Religious leaders met on Wednesday in Jerusalem in a united protest against a gay pride festival planned there in August. From left: Sheik Abed es-Salem Menasra, deputy mufti of Jerusalem; the Rev. Michel Sabbagh, the Latin patriarch; the Rev. Aris Shirvanian, the Armenian patriarch; Rabbi Shlomo Amar, the Sephardic chief rabbi; and Rabbi Yona Metzger, the Ashkenazi chief rabbi. The man at right was not identified.
("Clerics Fighting a Gay Festival for Jerusalem" The New York Times, page 1, March 31, 2005)
This is what unites these smiling morons. They will kill each other in the streets over an inch of barren land, and they will urge their supporters to fight to the death, but if there's one thing they can all agree on, it's this: gay people are icky! Gives me the creeps, man! Eeuuw, what if one of them tries to hit on me! I'm straight; I'm not one of those effing queers! Keep them the fuck out of my holy city!
I've said this before, but it bears repeating: which God do these people worship? And a special question for the two "patriarchs" in the group: what Jesus exactly was this that preached hatred of people, for anything? He didn't even hate the Romans, as I recall from my reading. (Okay, he wasn't too pleased with the moneylenders in the Temple, but he was criticizing their being in the Temple as inappropriate; he wasn't urging the crowd to kill them or anything. It wasn't personal.)
It's all tied in to this right-to-life thing going on, and to rights in general. First, there was this article from Newsweek that I cited yesterday that called into question our Leader's commitment to "err on the side of life", unless, of course, it happens to be the life of someone on death row who may or may not actually have committed the crime for which he was condemned. (He may not be sure, our Leader, because who has the time to waste on reviewing that crap? Fry 'em!) And of course there's that other whole angle of how he's saying that we have to protect the weaker members of our society (as in, the handicapped among them), but he's not too picky when it comes to the mental capacity of the soon-to-be-dead-at-the-state's-hand.
And what of our Leader's commitment to the sacred institution of marriage, as my friend LA pointed out yesterday? It's too good for ... you know, those people, it's a special privilege sanctified by God for a MAN and a WOMAN. Nooo, don't let anything threaten my traditional marriage! But oh wait, if one of the members of that traditional marriage holds a belief that's contrary to the prevailing fundamentalist bullshit our Republican lawmakers are spouting, then screw him. Isn't that what this was all about, all the legal attempts to stop Michael Schiavo in his tracks? About screwing around with his traditional marriage, claiming the state knew better than he did? Looks to me like it's the feds that are the biggest threat to traditional marriage these days. How any two other people of any gender, and their relationship, affect my marriage - which is in some ways not all that traditional - is that they don't. What does affect it is the government messing around in there, changing laws and making judicial decisions that get in the way and could potentially tell me or my husband that, hey, whaddaya know, you don't have the relationship you thought you did, the one you signed up for. We changed the rules.
And speaking of religion and its leaders, I'm watching what's going on in Rome with an interested eye. I've always been intrigued by the papacy; I was fascinated by Pope John XXII, a remarkable man (who was oddly admired by many members of my family, among them Uncle Aaron who had his name legally changed to Angelo in the late Pope's honor, but that's another story) and I remember well the election of Pope Paul following his death. And of course the election of the two popes that followed him; it's a fascinating procedure. And despite what many people say about this pope and his refusal to honor the role of women and to progress in many ways, he too has always drawn my admiration. What will happen now? He has made clear his belief that medical science should do whatever it can for people in any need. Yet I cannot help but feel that this man, above all others in the world, perhaps, must be very very secure and comfortable with what is about to happen to him. As Terri Schiavo's family said once the end has come, Well, at least now she's safe with God and that it was God's plan. So, if that's what you believe, what were you fighting it for? Didn't they believe all along that she was going to a better place? Why wouldn't they want that wonderful thing to happen to her? Which brings me back to the pope. I'm guessing that he has given instructions to allow him to die according to God's plan, and that when his time comes, as it seems to be coming any minute now, he will go along with great peace and happiness. A feeding tube while he's alive and conscious and making decisions - as they say he is - is one thing. But I'm guessing that he won't fight death as hard as that poor woman's family did.
So I'm back to the picture at the top of the page, the smiling and happy religious leaders of the so-called Holy Land, where nothing is holy and the only thing these people care about, much like our own legislative leaders, is preserving their own power by whipping up fear and loathing for something that is neither fearful nor hateful, but which is a convenient hot-button issue for rallying strong feelings. In other words, the same manipulative garbage is going on everywhere; it isn't limited to the halls of Congress. Well, at least that's nice to know. I guess.
