Onward Christian Dollar Rolls: My Day at Love Won Out

Growing up in the rural south in the 1970’s, I encountered very few examples of religious expression. You could choose between Southern Baptist or Evangelical Pentecostalism. Catholicism was even frowned upon in the dry-county in which I was raised. The folks down the road who hosted monthly fire and brimstone rattlesnake revivals didn’t much care for “drinkers” who played Bingo every Friday. These were the same folks who’d burn a cross on a random Friday night, too. Ecumenical dialogue wasn’t high on their list of priorities.

Like many gay men, I left the church in my adolescence – my budding sexuality identity didn’t jive with all that Sunday School gossip and hell in a handlebar mustache (it was the 70’s). A church filled with eternal damnation and greedy, mean-spirited hypocrites isn’t exactly a motivator to get out the bed on Sunday morning.

As is turns out, many gay men who left the church in their youth are coming back to it as they get older, hoping that a professed faith in Jesus will remove their homosexual desires. Better yet, there are droves of bright-eyed, clean cut, attractive “recovering” gay men waiting in aisles -- ready to engage them with the new millennia’s version of Sin Management.

That’s what I experienced yesterday at the Love Won Out conference hosted by the First Evangelical Free Church located in the western suburbs of St. Louis County. For the past eight years, James Dobson’s Focus on the Family organization has mounted a nationally-traveling quarterly event that not only claims that homosexuality can be prevented – but that it can also be cured.

The event features 14 different sessions, ranging from The Condition of Male Homosexuality (which is caused by poor parenting and a flare for theatricality in childhood) and The Condition of Female Homosexuality (which is not so easy to explain, as they note: “lesbianism is complex”). There are also workshops designed to showcase how you, too, can be cured of homosexuality. All you need to do is sign that check for $7,000 and spend three months engaged in lesbian lock-down at a “secure location” in Memphis, Tennessee.

As the day progressed, I noticed that the traditional, fundamentalist church service format was slowly morphing into a pray-the-gay-away 12-step meeting, where all sinners are welcome, especially you. Yup, and you and you and you!

I saw gleanings of a Christian movement that’s not about hell and damnation – but soul saving salvation. I heard pleas for Christian outreach into the heart of the gay community. I heard repeated calls for tolerance and understating.

Which makes complete sense.

The people making the call for reform and change are “recovering” gays and lesbians who are trying to fix the church that shut them out so many years ago. They gave up gay to get God – and whether or not you believe that’s a necessary trade-off, they sure do – and so did 1,750 others yesterday.

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What I know is this:

If you’re ever in the mood to spend ten hours in the company of hundreds of sexually-frustrated, reasonably intelligent, religiously-conflicted and WASPishly good-looking men – then you need to sign up for the next Love Won Out Conference in Fort Lauderdale. Then go hit the beach.

It’ll be one helluva show.

When you’re sitting in an auditorium filled with a thousand true-believers who shout Amen! on cue, it’s not that hard to believe that someone will readily renounce homosexuality. It’s even more believable when armed deputies are patrolling the perimeter of the room. I counted eight throughout the course of the day.

Truly, Bible thumping might deter some manly pumping...but drama...well, it sure as shit ain’t cured by reading Leviticus. They might not be gay anymore, but some old-school-trained ex-queens were holding court yesterday.

I have never seen such a spectacle. There were sermons filled with tears, laughter was pealing from the pews, hands were outstretched in pious praise, folks were talking in tongues and there were all sorts of holy-rolling, hetero-extolling, homos-gotta-get-going testimonies and jubilatory messages of redemption and salvation.

Oh. Anne Heche’s mother, Nancy, also spoke. She had on a really nice outfit – a tailored jacket and a well-designed and interesting skirt, but she still seemed awfully saccharine and smarmy. And kinda crazy. Some revelation that was.

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Thinking about it hours later, it occurred to me that Love Won Out was the gayest anti-gay event I have ever experienced. It was like a circuit party without the drugs – it was like Talbot’s with a Tabernacle.

A veritable Pentecostal PowerPoint presentation promoting pious, procreating penetration.

The presenters and the conference organizers have their shit together, though. It is a well-oiled, money-making machine. Check-in was a breeze but they still wore protective gloves and searched your bags when you entered the sanctuary. Christ’s love only goes so far, I guess.

Outside the chapel, there were banks of computers generating audio-CDs seconds after the speakers were finished. Those CDs, along with hundreds of books and Nalgene-inspired commemorative water bottles could be purchased at a station of four cash registers that remained 5-people deep, all day long.

There was also a tasty, slightly-upscale boxed lunch to enjoy (provided, strangely-enough, by a local catering company that’s well known for its support of the gay community). I found myself humming “Onward Christian Dollar Rolls” and considered suggesting a new tag line for Love Won Out.

Forget the closet – just stay in the kitchen.

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While I’m being a tad flippant about the event -- there were moments that are lingering in the back of my mind. I struck up with a conversation with a young man who was visibly shaken by one of the presenters. He was a nice looking man, well-dressed (of course), highly educated and thoroughly unhappy with his life, on a multitude of levels.

Visibly Shaken: “ I can’t believe that I’m at this ex-gay conference in St. Louis and all I can think about is how excited I am that I’m going to Ikea when I fly back home tomorrow.”

Me: “Just because you like to shop at Ikea doesn’t mean you’re gay. It just means you like modern, contemporary designs at an affordable price.”

VS: “Well...not when you’re from Georgia.”

He went on to tell me that he couldn’t seem to find his place in this world.

He wasn’t worried about being gay – he told me he was married to a lady best described as “Jesus in a dress.” He did, however, feel his masculinity was threatened by his furniture preferences, his clothing selection, his fitness routine. He was very concerned that others perceived him as gay – based solely on what he owns and how he looks.

I suggested a subscription to Adbusters – and mentioned that combating poverty rather than coveting Prada might be more in line with his religious goals.

I didn’t get an Amen, just a shrug of the shoulders.

“I guess,” he said, and walked away into a crowd of ladies who were scooping up copies of Out of Egypt: Leaving Lesbianism Behind.

As for discussions of lesbianism, there was only one speaker who addressed that issue. She claimed to be from Kentucky but pronounced Louisville the wrong way. By that I mean, anyone “really” from Kentucky pronounces Louisville like this: “Luhl-vul”

She kept saying “Louie-ville” and I didn’t believe a word outta her mouth after that.

The other thing that will linger for me is the moment I left the church. Granted, I wanted a cigarette and wanted to get out of the line of fire – but I also wanted to see how the gay community in St. Louis was conducting itself in an organized protest outside the church. Earlier in the week, several billboards promoting the event had been vandalized – and so had the church. While no one could pin-point gay activist as the culprits, the media was abuzz with suspicions.

The final sermon was very poignant and was very critical of certain hypocritical stances taken by Christian conservatives. It was well written, well sourced – there were Orwellian references and Churchill quotes, smatterings of old-time religion and new age consciousness. It was a call to action, couched in the tender, compassionate and concerned terms.

Before we were adjourned, we were informed that more protesters had arrived and that they were very agitated. We were asked to remember God’s love and instructed to leave quietly, respectfully, graciously with peace in our hearts. If we wanted, we could come up front and have hands laid upon us before we had to combat the throng of gays outside.

I may have my disrespectful moments, but ain’t nothing get laid on me in a church.

And it was true – there were hundreds of folks outside screaming, chanting and yelling. It was, as far as I’m concerned, a public relations disaster. Those protesters would have had a better chance at changing minds and would have had much better press if they were clutching white candles, holding hands, looking luminarious. Think white-winged doves or some shit like that.

These Love Won Out people are not stupid – they craft compelling messages of hope, redemption and change and sent over a thousand people out into the descending twilight and pissed-off protest. It was a brilliant stroke of crowd-control and negative reinforcement.

Think about it. If you’re feeling conflicted about your sexuality who’s going seem more welcoming: a gaggle of gregarious gays picketing your religious observance or an assembly of well-groomed, well-behaved, well-mannered, well-worked-out men?

Let me repeat that: many of these men were f-i-n-e.

And from my point of view, I say: let ‘em go.

Dating is hard and I sure as shit can’t compete with a 25-year-old former football jock with a great ass and a Christ complex. Being middle aged, overweight, outspoken, with no fucking clue why somebody would wear shoulder pads and nylon leggings in 100 degree heat, I dunno that world of Abercrombie and Fitch.

Let the ladies fight over him...go on, cutie….go!!!!

Seriously, though -- the number of good-looking men who confessed to being emotionally devastated and spiritually bankrupt was heart-breaking.

That’s the fatal faggot flaw, according to Focus on the Family and the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality.

Is it really?

Are most gay men simply flawed and fixable straight men?

Or is it that some straight men are just afraid they’re just one beer bong away from a little man-on-man action in the locker room?

I can’t answer that question, but it’s one I consider for time to time and it’s the reason I went to this event in the first place.

All people are searching for answers in their life. Some folks find them easier than others. Some folks spend their whole lives questioning. And some people would rather you never ask the question in the first place.

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One final thing: I was pissed when I heard that someone vandalized the billboards for this event and that someone desecrated the church hosting it.

That. Won’t. Do.

You see, I’ve had my college gay-support group signs vandalized, I’ve been threatened, I’ve had a gun pressed into my back outside a gay bar, I’ve had a brick thrown through my window, I’ve been hassled by fundamentalists at PrideFest, I’ve been harassed by skinheads, frat boys and even gay men wearing leather.

As much as I disagree with Focus on the Family – I do believe they have every right to assemble in public – and to assemble in peace. And I have every right to attend that trifling meeting and decide for myself if their reeducation process is religious expression or a crock of self-hating, white people bullshit.

One of the featured speakers noted the major reason why hundreds of men spend thousands of dollars to go through his de-gayification process: a “longing to be typical.”

And I saw that longing in the faces of so many gay men who attended this conference. Many were sitting on the edge of their seats in rapt attention, wiping the tears from their eyes as former ex-gays spoke of their unhappy, unrewarding lives as homosexuals. You could hear that longing in their tremulous voices as they were making their soul-crushing sin-confessions in the breakout sessions .

This longing to be “just like everybody else”.

Is that what this supposed culture war is really all about?

Conformity?

That’s the thing about one group trying to control the lives and minds of others. It’s destined to end badly, regardless of the tactics that are used. Folks will always resist what they consider to be deliberate and mean-spirited attacks on their way of life. And they’ll either react with grace, anger or silence.

The way I see it, the Grace of God is not about finding solutions for other people. It’s about getting right with yourself and harming no one else in the process.

Anger leads to more anger and silence doesn’t do shit.

And all this incessant clanging isn’t providing a whole lotta answers to folks who feel alone life’s journey.

Whether it’s a journey to redemption or a red-tag sale at your nearest Ikea.