Here’s the sitch:
Though I’m a technical agnostic and practical atheist, I sometimes attend services at First Congregational Church in midtown Memphis. Mostly it’s for social reasons; I have a lot of friends there from my believer days, and I enjoy the music and the fellowship. Moreover, the church does a lot of good works I’m happy to support. So I’m there one or two Sundays a month, and though I don’t take the woo-woo elements of the theology seriously, I can sit and smile and be agnostic.
First Congo is an open and affirming church. That means that they’re welcoming to gays, lesbians, transexuals, and so forth. This past Sunday they hosted a gay pride rally, as mentioned here.
Last night I went over to my father’s to make him dinner. Dad’s in his late 70s and a lay minister in the odious Church of God in Christ, about whom the best thing I can say is that they would not knowingly hire a serial puppy rapist as a choir director, though a pastor who beat his kids with a sock full of quarters would probably get a thumbs-up. As I cooked, he asked me if I was still attending First Congo and if I’d gone to church the previous day. He’d seen the article I linked to in the paper, and this had left him very worried. He wanted to have a discussion.
At this I groaned. My father’s never had a discussion in his life, you see, because he doesn’t really get the concept of conversation. Talks with him tend to to like this:
*DAD: Did you watch the Titans game yesterday?
SKALD: No, I was–
DAD: You should have, it was good. Football’s really interesting. You need to watch the next game.
SKALD: I don’t like football, Dad. Not really interested–
DAD: Everybody should be intersted in sports. You don’t know what you’re missing. Anyway, your sister brought me over some sweet potato pie, do you want a piece?
SKALD: No, Dad, I can’t eat sweet potato pie. I have diabetes and–
DAD: But you’re cured now. I prayed over it and I know that you’re cured. Didn’t you say that you weren’t taking the shots?
SKALD: I’ve never taken insulin shots regularly, Dad. I said I had managed to get my average blood sugar down by exercise and diet and that I only take a pill every other day, but that doesn’t mean–
DAD: You’d be cured if you’d let the Lord cure you. Let’s pray. *
And so it goes. You can see why I tend to avoid talking about anything of substance, particularly religion. This always annoys him, but I’ve learned that if we actually start talking about the Bible we both end up furious and screaming, whereas if I simply let him talk only he will be vexed.
Anyway: Dad insisted that we have a conversation about Jesus. A wiser or more callous man would simply have left, but I’d just put food in the oven and I didn’t want to abandon it to his ministrations, as it would have been simpler to build a bonfire in the backyard and toss it in. So instead I fell back on my old trick of letting him blather while I do algebra in my head. As the conversation developed, Dad talked about the first chapter of Romans, then the myths about the sadistic pit of fire called hell, and then the line of the patriarchs–going backwards, for some reasons, so that he began with Jacob and ended with the story of Abraham, sequeuing there to the Bible’s biggest asshole, Lot.
That’s when I realized the thurst of Dad’s concern. He was worried that I might be a ho-mo-sexual and didn’t want to actually the word, lest he get teh gay on his tongue.
This was irksome. So I stopped making up quadratic equations to solve and said, “Dad, what is bothering you? Are you worried that I’m gay or something?”
“Don’t say that word!” Dad exclaimed. “And yes, I’m worried! You go to that church! Either you’re gay or they’re trying to turn you gay, and either way they’re going to lead you to hell! I don’t want my son going to hell.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m not going to hell.”
“How do you know that?”
The same way I know I’m not going to be placed in the sky as the constellation Sardonicus when I die, I thought. Aloud I said, “I’m not worried about it.”
“You need to worry about it! Now you tell me right now–are you one of those? Because I can get you help if you are! Your brother’s a counselor* and helps fixs those people all the time, and if that doesn’t help you can come to church with me and we’ll get those demons out of you! But you have to tell me the truth!”
At this point I rolled my eyes so far back in my head that it was briefly painful. After I recovered from that brief moment of masochism, I thought about assuring Dad that I’m not gay, not because I fear Yahweh and obey his commandments but because girls are shockingly pretty and I regularly have to remind myself not to stare at the cute admin in customer service.
I opened my mouth to reassure him (in somewhat more politic language than the above) but then I stopped. It would be very easy to reassure him, but frankly I was too annoyed to do so. Also, I’ve always been bothered by people who disavow homosexuality in such circumstances.
But mostly I was just pissed.
So I said nothing. Let him believe whatever fairy tales he wants.
*My oldest brother works as a reparative therapist with his church. This is not the only reason I despise him, but it’s in the top 10.
