A Weekend in Knoxville

My girlie and I took advantage of the beautiful weather this weekend to take a trip to Knoxville, TN, and hang with some friends in Old Town, which is just beautiful. Performance poet Julia Nance's terrific Bookmark Slideshow on Saturday night. Sunday morning brunch just blocks from where Hank Williams, Sr.'s body was discovered days after going missing in the city. Gentrified cafes operating on the bottom floor of what used to be railroad-catering whorehouses. It was very, very cool.

When we left on Saturday, the Vatican had not yet announced that the Pope had passed on (maybe he hadn't at that time, I'm still not clear). Anyway, arriving to meet our friends for espresso martinis at The Cha Cha, our first question was whether John Paul had died.

It was an interesting evening filled with a lot of people in their early 20s and some considerably older than I, but nearly every homo I spoke to all night had kind words and sadness over the loss of John Paul. I know that there is a great variety of opinion within the gay community and I had some e-mails waiting for me this morning that were very critical of John Paul, but I was surprised by the depth of the respect that was so clearly felt by so many people who were labeled by John Paul II as "evil" and "self indulgent people".

I wish that in the political footballery that is the modern gay rights movement, more people on the right understood the common faith that gays and lesbians share with them. Politics in America, and in many places, seems so bent on divisions these days. I know that many of us are yearning for a leader who will work to bridge the divides and reawaken our sense that we are all Americans and we are all in this together.

I think of my friend Jen in Knoxville, 23 years old and raised in the Catholic church, explaining that when she was very small she thought John Paul II was God. One wonders how much influence her Catholic upbringing and John Paul's emphasis on justice contributed to her becoming an HIV/AIDS educator working in marginalized communities.

This is not the sort of work John Paul would commend, but it is the sort of work that he inspired. It's the sort of legacy of which the Church should be proud, but isn't. Probably not the next Pope, but maybe the one after that will be able to expand the Church's miserly view of gays and lesbians around the world. He could open the doors of the Catholic Church to people of faith and good will, recognizing that love is, after all, love, and the highest ideal of man and man's conception of God flows solely from it.

Like many others, I await the Church's reciprocation of the kindness I saw from a bunch of queers in Knoxville this weekend. I know I'll be waiting for a long time. I know I may go the way of John Paul before the Church ever recognizes the beauty of all of God's children. And I will continue to respect and applaud the faith and good works of the Catholic Church, and marvel at the warmth felt towards it by those it excludes in the meantime.