Michelle Shocked: "I want my old job back"

In a long, rambling conversation with Spin's Rob Trucks, Michelle Shocked has broken her silence after her March 17 performance in which she quoted Bible verses and said "Someone please send a tweet saying, 'Michelle Shocked just said God hates faggots.'"

Shocked has issued a written apology to Northern California public radio station KQED. The station also released an anonymously submitted audio recording of the performance. 

Read the long, long interview here. 

If you don't have two hours to spare, here's a small exerpt which I think sums up the flavour of the interview pretty well:

"Rob Trucks: Are you simply a vessel here?

Michelle Shocked: I'm not answering only because I'm enjoying the irony of a writer asking me that question.

Is the conversation larger, the conversation that you're referring to, the conversation that you say just started, is the conversation larger than homosexuality?
[Shocked nods her head.]

Much larger?
Yeah, I really, really hope that before the conversation is over that we'll get to the thing that is nearest and dearest to my heart, which is this amazing, amazing initiative that came out of Occupy Wall Street. I really want people to have this conversation. And, you know, I think it could be probably argued God so loved the world he gave his only begotten son. People are like, "Yeah, yeah, we get that, but how are you going to feed us on that?" And this is being called a Year of Jubilee by Strike Debt. We're abolishing debt, and we're going to declare a strike; we're going to go on strike against a debt system that holds people in bondage to slavemasters that we never agreed to serve.

I understand that argument. I don't see the connection with God hates faggots. 
[She holds up her iPhone with a picture of a bull charging towards a matador holding a red cloth.] You see that red flag?

I do see that red flag. And I see the bull behind it and I see the matador.
Okay, so who's the matador in this picture?

I don't know.
Who's the red flag? That would be me.

Okay, you're the red flag.
And who's the bull? That would be the debt system.

Okay. 
So who's the matador?

Well, in terms of this conversation, I'm going to have to guess Christianity.
[She shakes her head.]

No?
That's humanity.

Humanity.
I am here to serve, and this is the larger conversation. But people think this is a joke. People think this is just a bunch of idealists who got their hands on a few little Internet gadgets and think they're going to change the world. But this is real. They just liberated a million dollars in emergency-room medical debt for $50,000 they collected on a telethon called the "Rolling Jubilee." Now, the Jubilee is an ancient tradition, out of the Hebrew tradition, that says after seven years all debt is eradicated. And if it sounds too good to be true, it's because it is. But a thousand-plus Americans got a phone call the day after they liberated this emergency-room debt that those people were not being profligate to incur. They seriously needed medical attention. And instead of debt collectors buying that debt on the derivatives market, and then hounding those people to death trying to collect on a debt that they couldn't afford, Strike Debt liberated that debt.

It sounds like a bait-and-switch.
I know. It sounds like a bait. It does sound like a bait. But let's talk about the show on Saturday [in Los Angeles].

Okay.
You're not from L.A., so you don't know who's running for mayor.

... "