CAMPOut: It's a religious experience

By the time they upgraded that atmospheric depression to Tropical Storm Fay (spelled correctly, without a superfluous Dan Quayle-inspired “e”), I was anxious to pound the coast of Texas myself. When the headlines reported on Fay’s Fury and anointed her capable of dumping a foot of rain on Texas parades, Bonnie recognized the potential. “Get to higher ground, here comes Fay!” squawked the weather channel, and the dogs obeyed.

But now it’s September. We’ve got a newly finished garage, and the construction crew, with their oft-revealed butt cracks, is gone;

Traffic has ebbed and it’s possible to drive to Five Points without packing a sandwich or a catheter;

And Hurricane Fay flamed out.

After enjoying one quiet, reflective weekend without houseguest pets and people, we’re again happily booking for fall. Not that we don’t enjoy our solitude. We do. But there’s nothing like autumn at the beach with good friends, (Wo)Man’s best friends, and say, a bushel of crabs or a steak on the barbie.

Even local government gave me pause. After a very civilized city election that focused on issues, not irrelevancies, I was surprisingly moved watching Judge DeFiore swear in Commissioner Mark Aguirre. While I felt confidence in all those being sworn in to handle important city issues, I was unexpectedly touched watching our first openly gay commissioner take his oath.

Even Katie Couric must have heard me shrieking about TV’s obsession with all-weddings-all-the-time (except for gay couples). Today recently featured the two men who were the first gay couple to have a wedding announcement in the New York Times.

Not only did gays now have equal rights to ante-up a bundle for the society page listings, but after reading that first announcement, I was also struck by its potential for enlightening readers.

Wake up and smell the cappuccino you ostriches who choose to believe that all gay men dance bare-chested 24/7 and all lesbians merely swill beer, play pool, and dress like they just fell off the turnip truck. Black and white type will refute those musty falsehoods.

Take the announced nuptials of Daniel Gross and Steven Goldstein. Their September 1 New York Times announcement read, in part, “Daniel Andrew Gross and Steven Goldstein will affirm their partnership today in a civil union ceremony…in Vermont…Mr. Goldstein, 40, is the founder and owner of …a public affairs consulting firm in Manhattan. A summa cum laude graduate of Brandeis, Mr. Goldstein holds a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard and a master’s in journalism and a law degree from Columbia…Mr. Gross, 32, is a vice president of GE Capital in Stamford, Conn., working on the financing of international projects like power plants and pipelines. He graduated cum laude from Yale, from which he also received an M.B.A. and a master’s degree in environmental management. He was a Fulbright scholar in 1994-95 in Thailand.“

Wow. Compare that to couples announcing their big day at some Long Island wedding mill with the groom a recent graduate of Crimsoneck Community College now in the manager trainee program at Jiffy Lube while the Bride is employed as a shampoo assistant at Spas-R-Us. Life is good.

Well, sort of. Just when I thought it was safe to go back in the newspaper, something else caught my eye. It seems that Georgia State Representative, Billy McKinney, recently lost his primary battle in that peachy state. He’s the father of Cynthia McKinney who recently lost her primary for U.S. Congress with her inflammatory accusation that George Bush’s administration purposely ignored September 11 warnings because war would mean business for his defense industry friends. Not even the flaming liberal cabal, myself included, can go that far. So she lost her primary and so has Daddy. His sin, according to a Washington Post article was blaming his daughter’s tough primary race on “J-E-W-S.”

Nice. While it’s some comfort that McKinney lost rather than won in a mudslide, it still made me uneasy. I’ve spent more than half my life working to prevent discrimination against gays and lesbians. It’s been my issue both personally, for small instances of discrimination, and, in a wider sense, fighting for our community as a whole.

But until some recent news articles, I never really took anti-semitism as a personal threat or a particularly contemporary issue. Whose head’s in the sand now? I flinched when I read about the re-birth of European anti-semitism and the massive propaganda lie nurtured in Arab nations that, of all hateful untruths, the Jews were behind 9-11.

It’s enough to make me want to “come out” as Jewish and start paying more than lip service (like eating lox and bagels), to my heritage.

Which is why, when I heard about the Seaside Jewish Community hosting the first-ever Rosh Hashanah Service for Sussex County I decided to go. Now I have to admit, with the exception of weddings, funerals, and a stray visit to DC’s gay synagogue, this was my first religious experience in over 40 years (unless you count the Cloud 9 crème brulee). But I hadn’t celebrated a Jewish New Year at services since that wonderful year 5723.

Not surprisingly, I found myself a little lost amid the Hebrew prayers and songs, but not among the crowd. I accepted the Rabbi’s challenge to spend the following 10 days reflecting on my past year, and preparing to atone for my sins on Yom Kippur.

As I type this, Yom Kippur begins at dusk. I have to finish this column up pretty quickly, because I also have to eat dinner before dusk. The rules require that I fast from sundown tonight until sundown tomorrow. This may have been what steered me away from organized religion in the first place.

Now I surely don’t intend to launch headlong into the religious fold. There will always be unkosher dining for me, for not mixing milk and meat would preclude pepperoni pizza and that would be intolerable. I’m an admitted fan of pork, the other white meat, and I’d curl up and plotz without shellfish. I will not drink wine that tastes like Robitussin™.

But I do intend to atone for my sins, think a little more about my heritage, and take pride in the survival of my tribe. Happy New Year 5763.