Unaware that their cause had been lost, a small number of Japanese soldiers deep in the jungles of the Philippines continued waging guerrilla warfare against an imaginary enemy years after World War II had ended.
Via dropped pamphlets, newspapers left everywhere, and even relatives at the jungle’s edge hollering at them through bullhorns, the diehard soldiers got the news the war had ended. They just didn’t believe it.
It’s as obvious as a stunning rainbow in the sky that within, say, ten years, any church or denomination still fighting against the marriage of gay couples and the ordination of gay clergy will be like those recalcitrant Japanese soldiers living amongst the mangrove trees of Lubang Island long after everyone else has accepted peace as a fact and adjusted to the new world order.
And that’s ten years tops. At the rate things are changing now, I wouldn’t be surprised if by Thursday the Pope was a drag queen.
Okay, I’d be a little surprised.
Okay, fine: the Pope (despite the full-length resplendent robes and the tiara-on-testostrone headdress) will never be a queen. But as surely as the cessation of gunfire and your cousin screaming at you through a bullhorn, “Come out! It’s over! Stop embarrassing me!” means the war you were fighting has ended, men and women of the gay and lesbianic persuasion will ‘ere long be fully welcomed into every American Protestant church, where a great many of them will step up and assume their usual place in the pulpit.
It took longer for some Christians than others to understand that the Bible does not, in fact, sanction slavery.
It took longer for some Christians than others to understand that the Bible does not, in fact, forbid women civil rights.
And now it’s taking longer for some Christians than others to understand that the Bible does not, in fact, decree that moments into their afterlife anyone who dies an unrepentant homosexual is immediately issued a one-way ticket on the Hell Crosstown Express.
Here’s the headlines-making Gallup Poll released a couple of weeks back:
Don’t you wish that green line was the U.S. economy? Well it’s not. It’s the percentage of the population that believes same-sex marriage should be legal.
Want a tip for improving your economy? Invest in same-sex wedding cake toppers.
Ka-ching!
“The blue hairs” is a phrase sometimes used by Christian publishers to refer to the conservative Christians who own the Christian bookstores in which the publishers want and need to sell their books. One of the massive factors that for a great many years has kept Christian book authors and publishers from coming out and saying what they privately believe about same-sex couples and Christianity is that they literally cannot afford to offend the ever-vigilant blue hairs. Should the blue hairs take offense to something in your book — which they do vet for orthodoxy — then no book sales for you!
Well, Christian publishers and authors can stop worrying now. Today the blue-haired lady has either died, gone out of business, or changed her mind. Today’s blue-haired lady takes yoga classes; today, the blue-haired lady has a gay grandchild or nephew whom she loves with all her heart.
The Presbyterian Church (PCUSA), the Episcopal Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church, and the United Church of Christ now favor the ordination of gay and lesbian clergy.
Science continues to affirm homosexuality as inborn (not that anyone who’s ever actually known a gay person doubts it).
The Biblical scholarship supporting the idea that Paul never wrote a word proscribing natural homosexuality is at least as credible and persuasive as the scholarship (if not typical Bible translations) claiming that he did.
Young people — Christians very definitely included — fail to understand why the church makes such a big deal, or any deal at all, about gays and lesbians.
The bottom line on the whole gay/Christianity issue is that, in an astonishingly short period of time (yay Internet!), we have reached Ye Oldyee Tipping Poiynte. And that seesaw will only continue to further tip in the direction it is now. Which (let’s face it) is to the left.
And I won’t deny that works for me personally. For verily am I already just ever so slightly weary of calling into the jungle through a bullhorn for the deeply confused, bizarrely obdurate combatants in there to come forward and step out into the open: to enjoy the sunshine, to relax, to get a hug, to finally be at peace with an enemy who isn’t even there.
To finally and once again see not just trees, but the whole beautiful forest.
Read the Wikipedia entry on Hirro Onoda, the last of the Japanese soldiers fighting WWII — or of any soldier anywhere, ever, I would think — to surrender. OR you can read what I consider one of my greatest online finds ever: Badass of the Week: Hiroo Onoda.
![John Shore on The Huffington Post](http://johnshore.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/huffpost.jpg?w=120 "John Shore on The Huffington Post\")
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Knock knock.
Who’s there.
“Cray.”
“Cray who?”
“Cray-Zay!”
Yikes. I should delete it. Well… I must. So … now your response won’t mean anything. But it’s worth it. Yowzer.
***psst! hey. are they gone yet?***
\\ (despite the full-length resplendent robes and the tiara-on-testostrone headdress) \\
John, the Pope hasn’t used the tiara since 1964. Haven’t you heard?
And the vestments are based on what every MAN in the Roman Empire wore once upon a time–after centuries of the ladies’ altar guild working on them.
When I was in 5th Grade, a black kid moved to our town of 1500 people and went to my school. I remember one of the kids in my class taunting and teasing this black kid every day, and eventually almost every one of the kids (me included) did also. During the summer break, I was out for ice cream with my dad and the black kid walked by and I made a comment about him, and my dad just stood there…in absolute shock.
“What the F#*k did you just say?” he said sternly.
I froze in fear. Oh, shit!
“Who the hell do you think YOU are? Are YOU any better than him? Do you think that what he wears, the way he looks, or anything else makes YOU better than HIM?” he said. “That he walks by you and doesn’t punch you in the face makes him a better person than you. Do you know what ignorant means?”
“But Dad, everybody else..” I’m cut off mid-sentence.
“Everybody else is none of you’re business. The world is chock full of stupid f#$king idiots. Let them be ‘Everybody Else’; you need to pay attention to you. Don’t be stupid. Don’t be ignorant. Get your ass over there and apologize.”
My Dad made me go and talk to Roman, and talk to his Dad, and we went to dinner at their house the next week. The next school year I beat the living crap out of any kid who said anything to Roman. I teased and bullied and tormented those kids, and eventually I got every other kid to tease and torment the few kids who still persisted. By middle school, not one person gave Roman a hard time.
It may not be politically correct today to say it, but bullying works. It made me into a racist ignoramus, it made me stand up and listen when my Dad chewed me out, it made every other kid force the dumb-asses to STFU. Bullying works. That is why They do it, and that is why They get up in arms when we do it.
At the end of the day, though, the most powerful things for me was the opinion of a great father and getting to know the person who I was hurting. And therein lies the problem. Bullies persist because of the silence of good people, and the ignorance of their audience.
All that said, Civics, Maia: You must forgive me if I don’t take your “tone trolling” seriously. If there is anyone who needs to be pushed around and bullied, it is the people who stand around and silently let bad shit happen, even though they are good people. It is the people who refuse to abandon their ignorance and peer over tot he other side of the fence. It is the people who depend on those people.
On a different note: DR, I absolutely love you. Don’t ever stop doing what you are doing.
Oh, and don’t get a big head over it either!
Bravo for Dad. He said EXACTLY the right thing in EXACTLY the right way. But I think that your bully theory is off-track. If you actually bullied kids, you were wrong. There is a very real difference between fighting for what’s right and bullying.
Don,
Perhaps you are right, and perhaps you are wrong. Perhaps what I did was fight for what is right in the wrong way. Perhaps what I did is fight for what is right in the only laguage that works in the playground. And perhaps…..just perhaps…..that is exactly what DR and Dirk and others are doing here. Fighting for what is right is relative, I guess, to what those who judge your actions think is right. Some people on this thread think that holding people accountable for the unintentional consequences of their actions is bullying. Other people see those comments as putting a human face on what amounts to passive-aggressive hatred. So who is right? I guess that depends on what side of the fence you are on.
I used the term “bullying” when I talked about pestering and marginalizing those playground bigots because that is surely how they saw it. It is how my principle saw it when he called my dad. My dad came down to the school and asked the principle “So my son is in trouble for holding people accountable for their beliefs?”. Just like you did, the principle exclaimed “Yes! Because he did it in the wrong way! He should have reported it to the teacher on duty.”
Maybe I should have. Maybe I should have let the school deal with bullying. They have done such a bang-up jub of dealing with the issue; I should have spent all my schoolyard capital, marginalized MY voice, become a “rat”….so I could do the “right thing”. Perhaps.
Perhaps commenters here should just say “sorry to be a bother, but would you mind trying to see the issue from the other side?” Perhaps.
Who can really say what might have happened if I had been kinder and gentler and polite? Maybe I would have still made a difference, maybe not.
I’m a moral objectivist. I agree wholeheartedly that my actions were not perfect. In the ultimate sense they were “wrong”. But “wrong” actions stopped a greater “wrong”, and since I don’t believe in perfectly moral actions, I guess I’ll settle for being able to stand tall and accept the consequences of acting on principle-regardless of your perception.
Ironically, principle is likely the same argument that drives the bigotry on this site….and consequences is precisely what those who oppose them want them to see.
And that, perhaps, is the fence that divides us.
Keep doing it. If your brand of “bullying” gets out of hand, your conscience will intervene. Of course, this wasn’t bullying in the classic sense; you weren’t a weak person trying to keep people “beneath” you, you were a true radical pushing the limits to accomplish something good. You were one gutsy kid.
i really dont believe in bullying george because i believe it’s stooping to the bigots level.. i was bullyed myself and it got me into a lot of trouble. im happy you stood up for ramon. there are other ways. people dont know what people are going through sometimes. i am glad there is an anti-bullying compange sweeping the nation.
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