Leaving the Christian Cosmology, Lil Nas X, Montero, and the Kiss of the Rabbit God
Starting a discussion about possible religious directions of the Gay community.
Leaving the Christian Cosmology: Lil Nas X, Montero, and the Kiss of the Rabbit God & Sadao Hasegawa.
This article is to open the discussion about religion and Gays and explore possible new directions. It isn’t promoting a single direction for Gays to take. What it is suggesting is that Gays should look at what directions that are possible for themselves. These are not necessarily the directions we should take, I just want people to start thinking by sharing some speculative thinking.
Recently Lil Nas X released the video for his song Montero. I provide a link to it here:
It has over 460 million as of 4/27/2022 7:36 am CST. It has 10 million likes.
A little over a year ago it was at 66.5 million on 4/1/2021, by 5/23/2021 it was 216 million. It is a great video in terms of rejecting anti-gay Christianity and defying anti-gay Christianity and mocking anti-gay Christianity. Sharing this video I think sharing this video is a great way to support gay rights.
There is one issue with this video in that it exists within the Christian cosmology, within the Christian mythopoeic imagination. This isn’t a failing, to mock anti-gay Christianity it would have to be inside the Christian cosmology to throw it in Christian homophobia’s face.
But I think what Gays need to consider is leaving the Christian cosmology and go someplace else. Andrew Huang, who by the way is the video producer of “FKA Twigs,” from which “Montero” seems to have borrowed some artistic ideas, is the producer of “Kiss of the Rabbit God.”
Huang was formerly a Christian who left the faith. He said he missed having a god and made this video. I will provide a link to the interview at the end of this article. This video is about Tu’er, a gay god in the Taoist faith, who visits a Chinese American restaurant worker and enables the person to accept his identity as a Gay person. It has 2.6 million viewers. Please share it to help it get more views. It has been going up about 100,000 views a month.
The thing is that Huang has left the Christian cosmology.
Gay Christians are always begging for acceptance and trying to convince straight Christians that they shouldn’t be rejected. They see small shifts as major breakthroughs and as signs of hope.
Gay Catholics are always holding up some statement by a Catholic Pope as some hopeful sign and telling people that the Catholic Church moves slowly. I have been hearing that from gay Catholics going back into the 1970s. The gay Catholics never consider that all that is happening is that the Catholic church is reformulating its position for an age that is less and less homophobic, but hasn’t essentially changed its position.
The LGBTQ members of the United Methodist Church (UMC) worked decades to achieve some type of acceptance, but that church wouldn’t marry them, and in the end the UMC chose to be aligned with anti-LGBTQ worldwide Methodist churches.
And what do all these pleading Christians hope to do? What is the best they can hope for? In the end to be tolerated in a sexually repressive faith that has no recognition of LGBTQ identity in its theology. A rigidly binary faith that doesn’t tolerate a multiplicity of belief and insists that its members exclude all non-Christian religious beliefs. It should not be surprising that a faith that incorporates intolerance as an element is intolerant of LGBTQ.
With Taoism there is a god for LGBTQ. There is the theological space for LGBTQ to be recognized as part of the world. The begging for acceptance isn’t necessary, not even an idea.
There are religions of the world that aren’t Abrahamic in their origins, that is aren’t Christian, Jewish, or Muslim, and are open to multiplicities of belief.
A Chinese person could follow Confucism, Buddhism, and Taoism in degrees that suited himself. There is even a famous painting of three scholars walking through a forest, one a Confucist scholar, one a Buddist, and on a Taoist having an amicable conversation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_laughs_at_Tiger_Brook
In watching East Asian movies you will see individuals following more than one faith. They can have different degrees of involvement.
For LGBTQ if they are essentially in a non-Western religion they can consider a multiplicy of faiths. There is space for LGBTQ in the non-Western religions.
Sadao Hasegawa was a Japanese gay artist who incorporated Asian mythologies into his art work. I think his art is good for gays to observe since it offers the idea of a vaster theological, metaphysical, divine world with space for gay people and their sexuality. Since he was focused on men, I can’t say that he offers something for other sexual minorities, I leave that for their determination. If you scroll down a ways, you will see Hasegawa’s mythopoeic imagination at work. You can see gay desire and sex as part of the divine. (Two Thai deities with fire for hair, painted in 1992.)
The webpage with Sadao Hasegawa’s work.
http://www.kristianfpower.com/HSG/sh3.html
The picture is at this link.
http://www.kristianfpower.com/HSG/IMG/076%20na%201992%20.jpg
Some other links.
The Christians in their intolerant narrow faith, with a history of crimes going back centuries, is not the only choice out there.
Yet, the gay community seems to be focused on hoping to coax Christians for some sliver, some crumb of tolerance. The reporting on gay Christians never questions whether their endeavor is a futile one or worthwhile. The only alternative that seems to be discussed is atheism, and you can tell which gay atheists have Evangelical or Fundamentalist Christian backgrounds because they are endlessly pointing out the failings of the Christian faith. Their atheism always is facing and glaring at Christianity.
I say that in the immensity of the universe, in the vastness of human experience we have other choices, other visions for follow and we should start looking into them. I myself am planning to visit the temple of Tu’er in Taiwan this year. We have a Facebook page for people planning visit the temple. I provide a link at the end of this article. I am not Taoist, but I want to see what other Gay cultures have done with religious belief.
This is a good article about the Gay Taoist god and Huang’s movie about him.
https://www.goldthread2.com/identity/kiss-of-the-rabbit-god-andrew-thomas-huang/article/3016195
This is a Facebook page about Tu’er and visiting the temple.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/596788864540581
There are always going to be people who will be religious in some fashion. An expectation that the Gay community is going to become entirely or even mostly atheist is unreasonable. If Gays leave Christianity, they will want some options besides atheism. I mention Tu’er only as an example of one possibility. I am still discovering other non-Western Gay faiths.
This is the Lil Nas X channel.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_uMv3bNXwapHl8Dzf2p01Q
Montero on Saturday Night Live (SNL).
I was born into a Catholic family and got confirmed, but left the church at 18 when I came out. For ten years, I subscribed to no religion and did the “spiritual but not religious” thing, but then was introduced to Unitarian Universalism and dove in at Arlington Street Church in Boston for ten years. Today, I embrace Paganism, and have been learning about its diverse and many paths for the past 15 years or so. All of this is to say that my spiritual path went exactly the way this article suggests and I would like to shout out a huge “YES!” to the author’s suggestion here. And it’s not just the gay community that should venture beyond the christian cosmology. All young people, all people who realize we’ve broken our connection to the planet and to one another, all progressive people should look beyond the Christian cosmology. I looked to my ancestors and found magic and Paganism. What will you find? You won’t know until you look. Great article!!