“But then Pastor Clive would have to believe in evolution,” Vanessa says.
Thinking of Pastor Clive makes me think about the gauntlet we had to run yesterday to get into court. Last night, Wade Preston had been on the Hannity show. Today there will be twice as much media. Twice as much attention focused on me.
I’m used to it; I’m a performer after all. But there’s an enormous difference between an audience that’s watching you because they can’t wait to see what comes next and an audience that’s watching you because they’re waiting for you to fail.
Suddenly nothing about Pastor Clive seems funny at all.
I roll onto my side, staring at the buttery light on the wood floor, wondering what would happen if I phoned Angela and told her I had the flu. Hives. The Black Plague.
Vanessa curves her body around mine, tangles our ankles together. “Stop thinking,” she says again. “You’re going to be fine.”
One of the hidden costs of a courtroom trial is the amount of time that your real life is entirely interrupted by something you’d much rather keep secret. Maybe you’re a little ashamed; maybe you just don’t think it’s anyone’s business. You have to take personal time off work; you have to assume that everything else is on hold and this takes precedence.
In this, a lawsuit is not much different from in vitro.
Because of this—and because Vanessa’s taking off just as much time as I am—we decide that we will spend an hour at the high school before we have to go to court for the day. Vanessa can clear her desk and put out whatever fires have sprung up since yesterday; I will meet with Lucy.
Or so we think, until we turn the corner from the school parking lot and find a mob of picketers, holding signs and chanting.
FEAR GOD, NOT GAYS
JUDGMENT IS COMING
NO QUEERS HERE
3 GAY RIGHTS: 1. STDS 2. AIDS 3. HELL
Two cops are standing by, warily watching the protest. Clive Lincoln is standing smack in the middle of this fiasco, wearing yet another white suit—this one double-breasted. “We are here to protect our children,” he bellows. “The future of this great country—and those at greatest risk to becoming the prey of homosexuals—homosexuals who work in this very school!”
“Vanessa.” I gasp. “What if he outs you?”
“After all this media coverage, I hardly think that’s possible,” Vanessa says. “Besides, the people I care about already know. The people I don’t care about—well, they’ll have to just deal with it. They can’t fire me because I’m gay.” She stands a little taller. “Angela woulddroolto take that case.”
A school bus pulls up, and as the baffled kids stream out of it, the church members yell at them, or shove signs in their faces. One small, delicate boy, wearing a hooded sweatshirt that has been yanked tight around his face, turns bright red when he sees the signs.
Vanessa leans closer to me. “Remember what we were talking about this morning? He’s one of the other fifteen.”
The boy ducks his head, trying to become invisible.
“I’m going to run interference,” Vanessa says. “You okay on your own here?” She doesn’t wait to hear my answer but barrels through the crowd—shoving with a linebacker’s force until she reaches the boy and carefully steers him through this forcefield of hate. “Why don’t you get a life?” Vanessa yells at Pastor Clive.
“Why don’t you get aman?” he replies.
Suddenly Vanessa’s face is just as red as the boy’s. I watch her disappear into the school doors, still trying to refocus the student’s attention.
“Homosexuals are teaching our children—trying to convert them to their lifestyle,” Pastor Clive says. “What irony is it thatguidanceis being provided to these impressionable youth by those who live in sin?”
I grab the sleeve of a policeman. “This is a school. Surely they shouldn’t be protesting here. Can’t you get rid of them?”
“Not unless they actually do something violent. You can blame the liberals for the flip side of democracy, lady. Guys like this get to blow their horn; terrorists move in the neighborhood. God bless the U.S.A.,” he says sarcastically. He looks at me, cracks his gum.
“I have nothing against homosexuals,” Pastor Clive says. “But I do not like what they do. Gays already have equal rights. What they want are special rights. Rights that will slowly but surely take away from your own freedoms. In places where they have prevailed, speaking my mind, like I am right now, could land me in jail for hate speech. In Canada and England and Sweden, pastors and ministers and cardinals and bishops have been sued or sentenced to prison for preaching against homosexuality. In Pennsylvania, an evangelical group carrying signs like you were arrested for ethnic intimidation.”
Another busload of students walks by. One of them throws a spitball at Pastor Clive. “Dickhead,” the kid says.
The pastor wipes it calmly off his face. “They have already been brainwashed,” he says. “The school systems now teach even babies in kindergarten that having two mommies is normal. If your child says differently, he’ll be humiliated in front of his peers. But it doesn’t stop in schools. You could wind up like Chris Kempling—a Canadian teacher who was suspended for writing a letter to the editor stating that gay sex poses health risks and that many religions find homosexuality immoral. He was just stating the facts, friends, and yet he was suspended without pay for a month. Or Annie Coffey-Montes, a Bell Atlantic employee who was fired for asking to be removed from the e-mail list of gays and lesbians in her company that advertised parties and dances. Or Richard Peterson, who posted Bible verses about homosexuality on his office cubicle at Hewlett-Packard and found himself out of a job.”
He is a cheerleader for the cheerless, I realize. Someone who doesn’t gather people to his cause as much as drive them there with paranoia.
