National

On a drizzly evening earlier this week, the Rev. Billy, who calls Mickey Mouse "the Antichrist," was denouncing the evils of mindless consumerism at CalArts, the Valencia college partly founded and funded by Walt and Roy Disney.

Thursday night, the Rev. Billy and his Life After Shopping Gospel Choir will be preaching their puckishly anti-capitalist message from the bully pulpit of REDCAT, the multipurpose venue tucked inside Walt Disney Concert Hall. A late-night performance was added after the first one sold out.

Two weeks ago Reverend Billy, the performance artist and activist best known as the leader of the Church of Stop Shopping, was plying his trade, public proselytizing. He and 15 members of the church’s choir traveled from New York to Washington to stage a protest as part of Appalachia Rising, a campaign to end mountaintop-removal coal mining. They gathered around a mound of symbolic dirt in the lobby of a bank that they say finances mountaintop removal, shouted “Hallelujah!” and sang folk songs.

Even though we’ve come way farther than we did back in the day when Abraham Lincoln was alive, and he may have been gay too by the way, reading this New Yorker article about the gospel singer Tonex reminds me (once again) that we’ve got a loooooong way to go. The low down is that in September of 2009 the gospel singer Tonex came out of the closet, after dogging years of rumors and ending a four year marriage. And now he’s struggling to find his way, but not his ego, because his Church is not a-okay with him being gay.

Activist/performance artist Reverend Billy Talen held an "unmarriage until gay marriage" ceremony at Central Park's Bethesda Fountain on Sunday.

The Rev. Billy Talen makes us giggle. Not because he actually got dozens of couples to show up in New York's Central Park on a chilly Valentine's Day to revoke their wedding vows in support of gay marriage, but because he asked the crowd, "Can I have a same-sex-elujah?"

Dressed in his trademark televangelist drag and exhorting the crowd to a “same-sex elujah,” New York activist Reverend Billy Talen led straight couples in a mass “unwedding” on Valentine's Day in solidarity with gay couples denied marriage rights.

The Village Voice offers a detailed report of the scene with nearly 50 couples in Central Park on Sunday.

On Valentine’s Day 2010, over 50 straight couples gathered in the snow in front of the Bethesda Angel in Central Park for a mass Rev. Moon-style ritual of Unmarriage. Led by activist and performance artist Rev. Billy, these couples signed certificates of unmarriage and ceremoniously suspended their vows. They promised to stay committed but unmarried until gay weddings are legalized in New York State and the rest of the country.

We usually hear from the colorful activist Bill Talen, known as Rev. Billy of the Church of Stop Shopping, before Christmas when he stages his annual "Buy Nothing Day" and Dance your Debt Away events. But now he's expanding to Valentine's Day.

The angel at Bethesda Fountain in Central Park, shown here in this week's blizzard, is the meeting point for an UnMarry event for couples to call for gay marriage.

WITH THIS RING,  we de-wed.

More than 50 couples didn't let Valentine's Day stop them from taking an "unmarriage" vow in Central Park yesterday, in solidarity with gay couples throughout New York and New Jersey.

We're going to be married or none of us are!" said the East Village's Rev. Billy, who presided over the ceremony.

Brides sporting white veils smooched with dapper grooms -- then mailed off signed "certificates of unmarriage" to state officials.

Central Park's Bethesda Angel looked out at scores of brides wreathed in crowns of fake white hydrangea and grooms in thrift-store formalwear.

"Enjoy the last two minutes of your marriage," Rev. Billy Talen of the Church of Life After Shopping yelled, as on the most romantic day of the year the blissful couples prepared to negate their nuptials in solidarity with the same-sex marriage movement.