Design by Ingrid Frahm
Someone sent me Lil Nas X’s “Montero (Call Me by Your Name)” music video expecting that I’d be offended. I’m the senior minister at Middle Collegiate Church in New York City, which has long offered refuge and radical welcome to LGBTQIA+ people fleeing religious violence. And I’ll admit, I don’t know that I was fully ready to watch Satan getting a lap dance, but after watching the video, I
was offended: incensed by how the church has turned love into poison, spitting at boys like Montero Hill (a.k.a. Lil Nas X) for far too long. The true scandal of Montero isn’t Hill’s seduction in the garden; it’s the preaching that made him feel less than beautiful, sacred, and beloved.