Faggot: An Essay By William Control

I made a stop at a grocery store the other night to pick up some supplies on my way to the studio. As I got out of my car, I heard two men arguing—not in a friendly way. One of the men was a heavier set fellow, about 5’8”, in a flannel shirt and work boots. His mustache was thick, peppered black and grey. I’d say he was in his mid-forties. For brevity’s sake, we’ll call him “Mustache.” The other man was younger—in his late twenties—with broad shoulders, a collared shirt and slacks, maybe 6’2” and very neat (if you know what I mean). We’ll call him “Gabriel.”

As I exited my vehicle, the only portion of dialogue I caught was this:

MUSTACHE: I don’t understand why you all walk around and flaunt your gayness in front of everyone. It’s sick.

GABRIEL: Well, sir, this is who I am. If you don’t like it, you can crawl back to the shanty you live in with your sister who is also your girlfriend and watch more Fox News.


MUSTACHE: God wants you to know that you’re gonna spend eternity in Hell, burning with all the rest of the faggots and unbelievers.


At this point, Mustache lunged to attack Gabriel, who I am fairly certain had a strict workout routine that involves five or six days a week at the local gym. Mustache then proceeded to get the beating of a lifetime: From the letter B, he suffered black eyes, broken teeth, bruises, blood gushing from his nose, you get the point. When the cops arrived, they were both handcuffed and taken to into custody.


What sort of phenomenon can make an otherwise decorous and generous human being say and act terribly inhumane?

My guess would be a literal interpretation of religious scripture mixed with a lifetime of indoctrinated hate and plain intolerance. Couple that with the characteristic differences inside our species, and some folks just have a hard time viewing people as people and not “fags with ulterior motives”.


I have no idea what kind of man Mustache was. He could have been a psycho for all I know. Chances are he was a regular, hard-working, tax-paying American citizen who has a family that he loves and goes to church on Sunday. The same goes with Gabriel. He probably has a degree in business, works for some accounting firm in the city and has a boyfriend that he loves deeply. I didn’t stick around to get their life stories. I can only speculate.


Since the 1970’s, the LGBT community has been fighting for the same civil liberties as the rest of the nation. Almost forty years have passed and they still have not acquired every right heterosexuals have.
Why has it taken us this long to arrive at this inglorious doorstep? Why is there still an attitude that homosexuals are somehow inferior to the average man or woman?

In a society that has had tremendous advancements with regard to science and evolution, there are only five states out of 50 that grant same-sex marriage certificates? I’ll repeat that: five out of 50. New York, Rhode Island and Maryland recognize same-sex marriages but do not grant them. What is going on?

The Answer? You might have guessed it: religion.

When you have “people of faith” elected as public speakers and representatives, invariably their own beliefs will show up in politics. There’s just no way to separate it. The ban on same-sex marriage is truly suspicious in a country that advocates so highly the importance of family values, togetherness and supportive commitments for children in a system that has run amok. This ban was set in motion and then propelled by believers who concede that we live on a planet created by a divine totalitarian dictator who actually has some sort of opinion about which hole we stick our dick in or what kind of genitals decorate the person with whom we give our love and affection to.

The constitution with which we base our lives, our freedoms, our voices, our right to assemble peacefully and our right at free speech  was laid at our bloodstained trotters by the founding fathers of this country, who were above all…. Secularists. They understood that we needed a brand new way of living and thinking. If we were going to stand alone in the new world, it was imperative that the church could no longer dictate law the way it did back in Europe. Thomas Jefferson wrote the Virginia statute for religious freedom which then became the basis of our first amendment right as citizens of this great nation.

“Congress shall make no law respecting and an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the exercise thereof”


There is a problem here. Can you see it?

Gabriel is exactly the same as anyone else. Who are we to say that his personal preference of whom to love, is wrong, immoral, unnatural or unclean? And why do we continue to perpetuate the ridiculous belief that a higher being even has an opinion on this matter? Further proof that the God of Abraham is a man-made, fictitious creation to appease illiterate peasants and barbarians from Iron Age Palestine.


Hatred against the nature of homosexuality has been perpetuated through the ages because of religion, not in spite of it. Children born to parents of faith are taught hate and intolerance on this matter because of this meaningless and nonsensical platoon of letters strung together in the Old Testament.

“Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.” —
Leviticus 18:22

If you take the bible as the literal, infallible word of God, then you have to believe that homosexuality is an “abomination.” You look down on the gay and lesbian community as being a sick, uninformed, unnatural group of hopeless sinners who choose to live a life of rebellion toward your God—a faction of disgusting ingrates who will inherit a woefully dark and incredibly painful eternity, whilst you watch from the balcony of heaven with joy in your heart. Some folks rejoice openly in public about the fact that there will not be “faggots” in heaven.

This wretched, disgraceful, horribly shallow and inhuman way to act is disgustingly accepted in many places of America and around the world. If this applies to your thought process, you should be deeply ashamed of yourself. Yes, I’ll say it again… If you think that gays go to hell and actually rejoice in that fact, you…should…be…fucking…. ashamed.


Dr. Warren Carter, professor at St. Paul School of Theology, and other theologians can somewhat agree on the fact that this passage in Leviticus written in Hebrew was in reference to a pederast version of homosexual activity that was happening in the Roman empire at the time. It was referring to men who like to fuck little boys—not consenting adults who love each other deeply and want nothing more than to spend the rest of their lives creating families and contributing to the progression of our society. It had a completely different meaning!

I love how people pick and choose what passages from the bible they base their morality on, as if it’s some sort of divine salad bar. “I’ll take a sacrificial Caesar please, but hold the rape, genocide and torture. I’ll also take a second helping of abomination dressing, on the side… yeah, that’s great. Thanks!”

Our morals have evolved past this stuff. We used to have the preposterous notion that the world was flat. Can you even imagine that? Fearing the ocean and falling of the edge of the world was completely legitimate. Less than 10,000 years ago, we used to presume the world was created in six days because of the way we interpreted biblical scripture and denied truth that science and reason could give us. Now the theory of evolution is no longer a theory, it’s backed up by evidence in the fossil record, molecular biology and  radiocarbon dating. It’s evident in genetic mutation by way of natural selection. The belief about God has evolved just the same. And in the face of all the evidence, believers have to cling desperately to the shreds of Iron Age doctrine in a pathetic attempt to reconcile it with the world as we know it today.


Okay, yes, the evidence for evolution exists, and since we can’t explain where it comes from, let’s call it creation by an “Intelligent Designer.” Fancy. No, not really. If you ask me, that is pretty convenient for the faithful. I am unimpressed.

Changing the interpretation of the narrative to fit when the facts keep bubbling to the surface does not make it holy, divinely created or grounded in anything other than nonsense. What it does is cast huge shadows of doubt that any religious doctrine conveys even the slightest bit of truth at all. Someday—hopefully very soon—we will simply grow out of our need to feel somebody watching over us  every minute of every day, judging us while we sleep, guiding our moves, convicting us of thought crime, and never leaving us to our own devices. It’s so very S&M. Imagine that!


Now some of you are Christian. You are sitting there saying to yourself, “Well, I am a person of faith and I would never act intolerant to gays. In fact, I know some gay people and quite like them.” Or maybe, “I am gay, I am religious, and I take the bible as metaphor for the morals on which I base my life.”


I have met scores of people—religious faith in tow—who actually live the way they interpret belief in accordance to loving their neighbor and treating all men and women with respect. The world needs more people like you.


It is a shame that a good portion of you feel sorry for gays because of what the bible says about homosexuality—or rather, what you perceive to be a specific position the bible stands firm on. The bottom line is this: Whether you’re gay, bi, transgender or straight, with the exception of a few, every person on this planet loves to fuck. None of us would be here if we didn’t. We can either be entranced and let this natural, extremely beautiful act of seduction fill our hearts with pleasure, elation and eloquence, or we can shove ourselves against a wall of guilt and shame, hiding our natural instincts by making sure that the right incantations are muttered in the correct direction, oppressed by every religion that would rather us suffer all of our days under the watchful eye of a cruel dictator than ever see the slightest nipple of freedom.


I have a cousin who lives in Lincoln, Nebraska. Although she identifies with the Republican party and voted for McCain in the last election, I still love her very much. We grew up together in Washington. Her mother and my mother are sisters who left Florida together in the ’70s to find a new life as far away from the clutches of a degenerate alcoholic father and his mentally unstable wife. With the exception of Alaska, Seattle is about as far away as you could get here in America.


We were born nearly two years apart—Jan 1982 and Dec 1983. Growing up, she was always a tomboy with rolled up jeans, loved to climb things, play in the dirt, etc.

We were pretty close—brother and sister if you will. She loved to taunt me and I loved to torture her. A typical case of sibling rivalry.


When she explained to me a number of years ago that she was gay, it was not surprising one bit. I was more aghast to find out that she identified as conservative than gay. I had never known her to have a boyfriend or even talk about being attracted to one. Ever. The fact that there are cretins living among us who consider her and her partner “immoral, disgusting sinners who will burn in hell forever” is a barricade our society needs to burn down with the fervor and determination of a new world we all should envision coming over the horizon.


She now lives with a lovely girl who just finished college, they bought a house in Nebraska a few years ago to be close to her mother. When I spoke with her the other night about this fight I had witnessed  and the rhetoric the mustache was spewing, she said something that gave me a little hope: “Most kids in this generation are pretty tolerant of changes within our society, and someday this might not be an issue.”


This is definitely true. I see it every day on tour. In the next wave of human life—not just in America, but around the globe. I see it in the eyes of my son, who I hope will never have to witness people wasting so much time despising one another because of different skin pigment or sexual preference. A world where our human species is judged on the impact of actions, not by some archaic opinion of morality that was allegedly bestowed to illiterate peasants in the desert 2,000 years ago.


Morality is innate within us all. It is ascending to the surface we skate upon daily. Ice of the cold hearts we once knew are melting. While the old guard of pessimism and hatred of human nature begins to die out, we can take solace in knowing that gay, straight, black and white are terms that are fading into the distance, quickly becoming something of the past. Witch trials and institutionalized slavery were vicious atrocities endorsed by religious doctrine that, in hindsight, we recognize to be so morally reprehensible, one struggles to comprehend how anyone could ever justify it.


Ladies and gentlemen, we can terminate incredible brutality and savage obscenity derived from these sadistic ideas and start figuring out ways to push towards human solidarity.

Will you stand with me?

This blog was reprinted with permission from WilliamControl.com.