Being a student with limited income and living in an expensive coastal California city like San Diego, money does not go far when you have little disposable income available on hand.

I was on my way home from the masjid when I noticed an advertisement for this play I heard about called "Southern Baptist Sissies." I had never seen the play, but I remember that those in college who did see it loved it. So I shelled out close to $60 dollars for an aisle seat with no visual obstructions to the stage. The play was at the Birch North Park Theatre in San Diego's North Park district, a neighborhood adjacent to Hillcrest (the gay ghetto) and University Heights, where I reside, commonly called "Uptown."

The play is about four young men coming of age and who attended Calvary Baptist Church somewhere in a white Southern town. The play does utilize a number of stereotypes but it spoke to me. So despite the price, I gained value from the play.

I was raised in the Southern Baptist denomination from 1 day old to the age of 14, my grandmother, who married my Muslim grandfather never converted to Islam. No one in my Muslim cultural family here in the United States practices Islam, they do not perform salaat, they do not perform zakat, they have never been on Hajj/Umrah, and they never state the shahada. Those with the tendency to judge others, would declare them outside the fold of Islam.

So being a gay man and having been Baptist, I was baptized at the age of 5, when I was in middle school, I had this fear of going to hell and recommitted my life to Christ and now being out of the military and being a more practicing Muslim, I am sort of in the closet now again.

The play has its origins to the aftermath of the Matthew Shepherd incident, where a young gay man was murdered by a pair of homophobes and left to die on the side of a country road.

The play takes place in and around Dallas over a period of several years, and the play incorporates many common Baptist hymns that I grew up singing in Church.

The play chronicles the lives of four gay men, each who comes to terms with their homosexuality through different means. Not all completely accept themselves, one will pursue a life of "normality" which means marrying a wife and living a life "for the Lord Jesus Christ." The most flamboyant/effeminate gay man lives his life as he sees fit, not too overly concerned with homophobia and the teachings of the Church that come from the pulpit. Then another gay man lives his life in shame, devastated that his mother discovered his "secret life," his life will end tragically. And then the main character, the narrator who gives voice to the play, is torn between accepting himself, making peace with religion, and coping with the rejection of his one true love who has chosen a life of normality.

The play has a comedic sidekick through the character of Peanut, an old gay man who has wasted his life away through the consumption of alcohol. He befriends a woman named Odette, who is also a drunkard, but who is living with the shame of rejecting her brother because he was gay.

The play is ultimately about self-acceptance and coping with what we imagine to be the "ideal" and the real world.

I would recommend it to anyone, especially reverts who were raised Christian, are now Muslim and queer, and still find themselves coping with issues of the closet. That describes me.