On Sunday 27 June 2010 for the first time in my life i fought back against my persecutors of the past seventy years.
I marched (or actually rolled on my Segway since i'm too lame to walk very far) in San Francisco's Gay Parade carrying a sign reading
STRIKE BACK AGAINST YOUR
PERSECUTORS: TAX THE CHURCH
Aside from the stink eye from the cops, who we suspected all along were also religious fascists, i basked in the greatest affirmation i've ever experienced in my life. Thousands of people lining Market Street gave me thumbs ups, laughed, applauded, shouted encouragement, and filmed me...and that's just the ones i could see at the front of the crowd lining the street.
The high point was when a couple of young men shouted rhythmically FUCK THE CHURCH, FUCK THE CHURCH and were immediately joined by dozens (hundreds?) of bystanders around them.
And OK, right here at the beginning i need to point out that there are millions of decent Christians in this country who ignore the hatred of gays that their churches preach. And for that matter i learned on Sunday of a fourth Christian denomination that has (at least for the time being) stopped teaching hatred of gays as official church doctrine: the Disciples of Christ. It joins the Episcopal Church, the United Churches of Christ, and the Lutheran Church in tolerance. And while i'm pointing, i'll point out that the Unitarian Church, not being Christian, never taught hatred of gays.
But please, don't let the rest of them give you that hideous bullshit about 'loving the sinner and hating the sin' while they gather millions of dollars pushing legislation that would force all Americans, gay and straight alike, to follow the rules of their vicious churches. They hate you right along with your sin, and they have always done everything they could get away with to force everyone else to toe their line.
Think about it. Do you really believe that the leaders of the Christian churches stopped burning heretics at the stake out of the secret sweet kindness of their hearts or simply because they no longer had the power to do so?
In one of John Adams' letters to Thomas Jefferson, he observed that a primary reason he wanted separation of church and state was that the churches would still be inflicting hideous punishments on the people "if they but could."
Nothing has changed. It is the nature of religions to force everyone they can to follow their rules - at swordpoint, if necessary. The only thing that ever stops them is meeting resistance they cannot overcome. What i shall do in this blog is further my attempt to start an active movement against the church here in San Francisco instead of merely mounting a feeble defense against their continual assaults - most especially attacks from the Roman Catholic and Mormon churches led and organized by His Evil Excellency, George Niederauer, Archbishop of San Francisco and Persecutor of Rule Breakers. His rules, not yours.
4 comments:
Hey Matte, I met you at Gloria's a couple of years ago. I'm here in the land of Zion.....Mormon Utopia.....amongst one of the most homophobic cults in America. I've voiced my displeasure and disbelief in theological justifications for hate, bigotry and persecution on my own blog. I applaud your effort, Quixotic as it may be, to slay the monster and reach your goal. The more these tax-free entities continue to parasitize secular society and blatantly violate the separation of church and state with political activity, the more vulnerable they become to an enlightened citizenry to be extracted from the body politic once and for all and the ugly wound of their blood sucking cross healed.
You ROCK.
I agree we should tax the church. Any church. On all of their properties. And tax the collection plate as income. But I'm not anywhere near the "fuck the church" level of concern and doubt you can move me that way without a lot of nudging.
- ckm
I was just quoting the hotheads at the parade with that "Fuck the church" bit but i cheerfully admit i rather enjoyed it. That said, after a lifetime of tolerance i became hostile to the church only rather recently when i read Paul Monette and was at first shocked and then realized that he was absolutely right that the source of homophobia in our culture is the Christian religion. They started it and they nurture it.
I'll forgive my enemies when they stop mounting mendacious multimillion dollar advertising campaigns against me.
But no, i don't really expect mainstream America to turn against the church because their ox is merely being herded into a pen by the religious right rather than actually gored.
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