So "tolerance" is a genetic trait?
This is why we need the Catholic League. Bill Donohue represents boldness, balance and common sense in defense of the truth.
Bill Donohue comments on the reaction of a gay group, the New Civil Rights Movement, to a Chicago eatery that is featuring a hamburger topped with a Communion wafer:
Five years ago we protested the desecration of a Communion Host by P.Z. Myers, an anti-Catholic atheist professor. Yesterday, I decided not to protest the antics of Kuma's Corner, a Chicago restaurant, for serving a burger with a Communion wafer. The difference: Myers secured a consecrated Host and drove a nail through it; the sandwich shop played games with an unconsecrated wafer. While Kuma's showed disrespect, what Myers did was despicable.
Now I have learned that the New Civil Rights Movement, a homosexual outfit that is ever so sensitive about gay issues, is taking utter delight in the burger spoof. The guys who work there predicted that I would be "stroking out." Sorry to disappoint, boys. In fact, the only angst I feel is toward people like them. They say that what Kuma's Corner did risks the wrath of "every Christian born without a tolerance gene or a sense of humor." I'll remember that the next time they complain about one of my gay quips.
By the way, I thought tolerance was a function of nurture, not nature. So what is it? A preference or an orientation? Please advise as this is very confusing to a straight guy.
"Please advise as this is very confusing to a straight guy." Donohue is a messaging genius.
I've read that some gays are afraid that if a "gay gene" is ever discovered then there will be orientation-based abortions. I suppose if these same gays realized how intolerant they are of people who have a Christian sense of morality, they would be even more scared at the notion of a tolerance gene actually existing. But I'm sure they don't really believe there is a tolerance gene and they have shown time again that they cannot see any intolerance in the mirror.
I was struck more by the "sense of humor" angle. Mostly because I didn't get the joke -- unless the joke is intended to be on me, because a Catholic like me is supposed to be offended by the hamburger. (Which I'm not.)
ReplyDeleteTurns out the hamburger wasn't intended as a joke, but instead as a homage. (Which is why it wasn't funny, except to the gay mafia, I guess.) Pauli, maybe you're familiar with the Scandinavian death metal band Ghost -- I'm not.
While I appreciate the restaurant's donations to Catholic Charities, I am getting tired of the paying-of-tribute in response to every feigned offense these days. I'd rather that people just stuck to their guns more often.
P.S. OTOH, I am tremendously offended by Prof. Myers' desecration of consecrated hosts, which was noted by Donohue. And I am ashamed for my alma mater that Myers still works at one of its satellite campuses. I now take whatever little money I would have donated to the UofM and send it to my law school alma mater instead, which doesn't insult either my faith or my intelligence.
I don't know about "Ghost", or whatever. My first thought when reading the phrase "hamburger topped with a Communion wafer" was "Is the host consecrated?" When I found out the answer is "no" I simply thought "How boring." Next.
ReplyDeleteGay people are becoming the most intolerant sub-group in America, and the most suppressive of free-speech. You can't even point out the many health risks associated with male homosexual practice without being shouted down as a bigot.
Human years are longer than dog years of course, but I think we're going to end up looking back on this whole gay agenda thing as a passing beanie baby type of frenzy. There'll be some permanent civil rights concessions, but gays only make up, what, 1% of the population and don't reproduce reliably, so your great grand kids are far more likely to end up speaking Spanish as their co-language than gay.
ReplyDeleteAfter the media hotness wears off, and it always does, everyone will probably end up retreating back to their proportionally sized home turfs, which for gays can't ever be bigger than it ever was. Donohue's laconic response suggests he already gets that.
Keith
Keith: "…passing beanie baby type of frenzy…"
ReplyDeleteYes, possibly. But I have noticed lately in liberal leaning webzines the odd emergence of reviews being done in the "Arts section" about stuff that really is nothing but plain old pr0n.
I don't want to hunt down examples of what I am talking about because I would rather avoid this kind of thing. But I suspect that what is now going on is the trend of "mainstreaming" this stuff so that it is considered "progressive and respectable" somehow.
As trends go, I have said in the past on several occasions (in RD's comment box of all places) that "once the Light is rejected, the darkness has no bottom." So I think that degradation of society is going to get a whole lot worse.
Oengus, I think you're dealing with 2 different things here. It's not much of a stretch to say that pr0n dates back to humans discovering there was no season and no bag limit on mating like there is with other creatures, mostly cause dudes hunt sex with their eyeballs. Religion tries to keep a lid on that.
DeleteWhat I was talking about was the specific "gay agenda" which without the "feature" aspect the media gives it simply can't be politically more powerful than the number of gays themselves and the people really dedicated to them. When the media moves on to its next infatuation - the "authenticity" of raccoon fritters, the cutting edge stylishness of countertops made of hand-fused artisanal beer bottles - the bizarre, boiling way out of proportion public face of homosexuality will simmer back down to near invisibility, just cause there simply won't be a big enough population to support it.
This year's celebrity minority poster child is always next year's forgotten has been.
Keith
While you're both right, I lean more toward Oengus' view on this one.
DeleteIMO, the bottom-line "gay agenda" is all about convincing the culture that homosexuality is just-as-good as rightly ordered heterosexuality. To me, that is what the same-sex marriage battle is all about -- it isn't just about gays wanting to marry (which appears to be a minority among the minority), it is about the rest of us accepting it as no different as traditional marriage.
So as long as there are large numbers who believe that the homosexual sex act is not rightly ordered, there will always be "bigotry" to fight, injustice to correct, and rubes to poke fun at. To steal a line from Mark Steyn, the love-that-dare-not-speak-its-name will continue to be the love-that-will-not-shut-up. So the culture will continue to hammer this point.
A byproduct of the agenda is of course the destruction of any sexual norms, and the resulting clamor for the acceptance of each and every other sundry deviancy. (And more Miley Cyrus, to boot.) So I'm afraid we'll continue to plumb the bottom, as Oengus notes.
As an example of what I am talking about regarding "mainstreaming", I only need to point out that today, while I was perusing Google News, it had item at the top in its "entertainment section" about some NC-17 movie posters.
DeleteThat It was "TMI", I only need to say that I went to my Google settings and turned off the "entertainment" section completely.
It's getting crazy out there.
I think I'm leaning toward Oengus's POV on this. I could see Keith's prediction if (1) there was enough of a popular backlash and (2) there wasn't an enormous degree of sheer insanity associated with all facets of homosexuality and especially the defense of the homosexual lifestyle.
ReplyDeleteIOW, the media should say to itself "Wow, there is a huge market for normality. And many Americans actually think that the Robertsons are more normal than the gay couple down the street. So lets lay off the Christians for intolerance and produce more stuff they will approve of." And I think that might have worked in the 1980's. But now they'd rather shove perversion at you and if it revolts you they laugh and jeer.
Of course, I'd like to see Keith be right. However I think there has to be more than a backlash against the mainstreaming of perversion. An actual exorcism must take place. So keep praying -- and fasting.
But now they'd rather shove perversion at you and if it revolts you they laugh and jeer.
DeleteOr, as Tim Robbins and Pink lecture us, we're told that we've just "grow[n] up with unhealthy ideas of sexuality".
Annie Lennox agrees with you.
DeleteKeith
Good for Annie Lennox.
DeleteWell, here's my final thoughts on the matter. The gay agenda/gay-other culture war will only be as big as (1) the number of gays and their closest friends and family + the paid media market for gayness, whether it's just for its freakish novelty, like the piercing crowd experimenting with tongue splitting, or, far larger, the always marketable brave underdog minority gays against the Goliath bad religious and conservative bigots narrative.
ReplyDeleteAs for the first, enough "gay-gay-gay-gay-gay-gay-gay-gay-bab-bab-bab-bab-bab-bab" and even the most rebellious teen will finally say, "Enough! I get it! Shut up!" In other words, gays will inevitably be at best only as quaint as tie-dyed hippies. Can anyone today even imagine that hippies were once the imminent, universal scourge of civilization? As for the culture war, Donohue very wisely recognizes that, if you don't want more movies about marginal weird things like Sasquatch or killer bees, the last thing you do is help eager producers and their marketers to drive more paid demand for that kind of product.
But there's a third problem here flying right under the radar: you've got a high profile gay Catholic blogger, Andrew Sullivan. A gay Catholic blogger? How can that even be? Really only 2 ways: either Catholicism implicitly accepts gayness and only a fringe of wacko "extremists" rejects it, or Sullivan ultimately really isn't Catholic. Nuance just doesn't sell, so you're going to have to declare one way or the other to be heard. Me, I think it's pretty obvious, you can't be actively gay and Catholic, so pick one, Sully; you ain't both.
The same thing with Dreher and his Time article. Dreher wasn't bashing Francis and Catholicism for being insufficiently Catholic (does anyone truly believe he really cares anything about Catholicism?), he was only poaching for disaffected Catholics to join him in Orthodoxy (where all the lumberjacks are okay) while in the process publicly rationalizing his own narcissism and other psychological and spiritual weaknesses. The cozy, cynically pragmatic head-to-tail blogosphere relationship Dreher, the self-proclaimed "moral hardliner" has recently rediscovered with Sully just in time for book marketing season is part and parcel of that same completely unreligious, amoral crap.
So, bottom line: the best way I see to win is to take back your own side first - that means not validating the Sullys and the Drehers as Catholics, much less spokesmen; and that's where any winnable general moral battles with respect to the larger culture will be won, anyway - while, like Donohue, doing your best not to play into Alinsky tactics by unwittingly sustaining or amping up demand for more gladiator movies.
Keith
Or worse, it'll turn out to be not a gene at all, but rather the result of an in utero parasitic infection, probably akin to toxoplasmosis etc. Once that gets an effective screening test, what are the odds couples will add being a carrier to the list of things that are dis-qualifiers to either marriage or unprotected sex?
ReplyDelete-TMFKS
There might actually be a gay gene. These guys think there's something detectable, anyway.
ReplyDelete