Today, I was met at Union Station in Washington, D.C. by Paul Peachy, the first of many “author escorts” the publisher has hired to guide me through the media maze that I will encounter in each city visited. Ken Siman, my man at Penguin, was kind enough to lodge me in “the penthouse” of one of the nation’s oldest hotels, the Tabard Inn on N St. NW. As described on their website “Washington D.C.’s quintessential small hotel located on a quiet tree-lined street just five blocks from the White House.”

Gary loves antique. (Thank God. Maybe that’s why he still loves me.) I on the other hand love modern and though the sheets had been changed and the pillows fluffed I am certain that George Washington slept in the very bed where I slept. The massive attic room, reached only by climbing a narrow circular stairway five floors above the lobby (no elevator, of course), was filled with furniture that Pilgrims brought with them on the Mayflower (where is Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams when we need them?) I bathed that night in a cast iron tub with claws.

Living in the Tabard Inn, once a distinguished private mansion, was a step back into history. There may have been no real ghosts in that place but after dining on Chef Pedro Matamoros’s spring rolls stuffed with tender beef and plum sauce, house-smoked salmon, onions and capers with a finale of freshly baked blueberry scones and cream, it was not difficult to imagine ghosts floating about the place.

Like the old Inn, Religion Gone Bad is peopled by ghosts who carried to this city and to our nation the religious teachings that made same-sex intimacy a “sin.” A doctrine invented by the Vatican in the Middle Ages (to punish what they did not understand), the “sin” became a crime in 1533 under Henry VIII and that “crime” migrated to the “new world” with the Protestant settlers who founded the first American colonies.

Gay historian, David Bianco, reminds us that although there were colonial laws making “sodomy” a crime punishable by death, from 1624 to 1740 there were only twenty recorded “sodomy” cases in the colonies with the death penalty enforced just four times. And though those four deaths were tragic and unconscionable, we can take some comfort in their very small number over a period of approximately 116 years. It illustrates that our founding fathers were not preoccupied with “sodomites” or with arresting and prosecuting those who participated in same-sex intimacy. (Religion Gone Bad, pp 134-140)
That is no longer true. Today I’m visiting Washington, D.C. where the President himself has joined other leaders of the Christian right in calling for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would deny gay and lesbian Americans more than 1,000 rights and protections that go with marriage and make us outcasts in our own country. During a live appearance on Sirius Radio’s the “Young Turks” the two hosts, though sympathetic to the current state of LGBT rights in this country, just couldn’t believe that Robertson, Falwell, or Dobson were sincere or that we should take them seriously. They delighted in caricaturing these leaders from the Christian right as “phonies” and “money grubbers.” They didn’t seem to understand that these fundamentalists are true believers and that over the years while liberals laughed at their antics, these same leaders of the Christian right slowly and surely took power over church and state alike. Getting our friends and allies to take the fundamentalists seriously may be the biggest challenge I’ll face on this trip.

During an interview with Katherine Volin, a reporter with the Washington Blade, and a recorded XM Satellite Radio interview for “The Agenda” with Joe Solmonese, the new Executive Director of the Human Rights Campaign, I was delighted to point out that there are lesbian and gay leaders who are equally concerned about the fundamentalist Christian rise to power. Just recently, Harry Knox was appointed director of HRC’s brand new Religion and Faith Program and Jake Reitan represents Soulforce on the National Religious Leader Roundtable of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

This morning during a cab ride across D.C. en route to National Airport we drove through the relatively new World War II monument with its granite pillars and bronze wreathes memorializing the Americans who died storming the beaches of Normandy or raising the flag over Iwo Jima. At one end of that impressive mall the Washington Monument pierced the sky and at the other end the Lincoln Memorial glowed in the early morning sunlight.

I am an American. I love my country. I get chills riding past the monuments and memorials honoring the brave men and women who have sacrificed their lives to protect this nation from tyranny. Now, however, a new tyranny threatens. With Christian fundamentalists exerting their all-too- powerful influence over the Executive, Legislative and even Judicial branches of our government, we must mobilize another generation of brave men and women who will risk suffering and sacrifice to keep democracy in place and oppose with relentless determination those who would oppress us. Like tyrants and would be tyrants through the ages, our current President has declared a so called “war on terror” to deceive and distract us from the real dangers that threaten the world’s oldest democracy.

Yesterday, the whole nation stopped to remember the tragedy of 9/11 and the men and women who died in the Towers, the Pentagon and on Flight 93. I’m certain that the President and Mrs. Bush were experiencing real grief as they lay flowers at Ground Zero and bowed in prayer. But the President and his handlers know well that it is a necessary evil to fan the flames of fear and loathing against Muslim terrorists to keep the American people from dealing with the real issues of prejudice, oppression, and injustice, of war, hunger, poverty, illness, ignorance, disease in this country and abroad.

The President and his fellow fundamentalist Christians are playing the blame game for the nation’s current dilemma. One day after the Towers fell and the Pentagon exploded into flame Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell (in a slight of hand worthy of Houdini) blamed 9/11 (at least in part) on the nation’s growing acceptance of homosexuality and homosexuals. They explained to the millions of Americans who hear their powerful media voices that 9/11 was not just a despicable act of terror by a handful of Muslim extremists but a warning from God that “he will lift his hand of blessing” from this great nation if homosexuality is every considered “normal” or homosexuals are given recognition as a protected minority.

In my book store appearances across the US, people are fascinated by readings from Religion Gone Bad that explain how fundamentalist Christian planned and have been systematically carrying out their “solution” for this so called “gay threat.” In 1994, an impressive group of fundamentalist leaders gathered in a castle in Glen Eyrie, a conference grounds just outside Colorado Springs. We found tapes of those secret sessions in the Tufts University Library, transcribed them, and present them for the first time in chapters 4-5 of Religion Gone Bad. Step by step these fundamentalist leaders have implemented their “homosexual solution.” Amending state constitutions and eventually the US Constitution to limit the rights and protections of marriage is the next stage in their attempt to demonize and demean our relationships, deny us our rights, drive us back into our closets and worse.

Muslim terrorists are not nearly the threat to this nation as the Christian fundamentalists who terrorize us with their literal understanding of the Bible and their determination to superimpose these religious beliefs on the nation through federal and state legislation and constitutional amendments. Their teachings trickle down to discrimination, intolerance, suffering and death. We must mobilize an army of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans and our allies to confront those teachings and the Christian terrorist who exploit them.

In 1837, just a few years before our nation was divided by civil war, Abe Lincoln spoke these words: “At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer if it ever reaches, it must spring up from among us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we ourselves must be its author and finisher.”

Our freedoms are at stake. Democracy is on the block. If we don’t rally to defeat the lies and defend the truth, we have only ourselves to blame for the oppression that will follow