The Intellectual Homosexual

“I don’t really miss God, but I sure miss Santa Claus”

-Hole, “Gutless”

As promised in my last post, I recently went and saw Religulous, Bill Maher’s new anti-religion screed, currently in general release. (Especially, one hopes, in the Bible Belt.) There were a lot of people in line when I arrived at the theater, and it was full to capacity by the time the film started.

I loved the film. When Maher launched into his final tirade, ending with the blunt challenge to “grow up or die,” I spontaneously applauded the screen, and again when the credits rolled, along with a portion of the audience. (But not a large enough portion. That struck me as the very “timidity” that Maher refers to at the end, when he urges non-believers and skeptics to “end their silence and come out of the closet.” What I mean is that I sensed that the majority of the audience wanted to give the film an ovation but held back for some reason. It’s like in the back of our minds we still live in fear that God will strike us dead with a thunderbolt if we blaspheme His name.)

The film has many funny moments - like when Maher smokes a joint on-camera with a man who runs a “cannabis ministry,” and causes the minister to panic by telling him, “Your hair’s on fire!” - without losing sight of the serious message underneath, which is that we need to leave religion behind completely if we’re to continue our evolution as a species. Maher is highly sympathetic to homosexuals, as usual, and stands up for the gays against anti-gay activist John Westcott and a Jesus impersonator who claims that homosexuals are “incomplete” people. In one of the funniest moments, Maher rejoins Westcott’s assertion that gays are “insecure” with the memorable quip, “It takes a lot of security to leave the house in ass-less chaps.”

I found it interesting that Maher, as well as Richard Dawkins in his 2006 bestseller The God Delusion which I am currently reading (and loving), draws parallels between atheism and the gay rights movement, just as the gay rights movement has in the past piggybacked on the civil rights movement of blacks. I personally have no problem with this, which probably isn’t surprising given that I am pretty much an atheist myself in addition to being a gigantic homo.

I’ve spent most of my life being casually contemptuous, and at times actively hostile, toward organized religion, Christianity as much as (if not more than) any other. My single mother raised us religion-free, and I remember her telling me how she was forced to go to church as a child and hated it. But I recently apologized to a friend of mine - who happens to be a Christian Scientist - for my lack of tolerance and respect for his beliefs. (And hey…it’s not like he’s a Scientologist, for Christ’s sake!) It’s true, I suppose, that I must tolerate other people as they “tolerate” me. Then again, it’s hard for me to be tolerant of something that I genuinely see as an impediment to the future evolution of the human race; something that is exploited by so many people (the quacks interviewed in Religulous are only a tiny fraction) for their own illicit ends; something that has caused so much misery, strife and death to so many people throughout recorded history. As Allison Hallett put it in her review of Maher’s film in a recent issue of The Portland Mercury, “For atheists accustomed to the one-way street of religious acceptance (on which I will respect your right to believe what you want to believe, and you will attempt to limit my access to birth control), there is something refreshing about Religulous.”

However, Hallett, along with a lot of the press local and otherwise, also take Maher to task for what they perceive to be his arrogance and egomania. Aaron Mesh in Willamette Weak (sorry, typ-o there) went so far as to say that “The catechism running through the movie is the question of who is more annoying: God or Bill Maher?” I can’t say that Maher affected me this way. I really didn’t mind him much, probably because I am in sympathy with his viewpoint, and appreciate the fact that he’s out there saying the things I would like to say to these philistine, modern-day cave-dwellers, and saying it with so much humor and bluntness. I suspect most of the people who write for the local alternative press are more or less in sympathy with Maher’s viewpoint as well, which is why I find their reaction a little hypocritical and disappointing. I see it as a typical example of the apathy and lack of passion so often found among hipsters, especially hipster journalists. (I’ve coined the term “zompster” - zombie + hipster - for this sort of person.) I like people who have passionate reactions. I like to walk out of a movie theater pumped up, loud and full of fire. My Just Out editor Jim Radosta was unequivocal in his positive reaction to Religulous. While acknowledging that “Mocking fundamentalist wackos is like shooting wolves from a helicopter,” he gave the film an A+. (Read an excellent interview Radosta conducted with Maher here.)

Above I referred to myself as “pretty much an atheist,” which I should probably clarify. The thing I’ve struggled with is a certain sense of spirituality that I’ve had as long as I can remember, which has in the past prevented me from identifying unequivocally as an atheist. (In the interview linked above, Maher says he prefers the term “rationalist” to “atheist” because of the latter term’s negative connotations, and admits “I’m not sure there’s not some God or some force.”) This is where Richard Dawkins comes to the rescue. In The God Delusion he differentiates between theists (who believe in a supernatural God who is interested in human affairs), deists (who also believe in a supernatural intelligence, but one whose only concern is the laws that govern the universe, and who is detached from human affairs), and pantheists (who “don’t believe in a supernatural God at all, but use the word God as a non-supernatural synonym for Nature.”) Einstein belongs to the latter category and I suppose I do, too. That’s why it was so great to read the following assertion in Dawkins’ book: “A quasi-mystical response to nature and the universe is common among scientists and rationalists. It has no connection with supernatural belief.”

Good to know!