[BRIEF NOTE] Écrasons l'infâme
Aug. 25th, 2005 11:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldI'd a pleasant evening editing my friend's manuscript over at the Starbucks at Church and Wellesley. One pleasant accent to the evening was the gentleman a decade older than me, with graying well-tended hair and a slim body partly revealed by the one button of his navy-blue shirt he left unbuttoned, who was working on his laptop and flirting with me. It was all in the eyes, you see.
This reminded me, since the two-year anniversary of my emigration from the Island is upon us now, of how lucky I was to be in a place (geographical, personal) where I was able to do this, and how very close I came indeed to a point where all of that would have been forever beyond my ken. The Island is surrounded by water, and the currents can be strong. Fortunately, not particularly strong: The Island, like most of the rest of Canada, is blessed by not having much United States-style aggressively homophobic evangelical Christianity.
The top Google hit for the keywords "gay" and "suicide" was this article by Peter LaBarbera, hosted at Leader University's website, which denies the existence of gay youth suicide as a distinct phenomenon, partly on valid statistical grounds (certain perhaps overstated claims) but mainly because this would lend legitimacy to the "homosexual lifestyle."
It's a pity that these fuckwits are unwilling to recognize that their theologies, do, in fact, have real-world consequences. One of the whole points of a theology, after all, is to give a believers a way to deal with their world, to influence it. But then, if they did acknowledge this, they might have to start wondering whether these consequences were worth it. God forbid that they become autonomous moral actors.
This reminded me, since the two-year anniversary of my emigration from the Island is upon us now, of how lucky I was to be in a place (geographical, personal) where I was able to do this, and how very close I came indeed to a point where all of that would have been forever beyond my ken. The Island is surrounded by water, and the currents can be strong. Fortunately, not particularly strong: The Island, like most of the rest of Canada, is blessed by not having much United States-style aggressively homophobic evangelical Christianity.
The top Google hit for the keywords "gay" and "suicide" was this article by Peter LaBarbera, hosted at Leader University's website, which denies the existence of gay youth suicide as a distinct phenomenon, partly on valid statistical grounds (certain perhaps overstated claims) but mainly because this would lend legitimacy to the "homosexual lifestyle."
It's a pity that these fuckwits are unwilling to recognize that their theologies, do, in fact, have real-world consequences. One of the whole points of a theology, after all, is to give a believers a way to deal with their world, to influence it. But then, if they did acknowledge this, they might have to start wondering whether these consequences were worth it. God forbid that they become autonomous moral actors.
