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I’m gay, and I’ve just left my church of fifteen years to come out. I’ve already left my church job, lost my network, my home, most of my friends, and my family’s understanding. In a really strange time in my life, a little bit apocalyptic, #GoodOmens was a heartstopping watch.
It had all the joy of the book. But what really undid me were the scenes @neilhimself added. My queer friends who saw their loves in Aziraphale and Crowley are yelling happily about the new romantic parts; my book fandom friends are shouting their delight over the new ending.
Love those too. What put me over the edge were a trio of new scenes between Aziraphale and heaven’s angels. I already saw something I needed in him. I was raised in the little world of my church, and watching him standing bewildered on Eden’s Eastern Gate hit home.
He wasn’t prepared for the world. He wasn’t expecting to make choices. Heaven’s conformity hadn’t given him a sense of himself, only a mistrust of it. But as soon as he began to love it he started to learn himself. He found clothes and plays and food and dance and friendship.
And the more he loves the more dissonance he feels around his ideology. I get that. I was raised to feel desire is dangerous, that doubt is demonic, that “the heart is deceitful above all things.” I wasn’t to get attached to the world like a civilian; I was God’s soldier.
I wasn’t my own. So when Gabriel tells Aziraphale he’s being drafted back into heaven’s army, and I saw the fear on Aziraphale’s face, I felt it. When Gabriel, with angelic contempt, asks Aziraphale what he’s become, I felt that too. I’ve gone soft.
(@michaelsheen ‘s acting, in this scene and every scene, was extraordinary. He plays Aziraphale with such love, with delight, with honesty and attention and bravery. I never thought I’d see a queer angel in any myth, let alone one so important to me, and this one I can love.)
Like him, I’m not a good soldier. I’m not like them. Not because I gave up trying—but because I tried so hard to do what they told me: love the world. Love your neighbor. Love before everything; it’s the only thing that lasts. If you do that you start to see holiness everywhere.
That’s what has happened to Aziraphale. That leads to the second scene that got me: the moment the other angels pin him up against a wall and tell him he’s falling for loving the world. Because it’s the first time we see pure fury on his face, and then he calls them bad angels.
Discovering anger is the thing that’s saved me: it lets me know what’s not right and gives me energy to deny it. Anyone who tries to tell me my queerness is evil, anyone who says I’m damned for loving, anyone who tells me to mistrust my humanity—they’re being bad angels.
They’re denying love. Love is the other thing that’s saved me. Because I had to fight hard to stay alive. The ones who taught me love don’t know me now I know myself. But I have been so loved. New friends and teachers are loving me now. Strangers are too, through stories.
Stories like this one. The last scene that hit home for me is the moment Aziraphale faces down the shouting angel meant to command him, accusing him of unangelic ideas, and says calmly, “I’m not a very good angel.” Because he’s finally separated the ideas of goodness and angels.
He knows the love he has for the world, for Crowley, for himself, belongs to him alone. They don’t own it. He won’t lose that, its goodness and power, if he leaves them. It’s not holy because it’s theirs, but because it’s his.
And I am my own. The church that taught me love doesn’t own it. They can’t decide the limits of it, and they can’t take it away. My soul, my goodness, my God, my queerness, my loves belong to me.
So anyone reading this who feels this—watch Good Omens. Stories save us when there is love in them. And anyone who made Good Omens who reads this—thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Next day addition: realized I’ve confused some people—I wasn’t kicked out of anywhere; my workplace’s policies would have kicked me out if I’d come out there, so I left first. I lost most of my friends there and my home organization when I left.
I’ve lost a lot, but it was my own choice for a safer life, even if I didn’t want to go. I’ve had friends who were kicked out of churches, jobs and homes violently—that’s another level of pain. If you’re reading this and that’s you, you deserved so much better. I love you.
