In 1987 a pair of penguins named Silo and Roy started making eyes at each other. Eventually, they even started dancing and whatever the penguin equivalent of kissing is. After about a year together, they tried to start a family by way of sitting on a rock they presumed to be an egg. The zoo keepers eventually decided that they were probably pretty gay, and not just because they are called chinstrap penguins (I am not making that up). Anyway, on the other side of the enclosure, some straight penguins laid an egg they were not attempting to hatch, so the gay penguins adopted it and hatched a little one they named Tango. The story ends with a sad tale. Eventually, Silo realizes that he is bisexual and eventually leaves Roy for a woman named Scrappy. That same year, a tell-all book was released called, And Tango Makes Three, a kid's book about the love these two queer penguins once shared. That was way back in ancient times, the year of our Lord, two-thousand-and-five.

Then, some random mom got real mad. Apparently, God or the wine (in some traditions, they are the same thing) started talking to this very angry mother. She didn’t want her kids to know that gay penguins existed because that is the gateway drug for them discovering that gay humans exist, and then what’s next? PRONOUNS?! What are they teaching kids in schools these days? A cultural war began, and demands rose to ban such erotic literature as a picture book about two boy penguins raising an egg together. Well, they didn’t stop there! Eventually, the list of books continued to grow. Yet, one book was frequently suggested to be brought back into schools by these Christofascists: The Bible.

Yes, dear friends, they wanted Tango and her queer a$$ parents to be chucked into the trash bin of history and, instead, dust off the ol’ scriptures for some good old-fashioned religious education where kids wouldn’t learn about such silly things as gay penguins. Instead, they should learn about talking snakes convincing genetically identical people to get naked, Lot fathering his own grandchildren after being raped by his daughters (only after he offers them to be raped by the townsfolk in exchange for not raping angels), and who can forget the loving story of a Father submitting their child to die a horrific death to undo their own political and economic mistakes (wait, Jesus was a millennial?). This is the book that was going to teach all those horrible little ingrates about morals, ethics, and how to be really, super-duper, straight!

*record scratches*

And then in sashayed Jonathan and David. These dudes are so gay they make Bert and Ernie look like actual roommates. These guys are so gay that not even Christopher Rice could come up with such a sultry tale of homoerotic love. They are so gay (the crowd cheers HOW GAY ARE THEY!) They are so gay that I am absolutely shocked that more Christians aren’t trying to ban the Bible from public schools, lest it indoctrinate their children.

*Assistant runs in from off camera and whispers in the author’s ear*

Oh, right, cognitive dissonance is overshadowed by the milky-sweet goodness of hypocrisy.

Unholy Sh+t

1 Samuel 18 - 2 Samuel 1

Pride Month Special Edition

Queer Coded Characters of the Bible

There are many passages in the scriptures that are difficult to handle as a queer person. Though the words often lodged against us are not really about loving same-sex relationships, these verses have been so perverted over the years into anti-queer rhetoric that it’s hard to see them for what they really are. The tales of Sodom and Gomorrah or the laws found in Leviticus seem to place a clear target on our backs. Yet, with a keen eye, a theology degree, and the ability to read more than one language, you can easily see that these verses are not intended to attack consensual relationships between adults, whether romantic or sexual in nature. As challenging as it is to dissect these clobber verses, it’s important work. Then, there is the story of Jonathan and David, and I have no idea how anyone can read this sh+t and not instantly go, “That’s gayer than Siegfried and Roy getting box seats to the Ice Capades presents the music of Elton John.”

The institutional church has worked hard over the years to make the story of David and Jonathan seem like they were BFFs. Yet, the rumors of their queerness date back centuries, and by the time we reached the medieval period, they were already solidified as queer icons among artists. It is actually harder to find an image of these two men that looks straight than it was for me to find classic art of them being queer af.

It all began with a tale as old as time: a beautiful prince falls for a bear who is also a pauper. The very first thing that you need to understand, for anything else that will follow to make sense, is that David is super hot. David is such a smoke show that his beauty is actually referenced in the scriptures (1 Samuel 16:12). Which makes a ton of sense because he is a farm boy from the wrong side of town who has been working those muscles and getting a gorgeous tan. Everything is going pretty well for David, generally speaking, he has a cush job working for his dad, is the youngest and that’s always a beneficial lineup for a sibling, and then he gets conscripted into the military. Eventually, he gets quite a reputation for SLAYING… the Philistines. This puts him on the good side of the king, a total bigot by the name of Saul. Instantly, Saul is a little suspicious because he’s like, “This guy is super hot, way younger than me, and is kicking some serious a$$ on the battlefield.” Eventually, he makes the classic mistake that most parents who refuse to accept that their kids are gay make, “I’ve got a son about your age; y’all should hang out.”

This is where things get rather steamy. When Jonathan walks into the room, David and Saul are hanging out, talking about swords and sh+t. Upon meeting David, the scriptures say, “Jonathan became one in spirit with David, and he loved him as himself.” It’s important to note that David isn’t doing anything special here; he is just chilling with the King, having a pretty typical conversation. So this is not a situation of Jonathan being like, “Wow, this dude is really smart and probably going to overthrow the kingdom someday; I need to get on his good side.” No, dear ones, that is not what is happening here. This is Jonathan walking in and being like, “Holy sh+t, that is literally the hottest guy I have ever seen in my entire life! *ushers a servant over to him* call in the royal UHaul!” I hear you; you want to tell me that I am overdoing it and that I am implying things that aren’t there, but oh contraire, that is precisely what is happening because it gets gayer. Immediately upon falling into what theologian Theodore Jennings describes as “love at first sight,” Jonathan is instantly willing to give himself to David. It says that Jonathan made a covenant with David, though it does not extrapolate as to what that covenant might be. For the sake of integrity, I will say that people make covenants all over the Bible; it's kind of a thing. That being said and true, Jonathan makes his covenant to David by immediately disrobing because he loved David so much (1 Samuel 18:1-4)

The whole story takes a wild twist when Saul attempts to marry off David to one of his daughters. May I sidebar here for a moment to say that this is such a classic bigoted parent behavior. We’ve all heard the story before: two young military guys meet, fall in love, and what happens in the barracks stays in the barracks. Even though it is not explicitly stated, I am going to guess it was sword fighting. David does a little swing and a miss to dodge marrying the first of the king’s daughters. Unfortunately for David, the king has a lot of daughters. I swear to Christ I am not making this up, Saul has a daughter named Michal and David is like, “Sure, I guess I will marry the girl with the boy name” but then is like, “Oh, right! I am entirely broke because I am just a poor shepherd boy. I can’t afford to buy a whole daughter; I don’t have a dowry (1 Samuel 18:20).” Entirely unvexed by the lack of money and just trying to get David in a heteronormative relationship, Saul says, and again I am not kidding, “Just go get me a hundred Philistine foreskins, and that’ll be enough!” To which David is like, “You don’t have to ask me twice to go touch a hundred giant dicks.” Ever the overachiever, David returns with two hundred foreskins. If you are keeping count, that is twice as many dicks as he was supposed to be working with here (1 Samuel 18:24).

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Here, we enter a problem: David is married to a woman. If you grew up anything like me, this is how you were taught to see King David: as a womanizer. That’s legit because David is kind of a horn dog and definitely a ladies’ man. There is no doubt that women loved David a lot. He is notorious for having had an affair that resulted in his killing the woman’s husband in a very “if they can’t convict Charles Manson of murder, they certainly can’t pin this on me” kind of way. Spoiler alert, Dave, they did, and you are stone-cold guilty. Either way, the point is David is married to a woman, most especially to Jonathan’s sister. Now, I will go out on a limb here again and bet they probably looked a lot alike—just a hunch, a theory, but probably not a far-fetched one. Before you exclaim, “Ew, David!” please do note that this tracks with a great many queer and queer-coded stories that have existed for centuries. However, I think what I love the most about the story of Jonathan and David is that, whereas Jonathan is clearly a mega-gay power bottom, David is bisexual. The feelings are mutual but David isn’t like mad about it when he sleeps with women either.

Saul is still pretty bent with David and keeps trying to kill him. Michal, the daughter of Saul and wife of David, warns her husband that Saul is on the rampage, again. David sneaks out a window, and Saul gets into a big argument with his daughter about why she wouldn’t let him kill her husband. The answer is easy: it’s because she loved David. It states that expressly in the scriptures, just like it did with Jonathan. Yet, it never says that David loved Michal. It does say that David loved Jonathan. Just so we are abundantly clear here, it states unquestionably that Jonathan loves David (1 Samuel 18:1) and that Michal loves David (1 Samuel 18:20), but of those two, the scriptures only say that David loved Jonathan (2 Samuel 1:26).

This is when sh+t gets very Shakespearian. Saul can not get over the fact that David breathes oxygen, so he continues to devise a plan to unalive the would-be king. David catches wind of this plot and has a little chit-chat with Jonathan about it. Jonathan has diligently fought for David and is assured his father will do no harm to his boyfriend. That is when David has to hit Jonathan with some hard f+cking facts, “Listen, your dad is trying to kill me and he knows you love me, so he isn’t going to tell you anything. I promise you, he wants me dead.” They devise a plan that David will hide in the closet (it’s a big stone in a field, but who’s counting). David is supposed to be in attendance at the New Moon Feast (super-gay), and the King knows this. He plans to stab David with his spear (mega-gay) and is just sitting there at the feast waiting for Davie to show up. When David is a no-show on the guest list, the King loses his ever-loving mind about it. The scriptures literally say that Saul has this thought, “Something must have happened to David to make him ceremonially unclean; surely he is unclean (1 Samuel 20:26).” *The spirit of Leslie Jordan descends from the heavens dressed like a little cherub* Well, sh+t! Whatever could David and Jonathan do in the fields that might have made them ceremonial unclean? I am glad you asked. The first time that they met, they made a covenant with each other where Jonathan got super naked. Well, they did that again (1 Samuel 20:16). Jonathan has one job at the feast: find out if his father still intends to kill David, and the answer is a resounding yes. In anger, Jonathan leaves the feast and heads to warn David.

Jonathan must relay the truth that his father wishes to end the life of the man that he loves. He shoots an arrow into the field to let David know he is in danger. The scriptures say, "David got up from the south side of the stone and bowed down before Jonathan three times, with his face to the ground. Then they kissed each other and wept together, but David wept the most (1 Samuel 20:41).” I know this scene; many of you do too. That heartbreaking reality is that you live in a society that is not going to accept the love that you have with someone who means more to you than anything in the world. I can see them both as David watches that arrow fly, his heartbreaking. He rushes out of the field, unashamed, and they embrace. As their cheeks glide across each other's faces, David, panting from the run, their lips lock in a moment of soul-crushing intimacy.

Jonathan’s father, full of jealousy, conspiracy, and bigotry, has finally broken apart these two who are soul-bonded together. They had so many plans; they wished to raise their children together (1 Samuel 20:42) and for Jonathan to be like David’s queen (1 Samuel 23:17), with David acting as the King of Israel but Jonathan leading alongside him. There was so much hope on the horizon, but at that moment, they knew it was all crashing down around them. After they parted ways, they met one final time. Again, Jonathan goes to David to rescue him from the evil his father wished to do. It says that Jonathan warned him, and for the third time, they “make a covenant together before the Lord.” If I am being honest, I am beginning to think that covenant is a euphemism here. I imagine that it was much like the first covenant. Jonathan removes his robe, his tunic, and unsheathes his sword. After consummating their covenant, David stayed where he was hiding, and Jonathan returned home.

This is goodbye.

Months later, with the favor of the Lord having left Saul and the anointing now upon David, Saul embarks on a battle with Jonathan faithfully serving by his father’s side. However, both men are struck down on the battlefield. Jonathan dies on the field, and the king sometime later after a failed suicide attempt that is ultimately finished off by another soldier. This soldier runs to David with the crown to declare the fall of Saul and the new reign of David as King. The young soldier approaches the new king, and he says, “Where have you come from?”

“I escaped from the Israelite camp.” The young man responds.

“Please, tell me what happened?” David asks.

“It was bloodshed; the men fled the battlefield,” The soldier explains, “Many more died, and the King has fallen. So has his son, Jonathan.”

David’s heart sinks into his stomach, “How do you know this? How do you know that Jonathan is gone?”

“I was there. I saw everything.”

David rips his clothing, falling to the ground, he screams. In his anger and rage, he commands the young soldier to be killed for his part in bringing about the end of his father-in-law. When David regains himself, it says that he went away to write a poem about the loss of his Jonathan, his soul mate, the man that he loved. He titled the song The Lament of the Bow in honor of Jonathan being an archer. David’s first decree as the newly anointed King was that all of the subjects of his domain must learn the song and never forget Jonathan. An interesting aside, the scriptures say that this song was recorded in the Book of Jashar, a long-lost book of the Bible that no longer exists. But you don’t really care for music, do ya? Well, it goes like this:

“Oh, how the mighty have fallen! Jonathan lies slain on your heights. How I grieve for you, Jonathan. You were so very dear to me. Your love for me was wondrous, more beautiful than that of a woman.” - 2 Samuel 1:25-26

Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah

This is the story of Jonathan and David. For many of us, this may sound very similar to our own experience with coming out. You know this pain all too well, and you do not need to be convinced that this love between the prince and the pauper was more than a platonic friendship. Instead, allow me to say that I am so sorry that you grew up in a world where this was hidden, and David was whitewashed into a womanizer who had more in common with Bill Clinton than Harvey Milk. Much like Jonathan, maybe you had a father who would rather disown you than accept you. Perhaps you grew up in a household where you also feared that your parents would kill the person that you loved if they ever found out. I know it is a bitter consolation, but you have a kindred in David and Jonathan.

Now, to those of you who are reading this and are seething, please take a moment to ask yourself who you are in this story. The scripture is clear: the spirit of God left Saul but called David “a man after my own heart.” Do you see yourself in Saul? Do you see his rage, anger, hatred, resentment, jealousy, fear, and how it drove him mad? His hatred for the love that existed between Jonathan and David was so strong that he lost it all. I am inviting you in this moment to repentance. It is not too late to join the right side of history.

You can turn away from this evil. Maybe you are the parent who has threatened violence or has kicked your children out of the house, thinking you’ve done well. Listen, I am not saying it will be easy. You will have a lot of work to do in order to regain trust. But it is not too late. Perhaps you are reading this and thinking, “My kid killed themselves because of what I have done; it is too late for me.” Yes, it is too late for you to repair that relationship. Hopefully, there is an afterlife, and your child is living in peace, in the loving embrace of Jonathan and David, who have taken them in as one of those many children they had hoped to raise together. Yet, there are so many organizations you could join now, children needing a home, and adults needing elders like you in their lives. There is still hope for you to undo the wrongs you have committed. This can be a story of redemption; it does not have to end this way anymore.

Pray with me, “God, I have allowed my heart to be hardened like Saul. I believed the words of men over the Word of God and allowed fear to rule my life. I chose to believe that love was dirty, but today, I recommit my life to holding sacred the love that Jonathan and David shared. I will make a covenant today to be the type of parent, sibling, partner, or friend that will be a safe space. I repent before you for not seeing that what David and Jonathan shared was sacred and good before your eyes. Please forgive me this trespass and provide me, like you did with Paul, the opportunity to love those I once persecuted. Because whatever I have done wrong to your siblings, I have done to you. Amen.

I was standing behind a man who appeared to be homeless at a local gas station. His shoes were worn from hours of pacing up and down the sidewalk begging for change. He patiently waited in line until it was finally his turn. There was a childlike wonder on his face as he looked up and down the glass case before him. His mangled fingers slowly pointed to three different selections before finally nodding in approval at his choices. The cashier slowly made his way over to the counter and told him it would be ten dollars total for the lottery scratch-offs he had just delicately picked. The man reached into his pockets, pulling out a wad of crinkled singles from his tattered jeans, and gave them to the man behind the counter.

Behind me, a woman scorned, “Why would he waste his money like that?”

“He’s not wasting it,” I responded softly, “He’s buying hope.”

My parents played another kind of lottery system when our family was going through our time of poverty and homelessness. Though it looked very different than that man holding his singles out begging for the possibility that on the other side of that thin layer of hope between his coin and what was under that card might be an end to his misery. In those few moments before scratching that card, he was a millionaire. Walking out into the parking lot, he could see himself getting a haircut and a new pair of jeans. He didn’t want anything extravagant, you see, just a simple home to call his own. Maybe with just a little land, so that he could plant a garden, then he would always know he would have food. Perhaps he wouldn’t even need a bed because it would feel so strange after all of these years sleeping on the ground. He pulls a quarter from his pocket before returning it for a penny; he doesn’t want the cards to think he might be rich walking around with a quarter like that. Then the top of the card flakes away under those hands that used to be able to do so many push-ups in boot camp but are now weak under the strain of this summer sun. Before scratching the last number, he would look up at the sky with a half-prayer before learning his fate.

That is the same look my mother would make as she would drop our last few dollar bills into the offering plate as the prophet would sway on stage with the band playing behind him. She would close her eyes and pray. She didn’t want much, just to never suffer the embarrassment of those food stamps at the Kroger's checkout line again. Just a little house, with enough rooms for each of us kids. Something with a little bit of land so we could rebuild the tree house we left behind. Then again, maybe just a little bit of luxury, if the Lord would allow, for that bay window again like she had in the home my father build with the bricks he brought back from Pensacola so she would always have a little bit of home with her in their new one in Louisiana that turned in Nashville that became a log cabin that faded into hotels and motels and the Walmart parking lot. Then, just before the offering plate would whisk away with her silent prayer and dollar bills, she would have hope.

Those pastors, just like the lottery, promised a vision of possibility. All one had to do was be diligent in tithing ten percent of their income, and God would bless them with abundance.

Maybe this dollar bill would have enough faith attached to it this time for Dad to finally get a good enough job, or perhaps someone would give us a house, who knew? God works in mysterious ways, after all. Our family wasn’t very picky; anything would do as long as it meant that we were safe and together. Over those years of uncertainty, I watched as my mother faithfully continued to give what little she could into the offering plate, a small collection of singles she would save when she could, so that she was showing God that she earnestly believed He could get us out of this. Much like that man at the gas station, she would go back week by week and think that these were finally her winning numbers.

However, the church, just as with all gambling, the house always wins.

Growing up under this evangelical Christian tradition of tithes and offerings, many sub-teachings held it in place. There wasn’t just the idea that you could somehow magically be blessed by God by giving from your earnings, but you could also receive severe punishment if you withheld from the Lord. There is a story in the Book of Acts where a couple attempts to conceal some money they had made from the apostles, and they were struck down dead for their deception. Giving wasn’t just an act of kindness, but a compulsory action, lest one miss their blessings and suffer genuine harm to themselves or their family if they did not give God their due.

I remember one day our pastor was standing behind the pulpit and beginning to lean into it. This is how you always knew things were about to get very serious. He was a ridiculously funny man, and most Sundays felt more like a comedy set than a sermon until he started leaning. He looked sternly out at the congregation and said, “If you trust in God, he will take care of you. If you are in the will of God, he will bless you. If you want to know where someone stands with the Lord, look at their life! What do they have? I promise you right now, if you are right with God, you won’t even buy a lemon. That is what God promises us, amen?”

Everyone said amen except my dad.

I was about thirteen years old at the time and extremely confused about God not particularly caring for lemons. I wasn’t sure if maybe that was the fruit that Eve ate or something. I mean, I knew that Jesus wasn’t particularly fond of fig trees, but I didn’t think he had a lot of opinions about fruits in general.

No one at the church knew what our family was going through. To see us on Sunday morning, we didn’t fit the stereotypes. We didn’t look like that man at the gas station. Family homelessness rarely does. We had clothing and a car. We were able to conceal this painful reality in many ways.

I didn’t know what a lemon was; my dad did. The pastor essentially said that if you were on God’s good side, nothing bad would happen, not even purchasing a bad car. However, if you were outside of the favor of the Lord, then all kinds of nasty things would happen: death, famine, plague, and, I suppose, homelessness.

Even though I didn’t fully understand the lesson the pastor was teaching that day, I learned from the attitudes of those at church. I began to believe that all of the things that happened in our lives, the negative moments, were caused by my father's failure in some way. Worst of all, my siblings and I were suffering because of the sins of our father.

In our parents' efforts to conceal their homelessness from the world, they taught us to lie. Of course, that wasn’t the words that they used. Lying is a sin, but withholding information was also taught from the pulpit. Just like those bosses who tell you not to discuss your pay with other employees so that you won’t unionize, the pastors would preach that you were never supposed to talk about your giving. This could mess up the magic of it all. Just like your wish when blowing out the candles at your birthday, your giving was between you and God alone. If you are braggadocios, then God might not return your gift sevenfold. These were the warnings, and with that came a new type of shame.

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Even in my adulthood, I never felt like I could tell stories about anything I had done good whether with money or otherwise. If folks would ever point out a good deed I had done, I would shy away, afraid that I was somehow doing something wrong. So, in silence, I began to replace the tradition of giving to the church with something else entirely, but I never spoke about it until recently, while standing in a club. I had already learned to wash away the guilt and shame of my queerness, and yet, somehow, this was having a hold on me still. I didn’t realize how much I needed to shed this other shame as well.

I’m not sure which was more difficult, leaving the priesthood or finally coming out years later. Both came with unique challenges. Finally coming to terms with the fact that I was queer came in stages of healing and grief. One night, while taking a break from being on tour, I went to the local gay bar in Nashville. I was scared, alone, and sitting by myself on the back patio when I noticed two of the drag queens from the earlier show sitting outside. We struck up a conversation and took a quick selfie. I looked around the club, and almost everyone there was younger than me. I hadn’t realized I had come on college night, and I was feeling a little embarrassed. As I watched all of these young folks laughing and talking, I realized that I had missed out on so much. Here I was, almost forty years old, and finally free to be myself. Yet, I couldn’t help but think of that night, as a teenager, when I could have kissed my friend when he asked, but I didn’t. My youth had slipped away from me as I let the fear take control of my desires.

I sat there, with my mismatched luggage set of baggage, and cried tears of joy for these young folks who were able to live in a very different world than I had. Most of them would never know the sting of sitting at your friend's deathbed as AIDS finally took their final breath, but those memories hung over me like a cloud. That fear, which had been fortified by the Church, made intimacy difficult. Yet, fear has not been entirely eradicated from our existence, and these kids still face their own struggles. Resistance has remained an undercurrent in our community. Our trans siblings are still walking around with bullseyes on them every day. We have to keep the riot part of Pride alive in our hearts because our complacency can still equal death, and our diligence is the only thing that keeps us alive.

Walking back in from the porch, I sat and caught the second show. I watched these young folks with smiles on their faces and hope in their eyes. They jumped for joy, their cameras out, proudly taking photos of themselves and their friends to later post on socials, but I had yet to find the flamboyancy that used to be inside me, now beaten down by decades of a religious institution that told me I was wrong.

I was no longer homeless. I had built a career for myself telling stories on stage and in books. Though I was far from rich, I certainly had more than I ever had before. I desired to give, but doing so to a religious institution was no longer part of my life. I had tried going to progressive churches, but even there I felt a little on the outside, always afraid that I would be too much, say the wrong thing, or get myself into some kind of trouble. After leaving the priesthood, I had worked in the nonprofit world, and I knew all too well how little of the money given makes its way back into the hands of the folks who needed it.

I walked over to the ATM and pulled out some cash before making my way over to the bar to have it changed into singles. I walked up to the stage, stiff and rigid, still living in that fear. I held up my hand with money in it to one of the drag queens as she leaned over toward me to take it. She placed her hand on my cheek and looked me in the eyes with a smile.

“I love you,” she said.

I believed her.

As I walked away, I sat in my back corner in the dark and wept alone. I was loved. I was valuable. I still have purpose. I can hold someone's hand at the movie theater and still feel butterflies. It wasn’t over for me. There was love yet to be found, to be lost, and to be found again.

I had found hope with singles.

From that day forward, I had replaced the Christian tradition of my youth and began to give directly to my own community. Each week, I would take my tithe of ten percent and bring it to the drag queens at my local gay bar. When I was on tour, I would go out one of the nights to a gay bar in whatever town I was in and tip those queens too. Everywhere I went, I would visit these community spaces, and I would find the same love; the fear and shame would wash away from me.

But I had never told this story, because the fear was still there, and I felt I should never speak about my giving. That was supposed to be a secret, and maybe I would somehow tarnish this beautiful thing if I told others what I was doing. Then, on the first weekend of Pride, I made my trek over to Play in Nashville to see the queens who had now become my friends. As I stood to the side of the stage, handing them my dollars, I got a call from a friend who needed me on the other side of town. I had just arrived, and as I turned around, there was a young group of lesbians standing there counting their dollars. I walked up to them and said, “Can you do me a favor?”

“What’s that?” One of them asked with a smile.

“I have got to go, but would you be willing to give this to the queens tonight?”

I pointed my roll of dollar bills towards them, and they looked stunned.

“But why?” Another asked.

“I used to be a priest, I grew up religious. I have replaced what I used to give to the church by giving it back into our community. But a friend needs me, and I've got to go. So I was curious if you could help?”

Suddenly, and without warning, I was being hugged. I could feel the fear slipping away from me like a baptism. I heard her whisper a thank you before saying, “That is beautiful. I am so glad you are here now.”

I am, too. Somehow, I made it. I survived it all and here I am today, telling you this story without fear. Giving is important, and in this time of so much uncertainty, our queens need our support now more than ever. My dollar bills will never find their way into an offering plate again, but they will be found on stages at drag shows, burlesque, and strip clubs. I am going directly to the source this time, in giving to those who are being rejected by the institution built on the idea of a man who loved the outcasts and yet rejects them at every turn. Perhaps those pastors believe they have a monopoly on collecting singles. I don’t really care anymore; I just want to see my community thrive, because I have found more of God in these dark corners than I ever have in the place they claim is His house.

So, this is my thank you to The Princess, Blush, Amez, Aquamarine, Nichole, Vanity, Deception, Sasha, Carmen, Tony Baby, Mannon, Tracey, Leah, and everyone else at Play Nashville who helped me find hope again. I love you, too.

Once upon a time, there was a man named Abe, and his neighbors were a little rowdy. Eventually, God was getting pretty annoyed with everyone there because he didn’t like how much noise they made as they danced the night away to Cher, Madonna, and Lana Del Rey. The strobe lights were giving God one hell of a migraine, and so between the music, the lights, and all of the leather, he decided to blow them all up. When Abe heard about this, he was like, “Um, that sounds a little extreme. Have you ever considered that there might be some good people in that town? I mean, I’ve got some kin down there. Don’t get me wrong, he’s kind of an asshole in general, and there’s a weird incest vibe, but does he really deserve to be exploded? I don’t think so. Maybe you should reconsider this one?”

“No, I really want to blow them up,” God responded.

But being a gambling man, God was willing to make a little wager. God and Abe negotiated the terms of their trolly problem. It began with him arguing that if fifty good people were in the city, would you consider not unaliving them? God figured that was a good round number, and he would agree to these terms. Sadly, Abe was bluffing because he knew good and goddamn well that there weren’t that many decent people in all of Sodom; he wasn’t even really that sure that his family was that great. To make an extremely long story short, Abe showed his hand and relented that there was really only one righteous dude, and that happened to be his family member. Everyone else was rotten to the core with their Grindr Apps, perfect hair, and oil-slicked abdominals. Disgusting! So the Almighty was all, “Fine, I won’t kill that ONE GUY specifically and probably not his family, but I am going to f+ck everyone else’s sh+t up because if I hear one more f+cking drag queen lip sync to Lucky by Britney Spears, I am going to unmake the entire me damned universe. F+ck, like we get it, you weren’t allowed to be yourself in the ’90s, but is that everyone's problem, Matt? You do know new music has been released since you came out. So, yeah, I’m going to kill them all. This is an abomination to me, and I am the only one who really matters, lol.”

Abe agreed that this was an entirely normal way to handle everything so they shook hands on the terms and conditions. Then Bartleby and Loki got to work blasting all the reprobates to kingdom come—the end.

Unholy Sh+t

Genesis 18-19

Pride Month Special Edition

Sodom and Gomorrah: Homosexuality vs. Hospitality

If you have heard the above story before, in any shape or form, you were likely left with the distinct impression that Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed because the twin cities were one massive Pride parade 24/7. The visual that most modern pastors portray is one of a big leather daddy party gone horribly wrong, but since God had yet to invent AIDS, he did things the old-fashioned way with a bit of fire and brimstone to wipe out an entire queer club. They depict them as a town entirely peopled with a bunch of wicked homosexuals running around butt f+cking each other into oblivion until God decided it was just too much for him to handle, so he went all, “Give them queers the dinosaur treatment.” KABOOM!

What if it’s possible that nothing you’ve been told about Sodom and Gomorrah is even remotely correct? Well, uh, it’s not.

The narrative begins with the conversation between Abraham and the Lord on his ways to destroy Sodom. God has decided to appear in the form of a human along with two angels who also look like people but also very, very hot; these are not the eyeballs all over their body, kinda angels, but super f+cking sexy angels, apparently. At some point during the conversation, God says something like, “Okay, you caught me! I am heading to Sodom to go blow them all!”

“Blow them all up, sir.” One of the angels whispers.

“Right, blow them all up.”

Now, this isn’t particularly unusual because God is sort of constantly annihilating people any time they annoy him in the slightest. However, these verses expose a whole lot more about God than they do the sinning going on down at ol’ Sodom. If I am honest, it’s some pretty devastating stuff for the average Sunday School teacher. It makes sense that they have chosen to bowl all this down to being about nothing more than homosexuality because that’s an easier scapegoat than having to address the major problems these scriptures actually pose. Not only is Lot supposed to be righteous, but is actually an asshole, but this story also cuts at some core theological premises: the omnipresence, all-knowing, inherent goodness of God.

God is on his way to destroy the city before he actually gets caught by Abraham. The conversation that they had, and everything that followed, was not on God’s agenda for that day. He originally intended to go to a little recon before hitting the big red button. However, because God forgot to wear his invisibility cloak that day, Abraham happened to see that God was walking around his camp. Realizing he’s got a famous influencer nearby, he yells, “Yo, God, are you hungry? I’ve got some food and sh+t. Stay a while, and let's catch up!”

This is where things get a little complicated. Abraham walks off-screen to give Aziraphale and Crowley directions before sending them on their way. The second that the three of them leave, God has a conversation with Himself, which is a totally normal thing to do. In Genesis 18:17-19 the Almighty poses a question to himself: should he tell Abe what he is about to do or lie by omission? God admits that he has heard rumors about what’s happening in Sodom, but he isn’t sure; that’s why he will check things out for himself. I need to point out, just for my own amusement, that this means God is straight-up monologuing like a Bond villain before going to commit mass murder. This moment eviscerates some core doctrines concerning the very nature of God.

The quandary that God struggles with cuts at the idea that god is omniscient. Not only does he seemingly not know if he will, or even should, tell Abraham what he is about to do, but he also has to physically go from Heaven to Earth to investigate if what he has heard about Sodom is true. Furthermore, he is clearly not omnipresent because he must go directly into the city to figure everything out for himself. If God were all-knowing and his presence existed in every part of the earth, why would he need to do that? It doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense in context of what so many of us grew up understanding about the nature of God. But this isn’t the first time that God seems to be pretty f+cking confused about what’s going on. God got himself into another gambling debt situation when he placed a little wager on Job, and another astonishing thing happened. In Job 1:6-12 it tells us that Satan walks directly into the throne room of God, and the Lord’s response is, “Where did you come from, Lucy?”

Satan responds with, “Bitch, what about it? I’ve just been walking around on earth and sh+t. Btw, Job is simping for you HARD.”

If God is all-knowing, how did he not know where Satan was? But also, what in the actual f+cking f+ck because I was always told that God and Satan couldn’t be in the same place at the same time and that Satan had been thrown out of Heaven, so why is he just wandering in there with no problem? Does heaven have a security problem? You mean to tell me that God created the whole of the world by just speaking it into existence, and he can’t spring for a goddamn RING™ doorbell camera? In both conversations, God seemingly hasn’t a clue as to what is going on.

Then there is also the whole issue of God not being so sure if he wants to tell the truth about his plans to destroy Sodom. As he is debating all this with himself, he is unsure what the right decision would be. Interestingly enough, this isn’t the first time that God has messed with the whole idea of lies of omission or with little white lies. They exist all over the scriptures. In 1 Samuel 16:1-6, God directs Samuel to lie about his intentions for going to a particular town. In Genesis 18:9–15, Sarah laughs off the idea that she might get pregnant because “she is worn out and Abraham is too old,” but when God quotes that back to Abraham, he changes the wording to not hurt Abraham's pride. God is a little fibber.

By the time we finally arrive at the problem of the wager, Abraham pleads with God not to destroy the city, which actually works up to a point. Now, it’s clear that God has their mind pretty made up on the subject. The original plan was to go down to Sodom, see what all the ruckus was about, and if they were a bunch of dirty little sinners, he was gonna smoke ‘em. Abraham is able to negotiate God down to a lighter sentence based upon certain conditions. However, this isn’t the first time that God is seen changing their mind. Moses and the Almighty have a similar exchange. God had plans to wipe out those in Moses’ charge, and basically, Moe pulls out their original contract and shoves it in God’s face, “You promised my people safety; you can’t do this!” Moses wins the debate, and I sh+t you not, the scriptures say, “God repented of the evil he planned to do to his people.” Don’t believe me? Go read it for yourself here: Exodus 32:14.

It seems that the inherent goodness of God, along with their omniscience and omnipresence, is more fanfic than canon.

Now, let’s take a little intermission to focus on a very important point: so far, we’ve yet to engage with anyone who is gay. Homosexuality isn’t mentioned by God, the two angels, or Abraham. All that is being discussed is that the place is “wicked.” That is all we know about the town. Well, that and that it's only got one righteous person in the whole place, and that is where we are introduced to the most holy man you will ever meet: Lot, the man who is about to offer up his daughters to be gang raped by a mob.

There is some discrepancy within the scriptures about the relationship between Lot and Abraham. I know it’s shocking to learn that there are inconsistencies within an infallible book. How could this be possible! Some accounts say that Lot is Abraham’s brother’s son; others say they are brothers, while other scholars think they might be cousins. Either way, whatever the relationship is, Abraham did not want his kin to be kilt. After successfully getting God to agree to spare some folks from this micro-apocalypse, the two angels arrive at the city to investigate what’s happening so they can report to God what’s going down so he can decide whether or not to destroy the city.

Lot is waiting at the city gate when the angels arrive and pleads with them to go to his home. Initially, the angels refuse because they feel like they could get a better understanding of what the town is like by just hanging around downtown, but Lot makes it very clear that this would be a bad idea. This is when things get dicey. The towns folk, both young and old, decide to raid Lot’s home in an attempt to rape the angels. This doesn’t go very well for them because, and I don’t think we knew this about angels until now, they strike them all blind.

This is the moment that has become the sticking point theologically. We know that the town is wicked, which has already been expressed, and to the untrained eye, this is when we first see a sin take place; the threat to rape men. Over time, Christians began to believe that the sin of Sodom must be that they were all gay. Because of this misunderstanding of what was happening, the conclusion became that Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed because of homosexuality.

Let’s break down a few things real quick.

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Lot has lived in Sodom for a long time, and he is not confused about what’s going on. That is made clear by his pleas to the angels not to stay outside. He is well aware that this town has some big f+cking problems. However, when the mob attempts to rape the angels, he offers up his daughters instead. Now, if this town is entirely peopled by homosexual men, then Lot would be aware of that, and he would know that offering his daughters to these men would have no effect. Yet, he does it anyway. This is a clear indication that they were likely just generic deviants willing to harm anyone, regardless of the recipients of their violence presumptive gender. Evangelicals will often use the fact that the crowd rejected the proposal of Lot’s daughters to be raped instead, and then the mob’s refusal to take the offer, as some proof that they were all gay. This proves nothing of the sort. Like most instances of rape, this has nothing to do with sex or gender but power. These men want to show their dominance. In Genesis 19:9, the men in the mob say that Lot is a foreigner and that he has no right to judge them. It is clear that they have always treated Lot with suspicion because he is not originally from their community. They are angry with him for allowing these men to stay at his home, and they are going to assert their dominance. Tolerating one immigrant was one thing, but now, the number is multiplying!

After the angels successfully subdue the crowd, they warn Lot it’s time to leave. They warn him that they will soon destroy the city; I guess they don’t have to check with God now that their suspicions are confirmed that everyone is real sh+tty. This is the part of the story when we realize that Lot is kind of a dolt. The angels tell him that he’s got enough time to gather any of his relatives so they can escape too. Lot goes to his future son-in-laws to warn them, but they think he is joking, so they don’t leave. The scriptures say that Lot is taking too long, and the angels are seemingly getting a little trigger-happy, so they eventually grab Lot, his wife, and his daughters to drag them out of the city so they can get to killing. At some point, Lot’s wife turns around to see what’s happening, and she turns into “a pillar of salt.” I am unsure, nor does the scripture explain, exactly what happened here. I am unsure if they are presuming she is salt based on the texture and look of the impromptu statue of Mommy dearest or if they licked her; I can not say for sure. Some scholars and theologians have hypothesized that whatever happened to Sodom might be akin to a nuclear explosion and that she was turned to ash or some such thing. As fascinating as that is, that’s presuming that any of this really happened and is trying to apply logic, reason, and science to mythology, so I am not going to spend any time trying to make sense of the senseless. All we know is that she was allegedly turned to salt because she refused to listen to the “don’t turn around” rule, and somehow, they knew that the substance was salt without also turning around themselves. Also, there is no mention of them being particularly upset or shocked by this turn of events.

Now that mom and the boyfriends are dead, this gets Lot’s oldest daughter thinking, “We are supposed to have babies and become homemakers just like Harrison Butker told us to do, so we should probably f+ck our dad.” The two daughters put together a plan to get their father drunk, and they both raped him over the course of two nights. The scriptures make it very clear that Lot was so passed out from the liquor that he was completely unaware of them lying down or getting up.

There has been some lively debate about whether or not this counts as a rape. There have been discussions ranging from that the scriptures were altered to make Lot look like the victim and it was really his idea, while others have theorized that it's possible that this was the daughters getting their revenge on their dad for offering them up to be raped by the crowd. Whether this was a situation of a prequel to Promising Youth Woman or not is up for debate, but what is plain to me, upon a simple reading of the scripture, is that this was absolutely rape.

These are the righteous people that God wanted to save. These are the ones that weren’t nearly as bad as the men in the town. I’ve never heard a pastor or Sunday School teacher condemn Lot for offering up his daughters, or his daughters raping him in turn, or question why God isn’t omniscient, but I have heard them repeatedly rail against the Sin of Sodom: homosexuality. They are afraid to talk about how absolutely f+cked up Lot and his whole family are. Wouldn’t it make logical sense if you are trying to justify blowing up an entire town but rescue one family out of it, wouldn’t you clean up the narrative a bit? I mean, the whole Lot of them make the cast of Shameless look like they live on Sesame Street. This is a clear example of juxtaposition. The very reason we see the dirty laundry of Lot and Associates is because you are supposed to think they are awful! They exist to show how horrible everyone else must be. If these are the righteous, then you know the unrighteous are really, really bad. The bad that the townspeople participate in on the regular is never mentioned in Genesis; we just know it's terrible, and Lot exists to help us understand how bad it must be because he isn’t good either. He is horrible, but everyone else is worse.

Lot is a father who throws his daughter to the mob.

His wife refuses to listen to the explicit warning not to turn around.

Lot’s daughters are rapists, just like the rest of the folks in town.

They suck.

So imagine how much more the people of Sodom must be! That is the point.

The question lingers, though: what is the actual sin of Sodom, if not homosexuality? It’s another h-word altogether: hospitality.

Speaking of juxtaposition, if you read the story of Abraham and Lot, you will discover a unique similarity between the two men. When Abraham notices God is taking a little stroll past his tent, he immediately hops to action! He calls on Sarah to make bread, picks out an animal to be slaughtered, and then offers his tent for the three ethereal beings to chill under. His first instinct is to make sure his guests are fed and that they are cared for. When the two angels finally arrive in Sodom, Lot also greets them in a similar fashion. He is said to be waiting by the city gate, so he notices the angels immediately. He instantly offers them a home, a bath, and food. Note that no one else in all of Sodom is waiting by the gates, just Lot. Not his future sons-in-law, not the townsfolk, just him alone.

Part of the narrative of the book of Genesis is that the whole world is full of wickedness and heathen-like people who don’t give a f+ck about anyone but themselves. In many ways, the Genesis story is one of evolution: people used to be awful, but don’t worry. We are making a society, and soon there will be streets, kings, and taxes. It’ll be great.

Being kind to your neighbor, taking in the foreigner, and hospitality in general are core tenets of the scripture. It separates “the people of God” from “those of the world.” You have one segment of society that follow pagan gods, sacrifice other humans, steal from everyone, and will kill anyone they see as different. One of the earliest examples of a follower of God is that they were hospitable. This is what is being exampled here in the scripture. Yes, Lot is a flawed and f+cked person in many ways, but he follows the most basic principle of being a believer: he waits by the gate in case a stranger needs help. Yes, the way that he goes about trying to help is really, really bad. This can not be disputed or stressed enough. Lot is NOT a good guy in many ways, that is necessary for the rest of the story to make sense. Yet, despite all his flaws, he is trying to live a godly life in an impossible situation.

Had Lot not been waiting at the gate, if he had just been home like everyone else in town, he would have missed his moment of redemption, but he was. It’s clear that the angels have superhuman powers, so they probably would not have succumbed to any harm if they had stayed in the town square as they originally planned. The crowd would have likely accosted them, the angels would have just rained down hellfire from the sky, and everyone would have been destroyed, Lot and his family included. It was Lot's willingness to try to help that ultimately saved his family from destruction.

The sin of Sodom was not homosexuality; that is never stated or implied. Thankfully, we know precisely why Sodom was destroyed, and it is plainly stated in the scripture:

“Now, this was the sin of Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed, and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen.” - Ezekiel 16:49-50

Note the pronouns: she/her. If this was about homosexual men, why would they choose to gender the town as feminine? That doesn’t make sense. But more importantly, homosexuality isn’t mentioned. Even the argument that homosexuality might be amongst the “detestable things” doesn’t hit the mark. The word used in Hebrew, which is translated as “detestable” in this verse, is tôʿēḇâ which means “abominations” and is a generic term that encompasses all types of wrongdoing and lawbreaking. In other words, there is nothing about this story that, in any way, shape, or form, has to do with being gay. The clear text of Ezekiel makes it without dispute that the reason that Sodom was destroyed is because they had excess, that they didn’t care for the oppressed, and they were just plain awful. The historian Josephus noted this, “About this time the Sodomites grew proud, on account of their riches and great wealth; they became unjust towards men, and impious towards God, in so much that they did not call to mind the advantages they received from him: they hated strangers.” He does make reference to the attempted rape of the angels but he describes them as “beautiful young boys” and makes a point to say that these men were obsessed with both men and women and didn’t care where they placed their lust. Joe implies that God blew up a bunch of pedophiles, and regardless of political affiliation or sexual orientation, I think we can all agree the world is a better place whenever there are fewer creeps in it.

Josephus is also possibly one of the first people to use the word Sodomite but when he uses it, it is within the context not of butt f+cking but that they become so wealthy as a nation that they forgot where those blessings came from. Instead, they become paranoid about strangers. The real Sodomites are not the queer community but all of those who reject the immigrant, despise the poor, and are more concerned about wealth than goodness… who does that sound like?

Listen, even if I am wrong about everything I just said above, which I am not, but let’s say for the sake of argument that I am, the story of Sodom and Gomorrah still doesn’t condemn gay men. It condemns violent mobs that want to gang rape young boys. It never tells the story of an elder gay couple living in Greenwich Village with a poodle that just want to have the right to make end-of-life decisions when the time finally comes to say goodbye. What I am telling you is that this verse, though it has frequently been weaponized against our community, is not about you; it’s not about me; it’s about something entirely different.

If the conservatives didn’t have the queer community as the scapegoat, they would have to admit that this verse is really pointing at them. It’s directed at those who don’t care about their neighbor, those who would never take in a stranger who needed somewhere to find safety from the mob, they would have to face their hatred of those they considered foreign, and they would have to come to terms with the dangers of the opulence.

I am so sorry that you have become the target and that this verse has been weaponized against you. I hope that reading this brings you some healing and that you realize, as cruel as it is, they twisted this so that you would become the bad guy instead of them. But now, you know the truth. No, hurricanes weren’t sent to destroy pride parades in New Orleans, AIDS is not God’s judgment, and the destruction of Sodom was not your fault. You are beautiful just as you are, fearfully and wonderfully made in the image of God, how ever it is you choose to understand the divine. You are enough, you are cherished, and you are loved.

I am glad you are here.

Now, let's reclaim the word Sodomite by contextualizing it whenever it is misused; the real Sodomites amongst us are those who drown in wealth and privilege, not those who want to love who they love.

One of the promises I made when the first few of y'all took the risk supporting my writing here on Substack is that I would always let this group in first with anything I am doing.

This is one of those moments.

Last year was brutal, and 2026 kicked off with a bang as well. Between the massive ice storm and the lingering issues from the year past, it’s put me in a place of a great deal of self reflection. 

The big question I’ve been asking myself is, “What am I enjoying?” 

Not just in my day-to-day life with family or friends, but a lot to do with my work. Surviving as an indie artist can be a weird cycle of producing things that are valuable to you as the creator, but also the work that feels a lot like, well, work. We all have to do that, but I got stuck in a pattern of survival: last year, I was doing a lot of the stuff I don’t enjoy as much, and the price was sacrificing the parts of this job that bring me real joy.

What I do enjoy, and truly love, are:

Writing

Touring

Educating

So, I want to be doing more of that, not less. Last year, I did a lot less of all three of those because the turnaround isn’t as quick, but the fruits of it are so much more precious to me.

This past month, I took the risk of pouring more into the three things I love most about my job. But that means they’ve got to work. So let me tell you what I’m doing, or at least share as much of that as I can at this time.

First, I’m about to publish a new book. It’s something I am very proud of, and I believe y’all will be thrilled about. I can’t say more than that right now, but in the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing more about this with you.

In tandem with that book, I have been writing a new comedy hour that will be a mix of stand-up and a one-man play. I’ve put more into this than anything else I’ve ever done, and I can’t wait to share it with y’all. It’s something that has brought out the best in me and given me genuine excitement about taking this on the road. I truly believe it will bring not just laughter but healing. 

Doing all of this work has also brought me back around to thinking about the roots of the work I do and why I do it. I’ve reflected a lot on how I began writing, never imagining it would lead to books, tours, and a wildly popular Substack. I just wanted to tell stories, and I have certainly been gifted the opportunity to do that! Thanks to each of you for being present as readers, audience, and patrons of the work I do. I am eternally grateful. 

In the educational department, one of the things I have loved is doing workshops. During this time of reflection on the origins of my writing journey and where it has led me, I realized the best description of what I do is that I’m a storyteller. The medium is sometimes a novel, social media status, standing behind a microphone slinging jokes on stages, and then there are my essays here. Whatever the mode, it’s all storytelling. 

With everything else going on, I’ve also created a new workshop called Becoming a Storyteller. This class focuses on helping folks find the best way for them to tell their stories. 

This book.

This tour.

This workshop.

These are things I am proud of and bring me genuine joy.

I am beginning with launching the workshop, then the book, and finally heading back out on the road to spend time in person with each of you. 

So, here is the big ask. I currently have 47,000 subscribers on Substack, 1,334 of them are paid, which accounts for a little less than 3% of our readership. If we could double the number of paid subscribers, it would make a massive difference. That would mean just moving the needle just 3%. I am so happy that we’ve been able to keep this Substack free for anyone to read, thanks to each of you who pay and make that possible. If you are able, this would be such an amazing time to switch to a paid subscription. Again, if you can’t, I hope you know how glad I am that you are here. 

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Finally, I am going to explain more about this upcoming workshop below. If you’d like to join us, I would love to have you! If this workshop isn’t for you, please consider sponsoring someone else to attend with a scholarship.

There are a lot of exciting things ahead, and I can’t wait to share them with each of you!

Becoming a Storyteller with Nathan Monk

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Whenever someone finds out I’m an author, whether it’s while in line at the grocery store or out at the pub, they almost always say, “I want to write a book.”

Sometimes that’s a memoir about their childhood or a fantasy story that’s been growing in their mind for a while now. 

But books aren’t the only way I tell stories.

I’m an author.

I’m a public speaker.

I’m a comedian.

I’m an essayist.

There are countless ways to tell a story, from music to poetry to a novel the length of War and Peace. But very few of us ever take the concept and put it out into the world.

Long before I was a full-time author, I was a storyteller. In many ways, that’s still how I describe the work that I do. The medium might change, but the goal is the same: to tell captivating stories.

My journey to becoming an author began with telling short-form stories on MySpace and has now grown to include multiple bestselling novels, national comedy tours, and a wildly popular Substack. 

If you are one of those people who has a story to tell, whether myth, legend, or lore, what might be holding you back is not knowing which form to tell your story in. 

Over the years, I’ve taught classes on writing both fiction and memoir, but often people don’t even know which category to tell their stories in. 

My latest workshop, “Becoming a Storyteller,” is designed to help you discover where your talent is in bringing your story to life. 

Many people don’t know that some of the bestselling novels ever written began as serials in newspapers. Did you know that Charles Dickens and Mark Twain also did speaking tours? There are as many ways to tell a story as there are stories to tell.

Perhaps your novel should be a play or your memoir a mystery novel. 

Those will be the things we will discover together during Becoming a Storyteller.

What will we cover?

During this interactive virtual workshop, we will look at the types of storytelling and how they work.

We will discuss the process for getting your story out to the public, whether it’s as published works or spoken word. 

Answer the age-old question, “Where do I begin?”

Unlock tools to deal with challenges like writer's block or self-doubt.

I’ll even be sharing insights on how to find agents, publishers, or launch your own platform.

We will discover the power of using social networks to achieve the best results in reaching your goals.

This two-hour course will end with another hour of open Q&A where I will answer your questions live to dive deeper into topics we’ve already discussed or unpack obstacles we didn’t cover during the main course.

What are the details?

The event will take place live on Zoom

Sunday, March 15th at 6PM Central Time.

Once you purchase your ticket, an email with the Zoom link will be sent to you automatically. You will also be sent multiple reminder emails ahead of the event.

If you can’t make the event with us live, have no fear, you can purchase a video-only ticket, and you will receive a recording of the workshop within 24 hours of the live event ending.

Unique to this workshop!

Telling your story can be complicated, and sometimes we need more growth after the euphoria of the workshop fades. 

For the very first time, I am offering something many have asked for: follow-up group sessions called Afterglow. 

For those who choose to buy this ticket, you will receive:

A one-on-one private 30-minute call with me to answer your questions, go over your project, and get direct insight from what’s worked for me in the past.

Two additional hour-long follow-up sessions in April and May with the other Afterglow participants. You will also get a video of these classes if you can’t be there with us live.

Sign up today!

These classes fill up fast! So don’t wait. You can get your tickets today, and we will also provide scholarship tickets for those who can’t afford them at this time. Those tickets will be announced a week before the event for those who need them. 

You can also sponsor a scholarship for someone else during checkout!

Seating for this class is very limited, and the Afterglow sessions are limited to 10 people. So you do not want to wait. Traditionally, my workshops sell out within a day or two, so grab your ticket while you can. 

I can’t wait to see you soon and hear your stories come to life!

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SPOILER ALERT: some Dawson’s Creek references

Tears rolled down my cheeks as an uncontrollable emotion overwhelmed me while the words across my screen seemed both improbable and altogether predictable: James Van Der Beek has died, 48.

How is it possible that someone I have never met had such a hold on my heart? Well, to quote the Chantel Kreviazak song from Season 2, Episode 18, “it feels like home to me.”

Dawson, Joey, Pacy, and Jen felt like real friends. Unlike other shows I was growing up with that felt like they were written by adults pandering and preaching to us, Dawson’s Creek got the texture and emotions of the late 90s and early 00s right on the nose. These kids dressed like us, talked like us, and this show didn’t make fun of our feelings; it validated them.

Perhaps more importantly, the grownups weren’t these wise, always correct beings who pop in to dispense wisdom, but flawed characters with real problems. Maybe the biggest element of fantasy in the entire series is how many of the adults in the show are willing to adapt and change.

Grams goes from being a fundamentalist to becoming the loving protector of one of the realist gay characters ever depicted on television up to that point.

Mitch and Gail, the loving parents of the protagonist, are messy both in love and during their divorce.

Unlike so much of the absolute fluff and filth on television and the big screen at the time, the kids of the creek felt like the ones I grew up with—a bunch of overly ambitious nerds using too big of words.

Decades later, during the pandemic, I sat down with my kids to do something my dad had done with me: show them the movies, documentaries, and stories about what it was like to grow up a ‘90s kid. I remember when, at the age I was then, my dad sat me down to show me movies like Forrest Gump, the Woodstock doc, and the countless films that highlight the Vietnam War.

To my shock, I was having a hard time finding such movies that highlight the historical moments of my youth, like 9/11, Columbine, and the Crash of 08 that happened just in time for us to be adults. Any movies that did exist concerning these subjects looked at them, still, through the lens of how the boomers experienced these moments.

I decided to be kind and rewind, and show my kids Dawson’s Creek instead. When we pulled it up, and the show began, a song began to rattle my ears. This was not the classic by Paula Cole, no, it was some other tune that was foreign to my ears.

After a bit of research, I found out that the producers of the show didn’t want to pay royalties on the original theme song, and so they replaced it. They also edited many classic scenes and added new, royalty-free, songs to them too.

Imagine turning on a generation-defining television show like M.A.S.H., Cheers, or FRIENDS, and the theme song was entirely different. You can’t, because this doesn’t happen. There is little precedent for such a thing in film or television.

Rage filled my soul.

Not only could I not find a Forrest Gump of my generation, but I also couldn’t go back in time and introduce my kids to a classic show from my youth without it having been tampered with.

At first, I fumed, unable to understand why such a thing didn’t exist. Then, I remembered I am an author, and I could make it exist.

My parents’ best friends from high school and college are still alive. Whereas, over the years, many of mine have died. I’ve been to more millennial funerals than weddings. The two friends I buried earliest in my life were both cremated, and there are no grave markers. I actually don’t know a single millennial friend of mine who has died and been buried.

Neither in literature nor in the ground were there memorials letting the world know we were here and we mattered too.

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I opened my computer, and I began to write. I resurrected my friends and used their body parts to build characters out of. I took our stories, those universal moments that which defined us as a generation, and I immortalized them all in a book called All Saints Hotel and Cocktail Lounge. Here, the ghosts of us all could live forever, and maybe, in some future time, someone would dig this book up and know that we were here and that we mattered, too.

The death of Dawson Leery, and the real person of James Van Der Beek, has hit my generation unlike anything else has because his passing has been quintessentially millennial.

Even after all the work he had done, the royalties weren’t enough for him to live or die with dignity. In previous generations, being on a hit TV show or writing a #1 song would be enough to float you forever. But not for us.

Not for James.

He had to sell keepsakes that his children should have been able to cherish forever because medical bills crippled him and his family.

Yes, the deathbed gofundme, the retirement plan of every millennial.

I’ve already had the conversation with my partner and children that if, or more likely when, the day comes that I am hit with a diagnosis, I will simply let death take me rather than fight to live. I love my family too much to put them in that kind of debt. I know countless other millennials who have made similar end-of-life decisions.

One of my friends divorced his wife, the love of his life, so that his death wouldn’t ruin her.

No greater love has anyone than this, to die a painful death so that your family doesn’t drown in medical debt, or whatever it was that Jesus said.

Millennials are dying at a faster rate than their predecessors. We started dying during Columbine, and the death toll has continued to grow.

The same folks have been in power since we were children. We have the oldest congress in history, and the boardroom doesn’t resemble us. The medical advancements our parents fought for and created are now out of our reach. We are replacing the Vietnam vets on the streets with those who survived the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but nothing is changing.

James Van Der Beek dying has brought this issue to the surface but few of us are willing to actually say the more complicated parts of why this loss hurts so much less we suffer the chorus of boomers screaming in the comments, “I’m not like that” or “not all of us” or Gen X jumping in to say, “I guess you forgot about us, again.”

Oh, shut up.

We aren’t lumping everyone together, but goddamnit, let us speak. Our mortality rate is skyrocketing, and our parents will attend our funerals, while our dying thought will be to wonder who will raise our children in our absence.

We need you to stop getting mad at us for saying these damning realities and getting mad with us that you are watching an entire generation die because Mitch McConnell and Joe Biden refuse to die, instead living off the dust of our bones.

What better example do you need than that the entire adult cast of Dawson’s Creek is still alive, but the first of them to go was the actor who played the titular character of the millennials?

It is not that we wished the grownups were dead, it’s that we wish we got a chance to live.

So, as our collective generation mourns that passing of our prince, those tears came quickly not because he was the first among us to die, but that they were still having cast reunions of Cheers until just a few years ago but the only one we got for Dawson’s Creek was a fundraiser to pay the medical bills of a dad dying before he got to walk his children down the aisle.

The ways this has mirrored the prophetic season finale of Dawson’s Creek are almost eerie. But, then again, what possible conclusion could they have made to that show, then a millennial dying of cancer and having to leave their children in the care of their queer chosen family? There is simply nothing more millennial than that.

I know it’s uncomfortable to hear these realities, but I feel a responsibility, as one who has somehow survived, to say it.

Because, to quote Pacey, “I remember everything.”

When the storm was first projected to hit our area, my brain began to do what it does in a potential crisis; this is what I was designed for. These streets and years of experience in emergency management formed me into the man I am today. It sometimes takes my friends a while to realize how prepared I am for any level of calamity.

Oh, you didn’t bring matches for the bonfire you invited everyone to? Don’t worry, pal, I am just going to run to the car real quick because I have a hatchet, fire starter, matches, and a magnifying glass if all else fails.

You got a boo-boo while out at the bar? Don’t sweat it, I have Band-Aids, Neosporin, and here is something for the pain.

Don’t worry, girly, you started your period the second we went out to the big event you were excited to be at, you want tampons, maxi pads, or this spare packaged diva cup?

My car is packed with Narcan, medical supplies, survivalist shit, and enough non-perishable food to survive up to three days, but don’t fret, if we run out of food, I have six different ways to catch small game and, as you know, I have everything we need to start a fire.

Seven days out from the storm, I begin reading and calculating projections of how this weather event might unfold. I don’t trust the weatherman, but I will extrapolate his data into my own know-how until we are perfectly prepared. We have food organized by level in the refrigerator and plan to eat in rotation to ensure we consume the most perishable items first. On day three out from the storm, I begin shifting my sleep schedule so I can stay up all evening to keep the fire lit. I know exactly the hour to begin cooking over the fire once it’s down to coals, but the kids are asleep. This way, when they wake up, the meal will be prepared and the fire roaring again.

Some of the systems began to fail; I was unprepared for the batteries in my electronics not holding a charge as long in extreme cold. That is okay; we recalibrate and use the vehicle to charge things in intervals perfectly calculated to not damage internal components.

Every bit of my survival techniques was formed during my time of poverty and homelessness in my youth. Each skill was perfected when I began working in homeless shelters as an adult, trying to ensure others didn’t suffer as I had. By the time I was in my thirties, I was the one who had to make the call for emergency shelters to open or not. I carefully honed those talents so I could make the best, most ethical decision while also accounting for our resources. Compared to housing hundreds of people safe and alive, keeping my kids and me safe seemed like child’s play.

I was ready.

I was prepared.

I was born for this.

When it became clear that the power wasn’t coming on anytime soon, and wood supplies began to dwindle, I started harvesting the fallen branches outside. I tested burning them in the fireplace to see how long it would take for the ice to melt, but without putting the fire out. Then the question became: when would they be ready to be consumed by the burning embers and keep my family warm?

This didn’t work as well as I had hoped, so I began roaming the house looking for furniture that could be used instead. I found 36 small pieces of wood used as shelving inside our cabinets. These seemed to be neither treated nor stained; these will be the most optimal, but it’s still best to only use them in an emergency. There is a broken chair on the back porch; it is stained and old, not very optimal.

I begin to build a blanket fort around my daughter’s canopy bed. I am intentional with every layer and make sure that some of the knitted blankets are placed at the top of the canopy to ensure airway movement and lower the possibility of danger. I have mapped out where people will be sleeping and in what positions to ensure maximum comfort in an obviously uncomfortable situation.

Each morning, I check on roadway clearance and begin to plan our escape. This storm inflicted more damage than expected, and the electric company has stopped saying “multi-day event” and now calls it “multi-day event lasting into the week.” I know this language; I’ve had to use it myself when things aren’t going as planned. An evacuation is necessary for survival. However, I must ensure the evacuation is less dangerous than the current danger. I utilize everything at my disposal, and I find an optimal window for extraction and execute the procedure with the help of kind folk who are willing to come get us within the time frame.

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I have three backups in case this fails.

We are out of danger.

We are in an Airbnb with loved ones who rescued us.

My thinking is still methodical, mathematical.

I accept the invitation to dinner. I eat my meal sparingly; my stomach has been living on the smallest rations so my kids stay well-fed. I have only eaten Slim Jims and saltines for days.

While sitting at my neighborhood pub, a friend asked how we fared in the storm, and like a sailor just returned from the perilous seas, I began to tell my tale. I recount everything I just shared with each of you, in glorious detail, mapping out how I helped us survive the danger ahead, and we made it through the storm without loss of life or limb. As my soul begins to thaw, a smirk of accomplishment forms on the corner of my mouth.

“Wow! That is amazing. You did a great job, I am sure that will be good memories for the kids, cooking over a fire and telling stories by firelight,” my friend sighs and continues with, “We didn’t do any of that. We cheated and just rented a hotel downtown.”

I nearly spit my drink out in Jonathan Groff fashion *I wasn’t aware that was something a person could do*

Of all the tools I had in my tool chest, every inch of survival skills that I have grown up with and adopted over time and through all kinds of seasons, the simplest path was never an option. It never crossed my mind. No, only panic lived there because what if I was somewhere I don’t know and don’t understand and don’t have control over, and I can’t do everything I need to keep us safe.

Most of the hotels downtown didn’t lose power.

Hotels and motels are scary to me.

Those are the last steps before we end up sleeping in the car.

I can hear my inner child screaming at me, “Please don’t take us back there!”

Anywhere but there.

We can survive just fine, right here, you got us a home.

This is home.

Don’t take me away from home.

I pick him up in my arms, and I rock him close to my chest. I explain that someone just gave us something special, a new tool to put in our tool chest, something we didn’t have before. We didn’t know until just now that evacuating didn’t have to be scary, and it isn’t defeat. It doesn’t have to be like the hotels we stayed in before, when that was the gateway to it becoming a friend’s couch, then living in the van in the Walmart parking lot. Home will still be there when we return, and if it is not, we are prepared for that too. We have insurance now. This isn’t like before. I am not our dad.

We walk into the hotel room and lay our things down.

My son looks up at me and says, “Dad, thanks for keeping us safe this week.”

I did it.

I didn’t repeat history.

One day, they will tell their kids about the time they ate over the open fire in the cast-iron pot with nostalgia, and that when it got to be too much, we retreated to greater safety.

And, before I go to lay down my head, now safely back at home, I look down at that inner child, and I promise, “I’ll keep you safe too.”

I was newly ordained, and our church ran a small outreach program that provided food to folks living on the streets. Every week, we would provide a hot meal at a local park where those without homes often gathered. The city came after us pretty hard, and the media coverage surrounding it all polarized the community. Some folks called us saintly, while others believed we were contributing to the problem of blight in the downtown area. I was trying to do what I believed Jesus wanted me to.

One day, I received an email with a death threat in it. The person was explicit in their intent: if I chose to show up at our next gathering to share food with our friends, it would be my last day on earth.

I had recently started seeing a young single mother, and our courtship had been complicated. We were both in our early twenties and had a whole life ahead of us. I had been struggling with whether this life I was living would be compatible with marriage and children. Even though our denomination did not require celibacy of its clergy, it was a personal vow I heavily considered taking for this reason.

As I stared at those words threatening my life on the computer screen, I texted this woman to let her know we needed to talk. For hours, she listened as I debated the ethics of my showing up or not out loud. Would my going put others in danger? Would yielding mean I could never stand my ground again on anything else? What was the moral thing to do in this situation? In my heart, I already knew the answer; I had to go. Jesus would go, and martyrdom is a potential reality of living out the gospel.

Having consigned myself to my potential fate, we sat there quietly on a pier at a park overlooking the bayou of our small coastal town. With a bit of trembling in my voice, I finally broke the silence, “If I don’t survive tomorrow, just know I had every intention to marry you someday.”

I lived.

We got married in that same park near that pier.

Her name is Tashina, and we’ve survived decades together raising our children, but every day when I would leave the house, I know she’s wondered if that would be the day she gets the call from my phone, but it isn’t my voice, “You are the emergency contact listed for Nathan Monk.”

She has had reason to fear.

Whatever it is that makes others run for safety when they hear a crash or gunfire, I didn’t get that. Without thinking, I always run in the direction of the danger. I have run into burning buildings because I knew some of my homeless friends slept in the stairwell or jumped into traffic when a young child was standing there crying after their mother had been struck by a car. I have placed my body in between cops trying to arrest a homeless man more than once, and I knelt in the streets with my fellow activist during a Black Lives Matter protest long after threats of running us all over had been widely circulated.

Whenever a tragedy happens that has any proximity to me, my phone instantly fills up with texts and calls, making sure I wasn’t there.

I’ve had knives pulled on me.

Officers placed me in handcuffs.

More than once had a gun pointed at my head.

Folks attacked me during mental breakdowns at the shelters.

I’ve had my body slammed to the ground when I’ve stood up for others.

Somehow, I am still here, but there have certainly been times when I’ve not retold the story quite as scary as it really was, just for the sake of my family and their own anxiety. I’ve wondered plenty of times when it’s finally my ninth life and my card will be pulled, and I’ll be standing there at the pearly gates with the first thing Saint Peter hears out of me is the “fuck” I am still yelling when I departed.

And I would do it all again.

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When I saw Alex Pretti lying there on the ground, I didn’t have to imagine putting myself in his shoes; I could feel the sweat in them. I could feel his body going cold, and that moment of knowing this was really it: the final act (of mercy).

Should I die in my bed peacefully, surrounded by those I love, at some ripe old age, it will be the greatest shock not only to me but also to those who know me. As I read the statement from the family of Alex, it didn’t sound like they were too surprised either. I imagine that he has gotten the same warnings I have every time he went to work or marched in the streets to defend others who might be hurt during protests. I can hear those words of warning ringing in my ears. As I have gotten older, I have learned to listen better than when I was that young man full of piss and vinegar sitting on that pier all those years ago. There have been times Tashina has told me, “This is one that it’s better that you write instead of march about.” I think there is some wisdom in those moments.

But I still march.

I still run toward the wound of danger.

I still stand between those in power and the ones they wish to harm.

Why some of us flee to safety, and others rush to be the helpers, is beyond me. I don’t think there is any sin in trying to stay alive. Those people who got away because Renee Good was there to warn them, I don’t think they did something wrong; they did exactly what they should. Those folks that Alex Pretti laid his life down for are alive today because of him, and I am glad that they are here. Of course, I wish that they all were. I would have rather never know that Alex or Renee existed. I wish they had remained in the national anonymity of the local helpers in their respective communities.

But we now know their names, and with that comes a responsibility.

New helpers must rise up to take their place, and someday we might know those names too. Unless Congress and local officials choose to finally stand up beyond platitudes on social media, there will be more names. If we aren’t careful, this will also become our new normal. Much like school shootings, we could adapt to the news that another nurse, mother, brother, pastor, activist, is being gunned down in our neighborhoods. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

A day will come when those streets they bled on will be named after them. The official who let them die will write other platitudes known as proclamations declaring days in their memory. Others will become one with the river of blood of the martyrs from King all the way to Good.

One day it might be me.

Maybe you.

Perhaps it’s someone you love.

The nurse who helped your kid during your scariest day.

The mom who blew the whistle so your neighbor could get away.

Then again, we could put an end to all of this if our representatives chose to listen, or our comedians stopped suddenly being cowards so they don’t mess up their next Netflix special. People are marching in the streets, but our media is still playing both sides’ narratives for fear that they will be the next ones sued by an administration that is using the Constitution as toilet paper flushed down the golden throne of a President who would much rather have the title of Tsar.

This is the moment where we lose it all or win it back.

Our helpers are falling, and it’s time to stand up and fill the line where they fell, pour one out in their memory at the end of each day we survive, and then do it all again.

I am here to tell you, without a doubt, that you will be in danger. Your life is at risk. It is not a popular thing to say, but it is simply the reality we are now in. During one of my tours, during question-and-answer time, someone asked me, “What can we do to survive all this?” I paused to reflect on the very unfunny question I was now about to answer at the end of a comedy show.

“I can’t promise you survival. They want us gone. But what I can tell you is that you can die on a picket line or standing in line to the camps they want to send us to.”

As for me, I will take the picket line. I will continue to put up one more good fight and, should that day be my last, the only vengeance I wish for anyone to take in my name is to fill the space that is empty by my falling.

I saw someone say online, “We have no idea what he was thinking in those final moments.” And, I suppose that is true, we truly don’t. But as someone who also runs into the line of fire, I think I have a pretty educated guess.

I imagine Alex would want the same thing: for this moment not to cause us to fear and run away, but to be those who run directly into the spot where he fell and fill the gap where his body once was. There is now one less nurse out there holding the line and helping those who are being sprayed with chemical agents and pepper spray or shot with rubber bullets. You can be that nurse. You can be whoever you are, doing what you can to make a difference. If you can’t march in the streets, write your words online, make videos, call your congressperson, host meetings at your home, or purchase whistles to donate to your local organizations for distribution.

Let our voices not be silent until freedom and justice flow like water.

“The Lord said, ‘What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying out to Me from the ground for justice.” - Genesis 4:10

On Monday night, I had just left an open mic at one of my favorite comedy clubs in Nashville when suddenly the night took a very unfunny turn. A few friends and I attended and stopped by our favorite dive bar afterward for a cocktail to discuss the evening. I stepped outside for a smoke when an acquaintance leaned over to ask a question that hit me like a ton of bricks.

“Did you know Hope?”

The past tense of the question made my stomach turn. I’ve lost enough folks to know where this was going. As the story began to unfold, I felt like I was going to be sick. Hope, who was just 25 years old, had lost her life after allegedly being shot by her ex-girlfriend. The details were murky, but the ultimate reality was that we had lost a mutual friend to gun violence.

Hope and I first met at a nightclub when I stepped in to rescue her from a guy who was being a creep. We had a good laugh about the situation, and it began a tradition of us always saying hello whenever we saw each other around town. We were never super close, but I was always glad to see her and enjoyed our conversations.

Later that week, I found myself yet again at a comedy club, this time to watch a show, surrounded by others who knew Hope. We were attending an experimental comedy show, and it was good to laugh. As the night went on, our conversation shifted to the loss of our friend. We began to wonder when the funeral would be and started making plans to attend once the details emerged.

The next day, the world began a collective mourning when the story broke about another life taken too soon by a gun: Renee Nicole Good.

As someone who works professionally in the world of laughter, both as a writer and stand-up comic, it’s sometimes hard to find the joke in times like these. During my recent tour with Stormy Daniels, when we finally connected backstage in the green room, one of the first things she said in the most deadpan way possible was, “This is getting less funny.” Yet, moments later, we were on stage while folks in the audience found themselves doubled over with laughter.

Some folks have publicly questioned whether making jokes with all that is happening in the world right now has value or is even appropriate. I would posit that it’s more important now than ever.

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With the rise of a president who positions himself more as a dictatorial king than an elected representative of the people and by the people, the need for the court jester is all the more important. The role of the jester is to point out that the king is really the fool and often says things that others can’t. We help connect dots, supply folks with helpful arguments, and help keep the dimming light of hope alive.

The ultimate goal of a regime like this is to break the spirit of the common folk and to rule through fear to quell dissent.

As we look on with horror as Americans are being gunned down in the streets by federal agents, and our neighbors are being hauled off to detention camps, the instant reaction is to ask who will save us from ourselves? During that spiral, it’s easy to fall into the doom scroll, attempting to scavenge the internet for any semblance of brightness in this dark night of the soul.

That is where the court jester must run in to say, “I just saw a dude with a confederate flag demanding that everyone get out of the way of the government as they send in federalized troops to override states’ rights. I guess the Civil War really wasn’t just about states’ rights after all, who knew? I suppose when they cried, ‘Don’t Tread on Me,” they said it with a wink and a comma Daddy at the end.”

We still have to laugh.

Because if we don’t, they steal our hope. They dim our light. They rob us of our joy.

Anyone from historically marginalized groups will tell you that joy is a form of resistance. During these times of struggle, we must dance, sing, play, and laugh with abandon. Let us confound them with the absurdity of our opposite reaction to their cruelty.

They are attempting to goad us into rage, and instead, we are dressing up as frogs to stand on picket lines.

This week, I will gather with a small group of queer friends, and we will say goodbye to someone we loved who was gunned down in a senseless murder. We will cry and ask the age-old question of, “Why?” Then, once the sun goes down, I will find an open mic, and I’ll stand there on that stage, and I will tell jokes to prepare for my next tour.

How can I laugh at a time like this? Because it is one of the great forms of fighting against their attempts to silence us. I will mock, ask questions, make folks think, and ultimately, we will laugh until we cry and cry until it turns into laughter.

When faced with a similar question concerning the new to them fear of the nuclear weapons, CS Lewis once wrote, “If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that), but they need not dominate our minds.”

We must remain aware, we must protest, and never let them think we are indifferent to the barrage of injustices they are attempting against our neighbors. We must always be aware of the seriousness of all that is going on around us, of which I have no question or dispute.

For my part, I shall do so by reminding everyone that the emperor has no clothes on, which, for some reason, reminds me that my favorite mushrooms will soon be in season.

Very rarely do I narrow the scope so tightly on whom I am speaking to in my essays, but this is going to be one of those cases. I am writing this quite specifically to those who were not frequent targets of the words of Charlie Kirk. This is for those of you who might have never heard of him before today. Even if you align yourself with words like “progressive” or “left-leaning,” he might be a new figure in your world, though he wasn’t for a lot of people. Perhaps you are new to this fight for social justice, and you can’t wrap your head around why someone, anyone, would have a reaction any less than immediately saying, “There is no place in a civil society for this…”

If you can not understand why someone would have a visceral reaction to the loss of someone so vile, then you are one of the lucky ones.

Perhaps you weren’t someone who lost family members to his rhetoric. But so many others were. I have seen his vile words slither into the minds of people I was once close to. Even now, I am seeing folks that I had no idea held his views as valuable mourning him and quoting him. So many of us are having to realize that people we thought were safe are not. This is being piled on after nearly a decade of already losing so many people to his malignant despotism.

So, you might be sitting here watching folks shrug off the death of another and saying, “How can you lack empathy? How can you lack understanding?” And I am asking you the very same question. How can you lack empathy and understanding for those whom he harmed?

I recently wrote about an experience I had when my cousin died, and my instant guttural reaction was to laugh, “Just a few years after leaving the priesthood, on a not-so-eventful day, I received a call from my mother letting me know that my cousin had died. Moreover, he had been murdered. A sense of relief flushed over my body, knowing that I would never have to see his face again. That he could no longer lurk in dark corners or harm anyone else. At the news, I laughed instead of cried. I had been released from my own personal Hell, whose flames nipped at my heels anytime the specter of possibly seeing him would rise. Immediately upon his death, he was sainted in the media. I have visited his grave once, only to ensure that it existed. I said no words, I did not piss upon it (as I often joked I would), and I prayed no prayers. His being dead was enough.”

The context of these words was that I didn’t need there to be a Hell for him to suffer in for all eternity, but I was also not obligated to mourn an evil man meeting a demise of his own creation. My cousin lived a violent life, causing immense harm and destruction anywhere that he went. As a result, he met a violent end.

Some of the reactions I have seen toward those who can not muster alligator tears in this moment would be like Dorthy turning around to the Munchkins, saying, “How dare you sing that song! She was a sister, a friend, and she went to school once.”

Charlie Kirk spent his life vilifying people. Most specifically, he went after the most vulnerable amongst us. He turned their parents and siblings against them. He made using the restroom a battleground. He called Black people less than human. In the wake of school shootings, he told parents that their children dying in the hallways was a necessary casualty of protecting the Second Amendment. With his words and actions, he dehumanized anyone who was different than him and actively fought for a world in which those folks were erased. After the attempted assassination of Paul Pelosi, he said that folks should bail him out. He made heroes out of the worst people imaginable and wished harm on those with whom he disagreed. He fomented young people to become violent so that he could hide behind his words and demand nuance, only to serve himself, and never gave grace to those he saw as other.

Now, the very people that he has spent his life demonizing are being blamed for his death without cause or merit.

But because a trans teenager who is living in their car, rejected by parents over the words of Charlie Kirk, made a Tweet that said, “Ding dong, the witch is dead,” you are responding from the safety of your home, demanding a nuance that you aren’t willing to give them.

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If you have never been on the receiving end of being a target of Charlie Kirk, and you are only seeing passive things he said that are being quoted by his allies, then you aren’t seeing the full picture. I am aware that the video of what happened to him is shocking, and the guttural reaction is to have empathy for his family. I would even go so far as to say that having such empathy is good in a sense, it means you aren’t as vile as he, a man who couldn’t find empathy at all for anyone, and actually demeaned empathy as weakness. Yet, if you can not also find empathy for those whom he and his followers have perpetually victimized, then you are missing a major component in all of this. Every despot alive had a mother, but you will not find me crying at the graves of evil men who had their regimes toppled by those they subjugated.

It is good that you are able to find empathy in this moment; it means you aren’t like him. However, it does not mean that those who do not mourn him are. That is an important distinction.

Countless people have lost their lives to the violent rhetoric of Charlie Kirk; those lives also mattered. Is it possible that he would have changed if given a longer life? Perhaps, but playing an experimental game of “what if” is also dangerous in this moment.

In the aftermath of his death, the Christian Nationalists were quick, without any proof, to lay blame at the feet of the trans community. This is the very same thing that Charlie Kirk was so well known for. He did this countless times, and by doing so, he put their lives in danger. Those who followed him are quickly taking up the mantle. Even today, Donald Trump eulogized Charlie Kirk by stating that he died because folks called him a Nazi, while at the same time lumping everyone who disagreed with him as “the radical left.”

The writing is on the wall that this moment will be used to justify rounding up more immigrants into concentration camps. They are setting the stage to make it illegal to call a fascist what they are. And, I promise you, that a time is coming soon when anyone who criticizes this administration will be considered a terrorist. It is already happening now in other parts of the world. The mere attempt to protest is landing folks in handcuffs. We are watching our fundamental rights being stripped away from us.

Yes, we are all unsafe in this moment, but we must take a beat to realize who will suffer first: immigrants, refugees, activists, Black folks, Muslims, the queen community, and our trans siblings. They are profoundly in more danger today than they were yesterday. They are being saddled with the blame for what happened long before someone has even been arrested or a motive announced.

I am fully aware that somewhere in the world, a woman is crying because her husband is dead. She had to sit down and explain to her young children that their father isn’t coming home. That reality is not lost on me. Inasmuch as I am able, I can see that scene play out in my mind's eye, and I know that they are feeling pain today. It is this idea, this true thing, that you are demanding that people also take a moment to acknowledge. I hear that. The counter to this narrative is that so many folks who this very man has harmed are asking you, “How can you hear her cries over the children dying in the streets from these endless wars, above the tears of the trans person sobbing in their car about to lose their life, and beyond the children hiding under their desks at school?”

I need you to understand that what I have written here today will likely be read at my own sentencing someday, when they justify ripping me away from my children simply because I wrote words, asked questions, and openly challenged the narrative of my government. That is the nuance you are asking to understand.

Most of us have lived with the privilege of this type of violence happening on shores far away from us, and so seeing it playing out in our own streets and universities is jarring. But, make no mistake, this is not new. These politicians who are demanding civility now watched videos far more horrific than you saw in the last 24 hours happening to elementary school children and looked the other way to justify their political ends. They have lacked empathy at every moment from Columbine to Sandy Hook, but are now feigning shock that no one can mourn the wicked.

So, before you write words condemning those who cannot find it within themselves to shed a tear for the man who tore them apart, I am begging you to have empathy and understanding for THEM in this moment. Take a beat to read his words, to fall down a night-long rabbit hole, actually investigating the final solution that they hoped would come from things like Project 2025. Listen to the hurt and pain and reality from those whom Charlie Kirk wished to see deported, arrested, and executed.

I am begging you to do this now, because very soon, those voices will be silenced, and the only thing that you will be able to hear is propaganda being pumped by the mechanisms created and endorsed by the man you are demanding that they mourn.

You should be shocked by political violence. I desperately hope and fight for a world where no one has to see what we all saw this week. That is a noble cause and a beautiful hope. But, at this time, we must also live in reality. The real world that we are all tethered to is that Charlie Kirk was a White Christian Nationalist who promoted hate and violence. He diminished countless people. Those politicians who have spent decades saying we can not politicize the death of school children who died are now using the death of this man, who championed these tragedies, as a political tool. They said there was nothing that could be done, that nothing could stop these horrors. That there would always be a good guy with a gun. That we should trust the process. Yet, make no mistake, they will suddenly find the motivation to stop violence. But they will use violence to do so. It is only a matter of time before they start rounding up people who were never involved in his death, purely based on their identity and ideology. I need you to hear their cries.

It is good that you are repulsed by political violence. I am too. I am just begging you to cast a wider net on that outrage.

(This might be the first time that I’ve ever done a double post on Substack, and I promise not to make a habit of it. However, I have something really important I want to talk to you all about, mainly because I would like to take Labor Day off this year. Hopefully, by the time you finish reading this, you’ll understand why.)

Remember when Hollywood came to a screeching halt when first the writers' room and then the actors went on strike? Suddenly, we were hearing stories from actors we know through multiple shows and movies, telling the reality of living substantially less glamorous lives than some might have assumed. So many folks thought that since they were seen that attention equaled wealth.

The strikes shone a light on a little-known reality: the majority of people working in entertainment, whether in film, music, or writing, were living paycheck to paycheck.

It seemed unfathomable, but it was true.

Yes, there are plenty of examples in our culture of ultra-wealthy actors and the elaborate lifestyles of rock stars. We’ve had it shoved on us by tabloids and paparazzi for decades, so it must be true. Over time, the presumption became that if someone was in a movie with Tom Hanks, who takes in excess of $20 million a film, those in supporting roles must be doing equally as well.

Instead, we learned that many of our icons must sell photo sessions at comic cons to keep a roof over their heads.

It shouldn’t be a shock to any of us that the world of entertainment mirrors that of the rest of society; the top percent hold all the wealth while the working-class artists struggle to make it.

As a father of two teenage girls, when Taylor Swift dropped a new album, I was already well aware that it was on the way. When the record was finally available, I sent a text to the family group chat saying, “It happened,” and I received an immediate response that they were already well into listening. At the time, I was out with some friends, enjoying a well-needed night off. I opened my phone and posted a thought onto social media, because that’s what we all do. It simply said, “Taylor just dropped a new album, which is a great time to remind y’all to buy art from starving artists. Signed, a starving artist.”

Being the foolish eternal optimist, one might even go so far as to say a member of the tortured poet department, I assumed this would be a relatively benign statement to make. An indie artist was reminding folks to support indie artists in the midst of yet another cultural moment.

Golly, was I wrong.

I woke up to wild speculations that I was dissing Taylor or creating some false dichotomy where folks must choose between mainstream entertainment and indie art. By the afternoon, it was even being called into question whether I should be allowed to qualify as a starving artist, given that I had had a successful comedy tour. I read through many of these comments, genuinely bewildered, wondering, “Are some folks conflating that my circumstances are comparable to one of the most successful artists of all time?”

If that sounds absurd, it’s because it is.

The average attendance at my nearly sold-out tour was about 75 people. Some of the home shows were closer to 40, and the largest was around 120. I drove myself from each location to the next, no tour buses or PR team. It was just me telling stories while my daughter, who had just turned eighteen, ran the merch booth. There wasn’t a craft service; we survived on Taco Bell. Most nights, we stayed at the local Days Inn, typically rolling in around midnight, before heading onto the next show first thing in the morning.

At the time, I drove a 2019 Kia Soul.

The windshield was cracked.

Now, I drive a Kia Seltos.

Not breaking with tradition, its window is also now cracked.

Listen, I’m not ignorant of the fact that I’ve experienced some success, and when I juxtapose my life now with my meager upbringing, it’s night and day. The difference between my life and the lives of most indie artists I know is that we can’t take a break. Not a real one, anyway. Yes, my life is different now. I don’t typically worry about things like having food in the refrigerator or the lights being shut off due to non-payment. Guilty as charged. But that can change in an instant. Recently, we experienced a horrific incident where hundreds of items were lost in the mail, and we had to re-ship all of them. Just that one little moment nearly broke me. I doubt that Hanks or Swift are walking such a tight razor's edge.

Also, there are light years between the “success” of a tour with an average attendance of 75 per show and filling stadiums with a capacity of 72,500 people.

Taylor never has to release another album again in her whole life. Tomorrow, she could wake up and say, “I don’t want to do this anymore,” and just not. She could also sit in the studio every day until the end of her life and release albums at midnight every six months. She can create, she can choose not to create, she can do what she wishes. Well, except for doing what I did the other night: sit alone in a bar unbothered for an hour while waiting for my friends to decide their next move.

Soon, I will sit in front of my computer to work on a book that isn’t my favorite I’ve ever written, because I have to release a book this year. If I don’t, or if it doesn’t do well, my life will get very bumpy. Am I starving today? No, but I sure as f+ck will be in six months if I don’t restructure a few things, find the focus that has seemed to slip away, and get myself in gear. I love writing. I hate punishing. I wish I could create art on any schedule I choose. Sadly, sometimes, I have to write things I’m not exactly thrilled about or promote merch that I’m not in love with. As a working artist, if I don’t create, I don’t eat. That is how most artists live. It is a rare thing to be a Taylor Swift who has the privilege of living to see a time when they can do whatever they want with their art.

Or, as she put it, “I’ll tell you something about my good name; it’s mine to disgrace.”

I’m not complaining. I love my life. I’m a professional full-time author. That is amazing. When I complain about my job, it’s because it’s my job, and everyone complains about their job sometimes because it’s their job. I love what I do, and I would never want to do anything else, at least I don’t think I would, but then again, a decade ago, I would have said the same thing about the priesthood, so what the f+ck do I know?

I wrote Southern Gothic. Whenever I am asked to describe what this means, I say, “the opposite of fantasy. I write worlds without clear villains or heroes; everyone is flawed and broken. I tell the gritty and sordid tales of a world devoid of anything magical, where there are no gods or caped crusaders to rescue us from the plight of fentanyl overdoses and teen pregnancies.”

I realize that’s not everyone's cup of tea.

People are often shocked to find out that my favorite pastimes include watching shows like American Idol and America's Got Talent. I don’t have a problem with movies or music that exist purely for the sake of being entertaining. As someone who writes about some really f+cked up sh+t, I need escapism; we all do. It’s okay that some things are just bubblegum. We are all entitled to a little tapping out every once in a while.

My commentary on supporting indie artists was not a diss against Taylor Swift. No part of me was attempting to kick the Swifty version of a beehive.

The pandemic was a wild time to be an indie artist. As the world attempted to restructure itself during lockdown, there were suddenly no more new shows on TV or live music in the venues. In large part, those who had the means to hide did, and that included many celebrities whom we relied on for entertainment. In many ways, it was indie artists who picked up the slack in terms of entertainment and escapism. Indie artists revolutionized the concept of doing at-home comedy shows and live concerts from living rooms. It felt, for a brief moment, like we had entered a type of renaissance.

As the world began to reopen and stadiums could once again be filled, society returned to its pre-pandemic status quo. I get it; we missed this. I’m not judging. However, in the aftermath, I watched as many of my friends quietly quit their full-time entertainment jobs and went back into the rat race. One friend told me through tears on the phone, “I guess my music was just a stopgap until they could get back to the next Hot 100 release.”

For some of us, going back to a “normal job” isn’t as easy an option. I have been abundantly outspoken, and my choices are severely limited. I chose that this was my endgame. I am going to keep telling stories, calling truth to power, and not shutting the f+ck up until they make me.

We all enjoy the music, movies, books, plays, and TV shows that we want, and I’m not here to judge anyone for that. I’m just saying, don’t forget that the next big musician who will fill stadiums is sitting in a coffee shop right now singing their heart out, and you missed that show because you were too busy arguing with me in the comment section.

I wrote all of this because it’s sincerely important to me, but I am also silently hoping that some of my prose resonated enough to cause you to hit the subscribe button. That, my dear friends, is what being an indie artist under late-stage capitalism looks like. Because, as authentic as all of these feelings are, I still need that $8 from you each month, and Taylor doesn’t. You know why? Although the average show attendance was 75, I also walked into a venue with 17 tickets sold and four no-shows. That meant four folks not buying merch. That was a rough day; I almost had to sleep in the car that night. Fortunately, I’ve reached just enough success that right now, sleeping in the car if I don’t want to is probably not going to happen. So, if we are judging success based upon the bare minimum, I’m doing great.

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But there is no scenario under which Taylor Swift is sleeping in her Kia Soul off a highway outside of Albuquerque. That isn’t a chastisement, just acknowledging a reality. Then again, we’ve reached a boiling point as a culture where anything less than full-throated adoration is considered condemnation.

The core of this problem lies in the ideas we have about success and what it entails. We’ve reached a point where we think attention equals cash, and that’s just not the case. Last year, I experienced a perfect example of this. I had a post go viral, garnering over a million views and thousands of comments. I posted a link encouraging folks to buy my books if they liked the content; I sold one book. Later that month, I had a post with fewer than a thousand reactions and sold over a hundred copies. There isn’t a math to this thing, at least not one I can figure out.

What I hope you take away from this is that for those artists you enjoy following on social media, it’s likely hand-to-fist for them. They are creating content as fast as they can, often acting as writer, producer, and editor all wrapped into one. Some of your favorite indie authors, singers, poets, musicians, and filmmakers. They are all doing the best they can, and they can’t take six months, six weeks, or six days off. They’ve got to wake up tomorrow and create.

Taylor Swift doesn’t. That isn’t a diss. It’s just true. That isn’t a commentary on her music; it’s just a silly, pop culture-infused half-joke reminding folks that when they are done with Black Friday, remember Small Business Saturday.

This Labor Day Weekend, just remember that there are a lot of artists who helped you through the pandemic, the election, and this horrific year we are stuck in right now. They are creating art that’s healed you and helped you. They work hard to partner only with companies that prioritize choice, freedom, and equity. They aren’t using AI to move themselves forward but painstakingly penning every word and brushing every stroke. Even if it's not me, though I hope it is, if you read that paragraph, please run to whoever it is that did that for you and give them a subscribe, buy something from their shop, or give them a little tip on their Venmo or PayPal.

I am not going to diss you for liking big artists. The world is painful enough without us tearing apart everything. And now, Taylor has another album on the way. We all know it because it’s been everywhere. All I have to say about it is this: Enjoy her music. Listen to the album. Get excited for the drop at midnight. Speculate about all of the meanings of each carefully crafted word. See if you can guess when her and Kelce are going to get married and where and how and why. Then, when you are done, walk down to your local venue or coffee shop and toss a couple of bucks in the bucket for that girl with the guitar that everyone is talking over, because one day you might not be able to afford a ticket to her show.

Oh, and while you are here, hit the subscribe button so that one day, you can say, “Yeah, I was one of his supporters before his books really took off.”

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That’s what I was trying to say the night I made my Taylor Swift joke years ago, but because I didn’t say “also,” then I guess it’s me; I’m the problem, it’s me.

Oh, there he goes. Playing the victim, again 🐍

Like many of you, I could not sleep over the weekend as we awaited word on whether or not the Philanderer-in-Chief had finally shuffled the mortal coil. I lay in bed with wonder, reading debates on Threads about whether his death would bring about any change or simply be a momentary cathartic release. Would JD Vance have the charisma to continue yielding the power of the MAGA movement, or would much of the momentum die with Trump? While some claimed that the fear gripping Congress if they sidestep Trump would subside with his demise, others say the mechanisms of control far supersede the man. And who better to debate these topics than an entire generation with unused political science degrees?

As the hours ticked by without a word, the possibility of such a figure rotting away on their golden toilet while his acolytes feverishly run gaudy hallways speculating on when to tell the public was an ever-salty dish of deliciousness. The boring notion of civility being demanded by some, who cautioned against gloating over his potential demise, was easily brushed off by the reality that such a death could bring about peace for countless people and potentially end policies that cause real and lasting harm. For as long as people have existed, joy at the death of tyrants has been a pretty consistent mark of humanity, and I will not begrudge anyone, myself included, for indulging in such a fantasy.

As I continued to scroll, a phrase I had seen most recently when another dubious figure met their maker emerged, “He is looking up at us now.” Just a few days before, the notorious James Dobson had died, and similar remarks were made about him. Comedic punchlines of a theological sort hypothesizing that the now deceased preacher of death was finally suffering in the same pits of fire that he had threatened all of us with for decades.

I nearly made such a joke myself and had the sound wisdom to check it with my partner, Tashina, before posting it. I made some minor changes, and the joke worked just as well without me putting Dobson in the pits of Hell.

The Divine Comedy is, without question, a masterpiece of literature and was not intended to be a literal theological treatise on the afterlife. It is an allegorical and satirical work that is intended to make one think. Yet, much like the book that inspired it, The Bible, which is also rife with allegory, when in the hands of the wrong folks, it can become a weapon, so too Dante’s Inferno has become a flashpoint in the reimagining of the afterlife and divine judgment. I doubt that when Dante penned this work, he envisioned a world in which his imagination would take on such a literal definition. One could make the same argument about the Apocalypse of Saint John, most commonly known as the Book of Revelation, another book full of allegory that has, in the hands of the Evangelical Church, been misused to instill fear in the hearts of countless people. In reality, both of these worlds, the Apocalypse and Divine Comedy, are works meant to rejoice in the possible physical end of tyrants. In that sense, they are not dissimilar from the jokes we post on social media when our modern counterparts pass away.

One of the many things that began the journey of dismantling my faith was the moment I could no longer adhere to the standardized understanding of Hell. The idea of a God who is defined as love and calls us Their children, choosing to eternally set us on fire, simply could not be reconciled within my mind. Either God is a liar and not love and Hell exists, or God is love but a hypocrite, or then remains the more logical conclusion that human failure and tampering has resulted in a massive misunderstanding of the Divine. Of course, another option exists, which is that God is an entire fabrication and the whole point is moot. Regardless of where you fall on that understanding, the fact that the story of a loving familial deity exists and the idea that the end conclusion of that love is eternal conscious punishment seems entirely antithetical to such notion.

Of all the heresies that I was accused of espousing after renouncing my priesthood, my opinion that Hell is a myth has remained the one most surrounded by intrigue. What I could not have imagined is how quickly my resolve on this subject would be put to the test.

Just a few years after leaving the priesthood, on a not-so-eventful day, I received a call from my mother letting me know that my cousin had died. Moreover, he had been murdered. A sense of relief flushed over my body, knowing that I would never have to see his face again. That he could no longer lurk in dark corners or harm anyone else. At the news, I laughed instead of cried. I had been released from my own personal Hell, whose flames nipped at my heels anytime the specter of possibly seeing him would rise. Immediately upon his death, he was sainted in the media. I have visited his grave once, only to ensure that it existed. I said no words, I did not piss upon it (as I often joked I would), and I prayed no prayers. His being dead was enough.

I remained resolute in my newfound belief that he was butt dust, and to dust he shall return.

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Eternal punishment or reward is rooted in the existential desire for justice. As such, judicial terms are often used in the context of understanding the afterlife, including judgment, penance, and restitution. There are about as many ways to imagine what life after death, should it exist, might look like as there are minds to conceive it. For especially egregious characters, such as Dobson or Trump, individuals who have evaded accountability at every turn, the idea that they might finally face justice at the hands of an angry God could, for some, bring about a sense of peace.

That is certainly how many felt upon reading The Divine Comedy, as they relished in the idea of the horrible figures of their time roasting or being tortured in extravagant ways. I am sure that it was not very dissimilar to the glee that many felt at the idea of someone like Dobson having to arrive at the Pearly Gates only to have the lever pulled and him having to scorch in the very place he once threatened many of us with. Yet, this seems like a very simple and punitive form of justice that falls short of the cleverness of a deity capable of creating the genetic code, the Fibonacci sequence, and the placement of the prostate gland.

An argument could be easily and historically made that, had Dante never penned his Inferno, someone like Dobson might not have ever existed within our timeline. Hell was not a concept known to the authors of the Tanakh, often referred to as the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament. Neither was it a concept spoken about by Jesus; rather, three distinct words were unfortunately mistranslated as one word when the scriptures were moved from their native tongues to modern vernacular. Hades, Sheol, and Gehenna were three distinct ideas that were mushed together to create one dangerous theology known as “Hell.” This error, combined with the imagination of Dante, propelled forward the dangerous idea of an eternal punishment of conscious souls suffering for all space and time for the alleged sins of their temporal life on Earth.

It was with this flamethrower in hand that Dobson brought about death and destruction for countless people suffering from AIDS, natural disasters, and really anyone that Dobson and his so-called “Moral Majority” decided were less than. Many of us today have suffered under this horrific teaching and are scarred by it today.

I am simply unsure that we win by placing these figures in the very flames that we escaped from by estranging ourselves from our religious upbringing. I fear that we create a potential problem for those in the future by utilizing a Hell of Convenience whenever someone who does not meet our moral or ethical standards passes away. Rejoicing in them no longer being here to cause harm, while perhaps crass, is likely nothing more than the humor of the jester. Utilizing a tool of religion for the sake of punitive justice for the wicked, once they are gone, can have catastrophic consequences down the line.

In the days following the death of my cousin, I called the court-appointed attorney of the man who killed him, a Black man with a record living in the South, who killed a white man that had family members calling him “a kind-hearted person.” It seemed to me that this man, accused of murder, did not stand much of a chance in the current system we called justice. I offered to act as “Whatever the opposite of a good character witness might be, to counteract whatever fable is currently being written about my cousin.” Unfortunately, I was never called on to do that. Still, I did express to the attorney that, “I fear this man will suffer a lifetime of punishment for doing what so many of us had wished we had the courage to do; stop a man hellbent on harming others until someone stood in his way.” Sometimes, the closest thing we will ever see of true justice this side of Heaven is trying to do the right thing.

Because of my understanding of linear time, it seems an inevitability that, one day, we will wake up to that headline which so many of us wish to see. There will likely be spontaneous celebrations in the streets, not just across this county I call home, but around the world. A sense of relief will fill the hearts of many. I, for one, shall be numbered amongst them. While we can speculate in great detail about what the aftermath of this might look like, none of us really knows. The same, it seems, is true as far as what the afterlife will look like for these figures who have caused so much harm. Is Hitler suffering a South Park-ian perpetual punishment ala Dante’s Inferno, or did he simply cease to be? I do not know, and I can not pretend to do so. The same is true of any of these despots die.

I can say, with at least a reasonable speculation, that we might have been better off had Dante never written his personal pit where he placed all who wronged him. Without him, we likely would have avoided so much of the pain and suffering we’ve experienced here on earth. So, it is possible then that someday a collection of our tweets, threads, and statuses could become a justification for future understandings of the afterlife? Could these jokes, a divine comedy if you will, become the catalyst that inspires some Dobson-esque character to encourage harm to another generation of children? Perhaps it is a long-shot speculation, yet I can’t imagine it's what Dante envisioned his works would result in.

For myself, just like with my cousin, whenever that day does come when a collective “Ding Dong the Witch is Dead” moment finally arises, I will rest assured enough that they are now dust and then immediately continuing the hard work of unraveling all the harm they have caused with their made up mythologies by not adding to them with my attempts at jest.

But, make no mistake, I will make countless jokes in poor taste all the same. I will just prefer that they be spicy and not about eternal flames.

I was fourteen years old the first time I was warned from the pulpit that persecution was coming and that someday I might soon have to die for my faith. These ideas became quickly solidified in the aftermath of Columbine as stories of students who were shot for not denouncing their faith circulated. These stories were later revealed as likely fabrications, but not until after an entire generation of children, like myself, had been told that if we weren’t willing to die for our faith, then we would be left behind during the rapture. A great tribulation was coming, we were told.

We were taught that the world would ultimately kneel to a Russian dictator who brought about war and famine that would make the Holocaust look like a cakewalk. Masked men in trucks would scoop the faithful off the streets, where they would be tortured in attempts to make them deny their faith. However, those of us who remained strong until the end would receive a crown of gold and our own McMansion in the sky; all we would have to do first is die. You see, it was for the pastors and prophets to have mansions here on earth, but ours were on eternal layaway.

Everyone from Jim Bakker to James Dobson has used the scare tactic of persecution to bolster their own interests and build empires. Politicians have also used this specter to pass legislation that has slowly eroded our freedom and consciousness. After 9/11, the fear of Muslims coming here to destroy us all for our faith was so persistent that we watched in silence as Congress signed away our basic liberties in exchange for another day of avoiding the persecution that was to come.

For a group of people who believe they have an eternity of happiness, free food, and gold-paved streets waiting for them after death, they will undoubtedly do everything they can to stay alive.

Yet, the point remained the same; no matter how long and hard we try, eventually persecution will come. And, it seems, they were correct. They just got the who, what, when, where, how, and why entirely fucking wrong.

Ayman Solimann was a reporter in Egypt during the Arab Spring and wrote extensively on the subject. Eventually, he faced the threat of imprisonment and potential death for expressing his opinions. He was granted asylum in the United States as a political refugee. By every metric, Ayman is the exact type of person that we want to give asylum to. Not only does he exemplify the most clear-cut case of someone who should be granted such a privilege, but by all accounts, he has remained a perfect example of what it means to be a good citizen. He continued his education, became a minister in his faith tradition, and served as a chaplain at a children’s hospital, ministering to families who confront some of the most difficult challenges a parent can face.

It seems, however, that our parents were correct about something; a Russian dictator would bring about war and famine while masked men in trucks began to scoop up the faithful from the streets. Yet, while the evangelicals sleep soundly in their beds with no fear as their perfect white Christian nation is being rebuilt in their image around them, US immigrants are facing the persecution that so many pastors had long fantasized would one day happen to us all.

On June 3rd of this year, without any explanation or warning, Ayman had his asylum status revoked and was arrested a little over a month later while doing a routine immigration check-in. He is now currently incarcerated and awaiting potential deportation back to his native Egypt. Should that happen, Ayman will likely be put to death.

Imam Ayman is just one of many such situations of religious leaders being picked up by ICE and hauled off to detention centers as they face potential deportation. Though Ayman is of the Muslim faith, many Christian pastors have also been kidnapped by the current administration.

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Pastor Daniel Fuentes Espinal of Easton, MD, originally called Honduras home but came to the United States to seek freedom and a safe haven for his family. Much like Ayman, Daniel would face potential death if he returned home. Pastors and community leaders are frequently targets of gang violence in Honduras. Daniel has been a volunteer pastor at Nazareno Jesus Te Ama in Easton since 2015 and has garnered a reputation over the last decade as being a compassionate and Christ-like figure in his community. Though he has no criminal record, he has been frequently accused of providing food and shelter to those in need. He is currently back home with his family, awaiting an upcoming hearing, but the potential for his eventual deportation remains high.

I have a pretty thick skin, and I am rarely shocked anymore by the hypocrisy found so often within Christianity. However, these situations have gotten to me.

My first exposure to the realities of the holocaust was when my father gave me a copy of The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom. Dad had met her while he was on tour as a Christian musician. Her name was spoken of in our household as if she were an ancient saint. I was raised not just to be prepared to die for my faith but to live a faith worth dying for. I was ready from childhood to hide the persecuted under the floorboards if necessary. I was told the stories about how the Nazis kept changing the rules so that they could bring about their regime of destruction. The Jews, Romi, disabled, and queer were not always considered illegal. They were once citizens of Germany, but those rights and privileges were slowly stripped from them until they found themselves second-class, then moved to ghettos, and then finally the solution became execution.

No one was safe, not women, children, or even the clergy.

As kids, we would often play a caustic game of “What would you do if you were alive during Nazi Germany?” For all of the different answers I heard growing up, not a single person said, “I would vote for him three times and sign up to be a member of the Gestapo so that I could personally be the one picking up pastors off the streets to send them to death camps.” Somehow, that is precisely where we are.

I am aware of Godwin’s Law and that comparisons to the Third Reich are overused on both sides of the aisle, so I am sure that some readers will roll their eyes at this article. If you are one of those folks, I just want to say go fuck yourself and the president you rode in on.

We are far past the point of pretending that we aren’t in a crisis, and the stakes are no longer theoretical. Everything that evangelicals feared was coming is here, but it is folks like Ayman who are the ones facing down the barrel of the guns they said would be aimed at them. Real human beings have died and will die as a result of these policies. This is not a practice run; this is very much reality, and if you can’t see how absolutely fucked we are in this moment, then I encourage you to Google normalcy bias.

Often quoted in times like these are the words found at the base of the Statue of Liberty, penned by Emma Lazarus, which reads in part, “A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command the air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
‘Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!’ cries she with silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

As apt a reminder as these words are of our promise, we now live in a season where we have failed at these verses, and our check has been returned void. In this instance, I think, we are more appropriately reminded of another lofty promise written decades before, penned by the founders of our nation, and signed by treasonous men hoping for a brighter future. These words are found in the Declaration of Independence: "But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and provide new Guards for their future security.”

One thing will become as an absolute truth moving forward, should a day come that the evangelical church must face retribution for what it has brought, it will not be a persecution but a reckoning for choosing violence as a preemptive means to avoid a pretend crisis they created in their own minds. Their obsessive persecution kink has proven to be such a lie that they would rather take life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness from others in order to buy another day of safety for themselves from the fake death they fear might come should others be allowed to live in peace. We are suffering the consequences of a culture that has been LARPing for so long at their favorite fantasy book that they have begun to think it is reality.

The sad truth is that one day, as a nation, we will build monuments and name streets after many of those who die at the hands of this great persecution we are now tolerating. Some day, many years from now, our children and grandchildren will look back on these times we are currently surviving with shame. They will ask us where we stood and what we did. They will question who we voted for, and they will wear that with either pride or shame. Did we die on the beaches of Normandy closest to the water or on the other side of barbed wire? Were we hiding people in our closets or working in high towers? These will be the stains or badges of honor that will be passed down as the sins or absolutions of the fathers we choose to be now.

One day, decades from now, kids will play a game called “What would you do if you were alive during Trump’s America?” You and I are currently pawns in that game. And history books will someday write about where we stood.

I stand with Ayman.

I was a strong-willed child. I spent the majority of my childhood in trouble. I spoke too much, asked too many questions, and openly defied the adults when their actions triggered my clear sense of justice. This frequently landed me in the hot seat. I will never forget the day my mother sent me to the church to be spanked by one of the elders because my father wasn’t available to do it.

I am sure that I was difficult to handle; I’m now raising three strong-willed children myself. They challenge me. There are days I want to pull my hair out. But I know something by surviving that James Dobson didn’t want us to figure out: those kids will change the world.

Focus on the Family didn’t want a different world. They wanted one rooted firmly in a bygone era that felt safe to them. They wanted a Leave it to Beaver-style Christian theocratic utopia that America never was, but they believed it used to be and could be again. The problem is that the black and white binary view of a decade drenched in soda pop and bubble gum never pulled back the lens far enough to show the full picture. We didn’t see Mrs. Cleaver's black eye or cocaine addiction. There wasn’t a sequel that showed us what Whitey did when he joined that fraternity that became the catalyst for his time on the Supreme Court. They never let us view how Mr. Cleaver treated his secretary when he was safely away from home.

This world ignored the reality that there were billions of other people who don’t look, think, or act like them, and for these Christian Nationalists, that was exactly the problem. They would colonize out anyone that didn’t fit this perfect Americana they yearned for. They had a nostalgia for a world that never existed anywhere except for on their TV screens and resented anyone who pulled back the veil to show them that the empire had no clothes on while they were trying to fool us into believing in the wizard, great and powerful.

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People like Dobson saw figures like the Beatles and Elvis as having contaminated the world with multiculturalism, breaking down the social norm for an unruly summer of ‘69, and that AIDS was the natural punishment due the sins of a broken world that had fallen away from God. The only way to stop this would be a two-part plan:

1. Slowly infiltrate the government with Christian Nationalists to build a world in their image

2. Break every strong-willed child who might stand in their way

In Sunday school, I was constantly in trouble for asking questions concerning the Bible. Like the time I felt like my Sunday school teacher was picking on a gay kid in class, and so I asked the teacher if they masturbate to point out their hypocrisy. I landed myself in the Sunday school principal's office for that one. Ultimately, I traded in these minor infractions for handcuffs on picket lines as my fight for justice only continued to expand.

That, of course, is what they hoped to avoid. They wanted to break the strong-willed child to make them compliant or dead; either was fine with them. They just needed them out of the way. In many ways, they succeeded. Plenty of those children died on Christopher Street, or alone in hospital beds when doctors refused to touch them. Countless more decided to make an early exit after years of feeling like they would never be good enough. Many more are sitting in jail cells because they were taught to believe this would be the natural conclusion to their lives, for not listening, so they yielded to this doomed prophecy somewhere along the way.

Somehow, I lived.

So did you.

We are not the only ones. Thousands of us have made it through. Many of us did stints in ministry, thinking this would somehow fix us, only for us to crash directly into the reality of another book about a strong-willed child: The Bible.

The first time we hear Jesus speak, it’s him talking back to his parents because he literally ran away from home. He was a clearly gifted child who had big problems with authority. His defiance ultimately led to outright rebellion, cultural change, and an untimely death at the hands of state authorities and the institutional church.

The ones of us who survived are not better than those who didn’t. It’s probably part luck and a dash of circumstance. Those who didn’t make it weren’t weak, and we weren’t more strong-willed; it’s just how the story went. However, we are now faced with a unique challenge as survivors of this ideology.

Sadly, James Dobson lived long enough to see a significant portion of his vision come to fruition. The so-called “Moral Majority” has toppled advancements and progress made over the years. They’ve succeeded at overturning Roe v. Wade, expanding gerrymandering efforts, stacked the courts, replaced a president with a Messiah like king, and have marriage equality firmly in their sights. Yet, every step of the way, these changes they’ve made have been either slowed or sometimes stopped by a strong-willed child who lived. One that got through the cracks of their fingers to become a lawyer, author, social worker, actor, activist, musician, teacher, or general pain in the ass. We are the strong-willed children who grew into defiant adults, and together, we can make a difference.

James Dobson is dead.

But his ideas are not.

His books will sell more over the next few weeks than at any other time during his life. People will still regurgitate his words from pulpits all across the country, sometimes without ever knowing their origins. His body will lie cold in the ground, but his teachings will still burn hot at the end of the belt of parents hoping to beat the strong-will out of their children in his name.

So for those of us who made it through, it is our job to make sure he turns in that grave every single day until we dismantle all that he built.

Because we found real family in all of the corners that we were told were dangerous and filled with sin, they tried to keep us all apart so that we could never fight back. But we can, and we will, and that is the type of family I’m going to focus on saving, the very ones he spent his life trying to destroy; anyone who was different than him.

I had never done any partnerships with any brands before and I had no fucking clue what I was doing. I would often be asked, but it was primarily based on my social media reach, and the requests mostly seemed boring or something I couldn’t ethically justify. I’m aware that there is big money in brand deals, but I had already sold my soul to the church and saw where that got me; I wasn’t planning to do it again with capitalism. Most everything I’ve done has been very DIY and almost painfully indie. Everything I do, from shows to books and merchandise, is done in-house. Yes, it's a metric fuckton of work, but at least I know who I am partnering with.

One day, an offer came through that finally intrigued me enough to even give it a look. It was a local, ethically sourced coffee company called Mad Priest. I had actually seen their product in stores and bought one just because I thought it was funny. I even joked to my partner that I should reach out to them, but never did because of ADHD and executive dysfunction. It was exciting to see them noticing me and thinking there might be an opportunity there.

We had spent hours reviewing all the details, and a significant amount of work had been put into it. The owner and I had scheduled a meeting to finalize some of the deets before everything could move forward. It was a lunch meeting and we had found a location that was dead center of both of our locations. When I arrived, I realized we had picked a pretty swanky place. You wouldn’t know it from the name, but it was a very upscale establishment. We both looked like pirates about to sack the joint. One of us put our name on the waitlist because we didn’t realize we should have gotten reservations.

The place was bustling, and folks were coming in and out at a rapid pace. You could see that the hostess was a little flustered, if not entirely overwhelmed. A woman stood up to make her way to the hostess stand and, upon arrival, began berating the staff. She was angry that someone else had gone ahead of her. The hostess tried to explain that this person had a reservation and that those with reservations received priority. It was pretty standard stuff, but the woman wasn’t having it. She had been waiting too long; she was livid, and, more importantly, had arrived just a few moments behind Michael and me, who were also still waiting. Nothing was calming this lady down, and it became apparent what was happening.

We were in the presence of a full-blown Karen.

She was getting quite worked up and started tossing out the greatest hits. She cursed, she swore, and she was going to talk to the manager; heads were going to roll.

“Why don’t you shut the fuck up,” I offered as a solution to the problem.

“Excuse me?” The woman’s rage was now squarely aimed at me.

“Oh, I am sorry!” I said, “I must have not been clear. I said, ‘Why don’t you shut the fuck up?’ This young lady is just doing her job; she is trying to be accommodating, and you are being nasty for no reason.”

“Why don’t you mind your own business!” The woman told me, quite sternly.

“Because you made it my business when you wouldn’t shut the fuck up and went off on someone for no goddamn reason what-so-fucking-ever.”

The woman made a vague threat to me, and then I realized it was our turn to be seated. I looked at the woman as we were being seated and said, “The moment I sit down, I am asking for the manager and I am going to warn them what a mean, nasty person you are. I am also going to let them know what a fine job the hostess did handling an asshole such as yourself, so that she doesn’t face any consequences for whatever story you are going to make up.”

With that, Michael and I made our way to our table.

It was one of the longest walks of my life. We had put so much work into this deal. I had actually fallen in love with their brand and what they were trying to accomplish. It was all really cool stuff, and I was excited to be a part of it. Furthermore, other people were depending on me. I wasn’t the only person working on this project to bring it to fruition. But here was me, running my fucking mouth. I couldn’t just not for one whole day? Then, I remembered that this is precisely why I work for myself. I don’t want to be bound by the opinions of overlords and bosses. I want to tell my story, my way, and on my terms. By the time we reached the table, I had already cycled through all of this and was resolute in the fact that I was about to be told that I was too much.

“That was badass,” Michael said, “You really are just like you seem to be on the internet.”

My eyes were wide and filled with confusion.

This is supposed to be the part where I get in trouble. You see, I always got in trouble at Sunday school for these things. Well, and regular school as well. The constant looks of disappointment directed at me for always speaking my mind had translated into every single relationship from my parents, pastors, and partners. I had been fired for not shutting up. I have been arrested for not shutting up. I have faced real-life consequences throughout my entire existence because I couldn’t just not.

“I’m sorry,” I said as more of an I don’t understand than an apology.

“No apologies needed,” Michael said, “This is exactly why we like you.”

I excused myself to the restroom for a few moments, walked into a stall, and broke down into tears. For most of my life, I’ve been too much. As a neurodivergent kid, I was always in trouble for not sitting still, speaking out of turn, and especially for saying things out of place. I so didn’t fit into the norm that I had to carve a space out for myself where I fit, and the only boss that I knew I could trust to understand me was me. Even though working for myself had been tremendously difficult because of my limitations, it was the only way forward. It wasn't that I dreamed of being my own boss or owning a company someday; it was a matter of survival. And now, I was being accepted wholesale for being myself? This was okay? People would still want to work with me? There is a space where I fit?

When I composed myself and returned to lunch, we finalized the deal, and that was that.

From then on, every part of the process moved equally as smoothly. When they asked me what I wanted my coffee to be called, they didn’t balk at the idea. They loved it. When I said I wanted the flavor notes to be silly instead of earnest, they thought it was brilliant. They liked me. They wanted me. I was alright. I was okay. I was enough. I was too much. I was what they expected. I was what they anticipated. I had lived up to my own brand, which isn’t really a brand; it's just me being my chaotic self.

I had never partnered with anyone before because I was so afraid of rejection that I had limited my potential. This was a moment of profound awakening, where I realized I might actually belong somewhere. That staying true to myself meant that the right opportunities would come along. I had allowed the fear of my past to dictate every part of my future, and I found healing in the most unlikely of places: a business meeting where I wasn’t too much, I was exactly right. I was just me.

After a long season of collaborating on this product, I am pleased to announce that I am partnering with Mad Priest Coffee, and today, I am launching the Father Nathan Signature Heretic Blend. So, if you’d like to have a healthy dose of me every morning, you can get my new coffee here.

Lenny Bruce died alone in his home from a morphine overdose.

Many folks could easily read that line and believe that he lost a battle with addiction, but it was that the censorship laws had finally won their fight against the comedian. Once one of the highest rising stars in the New York stand-up scene had died in California at what should have been just the beginning of his career. In a pointed observation published at the end of the eulogy in Playboy commemorating the late comedian, author Dick Schaap said, “One last four-letter word for Lenny: Dead. At forty. That's obscene.”

For decades, Lenny Bruce had fought against the government for their censorship of comedians, burlesque dancers, and musicians who were constantly under attack by the morality police. Eventually, the barrage of arrests and court appearances took their toll, and Lenny slowly descended from funny man to a manic shadow of himself who spent hours on stage reading court transcripts and railing against fascism rising.

Just before his death in 1966, Lenny claimed that he was arrested for saying such “obscene” words as ass, balls, cocksucker, cunt, fuck, motherfucker, piss, shit, and tits. If those words, and their order, sound vaguely familiar, it's because just five years later, George Carlin picked up the baton and began performing what would become one of his most iconic sets, Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television, where he isolated the same problem that Lenny had been decrying.

Carlin was also arrested.

He died in California, in a hospital, at the ripe old age of 71 after having one of the most storied careers in comedy.

I’m not sure many folks would consider that very funny, but I bet Lenny Bruce would.

Television might have killed the radio star, but it was the United States government that killed the comedian.

There are still plenty of words you can’t say on television without there being a bleep, and to this day, comedians are warned of the things you can and can’t do before their appearances. There are few in the business who are best equipped to walk the razor-thin line between obscenity and just good old-fashioned fun as those who host the late night talk shows. These programs have essentially become vehicles for promoting upcoming movies, music, and television shows. Yet, they all still have the standard opening monologue where, for ten to fifteen minutes, they riff on the happenings of the day, ranging from scandals to politics. These finely tailored stand-up routines are written by comedians in the back rooms and then performed by the big stars of late night before a live audience… but it's no longer live television.

Most programs are filmed in the afternoon before a team of editors work out the details before the program is aired later that evening after on the bleeps and beeps are added, interviews are shortened, and anything that might go just a little too far is disappeared from what will become broadcast later that night. It is one of the most curated versions of comedy that exists.

Yet, despite all of these attempts to sanitize this version of comedy, it has still been met with the ire of our Philanderer-in-Chief. The Donald has railed against everything from Saturday Night Live, The Daily Show, and has an especially unfond place in his heart for Jimmy Kimmel. But, under his new administration, the first to fall has been none other than Stephen Colbert.

Though CBS has been quick to say that this was a simple business decision due to low ratings, the timing of this choice made that seem like a very vein attempt at explaining away the fact that the network was trying really fucking hard to pander to the current White House after a major lawsuit against the network, and their agreed upon settlement, resulting in them losing a fuckton of money. Now, investigations are underway to find out whether nixing Colbert was also part of the plan all along.

Over the last few days, Stephen Colbert has been hailed as an icon of the battle against the rise of fascism and praised for his tireless efforts.

Listen, I love Colbert. I have always hoped to do something in life significant enough to be worthy of sitting in that chair and being interviewed by the man. What is happening to him is nothing short of bullshit. However, as much as I adore him, I am going to risk it all by saying a more important truth. Yes, I am risking my ability ever to be numbered amongst those who have graced late night television with an interview by what I am about to say, but comedy is more important than taking the safe road. So, here I am going to go again, saying the dangerous shit out loud: Colbert and the Jimmy’s are about to get hung on a noose that they helped weave.

Now, if I have lost you here, well, fuck you.

I am not advocating for the cancelation of Stephen Colbert. Quite the opposite. I hope that this cancellation attempt by CBS blows up in their money-hungry faces and that this whole thing results in some of the highest ratings of all late night shows and that executives have to reverse course. Hell, I even hope that it causes them to have to beg Stephen to stay with one of the biggest contracts they’ve ever had. Not just because I love his work so much, but more because I want Donald Trump to lose in every conceivable way that he can.

However, if that's going to happen, it will take some going back to their roots as comics and a willingness to push the boundaries. They will need to lean into that harder than ever. And I don’t mean by just embodying the spirit of people like Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, and Richard Pryor, but by undoing some of the decisions they have made to distance themselves from some current comedians who have been facing the consequences long before they did.

So, if you are still with me, well, buckle up, buttercup.

Right before the 2016 election, many Americans were still undecided (yes, I don’t get it either, but it's just true). Many of those running for president made appearances on SNL and the late night talk shows to make their case. The comedy of the fact that these fuckers have to humanize themselves is actually hysterical. Why are our choices always people who seem so far disconnected from the folks who are supposed to serve? Yet, it works every time, and unfortunately, it was Jimmy Fallon who might have given Trump the boon he needed to make it over the finish line.

Trump appeared on The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon.

Before this, Fallon had been historically known for being the most gentle of the gentlemen of late night. He didn’t employ some of the same low-bar comedy as the other shows, keeping things relatively light. Politics just wasn’t his thing. He was more interested in doing bits and singing with celebrities. Which, I admit, is totally fine in general. It's okay to have entertainment that lets you just unwind. But you can’t live in both worlds, and Jimmy Fallon learned that in the hardest way. During his interview with Trump, which can only be described as softball, he rustled Trump’s hair. It had long been speculated that The Don actually donned a wig, but this seemingly put that rumor to rest. The moment somehow succeeded at putting an end to the idea that he had been lying about his famous quiff, and many folks thought, “Wow, he can take a joke!” How much of a boost it really gave can be debated around campfires around the rubble of what’s left, but the fallout for Fallon was palpable.

This event is something that Jimmy Fallon has lamented more than once, and, to his credit, he has taken a more political stance since that event.

Still, this moment became one crystallized in comedy history when the court jester walked in and gave the king a big kiss on the mouth instead of a bunch to it, and now kids are being separated from their parents under a fascist regime. This is what happens when comedy betrays its purpose of speaking truth to power by instead pandering to it.

Jimmy Kimmel took a slightly different approach by inviting Stormy Daniels onto his show to mock Trump in tandem with her. The now-infamous mushroom moment is one of the many reasons that Donald Trump hates Kimmel so much. Of all the late night hosts, Kimmel has taken one of the more defiant stances. He has given monologues that are actually quite brave and has frequently used Stormy as a prop in many of those speeches. Yet, it was reported in Rolling Stone that when it came time to put their money where their mouth was, Kimmel didn’t donate to the fund, which was supposed to cover her legal fees, as he had promised. While on her comedy tour, she was notably not featured on any of the late night shows. She was suitable for making jokes about, but supporting her when she was the one making the punchlines, instead of being one, she was never a guest.

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Now, we come to Stephen Colbert.

Just a few weeks before the cancellation of his show, comedian Kathy Griffin called out Colbert in a public video on her socials for not having her back during the severed head incident. According to Griffin, her appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert was intended to avoid discussing the photo, which was an agreed-upon understanding. She says that the day of her appearance, Colbert said he wanted to talk about it anyway. She was faced with either being replaced as a guest or talking about the one thing she was hoping to get behind her. She decided to proceed with the interview.

Griffin shared with Colbert how much the event harmed her emotionally, psychologically, and financially. She faced a federal investigation, and all of her shows were canceled. During the interview, she stated that she hadn’t had any paid work since the event and was facing the consequences. Having watched Colbert for decades, I couldn’t help but notice how his usually jovial demeanor had been left at the door, and he had a much colder approach. Something that Griffin said she felt profoundly, and left the experience in tears. At one point during the interview, Griffin was discussing how she hadn’t done anything wrong because the First Amendment protected her, but Colbert didn’t let her finish the thought, instead interrupting her to say, “But there are limits to what you can say about the President of the United States.”

Stephen Colbert is now learning how true those words are.

Just before the election, I was sitting in the green room of a venue in West Hollywood when I heard Stormy yell from her dressing room, “Come here! I want to introduce you to someone.”

I rounded the corner, and there was Stormy Daniels and Kathy Griffin in casual conversation. I sat in that room with them, wondering how the fuck I got here. I had been pacing the green room, trying to decide what bit I was going to open my set with. Now, here I was sitting between these icons. At some point, the two began sharing stories of their wounds like that scene in Jaws. I just listened silently in amazement at the moment, but then Kathy said something she’s said before: “Everyone abandoned me.”

“Can I invite you to rethink that?” I said.

Kathy Griffin looked at me, having only met me moments before, and now I was in the spotlight. Why the fuck can’t I ever keep my mouth shut? But I was too deep now. She gave a nod, I think, but either way, here I went barreling forward.

“Maybe your big Hollywood friends, or the New York producers, or whatever, did. But not the thousands of fans who bought tickets to your show at Carnegie Hall. Not everyone abandoned you; not the people who actually put food on your table. They are still there. So, fuck those other people, I guess?”

I was about to black out, so I can’t exactly remember what her response was. But I do remember that when my set was over, the only seat left in the area I was supposed to be sitting in was next to Kathy, and she leaned over and said, “I loved your set.”

Because that’s how real comics are behind the scenes, we push and challenge each other. I’ve often said that the world would be a better place if we could all talk with each other the way that comics do behind the curtain in between sets on a comedy night. Not just the stuff that ever makes it onto the stage, but the stuff that makes us say, “man, I wish people were ready to hear this.” Maybe that’s the part that the late night boys have lost along the way? They keep forgetting that it's not just about getting the next guest out but having those difficult chats where we challenge each other's thoughts. Kathy still got it, and maybe that’s what really matters.

The truth is, both Kathy Griffin and I were right that night.

Her and Stormy have been abandoned. The late night comedians still used them as punchlines and props, but they rarely allowed them to tell their own tales. Much like ol’ Lenny Bruce, they’ve taken the hits so that other comedians could keep on trucking. Unfortunately, Colbert is now having to eat his own words: “There are limits to what you can say about the President of the United States.”

There shouldn’t be.

I have a feeling we are going to see a much bolder Stephen Colbert in the coming year as he slowly walks the green mile to his final show. Just like Jimmy Fallon, he had to learn the lesson the hard way of what happens when you make the egregious mistake of thinking you can survive a fascist regime by delicately stepping over the bodies of your comrades. No one is safe under this administration, not the immigrant family seeking asylum, nor the late night comic doing his best to dance around the ever-expanding list of words you can’t say. The long arm of censorship will come for you too.

In that sense, Stephen Colbert is not the first comedian to fall under this new censorship quest: Rosie O’Donnell, Stormy Daniels, Kathy Griffin — he’s just the first man to bite the dust in a long time.

On New Year's Day, I got a text from Stormy Daniels saying that all of our upcoming shows had been canceled. We were supposed to be on tour together all the way up to Inauguration Day, railing against what was coming using the platform of comedy. We had been working on new material and had an entire month of shows ahead of us, but suddenly they disappeared. Both of us were kneecapped at the worst moment possibly.

I guess it was just too scary to have us going around ripping on Trump now that he was ascending to power yet again. The only place that still seemed relatively safe to do was during the late night monologue.

In the wake of it all, I’m still going out doing open-mics and working out new stuff. I am currently planning my next tour and hoping for the best. I am not going to shut up. No one should shut up. Stormy isn’t shutting up, nor is Kathy. I hope that Colbert, Fallon, and Kimmel do the same. This is not a hit piece against any of those three comics. I stand with them wholeheartedly. I do not wish to cancel them, nor do I hope that these network cancellations succeed. I want us to all work together, to grow together, and fight together, because it matters more each day than it did the day before.

Maybe the way forward is for Colbert to invite Kathy Griffin back on and redo that interview, this time with all the gloves taken off. Perhaps Jimmy Kimmel could hand Stormy that check he promised on air. Listen, if we are going to go down, let's at least make it worth fucking while.

But it is important not to forget that Stephen Colbert isn’t the first shot fired in this new round of censorship. I have already been a victim of it this year, long before him. As did Stormy and Kathy and Lenny, lying cold on his floor with papers strewn around, recounting all the times they tried to shut him up. That doesn’t mean that what is happening to Colbert, or that the specter hovering over the other late night show hosts, doesn’t matter. It matters a whole fucking lot. It just means that the only way out is through.

I’m not sure which one of us will survive all of this to tell the stories when the war is won. Which one of us will be Lenny, and who will be George? Only time will tell. But I think this should serve as a reminder to us all that in the time of a new kind of king, we need the jester more today than ever before.

So, here is my shameless plug to ask y’all to subscribe while you are here. I don’t just say this for myself, though I hope you do. I am saying this to remind y’all to take a deep inventory of every artist you know who is still out there fighting the good fight. Join their Substack and Patreon. Buy tickets to their shows. Go sell out all of their merch. Do everything that you can to help them buy another day to be out there making a dent in what the administration is trying to do to silence us. I promise you, it will make a difference. Because even if all of these shows go off the air, we will still be out here in the speakeasies and underground clubs saying this shit until the day they take our literal voices away.

I assure you, I am going to keep on fighting until my last breath. Because, no matter what the fascists might lie about what my last words were, know that they were this: shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits.

When you are in Pre-K Sunday school, there aren’t many stories from the New Testament that they can pull from. What are they going to do? Tell the story of the crucifixion? About when Jesus told dudes to pluck out their eyes if they get horny? Oh, I know! Teach about the time Peter smote two people dead for not paying their tithe; that’s a cute tale.

Instead, they told stories of mass genocide because it has animals in it.

One of the first times I remember hearing a story from the Gospel as a kid was the one about Jesus saying, “Take up my yoke and learn from me.” That seemed like a safe enough lesson for little kids. Heck, the verse even has the line, “You have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children,” so this is absolutely a story for children, right?

Well, after Sunday school, I kept pondering that little verse for quite a while and didn’t say a word—not when my mom picked me up, not when we walked through the sanctuary, not when we strolled the parking lot, not when she strapped me into the car seat. Eventually, the thought of what we had been taught that day finally stressed me out to the point that I was hand-flap screaming in the backseat.

“What is wrong?” My mom asked.

“I love Jesus but don’t want to touch his egg! They are gross and sticky. Why would he make me do that?”

“What are you talking about?” Mother looked concerned.

“Jesus said I am supposed to pick up his yoke.”

Unholy Sh+t: An Irreverent Bible Study

Fourteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time

Today’s Reading: Matthew 11:25-30

Nobody is more humble than Jesus, and he’ll be the first one to tell you about it.

This might be a great time to have a talk with y’all that I’ve been meaning to for a while now. The speculation that Jesus might be neurodiverse. Now, I am not a psychologist, so I’m not actually equipped to diagnose anyone, much less someone I’ve never met in person and who may or may not be the undead God of an ancient time. That said, I stayed at a Holiday Inn last night (if you got this joke, it is now time to apply for AARP). As a neuro-spicy person myself, who also hangs out with many other neuro-unique individuals, you get an honorary diagnosis degree after a while. You get good at seeing the signs.

I’m telling you right now, Jesus has a lot of markers for something. I can’t tell you precisely what; is he autistic? ADHD? I'm not really sure, but there is something special about the guy.

So, let's look at the evidence for a moment:

1. He was a gifted student (Luke 2:41-52)

2. He is prone to meltdowns (Mark 11:12-25, Matthew 21:12-17)

3. He doesn’t feel like he is from this world (John 8:23)

4. He becomes overstimulated (Mark 6:30-31, Luke 8:46)

5. He is not very good at social queues (John 6:22-62)

6. He is prone to rabbit-trail stories (Matthew 13:10-12) …

7. … except when he is being super blunt (Matthew 12:34)

All I’m saying is I can’t think of a single scenario where a neurotypical person would say, “Don’t worry, I am very gentle and the most humble.” Sure, they might think that about themselves, but they aren’t going to just come out and say it like that. That level of bluntness is reserved for the Gifted Kids. And, if you are reading this right now, thinking, “But I would totally do that, and I am not autistic, dyslexic, bipolar, or any of that!” I highly encourage you to Google the term “self-diagnosis.” Where was I? Oh right! Jesus is very, very humble. And the truth is, he actually is. I mean, the dude can walk on water and raise the dead, but he isn’t being braggadocious about any of it. Hell, half the time, he tells the people he heals not to tell anyone.

Yet, that is another example of Jesus being likely on some spectrum. Most of the time, he is like, “Please don’t tell anyone that I healed your leprosy or raised your daughter from the dead!” But then, like the next day, he says, “Yo, everyone is hungry. I am also hungry because I am very bad at regulating my blood sugar (another marker of neurodiversity) and, so bring me that food over there and I’ll magic it into enough food for everyone because that is a totally normal thing to do and will in no way draw any attention to me.” Then, when that backfires, and he doesn’t know what to do now that the crowds are pressing around him, he disappears to go for a little stroll without telling anyone where he is going.

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Another big sign for me is that Jesus is always talking but rarely understood. He makes statements that seem contradictory to everyone around him but makes absolute sense to him. For example, one second, he says, “If you want to be my disciple, you must take up my cross and follow me to the death,” and then flips that sh+t right around, saying, “My yoke is easy, and the burden is light.”

The whole concept of a yoke is lost on just about everyone who doesn’t live in the Midwest. You don’t see yokes all that often anymore, maybe a used one at an antique store if you are into that sort of thing.

The purpose of a yoke is to disperse the weight of an object. It was often used for oxen and horses carrying large loads. Basically, it was a large piece of wood with two holes in it, just big enough to shove the animal's head through, and it would evenly distribute the weight of the wagon or plow to lighten the load so that it would put less of a strain on the animal.

Jesus is making a pretty remarkable statement here.

In this parable, he is not placing himself as the farmer or the coachman; he is offering equity. Instead of him being the person pushing the cattle to do all the work, Jesus is saying, “Jump on over here and the burden of whatever you are carrying, we can carry it together. This will make the job a whole lot easier.” Jesus is making it clear that he isn’t afraid to get dirty, to be part of the solution, and he wants to make sure everyone else is having an easier time as well.

Jesus isn’t being arrogant when he says he is humble; he is just being honest. Jesus is a rabbi who is making a claim to the throne of King David. If that declaration is true, he is royalty and could make everyone his subjects, charge them taxes, and live out the life of a king. Instead, he has chosen to live a life of poverty, acquainting himself with those rejected and ostracized by society. He is hanging out with all the other weirdos of the world. He even goes to great lengths, albeit failing frequently, to conceal his abilities. That is the genuine definition of humility. Yet, to the general observer, it isn’t a very humble thing to say, “Y’all, I am so f+cking humble, you have no idea.”

This is why I assert that Jesus is, without question, a member of the neurodiverse community. He just never quite fit in; he didn’t feel like he was from this planet, and eventually, he was bullied to the point of death. If that doesn’t sound like someone who experiences the world a little differently than everyone else, I don’t know what does.

Jesus Christ, King of the Twice Exceptional.

As a kid, I used to love the 4th of July. My dad liked to go to the town square to watch the fireworks. I would wave my little American flag and listen to the announcers read passages from the Founding Fathers or the Gettysburg Address. Like most of you, I grew up reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, genuinely believing that we would fight for “liberty and justice for all.” Yet, some of those things began to fade by the time I reached my late teens, as I watched my friends' boots land on the ground in Iraq. The illusion of what I had been told was suddenly clashing with the reality happening around us all. Soon, they started using a type of double-speak, like calling the erosion of freedom and systemic racial profiling “The Patriot Act.” At a young age, I began fulfilling my patriotic duty by protesting.

I was just twenty years old the first time I was arrested at a protest. I was holding a copy of the Constitution in my hands when they put me in handcuffs. I wore that arrest with a sense of pride, honor, and duty to my country. I fought that arrest, and it made the local papers. They called me a “First Amendment Crusader” in the headlines.

That would become the first of many such clashes over a long course of a now lifelong devotion to activism.

I've lived long enough to see moments of activism win, such as the time we helped overturn a series of unjust city ordinances, or even on the national level, as bells rang out when marriage equality was made legal. Yet, I have also watched as freedoms have eroded from abortion rights to the police now wearing face coverings while throwing people in unmarked vans.

So, what do we do with the 4th of July on the 249th birthday of an America that feels less free today than at any other time in most of our lifetimes?

First, we must face the harsh reality that the freedom many of us feel is slipping away has never been a universal reality for everyone in this nation. From its inception, there have always been folks who were never listed under the category of “all” when we heralded liberty and justice.

We must remember that for every mythology we have grown to believe, there is almost always a more complex truth hiding beneath the surface. Take the Boston Tea Party, for example. Yes, it is true that in a dramatic protest against the perceived unfair taxation by the British Crown against the colonies, dozens of young men rushed the Boston Harbor and began to toss tea into the waters below. This event, now regarded as a moment of American exceptionalism and bravery, has a darker underbelly. The reality is, those men dressed as Indigenous people so that they wouldn’t get caught and in hopes that any blame would be placed on the native inhabitants of the land they were now calling theirs.

Beyond all of that, the reality of the colonial fight for freedom didn’t begin at the Boston Tea Party but the Boston Massacre when soldiers shot into a crowd of protestors, killing at least three people, one of them being a free black man by the name of Crispus Attucks. The events that followed created a very different kind of nation when John Adams decided to defend the soldiers in court. Though this was viewed as a betrayal by many, this action became the framework for the Sixth Amendment because everyone should have the right to a fair trial and representation, which became a bedrock of American philosophy, because Adams decided that even these men that a mob wanted to kill deserved a trial that they never would have received otherwise.

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Yet, it would be another six years before independence would be declared and a war would rage. A war that most thought could never be won. However, we did, and the reverberations of that rang around the world; now, some 65 countries celebrate their independence from the British Crown.

We have a long list of accomplishments and utter failures as a nation. For every freedom that has been purchased through picket lines and protests, they were bought at the expense of decades of subjugation.

Rockets will fly over the sky tonight, and many people will celebrate a national freedom with a severe case of irony deficiency. In contrast, countless numbers of people sit in modern-day concentration camps awaiting to be sent away to other nations that they don’t call home. Yet, the place they have called home has rejected them. We have failed, yet again, at a promise written at the feet of the Statue of Liberty, “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

The truth is, we don’t spend enough time talking about how long a struggle can last. The period from the Boston Massacre to the end of the Revolutionary War was thirteen years. Sadly, most fights for liberation do not happen in an instant. Rarely do oligarchs look down from the glass castles to the huddled masses below with their colorful signs and say, “Oh, shit, I guess we should stop being bad guys!” No, they bring in the police, the activists are arrested, maligned in the media, typically assassinated, and then we eventually name streets, parks, holidays, and boats after them once we finally correct course, sometimes decades later.

Then again, other times we live in moments when those names are stripped from streets, parks, holidays, and boats, attempting to erase the reality of the work of these activists.

The question becomes, how much hope should one have on a day like today? Should we have the same level of hope that the American Revolutionaries had when those first shots rang out against the British? Maybe the same level that Harriet Tubman had when she took her gun to confront the Confederates to fight for the liberation of her people. Perhaps we should have the hope of Malcolm X or James Baldwin.

If I have learned anything from history, it is this: there is always hope.

There were still weddings taking place in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany. Hope can be found in the darkest of spaces if we are willing to have eyes to see it.

I believe that a day will come when streets will be named after many of the liberation fighters who are being arrested during this time. Sadly, that also means that so many of these activists will pay the ultimate price for freedom, laying down one's life for their friends. My partner, Tashina, calls this “The problem of the dash.” That is because we don’t think of those long spans of history between the initial fight and the freedom, and we forget the dash that looks like this 1770-1783. Lost in that dash are thousands of lives, hopes, and dreams. We brush over that dash in school, but it is where a great amount of history takes place, not when an event begins or ends, but the reality of life lived and lost in the middle as we toil for freedom.

Sadly, my dear friends, I can not tell you how long of a dash we are set to live in this time. Will it be as long as the sin of slavery, or will it remain as unresolved as many of the other atrocities people have suffered under the shadow of our nation? I can not say. In reality, the dash is only as short or long as we are willing to allow it to be.

What I do know is this, if we can take in small sparkle of hope from those bombs bursting in air tonight, let it be this troubling truth for anyone who wishes for power; we can beat the king. If anything is true from all the distortions of an American history as we have been given, that is a remaining truth that we can cling to. If we, the people, are willing to strive together, to put aside petty differences for the sake of liberty and justice, we all can and will defeat this. History has shown us time and again that those who wear red typically do not fare well in the battle.

I can not tell you when, but somewhere in the distance, I see a day when we are celebrating again. There are children playing in the fields of Mahmoud Khalil Park, sprinklers in hand, and we have won this thing. I don’t know if I am there, but I know it exists out there beyond the picket lines, protests, and profound loss that awaits us ahead. Yet, somewhere over that horizon, the king has fallen, and we are free again. We just can’t get there yet, because no one is truly free until we are all free.

Let freedom ring.

I was standing behind a man who appeared to be homeless at a local gas station. His shoes were worn from hours of pacing up and down the sidewalk begging for change. He patiently waited in line until it was finally his turn. There was a childlike wonder on his face as he looked up and down the glass case before him. His mangled fingers slowly pointed to three different selections before finally nodding in approval at his choices. The cashier slowly made his way over to the counter and told him it would be ten dollars total for the lottery scratch-offs he had just delicately picked. The man reached into his pockets, pulling out a wad of crinkled singles from his tattered jeans, and gave them to the man behind the counter.

Behind me, a woman scorned, “Why would he waste his money like that?”

“He’s not wasting it,” I responded softly, “He’s buying hope.”

My parents played another kind of lottery system when our family was going through our time of poverty and homelessness. Though it looked very different than that man holding his singles out begging for the possibility that on the other side of that thin layer of hope between his coin and what was under that card might be an end to his misery. In those few moments before scratching that card, he was a millionaire. Walking out into the parking lot, he could see himself getting a haircut and a new pair of jeans. He didn’t want anything extravagant, you see, just a simple home to call his own. Maybe with just a little land, so that he could plant a garden, then he would always know he would have food. Perhaps he wouldn’t even need a bed because it would feel so strange after all of these years sleeping on the ground. He pulls a quarter from his pocket before returning it for a penny; he doesn’t want the cards to think he might be rich walking around with a quarter like that. Then the top of the card flakes away under those hands that used to be able to do so many push-ups in boot camp but are now weak under the strain of this summer sun. Before scratching the last number, he would look up at the sky with a half-prayer before learning his fate.

That is the same look my mother would make as she would drop our last few dollar bills into the offering plate as the prophet would sway on stage with the band playing behind him. She would close her eyes and pray. She didn’t want much, just to never suffer the embarrassment of those food stamps at the Kroger's checkout line again. Just a little house, with enough rooms for each of us kids. Something with a little bit of land so we could rebuild the tree house we left behind. Then again, maybe just a little bit of luxury, if the Lord would allow, for that bay window again like she had in the home my father build with the bricks he brought back from Pensacola so she would always have a little bit of home with her in their new one in Louisiana that turned in Nashville that became a log cabin that faded into hotels and motels and the Walmart parking lot. Then, just before the offering plate would whisk away with her silent prayer and dollar bills, she would have hope.

Those pastors, just like the lottery, promised a vision of possibility. All one had to do was be diligent in tithing ten percent of their income, and God would bless them with abundance.

Maybe this dollar bill would have enough faith attached to it this time for Dad to finally get a good enough job, or perhaps someone would give us a house, who knew? God works in mysterious ways, after all. Our family wasn’t very picky; anything would do as long as it meant that we were safe and together. Over those years of uncertainty, I watched as my mother faithfully continued to give what little she could into the offering plate, a small collection of singles she would save when she could, so that she was showing God that she earnestly believed He could get us out of this. Much like that man at the gas station, she would go back week by week and think that these were finally her winning numbers.

However, the church, just as with all gambling, the house always wins.

Growing up under this evangelical Christian tradition of tithes and offerings, many sub-teachings held it in place. There wasn’t just the idea that you could somehow magically be blessed by God by giving from your earnings, but you could also receive severe punishment if you withheld from the Lord. There is a story in the Book of Acts where a couple attempts to conceal some money they had made from the apostles, and they were struck down dead for their deception. Giving wasn’t just an act of kindness, but a compulsory action, lest one miss their blessings and suffer genuine harm to themselves or their family if they did not give God their due.

I remember one day our pastor was standing behind the pulpit and beginning to lean into it. This is how you always knew things were about to get very serious. He was a ridiculously funny man, and most Sundays felt more like a comedy set than a sermon until he started leaning. He looked sternly out at the congregation and said, “If you trust in God, he will take care of you. If you are in the will of God, he will bless you. If you want to know where someone stands with the Lord, look at their life! What do they have? I promise you right now, if you are right with God, you won’t even buy a lemon. That is what God promises us, amen?”

Everyone said amen except my dad.

I was about thirteen years old at the time and extremely confused about God not particularly caring for lemons. I wasn’t sure if maybe that was the fruit that Eve ate or something. I mean, I knew that Jesus wasn’t particularly fond of fig trees, but I didn’t think he had a lot of opinions about fruits in general.

No one at the church knew what our family was going through. To see us on Sunday morning, we didn’t fit the stereotypes. We didn’t look like that man at the gas station. Family homelessness rarely does. We had clothing and a car. We were able to conceal this painful reality in many ways.

I didn’t know what a lemon was; my dad did. The pastor essentially said that if you were on God’s good side, nothing bad would happen, not even purchasing a bad car. However, if you were outside of the favor of the Lord, then all kinds of nasty things would happen: death, famine, plague, and, I suppose, homelessness.

Even though I didn’t fully understand the lesson the pastor was teaching that day, I learned from the attitudes of those at church. I began to believe that all of the things that happened in our lives, the negative moments, were caused by my father's failure in some way. Worst of all, my siblings and I were suffering because of the sins of our father.

In our parents' efforts to conceal their homelessness from the world, they taught us to lie. Of course, that wasn’t the words that they used. Lying is a sin, but withholding information was also taught from the pulpit. Just like those bosses who tell you not to discuss your pay with other employees so that you won’t unionize, the pastors would preach that you were never supposed to talk about your giving. This could mess up the magic of it all. Just like your wish when blowing out the candles at your birthday, your giving was between you and God alone. If you are braggadocios, then God might not return your gift sevenfold. These were the warnings, and with that came a new type of shame.

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Even in my adulthood, I never felt like I could tell stories about anything I had done good whether with money or otherwise. If folks would ever point out a good deed I had done, I would shy away, afraid that I was somehow doing something wrong. So, in silence, I began to replace the tradition of giving to the church with something else entirely, but I never spoke about it until recently, while standing in a club. I had already learned to wash away the guilt and shame of my queerness, and yet, somehow, this was having a hold on me still. I didn’t realize how much I needed to shed this other shame as well.

I’m not sure which was more difficult, leaving the priesthood or finally coming out years later. Both came with unique challenges. Finally coming to terms with the fact that I was queer came in stages of healing and grief. One night, while taking a break from being on tour, I went to the local gay bar in Nashville. I was scared, alone, and sitting by myself on the back patio when I noticed two of the drag queens from the earlier show sitting outside. We struck up a conversation and took a quick selfie. I looked around the club, and almost everyone there was younger than me. I hadn’t realized I had come on college night, and I was feeling a little embarrassed. As I watched all of these young folks laughing and talking, I realized that I had missed out on so much. Here I was, almost forty years old, and finally free to be myself. Yet, I couldn’t help but think of that night, as a teenager, when I could have kissed my friend when he asked, but I didn’t. My youth had slipped away from me as I let the fear take control of my desires.

I sat there, with my mismatched luggage set of baggage, and cried tears of joy for these young folks who were able to live in a very different world than I had. Most of them would never know the sting of sitting at your friend's deathbed as AIDS finally took their final breath, but those memories hung over me like a cloud. That fear, which had been fortified by the Church, made intimacy difficult. Yet, fear has not been entirely eradicated from our existence, and these kids still face their own struggles. Resistance has remained an undercurrent in our community. Our trans siblings are still walking around with bullseyes on them every day. We have to keep the riot part of Pride alive in our hearts because our complacency can still equal death, and our diligence is the only thing that keeps us alive.

Walking back in from the porch, I sat and caught the second show. I watched these young folks with smiles on their faces and hope in their eyes. They jumped for joy, their cameras out, proudly taking photos of themselves and their friends to later post on socials, but I had yet to find the flamboyancy that used to be inside me, now beaten down by decades of a religious institution that told me I was wrong.

I was no longer homeless. I had built a career for myself telling stories on stage and in books. Though I was far from rich, I certainly had more than I ever had before. I desired to give, but doing so to a religious institution was no longer part of my life. I had tried going to progressive churches, but even there I felt a little on the outside, always afraid that I would be too much, say the wrong thing, or get myself into some kind of trouble. After leaving the priesthood, I had worked in the nonprofit world, and I knew all too well how little of the money given makes its way back into the hands of the folks who needed it.

I walked over to the ATM and pulled out some cash before making my way over to the bar to have it changed into singles. I walked up to the stage, stiff and rigid, still living in that fear. I held up my hand with money in it to one of the drag queens as she leaned over toward me to take it. She placed her hand on my cheek and looked me in the eyes with a smile.

“I love you,” she said.

I believed her.

As I walked away, I sat in my back corner in the dark and wept alone. I was loved. I was valuable. I still have purpose. I can hold someone's hand at the movie theater and still feel butterflies. It wasn’t over for me. There was love yet to be found, to be lost, and to be found again.

I had found hope with singles.

From that day forward, I had replaced the Christian tradition of my youth and began to give directly to my own community. Each week, I would take my tithe of ten percent and bring it to the drag queens at my local gay bar. When I was on tour, I would go out one of the nights to a gay bar in whatever town I was in and tip those queens too. Everywhere I went, I would visit these community spaces, and I would find the same love; the fear and shame would wash away from me.

But I had never told this story, because the fear was still there, and I felt I should never speak about my giving. That was supposed to be a secret, and maybe I would somehow tarnish this beautiful thing if I told others what I was doing. Then, on the first weekend of Pride, I made my trek over to Play in Nashville to see the queens who had now become my friends. As I stood to the side of the stage, handing them my dollars, I got a call from a friend who needed me on the other side of town. I had just arrived, and as I turned around, there was a young group of lesbians standing there counting their dollars. I walked up to them and said, “Can you do me a favor?”

“What’s that?” One of them asked with a smile.

“I have got to go, but would you be willing to give this to the queens tonight?”

I pointed my roll of dollar bills towards them, and they looked stunned.

“But why?” Another asked.

“I used to be a priest, I grew up religious. I have replaced what I used to give to the church by giving it back into our community. But a friend needs me, and I've got to go. So I was curious if you could help?”

Suddenly, and without warning, I was being hugged. I could feel the fear slipping away from me like a baptism. I heard her whisper a thank you before saying, “That is beautiful. I am so glad you are here now.”

I am, too. Somehow, I made it. I survived it all and here I am today, telling you this story without fear. Giving is important, and in this time of so much uncertainty, our queens need our support now more than ever. My dollar bills will never find their way into an offering plate again, but they will be found on stages at drag shows, burlesque, and strip clubs. I am going directly to the source this time, in giving to those who are being rejected by the institution built on the idea of a man who loved the outcasts and yet rejects them at every turn. Perhaps those pastors believe they have a monopoly on collecting singles. I don’t really care anymore; I just want to see my community thrive, because I have found more of God in these dark corners than I ever have in the place they claim is His house.

So, this is my thank you to The Princess, Blush, Amez, Aquamarine, Nichole, Vanity, Deception, Sasha, Carmen, Tony Baby, Mannon, Tracey, Leah, and everyone else at Play Nashville who helped me find hope again. I love you, too.

I had just asked a question at Sunday school. I don’t remember the question; I asked many of them. Unlike when baby Jesus asked the Rabbis questions at the temple, I was not met with praise for my brilliance, and this day was no exception. Whatever the question was, it must have been a good one because the Sunday school teacher did not have an adequate response. I know this because I was not given scripture or a theological treatise, as a grade-schooler would certainly and normally expect. Instead, I received a bumper sticker response. You know the kind I mean, a meme before memes, a postcard-level quip designed to shut you up.

“God said it, I believe it, that settles it.”

That was the first time I had ever heard the phrase, but it certainly wouldn’t be the last. As I grew older, I heard variants of this phrase over and over again, including on actual bumper stickers. The basis of this kitschy phrase is rooted in a broader theological problem known as Biblical Inerrancy. It may surprise some of you that the Bible was not always evaluated through such a rigid lens. In many ancient theological circles, the general understanding of the Bible is that it was a mystery meant to be understood as an anthology of books that comprise a text that tells the good, bad, and the ugly of humans attempting to understand the world, politics, governance, law, and their relationship with the divine.

Growing up evangelical, I was taught that the Bible was a book of absolutes, but as I read the scriptures for myself, I didn’t see that. Whereas I was told that God could never be wrong, I found verses where God asks for forgiveness for the evil he intended to do (Exodus 32:14). At church, I would hear sermons about how the devil had been cast out of Heaven and could never stand in the pretense of God; later in life, I read about how Satan walked into the throne room of God to challenge him to a game of craps over the wellbeing of Job (Job 1:6-22). As a young priest, my very first Easter Mass was thrown into upheaval when I was struck with the reality that Jesus was not in the tomb for three days. These ideas of who God is, according to some interpretations, compared to the plain text of the Bible, didn’t seem to match up all that well.

It turned out that within the church of my youth, there were those who believed in a literal six-day creation of the planet and those who ascribed to the idea of the Day-Age Theory. Conversely, when it came to the end of the world, there were those who believed that we would be raptured before the great tribulation, mid-trib, and post-trib. When I asked my father about this, he told me, “There are many ways to understand these things—in the essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, love.” Even that quote becomes an anecdote of the problem, often attributed to Augustine, but in reality has doubtful authorship. Yet, this quote has also become a bumper sticker phrase used to excuse certain theological problems and not others. It was a dizzying reality in which to grow up. However, there was one theological problem that seemed to have an absolute and was entirely devoid of love: homosexuality.

How did we get here? How did we become a church less concerned about the orphans and widows and hyper-focus on who someone f+cks (or makes love to, if you are into that sort of thing)? It seemed a maddening case of “do as I say, not as I do.” The Bible is literal, except when it is inconvenient to my life, choices, and personal liberty. However, for you and everyone else, the scripture is myopic.

Now, as an adult and theologian, my question to my Sunday school teacher would be, “But what if God didn’t say it, but you still believe it, and now millions have shed their blood over a mistranslation of scripture?”

Unholy Sh+t

1 Corinthians 6:9-11

Pride Month Special Edition

1947: Homosexuality has entered the chat

There are plenty of fascinating Biblical conspiracies that have led to book deals that evolved into movie deals that have become part of the zeitgeist. Did Jesus have a wife? Are there secret codes hidden within the scriptures? Was Solomon’s temple a real and tangible place? Did Moses take magic mushrooms before his interactions with a burning bush? Did he need to take antibiotics afterward? Of all these questions asked of the scriptures and possible mistranslations evaluated by modern scholars, few have had as grave consequences as the events surrounding the release of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible. Up until its publication, most versions of the Bible that existed in English were the King James Version of the scriptures, which is not only a bad translation, but it was initially released in 1611. Thus, its version of English was nearly impossible for modern readers to understand. The National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA gathered together to create a manuscript with modern language while still playing on the poetry of earlier translations that would be accurate to the original intentions of the scriptures. They released the New Testament in 1946, and it was an instant hit.

Below is an example of a commonly known verse from the Psalms of King David that will help you see how the language was made more contemporary without losing its flow as folks have grown to know it:

Psalm 23:1-3 King James Version

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

He maketh me lie down in green pastures:

He leadeth me besides still waters

He restoreth my soul.

He leadeth me of righteousness

For his name’s sake.

Psalm 23:1-3 Revised Standard Version

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want;

He makes me lie down in green pastures.

He leads me beside still waters;

He restores my soul.

He leads me in paths of righteousness

for his name’s sake.

People went absolutely bonkers for this sh+t. By the time the complete version of the Protestant scriptures was released in 1952, this quickly became the leading translation in the nation. In many ways, it was a revolutionary act. The Revised Standard Version used texts different from those of the King James Version of the Bible to reach their conclusions. One of those texts was a Dead Sea Scroll version of Isaiah, a major controversy at the time. When I tell you that some folks lost their ever-loving minds over this, that is an understatement. Pastors threatened to burn the newly translated scripture (because there is nothing new under the sun), and there were countless protests of this new woke version of the scriptures. Ultimately, this re-branded Bible found an ally in a young pastor by the name of Billy Graham, who believed that a more contemporary language could help others grow to learn more about the life and times of Jesus Christ. As his following began to grow, Billy Graham gave away millions of copies of this particular translation of the scriptures, which were now being read behind pulpits and sitting on the bedside tables of countless Americans.

Then, in 1959, a young seminarian wrote to one of the translators of the Revised Standard Version concerning a possible error. His letter warned that, should an update not be made, he feared that one particular verse would become a “sacred weapon” for extreme literalists. Equipped with his knowledge of the ancient languages, a keen eye for detail, and desire for accuracy, a rigorous discussion began between the young seminarian named David Fearon contacted Dr. Luther Weigle, the committee president who oversaw the translation of the Revised Standard Version. Though Dr. Weigle took Fearon’s concerns seriously and made attempts to update the language in future editions, the damage was already done.

By this point, numerous other English translations were released or in development, which all piggybacked on the work done by the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Essentially, this error had become a virus that would quickly infect the rest of the world. What was the word that David Fearon was so concerned about, and what consequences did he prophetically see as a problem for future generations?

Homosexual.

Before we dive right into the verses, let's have a quick convention about the epistles. For lack of a better explanation, reading Paul's letters is like skipping the meme and only reading the comments. You might eventually figure out what’s happening, but you only see one part of the story. Paul wrote these letters as responses, and they are being sent to specific church communities under his authority in some way. What we lack in these letters is the original correspondence. Were these questions Paul answered posed orally or by written communication? We don’t always know. The letters are Paul’s attempt to respond to specific conflicts or disagreements from within Christian communities during the infancy of the church. Paul is writing assuming that the people reading will understand the context because they asked for his opinion. We are missing those questions and, therefore, a great deal of context. We are reading the replies, not the original tweet that started the kerfuffle.

Choosing to isolate a verse like 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, the one that concerned Fearon so much, and not contextualizing it is not only bad theology but also irresponsible exegesis.

The word used by Paul in this verse is arsenokoitai. Over time, this word has been translated into short forms like effeminate and homosexual to more long-form versions like “men who have sex with men.” If you haven’t noticed, that’s a massive discrepancy because being effeminate is not necessarily homosexuality, and “men who have sex with men” is a sentence, not just a word, but we have a word. How did we get to this problem?

Because no one knows exactly what the word arsenokoitai means and that is because it doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world—Paul made it up. Like, quite literally pulled it out of his ass and created it. More accurately, it is a composite word. He has taken two words from the Old Testament, or Torah, and smooshed them together to make a whole new word. Some have even argued that it is akin to slang. A direct translation of the word is “man bed.” That’s it. This has left the translators of the scripture the ability to leave it up to wild interpretation because they have nothing else in antiquity to pull from to figure out what is going on. However, later research has helped us discover that there was something deeper going on here and the real reasons why Paul was condemning the actions of what he called arsenokoitai.

The root of the word Paul invented is found in Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13. He attempts to recall the law and the condemnation of “abusers of men.” However, even translating the words into “men” is not an accurate retelling of the events. Many scholars today agree that the real issue here is not men sleeping with men but adult men raping young boys.

In 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 and 1 Timothy 1:9-10, Paul uses the word arsenokoitai to describe the type of sex that he is condemning. The original readers of these letters would have understood the word's connection to the Torah and realized that this was referencing pagan temple sex. Interestingly, Paul does not use his made-up word in Romans 1:25-27; instead, he opts to describe more vividly what he is offended by. He begins in Romans with a lengthy condemnation of humans who abandoned the trueness of God for worshiping idols. He goes into a long rant about how humans have failed to acknowledge or worship God, choosing to worship the likeness of other humans and even animals. He condemns idolatry, and then, right smack dab in the middle of his frustration about what he views as pagan practices, he mentions again the types of sexual practices he sees as abhorrent: forced ritualistic sex.

Sure, I suppose if you lift these verses out of their original context, it sounds like a blanket condemnation of same-sex relationships. However, it's clear to see, if you pull the scope back just a bit, that what he was condemning is his perception of the rituals and practices of other religions: idolatry, animal abuse, sacrifices, and the ritual raping of underage boys by adult men. That is what this whole thing is about, always has been, from Genesis to Leviticus to the later writings of Paul. These verses aren’t targeted at the gay community; they are simply saying, “You don’t have to rape people to get close to God; you can just, I don’t f+cking know, pray or something like a not horrible person.”

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These were the very concerns that Fearon brought to Dr. Weigle; if we condemn all homosexuality and not simply the perverse acts of abuse condemned in the scriptures, then we will create a problem of epic proportions. Weigle conceded his error but was unable to make immediate changes to the text due to an agreement with the council and publisher. In 1971, a second edition of the New Testament was released, modifying the language of 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, but the damage had already been done. Some of the newer English translations used the original flawed research that brought the council to the conclusion of translating arsenokoitai to homosexual in one verse of the scriptures. This had horrific results because this led to future translations in other versions of the Bible adding the word homosexual to some or all of the clobber verses regardless of whether their origins were arsenokoitai.

From 1947 to 1971, a span of 24 years, the mistranslation was allowed to move throughout the English-speaking world. Worst of all, some lazy translators used the English manuscripts to translate Bibles into other languages instead of going from the original texts to those languages. This resulted in the word homosexual to be added to these non-English language editions. All previous translations of the scriptures had not used the word homosexual in their interpretations of 1 Corinthians, but it had now become a buzzword within the right wing of Christianity. Figures like Jerry Falwell and John MacArthur began to run with this in light of the Stonewall Riots in June 1969. During that time, though the translators of the Revised Standard Version were aware of the problem and intended to correct it, the word homosexual was still explicitly condemned, for the first time, in the leading translation of the scripture, and no one has publicly contested it yet. When the updated version was finally released in 1971, no public apology, acknowledgment, or retraction of the error was published. Instead, the correction was quietly updated. Since there has never been a recall on the publications since 1947, the egregious mistake continued circulating throughout the world, preached in stadiums, behind pulpits, and at Bible studies. The pervasive lie, albeit made in error, was about to collide with a moment when the Church would be needed the most but would choose instead to abdicate its responsibilities to the marginalized, destitute, and sick.

In 1981, a small group of men became infected with a novel virus. It began popping up in hospitals, and by the mid-80s, a full-blown epidemic was underway. However, the deadly illness was mostly only showing up in three demographics: intravenous drug users, prostitutes, and gay men. This would be a moment for both the government and church to work, as they had in the past, to concern themselves with the wellbeing of the people they are charged with protecting; neither did.

During the 14th century, a plague that would become known as the Black Death ravaged the world. Conservative estimates say this pandemic killed roughly 50 million people, and it is further estimated that about 42% of priests during that period died as a result of the disease because they acted as frontline workers providing medical care, last rites, and funerals to those infected. It has been common practice for the clergy to imbed themselves directly into the middle of a crisis and respond with compassion, even if it is a risk to their own life. Yet, in 1981 the church decided to take an entirely different approach asking a dangerous question based on the principles of eugenics, “Would it really be THAT BAD if the world was rid of heroin addicts, hookers, and homosexuals?”

Instead of running to the frontlines of the crisis, the institutional church huddled up and, now equipped with their newly homophobic Bibles, conflated two scriptures to justify their genocidal actions: Leviticus 20:13 and 1 Corinthians 6:9-1. For centuries, these two verses had been widely interpreted to mean something else other than homosexuality, but now, in the majority of English texts, they say the same word: homosexual. In these new English translations, Leviticus states that the punishment for being gay is death, and Paul condemns these acts in the New Testament in his first letter to the Church in Corinth, saying that homosexuality is still viewed as a sin. Additionally, Paul also stated in his letter to the Church in Rome that “The wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23).” Combining all of these ideas together, the newly formed Moral Majority decided that AIDS was simply a natural consequence for having a nature of sin, and therefore God’s will, so there would be no further action taken. The religion that denied evolution was now relying on a perversion of Darwin’s survival of the fittest. Since Reagan, who was president at the time, was essentially gifted his office by the far-right component of the new Evangelical wave, he got in line lock-step with the murder-by-omission plan of the mainstream Christian leadership of the day.

Reagan did not publicly acknowledge AIDS until the fall of 1985, allowing the virus to move from an isolated incident to a widespread crisis with an estimated global body count of between 33 million and 51 million human beings to date.

After completing the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA donated their work, notes, and correspondence to the Sterling Memorial Library at Yale University. That research remained relatively untouched until two unlikely companions began to seek out a long-lost truth: Kathy Baldock and Ed Oxford.

Kathy befriended a gay woman of color by the name of Meadow Montoya while they both daily hiked the same canyon. Though at the time Kathy was still part of the very institutions that had frequently ignored the plight of Montoya’s friends, she did not respond with, “My name is Meadow Montoya, you killed so many of us, prepare to die” or “I want my friends back, you son of a bitch!” Instead, they built a lasting friendship that opened Kathy’s eyes to a pervasive problem within her core belief system. As their friendship grew, Kathy became increasingly frustrated with God about excluding her friends from the love and saving grace she grew up with as a default privilege. Her research led her to discover the translational error made by the Revised Standard Version translators.

This eventually led to her befriend a man named Ed Oxford, a gay man who worked in finance and was also struggling with his sexuality. Together, they began researching the translation errors and eventually discovered the letters between David Fearon and Dr. Weigle. But a pervasive question remained: could David Fearon, the young theologian who raised the alarm through his letters, still be alive today? By this point, he would certainly be in his 80s, but would that be possible?

The answer was yes.

The now Reverend David S. Fearon had come out as gay, pastored a church in Canada, and was still very much alive. Sadly, Reverend Fearon was reposed to the Lord during Pride month, 2023. He was 84 years old. However, he lived long enough to see the fruits of his labor produce not only several books, essays, and reconciliation organizations but also it was the basis of a documentary called 1946 | The Mistranslation that Shifted a Culture.

During my research for this essay, I read numerous counterarguments made by those who oppose the research done by Kathy Baldock, Ed Oxford, and Reverend David S. Fearon. One such blog essentially said, “So we are supposed to throw out thousands of years of tradition because some guys wrote a letter?”

*Paul has entered the chat*

One of the great arrogances of our time is Protestant Christianity forgetting its roots. It makes me think of when Peter Pan forgets who he is in Hook, and we are all collectively Wendy, Toodles, and Tink over here screaming at him to remember while we watch in horror as Captain Hook destroys Neverland. It’s as if they forget that everything Paul wrote was a scandal at the time or that Martin Luther pinning his post to the church door in Wittenberg on Halloween Day of 1517 was an act of defiance against an institution he believed was causing tremendous harm. Yet, so many evangelicals refuse to realize that they are now the very institution in need of a reformation, and the church so desperately yearns for someone like Paul to send a letter to it lest it fall into the trappings it attempted to escape. The very idea of asking a question such as, “So we are supposed to throw out thousands of years of tradition because some guys wrote a letter?” is laughable! As if that is not exactly what the Gospels and the Epistles were doing! The gospels were allegedly written by Jewish men deconstructing their own faith, for better or worse, and yet it's posed as a theological impossibility for anyone to do that now. According to biblical literalists, the letters of Paul are set in stone, regardless of translational errors. Yet, the query of the young David Fearon is nothing more than ink on paper.

I can hear the cries now, “Nathan, are you saying the letters between David and the good doctor are comparable to the letters of Paul?!”

Of course not; that would be absolutely foolish. I am in no way trying to sanctify the correspondence between two academics as if it were scripture. I am simply saying that I am not sure why we are comparing two-thousand-year-old letters between a bishop and his congregants as scripture either. Both incidents are of men, flawed human beings, attempting to better understand the divine; an act of futility, I might add. I do not think either should be held up as equal to the words of Jesus, but I do believe they should held up against the words of Jesus. And, on the subject of homosexuality, Jesus says nothing. Instead, we are told by him to love our neighbor and to care for “the hungry, the thirsty, the foreigner, the naked, the sick, and the prisoner (Matthew 25:44).” A calling that the church abandoned in the 1980s, thanks to a failed translation of the scriptures, that lead to the death of millions around the world.

In other words, Jesus said, “Silence = Death.”

Acknowledgments: a very special thanks to the extensive research of Kathy Baldock and Ed Oxford; you can learn more about their work at the CanyonWalker Connections. You can learn more about this subject by viewing the film 1946 | The Mistranslation that Shifted a Culture, directed by Sharon Roggio. This piece is dedicated to the memory of Reverend David S. Fearon.

Once upon a time, there was a man named Abe, and his neighbors were getting a little rowdy. Eventually, God was getting pretty annoyed with everyone there because he didn’t like how much noise they made as they danced the night away to Cher, Madonna, and Lana Del Rey. The strobe lights were giving God one hell of a migraine, and so between the music, the lights, and all of the leather, he decided to blow them all up. When Abe heard about this, he was like, “Um, that sounds a little extreme. Have you ever considered that there might be some good people in that town? I mean, I’ve got some kin down there. Don’t get me wrong, he’s kind of an asshole in general, and there’s a weird incest vibe, but does he really deserve to be exploded? I don’t think so. Maybe you should reconsider this one?”

“No, I really want to blow them up,” God responded.

But being a gambling man, God was willing to make a little wager. God and Abe negotiated the terms of their trolly problem. It began with him arguing that if fifty good people were in the city, would you consider not unaliving them? God figured that was a good round number, and he would agree to these terms. Sadly, Abe was bluffing because he knew good and goddamn well that there weren’t that many decent people in all of Sodom; he wasn’t even really that sure that his family was that great. To make an extremely long story short, Abe showed his hand and relented that there was really only one righteous dude, and that happened to be his family member. Everyone else was rotten to the core with their Grindr Apps, perfect hair, and oil-slicked abdominals. Disgusting! So the Almighty was all, “Fine, I won’t kill that ONE GUY specifically and probably not his family, but I am going to f+ck everyone else’s sh+t up because if I hear one more f+cking drag queen lip sync to Lucky by Britney Spears, I am going to unmake the entire me damned universe. F+ck, like we get it, you weren’t allowed to be yourself in the ’90s, but is that everyone's problem, Matt? You do know new music has been released since you came out. So, yeah, I’m going to kill them all. This is an abomination to me, and I am the only one who really matters, lol.”

Abe agreed that this was an entirely normal way to handle everything so they shook hands on the terms and conditions. Then Bartleby and Loki got to work blasting all the reprobates to kingdom come—the end.

Unholy Sh+t

Genesis 18-19

Pride Month Special Edition

Sodom and Gomorrah: Homosexuality vs. Hospitality

If you have heard the above story before, in any shape or form, you were likely left with the distinct impression that Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed because the twin cities were one massive Pride parade 24/7. The visual that most modern pastors portray is one of a big leather daddy party gone horribly wrong, but since God had yet to invent AIDS, he did things the old-fashioned way with a bit of fire and brimstone to wipe out an entire queer club. They depict them as a town entirely peopled with a bunch of wicked homosexuals running around butt f+cking each other into oblivion until God decided it was just too much for him to handle, so he went all, “Give them queers the dinosaur treatment.” KABOOM!

What if it’s possible that nothing you’ve been told about Sodom and Gomorrah is even remotely correct? Well, uh, it’s not.

The narrative begins with the conversation between Abraham and the Lord on his ways to destroy Sodom. God has decided to appear in the form of a human along with two angels who also look like people but also very, very hot; these are not the eyeballs all over their body, kinda angels, but super f+cking sexy angels, apparently. At some point during the conversation, God says something like, “Okay, you caught me! I am heading to Sodom to go blow them all!”

“Blow them all up, sir.” One of the angels whispers.

“Right, blow them all up.”

Now, this isn’t particularly unusual because God is sort of constantly annihilating people any time they annoy him in the slightest. However, these verses expose a whole lot more about God than they do the sinning going on down at ol’ Sodom. If I am honest, it’s some pretty devastating stuff for the average Sunday School teacher. It makes sense that they have chosen to bowl all this down to being about nothing more than homosexuality because that’s an easier scapegoat than having to address the major problems these scriptures actually pose. Not only is Lot supposed to be righteous, but is actually an asshole, but this story also cuts at some core theological premises: the omnipresence, all-knowing, inherent goodness of God.

God is on his way to destroy the city before he actually gets caught by Abraham. The conversation that they had, and everything that followed, was not on God’s agenda for that day. He originally intended to go to a little recon before hitting the big red button. However, because God forgot to wear his invisibility cloak that day, Abraham happened to see that God was walking around his camp. Realizing he’s got a famous influencer nearby, he yells, “Yo, God, are you hungry? I’ve got some food and sh+t. Stay a while, and let's catch up!”

This is where things get a little complicated. Abraham walks off-screen to give Aziraphale and Crowley directions before sending them on their way. The second that the three of them leave, God has a conversation with Himself, which is a totally normal thing to do. In Genesis 18:17-19 the Almighty poses a question to himself: should he tell Abe what he is about to do or lie by omission? God admits that he has heard rumors about what’s happening in Sodom, but he isn’t sure; that’s why he will check things out for himself. I need to point out, just for my own amusement, that this means God is straight-up monologuing like a Bond villain before going to commit mass murder. This moment eviscerates some core doctrines concerning the very nature of God.

The quandary that God struggles with cuts at the idea that god is omniscient. Not only does he seemingly not know if he will, or even should, tell Abraham what he is about to do, but he also has to physically go from Heaven to Earth to investigate if what he has heard about Sodom is true. Furthermore, he is clearly not omnipresent because he must go directly into the city to figure everything out for himself. If God were all-knowing and his presence existed in every part of the earth, why would he need to do that? It doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense in context of what so many of us grew up understanding about the nature of God. But this isn’t the first time that God seems to be pretty f+cking confused about what’s going on. God got himself into another gambling debt situation when he placed a little wager on Job, and another astonishing thing happened. In Job 1:6-12 it tells us that Satan walks directly into the throne room of God, and the Lord’s response is, “Where did you come from, Lucy?”

Satan responds with, “Bitch, what about it? I’ve just been walking around on earth and sh+t. Btw, Job is simping for you HARD.”

If God is all-knowing, how did he not know where Satan was? But also, what in the actual f+cking f+ck because I was always told that God and Satan couldn’t be in the same place at the same time and that Satan had been thrown out of Heaven, so why is he just wandering in there with no problem? Does heaven have a security problem? You mean to tell me that God created the whole of the world by just speaking it into existence, and he can’t spring for a goddamn RING™ doorbell camera? In both conversations, God seemingly hasn’t a clue as to what is going on.

Then there is also the whole issue of God not being so sure if he wants to tell the truth about his plans to destroy Sodom. As he is debating all this with himself, he is unsure what the right decision would be. Interestingly enough, this isn’t the first time that God has messed with the whole idea of lies of omission or with little white lies. They exist all over the scriptures. In 1 Samuel 16:1-6, God directs Samuel to lie about his intentions for going to a particular town. In Genesis 18:9–15, Sarah laughs off the idea that she might get pregnant because “she is worn out and Abraham is too old,” but when God quotes that back to Abraham, he changes the wording to not hurt Abraham's pride. God is a little fibber.

By the time we finally arrive at the problem of the wager, Abraham pleads with God not to destroy the city, which actually works up to a point. Now, it’s clear that God has their mind pretty made up on the subject. The original plan was to go down to Sodom, see what all the ruckus was about, and if they were a bunch of dirty little sinners, he was gonna smoke ‘em. Abraham is able to negotiate God down to a lighter sentence based upon certain conditions. However, this isn’t the first time that God is seen changing their mind. Moses and the Almighty have a similar exchange. God had plans to wipe out those in Moses’ charge, and basically, Moe pulls out their original contract and shoves it in God’s face, “You promised my people safety; you can’t do this!” Moses wins the debate, and I sh+t you not, the scriptures say, “God repented of the evil he planned to do to his people.” Don’t believe me? Go read it for yourself here: Exodus 32:14.

It seems that the inherent goodness of God, along with their omniscience and omnipresence, is more fanfic than canon.

Now, let’s take a little intermission to focus on a very important point: so far, we’ve yet to engage with anyone who is gay. Homosexuality isn’t mentioned by God, the two angels, or Abraham. All that is being discussed is that the place is “wicked.” That is all we know about the town. Well, that and that it's only got one righteous person in the whole place, and that is where we are introduced to the most holy man you will ever meet: Lot, the man who is about to offer up his daughters to be gang raped by a mob.

There is some discrepancy within the scriptures about the relationship between Lot and Abraham. I know it’s shocking to learn that there are inconsistencies within an infallible book. How could this be possible! Some accounts say that Lot is Abraham’s brother’s son; others say they are brothers, while other scholars think they might be cousins. Either way, whatever the relationship is, Abraham did not want his kin to be kilt. After successfully getting God to agree to spare some folks from this micro-apocalypse, the two angels arrive at the city to investigate what’s happening so they can report to God what’s going down so he can decide whether or not to destroy the city.

Lot is waiting at the city gate when the angels arrive and pleads with them to go to his home. Initially, the angels refuse because they feel like they could get a better understanding of what the town is like by just hanging around downtown, but Lot makes it very clear that this would be a bad idea. This is when things get dicey. The towns folk, both young and old, decide to raid Lot’s home in an attempt to rape the angels. This doesn’t go very well for them because, and I don’t think we knew this about angels until now, they strike them all blind.

This is the moment that has become the sticking point theologically. We know that the town is wicked, which has already been expressed, and to the untrained eye, this is when we first see a sin take place; the threat to rape men. Over time, Christians began to believe that the sin of Sodom must be that they were all gay. Because of this misunderstanding of what was happening, the conclusion became that Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed because of homosexuality.

Let’s break down a few things real quick.

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Lot has lived in Sodom for a long time, and he is not confused about what’s going on. That is made clear by his pleas to the angels not to stay outside. He is well aware that this town has some big f+cking problems. However, when the mob attempts to rape the angels, he offers up his daughters instead. Now, if this town is entirely peopled by homosexual men, then Lot would be aware of that, and he would know that offering his daughters to these men would have no effect. Yet, he does it anyway. This is a clear indication that they were likely just generic deviants willing to harm anyone, regardless of the recipients of their violence presumptive gender. Evangelicals will often use the fact that the crowd rejected the proposal of Lot’s daughters to be raped instead, and then the mob’s refusal to take the offer, as some proof that they were all gay. This proves nothing of the sort. Like most instances of rape, this has nothing to do with sex or gender but power. These men want to show their dominance. In Genesis 19:9, the men in the mob say that Lot is a foreigner and that he has no right to judge them. It is clear that they have always treated Lot with suspicion because he is not originally from their community. They are angry with him for allowing these men to stay at his home, and they are going to assert their dominance. Tolerating one immigrant was one thing, but now, the number is multiplying!

After the angels successfully subdue the crowd, they warn Lot it’s time to leave. They warn him that they will soon destroy the city; I guess they don’t have to check with God now that their suspicions are confirmed that everyone is real sh+tty. This is the part of the story when we realize that Lot is kind of a dolt. The angels tell him that he’s got enough time to gather any of his relatives so they can escape too. Lot goes to his future son-in-laws to warn them, but they think he is joking, so they don’t leave. The scriptures say that Lot is taking too long, and the angels are seemingly getting a little trigger-happy, so they eventually grab Lot, his wife, and his daughters to drag them out of the city so they can get to killing. At some point, Lot’s wife turns around to see what’s happening, and she turns into “a pillar of salt.” I am unsure, nor does the scripture explain, exactly what happened here. I am unsure if they are presuming she is salt based on the texture and look of the impromptu statue of Mommy dearest or if they licked her; I can not say for sure. Some scholars and theologians have hypothesized that whatever happened to Sodom might be akin to a nuclear explosion and that she was turned to ash or some such thing. As fascinating as that is, that’s presuming that any of this really happened and is trying to apply logic, reason, and science to mythology, so I am not going to spend any time trying to make sense of the senseless. All we know is that she was allegedly turned to salt because she refused to listen to the “don’t turn around” rule, and somehow, they knew that the substance was salt without also turning around themselves. Also, there is no mention of them being particularly upset or shocked by this turn of events.

Now that mom and the boyfriends are dead, this gets Lot’s oldest daughter thinking, “We are supposed to have babies and become homemakers just like Harrison Butker told us to do, so we should probably f+ck our dad.” The two daughters put together a plan to get their father drunk, and they both raped him over the course of two nights. The scriptures make it very clear that Lot was so passed out from the liquor that he was completely unaware of them lying down or getting up.

There has been some lively debate about whether or not this counts as a rape. There have been discussions ranging from that the scriptures were altered to make Lot look like the victim and it was really his idea, while others have theorized that it's possible that this was the daughters getting their revenge on their dad for offering them up to be raped by the crowd. Whether this was a situation of a prequel to Promising Youth Woman or not is up for debate, but what is plain to me, upon a simple reading of the scripture, is that this was absolutely rape.

These are the righteous people that God wanted to save. These are the ones that weren’t nearly as bad as the men in the town. I’ve never heard a pastor or Sunday School teacher condemn Lot for offering up his daughters, or his daughters raping him in turn, or question why God isn’t omniscient, but I have heard them repeatedly rail against the Sin of Sodom: homosexuality. They are afraid to talk about how absolutely f+cked up Lot and his whole family are. Wouldn’t it make logical sense if you are trying to justify blowing up an entire town but rescue one family out of it, wouldn’t you clean up the narrative a bit? I mean, the whole Lot of them make the cast of Shameless look like they live on Sesame Street. This is a clear example of juxtaposition. The very reason we see the dirty laundry of Lot and Associates is because you are supposed to think they are awful! They exist to show how horrible everyone else must be. If these are the righteous, then you know the unrighteous are really, really bad. The bad that the townspeople participate in on the regular is never mentioned in Genesis; we just know it's terrible, and Lot exists to help us understand how bad it must be because he isn’t good either. He is horrible, but everyone else is worse.

Lot is a father who throws his daughter to the mob.

His wife refuses to listen to the explicit warning not to turn around.

Lot’s daughters are rapists, just like the rest of the folks in town.

They suck.

So imagine how much more the people of Sodom must be! That is the point.

The question lingers, though: what is the actual sin of Sodom, if not homosexuality? It’s another h-word altogether: hospitality.

Speaking of juxtaposition, if you read the story of Abraham and Lot, you will discover a unique similarity between the two men. When Abraham notices God is taking a little stroll past his tent, he immediately hops to action! He calls on Sarah to make bread, picks out an animal to be slaughtered, and then offers his tent for the three ethereal beings to chill under. His first instinct is to make sure his guests are fed and that they are cared for. When the two angels finally arrive in Sodom, Lot also greets them in a similar fashion. He is said to be waiting by the city gate, so he notices the angels immediately. He instantly offers them a home, a bath, and food. Note that no one else in all of Sodom is waiting by the gates, just Lot. Not his future sons-in-law, not the townsfolk, just him alone.

Part of the narrative of the book of Genesis is that the whole world is full of wickedness and heathen-like people who don’t give a f+ck about anyone but themselves. In many ways, the Genesis story is one of evolution: people used to be awful, but don’t worry. We are making a society, and soon there will be streets, kings, and taxes. It’ll be great.

Being kind to your neighbor, taking in the foreigner, and hospitality in general are core tenets of the scripture. It separates “the people of God” from “those of the world.” You have one segment of society that follow pagan gods, sacrifice other humans, steal from everyone, and will kill anyone they see as different. One of the earliest examples of a follower of God is that they were hospitable. This is what is being exampled here in the scripture. Yes, Lot is a flawed and f+cked person in many ways, but he follows the most basic principle of being a believer: he waits by the gate in case a stranger needs help. Yes, the way that he goes about trying to help is really, really bad. This can not be disputed or stressed enough. Lot is NOT a good guy in many ways, that is necessary for the rest of the story to make sense. Yet, despite all his flaws, he is trying to live a godly life in an impossible situation.

Had Lot not been waiting at the gate, if he had just been home like everyone else in town, he would have missed his moment of redemption, but he was. It’s clear that the angels have superhuman powers, so they probably would not have succumbed to any harm if they had stayed in the town square as they originally planned. The crowd would have likely accosted them, the angels would have just rained down hellfire from the sky, and everyone would have been destroyed, Lot and his family included. It was Lot's willingness to try to help that ultimately saved his family from destruction.

The sin of Sodom was not homosexuality; that is never stated or implied. Thankfully, we know precisely why Sodom was destroyed, and it is plainly stated in the scripture:

“Now, this was the sin of Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed, and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen.” - Ezekiel 16:49-50

Note the pronouns: she/her. If this was about homosexual men, why would they choose to gender the town as feminine? That doesn’t make sense. But more importantly, homosexuality isn’t mentioned. Even the argument that homosexuality might be amongst the “detestable things” doesn’t hit the mark. The word used in Hebrew, which is translated as “detestable” in this verse, is tôʿēḇâ which means “abominations” and is a generic term that encompasses all types of wrongdoing and lawbreaking. In other words, there is nothing about this story that, in any way, shape, or form, has to do with being gay. The clear text of Ezekiel makes it without dispute that the reason that Sodom was destroyed is because they had excess, that they didn’t care for the oppressed, and they were just plain awful. The historian Josephus noted this, “About this time the Sodomites grew proud, on account of their riches and great wealth; they became unjust towards men, and impious towards God, in so much that they did not call to mind the advantages they received from him: they hated strangers.” He does make reference to the attempted rape of the angels but he describes them as “beautiful young boys” and makes a point to say that these men were obsessed with both men and women and didn’t care where they placed their lust. Joe implies that God blew up a bunch of pedophiles, and regardless of political affiliation or sexual orientation, I think we can all agree the world is a better place whenever there are fewer creeps in it.

Josephus is also possibly one of the first people to use the word Sodomite but when he uses it, it is within the context not of butt f+cking but that they become so wealthy as a nation that they forgot where those blessings came from. Instead, they become paranoid about strangers. The real Sodomites are not the queer community but all of those who reject the immigrant, despise the poor, and are more concerned about wealth than goodness… who does that sound like?

Listen, even if I am wrong about everything I just said above, which I am not, but let’s say for the sake of argument that I am, the story of Sodom and Gomorrah still doesn’t condemn gay men. It condemns violent mobs that want to gang rape young boys. It never tells the story of an elder gay couple living in Greenwich Village with a poodle that just want to have the right to make end-of-life decisions when the time finally comes to say goodbye. What I am telling you is that this verse, though it has frequently been weaponized against our community, is not about you; it’s not about me; it’s about something entirely different.

If the conservatives didn’t have the queer community as the scapegoat, they would have to admit that this verse is really pointing at them. It’s directed at those who don’t care about their neighbor, those who would never take in a stranger who needed somewhere to find safety from the mob, they would have to face their hatred of those they considered foreign, and they would have to come to terms with the dangers of the opulence.

I am so sorry that you have become the target and that this verse has been weaponized against you. I hope that reading this brings you some healing and that you realize, as cruel as it is, they twisted this so that you would become the bad guy instead of them. But now, you know the truth. No, hurricanes weren’t sent to destroy pride parades in New Orleans, AIDS is not God’s judgment, and the destruction of Sodom was not your fault. You are beautiful just as you are, fearfully and wonderfully made in the image of God, how ever it is you choose to understand the divine. You are enough, you are cherished, and you are loved.

I am glad you are here.

Now, let's reclaim the word Sodomite by contextualizing it whenever it is misused; the real Sodomites amongst us are those who drown in wealth and privilege, not those who want to love who they love.