Anyone who has ever felt excluded from a group might have had an accompanying fantasy of getting some answers. Getting the run-around from an Evangelical mega-church in Austin, ministers and lesbian couple Ceil Melton and Han Nguyen, refused the passive route. Instead of shrugging it off, they disguised themselves as a husband and wife and infiltrated another Evangelical church in their former hometown.
We sat down over coffee with Melton and Nguyen to discuss "Faith of the Abomination," the documentary they filmed during the 11-month period they spent pretending to be a heterosexual couple. The film makes its world premiere at the Loft. Feb. 16.
The two of you met in Texas?
Han Nguyen: In Austin, yes. We just recently moved from Austin, actually.
To Tucson?
HN: Yes. Kind of related to this project, actually. We were subject to vandalism and harassment and lots of nastiness and we were trying to complete the project, and we felt we needed to get away from the hot spot, so to speak.
Ceil Melton: I have a brother here with his family, who’s been here for a number of years.
Texas comes across as pretty unforgiving terrain in terms of gay issues. Did that add to the anxiety?
HN: I guess that was part of the excitement for us, realizing that we were in the middle of the Bible Belt.
CM: I grew up an evangelical. My heart longed to be with what I grew up with and I have always felt this certain calling. I am now a licensed minister. But I gave up all those years because I was taught at an early age that because I’m gay, I’m an abomination and that God loathes me and I may as well forget that dream. As lesbian ministers, we had five meetings with the senior pastor there and we invested a year with him telling us, "Well, the wheel of justice turns slowly." And we understand that, but after investing a year he let us know that we could not be working ministers in his church unless we confessed our sin of homosexuality in front of the whole congregation and confess our sins and he said that god will change your DNA and you will be able to minister and work in our organization.
How did you prepare for your undercover experiment?
HN: It took us months to prepare our characters. For me it wasn’t so drastic, I just had to be more feminine than I was used to. For Ceil, it was more drastic because she was going from one gender to the next. We went for different looks until we finally went with the look that we went with, which were the male-pattern baldness and the facial hair.
CM: I knew there would be no question if I had male-pattern baldness. Had I worn a wig, I would always feel that someone would know it’s a wig.
Did you go to neutral places around town to test it out?
HN: We did. Grocery stores and stuff, to see how we would be received. In the experimental process as a heterosexual couple we were dong the usual hand holding and stuff, and it was an odd paradigm because it was the first time we had been out in public as a couple and, because of our costumes, we had not been stared at just for the simple act of holding hands.
CM: “The real test was when we dressed up as our characters and went out into our own community and no one knew us.
Once you became more involved with the church as pastors, was the fear of being caught prevalent?
HN: Always prevalent, I would say, within the first month or two.
CM: Until we were invited to lunch by the pastor.
HN: Not to mention that in this church, they broadcast their services. They had two big cameras set up and we had to be aware of all that.
Were you surprised by the rhetoric that you uncovered, or did you find pretty much what you expected to find?
HN: We were a little surprised, even though we kinda knew what we were heading into.
CM: I’ve been persecuted all my life—ever since I was old enough to understand that I am a lesbian—by this group, and I love them. I love the way they worship; I don’t love the idea that they teach a certain type of hate.
HN: And that we subsidize them with our taxes.
CM: And I also found out that as I was perceived to have a penis made a difference in the respect as a minister I got. Same everything except different clothes. Different hairdos.
