Like many people, especially around here, I have been wandering around in a daze since the announcement of Rick Warren. Wavering between fury and bewilderment, always thinking "Oh my God, what have I done!" (In giving Obama such overwhelming time, support, money and yes - hope).
However a simple lunch-hour workout brought a sense of clarity, easily lost in the fog of anger.
So I have a rather mundane job, word processing for a small investment bank here in New York. Good pay, great people, great company. Every day I pretty much force myself to get up from my desk, and get my gay ass to the gym. I hate to go but always feel better after.
As stated above, I have absolutely been crushed by The Rick Warren Invocation DebacleTM. With all our gay nerves still raw from the Prop. 8 nightmare, I would run the script over and over in my head - "How could he? How COULD he? Had we been taken for fools? Thrown under the bus AGAIN? Why is it always us?"
All that and worse.
You see, I have a problem with preachers, you might call it a "Pastor Problem". I'm deeply suspicious and untrusting of them. I was raised in Christian household and the emotional and spiritual scars inflicted by years of church-induced, internalized self-hatred had only recently started to heal. Rick Warren represents all that I have worked so hard to overcome.
Anyway, so I'm doing cardio, I've got my ear buds in tuning into the little monitor TV attached to the stair master. When I say stair master, I don't mean any easy elliptical kind of machine, I mean the one where you actually climb the stairs - it's a hell of a workout, I'm usually soaked at the end. I start to get warmed up and get going, and I start flipping channels. The usual suspects - CNN, ESPN, some crazy-ass show on MTV, a game show, nothing is really jazzing me, so I keep flipping. I'm flipping, and all of the sudden there are these two cute guys on some soap opera. Hmmm, what's this I say? Some dumb soap opera, they're probably fighting over some girl, or one of them is the husband and he's been cheating, yadda yadda yadda - yawn. But wait a second, what are they saying? At this precise moment, there was almost a horrible, horrible stair master accident. You see, they weren't talking about how much they loved some girl; they were talking about each other.
I had heard about the gay storyline of Luke and Noah on "As the World Turns," but I'm not really into soaps and frankly wasn't really interested in seeing another stereotypical lame gay character who was the token comic relief, or totally celibate, or seriously messed up. NOT INTERESTED. But this wasn't that AT ALL. Here were two young, attractive, healthy (mentally and physically) gay characters professing their LOVE for each other. Wanting to fight for each other, to be with each other, to commit to each other and they capped it off with a full-on, open mouth, lingering, passionate kiss. Actually a couple of kisses.
I COULDN'T BELIEVE MY EYES! Naturally I kept watching...
Granted it's a soap, so the scene ended pretty quickly and the show was on to something else, but I was practically running up the killer stair master. My heart was pounding out of my chest, but it wasn't in titillation, it was in joy.
I'll be 40 in a year or so, I've been around the block a few times and living in New York it's easy to become cynical about things, but as I finished up my workout all I could think of were these characters. If only I had been able to see something like this when I was a kid, what a difference it would have made in my life. To see someone like me, living fully and fighting for their love - not ashamed, or tragic or pathetic...WOW! Of course there probably is some gay kid out there, who IS seeing this, and IS experiencing that change in their life.
Suddenly, through my feelings of anger, pain, and betrayal arose one single overriding emotion. Hope. I know I've heard that word somewhere else recently.
We really HAVE come a long way. Not far enough for sure, but there have been victories, triumphs. Just as we work tirelessly to ensure our equality, let us not forget the battles we have won.
Am I still pissed? You bet.
Am I going to keep working, fighting, and demanding full equality? Hell yes!
Through all that I will try to remember that while things are not where I want them, some things have changed and they will never be the same.
Right as I ended my cardio session, I flipped channel one more time and landed on the Ellen show. As she came on stage, the announcer in a loud booming voice came over the speaker and in one sentence summed it all up.
"Ladies and Gentlemen, MRS. Ellen DeGeneres"
Yep, we've come a long way.