From Baltimore City Paper

Oh Come All Ye Faithful

November 24, 2004

On Thursday, Nov. 18, the Nose went to church. There, we bore witness to visions of men kissing men, women kissing women, drag queens, topless women, and leather daddies. No, church was not airing an episode of Queer as Folk that day (you could tell because cable TV wouldn't have pixilated the bare breasts). Rather, it was a film that was shown to a group of Christian pastors who gathered at White Marsh Baptist Church. This wasn't a typical Sunday service, though, so don't get excited about signing up to join the congregation. It was a Defend Maryland Marriage meeting led by Anne Arundel Del. Don Dwyer (R-31st District).

Dwyer, known for championing the cause of former Alabama chief justice Roy "Ten Commandments" Moore and for portraying Muslims as militant and violent, has been working tirelessly to oppose gay marriage in Maryland, actively recruiting church leaders and their congregations to the cause. Ever since the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit against Maryland on July 7, asking the state court system to determine the constitutionality of denying same-sex couples the right to marry, the issue has taken on a special urgency for Dwyer and others who oppose gay marriages. In September, Dwyer filed with the court to intervene in the case, which he calls on his web site "an example of a special interest group using the courts to circumvent our republican form of government and forwarding their agendas through judicial fiat."

To build support for the anti-gay movement in Maryland, Dwyer has been showing a film produced by the Traditional Values Coalition, a national nondenominational church lobbying group, to rally the anti- gay movement on the matter. Called Gay Rights/Special Rights, the film's goal is to expose what the coalition considers the homosexual agenda. GR/SR argues that people choose to be homosexuals and that the gay-rights movement has co-opted the language of the civil- rights movement, thus making a mockery of the African-American struggle for equality.

The film features commentary from such politicians as Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.), members of the clergy, "former homosexuals," and leaders of the movement to defend traditional marriage. It also contains snippets of coverage from the 1993 March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Rights and Liberation, which the film portrays as a three-day orgy.

The Nose found the footage of same-sex couples dancing and kissing, people in drag, and so on to be fairly tame, but many of the members in the White Marsh Baptist audience clearly did not share that sentiment. A small gray-haired woman sitting in front of the Nose sobbed throughout the film. And when it ended, Del. Dwyer apologized for forcing those gathered to watch it, calling it "stomach turning." He insisted that it was important to watch, though, because "unless you see it and you feel it you might not act."

He asked the gathered pastors to get their churches involved in the fight against gay marriage and to bring congregants to a series of rallies in Annapolis in January and March that he says will show legislators that the religious community disapproves of its failure to pass two anti-gay-marriage bills introduced last session. Dwyer told the audience that he hopes the events will be so large they will shut the city down. The media, he said, doesn't "want to report the rally, they'll still have to report the traffic jam."

When Dwyer declared that "this is not a war between men, it's a spiritual war," the Nose couldn't help but be reminded of another spiritual war: one led by a cross-dresser named Joan of Arc.