Life is not a Rehearsal

by John S. Spong,
Bishop of Newark

His name is David Brudnoy. In our part of the United States that name is not readily identified. If you live in Boston or New England, however, David Brudnoy is a household word. He is a regional radio and television personality. His late night radio talk show on Boston's 50,000 watt WBZ is said to reach into thirty-eight states. In his world David Brudnoy is known as "an intellectual Rush Limbaugh." He is an ultra conservative right-wing political critic. He refers to the President of the United States as "Bubba." He is a close friend of the outspoken and iconoclastic John Silber, the conservative president of Boston University.

Brudnoy got his start as a political commentator for William Buckley's National Review. The Conservative Party of Massachusetts sought him as its nominee for the Senate. So did the Republican party when they were seeking an ideological sacrificial lamb to oppose Ted Kennedy in one of his early re-election campaigns.

David Brudnoy is a unique human being. He is Jewish, but without religious convictions. He received his undergraduate degree from Yale in Japanese studies. His M.A. is from Harvard in East Asian studies. His Ph.D. is from Brandeis University in American intellectual history. For two years he taught at Texas Southern University , an all black state institution, where he became convinced of the harmfulness of all affirmative action plans. Every individual needed to make it on his or her own for Brudnoy. It was for him a sign of weakness or ineptitude to blame circumstances or anything else for one's own failure. His personal philosophy was shaped by the writings of Ayn Rand. He considered Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal "a platform for ruination" and Lyndon Johnson's Great Society "a political disaster." Religion to this man "was and is saddled with bizarre legends and preposterous miracle tales." Yet he claimed his Jewish heritage but without its religious dimension, and even reinforced that heritage while pursuing his studies at Brandeis.

I have had the opportunity to be a guest on the David Brudnoy Show on three different occasions. The first came in 1988 while I was on a media tour with my book, Living in Sin? I had been warned by my publicist that this show might be an unpleasant experience. Brudnoy with his academic background and keen intelligence was not a passive interviewer. It was easy to see him as a young Bill Buckley. I have always admired Buckley's mind though I have never been impressed by his arrogance or his personal rudeness. In my opinion, the power of right- wing radio talk show hosts from Bob Grant to Rush Limbaugh lies in their limited intellectual capacities. Their oratorical passion seems to develop in exact proportion to their inability to embrace the complexity of the issues. I, therefore, thought it would be refreshing and fun to spar with New England's right-wing intellectual hero. I was not disappointed.

That first guest appearance went by quickly. Only the two of us were in the studio. Producers and technicians directed the program from behind glass panels. They talked to Brudnoy through his ear piece. We discussed my book and homosexuality quite openly. Though some of the callers were vitriolic, I found David fair and receptive.

When the show was over, David and I chatted briefly and then I went out into the night. I wrote him a note of thanks when I returned to Newark and received back a gracious response. It did not surprise me, when Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism was published in 1990, that Brudnoy booked me for my second appearance. It too went well, and I received many letters from his vast audience.

What did surprise me was a story I read in The New York Times in January of 1995, which announced that conservative, right-wing talk show host David Brudnoy was a homosexual and was dying with AIDS. Suddenly all of the stereotypes built up over the years in my mind began to collapse. I had never before met a right-wing homosexual. They do not tend to be public. The Jesse Helmses and Pat Buchanans of this world are consistently gay negative. The attack on President Clinton's plan to remove sexual orientation as a bar to military service was led by a combination of right-wing politicians and conservative generals. The rush on the part of those members of the Congress, who are beholden to the religious right, to pass the "Defense of Marriage Act" in 1996 was almost amusing. That bill was designed to minimize the potential threat posed by the State of Hawaii's willingness to confer legal recognition upon same sex unions. I think particularly of the conservative Bible- quoting Republican Congressman from Georgia, whose oratorical brilliance on the sacredness of marriage was compromised just a bit by the revelation that he had wed three times and divorced twice. I wondered which of his marriages was so sacred or which of them he was so eager to defend.

In David Brudnoy I had been confronting a disciple of the same William Buckley who, on his program, "Firing Line," consistently refers to gay people as "Sodomites." Now it was publicly revealed that one of Buckley's closest asscociates was himself a gay man. More than that, Brudnoy was clearly an active gay man whose sexual proclivities had resulted in the dread diagnosis of AIDS. Upon reading this story, I wrote David another note, this time of sympathy, concern and support. I suspect it was one of millions. It was not answered. I know now that David Brudnoy had at that time descended into the valley of the shadow of death, where he suffered the tortures of the damned. His public admission came only after the disease was far advanced. His weight dropped to 125 pounds. He became unable to walk. He lost control of all his body functions. He developed a painful case of shingles. He contemplated suicide as many AIDS patients do. But because of an indomitable will to live and the skill of his doctors he survived and, miracle of miracles, he was ultimately able to return to his talk show in the fall of 1996.

In September of 1996, while on a book tour with Liberating the Gospels: Reading the Bible with Jewish Eyes, I was pleased to learn that I had been booked to appear once again on the David Brudnoy Show. Because of my schedule, this interview was done from my home by telephone so I did not see him in person. However, as is frequently the case, both before and after the show we had a few mintues to talk personally. That conversation was both touching and revealing. Interestingly enough, on this occasion it was David's Jewishness rather than his homosexuality that had attracted his attention. It was another good evening, spoiled only by the inevitable one or two fundamentalist callers whose threat found expression in rage.

I admired deeply this man who could and would return to his broadcast booth, resume his life, engage the issues once more from his far right conservative perspective and still be open and honest about his homosexuality. David Brudnoy had joined the ranks of such well-known public figures as Rock Hudson and Greg Louganis, who used their illness to educate the fearful public about both AIDS and homosexuality.

This man has now told the story of his life in an engaging book entitled Life Is Not a Rehearsal, published in January of 1997 by Doubleday. This book gives to those of us who are willing to learn a significant insight into what it means to grow up gay. He describes his inner struggles, his attempts to be heterosexual and his denial about a basic part of his identity. He portrays his sense of incompleteness, his hunger for love, and his first homosexual encounters which were, he says, both exhilarating and painful. He takes us into some of the perils of being gay in this society. He introduces us to the fear, the paranoia, the alcohol, the drugs, the chilling terror when life itself is at risk. It makes one wonder how different life would be if gay and lesbian people were not marginalized, if kids who grow up knowing themselves to be homosexual could see healthy, self-accepting gay role models making their way in the social order, and if gay people could have their deepest and most sacred commitments recognized by the laws of this society and blessed by those institutions that claim to speak for God.

David Brudnoy asserts frequently that he is not a religious man. It is true that he claims not to believe in God. Yet at the close of his book, which had chronicled incredible struggles with his illness and which were written in the full recognition that his life expectancy is all but over, he writes, "During my long journey, I did not find God. I wasn't looking. I found, instead, resources in myself that I thought didn't exist."

I wonder about those lines. Perhaps David did not find the God of traditional theism - separate, external and supernatural. But what about the God whose name was said to be "I am that I am." What about the God who is revealed in the depths of our living, in the wastefulness of our loving and in our courage to be in the face of the trauma of our existence? Perhaps David Brudnoy did not find God because he limited his search only to the traditional definition of God, as if God could actually be captured inside human words. I will not be able to judge that. I do know that this man contributed greatly to my knowledge and understanding. I can attest to the fact that he has made me a more sensitive and complete human being. God surely cannot be far from these intensely religious dimensions of life. It is just a bit ironic that "an intellectual Rush Limbaugh," who makes his living as a talk show host espousing causes that I generally find myself opposing with great emotion, could also be a gay man, a sufferer with AIDS and still be a window by which some of us are enabled to see life more deeply than ever before. Perhaps to his surprise and amazement, David Brudnoy has found the God, who in Paul Tillich's words is "the Ground of all Being" and who is ever revealed by those who risk being fully human.

David might well smile at such a conclusion.

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