BATTLE OF THE BULLIES!!: Dan Savage and Brian Brown To Fight Over ... "Bullsh*t"

(Author's note: Why didn't I get as much attention for calling some beliefs "crap"? Some people have all the luck!)

At a high school journalism convention, anti-bullying and gay activist Dan Savage (founder, It Gets Better movement and creator of the neologism "Santorum"), as is his want, made a crude remark making a point we all know: parts of the Bible are simply ... bullsh*t. However, he didn't say that the Bible was ALL bullsh*t, just parts of it, especially some of the laws of Leviticus. Some students showed their disdain for Savage's comments by walking out.*

Now people (aka FOX News) are calling Dan Savage a bully
...and THE WAR has begun.

Glenn Beck's THE BLAZE:

ANTI-BULLYING CRUSADER ATTACKS THE BIBLE AND CURSES CHRISTIAN TEENS DURING HIGH SCHOOL SPEECH**
Front and center in the phalanx of Christian Right critics is Brian Brown. The National Organization for Marriage's president became absolutely incensed at Savage's "savaging" (Brown's wit is astounding) of the Bible. Yes, that's the same National Organization for Marriage (NOM) that tried unsuccessfully to boycott Starbuck's for its support of same-sex marriage.***

Let me lay down a public challenge to Dan Savage right here and now: You want to savage the Bible? Christian morality? Traditional marriage? Pope Benedict? I’m here, you name the time and the place and let’s see what a big man you are in a debate with someone who can talk back. It’s easy to make high-school girls cry by picking on them. Let’s pick on someone our own size!

You will find out out how venal and ridiculous your views of these things are if you dare to accept a challenge.

The response:

FRIDAY, MAY 4, 2012

HORRORS / RELIGION / LGBTQITSLFAConfidential to NOM's Brian Brown: You're On, Motherfucker

posted by DAN SAVAGE on FRI, MAY 4, 2012 at 2:02 PM

I will name the time and the place, per your offer, as soon as possible. Looking forward to it, NOMnuts.

Lines have been drawn. Souvenir dueling pistals are being made. National bookies are taking bets. People are praying that the event take place near their home so that they won't have to break their bank accounts on airfare to attend the event. Forget the upcoming election debates - this will be the one for the history books.

The uproar even spawned some critics who are usually Savage's biggest allies, but most of that criticism resulted from what they considered Savage's being "crass" and not the message itself: that parts of the Bible are pointedly ignored because they are WRONG. 

But what exactly is this "war" about? The horrendously rotten, bullying, evil, persecuting passage of Dan Savage's speech:

“People often point out that they can’t help it. They can’t help with the anti-gay bullyings because it says right there in Leviticus, it says right there in Timothy, it says right there in Romans that being gay is wrong. We can learn to ignore the bullshit in the Bible about gay people the same way we have learned to ignore the bullshit in the Bible about shellfish, about slavery, about dinner, about farming, about menstruation, about virginity, about masturbation. We ignore bullshit in the Bible about all sorts of things.

The immediate context of the offending speech is here. Savage points out the strict Leviticus laws concerning slavery and stoning women who have been found not to be virgins before marriage ("Calista Gingrich lives") and focuses on the fact that we totally discount such concepts while taking the one concept of homosexuality and making discrimination against gays legitimate. He was making the bullying point of "you're going to hell" ridiculous, i.e:  "bullshit." 

What the incident brought out, however, is that an enormous over-sensitivity to anything dealing with the Bible is...bullshit. Students began walking out once the Bible was mentioned. Their brains shut down before Savage's point could even be formed. The possibility of the entire walk out having been staged has been discussed: knee-jerk reactions can be suspicious.

Note in the clip below, the fact that FOX News' Steve Doocy says nothing about the applause and laughter Savage's speech also created. In fact, the amount of students in agreement far outnumbered the dissidents, conveniently making "Christianity" look like a persecuted minority.

For the convenience of Savage's critics, I created a Wordle with a graphic that NOM can use, it being in the form of a wedge - NOM's favorite shape. It's too bad that the word "bullsh*t" wound up to be so small because Savage only said it about three times. (If you click on the actual Wordle below it, "bullsh*t" is easier to read).

 




So the uproar is really it's own "bullshit" - but the debate promises to spawn super bullshit from the losers: Odds are on Savage to win, but "belief" and twisted reasoning will belong to Brown in the end. Leave it to the likes of Glenn Beck and Steve Doocy to see to it.  




*Some people think the walk-out was suspiciously contrived since, you will notice in the video, students began to walk out BEFORE the offensive term.
**Evidently being called "pansy-assed" is extreme cursing. (NOTE: this article was posted under the heading of "Science" WTF?)
 *** Starbuck's stock remains at an all-time high.

The Monday Sermon: Why We Must Keep The Wall Between Church And State To Tear Down The Walls Of Bigotry And Hatred

The most chilling thought about America's future is a Cindy Jacobs as President.
Some walls exist to keeps things in. Some walls exist to keep things out. But one wall stands to help other walls fall: the wall of separation between church and state. It keeps the bigots at bay and gives us time to assess their bigotry and belie their hatred.

There is a movement afoot to erase the separation of church and state: it's boldly proposed by the "lunatic fringe" - people like Cindy Jacobs who has fashioned herself and her colleagues as "New Apostles" (the NAR, or New Apostolic Reformation), but it's more prevalent in the "We Are A Christian Nation" circles headed by pseudo historian David Barton.

"We Are A Christian Nation" - therein lies the seeds to dark times ahead. For Dominionists like Barton neglect to insert an important word into the slogan: "only." America is to be a Christian ONLY nation: we caught a glimpse of the vehemence with which Dominionists and Reconstructionists hold their "truths to be self-evident" when Pastor Dennis Terry's introduction of Rick Santorum created a firestorm, telling liberals, atheists, Muslims, Buddhists to "Get Out!" Terry's subsequent backpedaling of "I was misquoted. I'm a Christian, so of course I love everyone," fell on deaf ears - only his congregation believed him.


It is ironic to think that the very reason for America's freedom of religion is the thing that today's Christian Right is trying to destroy: without separation of church and state there can be no freedom of religion, only freedom of a few Christian sects to worship the One True Religion. They say that wouldn't be so, but given an inch, and a mile of hatred for other sects, other religions would be taken: there would be nothing to stop them.

Perhaps the best reason for Separation of Church and State is that the fighting between Christian sects and denominations should be kept among themselves. We've already seen how - in disregarding the wall - candidates' "Christianity" has come into play and how, if left to certain denominations (like the Southern Baptist Convention), candidates would be disqualified simply because they are not "their" kind of Christian. They want to build a theocracy, but not on the shoulders of someone like Mitt Romney. Rick Santorum got as far as he did with his campaign simply because he painted himself as more righteous than the Catholic Church - something that pleased the Protestant Christian Right immensely.

The Wall, properly in place, would eventually disqualify the disqualifiers.

Jefferson, The Architect of The Wall

David Barton's latest tome, The Jefferson Lies has been widely criticized as one of the most disingenuous books ever written about Jefferson, valiantly trying to convince people that Jefferson was really VERY Christian, he could not have fathered Sally Hemmings' children and that - most importantly - he was never a critic of Christianity or religion. And never really meant that crazy idea about separation of church and state.

But some people have believed Barton's fictional look at our third President. It's considered a bestseller.*

The problem with Barton's revisionist history: quotes, especially Jefferson's. You can't change them, nor can you give them too much of a relativist slant. They're there for all the world to judge them on face value, and with Jefferson's quotes, with writings from the man who constructed the "Jefferson Bible" because he did not believe in the miracles of the New Testament, Jefferson himself belies any attempt to make him into a founder of a Christian Nation.

• History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.
• Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity.
• Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law. 
• In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own. 
• (...and the one to which I identify most): Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is the mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus."
• - Man once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind.

And the coup d' gras:

"I have examined all the known superstitions of the world, and I do not find in our particular superstition of Christianity one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology."

Back To Barton ... and his ilk.

The bigotry displayed by David these last several years is undeniable: when rendering everything good as "Biblical" and everything else bad as "secular" Barton has himself set up a wall of "Us vs Them" and ramped up religious bigotry to new levels:

Right Wing Watch:

Barton, who has warned the public schools are trying to “force” students “to be homosexual” through “homosexual indoctrination,” concurred with host Diana Crews said that she sees “Hitler” in “the likes of Kevin Jennings,” whom she claimed is promoting a “very dangerous that the agenda is really leading kids away from God.” He went on to attack California’s SB 48 and claim that textbooks there will teach kids the debated claims that George Washington Carver and Abraham Lincoln were gay, contending that “public schools are more into indoctrination than they are into truth or knowledge.”

How many are in Barton's group? Unfortunately, enough to make Freedom of Religion very difficult and put other freedoms (e.g. women's reproductive rights) in jeopardy. It's a group that could decide that any theocrat, no matter how inane, would be better than none - and a good start to establish a true Reconstructionist state.

Without a Wall of Separation Between Church and State, immense walls of bigotry could force us to face the fact that someone like Cindy Jacobs could indeed become President.




*The criterion for "bestseller" still stands at overall bookstore and online sales, regardless of any one group buying it en masse. If, for example, a book about the state of Texas were to become wildly popular with Texans, and sell, say 75,000 copies in one week, it could conceivably be termed a "national bestseller."

For A Good Time, Call ...Your Local Church Lady!

"They have long-term relationships. They have better marriages. They make more money. They're happier. All the data is there..."

In order to give credence to Tennessee's walk down the road to the Middle Ages*, abstinence-only advocates are coming out of the woodwork and making outrageous statements:

"All the data is there, and it is time for everybody to recognize it, both in the church and in the public sector that you know what, the church ladies are having the best sex!" - Leslee Unruh, founder of Abstinence Clearinghouse.

"All the data" meaning that something in Christian literature states that abstinence until marriage will reduce unwanted pregnancies much more than sex education combined with birth control. "All the data." Where? To most everyone on the planet, that data is coming out of Unruh's own private place where the sun doesn't shine. 

Last Monday Sermon, we talked about faulty research used to further the goals of the Righteous Right. This example, however, goes beyond those lies because Unruh is citing research that's too twisted for words. 


And twisted research doesn't count. 

The most pertinent study for AO advocates has been, of course, twisted to tout absolute success: the study showed that AO education for 12-year-olds delayed intercourse for only two years - certainly not until marriage. The study group was also held in question as not quite applicable to the question of AO. Of course, if you google "abstinence only studies" this one pops up a lot because of its popularity. 


Earlier in the interview, Unruh stated an even more unbelievable premise: that sex education is "really based on profound ignorance about human nature and what makes for a healthy family." This WTF? moment indicates that Ms. Unruh has been living on Pluto and is as far away from earth's reality as you can get: since the beginning of time, man has always had sex whenever and wherever he wanted. The Church - not man - has set its own limits on sex, creating guilt complexes and suicides.


Oh, and the part about relationships and money, sorry Leslee: you failed to mention that the church ladies also have a higher divorce rate than non-Christians and atheists**, their relationships don't last, and they make less money than their male counterparts, speaking of whom, don't get enough sex. 


At this point, a pertinent paragraph about Unruh - who is now considered the Queen of Abstinence Only - might be in order:

Unruh's obsessions include pedophiles, rape, molestation, pornography, disease, peer pressure to have sex and the idea that having multiple sexual partners automatically makes sex less intimate. She swears her daughter never even kissed her own husband until her wedding day. She thinks that taking birth control pills that limit menstruation is an effort to turn women into men. She also loves to hand out dolls of baby fetuses.

Life with Leslee Unruh must be so much fun!

So the best teen pregnancy prevention program is really not to talk about sex at all, right?


Right. Comparisons of AO programs to no sex education revealed the same results in teen pregnancy. And remember "virginity pledges"? They worked really well! One study over a five-year period showed that not only were virginity-pledged teens having just as much sex, they were having more unprotected sex than teens who didn't take the pledge. 


Tennessee and Utah:  Be Prepared!


It has never occurred in their righteousness just what the consequences of failed abstinence only programs will be, and while it may seem hyperbolic to say that Tennessee and Utah better be prepared for baby booms and playgrounds teeming with misinformation, the grain of truth in the statement is more like a rock. Very much like the rocks in Leslee Unruh's head, for she'll think that abstinence only is working - while she continues to hand out fetus dolls.


NOW ISN'T THAT SPECIAL!

*[JURIST] The Tennessee House of Representatives [official website] has passed a bill[HB 3621, PDF; bill summary] that augments the state's abstinence-only sex education curriculum to allow parents to sue school teachers or organizations that promote "gateway sexual activity."

** Some interesting stats: Born-again Christians 27% Other Christians 24% Atheists, Agnostics 21%

SAVE THE RICH! Garfunkel and Oates Sing For The Beleaguered One Percent!

Sometimes it takes the brilliance of people like Garfunkel and Oates to point out life's absurdities: one of which is FOX News' support of the One Percent and still operating under the slogan "Fair and Balanced". 


Their new video, SAVE THE RICH is done in We-Are-the-World fashion. 

The Monday Sermon: If You Twist Science In The Name Of Family And Morality, You're Still ... Lying.

Lying ... is lying ... is lying ... is lying. False research? Hell, it's only lying on a different level. And in a sense, it's worse, because it is much more premeditated: sometimes we lie on the spur of the moment to cover something up, but false research, twisted research, takes thought. Lots of it.

Many organizations in our country have become extensions of today's pulpit: The American Family Association, The Family Research Council, Focus on the Family spearhead a movement to legitimize hate and promote their form of "morality" through junk science and "research." The Barna Group, for example, touts itself as an unbiased pollster, but it's findings are anything but unbiased: George Barna's profile can be found on the website for Newt Gingrich's campaign, the section titled "Faith Coalition." 

He founded the Barna Research Group in 1984 (now The Barna Group) and helped it become a leading marketing research firm focused on the intersection of faith and culture.

The Family "Research" Council has done it time and time again: presented bad research as the truth. In fact, the use of discredited research such as Paul Cameron's studies about gays is what has prompted the Southern Poverty Law Center to list the FRC as a hate group. Ditto the American Family Association (Bryan Fischer) Ditto Abiding Ministries (Scott Lively). Ditto AFTAH (Americans for Truth About Homosexuality). Ditto NARTH (National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality). Ditto the late Chuck Colson's Prison Fellowship:

Chuck Colson and Prison Fellowship faked the data to make it appear as though taking part in their Christian rehabilitation program had a much higher rate of success in avoiding recidivism than it actually did. 

To the average American, false research has occasionally been exposed when it deals with homosexuality*. The machinations of Tony Perkins (FRC) and Bryan Fischer (AFA) have been questioned for years. But the truth is that false research has been demoralizing other religions and social arenas like Islam, women issues, and global warming for a good time as well.

PFAW:

The prolific use of shoddy research was on display when Rep. King used the dubious contention that over eight out of ten mosques in the U.S. advocate radical Islam as a rationale for holding congressional hearings on the radicalization of Muslim-Americans.The thoroughly debunked claim that extremists dominate over 80% of American mosques was first made by a Muslim cleric who has never been able to document or verify his assertion, but that hasn’t stopped anti-Muslim activists from repeating it ad nauseam. Frank Gaffney, Jr., of the Center for Security Policy, one of the most vociferous anti-Muslim ideologues, cited the phony statistic to defend his campaign to prevent the construction of mosques in America, and Religious Right leader Gary Bauer cited unnamed “experts” to support his allegation that those who disseminate “radical Wahhabist ideology” fund 80% of American mosques.

One typical evangelical response to global warming is given by the website Got Questions.org (The Bible Has Answers!)

The “consensus” claimed by most global warming theorists is not scientific proof; rather, it is a statement of majority opinion. Scientific majorities have been wrongly influenced by politics and other factors in the past. Such agreement is not to be taken lightly, but it is not the same thing as hard proof.

Ah, politics! It's the best defense against true research. Two weeks ago, when researcher Robert Spitzer recanted his findings about the possibility of homosexual "change", the AFA and the FRC cited "politics" and the ferocious machinations of the "homosexual lobby."

"Liar Lair" and Vetting The Research.

The aggressiveness with which today's socially conservative organizations tout these pieces of misinformation is always limited to the people who will never question them, so one solution may be meet aggression with aggression: screaming  "lair, liar pants on fire!" But what about the morality of such aggression? This is probably where morality must be weighed and hate-enabling becomes far too heavy in the balance: make no stake about it, knowingly manipulating numbers and outcomes is intentionally harmful.

In our last Monday Sermon, we wrote about vetting your belief, and just as much as you need to vet your belief, you need to vet the research spouted by organizations that would make you distrust or hate a group, a religion or a science. 

You might say that vetting isn't enough, shouting "liar liar!' isn't enough. On the other hand, letting the lies go unchallenged is...a sin.

*TWO:NEW YORK — In a letter made available to Truth Wins Out, the authors of a book on the health of gay men have accused Focus on the Family of distorting their research. The researchers publicly repudiatedan article written by “ex-gay” activist Jeff Johnston in Focus on the Family’ web magazine, Citizen Link, which falsely linked homosexuality to childhood sexual abuse. This letter marks the tenth researcher in two years who has claimed that Focus on the Family misrepresented their work.

A History Of Degenerative America In One Easy Lesson: A Christian Right Leader's Memories Of Fantasyland!

Carol Brady might have told him to STFU (see below)


The Christian Right'as grip on reality has never been very firm, and now Rick Scarborough of Vision America proves it. In one short diatribe, Scarborough managed to show just how skewed the Christian Right's views of America have been. Read the quote, view the video below. It's worth taking apart point by point - just for the fun (and the reality) of it.

Scarborough: We’ve gone from Andy Griffith to Bart Simpson in my lifetime; we’ve gone from Leave it to Beaver to Beavis and Behind Head, from My Three Sons to Two and a Half Men, from the Brady Bunch to the Big Bang Theory, we’ve gone from the Partridge Family to Desperate Housewives, from Happy Days to Jerry Springer, and look at comedians, there used to be comedians like Bob Hope who epitomized class and loved his country, now we have Larry the Cable Guy being gross and crass, and Christians laugh, what used to amaze us now simply amuses us. We’ve gone from commentaries from such cultural icons as Eric Sevareid to Bill Maher and Rachel Maddow. Look at our movies; we’ve gone from True Grit to Brokeback Mountain, from musicals like the Sound of Music to Oklahoma, from showgirls to slasher porn. Our schools were once the envy of the world, now we have dropout rates exceeding fifty percent in some of our major cities, graduating seniors can’t even read the diploma they’re receiving. Prayer and bible study are out, metal directors and drug-sniffing dogs are in, the Ten Commandments are out, murder and mayhem are in, the theory of evolution is taught as fact while the fact of God is taught as theory, sex-education has become nothing more than the facilitation of fornication, complete with home study with the teachers, in many cases.

1. Andy Griffith was television's answer to Will Rogers. Unfortunately, it made buffoons of Southerners through characters portrayed by Don Knotts (Barney Fife), Jim Nabors  (Gomer Pyle) and George Lindsey (Goober Pyle). Even Frances Bavier's character (Aunt Bea) was non too bright at times. As to Bart Simpson, he's waaay more intelligent, dude!

2. Leave It To Beaver was America as it wanted to be, but never was. That is, unless we knew of any housewife who cleaned the house in pearls. Perhaps the only realistic character was the smarmy Eddie Haskell. We knew kids like Eddie, but we never knew any family even approaching the Cleavers. And unfortunately, we all know idiots Like Beavis and Butthead.

3. My Three Sons was an attempt to give credence to fatherhood by making the dad single and his sons mildly contemporary. It managed to cover up the problem of deadbeat dads which was real, but not well known. And while Two and a Half Men doesn't tackle social issues, the characters deal with one of today's most prevalent lifestyles: the surrogate family.

4. Making the comparison of the Big Bang Theory to The Brady Bunch is more apt to the study of our fictional past than Scarborough knows: while the BBT touts science, the Brady Bunch borders on science fiction. The show, with its cutesy-sweet characters living in a sprawling suburban dream house might have been scripted by aliens from Mars. The stars of TBB certainly knew that they were playing out-of-reality characters and, later on, had some fun going totally against type (see Florence Henderson's rendition of "When You're Good To Mama" below).

5. The Partridge Family was a cute, musical attempt to bring the sitcom up-to-date, after the Monkees/Beatles era. It  made Oscar winner Shirley Jones a hip, working mom and spawned a minor rock star in Sean Cassidy. But it never touched upon reality in the slightest. In comparison, Desperate Housewives has highlighted today's war on women: remember, the beginning premise is that the narrator killed herself and the angst generated by the plots was the key to the first riveting episodes.

6. Scarborough's pairing of Happy Days to Jerry Springer is probably the most outlandishly ridiculous comparison, like countering a kumquat with an elephant. Happy Days was a spoof on what the Beach Blanket Bingo crowd looked like at home. Jerry Springer is a spoof on the mores of trailer trash. Springer himself never took any of it too serious. 


7. Bob Hope's class was born of vaudeville's less seamier side, kind of vaudeville lite. Hope's humor was always created to counter the grim realities of life and war. Was it based on reality? Only in allowing the common man hope that he too could get Dorothy Lamour. Larry The Cable Guy was, ironically, born of the humor of Jeff Foxworthy who now hosts The American Bible Challenge. 


8. The most distinguished hallmark of the American society is and always has been change. - Eric Sevareid. 


Scarborough would have hated his Sevareid's guts had he bothered to find out what Sevareid thought - and what he stood for. Sevareid was definitely to the left of center and one of his proudest achievements was in obtaining Adlai Stevenson's last interview. If he were alive today, he'd probably be co-hosting uber-intelligent Rachel Maddow's show. 


9. True Grit's Rooster Cogburn was not exactly a nice man and any love affair with the likes of Katherine Hepburn (in any character) would have been out of character for a misogynistic egotist. Brokeback Mountain  delved into the psyches of "macho" men in the closet. Much closer to reality and Rick Perry (regardless of leather jacket) wouldn't you say?
10. Hollywood's first real "slasher porn - "Psycho" - was made five years before the Sound of Music.


11. Drop out rates in inner cities has always been high, especially at a time when segregation dictated a poorer education for African Americans. Besides, you can't drop out of a school you're not allowed to attend. 


12. Christian prayers were "in" because diversity was not an issue (especially in Scarborough's Southern Baptist school). 


 13. Of course, Scarborough saved the most salacious and fallacious for last when he said: "...sex-education has become nothing more than the facilitation of fornication, complete with home study with the teachers, in many cases."


Has Scarborough ever visited the homes of today's youth pastors?

From Mary Magdalene To Mary Haynes: The 2000-Year-Old War On Women And Religion's Role In It.

"A woman's compromised the day's she's born."
- Miriam "Vanities" Aarons, in Clare Booth Luce's The Women


Mary Magdalene was not a prostitute, but early Christian men seldom failed to realize it when trying to put women "in their place." It was St. Paul who nailed it in his letter to the Corinthians when he basically told women to shut up in church and to wear head coverings. And even though the early church had women deacons (and brave women who sometimes saved male Christian ass), the ensuing orthodox Christians knew a good thing when they saw it in making women like Mary Magdalene prostitutes and other women child-bearing chattel as meek (and virginal) as Mary the mother of Jesus.


For putting women up on a pedestal or down on a bed in a brothel was the best way to keep them out of the middle - and equal with men.


Of course, there have been matriarchal societies throughout history* and different attitudes towards women: e.g. in ancient Greece, the concept of a wife was quite different since a woman was taken in as the man's "sister" and subsequently became a more integral part of his family. But let's face it, the Western Civilization built upon Judeo-Christian standards has always compromised women.Women as equals to men is a very recent construct.


A construct most people, especially the Christian Right, still cannot countenance. The latest denunciation of Catholic nuns' endeavors in social justice have been denounced by Benedict XVI not only because he is trying to placate America's Christian Right, but also because as the mainstay of patriarchal Roman Catholicism, the pope must keep nuns (women) in their place. They, after all, have not been against certain issues which women should be against:

WASHINGTON (RNS) -- The Vatican has launched a crackdown on the umbrella group that represents most of America's 55,000 Catholic nuns, saying that the group was not speaking out strongly enough against gay marriage, abortion and women's ordination.

COMPROMISE

Mary Magdalene was compromised. Lucretia Borgia was compromised.** Eleanor of Aquitaine was compromised. Even Eleanor Roosevelt was compromised.*** With the exception of a celebratory few in entertainment and politics, American women have always been compromised. Religious organizations like the SBC have always seen to that. 


And sometimes it takes a strong dose of the truth to tell America's women that they are still compromised.



Every time I see The Women (screenplay by Anita Loos), I marvel at the innate intelligence of women: sure, women aren't REALLY that catty, vicious or vain, but the sophistication of the movie is remarkable - simply because women really have had to survive under the cloak of self-made machismo men have imagined. In a sense, The Women is a wake up call to women everywhere: you're compromised, all right, but you've been able to deal with being compromised for two millenium through an intelligence that belies men. Underneath the facade of "Park Avenue Playgirls" lies a will to survive no man can match.  

"This is today. Steven and I are equals. We gave ourselfves to each other of our own free will for life. And to compromise that is wrong. Shockingly wrong! 

That's what Mary Haynes thought. Although God is never mentioned in The Women, the presence of religion and imposed mores is pervasive and substantial: it allowed Mary to think that "morality" included a kind equality. But she comes to a rude awakening later when, in Reno, Miriam tells her the truth. Then the very end of The Women shakes us to the core with the ultimate truth: women are still compromised. When the question of self-respect (in going back to her wayward husband) is brought to the fore, Mary responds:

"Pride is something a woman in love 

can't afford."****

So there's always been, in a sense, a war on women by a society formulated by religion, and maybe when women counterattack the the primal causes of doctrine and the clergy, they can finally receive the one thing that has eluded them for the last two thousand years: respect. 









*The most recent being the matriarchal society of the Filipines.
** Her father, Pope Alexander VI used both her and her brother Cesare as political pawns. The portrait of Lucretia as a poisoning fem fatale was both fictitious and unjustified.
*** Eleanor's lack of beauty compromised her from day one: in a letter to his mother, Sara Delano, FDR actually apologized for it. Unflattering cartoons were used against her, hiding the fact that she was a superb stateswoman. 

****Gay men like me have always looked to strong or beleaguered women for inspiration and support. At the Castro Theatre in San Francisco, a showing of The Women, Mildred Pierce, or Auntie Mame guarantees a packed house overflowing with notepads at the ready. Even the camp classic Valley of the Dolls exudes a kind of female machismo. What they sense most, however, is the fact that women are compromised - retrained - in their lives by society, an aspect many formerly closeted gays know all too well.