The relationship between organized religion and the LGBTQ community can sometimes be very fraught.

Actor/activist Daniel Franzese and former Christian television host Azariah Southworth are delivering their own patented brand of faith and knowledge via the amazing podcast "Yass Queen", now on WOW Podcast Network. With religious trauma being a front page story across the country, Franzese and I sat down for an extensive conversation. We discussed not just “Yass Jesus” airing on WOW Podcast Network, but we dove deep into how the faith we all learned may just be very different factually, as well as how Franzese and Southworth letting the entire LGBTQ community that there still remains a place for them in Christianity.

Michael Cook: The podcast “Yass, Jesus” is wonderfully unique and is such a wonderfully addictive and ultimately necessary listen.

Daniel Franzese: I’m glad to hear that, I’m so glad you feel that way about it. I definitely think the same. Anything that feels like a sense of community to us is like a warm hug.

MC: What made you move over to the WOW Podcast Network?

DF: World of Wonder has always been what I call my “Hollywood Family” and I feel like they’ve been with me pretty much since the beginning of my career. They’ve been friendly and accepted me in all stages of who I felt that I was. I have seen amazing things happen with the growth of “RuPaul’s Drag Race” and how “Drag Race” to me is the number one queer stage in the world that you could probably be on. It is an incredible honor to be cast on that show and it changes their life to be cast. I think the best stories that we have seen out there in the past decade or so of queer faith stories have been on “RuPaul’s Drag Race”. Backstage and in “Untucked”, with the queens telling the stories of their faith journeys.

As a person who has dealt with church hurt and I know a lot of LGBTQIA Two Spirit people have, for them to see themselves reflected in some of the queens journeys has been a beautiful thing. They don’t really have a place to go after that to continue that discussion, we don’t really have a forum for celebrities to go on and discuss their faith journeys in a way that doesn’t feel heavy handed or judgmental. I feel that that is where our space is significant.

MC: What makes “Yass, Jesus” significant and the place to do that?

DF: We are non-slut shaming, we are sex positive, how we are from Monday through Saturday is how we are when we show up Sunday on the show. We curse, we’re comfortable, we smoke weed, we show up exactly how we are; we wonder and ask questions. I hate the term “Bible study” because what are you studying? I mean, you would wonder. I mean, there is so much to say about drag queens, okay lets collect drag queens from around the world and play one at the end of every episode. When we had the tragedy of the Pulse shooting, I couldn’t find one prayer for LGBTQ people online; so now we end every episode with a prayer. Some of our guests pray for us or with us. We also have great forum for people to celebrate things, ask for some prayer, or ask other people to pray for them.

I think that they show that if you take the two jars of rice and you yell at one “I love you, I love you” and you yell at the other. “I hate you, I hate you” that one turns black. Think about all of these queer people that are affirming to you and love you all are vibrating and praying for you. I think that that has power to it. When I think of that, World of Wonder and Wow Podcast Network is the perfect place; their message reaches the entire world. We’ve been doing that from my living room, I can only imagine what we can do with the big megaphone that WOW is.

MC: Many times, LGBTQ people turn away from faith and feel that they don’t have a place in a spiritual world, and “Yass Jesus” literally gives them that very space.

DF: I’m really excited to see some of the queens on “Drag Race” Season 16 and to see if they have faith journey stories. I am really excited to continue that story immediately and get deeper into it. Ask questions and find out things about them. In the past we really had a great episode with Ginger Minj and talking about her faith journey, Silky Nutmeg Ganaches’s faith journey was so inspiring also, talking about how she was a ministry of music and they turned on her when they found out that she did drag and she pointed to the sign where they were raising money for the church and it said “Under Construction”. She asked, “Aren’t we all under construction”? These are powerful tales that I think are really affirming.

There are queer tales in the Bible, surprise surprise we existed! We like to demystify the clobber passages where they talk about Sodom and Gomorrah or Leviticus and talk about what they think they really meant and back it up with scholars that agree. I feel like organized religion has politicized being anti-LGBTQ for so long and the Catholic church is the number one real estate holder in the world. There are so many reasons why they have to remain homophobic in order to keep supporters and funders of the colleges and all of these other things. We get to demystify all of that and talk ab out all of that as well. Azariah and I are both up-risers in our own regards. I like to say that we like to pull out of the pros that are in the Bible and call out all the cons in organized religion.

MC: What is something that you have discovered about yourself that was truly core shaking during the podcast?

DF: Azariah and I have seen a lot of things come full circle from the show over and over again. He and I had a conversation about one of our guests saying, “Fix your crown” and now we say that to each other all of the time. That is something that I carry with me all of the time, whenever I feel like I’m less than or feeling a certain type of way I look in the mirror and say “Fix your crown.” That came from our show.

I also got a prayer from Elegance Bratton the filmmaker and he was talking about being homeless and living off of the Christopher Street piers. The trans women who were not passable and didn’t have money were taking care of him on the streets. They gave him Chinese food and let him sleep on their couch. He said that until the most marginalized of us have full equality and acceptance, none of us are free. It really made me re-question my privilege of where I am as a celebrity, where I am as a white American, even though have duel citizenship and am a first generation American. I get to have the experience of being someone who comes from an immigrant family, but there is that duality. There is this intersectionality of all of us. It goes with not only sexuality and ethnicity, but also with spirituality. How do we put this together for queer people?

MC: What are some specific Biblical stories that stand out to you?

DF: The story of David and Jonathan in 1 Samuel is a very gay love tale. If you read it I don’t care who you are it’s so beautiful. It’s always portrayed to us at heterosexual weddings and one of the trippiest things I learned is that the two covenants that are in the Bible read at every heterosexual wedding are between two men or two women; there are no covenants of love between two men in the Bible. They’re either between Ruth and Naomi or David and Jonathan. So anytime anyone is reading from a Bible at a wedding, they are reading a covenant of love between two men or two women; mind blowing! They aren’t framed that way, Ruth and Naomi were daughter and mother in-law, maybe people can’t conceptualize that they might have fallen in love. Her husband was dead for many years, her children were dead for many years, they stayed together as family; they created a new family. I think that is a great affirming message for queer women.

There’s the story of eunuch talking to Paul after Jesus had already left. He said “Is there any reason that your God wouldn’t baptize me knowing that I’m a eunuch”? He said “no,” and eunuch said, “Well, baptize me right now,” and he did. What a great message for intersex and trans folks and a great perspective that is not given.

Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat, the original translation of “coat” in 46AD was a “ketonet passim” which meant a virginal princess dress. A ketonet passim is only in one other story in the Bible in Tamar’s wedding and that means that Joseph was not beat up because they were jealous of the coat, it means they beat him up because he had a dress. They would have left with the coat if they loved it, but instead they left it and put blood on it because they were mad at him for being gender queer and maybe a trans person of color.

I think these perspectives are lost on us and we try to do it in a fun and irreverent and spoonful of sugar way, but it is important. As someone who grew up with the generation losing all of our elders in the AIDS crisis, as a feral generation. Even growing up in musical theater, everyone doing everything, the producers that played the music, they were all my age because everyone else had passed. We didn’t get these tales, we didn’t get a lot of the scholars living to tell us these things. Now that these things are coming to light in the age of information, why not share it and do it in a fun way? And what’s more fun than WOW Podcast Network, a place that allows you to say whatever you want?

MC: Younger people are slowly starting to realize that the generation you are speaking of simply doesn’t exist anymore and it up to both our generation and their own to continue telling their stories.

DF: My goal used to be to be famous, I couldn’t want to be famous when I was around 12. I mean, Damian in “Mean Girls”, that’s pretty famous when you say that, people know who I am. So what’s the goal now? What do I want to do with my life now? I think about legacy … Each of these episodes of “Yass Jesus” is a piece of media that will last forever and people can go and listen to these queen’s stories, listen to their favorite pop star come and talk and have these kind of conversations, and listen to prayers read by queer ancestors. We don’t have any other place that is doing that and even in the space of queer Christianity that Azariah and I are in a lot, that space is often not sex positive.

Here we believe that sex work is work, you can be slutty and heavenly all in one breath. We try to break up the guilt of feeling pleasures that have been created by man and not spoken by God. Who would have the audacity to tell someone that that God doesn’t love them? As a Christian, I am offended with the rap that Christians have for the LGBTQ community. They’re known more for hating gay people than they are for loving God. I feel like as a true Christian, I should stand up and say that. Azariah and I are both in agreement that we are Christians in the way that we follow the teachings of Christ, but we are also agnostic in the way that we don’t think we have the answers to every single thing or that people don't make mistakes and things don’t get lost in translation. Do I think God took two bed bugs on the arc? No. But why can’t we take that story and discuss it and laugh about it over a joint?

MC: You mentioned “Mean Girls” and your legacy is cemented. Now, the musical is about to be released. Is looking back on your “Mean Girls” legacy like looking back on a different life all together?

DF: To me, the musical feels like its own thing really, even the story is not entirely the same. I feel like they already made the musical of “Mean Girls” and now this is so everyone can see it. It still doesn’t satiate me for another movie, I want to make another movie one day.

MC: If you could capsulize it, what is one thing that you want people to get from “Yass Jesus”.

DF: I want them to understand that God loves them; Period. And I want them to understand that there are a bunch of gay people vibrating on God loving them. As we always say, we’re on our knees for being gay and the Lord!

Follow Daniel Franzese on Instagram @whatsupdanny.

Check out “Yass Jesus” on WOW Podcast Network.