Jacob: Absolute Truth

On a cold, New Years Eve afternoon, waiting to start work, Jake and I sit outside in the cold away from the distracting noises of the inside of a café. We sit at a cold, dirty metal table, trying to dodge barbeque stains. To this interview, he brought with him The New American Standard Bible, and, in the leather cover was his name inscribed.


I’m from a town called Angel’s Camp
About two hours east of the bay area.
Moved to the bay area in December of 2005,
Right after I got married

You’re typically going to find a tight knit community,
Small town, so people know everybody,
Handful of churches up there.

You’ve got everything.
You’ve got just standard protestant churches,
You’ve got Catholic churches,
Jehovah’s witness,
Mormons,

You don’t really find a lot of eastern religions

I’m a Protestant.
Everything that I do
I filter through my understanding
Of who God is and
How I’m supposed to be following him.

What I do, what I see and
How I perceive things
I do through what the bible says
To be absolute truth.

I judge what I do as what
I would call wrong is based on what the bible says,
What I do right,
Is based on what the bible says.

Ryan: Have You Talked to God Today?

This interview occurred in his one bedroom apartment in Marina, a small little town five minutes north of the city of Monterey. We sat in his living room, him sitting backwards in a chair, smoking an extra long, extra thickly rolled joint and drinking shots of Tequila Rose and an awful sounding 40oz. Throughout the interview, he was trying to make sure that his cat, Hunter (named after Hunter S Thompson) didn’t try to go out on his non existent balcony that was in the middle of being renovated.


Do I consider myself to be religious?
That’s a really complicated question with me,
And that’s a good question.

I grew up being a child of an ex nun (adopted)
Went to school every day,
Middle school and had to go to church
At 5:30 in the morning, it was ridiculous.

You know, when you finally get set free
You want to run away,
And you do run away but
I’ve had plenty of time away and
I’ve actually just been coming around
To the fact that I don’t care about other people’s
Religions

I actually believe in everything
In a sense, even to the dark side.
I just kind of let people be.

I can be very critical of the Catholic church…

Well, they don’t believe in the gay marriage,
I grew up with a roman catholic church,
My mom was a nun,
My father figure is a Franciscan friar,
A deeper history goes in,
They were supposed to get married,

But they didn’t.

So my whole life, every day,
My conversation with my mom goes,

“Have you talked to god today?” it’s like…uh…

Therese: For All People

If you want to go by any sort of bible,
Then take your new testament as
A means to a better life, or
Take the incriminations or
Judgments coming from a society
That really, in my opinion,
Needed to try to grow stronger

It’s not about religion

Or recognition

Or ritual.

It’s about the fact that
The 14th amendment was created
In a document by a government
That was founded by and for the people,
The people,
Not just the white people,
The black people,
Not just the gay people,
Not just the straight people.

For all people.
To be equally protected under the tenants of those laws

Jewel: To Be Happy

My friends don’t really make a point

”It’s against our religion”
Well, everyone has different types of religion,

What if somebody doesn’t identify with your religion?
Can same sex marriage be okay?
So I think the religion element should
Not even be brought into the context of prop 8.

Yes, people get married in a church,
But then there are people who
Don’t want to get married in a church,
It’s all about what you believe

I believe people should be able to be happy.

On Religion:

I’m not, of course, an expert of religion, but it seems to me
That the major faiths have much more in common than they are
Willing to admit. They share a basic point of departure- that is,
Our world and our existence are not freaks of chance but rather part of
A mysterious, yet integral, act whose sources, direction,
And purpose are difficult to perceive in their entirety. And they
Share a large complex of moral imperatives that this mysterious
Act implies. In my view, whatever differences these religions
Might have are not as important as these fundamental similarities…

- Sharif Abdullah, Creating a World that Works for All

Mary: Corrupt

For Mary’s particular interview, I decided to have it in the park at a bench. We each had our respective drinks- me with an iced tea, her with her cup of coffee and her Marlboro red 100’s. A beautiful summer’s day, she and I both sat straddling the pinkish- orangeish table, facing each other.


I’m a centrist.
In some ways,
I lean very much to the right,
In some ways I lean to the left,

I’m a person that likes to look at
Each individual issue,
I don’t identify with either political party
‘Cause I think politics in this country
Has gotten extraordinarily corrupt.

It’s funny,
I had an argument with my husband about that

“No, no, I lived in Latin America where it’s very corrupt”
He came here and he saw, yea, It can be very corrupt.

People are going to support who is going to pay them the most.
I’ve gotten disgusted with the whole matter.
I tend to look at everything, each individual issue and
I look at my own conscience and
I try to go that way.

Sometimes it’s very difficult
If people don’t understand the motivations behind them
They’ll get the wrong impression

On prop 8, I voted yes.
I’d like to have the chance to explain myself.

I am, deep down, a very private person.
Bedroom issues should be kept out of public policy.

Period.

Therese: I Won't Go Away

When this interview started, it originated inside her house. In front of us lay a wooden coffee table that had only my notebooks and a large jasbiscus (jasmine/ hibiscus) iced tea that had grown warm driving from downtown Walnut Creek to Carmel Valley.


I would consider myself a humanist,
I can’t consider myself liberal because
I’m not gonna sit on someone’s wall and
Yell:

“I’m here,
I’m queer,
I won’t go away”

I think they’re painfully aware of that.

I just live my life and
Try to be as humane
As possible and
I make my political decisions
Informed by that as well