I have watched God take Her love
and squeeze it through a surgeon’s
precise line of vision
to save the heartbeat of a strait
who would probably vomit
to know a Lesbian operated.
I have heard God distill His grandeur
through a Brother’s gay fingers
opening organ pipes in dark
ecclesiastical corners
to make even tired adulterers
tremble at the glory of the Queandom.
I have watched God twinkle
in the eye of a teacher
seducing bored minds
away from sitcoms and comics
into Native Son or a Renoir nude,
only to have God laughed at
when the student ossifies to say,
“Teacher was a harmless bit queer!”
And I have seen God grow bald,
don a wig and sequined gown,
and cruise the streets,
even of small towns,
laughing joyfully to be God,
to understand creation,
to wait out
the slow drainage of stupidity.
A prolific author and lifelong campaigner for the acceptance and inclusion of LGBT people by Christians and in the mainline church, Dr. Louie Crew Clay founded IntegrityUSA, a gay-acceptance group within the Episcopal Church, while teaching at Fort Valley State University in 1974. He married Ernest Clay in 1974 and then again in 2013, when marriage equality had become the law of the land. Known as Louie Crew for most of his life, he took his partner’s surname in his later years.