From the ‘Weasel-Words’ file, the Chicago Sun-Times (Sept. 10) relates the rather amazing story of a West Chicago church congregation leaving their building, which belongs to the Episcopal Church of America, for another that belongs to the Anglican Church of Uganda. The splitting ceremony was ‘joyous, upbeat’, had ‘colorful flags, while worshippers sang with their hands outstretched toward the heavens.’ A parishioner said ‘Anyone can come here—Black, white, gay, straight—and be loved.’ And why are these happy, sweet, Christian folk leaving the Episcopal Church? Why, because a gay bishop was elected in the United States and a lesbian is in the running for bishop of Chicago. These churchgoers may indeed be Christian, but thanks to essayist William Hazlitt (as quoted by Neil Steinberg in the same paper that day) we know what else they are: bigoted maniacs. Let the gay bishop, the lesbian priest or a gay couple wishing a blessing of their union show up at their new church and we’ll see how, umm, Christian they are. What circle of hell did Dante save for hypocrites?
Steinberg opines that if religious types who say their faith sets them against gays and that all gays are going to perdition ‘… then why waste your time trying to punish them here?’ If you’re of the moral sort, why not make their (short, sinful, painful) lives as pleasant as possible? ‘Why the bottomless need to harass gays here on Earth?’
We have another delicious gay situation in which liberals and conservatives have no idea which side to be on. (The previous was the meth-dealing gay foster parents.) Republican Senator Larry Craig of Idaho and his attempt to have a short-term romance with a vice cop in a Minneapolis airport is responsible for this one. The Chicago Tribune (Sept. 10) says Craig is the villain, not the rather cute officer who caught him in his toe-tapping pick-up act. Other conservatives are screaming at the police for invasion of privacy. The New York Times (Sept. 10) is a little more sympathetic, saying many arrested in similar or worse situations were treated more lightly. Doonesbury, the long-running political cartoon strip in various newspapers, has a hilarious riff on the whole in-the-bathroom scene (where we get to see inside the stalls—no doubt a first). Nobody can figure out if gay public sex in washrooms is disgusting, innocuous, dangerous, obscene, invisible or pro- or anti-personal civil rights. Is it publically private or privately public? And, by the way, gay men over the age of 40 who say they are totally unaware that this ever, ever, ever happened need to come clean (but probably not in a public lavatory).