June '98 commentary

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SOCIALISTS AND GAY LIBERATION by Colin Wilson...yet, another installment GLF & the left In the US many of the people involved in GLF (Gay Lesbian Front, a New York group that formed soon after Stonewall) had been members of left wing student groups. In Britain the early 1970s saw both the rise of GLF and the highest level of working class struggle for decades, with a miners' strike eventually bringing down the Tory government in 1974. Despite this, socialist politics and solidarity with workers' struggles played little part in the new gay movement. There were two reasons for this, Firstly, most of the left wing students involved in GLF groups in the US had already abandoned any hope that American workers would fight the bosses. The events of the late 1960s - with civil rights protesters, anti-war students & lesbians and gays on the streets while struggle in the workplace was less frequent or dramatic - did nothing to challenge that view. Many of the students therefore believed that socialism could only be brought about through their own intense personal efforts. This led them towards separatist politics and away from politics of collective working class action.

A further weakness of the left in GLF was the illusions they had in the Stalinist regimes of the USSR and its allies. The greatest influence on the American gay movement's thinking about socialism was Cuba, a client state of the USSR since Fidel Castro had seized power from the US backed Cuban government in 1959 and declared the country socialist. Successive US governments imposed a complete trade embargo on Cuba from the early 1960s. For much of the US left in the 1960s, and the GLF left later, defiance of their government through support for Cuba was a crucial issue. But Cuba, along with the other Stalinist states, was a violently homophobic society. The Communist Party of Cuba had decreed the 'homosexual deviations' were of a 'socio-pathological character' and that 'all manifestations of homosexual deviations are to be firmly rejected'. Gay people who visited Cuba in 1970 out of solidarity with the regime were abused and threatened.

Many concluded from this, not that Cuba and the USSR were not socialist, but that socialism had nothing to offer gays and lesbians. Horrified at the previous support for viciously anti-gay regimes, many on the American student left gave up socialism and embraced separatist politics.

In Britain the high level of class struggle of the early 1970s made it potentially easier to see links between the working class fight against the Tory government and the struggle of lesbians and gays. Throughout the period small GLF contingents joined the demonstrations against the Tories proposed anti-union laws. A GLF group joined the massive demonstration in 1972 that helped free the Pentonville dockers jailed under the Tory anti-union laws. In this way some links with the workers' movement were made. But such involvement was never the center of GLF's politics or activity. When the Labor government of 1974-9 set about breaking the back of workers' struggles and organization, the chance for GLF politics to develop in this direction was curtailed.

The politics of autonomy The principle of 'autonomy' or separatism was taken for granted in GLF, as it has been in the gay movement ever since. The argument runs that, because lesbians and gay men experience gay oppression and straight people do not, lesbian and gays necessarily know best how to fight it. It follows that fighting for gay liberation is centrally the task of gay people and that straight people are to be excluded from gay organizations, since at best they do not understand the issues and at worst they are the enemy.

There are many problems with this approach. For example it is far from necessarily the case that gay people automatically be radicalized by their oppression and want to fight back. Gay oppression makes many fearful of fighting and eager to conform with society as much as they can [like Log Cabin Gay Republicans]. Campaigning by socialists of gay militants is resented out of a fear that it will produce a homophobic backlash. As a result, the strongest fighters against gay oppression can come to be held responsible for the oppression itself.

Neither is it necessarily true that lesbians and gays, because they experience gay oppression, will have the best ideas about how to fight it. Lesbians and gays have all kinds of ideas about how to fight it. Some turn to the Labor Party, some to civil disobedience, some even to the Tory Campaign for Homosexual Equality. As the experience of GLF and of Hirschfeld in Germany shows, gay oppression does not by itself lead to effective politics but often to confused or mistaken ones. Likewise straight people may have useful things to say about gay politics. The effect of separatist politics is that Tory gays - linked to a party directly responsible for increasing gay oppression - are guaranteed a hearing while straight socialists who actively support the struggle against oppression are not.

For gays and lesbians to organize separately assumes that, regardless of their class, they can work together as gay people, as a 'lesbian and gay community'. In fact, class differences are as central amongst gay people as they are in the rest of society. Gay and lesbian government ministers and business people reap huge rewards from existing society - the last thing they want is to fight to end it. If sexuality was really more important than class, then gay millionaires would have donated huge sums to AIDS research and relief as thousands of the fellow homosexuals fell ill and died - but they clearly haven't. Ruling class gays are happy for society to stay as it is. Many middle class gays might like some changes if they could be achieved by means which don't threaten their privileges. The interests of working class lesbians and gay men lie in bursting through the limitations which ruling and middle class gays seek to set.

These same class divisions also exist between gay workers and the owners of the commercial gay scene. Gay people only use the expensive pubs and clubs of the scene, because it is impossible to be openly gay in other venues.(sic) If gay oppression didn't exist, anyone could go into any pub and club without worrying about how they would be treated. Gay oppression guarantees pub and club owners their profits. Gay business people encourage other lesbians and gays to celebrate the existence of the commercial scene. Of course, when gay pubs and clubs are attacked by bigots or raided by the police, socialists are among the first to defend them. However, as the GLF recognized, the commercial scene is not part of gay liberation - it is a sign that gays are still oppressed. The owners of the scene will support some campaigns - too much gay oppression is bad for business since it means fewer people through the door. But like the owners of any small business their first priority is to defend their profits, which means being against true gay liberation through the creation of a socialist society.

To be continued in the July issue.

As you can see, in Colin's last paragraph, the American and British scenes are different, since the gay "pub and club" scene started and remained with a lower or working class image in the USA, leather & tattoos being the most obvious examples. The leather "street tough" image was compensation for the deballed status of gay men - not exactly ancient Sparta. America fostered an "outcast within outcasts" persona. And yet the social harangue about working class solidarity was and is a "turn off" to most Americans, gay or straight, due to the obvious classist focus. The political high ground goal is to be accomplished with inclusiveness, not classist exclusivness.

Colin does not explore middle class psychology, etc. deeply enough to see what else paralyzes their mind and potential action towards taking care of themselves, in contrast to being approval-seekers, i.e. "the other directed" people, or to be blunt: ass kissers. God forbid I should accuse Colin for being so reductionist as my comments are, but this is an area which needs further explanation. I would contend that most middle class today are functionally incapable, either emotionally or intellectually, to be either radicals or revolutionaries. They would have too much to lose.

The middle class has been carefully trained to be passive sheep; the old technique of marching in rallies as an effective political action is passé (doesn't work any more) and an ineffective message to the government. When you do march, what happens? You are ignored by the media: neutralized. Besides, those of you who are old enough to recall, the Martin Luther King, Jr. march on Washington, D.C. was an extremely tense time with King taking the moral high ground. (Gay issues are not exactly the high moral ground in the minds of most people.) There was revolution in the air, because the civil rights issue was tied to the anti-Vietnam issue. King was outspoken in his support against the war. He rightly saw his people being used as cannon fodder in an unholy war, after all, didn't the Constitution talk about the military in terms of protecting the borders of the US. Vietnam was no border; it was pure American imperialism. We had no national interest there, only national ego backed by big business greed, as in the military-industrial complex, thank you, General / President Eisenhower.

But today marches and rallies are only for the internal / emotional / mental stuff going on within the gay person him/her self and gay community organizations. They are very useful in creating grass roots activists. They are politically ineffective (short range) on making new laws or enforcing old laws that protect equal rights. If you want proof, take a good look @ where the civil rights issues are among Blacks or any other minority today. The ploy the Clinton Administration is now using is to enlarge care for children; after all, who could possibly be against children, i.e. family values? Only mean spirited Republicans. "Suffer the little children...", right? (Matt. 19:14) Clinton is going to rub their noses in the dung heap of family values.

For all minorities new methods are needed to break the passive behavior of "baa-ram-ewe" mind-control of the minorities by their own leadership. It 's like new wine in old wine skins. Only a totally mindless gay middle class would see a march and rally in the style of a party / frolic as a way to get politicians and the courts to support equal rights for the GLBTQ community.

The reason Martin Luther King, Jr.'s (Bayard Rustin's) march on Washington worked was because the country was at such a high emotional pitch that heads were going to roll if the Black movement didn't get a credible crumb from a white racist government. Without a movement, no minority is about to get anything. Without coalitions, no minority is going to be listened to. The socialist insight, that separatist politics is a middle class fantasy, is right on target. A middle class weltungschaung - perspective does not have the anger or focus or collective mentality to build coalitions that stick together in solidarity.

Besides, it is not possible to maintain the high emotional pitch, the glue, which keeps the movement together. Like music, the crescendo has to be tightly orchestrated or the anger will melt in your hands if it is extended too long.

Gays don't even have a serious, angry, focused movement. Middle class people are useful for building service agencies and re-active political events, but they have no cache, not a clue, about building movements and revolutions: only the poor and rich know how to do this, because neither the rich nor the poor have much to lose, the rich being protected by their wealth.

Middle class politics are for the most part RE-active politics, and although that is some support, it's never enough. Indeed, few agencies are into both support services & PRO-active politics. The post-Alinsky activities in the state of Texas are only an interface - cooperative venture of two separate agencies, churches and the Alinsky agency out of Chicago ( the book "COOL ANGER"). The only place with which I am familiar where they DO mix into one is in poverty situations like the Catholic Church's Maryknoll Order in places like Nicaragua or in the work being done with a unity of church and politics in Chiapas, Mexico. Only those who feel desperate and severely oppressed (and are clever), are into PRO-active politics. And where are we likely to find that in Madison?! Lightner, Wagner & Green are past history.

HERD POISONING Simply put, herd poisoning is a psychological term used to identify a situation where, when everyone in a culture is doing something wrong, no one notices it, because there's no intervening viewpoint or behavior to call the issue into question, so the negative or destructive behavior continues without being challenged or remedied. Cows are a good example. Cows used to be very ferocious beasts, but it was slowly bred out of them to the point where most are passive. That's what's happened in American politics. In the 1700's most white middle class males who owned property in the USA knew how to behave as a citizen, and it was NOT just going to the polls on election day. Today, we can't even get most people to the polls on election day. There is no future for a democracy in this situation, because there is no democracy. Recall the Greek word demos means people, i.e. all the people who are eligible to vote.

What is within the realm of the possible to make political progress? We have no movement. We do not have the anger that focuses on creating a movement. Instead, we have a big group who wants to party.

AN ALTERNATIVE Our only hope, as I see it, is to fall back on the trickster antics found in both the Old Testament and the 20 th century's best non-violent community organizer: Saul Alinsky, i.e. BRAINS. Neutralize your enemy with the humor: publically embarrass the enemy with wide coverage. Put them on the defensive. And if a little guilt works, DO IT !

THE NATIONAL AGENDA..........AS I SEE IT The National Gay Lesbian Task Force has been a national lobby long enough to experience first hand the limitations of trying to get legislators to vote for our most basic issues, like ENDA, DOMA, etc. To say the least, those efforts have failed. My point: if you can't get the legislators to respond appropriately ONCE they are elected, the only alternative is to replace them, and that's a grass roots project.

Let me make the same point with regards to the up-coming Marches planned for State Capitals in 1999, and especially the March on Washington in 2000. If you are old enough to recall, progressive legislation only happened, no matter who was in the White House or Congress, Democrat or Republican, when the country was at a fever pitch of emotional tension near revolution. There is none of that with GLBTQ marches; instead, it's always a frolic and a party, like a day at the Petite Hameau @ Versailles with Marie Antoinette dressed up as a shepherdess playing dairy maid...a romp in the meadows, at least. This sort of behavior does not change votes in Congress or the Courts. Indeed, at best, it just might bring the peasants to the palace to escort the royals back to Paris! Yes, grass roots, again.

Recall that wonderful woman from Madison, Melinda Paras? She was elected head of the National Gay Lesbian Task Force and remained just two years, if that long. Her focus was grass roots, grass roots and more grass roots. This is the name of the game, i.e. as any seasoned politician will tell you, "all politics are essentially local," i.e. shit-in; shit-out. If we are unable to budge Congressional legislators once they are elected, then the only thing left to do is to remove them: elect OUR PEOPLE or one's who are committedly gay friendly like Joann Elder, John Hendrik and Andy Heidt. That is the real meaning of the State and National marches. What marches do is to activate people who have not yet entered grass roots political action. Yes, this is a long range scenario, if you think of two years as long range. It is no longer enough for the GLBTQ community to be put-off, silenced, by having a few of our professionals be appointed to posts in an administration. Mascot days have dwindled down to a precious few.

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WHAT WALKS ON 4 LEGS, THEN 2 AND THEN 3 ?

Institutions and agencies. The US Government started as a revolution and slowly fell apart as a progressive force for positive change; however, there were moments of hope, like women's suffrage, the 14 th amendment, anti-monopolistic legislation, the creation of Social Security, the Marshall Plan, the GI Bill of Rights, Civil Right legislation in 1965, Medicare ( sans eyes and teeth; what the hell, some parts of our body get 60 % coverage) and Medicaid. But Blacks and gays are still not really included in the all of "...with liberty and justice for all, "or in the equal of "Equal Justice Under Law", not to mention the poor, women, the elderly and other ethnic minorities. Was it Jefferson who said that liberty has to be "watered" by the blood of martyrs every twenty years or so? Mao Tse Dung said much the same thing.

And to make matters much worse, I am not sure that it is possible for most service agencies to also be a politically pro-active as well. What it takes to be effective as a service agency is very different from what it takes to be successful politically. Just as there is no accessible school courses on how to be a good parent, so too, there is no training how to become an effective citizen.

The same holds true for governmental as it is for non-governmental agencies and institutions. Can you think of a more RE-active political agency than the Church? Sure, there were moments when one could detect life, like the Social Gospel with Raushenberg, Pope John 23 rd, Bishop Spong, etc., but for the most part the Church is the living embodiment of the words of Jesus: "Let the dead bury the dead." And it doesn't even pay taxes on all that property !

The Court decides mostly to the advantage of large corporations (and it's been a long time since they acted for the public good as is stated in State charters). The Court's recent decision against the Progressive Party said that the two party system had to be protected (where does it say that in the Constitution?) and in the Georgia case a few years back, two men having consentual sex in the privacy of their own home were arrested, and the Supreme Court ruled (Bowers v. Hardwick) against them (so much for the 4 th & 14 th amendment and British common law dating back to the Semayne Case, 1604: "your house is your castle"). Indeed, the Court today has an Establishment (insider's) point of view rather than a perspective of justice for the little guy (outsider)("Don't ask, don't tell").

Is Republican state government regressive? (Hello, W-2 and the governor's ability to line-item veto and rewrite legislation). Republican federal government has been no friend to the elderly or any of us needing a Canadian styled national health care plan. Socialized? You best your ass! The US military is socialized ! So what's so wrong with that?! When there are screw-ups there, it's because capitalists have ripped-off the tax payer; hello toilet seats and hammers to name just a few. So much for privatization, which is about as stupid as the flat tax.

Even our GLBTQ agency, The United, began as a pro-active advocacy agency but will die this mid-summer as an uneven service agency which does not, for instance, even provide much in counseling services and nothing in pro-active advocacy; instead, various groups, for the most part, use the office as a place for their support groups to meet. And if you really want to take a good look at what a lack-of-challenge looks like, check out Frontiers ("A fourth for bridge, anyone?") When was the last time they did anything for anyone besides themselves, especially with the size of the tidy nest-egg in their treasury? Even the number of people willing to help organize the GALVANize rally, parade & picnic is very light. How many are working in the election campaigns of Tammy and Garvey? If being politically stagnant were precious metal, Madison would be Fort Knox. Christ! This is a re-run of the last election turn-out. Wake up, folks; has it ever occurred to you WHY the National Gay Lesbian Task Force doesn't have many people from the midwest area on their boards? DUH! The only really Pro-active one they haven't taken is Wagner, but he's past history.

With the KKK threatening to rally in Madison sometime this summer, not even PFLAG was willing to use their card table at Farmer's Market on Saturdays as a place to sign a petition against this hate group with a record of killing Blacks and bashing Gays. What a golden opportunity for some agency or cluster of agencies to pull together to get a parallel permit to rally next to the KKK and ask for donations toward scholarships for Black-gay kids wanting to attend college/university. Service agencies are systematically unable to get beyond short range thinking, the immediate cry, the focus of only the tail end of the problem.

We could USE the KKK's hate as a force to "build bridges" and "light candles". We have had three incidents: Ronny Greer, Reggie White and now the KKK. Ronny is such of non-entity, maybe it was best to just ignore him & let the city administration deal with his bigotry. In Reggie's case, maybe we should have mounted a serious attack against the UW Sports group that hired him to speak. But the KKK is such a big group with a wicked history of murder that we need to make some sort of statement rather than bury our heads in the ground. See what liberals we are? Liberals wring their hands and talk about how terrible it is, but liberals are dead-assed when in comes to action, any action. Long on talk; short on action. Not unlike the pastors who signed the Affirmation for Gay/Lesbian Unions. It looks good on paper, but... If ever there was an opportunity to reach out to the Black community by gays, this is it. Many Blacks have a gay bigotry problem. Where is an "out" gay kidney for Madison's E.O.C. Director, Anthony Brown?

Is it not fair to describe our local political stance as somewhere from low profile to comatose? If this is a fair assessment, then is this scenario working to advance our equal rights?

Where are you, when we need you, Reinhold Niebuhr? ("Restrain the heartless till they have a change of heart.") Where are you Martin Niemoeller? ("I wasn't Black, so it didn't concern me." That's what he would have said.) Where are you Saul Alinsky? (Read "Reveille For Radicals") ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Liar, Liar, Pants on fire! Reading in the Wis. Light's front page issue (v.11,#10, May 7,1998-May 20,1998-issue 256), one would believe that the Republicans are our friends, if Log Cabin Scott Evertz were to be believed. He was quoted as saying the Republicans were THE TRUE political leaders for the GLBTQ community in Wisconsin. When you read rubbish like that, you instantly know you're having cider poured in your ear, i.e. 5 pounds of horse puckie in a two pound bag. The issue was the recently passed "hospital visitation rights" bill in the State Legislature (AB 397). On closer examination one discovers that the bill never had a gay spin. Legislators were not even thinking in terms of gay and straight. The bill had only two co-sponsors, one Democrat (Krug) and one Republican (Jensen), i.e. BI-partisanship. The bill passed on a voice vote, i.e. no one officially voted against it. And lastly, the bill is mostly "hot air", since there is no enforcement mechanism included, i.e. a hospital could ignore this bill with impunity.

If I have learned one thing about Republican baloney, it is that it is never accurate: scratch the surface, do your research and homework and you will discover a totally different story. Yet another example is Scott's attempt to have us think that former Republican governor Dreyfus who signed the gay rights bill back in 1982 is an example of such Republican leadership for gay support. The truth is that the SOB has publically stated on record that he had made a mistake, and upon reflection would have never done it if he were in that position today!

Always wear hip boots when standing near Scott, because his mental horizons do not rise above WEDGE politics. He's all propaganda. (Reporting in The Wisconsin Light on occasion actually gets beyond press releases, but not in this case. Why doesn't someone put that rag to rest, like buying it?) Scott "Ersatz", is, like every Log Cabin Republican I've ever met, what the Japanese refer to as" a bat in a birdless village". The best we can say about Scott is that he does not play well with others. ***************************

PRIDE MONTH BEGINS WITH PRESIDENTIAL SALUTE: As Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride Month begins June 1, President Bill Clinton has issued a commendation honoring the occasion. "Events like the Pride Celebration help us to recognize anew that working in a spirit of community is not a hope but a necessity, and that our individual dreams can only be realized by our shared efforts," President Clinton said in a letter issued recently by the White House.

"Our nation stands to lose if we let prejudice and discrimination stifle the hopes or deny the potential of a single American. And we stand to lose when any person is denied or forced out of a job because of sexual orientation."

He went on to commend those taking part in the celebration for "your dedication to working for an America that celebrates our diversity, builds on our strengths, and fulfills our fundamental values of mutual respect and compassion."

For more information contact Richard Socarides (Special Assistant to the President and Senior Advisor for Public Liaison) at (202) 456-1687.

National Gay Task Force APPLAUDS CLINTON NON-DISCRIMINATION ORDER WASHINGTON, DC---May 28, 1998---The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force today praised President Clinton's signing of an Executive Order prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation in the federal civilian workforce.

"We applaud President Clinton for this act of leadership and fairness," stated Task Force political director Rebecca Isaacs.

"Federal civilian workers will now be covered by a uniform policy."

The Executive Order, entitled Further Amendment to Executive Order 11478, Equal Employment Opportunity in the Federal Government, ensures that all federal agencies ban employment discrimination based on sexual orientation. Many but not all federal agencies currently have some form of policy prohibiting sexual orientation discrimination. This Executive Order adds sexual orientation to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, handicap, and age as the list of categories for which discrimination is prohibited. Upon signing the order the President also advocated for the passage of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which is currently before Congress.

"This is an important step in countering employment discrimination. All people should be able to work free from discrimination," said Isaacs. *****************************************

THE BOOK BLITZ against the Right Wing Religionists The religious intellectual community has been stimulated by the Extreme Right Wing Religionists to a degree seldom seen before. Some of those writers are gay and some are not. Some are clergy, some are not.

Some of the writers are not well versed in gay intellectual research, like THE HARLOT BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD, Forbidden Tales of the Bible (1997) where Jonathan Kirsch uses The King James version of the Bible and thus is not aware that the S&G story never had a homosexual-acts bias until the Bible was translated into English (John Boswell, "Christianity, Social Tolerance, & Homosexuality ", (1980). One point of the text is to point to the 7 seven stories you will never hear from the pulpit or in a Sunday School class; the other point deals with the importance with Jesus' genealogy which is a surprise. It's a useful book to give as a gift to the MGLRC's library at The United.

STEALING JESUS: HOW FUNDAMENTALISM BETRAYS CHRISTIANITY, by Bruce Bawer, Crown, 1997, explains what's unbiblical as well as unchristian about all the extreme right wing crazies, as did Bishop John Shelby Spong's Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism:... did a few years back .

But Spong's newest WHY CHRISTIANITY MUST CHANGE OR DIE deals with two of my closet situations while a student at McCormick Theological Seminary. I was both gay and a non-supernaturalist. My questions were twofold: was there anything worth saving in the Bible for the modern age? And, if there was, how to re-mythologize it into everyday concepts and language? Four years into the local parish ministry after being an interim pastor at the Westminster Foundation @ the University of Oregon, Eugene, showed me that the local parish ministry in the Presbyterian context was not a good idea at that time, so I quit, i.e. demitted.

Now, 30 years later, a radical Episcopal Bishop is starting the process for his flock. Being a bishop, means that this top-down scenario has a greater chance of being taken seriously, especially, since, in the mean time, the main line Protestant churches have lost parishioners to the thriving conservative churches. The brain drain has not gone to the conservative camp; they have just left the main line church and gone no where or joined the rising interest in Classic Indian Buddhism. Buddhism is growing faster here in the USA than in any other part of the world. The aim, now, is to bring the brain people back into the fold by re-directing the church's word-pictures and mission into fruitful directions. It may take another 50 years, but if it's to be done, there's no time like the present to start. WHY BOTHER? Religious crazies see their situation as a WAR, note the bomb treats and actual bomb blasts and fires at churches, plus there is that end-of-the-millennium scenario. Not all religious crazies are uneducated; however, they are schizophrenic, paranoid or otherwise. And any tightly bonded group of people are probably a cluster of political votes: note how the Republicans, being desperate for votes, will stoop to any depth. *********************************************

Follow-up on last month's "Sodom & Gomorrah"

As I mentioned last time, S&G is referred to in other places of the Bible. I listed one, Ezekiel 16:49, but this linkage of S&G to inhospitality (note the word hospital in it !) can be found elsewhere in Scripture: Ecclesiastes 16:8, Songs of Solomon 19:13-14, Judges 19:22 ff, Joshua 6 where a prostitute is the only one spared by God in the destruction of Jericho because of her hospitality to the messengers of a sacred right. (Jeeeeesus, even the pagan god, Zeus, was a protector of guests and strangers!) And yet prostitutes are trashed in Lev. 19:29 & Deut. 23:17. So much for consistency and infallibility of the written word. And for New Testament readings, check out Matt. 10:14-15 & Lk. 10:10-12, i.e. for those who are inhospitable: "shake the dust off your sandals and move on", i.e. don't give them the time of day: "let the dead bury the dead".

Oh, if it were that easy. The sad truth is that there is also an anti-stranger theme there in the Old Testament (check out Kirsch's book, THE HARLOT... mentioned above). The truth is that you can find all sorts of not-so-good stuff to justify your viewpoint in the Bible. Would I be too rash in saying that the Bible looks like Joseph's coat of many colors, i.e. there are many viewpoints, no one-consistent theme, and if each one is the literal world of god, then we've got a real patch-work of divinities. One of the names for god, Elohim, is not plural for nothing ! Or is this a situation where we have a cluster of viewpoints called the word of god and then each group tries to impose THEIR ideas on everyone else? Your choice.

And in the writings of the early Church fathers, Sodom has no gay meaning. It is not until the Bible is translated into English that we note ANYthing about homosexual acts (Boswell). Well! I wonder what that says about what's on in the mind of the English? Is this yet another John Bull burden we must carry beside the revolution and burning down the White House?! The English have lots to answer for.

There are lots of goofy / weird things going on as one reflects upon the Bible in general and especially in this book and story of the Old Testament.

Consider Abraham's name. At the front end of the story his name is Abram, i.e. father of height. I have no idea what the height thing is about if it isn't about being a tall man, i.e. a commanding-looking figure, but doesn't it seem a little strange that a childless man 99 years old has the name FATHER? Unless we think of this name in terms of Sadam Hussein and his "mother of all wars" type of language imagery, it makes no sense. What is this, irony? Like some fat guy is called "Slim"? I don't think so; that's OUR culture, not there's. Is this a literary device so that he has a subtly scornful name at first (people make fun of him because he is without children) , i.e. a set-up, so that when his name is changed in the middle of the story (birth of Isaac) to Abraham (father of a multitude), it's an example of the totally unexpected? That is, from nothing (no potential) to countless? Is this the work of some later editor (redactor) by giving an unnamed ancestor a name to make the reader's connection with the story more personal or attention-getting in order to increase the hearer's emotional envolvement? Abraham's wife's name is another confusing thing. At first her name is Sarai (prince). Huh ? When is a female given a male name?! And later her name is changed to Sarah (princess). PRINCESS?! There's no question in my mind that she is being portrayed as a screaming bitch: she orders her Egyptian hand maiden (Hagar) and son by Abram (Ishmael) out of their camp into the desert to die, not once, but on two different occasions!

Then there is Lot, which means concealed / dark colored. What's that about?! Trying to hide something? Suspicious? Sneaky? We see him at the gate of Sodom checking out who is going into the city. He's portrayed as if he's a hustler, like one of those guys who gets you a cab and expects a tip when you walk out of the bus terminal, the Port Authority, in NYC. He seems to be looking for people who need something, i.e. a situation where he can ingratiate himself on someone in order to reap some profit for himself: a real ass kisser for private benefit. And later, when the crowd wants to have him bring out the two strangers so they can be quizzed by the citizens, Lot is a real "blow hard" big mouth: "Take my daughters, instead." What an asshole! Surely, his daughters heard this; how could they not be resentful of him EVEN IF it was permissible by the code of conduct of that day and age and culture?! Once again I see a parallel. This time with the Noah story (myth). After the sign of the covenant, the rainbow, Noah gets drunk and one of his sons, Ham, accidentally enters Noah's quarters and sees his father exposed, where upon he (Ham) is crass enough to invite his brothers in to take a look. For this inappropriate behavior he is cursed and became the founding ancestor of the Canaanites, a constant enemy of the Israelites, just as Lot's daughters get their father drunk and spawn two other traditional enemies of Israel.

It seems something is always going wrong or being done wrong by the remnant which God has spared to start the world afresh, as in, there is about as much hope for these people as a snow ball in hell. Besides this, it's obvious that some late editor, redactor, is writing mythological history to explain the evil beginnings of Israel's enemies by creating names, genealogical linkages, etc. to present-day or remembered hostiles; and doing this in such a way where the editor wants us to note what he is doing, i.e. he doesn't really try to hide what he's doing. A simple example is when Noah awakens from his drunk and somehow realizes what's has just happened. His remarks slip into poetry (an ancient quote) which foretells the future with a name which comes out of nowhere: "Cursed be Canaan:..." (verse 25) indeed, the earlier verse of this same chapter, 9, verse 22, assumes we the readers are living at a time when we know about Canaan. There's an obvious anachronism in time placement here. I mean it is so obvious that we are not getting history from an eye witness perspective. This is a strange definition of history by our standards where all sorts of "packaging" is being pumped into fragments of the past.

And then there's that Garden of Eden story. My word, you would think that eating from the tree of good and evil, escaping the docile mental state of innocence, would be a celebratory event of great joy, but instead, Adam and Eve are cast out of the Garden. Like God wanted the two to remain obedient even if it meant that they were to remain dumb and stupid?! I think there's a better spin we might put on a "rite of passage" incident, like, "hey! this is the way things are: if you transgress authority, you will pay a terrible price, but maybe it's worth it. Living with my own mistakes is so much better than being a victim of someone else's."

The word "to know" is not the only word or phrase which suggests sexual behavior in the Bible, like, for in stance, "uncover". Indeed, there is more than one word to express "to know" and the one used in the Sodom story is used some 943 times and of these it refers to sex only 10 times and one of the ten is NOT here. (John Boswell's "Christianity, Social Tolerance, & Homosexuality", University of "Chicago Press, 1980, pages 93 & 94. Since Boswell was a linguist, his research has credible standing behind it.) Thus the issue of "...send the angels out so we may know them, i.e. bugger them, has no such connotation, but is, instead, a projecting in of later translators biases. **********************

Tammy Baldwin received both the State and the National awards for Woman Of The Year from NOW, the National Organization of Women. The State chapter began a girl's award this year with the first going to the 11 year old Sol Kelley-Jones.

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Bike trek for AIDS in June from Minneapolis to Chicago through lovely Wisconsin 1 - 888-743-3947 WISCONSIN AIDS RIDE **********************

Dental student, Peter Ceylon Farmer, ceylon@itsa.ucsf.edu, is looking for a place to live, preferabely with roommates, within 15 minutes from Meriter Hospital, where he will do his residency . July first.

 

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Last Updated: 6/3/98