Jan

The problem for me growing up gay in the Bible Belt was being told I was a wicked sinner. All I knew about being gay, at the time, was that I loved girls in platform shoes and feathered hair (which I still do.) And I loved to belt Christmas Carols all year long ( now, only appropriate from October 1 - December 26 .) I remember being at a revival when I was about eight or nine. The preacher, who by the way, managed to make off with a considerable amount of money when he left the church, ridiculed me in front of the other parishioners when I requested Silent Night.

I was crushed. I wanted to sing praise and utter holy hallelujahs -- but was forced instead to trudge through four verses of the Old Wooden Cross. I thought that church should be about celebrating life, but instead found myself weighed down by the burden of my "unnatural" sin, and the grueling slate of apocryphal gloom-and-doom hymns.



	PASSING THE PLATE (continued)

	The problem for me growing up gay in the Bible Belt was being told I was a wicked sinner. All I knew about being gay, at the time, was that I loved girls in platform shoes and feathered hair (which I still do.) And I loved to belt Christmas Carols all year long ( now, only appropriate from October 1 - December 26 .) I remember being at a revival when I was about eight or nine. The preacher, who by the way, managed to make off with a considerable amount of money when he left the church, ridiculed me in front of the other parishioners when I requested Silent Night. I was crushed. I wanted to sing praise and utter holy hallelujahs -- but was forced instead to trudge through four verses of the Old Wooden Cross. I thought that church should be about celebrating life, but instead found myself weighed down by the burden of my "unnatural" sin, and the grueling slate of apocryphal gloom-and-doom hymns.		So… needless to say, I stopped going to church. I refused to get baptized. Now if I had gotten baptized like everyone else in my Sunday school class, I could have taken that trip to Opryland for all the new "Saved Young'Uns." But I was a firm believer that the spirit called you - you didn't call it when you wanted to ride roller coasters. I still watch Fundamentalists on television. They are brilliant marketers and very adept salespersons. If I do, indeed, go to hell for being gay, I imagine that many of the fine televangelists will be there with me. I don't think that Jesus would approve of church-sanctioned cosmetic surgery and limousines.

PASSING THE PLATE (continued)