Saturday, December 5, 1998

A lesbian goes undercover with the religious right and finds several surprises

By Murray Dubin

Knight Ridder Newspapers

NEW YORK -- The writer wore a disguise: a wig, flowered hat, long flowered dress and pearls. The pearls were probably a little much. "I may have overdone it. I had not been dressing too femininely back then."

Radical feminist-lesbian, butch-looking Donna Minkowitz was going undercover in 1993 to report on a two-day meeting of the Christian Coalition for the Village Voice.

And she found something she wasn't looking for.

"What disturbed me the most about them was present in me. It was the misogyny, the fear and hatred of women. Me, a feminist and a lesbian. I hated the clothes. They were feminine and dowdy and it was a humiliation wearing them."

She was a lesbian separatist, believing that "we're strong and powerful," and looking down on straight women, pointing to "those submissive women over there, the ones being victimized."

"But wearing those clothes made me look at a part of myself that wants to be submissive and powerless sometimes. It eventually made me realize that being feminine was not a terrible thing."

Her first book, "Ferocious Romance: What My Encounters with the Right Taught Me About Sex, God and Fury," tells the story of this coming out of Minkowitz, a lesbian and a feminist to the core, but not nearly as radical as before.

Chronicling repeated forays into the religious right, the book also pulls at the orthodoxies of two very different worlds, one politically gay-lesbian and the other, the religiously and politically tilted right. And she finds, to her surprise, similar sinews. Published just weeks ago, it is a book that will likely antagonize both sides.

She is 34, a Brooklyn Jew lacking the borough's accent or affect. A Yale graduate, she does not appear to have been someone messianic about her political beliefs, but she was. Small, with a blend-in-the-crowd face, sweet voice and gentle mien, she does not appear to have been convinced of the holiness of sadomasochism, but she was.

On the page, however, small, sweet and gentle go bye-bye, replaced by audacious, passionate, revealing and just plain funny.

Her writings about the religious right began in 1991 because she was scared of their anti-gay stance. She wanted to know more about the enemy, but instead of crawling under enemy lines, face covered in black, she walked in the front door, adorned with earrings, flowered dress and sensible shoes.

"The Tailhook scandal had just begun. At the Christian Coalition meeting, the women delegates were calling the harassed women from Tailhook sluts. That shocked me, but it also kicked something off in me. I enjoyed it when they said terrible things. I think liberals get a vicarious pleasure ... because we can't say 'God hates fags' or 'Throw the immigrants out.' But we can get some pleasure without taking any responsibility for it.

"I was applauding Ollie North, despite thinking that he's a fascist. I was waving a flag for him and it was very heady. Part of being gay for me was believing that you're better than anyone else. That's ... how people feel at the Christian Coalition."

The Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship has been "kicked out of its own denomination for being too extreme," she writes. Worshipers lying on their backs there are told to "just marinate in the Lord ... Just soak."

Minkowitz: "I knew I'd feel very much at home here, with people who cackle, ululate, and bray their praise of God ... I like people this warm, ecstatic, extreme and cheerily fey. ... My own people, gays and lesbians, have been known to get pretty ecstatic themselves; but I've discovered that our alleged enemies, the religious right, like to go out of control and get crazy as much as we do. They just do it in their own way."

She got inside a Promise Keepers conclave by binding her breasts and adding a mustache. She found the message anti-abortion, anti-gay and "suspicious of sex generally."

But she also found it "startlingly feminist. And in some ways, it was a message that really spoke to me because there's part of me that's a lot like a man. Many lesbians -- and lots of straight women, for that matter -- have grown up terrified of not being tough enough, fearful of weakness and effeminacy."

And she wonders at the moral paradox: "If there is good in 'them,' who believe homosexuality is wrong and give money to the clinic blockaders, then there is liable to be good in the most monstrously evil persons I will ever meet, and mercy will always be required of me."

Moral paradox wasn't on her mind when she read an ad in Charisma Magazine for Total Women Ministries urging a beauty makeover, a way for women to bring themselves closer to God. Minkowitz couldn't resist.

But again, she had to disguise herself. "For me, looking like a woman is harder than clapping for Pat Buchanan," she writes.

The women leaders were Gina and Laura. "The hairbrushes, scarves and other baubles underscore (their) sense of the Holy Spirit as a spirit of love and frivolity, nurturing and self-nurturing, a feminine lightheartedness I have always envied. ...

"Frivolity has always been hard for me," she says. "Butch people are just not that frivolous."

Later there is hugging, holding and a "promiscuous friendliness" that Minkowitz likens to a ladies' night at a Manhattan gay bar. Clothing and accessory tips ("vests are wonderful, especially for small-busted women") precede a spiritual session when people begin to be "slain in the spirit," falling back into the arms of others.

Women come up to the stage and Gina cries, "Fill her, Lord Jesus, fill her!" And a minister named Grace begins singing loudly, "Ain't nobody do me like Jesus!' She gets the audience to respond, "No, ain't nobody do me like Jesus!"

Everyone being so oblivious to the service's sexual nature disturbed Minkowitz, who says, "They weren't distinguishing between 'them' and 'you.' That erodes the sense of the other person as an individual."

In the end, the book is about her relationship with the religious right, a quasi-romance filled with sex, paradox and fear, a metaphor for relationships, hers, ours, yours.

She is no longer a strident believer in the rightness or victim status of gay men and lesbians. Nor has she become a true believer in "The 700 Club." She passionately disagrees with much of the message of the religious right, but better understands its appeal. And she liked many of its believers. She writes:

"I had to disarm myself to get inside this land. I took off my weapons, and my incense too. And as my feet dipped in the velvety grass, I could see there was no redeemer. No enslaver. Only other people."

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(c) 1998, The Philadelphia Inquirer.

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