Scatter Plots, cont.: Who's speaking?

So, I've spent the last few posts looking at how Tectonic fudges around a few data points from our survey of Laramie, WY in order to make the pattern more uniform.  For a long time, this really bothered me.  Could that have been a necessary evil, however?  Let's take a look now at how the background politics of who's speaking actually might necessitate covering up some background information for the good of the play-- and a fair representation of the community.

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And it was... it was just... I'm fifty-two years old and I'm gay.  I have lived here for many years and I've seen a lot.

-- Harry Woods, in TLP (2000): 63

When I came here I knew it was going to be hard as a gay man... but I kept telling myself: People should live where they want to live... I mean, imagine if more gay people stayed in small towns.  But it's easier said than done of course. 

-- Jonas Slonaker, in TLP (2000): 22-23

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These two voices speak to more than the experience of just a semi-retired actor and a university admin specialist.  They're the voices of those who can speak to both their own personal experiences as well as the experience of gay men in the Laramie community at large.  And within that community, they each have a unique story to tell about their life within the community as a whole. That's how I'd like to finish out with this discussion this week-- looking at how these voices speak for more than just one side of Laramie, and with more clarity if we let them be a little less specific...

Jackrabbit vs. the Street Preacher

Being a Day in the Life of a Conservative, Straight, Evangelical Fledgling LGBT Activist, 

Part 3

A NOTE TO LINKBACKS:  It has recently come to my attention that a blog for fundamentalist street preachers has linked to this post, for which I commend them (especially because no one yet has scribbled their anathemas in the Comment box).  However, if you want to understand why I have such serious reservations about this form of spreading the Gospel message, you really should read the post linked here, not just the one below. The choice is naturally yours, but I hope you find your experience here both convicting and spiritually edifying nonetheless...

~~Jackrabbit

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Well, better late than never, I guess...  Our "friends" (pictured at right,) the fundamentalist, cultish street preachers finally showed up on campus again this week, so my "Protest in a Box" riding around in the back of my car finally got used.  I was heading out for lunch from our library at about eleven thirty when I saw their big, ugly yellow sign cresting over the top of the amphitheater hill, and my heart sank all the way down to the toes of my clogs.  Damn, I thought, I'm actually going to have to do this after all.  I ran for a quick bite of food so I wouldn't pass out before four o'clock, threw the rest in the fridge at my job, and ran off to the far side of campus to cart 120 LOVE signs and paraphernalia back to the quad.  By the time I got back, the hate preachers were in full force, and I suddenly went from wet-my-pants terrified to extremely determined, which was totally a God thing.  I started by working the crowd with my big yellow signs, handing them out to anybody who wanted one, and then stood on the top of the amphitheater in the middle of the quad with a huge LOVE poster.  After about twenty minutes, I started getting in reinforcements from two equally wonderful and equally supportive groups: the LGBTA and the Christian ministry community.  They both offered me a lot of support, one of them offered me an iced mocha coffee (for which I am eternally grateful, dude!) and they all grabbed signs and stood in resistance to these guys' bad press for Jesus.  Man, I can't begin to explain how much I love both of these communities.  Now if I can just get them to talk to each other...

One thing I wanted to do as a part of my personal protest was to wear a yellow arm-band.  Since I'm a little bit chicken-livered in the face of conflict, I wanted a reminder to myself why I had to do this, so my reminder was my friend James (the one who committed suicide back in 2006, which I've talked about before.)  That was my personal kick in the butt to realize how important it was to speak back to these guys' hate, especially because they were singling out gays and lesbians for particular abuse.  A few people asked me about it during the afternoon, so I was able to share with them about James' story and why I felt speaking up against a legalistic concept of God was so important.  One of the girls I ran into was herself a depression survivor, and she had a beautiful story about being led out of despair through the kind of loving intervention that I wish James had found.  (And, if you've never heard of "To Write Love on Her Arms," you owe it to yourself and your loved ones to check them out.)   

Anyhow, I stood out in the Appalachian sun for two and a half hours holding my big sign, passing out LOVE signs to other people, and just chatting with others about what they were saying and what we felt about it.  The protest generated a lot of conversation-- and very positive, open conversation-- between people of all sorts of faiths, politics and cultural communities.  That's what I felt like was the biggest success of the whole thing.  By the end of the afternoon, I had handed out all but about twenty of the 100 signs I had printed, and I only got back three of the fifteen yellow board signs I had painted-- and those had passed through several sets of hands over the course of the afternoon. 

The preachers, of course, were rather pissed about the whole thing, but, the more I think about it, when a reasonable, loving Christian tried to dialogue with these guys, one the preachers told him he was the "Spawn of Satan," so who cares what they think?  One guy kept trying to interfere with us by stationing himself next to my sign-station with a pile of tracts, but I just moved it on him, and one of the campus ministers stood by to fend him off.  Then the banner guy (pictured above) started wandering the crowds next to my little LOVElies trying to get something stirred up.  He did one thing that really pissed me off though: when a girl in a very short plaid skirt bent over to talk to her friends, he pulled out a camera and basically up-skirted her.  He did all this while wearing a "no porn" button on his shirt.  I found this very interesting for a man who claimed that he had stopped sinning the moment he accepted Jesus...  grrrr.  This is exactly what God meant in Ezekiel when He says that he'll judge the religious by their own standards of righteousness, which will be more than enough send them straight to perdition. 
 
The strangest thing was that the first of the three preachers tried so hard to incorporate our signs into his sermon and preach on love.  But, having never spent any real time with the Bible studying the nature of God's love, he just absolutely hashed the whole thing up and didn't make any sense.  For him, God is some sort of ultimate taskmaster whom we can only please by good behavior; loving God for His goodness, and Him loving us out of His goodness, seems to never have occurred to him.  That may have been the most powerful message anybody got out of the whole protest-- that he didn't know what love was.

"YOUR love is just a glandular feeling," he shouted at us.  "It's not real love.  Your kind of love will send you to HELL!"  At that point, an co-ed on the quad pulled a wry face. 
"What does that mean, a 'glandular feeling'?" She asked me incredulously.  I couldn't help myself.
"I think that it's sort of a squishing sensation,"  I replied back, scrunching my fingers together to illustrate.  She roared with laughter.  Then I went around handing out a few more signs. 

So, what did I learn?  I discovered that there are a LOT of Christians on campus who want to speak up and give a more loving response to the world than what creeps like this are up to, but they're scared.  All they need is a little gumption and somebody to tell them it's okay to do it.   I think we get so freaked out about protecting our "witness" that we forget to witness.  I lost count of the number of Christians who came up to me to tell me how badly they had wanted to do this.  Oh, and those two ministers I was so unsure about on Monday?.... as it turns out, I was totally wrong about them.  They showed up and held signs.  And they didn't care a whit who was straight, who was gay, or who was atheist.  They came as Christians who wanted to support the campus community, and I was so proud of them.  I think I owe those two fellas a huge apology sometime. 

I also learned, for the upteenth time, how loving, supportive, and open the GLBT community can be in the face of oppression.  My favorite part of the protest was about thirty minutes in, when a much beloved professor of my acquaintance (and herself a member of the GLBT community) came bounding up the hill just to get a sign with this look of pure joy on her face.  She had seen me holding my sign from her office window.  She couldn't stay for the protest, but since her office was directly in sight of the protest area, she hung the sign out of her office window in support of all of us.  

Every time the preachers would yell something that made me wince, I'd look up to the fifth floor of the Humanities building, see that yellow LOVE sign glowing in the afternoon sunlight on her window, and I'd smile.  So, until next time:

"If I have a faith that can move mountains and have not love,
I am nothing." 

--the apostle Paul, 1 Cor. 13:2

Same Planet, Different worlds

Being a Day in the Life of a Straight, Conservative Evangelical Fledgling LGBT Activist, 

Part 2

My oh my, what a week this has turned into.  I shared with you already about the crazy street preachers who showed up on our campus and started screaming at everybody last week.  Sometime Wednesday afternoon I was struck with an overwhelming conviction to protest these guys.  It was such a strong conviction that I felt it had to be wrong.  But, no, God was definitely nudging me to do something about it.  And the more I looked into these guys, how they work and what they preach, the more I felt I need to make a stand.  The question was, how does one Christian picket another?  Biblically, that gets very interesting-- and I don't think there's a good answer to that.  And, how much does the LGBT activist me and the Christian evangelical me get to coincide on a project like this?  That was an even harder acrobatics routine... 

I finally decided on copying a protest I'd seen pictures of in Athens, GA against the KKK-- signs that say only "Love" on the front, and a code of conduct on the back.  That's one of my signs right there.  I also decided that I had to do this as one Christian speaking back to another, so I made some larger signs with a few Bible verses on the back about love to make my stance on the whole thing clear.  My favorite, and the sign I was going to hold had 1 Corinthians 13:2 on it:  "If I have a faith that can move mountains and have not love, I am nothing." 

So, because I was still a little queasy about picketing what is, ultimately, still a Christian message even if it's not a Christian approach to the Gospels, I needed some advice.  I started with my husband, who eventually just shot me a baffled look and said, "Jackrabbit, I don't know.  The big problem I'm having is that this isn't something I would personally do because that's not how I operate."  Then I asked my minister friend.  He was on the fence, but cautiously optimistic.  I asked one of my pastors after church on Sunday.  He was extremely ambivalent, but for some reason he wouldn't tell me not to do it.

Finally, I asked a couple of ministers at a non-denom Christian ministry for a little insight into the Christian campus community and see if they were interested in helping me out.  They were overwhelmingly enthusiastic. Oh, thank goodness, I thought.  Finally somebody understands.  But, to make my motives clear, I felt like I had to tell them why I felt led to do this.  So I told them I was a member of our LGBTA as a straight supporter, too.  That got them a little flummoxed.  On the one hand, they thought it was just awesome that I was both a Christian and a part of that counter-culture because they hadn't figured out how to do that yet.  On the other hand, they thought I needed help. Help for what?   "Jesus always sent out disciples in twos," they kept saying.  Um, we'll see what happens with that. 

But in any case, I talked to a larger campus ministry meeting (where I didn't come out as a LGBT member, which was a serious mistake) and told them what I was up to.  They seemed pretty enthusiastic.  But then I had to go to my LGBTA meeting thirty minutes later and give the same pitch.  Here's what happened...

I showed them a LOVE sign and explained what I wanted to do.  They were pretty enthusiastic about the idea of protesting the street preachers, and I was surprised at how willing they were to stand next to me with a big Bible verse on my sign.  But then the questions started:

"Can we make fun of them?" Someone asked. 
"Well, no.  It's a silent protest.  Besides, look at the front of the sign!" 
"Can we make faces, then?"
"Um, no.  Same reason."   
"Can we interrupt them with noise or anything?"
"Nope.  Silent protest."  One guy tried to get creative.
"Um, can I, like make a big sign with Bible verses about how the moon gives off its own light or the world is flat and stuff?"  It was hard not to snort with exasperation. 
"Can you get that to fit into the 'Love' theme?"  I asked patiently. 
"Wow, that's hard... I guess I could find a way to do that," he conceded.  Then another guy stopped to ask me one more question:

"Did you tell any campus ministries you're planning on doing this?"  Silence in the room. 
"Uh, yeah," I said, and I told them which one. 
"They're actually okay with you doing this against the preachers?" He asked incredulously. 
"They were pretty enthusiastic," I said.  The room almost erupted with excitement. 

"This is so great!  I'm going to bring my rainbow flag tomorrow, okay?"  one girl said excitedly.  I stopped in my tracks for a moment.  What will all those campus ministers think of a giant rainbow flag? I asked myself, panicked.
"Um...  I think that's okay," I told her.  That girl, "Martha," grinned excitedly and took off.  I emailed those campus ministers to get some advice and to warn them ahead of time if they walk up to see a huge rainbow flag in the middle of the protest.   

So, I get a call this morning from one of the two ministers I had talked to (Who I'll call "Torben"):

"Hey, Jackrabbit, I got your email last night and wanted to touch base with you," he said.
"Okay, so what do I do?" I asked him.  Silence for a moment.
"Well, my feeling is that they need to respect what you're standing for, right?  And bringing that flag isn't doing that, is it?"
"Why don't you think so?"  I asked. 
"Well, because that's changing the nature of the protest.  If they want to join in, fine, but they have to do it under your terms."  Is it really?  I thought to myself.  I thought that was sort of the point. 
"Look, I'm not going to tell my friends they have to step back into the closet if they stand alongside me," I countered.  "That'd undo all the good work I've done in there so far." 
"But if they stand alongside you, they need to stand for you as well, don't they?"   Torben asked.  "That's not asking too much, is it?"  I had to think a moment.  Yes, it is, I decided. 
"Torben...  That's what my LGBT friends tell me every week," I told him.    Silence on the other end.  
"What do you mean?" 
"That if I'm standing alongside them, then I have to stand for them." 
"I see."
"Welcome to a day in my life, Torben," I told him.  "I feel like a ballerina dancing en pointe on a straightedge razor." 

In any case, so far it hasn't even been an issue.  I woke up to a steady stream of rain soaking everything that still hasn't stopped-- and no sign of Crazy Preacher Man.  I think they got rained out and will be a no-show for today.  My meticulously painted signs are sitting in the back of my car, I feel tied to the quad looking to see if they're there, and I'm wondering:  what the heck was all this for?  With the money and time I spent on signs I could have done one of the following:

• Fed a room full of homeless people a hand-cooked meal
• Sent the money to a friend going on a medical mission to Sudan-- and driven to South Carolina to deliver it
• Bought an awesome little wireless remote for my wicked new camera and taken pictures of sunsets all weekend
• Donated it all to To Write Love on Her Arms and spent the weekend playing frisbee
• Gone to see Alice In Wonderland in 3-D about six times 
• Blown it all on a day-trip to Dollywood (I am in Appalachia, after all...)

Well, I guess that the answer is that this was an exercise in Christian obedience.  And acrobatics.  We'll see how long I can keep all these balls in the air-- Christianity, social justice, GLBT activism-- in the air before I fall off the high wire...

Hey Mister Preacher Man

Okay, so you've all probably figured out by now that I'm no real fan of radical preachers. I've been a little gun-shy of them ever since Fred "bat-poo crazy" Phelps first showed up on the UW campus protesting the Russell Henderson trial, and my distaste of them has only increased in recent years as I've seen others like them start to spring up.  Ironically, just two weeks after I did a series on WBC protests and the counter-protesters who mock them on my blog, we had this show up on our campus: three guys walking right out of Protestant nineteenth century America to hold a scream-off with a bunch of postmodern college students.  Damn.  

These three fellas showed up last week on campus, too.  Their main preacher was a walking anachronism, dressed up like an antebellum carnival barker, down to the striped shirt, vest and flat-topped straw hat.  I kept waiting for the nightmare to end so he'd just go back to hocking boiled peanuts and cotton candy like a guy in his outfit was supposed to be doing.  Instead, he preached for hours, in unconnected ideas for the most part, about sexual sin, disobedience to God, and turning to Jesus for salvation-- and a lot about Hell.  There was not a whit about God's love or having a relationship with Jesus that exists beyond just our fear of hell to something deeper and more satisfying.  There was a lot about God as taskmaster, disciplinarian and judge without any hint of God as pursuing lover, bridegroom or loving father.  That's not even half of the message, folks.


I was standing out in the heat this afternoon taking pictures of these two when I found myself surrounded by six lesbians and a bi-curious male of my acquaintance while they chatted about the preachers and their "sodomite" condemning sign.  It was weird, to be honest; they were all chill and accepting of their presence, just ignoring the message and poking fun of the messenger, and I was the one getting bent out of shape.  I told one of them, "for me it's like having that lunatic uncle who shows up to every family reunion, gets wasted, makes a total fool out of themselves and totally embarrasses you.  You know what I mean?"  She just laughed and told me I needed to relax.  What I really wanted to do was apologize to them each personally for the yahoos holding the yellow sign. 

But, seriously, Mister Preacher Man, what exactly is it you think you're accomplishing by trotting into an environment you know nothing about and spewing your condemnation upon it?   This is not Old Testament Mesopotamia and you sure as heck are no Ezekiel.   You know nothing of these people, their individual lives, their needs or fears.  And since you can't speak to their needs in love, all that leaves you with is condemnation because you can't love a stranger, but you can judge them. 

Actually, you don't care about this campus.  If you love people enough to want to see them saved, like you kept claiming to the passersby, then why aren't you getting to know the names of some of these "sodomites" and "fornicators" and learn their stories?  Why won't you shut your traps long enough to actually listen to what they have to tell you?  Jesus, if you take a peek at the New Testament you have memorized, spent a lot less time preaching at the sinners than he did eating with them.  Actually, he preached against the religious primarily, not the sinners.  If you really want to get through to this campus, put down the damn yellow sign, buy lunch for a few "fornicators" and let them do the talking.  Learn their names, at least.  Talk about how you've let down God and how he's forgiven you-- not them.  They don't need a voice of condemnation; the Epistle to the Romans says they have the law written on their hearts already.  What they need is a common point of sympathy with you enough to find a reason to want the Lord in their lives.  

That sign above is the only thing I saw them accomplish all afternoon: they gave people a good reason to reject the gospel and assume that God doesn't exist.  And now they're going to eventually leave campus and leave the actual Christian community here to clean up their mess and try to undo the damage they've caused.  And that's just a freaking shame, man.

They're coming back in a week, and it sounds like a lot of people decided to plan ahead for a counter-protest.  So, I guess I'll see you next week with some pictures from the counter-protest and see how people react...

The Best of Counter-Protesting on Flickr

Okay, so this is going to be my last post on Phelps counter-protesters, I swear. But if you found any of the social protests things I have mentioned over the last few days fun or interesting, I'd recommend this Flickr Gallery of images I put together which contains my favorite responses to the WBC in one spot. There's a little bit of everything rolled together in the gallery-- a lot of love, a little hate, reason and religion-- and what has to be the most adorable social protesters I have ever encountered. 

Peace, love and finger paint, y'all. It's a beautiful thing.

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PHOTO CREDIT:
Richmond Protester against WBC, fundraising for "Pennies for Peace."  From theloushe's Flickr photostream: 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/theloushe/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

A Little Bibliography: Op-ed statements on the Shepard beating

Matt's beating and murder in 1998 couldn't have come at a more timely point in terms of stirring up some seriously wicked national debate on GLBT rights.  When you look at some of the national discourse at this time-- questions about DOMA, Trent Lott's comparison between homosexuality and kleptomania, the ex-gay movement's advertising campaign--  Shepard's death was like dropping a piece of hot slag in the middle of a munitions plant.  That's where my frustration with the politics surrounding the Shepard case comes from: once everything exploded, there was no easy way to sort the productive from the non-productive dialogue, and for every passionate and reasoned call for change, there were so many others just spewing about their own brand of incandescent hate on both sides.

In a real way, even though I adore him as a playwright and I understand the source of all that fury, Tony Kushner's response to Matt's death was just as frustrating to me as Trent Lott's: neither seemed to think far enough beyond their own concerns to see the real human beings on the other side.  The fulminate rage in Kushner's rhetoric in his editorial makes me flinch.  For all his condemnation of those "savor[ing] the unsavory details" of the Shepard murder, Kushner just seems to me to use Matt Shepard as a grisly trope, a blunt object he can hit back at the Republicans with in retaliation.  If you're arguing for human rights and the equal dignity of all people,  I don't see the point of slapping somebody upside the head with a real human being.  I have the same problem with anti-abortion activists driving around in trucks with pictures of butchered babies on the sides: neither approach provides space for compassion, understanding or forgiveness-- and it certainly doesn't uphold the dignity of the real human beings whose lives are at stake. 

In any case, a few of the more notable responses I have attached here as a short bibliography if you're interested.  From a literary standpoint, obviously those by Kushner and Vidal will be of the most interest.  But the one that piques my own curiosity is Paul Capetz' meditation on the church as a ground of reconciliation between gays, lesbians and straight Christians.  His response is provocative, unwavering, and, knowing what has happened within the Presbyterian church (my current church home) since this was written, it's an interesting bit of prophecy.  He also recognizes the humanity on both sides of the debate and speaks in love even as he calls passionately for change.  Please, no matter your personal conviction, give his argument a fair read.  Full bibliography (with references to Wyoming letters, too) after the jump...

Incredible panorama shot of a WBC protest/counter-protest

Westboro Baptist Church Counter Protest Clowns pt.1, originally uploaded by jesse.feinman.

I had used some pictures from a 2009 Albany high school performance of The Laramie Project in a previous post.  Apparently, Westboro Baptist Church had shown up to protest the performance, and a Flickr community member, Jesse Feinman, has posted an absolutely amazing panorama shot of the protest.  (That's him at left counter-protesting, which I absolutely love.)  If you want to see what love overwhelming hate looks like, then I'd recommend it.   The counter protest on the other side of the street in the full panorama shot is simply amazing.

Since Flickr has a size limit posted on pictures, the link below goes to a different web address where you can view the whole thing.  

My favorite signs:  "Jesus Forgives" (on left)   and "You eat your kids" (!) on the right.  Guess which one is which:  http://pic90.picturetrail.com/VOL2209/11470066/20327503/357238914.jpg

The picture link above is watermarked (I did that intentionally), but go to his Flickr photostream (linked above) for contact information and link if you'd like a clean copy.  He says he's happy to answer requests.  

So please if you like, take a look, wash your hands, and then hug somebody who needs it.

Shepard and TLP Reporting from the "Advocate"

For obvious reasons, the national magazine The Advocate was particularly interested in the Shepard story; they followed it longer and more thoroughly than most of the national media, and the quality of the coverage, from what I can tell, it a lot better than a lot of the other slash-and-type reporting that came out during the trials. Interviews with LGBT locals are also a lot more detailed and give more background information-- plus, they revisited the town periodically to get first-hand reports. Issue 796 has the most information if you need to get just one issue. 

For those that are interested, here is a list of some of the Advocate's best articles on the event.  Unfortunately, their online archive only goes as far back as 2008, so if you want to get these you'll need to find a source.  The Advocate is indexed by Academic Search Premier and Gale Cengage Academic OneFile if you have school access.

• "Back to Laramie." Advocate 1031 (2009): 71-74.  [About TLP: 10 Years Later]
  
• Martin, Michael. "Remembering Matthew." Advocate 1017 (2008): 28-35.  
• "Revisiting Laramie." Advocate 899 (2003): 31.  [Interviews w/ principal people 5 years later]
  
• Gross, Michael Joseph. "Pain and Prominence." Advocate 899 (2003): 26.   [Judy Shepard]
  
• Vilanch, Bruce. "Hallowed Ground." Advocate 815 (2000): 47.   [The Fence]
  
• Curtis, Phil. "More Than a Verdict." Advocate 802/803 (2000): 34.  [Sentencing; M&H's future as prisoners]
  
• Curtis, Phil. "A Town Reflects on Itself." Advocate 796 (1999): 44.  [Interviews with friends]
  
• Wieder, Judy. "The Shepard Family Heals." Advocate 796 (1999): 38.
• Bertrand, Stephen J. "Matthew Shepard One Year Later." Advocate 796 (1999): 36.
  
• Barrett, Jon. "The Lost Brother." Advocate 773 (1998): 26-30. [Interviews]
  

Links: Laramie Inside Out

One of the lesser known films about the Shepard incident and the LGBTQ community in Wyoming is Laramie Inside Out, a quite good documentary of Laramie, its people, and the protests that were going on during the trials.  I can't say as I have ever met the producer of the film (she graduated before I got to Laramie), but Beverly Seckinger is a Laramie native and filmmaker with ties to many of the same professors as I do-- particularly the Harrises, Dr. Duncan Harris of English and Dr. Janice Harris of English/Women's studies.  These two beloved members of the faculty have served as sort-of foster parents for the Honors Program students for years. 

You can find out about the film and view a synopsis of it on the film website, larmieinsideout.com.  If I can get up the gumption to do it (I'm still a little chicken), I might check this out from our university library and give you a review of the film later this year, when I have a little more free time.  In the meantime, I'd encourage you to do the same!