"… and I'm a gay basher …"
PG Friends: I'm sitting in on a meeting of Gay Basher's Anonymous with – unknown to the bashers gathered – my pocket-size recording device surreptitiously "taking notes."
I'm disguised as a Gay Basher: sporting a pair of $350 sunglasses (sorry, I can't resist a touch of glamour), wearing polyester aqua-blue slacks with a forest green God Hates Fags wife-beater. Oh, yes: sandals with red-white-blue argyle socks. (I'm probably the best dressed bashee here. I hope it doesn't blow my cool.)
Note: For readers who don't know about Fundygelical outreach programs, GBA is designed 1) to alleviate guilt of those who by word, deed, or half-thought have been caught red-handed "casting the first stone," and 2) to reorient such red-faced holy hurlers in more effective ways (less antithetical to passive/aggressive evangelism) to win homospecials-by-choice to the redeeming message of heterosuperiors-by-circumstance faith.
We're sitting in the basement of the Greater New Faith Temple-Church-Cathedral-Tabernacle of God's Last Days Rapture. There are 60 heterosuperiors huddled at ten tables, decorated with lilies of the valley, a Scofield Bible with Holy Land Gift Shop picture maps, and a bowl of chocolate-covered Grabass-A-Gay Goobers.
Nearly all participants are guys, tho' "Spud" – occasionally deep-kneeing me to my immediate right – beer-breaths there are two roller derby "big namer" bimbos at the Step Four Table. (If I may vouchsafe an opinion to the tape recorder: I estimate the collective intelligence at each table is in the ballpark figure of, bottom-of-the-ninth, IQ 89.5. My participant-observer presence at Step One Table ups that count by 30 points.) Private transcription …
SPUD: "I knew I had a problem when I became aware that the first thing I wanted to do after church was beat up a fag. The urge just took over my whole life. I found myself spending all my evenings going to gay bars, all my days going to steam baths. I had one thing on my mind. Are you ready for the Second Coming? I'd ask. I wouldn't take no for an answer. I twisted a few arms to get what I wanted. But, it was too damn time consuming. Honestly, I suppose I'm getting too old for bar ministry."
BIG RED: "I hate to admit it, but six of my seven kids are, well, gay. The seventh is a married cross dresser. I gay bashed by kicking them all out onto the street – which, now that the cost of suburban living has skyrocketed, turns out was a big theological mistake.
"With my reduced income I can't tithe to my mega-church like I used to. My better half tells me to call our kickouts back home. What in hell does she know? She's a goddamned feminist Wiccan. Oh, well. Live and learn."
BRUNO: "I loved the sinner and hated the sin in a very special way – I organized block-party gay-bash stonings. Just a few guys after brewskis. No big rocks. Just pebbles, marbles, vegetables, day-old hot-cross buns. At first it was alota laughs.
"We 'stoned' about a – hahahahaha – 'baker's dozen' of fruit-loopers. Unfortunately – and that's why I'm here – we pelted a pastor's son by mistake (God, who would have thought … You know … Come on, who knows they're gay at 14? He was, well, cute. Too damned cute for his own bubble-butt good.)"
ZEL DIPSON: "I swear I'll never, NEVER Gay Bash again! Criss-cross my heart. I made the mistake of pinching a drag queen in the unisex john at Pronto. She was a holy terror in high heels. See, I got two black eyes. What's worse, my Viagra ain't workin'. No siree, guys. Those bitches cain't fight fair. No how. Nooo way. I've had it."
