Friday, December 19, 2008

Christopher Durang Lambastes Rick Warren

Huffington Post carried a blog by Christopher Durang, the playwright and actor, whose stage works include Beyond Therapy and, I'm told, a very amusing take-off on Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie. He was chagrined by Obama's choice of a right-wing nut homophobic pastor to give the inaugural invocation next month. In taking Rev. Rick Warren to task for his hopelessly homophobic (and, I might add, crypto-misogynistic and apocalypto-theocratic) beliefs based upon Biblical writ, Durang writes: "...my point is, just because something is in the Bible is not a reason to accept it; you have to analyze it and figure out if it's part of the Bible that was written centuries ago from a different, less mentally evolved state...."

Yes, but you see, Rev. Warren told the media today (12/19) that gay people are evidence evolution is bunk. In effect, he is saying gays are sub-human. This was the Nazi attitude toward not only the mentally handicapped and any perceived or actual enemy they envisioned or encountered. All were classified as less than human, and they included gypsies, homosexuals, Jews, and, in satellite Croatia for example, Serbs). Millions of people were exterminated, and I daresay the Warrens of this world, wolves in the clothing of sheep, will dole out a similar fate to anyone who doesn't accept Jebus as his or her savior and be born again in the blood of the Lamborghini.

Warren, the Osteens, all of that Lot, are motivated by one thing and one thing only: the shekel. And here I thought Jebus threw all the money changers out of the temple. Does anyone think Joel Osteen is going to make a camel pass through the eye of a needle?

Durang also scoffed at Warren's cherry-picking, as for example the Bible's quaint proscription against eating the flesh of cloven-hoofed animals. Durang does not note that this mostly applies to the eating of pork, forbidden both to Jews and Muslims alike. These peoples had more in common that Abraham, their ancestor and the pater familias of their Lot; not the least of their similarities was that they were nomadic, as, indeed, some Arabic peoples even today.

Warren's plea to consider the Bible as a work of its time would lead to the conclusion that eating pork was verboten not because "God" said so, but because the tribal warlords of the desert were terrified of what we now know as trichinella. Increasing, rather than decimating, the population of the tribe meant that the offending flesh was enjoined, a decisioin of a man who lent it magical powers by virtue of his claim it came from "God." Ditto the proscriptions against homosexuality and, in our time, abortion. As a women's rights friend put it to me: "The Pope is against abortion because he wants new little Catholics."

In any event, most historical evidence indicates that the "abomination" characterization of homosexuality was primarily directed at keeping the heterosexual male away from male temple prostitutes, many of whom, worshipping such goddesses as Isis and Cunti (yes, it works out etymoloically speaking to "Cunt") cross-dressed in emulation of their Lady. Remember, this still was a time when propagation of the species was paramount; after all, "God" had commanded they go forth and multiply; there was no global warming and Chinese population figures had not quite yet attained the status of a world unto itself.

But, again, why the cafeterial approach? Leviticus, the only cited source of the gay injunction ("it is an abomination"), also says that you can't shave your beard (and a lot of other silly things).

Warren is right about one thing. Science is just plain wrong; man obviously walked with the dinosaurs. And you know what? Warren has not evolved a single cell since that time six thousand or so years ago.

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