Tila Tequila, whose real name is Tila Nguyen, was born to Vietnamese refugees in Singapore. She grew up in Houston, Texas.
Tequila was raised a strict Buddhist, and between the ages of one and eight, she lived with her parents in gated Buddhist community in Houston.[1] But hers was a rocky upbringing, full of drugs, alcohol, gangs, juvenile delinquent detention centers and teenage pregnancy.[2] We'd be hard-pressed to say that the Buddhism had a positive influence on her life. But that might explain her search for spirituality and faith in the western monotheistic traditions.
In 2007, Tequila responded to conservative Christian's objections to her bi-sexual dating reality show with some very Christian-sounding rhetoric. She spoke of some kind of conversion, born of trials, tribulations and criticisms and saying:
I accepted me for who I am in all my glory. I accepted the fact that God would love me as long as my heart is good… The church should understand that they have a higher responsibility to teach the youth about unconditional love, and how we can spread the love, not why being gay is a bad thing.[3]
However, her foray into Christianity was relatively short-lived. In 2012, Tequila announced her intention to convert to Judaism, specifically Kabbalah, saying:
As time passed, I started to become more and more fascinated with Kabbalah, the culture, and the way of life of the reform Judaism religion… I feel Orthodox is a little hardcore for me at this stage.[4]
Keep us posted as to how that develops, commenters.
Crazy lesbian politics
Of course, Tequila's lifestyle–and the fact that she flies it like a flag–puts her at odds with conservatives. And in terms of gay rights, she's where you would imagine she would be. She wrote an open letter to Obama to repeal the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy and to be more aggressive with the whole gay rights thing.[5] She wrote:
We are here, we are queer, and its about time that the military gets used to it!!! Discrimination is so 2000 and Late.[6]
So, she's liberal when it comes to social issues. Fine. That's not the most interesting part. Now, normally, I ignore all the "Illuminati" stuff. Every celebrity, somewhere on the Internet, has likely been accused of being Illuminati. My sense is that it's by people who have very little conception of what that means. However, in Tequila's case, she's the one that brought it up.
It's all a part of her "down the rabbit hole" conspiracy theory stuff, involving people living on the moon, mind-control crystals in the atmosphere, the Illuminati and parallel realities–which she occasionally occupies apparently.[7] She'll be happy to regale you with any and every conspiracy theory that has ever been conceived on her podcast.
As to how this is a political position? It's an outright rejection of anything mainstream and a grasping at answers, both cosmological and political, that would put her at odds with conventional explanations of reality. It would be way too simple to chalk-up geopolitics and social problems to the constant jockeying for money and power by flawed human beings–there must be answers in aliens and different dimensions.
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