"Footloose" was a Documentary, Y'all

                Just like Kevin Bacon’s character in Footloose, I have been dealt harsh punishments from good Christians related to dancing in a place thought to be inappropriate.  It was a cook-out at a lake.  Allow me to explain.

                My aunt and uncle had a ranch just outside the bustling metropolis of Bogata, TX, population (allegedly) 1,100.  I’m unsure who or what was deemed as ‘population’, but based on my time living there, this included dogs, blackbirds and, when necessary to get up the numbers back up due to someone’s death, tractor tires. 

The specific location of the ranch was Rosalie, an even tinier community as far away from the Bogata Baptist Church as it takes for someone (usually me) to sing the country super-group Alabama’s hit “Love in the First Degree”, if you held the last note for a good 30 beats or so.  This must be done from either the open bed of a pickup (Ford or Chevy depending on your inclinations) or the open truck of a Lincoln Town Car, depending on who was driving.  Those who are surprised must not be familiar with my background as the lead singer of The Pine Branch Boys, when I was in the 8^th Grade.  I have carried the baggage of celebrity for a long time, y’all.

As there isn’t much to do in Bogata, much less Rosalie, there were often activities planned for the youth at church that included inventing new reasons to eat outside at night.  I don’t know if this particular cookout was to celebrate the fact that it gets dark at night or that it was summer or something equally mundane, but cookout we did, on the banks of Lake Providence West. The original Lake Providence was in Northeast Louisiana, where my parents grew up and met and I and my sister were born, after an appropriate lapse in time, thank you.  This body of water was much, much smaller but we were homesick, I suppose.

Once we started the fire, ate our hot dogs and s’mores (in which the chocolate never melted from the heat of the marshmallows, regardless of how hard those commercials try to convince you is possible), most of the adults retired to my aunt and uncle’s home, about a mile away, on the other side of the Irby Dairy Farm, possibly to escape the noise and Christian antics of a baker’s dozen Baptist youth.  I never saw an aerial view or drawing of my relative’s ranch but, based on the fact that we had to drive through the dairy farm to go from one side of the ranch to the other, the Irby’s land was the hole in the center of the donut of my extended family’s acreage.

Someone had brought their jambox that also had a radio (remember those?) and we found a station playing what we had been told was the devil’s music.  You may remember them as The Go-Gos. 

As heathens are wont to do, some of us started dancing, only two of us with any rhythm.  Baptists are not known for being rhythmic in any capacity and rarely use the word as it sounds ‘dirty’.  It was innocent fun and ended rather quickly due to God being omnipresent and, therefore, lurking somewhere nearby we assumed, but I had seen a new dance move by one of my cousins that intrigued me.  I saved her from recrimination then and I am steadfastly loyal even now.  As all innocents do, right before their undoing, I asked for and received a quick lesson and mastered the rudiments if not the dance itself. 

The next morning, after breakfast back at the house, the adults were in the living room chatting.  The teens and really tall 12-year-olds were in the kitchen performing some sort of child labor and singing, I assume, Hard Knock Life (from Annie) as you do when you are feeling overworked and underappreciated, when something came over me.  I don’t know if it was the devil himself or too much socializing with The Methodists, but I took my new dance step out for a test drive.  Any sin committed in the dark is quickly exposed in the light and I was caught red-handed or rather red-footed by one of my aunts.  When she asked, heatedly, what I was doing, I said, “Dancing” as ashamed as an Amish teenager on Rumspringa, y’all.

I was summoned before the tribunal, otherwise known as my mother, grandmother, other aunt and uncle.  They demanded I give a full account of the activities including, if possible, at which point we had headed down the path of unrighteousness, a demonstration of the sinful movements and a list of fellow sinners and/or witnesses.  My crazy aunt tried not to laugh; the other members were as serious as a spelling bee, people.  I felt like someone on trial, which I most assuredly was.    

Have you ever had to complete a brand-new dance move with no accompanying music, while crying, on a Saturday morning in the living room of a single-wide trailer in Northeast Texas?  No?  Trust me when I tell you this is humiliation on an epic scale, especially when there is the very Biblical wailing and gnashing of teeth inside your head.  Silent, internal flagellation will throw off your rhythm something fierce, y’all, especially when you are trying to modify the dance move into whatever is least likely to get you cast into the Lake of Fire. 

Apparently, I felt stomping my foot really hard in one spot, like I was either ‘pitching a fit’ or squishing a bug, was the least offensive move I could make.  The tribunal scoffed and peppered me with more questions, demanding to know if that was really all that happened and instructing me to reveal my co-sinners.  Tearfully, and with a confidence I did not feel, I lied; like the heathen that I was.  I started wondering what it would be like in the Outer Darkness, where I was about to be cast.  I hoped there would be at least a night light as I was scared of the dark, y’all.  For real. 

Based on every After-School Special I had ever seen, starring unknown British kids with bad haircuts, I knew I had only tasted the sinful freedom of dance.  My punishment was the tried and true ‘whooping and solitary confinement’, which in a single-wide trailer was more akin to ‘don’t you dare look at anybody or have fun in any way’.  Even though I was unused to much punishment, being as close to Jesus as one can be wearing Husky-sized Tuffskins and hand-me-down cowboy boots, I was able to cope with the repercussions of my mistake.  But, in my heart-of-hearts, where all my secrets were kept, I knew I had to keep dancing; not so much for the love of movement, but for the opportunity to excel.  If dancing was to be my ultimate downfall (as was verbalized by someone in the tribunal – I was too teary-eyed to make out who), I wanted it to be for something a bit more decadent and/or impressive than the Electric Slide.

Can I get an Amen up in here?

To boldly go...

              For many years there wasn’t much in my life which made me proud.  I was embarrassed my family was poor.  I was embarrassed I was overweight.  I was embarrassed I wasn’t handsome and I thought I looked like a cartoon or a teddy bear.  I was embarrassed I didn’t have it all together when people assumed I did.  I was embarrassed I was single, desperate for validation, obsessed with trying to achieve society’s definition of success.  Most of all I was embarrassed to be gay.  I never attended Pride as I believed actually being proud was a prerequisite.

                Now, six weeks after my 46^th birthday, I find myself suddenly proud of it all.  Proud of me, proud to be me with all my experiences and failures, my background and roots.  I am proud because I am a product of those experiences, those failures, those roots.  I’m proud because all this made me different than I would have been otherwise. 

                My gayness, if you will, caused me to be more ambitious, sometimes misguided in my pursuits, but always striving to achieve whatever I felt was necessary.  At first, it was to feel I deserved the tenuous love I felt with my family.  Then it was to impress, to receive validation.  By my late 30s it had just become who I was; my ambition was simply a part of me, to improve for the sake of continued growth, to be a better person, a better leader.  I wanted simply to impact the world in a positive way, to be the passion I didn’t see. 

                I have never had an ego.  However, I do have traits commonly misjudged as ego – stating my strengths aloud to people, hoping it would be believed if they (or I) heard it enough, striving to convince me and everyone else of my value through sheer force of will.

                I was 29 when my mother died never having accepted my homosexuality.  I was devastated as my mother was perhaps the most important person in my world.  I have not talked about it much, it seems disrespectful.  However, for the next 11 years, until I turned 40, it caused me to try to attempt to be straight and when that inevitably failed, to simply choose celibacy and solitude, believing I was unworthy of personal happiness.  My father had the advantage of living long enough to accept me as I am although it has been slowly over the years.  His comfort is that my gayness is almost theoretical at this point.  I am still single at 46. 

                Also his opinion of me hasn’t mattered in such a long time.  As the one constant bully during my formative years, I stopped caring what he thought long ago and it’s hard to truly care even now, when he tries to be a different person, often failing but still trying, though I really haven’t given him a chance like I probably should.

                The other relationship my gayness impacted has been with God.  If I had been born straight, I may have kept the same superficial Christianity as many of my fellow Evangelicals; attending church Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, plus choir practice, teaching Sunday School, chaperoning youth events.  Never really learning who God is; never questioning my opinions or actions, thinking “I’m not a bad person therefore nothing I do should be considered bad.  Even when I think, say, do, vote in a certain way, I’m exhibiting Christian behavior solely because I think of myself as a Christian; my behavior should be beyond scrutiny.”  I would have bent Jesus to match what I feel because I never studied enough to really know Him enough to understand and know what He would do.  It’s Evangelical privilege and I would have likely had it, based on many self-professed Christians I have known throughout the 14 states I have lived in the last 46 years.

                It’s lazy Christianity; the right to refuse to change to be more like Christ because calling myself, and believing I am, Christian simply requires adherence to a certain appearance, attendance, surface prayer, remembering as opposed to learning. My gayness compelled me to study because I had to know why God would make me gay if it were a sin.  Why would He create someone solely to hate?  He is not about hate; He is about love.  To create someone just to make them perish for all eternity no matter their actions is capricious and hateful, two things God is not.

                In my studies I also learned my view of God was skewed by my view of my father; that I was afraid of God like I was afraid of my father.  Questions with strong Christians and conversations with other believers helped me understand the God Jesus knows.  Dedication to learning more helped me realize it really is all about the greatest commandments:  Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and love your neighbor as yourself.  These are the greatest commandments, all the law and scripture fall from these truths.

                I am a proud Christian and gay man and I need to say this because of what has recently occurred.  Thirty-seven days after I officially hit my late-mid-forties, a reality TV star and one of the most anti-LGBT politicians in a generation became our new leaders.  Based on the rhetoric during the campaign and the activities since the election, it is more important than ever before to stand up; to be proud; to ensure my voice is heard not just by those who need to be reminded we are here and we are worthy but by those who need to know I am here so they feel less alone.

                I will not be silent while rights are taken away.  I will not sit idly by while actions are taken and laws enacted that are counter to real Christian and American values.  I will be vocal so those who are disenfranchised and targeted know I am here to stand with them, to love them as God loves them, to fight for them.  I want to be a living example of a successful, happy and proud Gay Christian not for me but for the younger me out there struggling.  I will be who I needed when I was younger because I know exactly what it feels like to be alone in the world, to feel like a stranger in your own family, in your own house.  To be embarrassed to be who God made you to be.

                I must be bold because boldness is appropriate, boldness is necessary, boldness is required, boldness is the new mandate.