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Cover
Table of Contents
Editor's Notes
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Stories & Essays
A Day In the Life
_ By Sida Li
Eight Minutes
_ By Michael Gettings
Jesusland
_ By Max Gordon
One September Morning
_ By Brian G. Ross
Patrimony
_ By Len Joy
Reading Between the Lines
_ By Michael Gettings
Scarring Truth
_ By M.W. Hamel
Snapshots of the Ordinary
_ By Monica Lee
Spirals
_ By Robert Connal
Stars
_ By Daliso Chaponda
The Jury
_ By Jeremy Tavares
The Thief
_ By Marva Dasef
The Train to Pennsylvania
_ By C.L. Atkins

Poetry
735 Miles to Nootka Island
_ By Nicholas D. Klacsanzky
Al Fresco Cafe Poems #125
_ By Duane Locke
Al Fresco Cafe Poems #127
_ By Duane Locke
Barnstormer
_ By Lynn Strongin
Gilded Candy
_ By Mina Blue
Marriage 2
_ By Christine Redman-Waldeyer
Memo to Italy
_ By Andrew Francis
Rain, Your Words, and the Agony...
_ By Betina Evancha
Sarcasm
_ By Juliette Capra
Textbook
_ By Christine Redman-Waldeyer
The Unspoken Eloquence of the Sword
_ By Anne Nialcom
Three Shades of Grey
_ By Monica Lee
We Pay
_ By Betina Evancha
White Dread
_ By David Snyder
Writing
_ By Betina Evancha

Art & Photography
Keira Anderson
_ Photography
Anne-Julie Aubry
_ Paintings
Whitney Clegg
_ Photography and Drawings
Eman Reharno Jeman
_ Photography, Graffiti, and Drawings
Mike Pomery
_ Paintings
Jennifer Robbins-Mullin
_ Photography
Madia Krisnadi Widodo
_ Photography
Penny Wilson
_ Mixed Media and Digital Art

(Continued)

America: you do not have the right to throw your lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender citizens in the garbage. You have a responsibility to protect us whether you like us or not. If you do not approve of gay marriage, do not attend gay weddings. It is not your prerogative to decide who is worthy of your care, or to deny protection to anyone. As American citizens our protection is guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States.

We are in a holy war, a fundamentalist Christian jihad, where the possibility exists as never before that Jesusland will finally become Jesusworld. (I wonder what the rides will look like.) With a faith-based president who doesn't respect the Constitution as separate from his belief in God, there is no difference between extending democracy and extending Christianity. Once you free a citizen for elections, you have to free a soul for salvation.

Accosted by Christians on subway cars when I first came to New York City, I never ceased being amazed at the chutzpah of a stranger suddenly asking me about my relationship with God, not to mention being deeply insulted by the lack of subtlety that announced the intrusion. "That chocolate ice cream looks delicious; do you have a relationship with Jesus Christ?" I knew that no one would ever have the audacity to say to me, "Excuse me, Sir, how much money is in your bank account?" or "Pardon me for asking, how many times did you make love this week?" Yet somehow just anyone can demand to know on the spot what your relationship is with Jesus, which—if you have one—is arguably the most intimate relationship of them all. I admit it crossed my mind on more than one occasion to reply, "Why yes I do, actually, a pretty good one, and fuck you for asking such a personal question."

The most exasperating religious experience ever may be the attempt to convince a born-again Christian that God will allow someone into heaven that isn't "saved" through Jesus Christ. After a brief exchange, I inform the stranger that while I was “saved,” or at least baptized as a child, and my grandfather was a minister of his own church, I have no intention of being part of a religion that doesn't accept me because of my sexuality. My inquisition on the A-train ends and my Jesus interrogator trots off to his next victim, reminding me, "we’re all sinners." He hasn't achieved a new convert, but he's watered that seed of insecurity in me that maybe homosexuality is evil, that gay people do end up in hell, and because of what I am, God doesn't like me anymore. It's a child's fear, like dark closets and monsters under the bed, but it can rule a life and last a lifetime.

During the six months after college that I ran around cracking people over the head with my Bible, I remember the extraordinary relief that came from finally having the Answer to Everything. No longer circling endlessly on the parking ramp of life, I had finally found a space. Trying to forge a gay identity on my own was too rangy and uncertain, and if I didn't succeed, what could be more disheartening than failing at being a pervert? The world was much easier to understand with my new faith and broken down into two distinct groups: those who were wrong, and us. I did exactly what they told me to do: love God, accept Jesus, and, like courting Santa Claus, try not to be naughty and always be nice.

Because my homosexuality, however, is dictated not by fashion or trend, but biology and DNA, I couldn't warp or mutilate myself into the desired new result. My naughtiness eventually outweighed my niceness and I was in deep shit. I wasn't told to leave, exactly, but knew that if I wanted to, I could stick around for a sort of exalted pervert status; the old "God loves you, homosexual, because He loves us all—even child molesters, rapists, and serial killers" line that some Christians think is generous.

Certain minds are vulnerable to fundamentalist thinking. Closet gays, immigrants, poor blacks, rich white women with philandering husbands—it draws so many. It's not easy to talk about why fundamentalism is attractive, why a heart might crave it. There comes a time in a life when the world simply becomes too painful for nuance, when it's freezing out and you just want to come inside and have someone say, "Relax, we'll take care of you; in fact, we've been waiting for you. Here is the rulebook, no need to ask any questions: just sign here."

There isn't an oppressed person alive who at one point or another hasn't felt the seductive gravity of capitulation. The decision to resist always means thrusting oneself into the vast, unknown and dangerous wilderness of truly being free. One is tormented, at the same time, by the grim suspicion that while a secure existence may never be found in self-determination, a designated place always awaits one who will succumb to the State.

The violence against gay people, religious, emotional, physical or political, has done what social violence is supposed to; it's driven us underground, afraid to demand our rights or protect them when they are threatened. One good, well-publicized, gay murder can do wonders. Those of us who aren't brutalized or obliterated in elaborate campaigns by strangers or our families are perpetually trapped in nets of chronic shame, our internalized hatred simplifying the work of the bashers by beating them to it.

I was astonished the day I discovered that I was a gay-killer. Indignant over the nationally publicized murders of Matthew Shepard and Brandon Teena, I'd demand a stop to gay bashing, leaving the rally or dinner party for a bashing session of my own with unsafe sex, alcohol and drugs. I had to finally consider the idea that my self-destruction wasn't fabulous or gloriously tragic; it was predictable, and (this hurt the most) not very imaginative. I was complicit with the anti-gay agendas that were aimed at me with the precision of a sniper’s bullet, an accomplice to my own gay assassination. I made a decision that although I wouldn't be able to save every gay life, I could definitely save the one I'd been given. (I'm still saving it; the mistaken assumption being that you only have to save your life once.)

I was a 13-year old boy in East Lansing, Michigan on his way to school in 1983, attracted to a boy in my class, and flooded with the shame and terror that I was gay. My father also kept a Smith & Wesson in his closet. I don't believe I would have used it on myself, but a gun in any house has an aura of potential, waiting for the fatal chemistry of an escalating argument or a very, very bad day. What I did have was a lesbian friend in high school, who, one could say, "died for my sins." She came out of the closet first and when I saw that the coast was clear, I came out after her.

She was humiliated daily by notes shoved in her locker or jokes made as she walked down the hallway. Girls came up to her in groups during lunch and asked, "Are you gay?" to which she replied, "Why, are you interested?" Leaving a gas station one night, a boy, spurned by her refusals, called her a dyke and punched her in the face. She didn't allow the violence to derail her.

I don't think Jesusland would have approved of her—a sassy, courageous, I'm-scared-to-death-but-you'll-never-know-it, 17-year old black lesbian—but Jesus himself might have.

If Jesus is with us, I think he stands beside the black man who faces the lynch mob, the midwife who is brought before the church for being a witch, the bewildered and naked prisoner cowering against his cell wall in Abu Ghraib, the transgender teenager who has decided to dress as herself, no matter what her parents or the kids at school do or say. Jesus stands with all of us, but He especially knows what it's like to be innocent, to be violated and murdered for telling the truth, to face a violent mob and be alone.

America. If only you would purify your hate. When we walk into someone's country and wish to take what they have, let's just take it. Why call it "liberating the Iraqi people" or Operation Iraqi Freedom? Call it stealing and steal it. If you want to kill someone, don't refer to pre-emptive strikes or wars on terror. Kill them.

And if you want to hate homosexuals, Jesusland, just hate us. But don’t call it a "moral" or "family" issue, or try to legislate it and say, “I still support civil unions." And for Christ's sake, please stop dragging Jesus into it. Hasn't that poor man been through enough? Whether we believe He was the Savior or not, I think we probably all agree that He was a pretty nice guy who loved all kinds of people and never meant harm to anyone.

If He were alive to see this land today, I don't think He'd claim it.

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MAX GORDON is a writer and activist. He has been published in the anthologies Inside Separate Worlds: Life Stories of Young Blacks, Jews and Latinos (University of Michigan Press, 1991) and Go the Way Your Blood Beats: An Anthology of African-American Lesbian and Gay Fiction (Henry Holt, 1996.) His work has also appeared on openDemocracy, Democratic Underground and Truthout, and also in Z Magazine, Gay Times and other progressive magazines in the U.S. and internationally, as well as in translation. Max writes a monthly column at Sapience Magazine. He lives in New York.