I am reading "Spirit and Flesh: Life in a Fundamentalist Baptist Church" by James M. Ault, Jr. Really, I recommend this book. I am reading it as background material but really, it is quite riveting and surprising and overall fascinating in the tradition of the very best storytelling.

I had told my Magazine instructor that I wanted to do my final project on gay Nascar fans and she excitedly agreed. Gay Nascar has been a conversational showstopper of mine for some time now and every time I trot it out the response is always "Dude! You gotta write that!"

But, you see, it's a trick. I met a gay Nascar fan (and corresponded with a few online) and I learned about the sport itself. So here's how it works...I say "Gay Nascar!" and, after pausing appropriately in the stunned silence, I go into my 5 minutes about Nascar and why it is, in fact, fascinating and full of drama rather than just boring-ass driving in circles around and around.

My explanation of why Nascar is kind of cool is fairly compelling, I think. But saying "gay Nascar" is just a trick to get my foot in the door. I perk up the ears by saying those two words "gay nascar" thereby earning the right to go on for a bit about what Nascar itself is.

This is the problem, gay people participate in Nascar pretty much like everybody else which is to say that they watch it on television. They don't do it gay-ly. They do it alone or with roommates or family members but they don't wear pink boas or dish or otherwise carry on in a way that lends itself to contemporary journalism. Ultimately, saying that there are gay Nascar fans is like saying there are gay customers at Wal-Mart. And what do those gay customers do??? Why they get a cart and they...

Yawn.

Anyway, while googling-away on Gay Nascar, I tried all sorts of other searches (Gay Blue Collar, Gay Red State, Gay Rural) etc. And "Gay Evangelical" returned a motherlode.

There seem to be two sorts of gay evangelicals...there are the "Ex Gay" sort. This school of thought says that we are all sinners (although sodomy is especially horrible as a sin...if you had the choice between murder and sodomy, you are better off going with the murder, at least per. this crowd) and that homosexuality is a sin of choice, like alcoholism. And, like alcohol, someone might always feel the urge but, with enough prayer, etc. the urge can be overcome.

The second sort is the openly gay, openly evangelical sort. Which says that they don't have to be cured, they are just fine. Which I find fascinating.

Anyway, I'm doing some background reading. Although I grew up around fundamentalist Christians in Tennessee, my understanding was limited to "those people are weirdos." Which is not a very satisfactory explanation of anything.

Indeed, as author Ault makes clear, urbane people have been insisting that fundamentalism is on its last legs forever...that surely modernism will wipe out these backwards people.

In fact, fundamentalism is a response to modernism.

One of the key ideas in the book is that fundamentalists operate on a model of community reciprocity. Think of a village...I help you get in your crops, you, in turn, share some of the butchered hog. Part of the element is that we share with each other, all the time and without being asked, and the other part is that we didn't choose to be this way with one another. We have to be this way, we are in the same village. It's like an arranged marriage.

The modern world, on the other hand, is not like an arranged marriage. It's like a love match. In the modern world I might labor in a factory while you work in a bakery. Maybe we can meet each other's needs but maybe we just need to stay out of each other's way. The people who help me, the people who watch my children or the ones I bring dinner, those are people that I chose and they chose me back. They are my friends, not my family.

Arranged marriages sound kind of appalling but they have an advantage...you don't get left out of the system. Out there on your own? You might make a love match but you might choose poorly or you might be left out altogether.

This system of reciprocity gets lost in contemporary society. Fundamentalism is a way of recreating the system.

Part of making such a system work is that there is considerable pressure on individuals to conform to the desires and needs of the group. In the city, your choice is your choice, whatever. But in the village, your choice indirectly becomes my choice as well. Your morals become like cigarrette smoke, second hand exposure to them can be dangerous.

So if you are gay and call your relationship a marriage, that does actually feel like a real threat to these Christians. Because then how does the reciprocity work???