God, gays and G-strings
The outrage over Lil Nas X’s new single is yet more evidence it’s time to elevate the conversation from the ouroboros that serves only bigots, writes S’bo Gyre
Religion and the LGBTQIA+ community are in a toxic relationship that even screenwriter and producer Shonda Rhimes couldn’t conjure in her fertile imagination. Two passionate lovers are fixated on the missionary position when one of them ought to weave out of the doggy door, leave a house filled with memories of cyclical fights, and touch some grass. The reality is — nuance is desperately needed in their relationship.
Mainstream discourse of the intersectionality of the two has long since been stagnant, regurgitative and unintelligent. The famous character Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada sums it up, “Floral collection in spring — groundbreaking.”
Despite modern queer artists’ attempts to take the conversation to the next level, religion has proven itself to be a one-stroke kind of fellah, a painter unwilling to satisfy the needs of the ever-changing canvas of society. The realm in which queerness has existed has been that of sexualisation and, ultimately, damnation. Religion has systemically stripped queer bodies of their humanity by accentuating the premise of their existence in sex and ungodliness.
J Christ, the latest single by the queer American rapper Lil Nas X, has sparked yet another conversation about the age-old entanglement. No stranger to the use of religious imagery in his art, the lead single off his debut album, Montero (Call Me by Your Name), was largely effective in generating conversation.
It wasn’t a fresh perspective on the topic but a first in the Gen Z era of mainstream pop culture to illustrate, and effectively so, the queer intention to reclaim the narrative.
The point being, if you’re going to throw me to the wolves (the devil), I’ll come out leading the pack (I’ll give the devil a spicy lap dance, kill him and run hell like the Joburg gays run Kwa Mai Mai). Forget “big D energy”, that was some serious power bottom bravado right there!
But religion is Tristan Thompson and the queer community knows this. Religion has an unrivalled record as a shoddy lover (ask the first woman you can find after reading this) but queers can’t help it, they love them some good God imagery.
Religion is a gas lighter. It baits queers into bed and proceeds to complain about their presence and participation there before shaming them for being the person they always knew they were.
And before they know it, in the words of the famous Bishop TD Jakes, the queer community is swallowed up into the same fights, conversations and positions. That’s where Lil Nas X finds himself.
Nas’s J Christ single sees the rapper depict and refer to himself as Jesus merely on the grounds of being back from his musical hiatus. He is by no means the first musician to do so, from Kanye West’s Rolling Stone cover in 2006, Kendrick Lamar’s Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers era and Jay Z’s nickname “Hova” derived from Jehova — it’s safe to say the depiction is frivolous and unremarkable, even if it’s done so by a queer man.
The whole furore has rendered Nas X choiceless but to return his power bottom card in exchange for missionary and its repercussions — regurgitated discourse that strips queerness of the nuance of humanity and relegates his art to rage bait.
In this instance, if Nas X were a representation of the queer community (of which he is not), the queer community is wrong in acrimony. Courageous and untapped conversations about religion and queer art will be what propels the conversations forward and out of the ouroboros that serves only bigots.
Though not “out” or widely known as a queer person at the time of release, the work of Thandiswa Mazwai (King Tha) in Ibokwe’s Thongo Lam serves as a strong illustration of where conversations around queer art and religion/spirituality can go.
When you stream the song through her lens as a queer person, in particular, the conversation becomes steeped in an inescapable sense of humanity that connects religious or spiritual queer folk to their heterosexual counterparts.
It would seem the issue is where the conversations are taking place. There is a legion of queer artists who are not in the mainstream who pose complex and intriguing interactions with religion and spirituality.
They just don’t make “captivating” threads on X no matter how compelling they are because they do the one thing religion uses to keep the queer community in this toxic relationship — humanise their experience.
Younger queer and South African artists such as Desire Marea and ZuluMecca have consistently brought interesting complexities to a topic that has become sterile.
From ZuluMecca’s debut EP, Of Angels and Ancestors, and 2022’s Starving from her FABLE EP, to Desire’s Sama award-winning 2023 offering, On the Romance of Being, these projects offer fresh perspective that, though spouted by a queer voice, go beyond the binary.
As a queer musician who grew up in a home run by Pentecostal evangelicals, engaging with my sexuality and religion has been challenging, to say the least. I remember desperately hoping rumours of the late gospel artist Lundi Tyamara’s sexuality were true just so I could feel represented in a community I am a part of but continuously ostracised by.
I understand how Nas X has found themselves in the position they’re in, as well as appreciate the maturity offered by the works of my contemporaries like Desire and ZuluMecca. I, too, was once stuck in the toxic relationship with religion. In that time, anger and rage are the most accessible feelings that consume and attract you. You feel an entitlement to act with little regard to the religious community because you have been baited by that community, yet spat out and disregarded.
It should be a collective effort to propel conversations beyond the undeveloped foundations on which they have existed for millennia. Lil Nas X’s latest controversies and the presence of other queer artists who engage religion with nuance is yet more proof of the importance of opening the doors for more and different queer artists.
More so in the mainstream, the need for those who strum their G-string to a different rhythm will be what ends this toxic relationship.