Chris Jepson: Take God shopping

“Fasten your seatbelt, kids, it’s gonna be a rough ride.” For as long as I can remember I thought that the universe — after the Big Bang — would expand until it reached its absolute maximum size (billions of light years across) and then collapse back in on itself. Sigh, that isn’t the case. Not only is the universe expanding, it’s accelerating. And that’s when I came up with the child advisory about mankind’s condition, “Fasten your seatbelt, kids, it’s gonna be a rough ride.”

Remember in seventh-grade science when you were first introduced to the idea that the Earth rotates on its axis while revolving around the sun? And then the miles per hour figures were added. Yep, we’re rotating at around 1,000 mph while racing around the sun at, oh, 66,650 mph. My genuinely limited mind really could not then absorb such ideas. But practically speaking I had enough sense to turn my back to the wind — no guy I ever saw had much success peeing against the wind.

Yet that is exactly what Republicans are doing concerning gay marriage. Here you are, a 65-year-old man, married for decades with the requisite children, and you know in your heart of masculine hearts that what is normal is man on woman sex. Period. No debate. No discussion. Not only that, it is God’s will. End of story.

I am about Mitt Romney’s age and when he says that “such matters” (homosexuality) were not openly discussed in the mid-west in the early 1960s, he’s correct. That is because being gay was such a repressed and punished life that few individuals had the courage to be out and open. Oh, I had some suspicions about certain men at the YMCA but they were so nonthreatening as to be sweet. Essentially, I had so little experience sexually, my mind so wrapped around the mystery of all things feminine that I did not even remotely think about that which was “unnamed.” And if it (being “queer”) ever came up, I would knowingly laugh yet was totally clueless. Totally.

That was 50 years ago. Fifty years ago. You think the Earth is moving fast, well, we’re moving along at glacier speeds compared to the rapid turn (evolution?) in the acceptance of gays — as human beings worthy of our respect. How far we’ve come from the 60s.

But it’s abnormal and it’s against God’s way. Abnormal? OK, it isn’t your cup of tea, but because you don’t live that way, does that make it abnormal? No, I really don’t necessarily think so. Because it’s not right for you doesn’t mean it isn’t right for her or him.

God’s way is a trickier argument to refute. Why? Because we have so much invested in our belief in God (and “the” way) that anything remotely challenging one’s belief, well, that is simply unacceptable.

And that is so profoundly sad. God is an evolutionary idea. He/She/”X” has changed right along with the human imagination.

It is OK every now and then to put a new suit of clothes on God. Go ahead. Take God shopping for some new t-h-r-e-a-d-s. I’d go haute couture, for sure. Damn the cost. Some new shoes, a dress. Perhaps, an idea. Or, two. Maybe it is time God came out of the closet, too. Ya think?

If not, the ride could be unnecessarily rough. For all of us.

Jepson is a 24-year resident of Florida. He’s fiscally conservative, socially liberal, likes art and embraces diversity of opinion. Reach him at [email protected]