Gay Pride and “Jesus Loves Me”

June 26, 2008

This coming Sunday is the Gay Pride Parade in San Francisco and while D and I’ve gone a couple times in the past it’s something we tend to avoid at this point in our lives. Maybe other 51 year old women enjoy standing in the glaring sun for five hours with 3 bazillion other spectators while a parade moves along at a snail’s pace, all but hidden by a 3 deep row of people but me, not so much. And it’s Sunday when I normally lean toward the worship God, pass the peace, and break the bread sort of activities over gawking at the shapely legs and glittery attire of drag queens. I actually prefer gawking and appreciating our tremendously diverse queer community on Saturdays which is why we’ll head over a day early with our buddies Denise and Heather to grab free stickers from the Marriage Equality booth, buy a cheap Gay Pride teeshirt I’ll never wear and munch on truly bad fair food. Ah, nothing like Gay Pride weekend!

So let me tell you about my first Gay Pride Parade. It was my favorite and you’ll know why at story’s end.

Gay Pride Parade. Chicago. 1996. I’d gone across the nation to join a contingency of folks from the United Church of Christ Coalition for LGBT Concerns. The humidity was suffocating to this west coast girl and the crowds of spectators staggering in number and in diversity. Having only been out as a lesbian for two years and living in a small college town at the time I’d never been surrounded by so many drag queens, leather-clad gay boys and dykes on bikes in my life. Okay, I’ll confess. It was my first time to ever be within close proximity to any drag queens, leather-clad gay boys, and bike-riding dykes and in hindsight I suspect I looked a bit like a two-legged version of a deer in headlights, only gayer.

Our funny little mix of churchy gay folks was stationed in the parade somewhere between a contingent of drag queens in the most extraordinarily high stilettos on earth and a group of PFLAG parents marching with placards reading “I love my gay son” and “Out and proud straight parents of our beautiful lesbian daughter.” As we moved along the parade route waved on by spectators pressing in on both sides of the street, hanging out from every window, and filling every building fire escape and porch, our group, marching without brightly-colored banners, sloganed placards or cheesy rainbow trinkets to hurl to the crowds, contributed nothing more than our mediocre singing to the festive chaos. Included in our extensive musical repertoire of three songs was “Jesus loves me, this I know…”

Over and over we sang the familiar childhood Sunday School song. We walked and as we walked we sang and while the people standing on the side lines changed something never did. No matter where we traveled on the parade route and no matter what direction my eyes would chance upon there would be one or more spectators singing along with us, mouthing the words, “Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so,” and on more than a few occasions with tears glistening in their eyes. At one point in the parade route we stopped to wait for the groups in front of us to move on and as we sang, my eyes caught two men 15 feet ahead of me standing on the sidewalk; the taller of the two men leaning against a stop sign pole, with his arms wrapped in an embrace around the other man who was leaning against him. Both men were dressed on this stifling humid day in black leather pants and vests, leather boots and black leather caps and they were all but glimmering as the mid-day sun ricocheted off all the metal studs and chains embedded in their clothing and draped around their bodies. They were bearded, mustached, and if I have my queer vernacular down, I believe the term “Leather Daddy” might have been appropriately applied, but then I’m a lesbian, so what do I know about gay guys other than what I learned from “Queer as Folk”?

Now let me make a confession; something I tend to do a little too frequently to retain any kind of queer-coolness factor. At this point in my life as a gay Christian I was struggling with the more wild and wacky members of the gay community who were constantly being held up by conservative Christians in their case against homosexuality. The only video clips they ever showed of gay people were of shirtless oiled-up men dressed in leather pants that lacked cowhide on the buttocks, drag queens with busty casabas that were only out done in grandeur and size by their extravagant hairstyles, and uberbutch lesbians draped in full body press lip-locks. I secretly just wanted everyone to tone it down a bit to give James Dobson and Pat Robertson a little less material to work with. Patch up your pants! Deflate those bazoombas! Lighten up on the PDA! Obviously I’m not in that place anymore, but back then, when I was still running headfirst into my own internal homophobia that’s the kind of arrogant judgmental chatter that went through my head.

Back to 1996. Chicago. Gay Pride Parade. Leather Daddies.

So there I was, forming my critical critique of these two men in my head when it happened. My little self-righteous judgmental butt got slammed to the pavement. Hard. As we moved closer to where the men were standing I could see they were both weeping. I’m not saying that one random tear glistened in their eyes. They were w-e-e-p-i-n-g. Multiple tears. Runny noses. Scrunched up faces. And as they wept, I could see they were singing, “Yes, Jesus loves me, Yes, Jesus loves me, Yes, Jesus loves me, The Bible tells me so.” I stood there, staring directly at them and in turn, they were looking at me, and for a few brief moments we sang together, singing to each other of a love that all three of us had been taught in our childhood by people who stopped singing it to us when we were grown and gay.

So, do you understand now why that was my favorite Gay Pride Parade?

Posted in Storytelling