It may come as a surprise to some, to most, that I, a gay activist of a sorts, should take up with the very Jesus that Christian fundamentalists claim so vociferously as only theirs. To them we are the Enemy. I am the enemy. The truth is that they are irrelevant to what I think. Since I was a boy, Jesus has been my god and that's the end of it. The puzzling thing is that they have risen up such a great crusade against us. Against me. Why? I think it stands to reason; Nietzsche said that one's sexuality reaches to the heights and depths of one's spirit. Thus the sexuality I write of is no insignificant thing. I agree with the fundamentalists that it is important, extremely important, of great significance to the essence of one's religion. Should I say that a gay religion is a different religion? Perhaps. Perhaps it is only one mansion in the House of Being. Whatever the case, Jesus is still the God of this gay religion I write up. That they think they have the right to take that away from me, from us, is cause for a great fight. Fortunately, I have history on my side. Unfortunately, they don't give a damn about history. I rejoice in the world as it is. Nothing has changed. The rabble rise up naturally from a transcendent necessity. We are brothers in this Great Surprise.

From John 21:

20 Then Peter, turning about, seeth the disciple whom Jesus loved following; which also leaned on his breast at supper, and said, Lord, which is he that betrayeth thee?
21 Peter seeing him saith to Jesus, Lord, and what shall this man do?
22 Jesus saith unto him, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? follow thou me.
23 Then went this saying abroad among the brethren, that that disciple should not die: yet Jesus said not unto him, He shall not die; but, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?

Oh My Friends, if I should spy transcendence here in a lover the same as I, what is that to you? Nevertheless, agitate as you must.

Having said all that, I must insist that the actual sex act isn't so unsettling to the spirit as its transcendent meaning. Theology and the dialectical understanding of doctrine, in other words, belief, is the concern and urgency of the soul. The intellectual meaning of one's sexuality is the nub. The body is a sluggard; the mind is where the action is. The mind is where sex takes place, not the body, except as Body is an intellectual Form. That is Platonism. Spiritual sex. And it is that very anti-body Body that is the denial of creation that the fundamentalists hate. They are materialists at heart. Sluggards.

My main personal objection to the church today, therefore, is that it is so boring, so bland, so able to put you to sleep. I'm speaking of both liberal and evangelical conservative. My Holy Roller Pentecostal Grandmother said that was the same reason she rejected the Catholics, the Baptists, the Lutherans, the Methodists, even the Assembly of God. Boring, boring, boring. They are finally so respectful and polite, descent, and caring while they delicately condemn you, or rather let you condemn yourself to eternal Hell. They are gently troubled that the unboring could do that to themselves. They sadly smile at the folly of the world. But then maybe you like all that. Most liberal academics are the same, though they try to work up a modicum of disdain. Low intensity love, sighing concern. Focus groups and social outreach. Blather and twaddle. Blather and twaddle. Blather and twaddle. Zzzzzz. A spiritual death far worse than any physical torture (which at least will wake you up fast).

The church is the ordinary. It is the inert mass of the mass. It is the log the fiery flames dance over. It is the hometown audience the traveling theater of spiritual delights leads to the precipice. It is also the ordinary. It is also the mass. And therefore it is also the log from which the stage for these transcendental epiphanies is constructed. Across the limelight, on the boards, in the regalia and Pomp, priests dance with altar boys around the sacrifice of Christ – red blood, torn flesh, immersed in the twilight of holy substance. Commotion argues out a grand theology. Wooden eyes watch. Revolution brews. The mash and the mess for the soldiers of this War God.

As a boy I attended church camp. Lovely mornings on the lake. Ladies making breakfast. Bible readings and gentle prayer. On long, lonely walks in the nearby woods boys would carve their initials in hearts on old trees. For Jesus and each other. Surges of puberty had come into their beds over night. It now rode on the breezes of dawn. And timber pollen. The water lapped at their smooth thighs. These well-behaved, primly-dressed boys contained the clamor of heavenly war. They never had much to say. Their sighs were barely visible.

I was the pimple-faced boy on the side contemplating this incoming of the Forms. The surgings left me mangled and muttering the old words.

That Roman soldier, who has come to be known as Longinus, was worried enough about his slave-boy to come to Jesus, a dirty Jewish faith-healer, to find help. The high and the very low are all brought together. All through the New Testament we are called to be slaves in the household of God. Aristotle wrote in Book Lambda, " … all things are ordered together. It is as in a household, where the free persons are least able to do what they like, but all or most of what they do is ordered, while the slaves and animals contribute little to what is common and mostly do what they like." Plato writes of the same thing in the Lysis. The church in these later days would have us be watched and ordered sons of the Most High, not His slaves.

I feel like a slave-boy in a great house and I am talking secretly, furtively with the son of the Master, the Father. An illicit love affair, a strange union, is taking place between us. I have never been able to call God, Father. I have been able to call the son, lover. As a slave, I have a freedom that the free son never had. I led him down; I introduced him to the un-cosmos of our dissolving into each other. We talked. That swirling talk is philosophy. The highest, most orderly, tight with the lowest – there, the most free. Thus a dialogue that has become a monologue.