NOTE: Somehow this chapter did not get posted into the proper sequence when I first posted this story. I apologize for the seeming incontinuity. -- Lee
Alicia and Tim Bowman were sitting in the fellowship hall of First Presbyterian Church. They were sharing a table with Marlys Ziemann and Tim’s mother, Susan.
Marlys was a friend of Susan, about the same age, a widow of a J.G. Cherry chemistry professor. She was one of those people who had opinions on everything and could not imagine that there might be some people who did not want to know them. The Bowman children were elsewhere in the building with others their own ages and the four of them were discussing the service they had just heard, given by Rev. Julia Ward, the associate pastor.
‘I just can’t believe that she didn’t really lay it into those judges for putting us in this spot,” Marlys was saying. “It’s so disgusting and immoral and all she could do is say we should pray for help and tell us to remember that humans are made in God’s image. I was made in the image of God, but I can tell you that I haven’t kept it that way and I don’t want everybody to see how poorly I have maintained it and I don’t want to see how everybody else has mismaintained theirs. I suppose that next week she’ll be preaching without her robe, just her stole.”
“Well, Marlys,” Alicia interjected. “Dr. Wilson will be back next week so I imagine that he’ll be doing the preaching. I would be interested in hearing how he addresses these things, but I didn’t think I heard Julia say that she was going naked or suggesting that any of us should. She just reminded us that we are all responsible for our own choices and that there are things we should seek divine help for. And,” she just had to insert her own zinger since sometimes Marlys got on her nerves, “don’t you think that God already sees how poorly you’ve maintained His image?”
“Well, it still isn’t right,” the older woman replied. “I never thought I would live to see the day that people will be running around in public naked. And nobody in this church seems very concerned. I won’t be that long before we have a naked man serving communion.”
“Well, calm down a minute,” Susan Bowman replied. “Nobody’s going to church naked. We don’t even know that anybody’s even going anyplace else without their clothes on. Maybe a few nut cases, but probably not many others. Twenty years ago we went crazy when the homosexuals came out in public so hard. We thought that they’d be recruiting all of our youth and giving everybody AIDS. We survived that. I know that the Mays family wants us to consider some of the economic plusses of the situation, but I haven’t heard of anybody who is signing up. The politicians are screaming, but dysfunctional, but even the ones who kept them from doing anything in the special session, even none of them has said that he or she will make personal use of their so-called ‘new freedom.’ I imagine that if we go downtown or drive to any place in the state, except possible for a few people in a few places in the capital on a weekend evening that you won’t see a single naked person. Remember, they let all of us women go topless a couple of years ago, but outside of a few lesbians at gay rights marches, has anybody ever seen a topless woman?”
Tim Bowman noted, “Well, Mom, I suspect that we will see a few new nudists, but it won’t be a lot. Donald and Edna want us as a business community to be welcoming to visiting naked people, something like a ‘More Light’ church is to wandering, gay Presbyterians. Remember how strange that sounded when that came up? Dad didn’t go to church for a year after that, remember, but it really didn’t change much when all was said and done. I guess that they will be going nude themselves to kick it off, but I’m not sure it’s all that big a deal.”
Marlys was still upset. “And Edna and Donald Mays and most all of that clan are members here. How disgusting! They ought to excommunicate them, but I know they won’t. They give too much. It’s as if they think they’re buying heaven. Like the indulgences the Catholics have, but cleaner.”
Well,” Alicia noted, “I really hadn’t thought about it in the context of indulgences and I’m not sure that it’s the same. Maybe Hugh or Julia could explain that, but it seems different to me. But I do think it’s interesting that I have heard of no politician or any judge in the whole state who has demonstrated an intention to use their new freedom. I think it’s just being overhyped. But Donald and Edna and the rest of them will be doing what they want to on this. We may all find out that the Emperor has no clothes in more than just a symbolic way. But even so, I’m not so sure that I don’t like the idea that whether we wear clothes or run about in our birthday suits is any of the government’s concern as long as we aren’t perverts or something.”
“Well, I think they’re all perverts,” Marlys retorted.
Pastor Ward was making the rounds of the tables and approached theirs. Marlys was still feeling a bit disgruntled and asked her, “What kind of vestments does a naked clergyperson wear?” she asked the associate pastor.
“I don’t know. I have never looked into it,” the young associate pastor chuckled. She had been at the church for a bit less than a year and like many young associate pastors she was more acquainted with the children and their parents than the older people of the congregation. Seeing the look on Marlys’ face as she answered the question so flippantly, she suddenly realized that the older woman wasn’t joking so she straightened her demeanor and continued her response.
“I don’t expect that it will happen. Maybe in the Unitarians, but not with us. We’re too conservative socially. I was thinking of it as I did my sermon prep and I tried to vision it, but I just can’t imagine a naked person in a pew. I’m sure that it will happen sooner or later that somebody will at least try to come in that way, but I imagine that Dr. Wilson and the elders will have come up with a position and that the session will have too, so we’ll have to go from there. You know, this is only the second table where anybody has even brought the subject up and I’ve only had two calls from church members since this whole subject came up. This is either a big thing that nobody is taking seriously or a little thing which is being overblown and I don’t think a lot of us can figure out which it is. So I don’t blame anybody for their concern on this. We all have a lot of praying and thinking ahead of us on this.”
Well, I still think it’s wrong,” Marlys told her. “Like I was just telling Susan and her kids here, I was made in God’s image, but I think that the way I have maintained it is between me and Him. I expect that you and Dr. Wilson will be keeping the right position on this.”
“Thanks for stopping by,” Alicia told the pastor. “We’ll let you go on, but I imagine that a lot of the parish will be asking a lot more about this after Thursday if it actually goes through.”
“You probably are right. Thank you,” Julia said and started to move on.
Alicia turned to Tim and suggested, “You go find those kids and I’ll help Mom get to the car.” Turning to Marlys she noted, “You never did say whether you would join us for dinner.”
“Not this week, thank you,” the older woman answered. Tim and Alicia were not surprised. They extended Marlys the same offer every Sunday that Tim wasn’t at the store and his mother was coming home with them for dinner and almost always she declined the offer. Alicia always wondered why Marlys would want to go home and eat by herself, but Tim had reminded her several times over the years that Marlys was his mother’s friend, not theirs, and had no intention of becoming theirs. She was a professor’s widow and they were merchants and she had some status to protect. The fact that Susan was a merchant’s widow somehow was not a factor, possibly because Susan and Marlys had known each other for almost forty years. Alicia did not appreciate this aloofness, but had too much grace to let it show much.
At the same time a discussion was being held in the social call of St. James Lutheran Church in Monticello, a town about twenty miles north of Blacksburg. Cyd Lee and Linda Wyatt were standing near the beverage table waiting to get coffee when a guy they only knew as “Sid” joined them.
They had been driving the distance to Monticello for several years because they thought St. James was more GLBT friendly than any of the churches in Blacksburg. They had visited Protestant churches in both Conway Corners and Elmerton which professed to welcome GLBT people, and while they did not question the friendliness of the parishioners, they thought that they did not fit in at any of those congregations. The parishioners of one church seemed too affluent and pretentious, those of some others too old and rural. A third church just seemed too small.
Sid had not been attending for long and nobody seemed to know much about him. Linda and Cyd thought that maybe the pastor or somebody in the church office knew his last name or address, but they weren’t sure. Sid was tall, tattooed, and about forty and he seemed to make it pretty clear that he was gay. They had had only brief conversations, but he seemed to be somebody who didn’t want anybody too close. He did, however, definitely have a lot of opinions and was willing to share them with all.
“It just isn’t right,” he said to them.
“What,” Cyd asked.
“They got their rights before we got ours.”
“Who got what rights?” Linda asked.
“The nudists. They weren’t even trying to get them and they did.”
“I’m not sure what makes you think they got any rights they either deserved or wanted,“ Linda commented. “I think that there must be a lot of nudists who aren’t happy with this. After all, who will pay to go to one of their places if they can run about nude anyplace?”
“Well, if one of them tries to prance around in front of the wrong person, they’ll regret it,” Sid said as they moved on to different tables.
On the way home both women discussed his last comment. They agreed that Sid sounded somewhat threatening.
They talked a bit longer and Linda observed, “I think I’m having an epiphany. I had never thought of nudists as being a group of people being deprived of their rights, but I suppose that they must be, at least to a lot of people. It might not be the same as race, creed, or affection – it clearly is not - but I guess they must be some kind of discriminated against group. And I had never thought of it as a contest to see who gets what rights first, I guess. And the nudists don’t have a lot of rights yet. They can run around naked, but they can’t stop others from discriminating against them because they do. I suppose that if FSH decided to say that people who exhibit themselves can’t work for us that I’ll be writing up a lot of severances. Of course, I don’t think that Connor Fredricks would ever do that.
“But back to what is threatening us now. I guess I figured that things wouldn’t be right until everybody got their rights, all the rights everybody else has. I never thought of blacks or Hispanics or Indians or Jews as competition, just people who still suffer even though like us they have had some progress. We don’t resent them for their progress, so why would we wish to resent the nudists for theirs, even if they hadn’t been looking for it as much or even needing it as much as we have. We’ve never thought of blacks or Hispanics as competition, have we? Why nudists? I guess that now I will need to rethink things a bit. When the nudists lose their new rights as they will when the politicians get their act together, we will all have to wonder who’s next. If the wrong people get power after a hyped-up election or two, they’ll be the people who’ll go after us next.”
Cyd agreed, adding, “I suspect that most people like us have already figured that out, but far from all. I think we have some surfing to do this afternoon. And we have a message to get out.”
Linda replied that she agreed with Cyd that there was work to do, adding that she was not so certain that other lesbians and gays saw the backlash that might materialize. She also wondered what might lay in store for blacks and Hispanics.
