www.GayByGod.com

But the corny—is that CornyByGod, or CornyByDesign, or CornyByAccident?

Hoo boy, what a cynical old hag I’ve become. Here’s this lovely, very well-intentioned nonprofit group dedicated to affirming the spiritual life of queer people, with a website that tells us that they are praying for us, brothers and sisters, actually praying: “We pray that this website as well as it's promotional items will provide positive affirmation of God’s love and acceptance to persons that identify themselves within the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgendered (GLBT) community,” and all I can think is, “Yeah … you didn’t need that apostrophe in it’s.”

They sell a Bible cover with an embroidered rainbow cross, for God’s sake.

When did I get so negative about being so affirmative? There is certainly an ongoing need for the queer community to embrace its spiritually motivated members, just as there is an ongoing need for many faith communities to embrace queer folk. Duh. And here is one harmless group that unabashedly starts at Square One: You’re okay, God’s okay.

The group sent out a press release, and then they good-naturedly sent out some of the comments they got from some people who received the press release. “The whole idea of Christianity and religion in general is silly and infantile,” wrote one gentleman from an AIDS project in Philadelphia. “Religious doctrines are based on a combination of conflicting beliefs and fantasy. Find something more useful to do with your life.”

Meow. I tend to think it’s a pretty big world out there, and what may work for you may not be my cup of tea. I, for one, will never, as long as I live, understand men who choose to wear women’s undergarments. Never. You people must be insane. You are required neither by law nor by custom to wear elastic and wires and yet you do. Insane.

I cannot seem to extend this magnanimity to GayByGod.

Maybe it’s (not its) the brochure they offer. You can buy bundles of brochures (with space for your organization’s label) emblazoned with “Gay or Christian? You can be both!” and “take a new look … God wants you back.” Or maybe it’s their logo: a rainbow of sheep. Sheep, for crying out loud. Because, as Handel helped drill into our heads, we—like sheep—have gone astray. We have turned, everyone, to his own way.

Or maybe it’s the way they raise funds via donations: “Make a $10 contribution and allow us to bless you with this magnet.” Of the rainbow sheep.

Am I so postmodern that I cannot bear their earnest good cheer? I doubt it; I’m an absolute sucker for Norman Rockwellesque Wal-Mart ads featuring employees who love their jobs.

I think it may be that I have so fully swallowed both our American pluralism and our American individualism that I can no longer conceive of an organization that is proudly generically Christian—not narrowed down to a denomination like Lutherans or Methodists, but Christian. How on earth can there be a group that affirms queer Christians? It is at once too narrow and too broad. If a group is on-message about this “You’re okay, God’s okay” stuff, it would seem to be necessary to work to affirm all queer people in their spiritual lives—not just people who already identify as Christians.

Or the organization would be working within the American Baptist denomination, or within the Presbyterian synods, or perhaps within Congregationalist churches west of the Mississippi with fewer than 400 members—something that at least on paper would seem to unite these queer Christians.

Queer Christians, I daresay, have far more in common with queer Jews and queer Zoroastrians than they have with each other.

But God bless GayByGod for trying.