The phone, as the saying goes, was ringing off the hook. Media outlets were calling for a comment or to schedule an interview. LGBT activist organizations were also calling, wondering how we should manage the “damage control.”
Back in 2007, the annual Folsom Street Fair in San Franciso, billed as the “world’s largest and best loved” leather event, was about to get underway when I was the Programming Director at the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in Religion in Ministry in Berkeley, California. People of all sexual orientations and gender identities gather for this event organized around the vast diversity of leather-related sexualities, dinners, exhibits, and of course the daylong street fair.
The fact of the fair itself was not the issue; it was the marketing for the fair that put people into a panic. That year’s poster evoked an image of the Last Supper styled after da Vinci’s famous painting. But this depiction included leatherfolk as the disciples and a table replete with not only bread and wine but also sex toys and various leather paraphernalia. It featured a shirtless African American “Jesus” with an outrageous drag queen on his right and a harnessed leatherman on his left.
Plus ça change…as it were. And here we are again; it’s a different cast of characters but basically the same script.
This weekend’s opening of the summer Olympics in Paris has created a controversy just as vigorous as the Folsom fair, this time with a last supper of drag queens. Christian clergy of various churches are demanding an apology for what they believe mocks the final meal Jesus shared with his friends, which is of course the template for the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist.
But an apology is precisely the wrong thing to ask for; we Christians should instead be grateful. Not only is a leather daddy or drag queen last supper not offensive, such images might actually illustrate particularly well a core conviction of the Christian Gospel: everyone is invited to the Table, and we’re invited to bring our whole selves with us.
(And by the way, the Last Supper done up in leather and in drag are not the only two contemporary re-imaginings of this iconic scene; Doug Blanchard is one of many contemporary queer artists who work with this material–and he’s one of my favorites. The plethora of creative re-appropriations of that Gospel story and that moment in the life of Jesus bears ongoing witness to the power of table fellowship, the intimacy of Jesus and his closest friends, and by extension, the self-offering of God to the world in ways we can scarcely conceptualize–of course there would an outpouring of creative energy for just such a divine encounter!)
It just so happens that this morning’s Sunday lectionary gave us John’s version of the miraculous feeding of the multitude, which many scholars take as John’s favored image for Eucharist (John didn’t include a last supper narrative like the other three gospel writers did). The abundance in John’s story is underscored by the many baskets of leftovers after the meal, and also with the instruction from Jesus: “gather up the fragments…so that nothing may be lost.”
So nothing may be lost.
What most people missed about that Folsom Street Fair poster is just how seriously leatherfolk take the very idea of spirituality and how their own sexual relationships and hyper-gendered displays of power qualify as spiritual practices. (Be sure to read the Fair’s mission statement, which includes decolonizing commitments, racial equity postures, and acknowledging stolen indigenous lands.)
Workshops on spirituality have been appearing at leather conferences and gatherings for years now. Many of those involved in these gatherings are also actively and generously involved in charitable work around poverty, hunger, and homelessness—work they understand as part and parcel of their leather spirituality.
Imagine what might change in the world if Christian churches had stepped up in Paris on that world stage and declared the Drag Queen Last Supper a beautiful and inspiring depiction of the radical welcome of the Gospel extended to all—no exceptions. So that nothing may be lost.
Leatherfolk and Drag Queen depictions alike—and the many other artistic re-imaginings of that final meal—proclaim what churches ought to be preaching rather than grumbling about concerning queer people (yet again): the Gospel welcomes everyone, just as we are, no exceptions. And that’s exactly what I see in these ostensibly “offensive” pieces of art: people who have put themselves on the table, leather gear, sex toys and all. It is at once a deeply human and deeply spiritual portrayal—exactly like the final meal Jesus shared with his closest friends.
Neither a Leather Daddy nor a Drag Queen at the Last Supper should cause anyone to worry about sacrilegious art. People of faith can instead thank the artists for reminding us that the radical welcome of God in Christ is actually supposed to be scandalous; if it isn’t, we need to try harder.
So, what did I tell the reporters asking for a comment back in 2007 about the Leather Last Supper? The same thing I would tell reporters today about the Drag Queen Last Supper at the Olympics: those images are preaching the Gospel better than most churches.
