from "At Seminary, Unease Over Gay Priests"

Somewhere between them is Donald B. Cozzens, a former seminary rector. In "The Changing Face of the Priesthood," Cozzens wrote that the presence of a "gay subculture" is self-evident, as are the costs of ignoring it. The answer is simply to open up the debate, he wrote: Is the priesthood "becoming a gay profession. . . . Does it matter?"

 
from "True Porn Clerk Stories"

One of my favorite concepts in anthropology is that of the polite fiction. It's something nobody believes, but we all pretend to because it makes life so much easier. My favorite example was of a Pygmy couple. Pygmy divorce involves quite literally breaking up the home: the couple tears apart their house (it's easy - the houses are made of leaves) and once it's down, the union is dissolved. One anthropologist was watching a long-married couple have a fight. It escalated until the wife threatened to leave, and the husband yelled something along the lines of "Fine!" and there was nothing the wife could do but start tearing down the house. She began tearing the roof off, clearly miserable. The husband looked wretched too, but at this point neither could back down without losing face and by now the whole village was watching.

Finally, the husband called out the Pygmy equivalent of "You're right, honey! The roof is dirty! It'll look much better once we get those leaves washed!" The two of them started carrying leaves down to the river, soon with the help of the whole village, and then washed and rebuilt the whole roof. When the anthropologist later discreetly asked how often one washes the roof, everyone looked at him like he was a complete doofus.

 
Dr. Bill Maier of Colorado Springs apparently is missing his sarcasm bone when he takes this quote from Michael Swift seriously:

We shall sodomize your sons, emblems of your feeble masculinity, of your shallow dreams and vulgar lies. We shall seduce them in your schools, in your dormitories, in your gymnasiums, in your locker rooms, in your sports arenas, in your seminaries, in your youth groups, in your movie theatre bathrooms, in your army bunkhouses, in your truck stops, in your all-male clubs, in your houses of Congress, wherever men are men together. Your sons will become our minions and do our bidding. They will be recast in our image. They will come to crave and adore us.

My question has to be: does Dr. Bill think that all potential Big Brothers/Big Sisters need to be vetted for potential queerness? And of course, how can we help Dr. Bill replace his defective sense of sarcasm?

 
I have been threatening to make note of Alexander's piece about Bonnie Kaye. Now you too can read his synopsis of this "counselor" and her work to "help" women with gay and bisexual husbands. I love Alexander's writing style. Hope you do as well.