Thursday, February 08, 2007

Current Events Rant

(DANGER! This is really disjointed. Stream of thought)

I have been thinking about a couple of things lately. The two are related although some may think it is a stretch. One is the Snickers commercial on the Super Bowl and the second is Ted Haggard’s miraculous trip through reparative therapy.

I guess first, I will talk about Pr. Haggard. How quickly was that reparation therapy? I know Jesus can do anything, but people spend years coming to the realization that reparation therapy doesn’t work in prayer to make a change in their sexual orientation. Now suddenly, Pr. Haggard is able to make the change in just three weeks. A miracle has happened to him!

But think of how much he has at stake in this “miracle:” He is the “chosenest” of God’s chosen. To validate the whole mega-church thing, Ted would have to propagate the idea that God has a special relationship with him; so God would, of course, answer his prayers quickest.

I feel it is almost like Ted is trying to get the “official” things over with so he can fade into the background. He goes to treatment and suddenly he is cured! Now he can go on with life without a lot of people watching. I may be wrong, but that is the feeling I am getting.

However, Pr. Haggard will never be able to fade into the background. He will be watched for the rest of his life. Especially since he had such a “miracle” change. People are going to be waiting for him to fall again.

The other thing is the whole Snickers fiasco. How could anyone in a leadership position NOT thing that commercial was offensive? And I am not just talking about it from a GLBT position.

The GLBT stuff is offensive enough. People would be willing to mutilate themselves and others just to prove they are not gay. As if being gay is so reprehensible that one would prefer to indulge in self-mutilation than be gay. Or one would rather drink noxious liquids (possibly poisonous, e.g. commit suicide) than be gay. That is totally offensive!

If the commercial had people committing suicide because they were black, then the whole country would be in an uproar. You would not be hearing people say, “Humor is subjective.” The boycott would be on and the president of M&M/Mars would be out on a rail.

But all we hear is hardly an apology. Yes, they have yanked the commercials and the web site, but is that enough. Are they yanking the commercials because they were wrong or because they will be bad for business?

But what both of these events are saying is that “We need to get rid of homosexuality at all cost!” We have to have divine intervention or pound it out of each other. We need to have it miraculously removed or kill ourselves. We have not gone as far as we hoped.

This is kind of rambling, sorry.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Don't I recall that it takes three independent witnesses to a miracle before beatification? I suggest we send three hunky gays to "interview him" and gauge Haggard's "reaction". (**wink**) We'd see then what miracles have really been wrought.

When I read your reaction to the Mars commercial and your comparison to the probable public reaction had the target group been blacks (or others) and not gays, I was reminded of the scene from Angels in America in which the character Roy Cohn is told by his doctor that he has AIDS. He goes into a long dialog centers around the theme that gays are powerless.

Steve F. said...

You know, I have been just dealing with day-to-day life and faith, and really have been quasi-closeted again, just because I'm not around gay people except at one AA meeting a week.

I need to change that - desperately.

In the last few days, I saw the Snickers ads, which were stupid and homophobic. They were stupid first, which is why I could give a rat's patootie about them. But it's annoying. Yes, it guaranteed M&M/Mars all kinds of publicity - but who's thinking about Snickers? Not me. Bad move, boys'n'girls.

The ranting and raving about John Amechie, the gay former NBA player, is another topic. I heard one of those AM-radio "talk show" folks raving about he doesn't care about gay NBA players. Well, you raved about something you don't care about for 30 minute, moron. Good thing I couldn't reach my cell-phone in the back seat... or I would have added to the idiocy, no doubt.

The discipline of the partnered ELCA pastor is another one that just annoys the hell out of me. I'm not even ready to go there...

And poor Ted Haggard. I'm with Lemuel - I'd love to see a bunch of shirtless muscled twinks swarm around Ted and see if "Love Won Out" after all.

/end rant