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I have this distinct memory: as a young teenager, back in the very early 1960s, I, along with a pal, would church-shop. We would attend services in churches other than the one into which we had been recently confirmed (suburban, low Episcopalian). One Sunday, we found ourselves amidst the Holy Rollers. The music got going, the singing, the clapping. Several female parishioners got themselves into the aisles and began screaming, writhing and, finally, falling on the floor, flailing about. It was quite spectacular. I recently recalled this memory for my brother. He doubted I had ever been to such an event-- though there were congregations of Holy Rollers in Cincinnati, Ohio, when I was a lad, and maybe there still are. Dear Brother said he thought I was conflating this "recollection" with my memory of my first James Brown concert (about the same time) at which numerous black ladies rushed to the stage, screamed and carried on as they did at the Holy Roller service-- though, if memory serves, the women began removing articles of personal apparel and throwing them at the performer.

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I mentioned the Holy Roller "memory" to a friend a few weeks back. He knew all about them (he, too, is from southern Ohio). He told me that at such a service, you will always see a group of black ladies, dressed in white, with a bunch of serviettes over their arms. When the women rolling in the aisles have finished their religious agony, one of these monitors will lift up the agonized one's skirt and place the napkin so as to absorb the moisture. Long before the Liberated Lesbians of San Francisco produced and distributed their instructional video "How To Female Ejaculate," the members of the Holy Roller Ladies' Auxiliary were having their Sabbath orgasms.

Religion and sex. It took me the longest time to understand so much of the iconography of the Roman Catholics-- all those saints, all that suffering, all that sex and sexual denial. In the more liberal American Protestant denominations (Lutheran, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Methodist), this pictorial display of life's extremes is just not there-- a few paltry stained glass windows, some of the divines with halos, that sort of thing. In fact, much of this variety of Protestantism is derived from the iconoclastic tradition not the iconographic. There is no way any Protestant denomination could have come up with an equivalent of the iconic St. Sebastian, the gorgeous, mostly undraped lad with all the arrows sticking into his flesh-- for gay men in the US of the 50s, the echt symbol of eroticism and suffering, something the Roman church, amongst all the others, learned how to do the best. And think of the David-- two, three, many Davids. Donatello's is a shrimp-like lad. The famous David, all 16 feet of him, or whatever-- well, what was Goliath like if David was such a big, butch, gorgeous number?

In early US history there were the great religious revivals-- in this part, meaning New England and New York, later called "the burned over district" because of all the religious bonfires. Religious revivals are probably the closest a Protestant culture got to Festival Time. Catholic cultures have festivals all the time. Is that good or bad? I recall an interview that Guide columnist Michael Bronski did with Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar, who was touring the US promoting his latest movie. They were talking about sex and Pedro told Michael that his favorite cruising venue back in Spain was in the middle of a religious festival. The men would be all worked up, dancing, drinking, getting horny. Almodovar would grab his number, take him into a dark alley and have sex with him. Worked like a charm. Sex and religion.

Some religions seem to be fueled primarily by sex. I think of Sister Aimee Semple McPherson. I suspect most of her parishioners wanted to get in her pants-- an LA-based sex cult if there ever was one. Think Elmer Gantry-- an Aimee spin-off. Then there was Joseph Smith and his band of so-called Latter Day Saints. Poor Smith got himself murdered before he got his band to the Promised Land. One rumor still making the rounds is that Joe got done in because the folks decided to get outraged at his enjoying some fudge-packing with some of the cuter of the LDS lads-- and looking at some of today's Mormon guys working the streets trying to proselytize, wouldn't you want to engage in some fudge-packing with them, a tribute to the Founding Father!

Think of Francis Cardinal Spellman, my favorite American Catholic prelate. If it weren't for Fanny, Franny, whatever nickname queans called him, I'm afraid my Protestant lack-of-interest in our Catholic brethren would be even more considerable. Back to my sordid youth again: at age 10, I, along with friends, walked to our Public School. The route took us past the Catholic Church and School. This was the Church of The Annunciation. Cincinnati was-- probably still is-- full of right-wing German-Americans, who, in difficult times, were actively pro-Third Reich. (My maternal grandfather has the family rep of busting up, with his friends, pro-Nazi Bund meetings in Cincinnati.) At any rate, when my friends and I passed the church, we would occasionally chant "Nazi Nation," a warped version of Annunciation. I wonder what sex went on behind those walls. The mixture of religious pathology and libido always makes for an interesting recipe.

I was glad to have witnessed those Holy Rollers. I think they had it right.

Author Profile:  Mitzel
	Mitzel was a founding member of the Fag Rag collective, and has been a Guide columnist since 1986. He manages Calamus Books near Boston's South Station.
	Email:	mitzel@calamusbooks.com
	Website:	calamusbooks.com