Sunday Sermonette: High Camp and High Dudgeon
People think of Massachusetts as a liberal state, and that’s mostly true. We were the only state that voted for McGovern back in ’72, our congressional delegation is a deep shade of indigo, and we’ve had Marriage Equality for ten years now.
But we still have hate groups. The Southern Poverty Law Center counts twelve hate groups in our Commonwealth, although I suspect a couple of them are just two guys in a basement with a swastika flag draped on the wall. One of our hate groups just reared their ugly head in time for yesterday’s 44th Annual Gay Pride Parade in Boston.
MassResistance (formerly Article 8 Alliance, formerly Parents’ Rights Coalition) published a press release that it was shocked, shocked I say, to find that the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence were to be the Grand Marshals of yesterday’s parade. Homosexual men pretending to be nuns! Why, this was not just pro-perversion, it was anti-Catholic!
Ever notice how these high-dudgeon hissy-fit screeds never seem to be able to use the word “gay” without “scare quotes”? It’s always the polysyllabic “ho-mo-sek’shul.”
In point of fact, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence have been doing their street theater charity work since 1979, and while they do mock religion, gender roles, and just about anything else, they don’t reserve their satire to the Catholic church.
What really toasts MassResistance’s Pop-Tarts is Openly Avowed Perverts In the Streets! Even young people! Won’t someone please think of the children? They’re going to grow up thinking it’s OK to be gay, bi, lesbian, or transgendered. And it’s NOT! It’s just NOT! Because… Well, because God doesn’t like it.
All arguments against Marriage Equality and civil rights regardless of gender expression or sexual orientation are ultimately religious. God doesn’t like it, and when he doesn’t like something, he punishes us with bad weather. Unfortunately, because God has lousy aim, he never seems to send lightning and tornados to take out Gay Pride Parades. Even yesterday’s threatening rain showers were brief and light. But that doesn’t mean God is not waxing exceeding wroth or purple with pique or whatever. God is not mocked. Remember that, Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. The next flood / forest fire / tornado / hurricane / rain of fish that happens anywhere on the globe is all your fault.
One thing I never understood, not even when I was a Christian, was why we should fight God’s battles for him. He’s the one with the heavy artillery, after all. If he doesn’t like something, doesn’t he have the wherewithal to make it unambiguously clear? Flooding a low-lying city in Louisiana somehow doesn’t clearly express unhappiness with gay marriage in Massachusetts.
There are those who say that God did express his wishes unambiguously, to late-Bronze-Age goat-herders in the Sinai peninsula and their descendants in occupied Palestine. It’s in a very old book. The trouble, of course, is that the very old book also says that it’s perfectly OK to enslave other human beings, murder your children as a sacrifice, treat women as chattel property, and other terrible things.
“Well, I just don’t understand how a man could love another man. And the things they do in bed are just disgusting.”
Since when is your understanding or approval required? I don’t understand how your wife can possibly love you (assuming she does), but it’s none of my business. And what disgusting activities you two do is bed (assuming you do) would really be none of my business if I gave it a moment’s thought. There are words for people who are obsessed with other people’s sex lives.
But what the breathless pearl-clutching offensensitivity of MassResistance and its ilk really miss is that the Pride Parade is a fun family celebration. The governor, who often marches with his gay daughter, led the parade. The mayor, who skipped the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade over their refusal to allow gay marchers, was right beside him. If you wanted to be offended by fit young men in Speedos dancing to booming house music, you could find them, but first you had to ignore all of the families, the older people, the children, the church groups, the companies, banks, colleges, universities (including my employer), and yes, even the straight people. The parade wound through the streets of Boston for two hours before ending up in a big festival at City Hall Plaza.
I could not be there this year. But my friends posted pictures in Facebook, and the Boston Globe covered the event. (In 1978, I called the Globe City Desk, demanding to know why our newspaper of record did not publish a word about the Gay Pride parade that had just happened. Their excuse was that they didn’t have a reporter available to cover it. Times have indeed changed!)
I don’t know if anyone from MassResistance was there. Probably not. They might have had fun. They might have enjoyed a colorful, vibrant, welcoming community of all shapes, colors, sizes, genders, and affections.
It’s vitally important for a hate group not to expose themselves to such things as love, acceptance, and diversity. Such things are powerful and dangerous. Just one exposure has been known to change a person’s life forever.
But we still have hate groups. The Southern Poverty Law Center counts twelve hate groups in our Commonwealth, although I suspect a couple of them are just two guys in a basement with a swastika flag draped on the wall. One of our hate groups just reared their ugly head in time for yesterday’s 44th Annual Gay Pride Parade in Boston.
MassResistance (formerly Article 8 Alliance, formerly Parents’ Rights Coalition) published a press release that it was shocked, shocked I say, to find that the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence were to be the Grand Marshals of yesterday’s parade. Homosexual men pretending to be nuns! Why, this was not just pro-perversion, it was anti-Catholic!
Ever notice how these high-dudgeon hissy-fit screeds never seem to be able to use the word “gay” without “scare quotes”? It’s always the polysyllabic “ho-mo-sek’shul.”
In point of fact, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence have been doing their street theater charity work since 1979, and while they do mock religion, gender roles, and just about anything else, they don’t reserve their satire to the Catholic church.
What really toasts MassResistance’s Pop-Tarts is Openly Avowed Perverts In the Streets! Even young people! Won’t someone please think of the children? They’re going to grow up thinking it’s OK to be gay, bi, lesbian, or transgendered. And it’s NOT! It’s just NOT! Because… Well, because God doesn’t like it.
All arguments against Marriage Equality and civil rights regardless of gender expression or sexual orientation are ultimately religious. God doesn’t like it, and when he doesn’t like something, he punishes us with bad weather. Unfortunately, because God has lousy aim, he never seems to send lightning and tornados to take out Gay Pride Parades. Even yesterday’s threatening rain showers were brief and light. But that doesn’t mean God is not waxing exceeding wroth or purple with pique or whatever. God is not mocked. Remember that, Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. The next flood / forest fire / tornado / hurricane / rain of fish that happens anywhere on the globe is all your fault.
One thing I never understood, not even when I was a Christian, was why we should fight God’s battles for him. He’s the one with the heavy artillery, after all. If he doesn’t like something, doesn’t he have the wherewithal to make it unambiguously clear? Flooding a low-lying city in Louisiana somehow doesn’t clearly express unhappiness with gay marriage in Massachusetts.
There are those who say that God did express his wishes unambiguously, to late-Bronze-Age goat-herders in the Sinai peninsula and their descendants in occupied Palestine. It’s in a very old book. The trouble, of course, is that the very old book also says that it’s perfectly OK to enslave other human beings, murder your children as a sacrifice, treat women as chattel property, and other terrible things.
“Well, I just don’t understand how a man could love another man. And the things they do in bed are just disgusting.”
Since when is your understanding or approval required? I don’t understand how your wife can possibly love you (assuming she does), but it’s none of my business. And what disgusting activities you two do is bed (assuming you do) would really be none of my business if I gave it a moment’s thought. There are words for people who are obsessed with other people’s sex lives.
But what the breathless pearl-clutching offensensitivity of MassResistance and its ilk really miss is that the Pride Parade is a fun family celebration. The governor, who often marches with his gay daughter, led the parade. The mayor, who skipped the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade over their refusal to allow gay marchers, was right beside him. If you wanted to be offended by fit young men in Speedos dancing to booming house music, you could find them, but first you had to ignore all of the families, the older people, the children, the church groups, the companies, banks, colleges, universities (including my employer), and yes, even the straight people. The parade wound through the streets of Boston for two hours before ending up in a big festival at City Hall Plaza.
I could not be there this year. But my friends posted pictures in Facebook, and the Boston Globe covered the event. (In 1978, I called the Globe City Desk, demanding to know why our newspaper of record did not publish a word about the Gay Pride parade that had just happened. Their excuse was that they didn’t have a reporter available to cover it. Times have indeed changed!)
I don’t know if anyone from MassResistance was there. Probably not. They might have had fun. They might have enjoyed a colorful, vibrant, welcoming community of all shapes, colors, sizes, genders, and affections.
It’s vitally important for a hate group not to expose themselves to such things as love, acceptance, and diversity. Such things are powerful and dangerous. Just one exposure has been known to change a person’s life forever.