What a turnaround!

The end of a busy, hectic and occasionally hair-raising week is a wonderful thing. Altogether now: Ahhhhhhh!

Was called by the local paper about my letter and whether I had written it--did I detect a tone in the clerk's voice, or was that just my supported-by-years-of-experience paranoia? Dunno, but the fact that they verified the source suggests that perhaps my letter will run.

Here's hoping they don't edit the living daylights out of it. Always a possibility, don't you know.

On other fronts, I wrote my first fan letter to a man of the cloth after reading a wonderful piece on the Common Dreams website entitled, "Real Christians Don't Gay Bash," by the Rev. Jim Rigby of St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church in Austin, Texas. It was balm for my little lezbo soul, I must say. While I urge you to read the entire, beautiful piece, the following excerpt offers a taste of his words and wisdom:

"In the Gospel, biblical literalists and judgmental people were the negative example in many of the stories. The point of those stories was to teach us the hypocrisy of judgmental religion. When a woman was caught in adultery, the Biblical literalists lined up to protect family values. They pointed out that the Bible literally says that adulterers are to be stoned. If Jesus took the Bible seriously, they claimed, he would have to participate in the mandated biblical punishment of an adulteress.

"Instead of following scripture, Jesus tells the woman to get her life together and tells everyone else to drop their stones of judgment. The only way to take this story seriously is to conclude that real Christians don't use the Bible to condemn other people."

And listen to this:

"It violates the teaching of Christ to say that God will get angry if America does not confront homosexuality as a sin. Jesus did not mention homosexuality and it is a lie to say he did. Furthermore, Jesus said 'judge not or you will be judged.' These false prophets are saying, 'judge or you will be judged.'

"Jesus was kind and understanding, but he was not silent about those who abused the vulnerable. He called them 'wolves in sheep's clothing.' Christians must follow the example of Jesus and confront those vicious predators who use the Christian religion as a camouflage for bullying. We must be as understanding and kind as we can be, but to be tolerant of the oppression of others is not true tolerance."

Oh my goddess, can you see why I had to fire off a "Thank you" note and a half? I thanked him for the piece, and remarked that my only regret is that my mother isn't alive to read his words--she was an industrial-strength Presbyterian, and as she never quite made peace with my sexuality, I think these words, coming from a man of her favorite cloth, might have helped ease her mind some. Alas.

Last but not least, I have been invited to NYC (probably along with 1,000 other comics) to participate in the Laughing Liberally lab on--get this--Monday nights. At 9:30 p.m. Now, as the Lab was a glorified open mic last I went, I am thinking I probably won't bother. However, if showing up for the Lab is the only way to break into the heavily heterosexual male comic lineup that Laughing Liberally seems to prefer, perhaps I need to just go down there and give it all I've got.

Or should I just wait and see if the Thursday night queer show pans out?

Ah, decisions, decisions. Hey--at least I have decisions to make here, and I don't have a vast, open void of comic dead air in front of me.

Not yet, anyway.