, of the works and philosophy of Jesus—something against which we can measure the validity of our assertions. In the apocalyptic vision of sinners and salvation that’s so salient in the Southern church, we have nothing the least bit factual to go on, so people can make him into anything they want. They can dress Jesus up in their own prejudices, give him an avenging sword with which to slay the unsaved. Repeated often enough, these notions of the Rapture can supplant all the more demanding moral teachings of the man who stood up to a mob to save a whore. And that is exactly what those who hold religious sway across the South have done. They have, over the course of decades of dominance in our religious culture, buried the humility of the man of sorrows beneath the hubris of a conquering king. But they can’t ignore him, and that is the mustard seed of their downfall, as regards fair and equal treatment of God’s gay children.
What of the fact that most fundamentalists would send us to hell (or vote us there) because, they are convinced, the Bible tells them to? It doesn’t, but arguing theology or the intricacies of translation alone won’t win the day with these folks. Neither will pointing out the obvious inconsistency of their enforcement of Levitical law in a region where pork barbeque remains a church supper staple. Some thoughtful people will acknowledge these cracks in the wall of logic and begin to ponder these things in their hearts, but for the most intractable congregants argument alone won’t be enough.
What might help, then? Our presence—and I speak here to those who share my faith and institutional commitment. It is by our presence and the fact that we are living, breathing contradictions of their condemnation and the notion that we’re promoting an insidious “gay agenda” that we prove them wrong. A strong nonpartisan effort in Southern places of worship would be the third side of the triangle, supporting the essential legal and legislative work for fairness that is ongoing. Perhaps then, lasting change will come, change which is written not only in the statute books, but in people’s hearts. Besides, it might be good for all of us, in the words of Ben Franklin, to “doubt a little of our own infallibility” and meet the enemy. If nothing else, we are assured of some very good barbeque.
Forty years ago, Martin Luther King said, “Hate is too great a burden to bear. Somehow we must be able to stand before our most bitter opponents and say, ‘Do to us what you will and we will still love you … but be assured that we will match your physical force with soul force, and we will so appeal to your heart and conscience that we will win you in the process, and ours will be the double victory.’” King wasn’t talking about us. But eternal truth has a way of coming around when it is needed again. The path is narrow, but it is ours, too, if we choose to take it.
William Strobe, a native Southerner, is an actor and writer living in Southern California.
