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It’s nearly Easter Sunday, Christianity’s holiest of holy days. I know a lot of gays who go to church. Like anyone else, LGBT people have spiritual needs. For some, traditional organized religion, perhaps because they were raised in it, allows them that certain access to inner peace or provides moral structure. I read about some anxious and guilty gay Catholics who, begging for acceptance, have, in deference to the essential Catechism, voluntarily chosen a celibate life for themselves. Others have left the religions of their upbringing because they are the very cause of the stress that demands the search for inner peace. That conundrum lead to the formation of the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC), the LGBT answer to churches that rejected their own. Meanwhile, over the decades since Stonewall, certain mainstream congregations, or parts thereof, have begun to live verily by the true words of Jesus and accept all, including gays. Most recently it was the Presbyterians. They have received death threats as a result.
Then last week, days before Palm Sunday, Indiana Governor Mike Pence signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. An end run around the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals that forced Indiana’s marriage equality, the new law allows discrimination by business owners of faith against, you guessed it, gay people. It is such a broadly written law that even a fast food restaurant worker could, based on religious beliefs, refuse service to LGBTs and others deemed apostates. I can imagine the drive-through exchange in which a customer orders a burger and rather than “You want fries with that?” hears the question, “You gay?”
Despite calls for a veto by the Indiana Chamber of Commerce and Indianapolis Mayor Gregory Ballard, among many others, Pence was unrepentant. The signing press photo shows a private ceremony with the governor surrounded by nuns in traditional habits, a Franciscan friar trussed with a cincture, a rabbi in a Fedora and sundry conservatives. Conspicuously absent from the grinning retinue were a Muslim Imam, a Buddhist monk and a Wiccan witch. The push back, however, was immediate. A boycott of Indiana was called, major conventions, including a Christian one, threatened to move their events, and the NCAA issued a statement deploring the new law.
Could it happen in Wisconsin? Of course it could. With our Tea Party Governor Scott “Divide and Conquer!” Walker aspiring to be president, his conservative credibility may depend on it. His competition, Ted Cruz, a homophobic dominionist Christian, has already got the jump on this one. Walker may defer, as is his wont, and claim a religious freedom act is a distraction, then sign one conveniently passed by his Republican legislature. As an expedient act of more-conservative-than-thou one-upmanship, this would serve him well. Local gay Republicans, meanwhile, having counted their 30 pieces of tax break silver, should look for a tree.
In moments like these, someone inevitably asks, what would Jesus do? If it were me on Easter morning, I’d rise, grab a coffee, some marshmallow peeps and a Chocolate bunny, and go back to the sepulcher.
