If you haven’t caught Morgan Spurlock’s new show, 30 Days, on the F/X Cable network, I highly recommend that you do.
Spurlock gained notoriety for his documentary Super Size Me, chronicling his amazing transformation due to living on nothing but McDonald’s fast food for thirty days straight. Now his F/X show chronicles other transformations as people from a certain lifestyle experience thirty days living on “the other side”.
The debut featured Spurlock and his girlfriend living for 30 days on minimum wage. Another show took a born-again Christian from West Virginia and had him live life as a Muslim in Dearborn, Michigan for 30 days. During each show, Spurlock’s reality-TV cameras follow these folks as they are forced from their sphere of comfort and their eyes are opened up by experiences in diversity. In between shots, Spurlock shows little cartoon-driven “Intro 101” style educational bits to give viewers a basic understanding of the issue. Also he features a few “man on the street” interviews to give a look at typical American thinking about the issue.
Last night’s show was about a young straight Christian Army reservist who left his rural Michigan home to live with a gay man in the Castro district of San Francisco, laughingly referred to in the show as “the gayest place on Earth”. He begins by thinking that homosexuality is disgusting and sinful. He’s against gay marriage and gays in the military. He gets into confrontations at the gay bar, plays softball with the gay softball team, visits the Metropolitan Community Church, and works in an upscale wine and cheese store.
By the end of the show… he thinks homosexuality is disgusting and sinful. Yet, he finds he has much in common with his new gay friends, decides that perhaps some gay people would be “good soldiers” in the military, many gay people don’t fit his preconceived gay stereotypes, and he begins to exhibit tolerance for diversity.
It led me to think of another way in which the gay community is engaging with rural religious Americans. There is a scene where the pastor of the MCC is talking with the man about the Bible and homosexuality, asking whether it really is a sin, and asking why he chooses to abhor this “abomination” and not others. She’s trying to convince him to see religion her way and he doesn’t seem to budge, even by the end of the show.
Here’s my advice. Gay folks, you’re never going to get these people to think gay isn’t disgusting. It is a visceral, subconscious reaction. Yes, I know, it probably stems from immature sexuality and ignorance of self, but regardless, it is something they cannot control. It is a part of them, not a choice, as much as your gayness is not a choice. When you tell homophobes to accept gayness, it’s like asking an acrophobe standing on a ledge to not look down. Even when this kid from Michigan finished his 30 Days, even as he was toasting his new gay friends and hugging his gay roommate, I’ll bet there’s still a voice inside his head telling him that they are immoral sinners destined for hell… but that doesn’t mean we can’t get along.
Tolerance is not the same as acceptance. I say cede the “disgusting” and “sinful” labels to them. Accept that they think gayness is wrong and accept that there are many whose minds can never be changed on the matter. But then turn it on them and ask, “Do sinners deserve equal protection under the law?” For example, adultery is directly mentioned as sinful in the Ten Commandments, yet we allow proven adulterers to remarry. Heathen atheists, murderers, thieves, and all manner of sinners are allowed to marry, too. So why not gay folks?
Stop trying to fight the tolerance battle between the pages of the Bible; it’s like holding a car wash on a rainy day. In my mind it is a simple question: how do we treat people that are different, whether they get by on foot or wheelchair, whether they are light or dark skinned, whether they speak English or don’t, whether they are rich or poor, and whether they are attracted to men or women. It doesn’t matter whether they were born different, became different through no fault of their own, or chose to be different — how do we treat different people in the eyes of the law? How do we live up to “all men are created equal” and “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights”?
When I wade through the muck at places like FreeRepublic and RedState, one common theme I hear about the “homosexual agenda” is that they’re going to outlaw the Bible and treat preaching against homosexuality as hate speech. I think this is a direct result of people trying to discredit their anti-homosexual interpretations of Scripture. And what does a religious zealot do when you tell him his Holy Scriptures are wrong? You know the answer.
Give them that. Let them believe their Bible teaches hate and prejudice. Let them know that no one is going to force them to accept homosexuality. They can join right up with The Rotting Cryptkeeper Fred Phelps and picket in the next GodHatesFags rally all they want to. They can tell their kids its gross and disown them if they “turn” gay. They can personally shun people that are gay. Their church can condemn gays to hell and will never have to marry them.
Make it clear that this is a fight for civil, governmental, legal acceptance, not personal, private, religious acceptance. When they make the claim that gay bigotry is in the best interests of society, America, “the children”, or whatever, turn that on them, too. “Wouldn’t it be in the best interests of society if everyone in America accepted Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior?” (I think they’d have to say yes.) “So why not have a law mandating Christianity? What kind of message do we send to the children when we allow them to be Muslim or Jewish or Atheist? Why do we allow Atheists, drug addicts, or ex-cons to marry; isn’t that government condoning an immoral lifestyle? Force them into that corner where they have to admit that either legislative gay bigotry is inconsistent with American values, or that American values need to be more consistent with the Taliban-idea of national religious law.
