God, Gays, and Baseball

Clayton Kershaw writes on his hat and I write here.

If you know me, you know I am a big baseball fan. I had a pretty long running baseball podcast called “Three Swings”, wrote on A League of Their Own, and have been personally playing in a co-ed baseball (not softball) league for at least 10 years with almost embarrassing consistency. If you don’t know me, now you do. I am also a 42 year old white trans man, who is currently walking through the understanding that I am neurodivergent. I am also over six years sober. I have a lot going on lol. I am also very much a leftist, and anti-fascist. The US government (not just one guy) is currently kidnapping and disappearing my neighbors simply because they are brown skinned. They are doing this now at a more alarming and cruel rate, but ICE has been in LA for as long and longer than I have lived here and at the same time, they are only a 21st century creation. Fascism has been here for a long time, and the people of LA have been fighting it for just as long, including when this place was colonized hundreds of years ago. So, naturally I am going to tell you my thoughts about what Clayton Kershaw wrote on his baseball hat this past Friday, which was also Pride night at Dodger stadium.

Men’s professional sports “celebrating” Pride nights have always been a double edged sword to me: at once they are clear attempts at “rainbow capitalism”, the corporate grab for our hearts and minds by selling us our pride back to us, watered down and usually funding the same organizations and politicians actively attacking queer people’s basic human liberty and autonomy. And at the same time, it signals change of the long arc bending kind; something my queer elders could never imagine happening, however much of a shortcoming it is in the grand scope of liberation for all. I tend to believe, and hope that most of them dreamed way beyond some very rich cis men who probably vote republican wearing a pride themed jersey and cap set for one night or two a year. That, and the fact that there are so few out cis male athletes, not because they don’t exist, but because they can’t or won’t be themselves in that way. Women’s sports, on the other hand, tend to tip towards being a general haven of gayness but even that is twisting back on itself because of the ongoing “debate” about whether cis people should deign to allow trans people to compete in women’s sports (weird that it’s only the women’s sports, isn’t it), and really sports at all, vis a vis should trans people get to participate in life publicly? And all of this is in the name of “fairness.”

All this brings me to Pride night at Dodger stadium, on Friday the 13th no less. The Dodgers were hosting the San Fransisco Giants, appropriately. These teams have an intense and very ridiculous not to mention one sided rivalry, and a recent history of playing each other for Pride night and being some of the first teams to both wear the Pride themed jerseys in the same game. Kinda cool! Pride night in baseball has been hotly contested for years and if you are LGBTQ yourself, I highly recommend skipping the comments of pretty much any post about it by any team in MLB or MiLB. Just save your serenity, for real. So this brings me to one of my favorite players and stories in MLB right now: Clayton Kershaw. The man has exemplified success and failure, unfortunately more of that last one. Failure is a feature and not a bug in baseball. If you hit the ball 3 times out of 10 you are a hall of famer. There is no other sport that allows for success to be such a low bar. But the sport is also REALLY hard. Being a Major League pitcher is not for the faint of heart. After numerous failures in the postseason, “Sad Clayton” became a predictable meme, with FoxSports camera people being ready for the shot to the dugout when Kershaw came up in the postseason rotation, along with Dodger fans themselves. At a certain point, none of us Dodger fans were surprised when the inevitable happened but we all wanted for him to succeed. That’s why for me, in 2020, when the Dodgers won the highly disputed shortened season World Series and an exasperated and joyous Clayton Kershaw came out of the dugout where he’d been humbly relegated and looked up to the sky and smiled in joyous belief, I cried.

I cried because I have felt that same way, so many times in my life - as a comic, as an athlete, and just as a person, but especially as a queer person. I am one of those queers who believes that God made me to be who I am and who I choose to be. Kind of like how Mary Oliver asks us, “what will you do with your one precious life?” I think she was channeling a Loving Creator when she wrote that line that so often pisses me off. I am trying my best ok, Mary! It’s a hard thing for me to admit - the God thing, because I am basically saying I believe in an imaginary Friend who sometimes talks to me and to whom I talk often, and I have this belief in common at worst with a lot of right wing lunatics, or at the very least cheesy youth pastors. But the truth is true, and I do feel this way - just like Fred Rogers! Part of my realization and acceptance that I was trans came along with a book I had been gifted called “Transforming” which included many trans Christians experiences with their various churches and their faith; some good, some bad, some ugly but the one thing that was consistent was their connection to God through their transness. It also had many trans interpretations of Biblical stories, including Creation and the Garden of Eden. I then found other non queer sources who had these similar interpretations, specifically that of Adam and Eve, who while in some ways must have existed in that we all evolved from someone somewhere, are really allegories for the poles of femininity and masculinity that all humans and creatures and plants contain but also fall on various points in between said poles, each growing in sentience and experience of these poles as they evolved up, and/or/also as God threw Her paints around the Universe. We really are the secret third thing result of a Divine Spirit messing around in a Wreckit Room and an Escape Room at the same time, in my humble opinion.

Clayton Kershaw wore a Pride hat on Friday but he put a Bible verse on it. The verse he chose was Genesis 9: 12-16. I stayed out of the outrage or discussion - I did mention it on my fantasy baseball chat - and just looked up the verse for myself instead. Here it is:

And God said, This is the token of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations: I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth. And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud: and I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh. And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth.

This is from the King James version of ze Bible. I prefer reading the New International version myself but I am using this one because it’s the most used by most people. This is one of the gayest things I have ever read! To put this next to a pride flag is like a hat on a hat! Pride, first of all, was a riot. It was an uprising against fascist racist sexist classist racist homophobic transphobic ableist police brutality, something that is now coming quite literally for everyone - except maybe white millionaire cis male athletes. Secondly, Pride is about loving and accepting ourselves for exactly who we are as we were made and choose to be, and learning to love and accept each other that same way (otherwise known as the Golden Rule). It’s not about conforming to rules to be accepted, either by the LGBTQ community itself, mainstream heteronormative culture, or dogmatic Christians/orthodox religious people. It’s also not about letting everyone into your home (Wacked out Christians love to bandy that about) or into your orbit or even your life! It’s actually about leaving people the heck alone. It’s about liberation and love. It’s also about not judging other people, which on my worst days is one of my other favorite sports. I throw that rock like a baseball around the horn after a great play (which I did make on Sunday at third and at first, thankyouverymuch), and it’s extra spicy when that judgement is 1000% justified, like in the case of, basically everything that is happening right now. I don’t think I am being asked to never ever judge, just that I have no right to persecute others, which is not the same for standing in what I believe to be the loving and righteous thing to do. Like stand against fascism, genocide, and police brutality. Which Clayton Kershaw is decidedly not doing either. His fanbase is 95% Latinx and under direct assault right now, and he has not thrown them even a hint of a bone of support or care or concern. I will leave it at that.

When I read this verse I am reminded that there is nothing, no cloud I can bring or can happen, that will ruin the love God has for me and every living thing on this earth - gay, straight, cis, queer, disabled, Black, white, Brown, male, female, nonbinary, cactus, dog, swordfish, clover, wasp, dandelion, mosquito, you name it. I can harm the love people have for me, I can hurt people’s feelings, I can live in a way other people disagree with, but there is absolutely nothing I can do to make Her break the promise that Something loves me and put me and all of us here on purpose. To me, Clayton is accidentally saying we are all loved, no matter what we are or choose to be. No matter how many mistakes we make. No matter if we are labeled by the world as a criminal (Jesus, undocumented/documented immigrants & anyone who looks like one or stands with them, Indigenous people, Black people, Asian people, Palestinians, queers, etc etc) or a deviant (me), or a postseason failure (Clayton).

It has been a hard road to accept that. There is a lot of horrific shit going on that can easily “prove” to me that a loving God doesn’t exist. Hell, even religions tell me that! Mr. Kershaw himself is trying to tell me, with a Bible verse that says I am loved by God, that I am not actually loved by God and that he is and I will burn in hell if I don’t become a woman again and be straight and have as many children as possible. The same people who think God’s love is only reserved for those who do everything right often use god and religion to excuse their incredibly bad behavior, so I throw that baby out with the bathwater. Where I choose to look is where this Loving Presence Is, rather than where it is not. It is often a very tall order.

In the grand scheme of things, my life has been pretty easy - I am learning to understand how much untreated mental illness and addiction and basic cruelty and disfunction has prevailed in my family for a very long time. There is some pretty bad and heavy stuff back there. Where I used to have despair, I now have gratitude for what I did have: a kind mom, a home, friends, healthcare, food, safety more often than not, education, and teeth in my head. Being queer and trans and neurodivergent and an addict have been very difficult, but I share these things with many other people, who were made in Love like me, too. I have had to learn to forgive myself and others, and in doing so my life has been changed so much for the better. I have seen the rainbow both literally and figuratively. I believe I have been given the problems I needed to understand that. I thought Clayton Kershaw had too.