Gayianitism : The Religion of Fab

Christian protesters at London gay pride 2006

The biggest obstacle to gay rights is religion. There is no question about it. There are many religious people who are against gays and more often than not these people think that not letting them discriminate against gays is an infringement on their right to practice their religion and worship their God.

I'll repeat myself for those sitting at the back: some people actually think that it's OK for them to hate and discriminate against gays and at the same time be themselves immune to any form of criticism because the right to practice a religion is protected. Apparently.

With the excuse of religion gay people are constantly oppressed and killed. Are gay people killing religious people? Are gay people campaigning to revoke the right of religious people to marry? Are gay people trying to force religious people to abandon their faith or convert? Not really. Yet many religious people have the audacity to play the victims in the battle for equal rights. 

Annoyed? Very much.

So I propose my solution. The only way to fight the faith criticism shield is to establish homosexuality as a religion. Yes, it's a ridiculous concept, but then again all religion is ridiculous. We can do it.

It seems that the biggest difference between a "cult" and a "religion" is how big it is and how long it has been around, so the first few years are going to be difficult, but we should brave through them. Just look at Scientology: they're fairly new, have to deal with a lot of unfair crap (they aren't more ridiculous or dangerous than any other religion after all) and yet not only are they still around, they are also championed by an impressive a-list celebrity roster.

Needless to say that means that phase 1 will include reaching out to the biggest gay celebrities and recruiting them early: Ellen DeGeneres, Stephen Fry, Neil Patrick Harris, Ian McKellen, Rosie O'Donnell, Rachel Maddow, Anderson Cooper, Elton John, Tom Cruise - all of them. We need them to go out there and start spreading the word.

Obviously we'd need a word to spread first. So here it goes:

Our deity is called Gosh, so when we want to be all spiritual we say "oh my Gosh" and gently place our right hand on our right cheek to indicate our awe. It works.

We need a bullshit origin story. The whole Jesus-died-for-your-sins story is probably the most successful so we shouldn't veer from that too much. You know what they say: Don't mess with the classics. If it ain't brokeback don't mount it.  Maybe not very original, but considering that Christianity ripped off tons of pagan traditions and got away with it that shouldn't be a problem. 

As for a Jesus figure we are spoilt for choice. We have a huge selection of gay people who were murdered brutally: Matthew Shepard or Harvey Milk are great iconic choices, but we have essentially an endless and ever-growing list of candidates.

Our holy symbol will be the pink triangle and we can even make a triangle sign by touching each shoulder and then the groin. I love it!

Straight people are welcome to convert, but once converted they must have a lot of gay sex whether they like it or not because it says you should in our yet to be written holy book, the Buttble. So you just do what the book says because.

Once we establish our religion we'll enjoy great tax breaks, but also be able to hold our ground in arguments against people of other faiths. Rather than use arguments based on common sense, compassion and integrity, we could just flail our arms hysterically and thump some holy book.

We fight for the rights of gays to get married not because it's the decent thing to do, but because there is a quote about it in an old book. You'd be surprised how much more effective this type of argument will be in some circles.

We can still carry on using the  rational and intelligent gay rights strategy where it works. It certainly does work on occasion but on many others it simply doesn't. And when it comes to ignorant idol-worshipping lemmings we simply bring it down to a level they understand by speaking their language.

I'm not quite sure how to get this thing started and will appreciate any help in the matter. Maybe a Kickstarter project? I know it's going to be a long and challenging uphill battle to get this religion going, but some suffering will add an edge of authenticity.

Dibs on the Pope job.

Let's do it. 

May Gosh be with you.

--Mickey