Sing You Home

JUDGMENT IS COMING

NO QUEERS HERE

3 GAY RIGHTS: 1. STDS 2. AIDS 3. HELL

Two cops are standing by, warily watching the protest. Clive Lincoln is standing smack in the middle of this fiasco, wearing yet another white suit-this one double-breasted. “We are here to protect our children,” he bellows. “The future of this great country-and those at greatest risk to becoming the prey of homosexuals-homosexuals who work in this very school!”

“Vanessa.” I gasp. “What if he outs you?”

“After all this media coverage, I hardly think that’s possible,” Vanessa says. “Besides, the people I care about already know. The people I don’t care about-well, they’ll have to just deal with it. They can’t fire me because I’m gay.” She stands a little taller. “Angela would drool to take that case.”

A school bus pulls up, and as the baffled kids stream out of it, the church members yell at them, or shove signs in their faces. One small, delicate boy, wearing a hooded sweatshirt that has been yanked tight around his face, turns bright red when he sees the signs.

Vanessa leans closer to me. “Remember what we were talking about this morning? He’s one of the other fifteen.”

The boy ducks his head, trying to become invisible.

“I’m going to run interference,” Vanessa says. “You okay on your own here?” She doesn’t wait to hear my answer but barrels through the crowd-shoving with a linebacker’s force until she reaches the boy and carefully steers him through this forcefield of hate. “Why don’t you get a life?” Vanessa yells at Pastor Clive.

“Why don’t you get a man?” he replies.

Suddenly Vanessa’s face is just as red as the boy’s. I watch her disappear into the school doors, still trying to refocus the student’s attention.

“Homosexuals are teaching our children-trying to convert them to their lifestyle,” Pastor Clive says. “What irony is it that guidance is being provided to these impressionable youth by those who live in sin?”

I grab the sleeve of a policeman. “This is a school. Surely they shouldn’t be protesting here. Can’t you get rid of them?”

“Not unless they actually do something violent. You can blame the liberals for the flip side of democracy, lady. Guys like this get to blow their horn; terrorists move in the neighborhood. God bless the U.S.A.,” he says sarcastically. He looks at me, cracks his gum.

“I have nothing against homosexuals,” Pastor Clive says. “But I do not like what they do. Gays already have equal rights. What they want are special rights. Rights that will slowly but surely take away from your own freedoms. In places where they have prevailed, speaking my mind, like I am right now, could land me in jail for hate speech. In Canada and England and Sweden, pastors and ministers and cardinals and bishops have been sued or sentenced to prison for preaching against homosexuality. In Pennsylvania, an evangelical group carrying signs like you were arrested for ethnic intimidation.”

Another busload of students walks by. One of them throws a spitball at Pastor Clive. “Dickhead,” the kid says.

The pastor wipes it calmly off his face. “They have already been brainwashed,” he says. “The school systems now teach even babies in kindergarten that having two mommies is normal. If your child says differently, he’ll be humiliated in front of his peers. But it doesn’t stop in schools. You could wind up like Chris Kempling-a Canadian teacher who was suspended for writing a letter to the editor stating that gay sex poses health risks and that many religions find homosexuality immoral. He was just stating the facts, friends, and yet he was suspended without pay for a month. Or Annie Coffey-Montes, a Bell Atlantic employee who was fired for asking to be removed from the e- mail list of gays and lesbians in her company that advertised parties and dances. Or Richard Peterson, who posted Bible verses about homosexuality on his office cubicle at Hewlett-Packard and found himself out of a job.”

He is a cheerleader for the cheerless, I realize. Someone who doesn’t gather people to his cause as much as drive them there with paranoia.

There is a rumble of disturbance at the edges of the crowd, an undulation like a puppy under a quilt. I am elbowed by a woman who has a large gold cross hanging between her breasts.

“Your right as a Christian to embrace your own beliefs is being curtailed by the homosexual agenda,” Pastor Clive continues. “We must fight back now, before our religious and civil freedoms are a casualty, trampled by these-”

All of a sudden, he is knocked over by a blur of black. Immediately, three of his suited thugs pull him to his feet, at the same time that the two cops grab the attacker. I think he’s just as shocked as I am to see who it is. “Lucy!” he cries. “What on earth are you doing!”

I can’t figure out how he knows her name at first. Then I remember that she goes to his church.

Apparently under duress.

Shoving through the crowd, I step between Clive and the policemen, who are totally going for overkill with Lucy. Each of them has one of her arms twisted behind her back, and she weighs all of a hundred pounds. “I’ll take this from here,” I say, my voice brimming with so much authority that they actually let her go.

“You and I aren’t finished,” Clive says, but I shoot him a look over my shoulder as I lead Lucy into the school.

“Take it up with me in court,” I tell him.

I bet Lucy’s never been so glad to have the doors of the school close behind her. Her face is flushed and mottled. “Take a deep breath,” I tell her. “It’s going to be all right.”

Vanessa comes out of the main office and looks at us both. “What happened?”

“Lucy and I need a place to calm down,” I say, keeping my voice as even as possible, when what I really want to do is call the ACLU or Angela or a proctologist, anyone who has experience in dealing with assholes like Clive Lincoln.

Vanessa doesn’t even hesitate. “My office. Take as long as you need.”

I march Lucy into the main office-a place where she’s spent far too much time, being disciplined by the assistant principal-and into Vanessa’s cozy space. I close the door behind us. “Are you all right?”

She wipes her mouth on her sleeve. “I just wanted him to shut up,” Lucy murmurs.

She must know, by now, that I am the center of this storm. There have been articles in the papers about the trial. Last night when I was brushing my teeth, there was my face, on the local late-night news. And now, there’s picketing on the steps of the school. I may initially have tried to keep my private life from her because of our therapy relationship, but now, doing so would be like trying to sandbag the ocean.

It makes sense that Lucy’s heard about all this. That people at her church are bad-mouthing me, and that she feels torn.

Torn enough to tackle Clive Lincoln.

I pull out a chair so she can sit down. “Do you believe him?” she asks.

“Frankly, no,” I admit. “He’s like something out of a circus sideshow.”

“No.” Lucy shakes her head. “I mean… do you believe him?”

At first I am shocked. It’s hard for me to imagine anyone who can listen to Pastor Clive and not take his words as utter lies. But then again, Lucy is only a teenager. Lucy goes to an evangelical church. She’s been spoon-fed this rhetoric all her life.

“No, I don’t believe him,” I say softly. “Do you?”

Lucy picks at the unraveling black threads of her leggings. “There was this kid who went to school here last year. Jeremy. He was in my homeroom. We all knew he was gay even though he never said it. He didn’t have to. I mean, everyone else called him a faggot often enough.” She looks up at me. “He hanged himself in his basement just before Christmas. His stupid fucking parents blamed it on a D he got in Civics.” Lucy’s eyes glint, hard as diamonds. “I was so jealous of him. Because he got to check out of this place for good. He left, and no matter how many times I try, I can’t.”

I taste copper on my tongue; it takes a moment for me to realize this is fear. “Lucy, are you thinking of hurting yourself?” When she doesn’t answer, I stare at her forearms, to see if she’s cutting again, but even in this mild weather she’s wearing a long-sleeved thermal shirt.