Featured in Overcoming Homophobia Meeting for Youth (OHMY) 2004 Opening Ceremonies, an annual state-wide conference for high school and middle school youth who wish to create safer learning environments for students who are or are perceived to be lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender. Co-hosted by Gay-Straight Alliance Network and LYRIC, and held each February in San Francisco.

Heavily-Tanned

It's seven o'clock,
and behind the news desk
a new guest anchor
as chipper as she is blonde
enunciates the day's headlines:
"Junk Bonds Up Due to
Interest Rate Decline,"
"Tornado in Toledo,"
"Bombing in Afghanistan,"
and, Newsflash: "New study demands:
Jesus was a 'heavily-tanned' man."

Jesus was a 'heavily-tanned' man.
A 'heavily-tanned' man. Oh, I see,
so that must be why in L.A.
there're as many tanning salons as churches—
cuz all those pale don juans and prisses
want to be just like Jesus,
or JC, as they affectionately refer to him,
un-furring their armpits and legs
to prep for their bronze. Brands?
Brown Sugar, Jamaica Me Crazy,
Island Heat, and Clinique.
To avoid unsightly streaks, try the new
PRO 3000 Deluxe technique:
an all-in-one airbrushing kit.
So now, from dome to digits,
you can have that same exotic tone
of... neon-orangish-yellow.

And that prophet would also suggest
all the first public leaders
for American Anti-Racism
weren't light-skinned cuz
lighter was closer to white-skinned—
Oh no, they were just going for
that 'heavily-tanned-like-Jesus' look.

Take a look in the colored-glass mirror:
Those of you with Christian peers
may find self-hate is closer than it appears.
Cuz bad Christians will tell you
it all started with Cain,
whose children all bear the mark of his sin.
Bad Christians will tell you
that mark is black skin.
And if Cain is black,
then Jesus must be white.
White like Christmas.
White like a lamb. Like peace.
White like the pearly gates of heaven,
like the clouds, the robes,
the halos of angels.
The verdict is in, Ms. Morrison,
and he with the bluest eye
ain't no Masai rabbi from Shanghai or Paraguay;
he's the son on high in the highest of high skies.

Those who question his pale blondness
will be called blasphemous
and outcast from us.
Don't even try to pull that
Middle East geography demography shit,
or point out there's no
physical description of the prophet
in the New Testament—
cuz Michelangelo and Warner Sallman
got you beat by over
one billion reproductions,
not to mention the BBC documentary
and CBS mini-series:
blue-eyed, blond, every one.

I mean, please, how could Jesus
have walked on water
with all that melanin weighing him down?
And who would've stuck around
to hear some beige-ish brown guy
spouting commandments
from his rocky rostrum?
Instead of asking,
"Where do we come from?",
"Who is God, Jesus?",
"What does life mean?",
they'd probably just've wanted to know
if dark folks use sunscreen.
Yeah, they'd've taken him for a homeless man
and arrested him for panhandling.

The latest front-cover investigation
claims "olive" skin, with the authority
of Popular Mechanics' Israeli
forensic anthropologists — though there's not
a single bone to study, since obviously
Jesus' body's gone to heaven with him.
These forensic anthropologists
make me wonder: To determine
whether Mary was a virgin,
would Popular Mechanics call in
a team of gynecologists?

But that reporter calling Jesus Ôheavily-tanned,'
all those centuries of white folks
looking for tips from Michael Jackson
for how to bleach their savior's skin,
It seems to me they're just like
Christians of every color:
wanting Jesus to look just like them.

So explain to me, how are
the Lamb of God,
the Lily of the Valley,
and all those dozen bright white epithets,
the paintings, the films, the tv mini series—
how is any one of these off the path
of a... golden calf?
And is it any better that the Rastafarians,
who trace Jesus to King David
to the royal Ethiopians,
make Jesus as ebony as
the Caucasians make him ivory?

Something tells me Jesus
wouldn't be too happy to see any of us
trying to create his visage
is our own image.
Something tells me Jesus
wouldn't view the Crusades,
or the African and Native American slave trades,
with anything but rage.
I'd gauge he'd surge with ire
to see how we've transpired
to transfer our colonization
from the holy surface of the earth
to the holy surface of his skin.

Jesus does not appreciate being used
as justification for world domination.

And the pretence that he's on your side,
flying under your flag's embroideri,
does not make justice.

Telling the same lie one billion times
does not make it true.

Your rhyming tongue
does not make white right.
Your eyes do not prove
Jesus' eyes were blue.
Just cuz it snows up North isn't redeeming,
cuz if you think it's a white Christmas,
then you're the one dreaming.

And it don't take a Christian
to tell it's not the skin
but the heart within that counts.
And it don't take a Christian
to believe loving your neighbor
means a globalization
for and by... hearts—
not clubs of spades digging for diamonds,
not mindless industrialization
of defenseless nations.
It don't take a Christian
to believe that thou shalt not kill
does not make exemptions
for the country with the most money
or the most uranium.

Popular Mechanics goes on to claim
Jesus was five-foot-one,
one hundred and ten pounds;
his hair: short, dark, curly but tamed;
his face: large-nosed and round.
I feel like we might as well go on to say
Jesus had bad teeth but nice breath.
He was right-handed but batted left.
His favorite color was green.
He lost one pinky toe to gangrene.
He never told a lie or planted a cherry tree.
He loved poetry.
He's never heard of "Christianity"
or 30 B.C. or 6 A.D.
He's never dyed an Easter egg.
He's never seen snow.
And, regardless of what shows
on the exterior, or what you or he sees
in any mirror, his inner skin
is exactly the average
of all skin colors that have ever been.

Oh, and by the way,
sorry girls, but Jesus
is also gay.