The Touchstone of a Burning Bible
This morning, as I sat with Ray in the pre-op room of the hospital where he is now having neck surgery, a nun came into our curtained area and asked if Ray would like her to say a prayer. It being a Catholic hospital, her question was not inappropriate. She looked disappointed though when Ray smiled and said "No, thank you, Sister."
Ray had already sat in meditation this morning and I had already read a section of the Tao te Ching. We had engaged in conversation about the possibility of surgical complications and the joy of the life we have shared. Spiritually, we felt nourished. Neither of us wanted to have that peace negatively impacted by religion. Had he said "yes," to the nun's offer of a prayer, he would have been doing it for her benefit and not his own. We've both come to the point in our lives when Catholic rituals and Christian dogma can cause more pain than peace, and we're wise enough now to set boundaries to protect ourselves from the best intentions of others.
Our spiritual journeys are described in Chapter Five of my soon-to-be-published book, "Are You Guys Brothers?" What follows is the first half of that chapter. Please feel free to share your thoughts with me at www.brian-mcnaught.com.
During a very large and highly-charged Gay Pride rally in the Boston Commons in 1978, right after the much-publicized, agonizing defeat of gay civil rights legislation in Miami at the hands of Anita Bryant, the keynote speaker, a local anarchist history professor, dramatically, in the heat of his rhetoric, threw a Bible into a burning cauldron. Prompted by the horrified jeers from most of the crowd, including from Ray and me, the rally organizers asked me to speak in response to his defiant, sacrilegious gesture. I chastised him from the stage for abusing a book that had great spiritual significance to the majority of us in attendance, and for resorting to a Nazi tactic to make his point. My comments were enthusiastically welcomed by most of the people in the crowd.
Thirty years later, I have to admit that if it happened again, I would be far less offended, and perhaps even amused by the professor’s theatrics. My offense today would come from his complete insensitivity to the feelings of religious gay men and women. My amusement would result from his utter audacity. It was harder for Ray and me then, than it is today, to laugh confidently at the inappropriate behavior of other gay people.
Yet, the speaker did get everyone’s attention and he provided me with a terrific benchmark to gauge my feelings about the Bible and other objects considered sacred by many people, such as the image of Mohammed, the American flag, and the consecrated host.
In my family’s home, and in Ray’s too, the Bible was far more important, but much-less used, than the dictionary. If it was to be handled, it would be done so with great respect. It was a holy book, the word of God. One wouldn’t dare write in the Bible other than to record births and deaths in the designated areas in its front or back pages. There would never be words underlined in pen or notations made in the margin. What needed emphasis or explanation was determined by the publisher, who did so with different colored inks and copious footnotes.
While the Old Testament never much held my interest, the words of Jesus, found in red type in the four Gospels, and a small handful of inspired writings by Paul, created my concept of God and guided my spiritual development. The Sermon on the Mount, in particular, seemed to me the crux of the book.
The Jesus that Ray and I met in the writings of the four evangelists was an amazing man, unlike any other in our lives. He was strong, tender, thoughtful, wise, non-judgmental, self-sacrificing, inclusive, focused, loving and forgiving. As such, we and Jesus became really good friends; the best of friends, even. He was nothing at all like the scary Frankenstein Jesus that has been put together clumsily but calculatedly by those who need a monster to enforce their fear-based biases. The Jesus with whom we both built an intimate relationship in our childhoods was a lover, not a hater. He was so cool, he could have been (and perhaps was) gay.
Although I didn’t memorize and quote biblical passages as a child, or read the “Good Book” from cover to cover, I was, by Catholic standards, a passionate disciple of Christ. When I watch programs such as Jesus Camp, the Oscar-nominated documentary in 2006 on the frightening extreme emotionalism of fundamentalist children, I see myself and the frenzy I could get into as a young Christian. The parents of my neighborhood friends at one time called my mom with the request that I quit trying to convert their children to Catholicism. In high school, I got the highest score they had ever recorded for social work in a standardized career preference test. (“Would you rather read a book to a sick friend than play outside?” Yes.) Though they took my name off the plaque when I identified myself as gay eight years later, I was the unanimous choice of the faculty for the Christian Leadership Award when I graduated from Brother Rice High School in 1966. At Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, I was teasingly called “the dorm Catholic” because I went to Mass every day. Shortly after college, I wrote to U.S. Senator Phil Hart (D-MI) and told him in the strongest possible terms that the Holy Spirit had told me he should run for President of the United States. (He did not run, and to my great relief today, never responded to my letter.)
