Quote of the Day

This [homophobic] posture is nothing new from the gospel music world.  I'd simply gotten very used to separating the message from the messenger.  The morning of December 30, 2016, was the day all of that ended for me.  No more separating.  I had stood by and stayed silent on this issue for years, hoping that the church would evolve.  But I saw that evolution is not what religious folk were in search of, so it was time to disengage from those who sought to destroy me.  Kim Burrell's lashings felt personal this time.  And disingenuous.  Because, as many folk brought to light in the subsequent overall cancelling of Ms. Burrell that came very swiftly and was very exacting, she was fine with the faggots when it served her bank account -- note her duet with the out musician Frank Ocean.  And while the cancel/consequence culture let that bitch fully have it -- she lost her radio show; Ellen canceled an appearance that was to happen the following week, where she was supposed to sing a duet with Pharrell [Williams] in support of the film Hidden Figures -- her betrayal gutted my soul, because it was us, her mainly Black, LGBTQ+ fan base, who supported her.  We didn't care that she had an obesity issue, which incidentally is directly connected to one of the Seven Deadly Sins.  Gluttony!  And yet, we loved her and supported her unconditionally.  Fuck that!  Many celebrities released statements condemning Ms. Burrell's hate speech.  Pharrell wrote, "I condemn hate speech of any kind.  There is no room in this world for any kind of prejudice.  My greatest hope is for inclusion and love for all humanity in 2017 and beyond."  Good luck wit dat!

-- Billy Porter, Unprotected, p. 246-247

Quote of the Day

My art is my calling, my purpose, dare I say my ministry, and I will proudly and unequivocally use my platform to "preach" the gospel of truth and love for as long as I have breath in my body.  Because, truth be told, as we have seen the events of the last five-plus years unfold, there is still half of our country who doesn't get it.  There are still factions of hate all over the world who believe in absolute, male, straight, white supremacy power, in perpetuity, at any cost.  Our job as artists and storytellers is to teach and, when necessary, preach the gospel of true humanity in all its forms.

-- Billy Porter, Unprotected, p. 240

Quote of the Day

The horrifying images of Minneapolis white police officer Derek Chauvin pressing his knee on George Floyd's neck for 8:46 has been running on a loop nonstop on my television screen and in my mind for days now.  I'm tired.  I've had enough.  We've all had enough of this.  Four hundred years of the same shit.  Every day of my life I live in fear for it.  EVERY DAY of my life my humanity has been up for legislation.  And we're supposed to just sit down and shut up.  We are at a tipping point, and Orangina 45 and his cronies know exactly what they are doing.  Create dissent.  Create division.  Create chaos and watch it all burn and then blame Black people for having a response.  We are tired.  We are enraged.  I'm so mad I don't know what to say.  I'm so enraged that I have a hard time speaking because all I want to do is scream.  All I want to do is rage.  All I want to do is burn it all down.  Dismantle the entire system and let the chips fall where they may.  I don't know how else to do it.  They pushed us, once again, to the brink of insanity.  Every day of my life I have to make myself smaller so white folks will feel more comfortable.  I'm done doing that.

-- Billy Porter, Unprotected, p. 197

Quote of the Day

As for my biological family, my absolute and unequivocal extraction from the dangers of their lack of understanding of me and thereby their inability to love me unconditionally was my only path to survival.  The Bible had become the breaking point, and I was no longer interested in believing in something that didn't believe in me.  Sorrowfully, with much pain and sacrifice, I cut organized religion out of my life.  And when I say I drew a line in the sand, I mean -- fo' real, fo' real.  I stopped going home to Pittsburgh for holidays.  Hell, I stopped going home to visit, period!  I had already had one foot out the door for a decade, but I held on to the hope that my community would choose love over fear.  Most didn't have the tools.  So I bounced.  I have discovered in recent years that there was a lot of collateral damage in the wake of my decision.  At the same time, I have observed how many of my family members and extended members of the community have evolved.

-- Billy Porter, Unprotected, p. 173-174

Quote of the Day

Don't wait for anyone to give you permission to practice your art.  You must always be practicing, even when no one's listening -- and most of the time, no one's listening.

-- George C. Wolfe

Quote of the Day

... good people are dying for no reason.  People I know, people who are my friends, people who live by the principles of Christ more than any of y'all up in this sanctuary.  And all y'all holy Christians stood by and did nothing about the shit I endured at the hands and...cock of my stepfather, for five years, and none of y'all did nuthin', none of y'all saw nuthin'?  Nobody sensed that anything was wrong with a twelve-year-old riddled with stomach ulcers?  Nobody thought to pry, to ask me why?  Nobody thought it strange that I had nodules on my vocal cords at thirteen and couldn't sing for six months, couldn't speak for the first three?  Nobody?  'Cause the Holy Ghost is gonna fix it?  And I'm the sinner?  Pastor up here having a Saturday afternoon delight in his back study with my mother's best friend, and when they get caught, Pastor literally with his pants down, she has to apologize in shame in front of the entire congregation while he sits on his pulpit-throne with no accountability or consequences required or applied.  I see y'all.  I see alla y'all.

-- Billy Porter, Unprotected, p. 103

Quote of the Day

My past had cured me of my desire to receive validation or care from the so-called saints of my congregation or any man-made religiosity.  I looked around at twelve years old and realized there wasn't an adult in my life who was equipped with the tools to help me, support me, see my pain, see my abused and wounded soul.  No, not one.  So by nineteen, operation "save-a-sissy" was in full swing!

-- Billy Porter, Unprotected, p. 102

Quote of the Day

I was on the road to reconciling my gayness with the hate spewed from the bully pulpits of my childhood ... I learned early on that questioning religion garnered two abrupt responses: shaming and/or banishment.  I had already been shamed and banished for asking a question about the reach of God's love in Sunday school class when I was ten, and wearing a green afro wig and singing an Aretha Franklin tune at Kennywood park when I was fifteen, so there you have it -- no love lost.  I actually enjoyed the unspoken exile.  I count myself as one of the lucky ones, one of the ones who broke free from what very often can be a life's worth of debilitating stagnation.  I've seen it.  I felt it happening to me.  The Christian othering, the soul-salvation bullies.  The shame that keeps one bound up in a prison of their own mind for a lifetime.  The hypocrisy of church folks was dangerous and deadly to me, and I could see that fact plain as day.

-- Billy Porter, Unprotected, p. 101

Quote of the Day

For eight years we had a Black president.  I still have a hard time believing that actually happened.  And this post-Obama-lyptic blacklash is in direct response to the fact that white folks had to take orders from "the nigger" for eight years.  And yes, I said nigger!  'Cause their actions say it all!

-- Billy Porter, Unprotected, p. 96

Quote of the Day

It's been an inexpressible privilege to star in Broadway shows and on a hit TV series.  I feel deeply honored to have won my Tony, Grammy, and Emmy awards.  But every day I remind myself that nothing matters more than extending the legacy of the angels in my life.  It's my devout conviction that if I'm not enabling and encouraging the underprivileged and the vulnerable, then I haven't justified their confidence in me, and I haven't done sufficient justice to their gifts.

-- Billy Porter, Unprotected, p. 51

Quote of the Day

Now, after being at Florence Reizenstein School and around white people for the first time, I started to realize how poor my family was and how much I didn't have.  I also realized how rigid and restrictive my church community was.  When you've never experienced an alternative to your own culture or circumstances, you don't always know there's something else outside of your bubble -- that a different way of life is possible.  But now that I'd been immersed in another kind of environment, and the opportunities that came with it, I made the conscious choice to stay in the light.

-- Billy Porter, Unprotected, p. 40

Quote of the Day

Though I could not have articulated it back then [as a child], not even to myself, my fixation on fashion went deeper than mere aesthetics.  I sensed that clothing was a potent signifier -- that its import went beyond its visual appeal.  Later I would come to understand that the finery donned by Black churchgoers was a powerful form of resistance.  Many of them were employed during the week as domestic servants, or security guards, or custodians, and were required to wear uniforms meant to reinforce their status as less-than.  To dress impeccably and regally on the Lord's day, then, was to insist on their own dignity and worth in a world that sought to systematically strip them of both.  It was a way to assert that they were God's children too, and in His house, they would adorn themselves in a manner befitting the glory of the Lord!

-- Billy Porter, Unprotected, p. 2

Quote of the Day

Music is the universal language...it brings people closer together.

-- Ella Fitzgerald

Quote of the Day

If people wish to love a 7th century preacher more than their own families, that's up to them, but nobody else is obliged to take it seriously.

-- Andrew Mueller

Quote of the Day

The journalist Andrew Mueller is of the opinion that pledging yourself to any particular religion "is no more or less weird than choosing to believe that the world is rhombus-shaped, and borne through the cosmos in the pincers of two enormous green lobsters called Esmerelda and Keith."

-- Megan Phelps-Roper, Unfollow, p. 233

Quote of the Day

The answer to bad ideas is to publicly reason against them, to advocate for and propagate better ones.

-- Megan Phelps-Roper, Unfollow, p. 277

Quote of the Day

Others with stories like mine have shown me repeatedly that the root of Westboro's ideology -- the idea that our beliefs were "the one true way" -- is not by any means limited to Westboro members.  In truth, that idea is common, widespread, and on display everywhere humans gather, from religious circles to political ones.  It gives a comforting sense of certainty, freeing the believer from existential angst and providing a sense of stability -- a foundation on which to build a life. But the costs of that certainty can be enormous and difficult to identify.  Ultimately, the same quality that makes Westboro so easy to dismiss -- it extremism -- is also what helps highlight the destructive nature of viewing the world in black and white, the danger of becoming calcified in a position and impervious to change.

-- Megan Phelps-Roper, Unfollow, p. 275-276

Quote of the Day

(Westboro Baptist Church)'s garish signs lend themselves to this view of its members as crazed doomsayers, cartoonish villains who celebrate the calamities of others with fiendish glee.  But the truth is that the church's radical, recalcitrant position is the result of very common, very human forces -- everything from fear, family, guilt, and shame, to cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias.  These are forces whose power affects us all, consciously and subconsciously, to one degree or another at every stage of our lives.  And when these forces are coupled with group dynamics and a belief system that caters to so many of our most basic needs as human beings -- a sense of meaning, of identity, of purpose, of reward, of goodness, of community -- they provide group members with an astonishing level of motivation to cohere and conform, no matter the cost.

-- Megan Phelps-Roper, Unfollow, p. 275

Quote of the Day

While I engaged church members as an outsider, I started to understand that doubt was the point -- that it was the most basic shift in how I experienced the world.  Doubt was nothing more than epistemological humility: a deep and practical awareness that outside our sphere of knowledge there existed information and experiences that might show our position to be in error.  Doubt causes us to hold a strong position a bit more loosely, such that an acknowledgment of ignorance or error doesn't crush our sense of self or leave us totally unmoored if our position proves untenable.  Certainty is the opposite: it hampers inquiry and hinders growth.  It teaches us to ignore evidence that contradicts our ideas, and encourages us to defend our position at all costs, even as it reveals itself as indefensible.  Certainty sees compromise as weak, hypocritical, evil, suppressing empathy and allowing us to justify inflicting horrible pain on others.  Doubt wasn't the sin, I came to believe.  It was the arrogance of certainty that poisoned Westboro at it foundations.

-- Megan Phelps-Roper, Unfollow, p. 273-274

Quote of the Day

In court, (Aunt) Margie's job was to present and defend her interpretation of the facts and the law before a judge, who would hear all sides before making a final decision, which was subject to review by higher courts.  But when it came to the purported Word of God, in all its complexity, we considered our judgment to be so reliable as to merit absolute confidence, so unquestionable that we could insist that all of humankind follow it.  I shook my head and inwardly cringed.  Coming face-to-face with my arrogance, aggressive in its misplaced certainty, was a special sort of shame.

-- Megan Phelps-Roper, Unfollow, p. 251-252

Quote of the Day

That's one thing I have never understood about (Megan Phelps-Roper's) family.  They're all lawyers, right?  The U.S. Constitution was written some two hundred years ago in essentially modern English, and there's so much disagreement about how the U.S. Supreme Court should interpret and apply those words today.  The Bible was written thousands of years ago in languages no one speaks anymore...and somehow, Westboro alone has figured out its one true meaning?

-- Jeff Chu, as told by Megan Phelps-Roper, Unfollow, p. 251

Quote of the Day

We had never learned how to "agree to disagree," because to church members, such a concept was blasphemous.  Can two walk together, except they be agreed?  What communion hath light with darkness?  At Westboro, every decision had moral implications.  Every question had a single correct answer.  Miscommunication required blame, and mistakes required punishment.  My sister and I knew how to cajole, issue ultimatums, attribute ill motives, and assign moral failure to the other party in a dispute, but we couldn't compromise and we couldn't move forward without a resolution as to which of us was in the wrong.  Without an absolute authority who could resolve the problem and declare one side as just and righteous, we floundered [in the days and months after leaving the church].

-- Megan Phelps-Roper, Unfollow, p. 227

Quote of the Day

I thought about the last time we'd heard from Nana -- a birthday card she's sent to [my sister] Grace back in October.  I had felt so sad for her, ignored by our family for years on end.  Happy birthday, Grace, she'd written.  I'll bet you are growing up beautiful.  Wish I could hear from someone.  I love you.  As little as I'd seen Nana, she hadn't missed sending us birthday cards in all my years.  Like my mother, I had seen her efforts as a pitiful substitute for having a real presence in our lives, but now the gesture seemed like determined persistence -- an effort to maintain an open door despite my parents' attempts to seal all doors shut.  Nana had been trying to show that she loved us, even though she couldn't be around us.

-- Megan Phelps-Roper, Unfollow, p. 223

Quote of the Day

[My sister] Grace and I had wept that night, realizing that it was gay people -- I'd stopped using the "f" word by then -- who would best understand what we were going through.  The community we [at Westboro Baptist Church] had antagonized more than any other.  I hated that it had had to come to this for me to understand what the church had been doing to vulnerable people for so long.

-- Megan Phelps-Roper, Unfollow, p. 200

Quote of the Day

(A couple at the church) had planned a "double date" with another young couple, and that, too, had been disallowed.  I was baffled.  Having meals together was a regular part of our fellowship, and had been for as long as I had been alive.  To my mind, it was now undeniable that the elders' decisions were primarily driven not by Scripture, but by a need to keep church members in our place.  To make us understand that bending to their will was the only option.  Nothing else mattered.

-- Megan Phelps-Roper, Unfollow, p. 186

Quote of the Day

By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.  I couldn't believe how our love within the church had been warped beyond recognition by the elders' unscripted will to punish.  By their implacable demands for unquestioning obedience.  By their pernicious need for superiority and control.  They had developed a toxic sense of certainty in their own righteousness, seizing for themselves the role of the ultimate arbiter of divine truth -- and they now seemed wiling to lay waste to anyone who disagreed with them.  It was a heinous arrogance and sinfulness that could not be denied.

-- Megan Phelps-Roper, Unfollow, p. 158-159

Quote of the Day

I had never seen a member of my immediate family subjected to church discipline before, but it wasn't special family ties that made the situation untenable.  It was the fact that for the first time in my life, the accused were people I lived with and knew most intimately.  I had direct, firsthand knowledge of their daily lives and habits, and I knew that the judgements leveled by the elders were wrong.  They were wrong about my mother.  They were wrong about my sister.  And I strongly suspected they'd been wrong about my cousin, too.  I could not acquiesce to their conclusions the way I'd done with so many others before.  I could no longer blindly trust the judgment of these men.

-- Megan Phelps-Roper, Unfollow, p. 158

Quote of the Day

By visceral instinct more than conscious deliberation, I understood that no force silences doubt as effectively as zeal -- a passionate clinging to familiar and reliable truths that quiets dissonance and snuffs out uncertainty in an avalanche of action.

-- Megan Phelps-Roper, Unfollow, p. 147

Quote of the Day

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,

you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.

-- Naomi Shihab Nye

Quote of the Day

Music is life itself.  What would this world be without good music?  No matter what kind it is.

-- Louis Armstrong

Quote of the Day

I was terrified that when I came into myself, I would lose everything.  Instead, I found myself.  I found the connection I had been searching for my entire life: people who loved me for me and not my category; beauty in my individuality, not my obedience.

-- Alok Vaid-Menon, Beyond the Gender Binary, p. 62