In high school I joined the Poster Club, an after-school extra-curricular group that did, well, posters. Posters for the football games, posters for the music and theater events.
I even noticed that the priest who ran the Poster Club had a "buddy" priest. All the faculty priests lived on the top floor of the high school. These two priests had rooms side by side. I wondered about them...
I also wondered about me. Why did I like the looks of that guy in the locker room, whose locker was next to mine? And that one handsome guy who wore tight, short gym pants in gym class instead of the regulation loose baggy gym pants. Yeah, I heard about "fairies" and "queers" but... Me? Naaah.
Well, God told me why I should leave the monastery. He wanted me to pursue my life as He created me; not like others tell me to be.
I also did not know at that time when I cried in the small monastery chapel - asking God why I was in the monastery - that a baby was born who would eventually change my life.
The Bible Says You Are An Abomination
Moving on to the present time: Have you been listening to the Republican candidates who want the conservative Christians to elect them president of the United States? They are all against homosexuality! "If gays marry, it will destroy marriage! Next thing, they'll want to marry their pets! Same-sex marriage will destroy humanity!"
Sure. If everyone on the planet suddenly decides to turn gay. Besides, it's those damn straight marriages that keep creating gay children!
God created gay people so there would be beauty, wisdom, intelligence, and so many other rewards by people not hampered with having to raise families. Not that there aren't straight people who contribute these gifts to humanity.
If the Republicans - and fundamentalists - think gay people are an abomination and must go away, they have some mighty big chores ahead.
They must destroy the Sistine Chapel; and any other works created by Michelangelo Buonarroti during the reign of seven popes.
The works of Leonardo Da Vinci must be removed from all museums, including the Louvre. La Gioconda knew Leonardo was gay, and smiled about it.
Benvenuto Cellini was “pal” to a couple of cardinals, who helped him escape from prisons when he was charged with sodomy and theft. Do not visit Florence, Italy under any circumstances. Cellini’s work is all over that town.
Sandro Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus” must be removed from view, as well as any other of Sandra’s works. Did he have a thing for Fra Filippo Lippi, his teacher?
Forbid the reading of anything by William Shakespeare, especially the love sonnets to his male lover, a very young actor named Willie Hughes.
St. Paul’s Cathedral in London must be renamed. As Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong wrote of Paul:
“The war that went on between what he desired with his mind and what he desired with his body, his drivenness to a legalistic religion of control, his fear when that system was threatened, his attitude toward women, his refusal to seek marriage as an outlet for his passion -- nothing else accounts for this data as well as the possibility that Paul was gay.”
They must order the ceasing of the singing of “The Messiah” by George Friderik Handel, because he was gay.
1812 Overture? Don’t play it at any July 4th celebrations. Tchaikovsky’s fireworks were aimed at only one direction: to other men.
What the hell, here’s a list of some people that Republicans must publicly condemn:
Alexander the Great, Macedonian Ruler, 300 B.C.Socrates, Greek Philosopher, 400 B.C.
Sappho, Greek Woman Poet, 600 B.C.
Hadrian, Roman Emperor, 1st-2nd c.
Richard the Lionhearted, English King, 12th c.
Saladin, Sultan of Egypt and Syria
Desiderius Erasmus, Dutch Monk, Philosopher
Francis Bacon, English statesman, author
Frederick the Great, King of Prussia
Lord Byron, English poet, 18th c.
Walt Whitman, U.S. poet, author, 19th c.
Oscar Wilde, Irish author, 19th c.
Marcel Proust, French author, 20th c.
Colette, French author, 20th c.
Gertrude Stein, U.S. poet, author, 20th c.
Alice B. Toklas, U.S. author, 20th c.
Federico Garcia Lorca, Spanish author, 20th c.
Cole Porter, U.S. composer, 20th c.
Virginia Woolf, English author, 20th c.
Leonard Bernstein, U.S. composer, 20th c.
Pope Julius III, 1550-1555
T.E. Lawrence, English soldier, author, 20th c.
Jean Cocteau, French writer, director, 20th c.
Charles Laughton, English actor, 20th c.
Marguerite Yourcenar, Belgian author, 20th c.
Tennessee Williams, U.S. Playwright, 20th c.
James Baldwin, U.S. author, 20th c.
Andy Warhol, U.S. artist, 20th c.
Michelangelo, Italian artist, 15th c.
Leonardo Da Vinci, Italian Artist, scientist, 15th c.
Christopher Marlowe, English Playwright, 16th c.
Herman Melville, U.S. author, 19th c.
Horatio Alger, Jr., U.S. author, 19th c.
Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Russian composer, 19th c.
Willa Cather, U.S. author, 19th c.
Amy Lowell, U.S. author, 19th & 20th c.
E.M. Forster, English author, 20th c.
John M. Keynes, English economist, 20th c.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Australian mathematician, 20th c.
Bessie Smith, U.S. singer, 20th c.
Noel Coward, English playwright, 20th c.
Christopher Isherwood, English author, 20th c.
Pier Paolo Pasolini, Italian film director, 20th c.
Yukio Mishima, Japanese author, 20th c.
Eleanor Roosevelt, U.S. stateswoman, 20th c.
Julius Caesar, Roman Emperor, 100-44 B.C.
Augustus Caesar, Roman Emperor
Harvey Milk, U.S. politician, 20th c.
Bayard Rustin, U.S. Civil Rights activist, 20th c.
James I, English King, 16th-17th c.
Queen Anne, English Queen, 18th c.
Marie Antoinette, French Empress, 18th c.
Melissa Etheridge, U.S. Rock Star, 20th c.
Pope Benedict IX, 1032-1044
May Sarton, U.S. author, (1912-1995)
Edna Ferber, U.S. author, 20th c.
Elton John, English Rock Star, 20th c.
Margaret Fuller, U.S. writer, educator, 20th c.
Montezuma II, Aztec ruler, 16th c.
Peter the Great, Russian Czar, 17th-18th c.
Langston Hughes, U.S. author, 20th c.
Pope John XII, 955-964
Madame de Stael, French writer, 17th-18th c.
Martina Navratilova, U.S. tennis star, 20th c.
Greg Louganis, U.S. Olympic swimmer, 20th c.
Billie Jean King, U.S. tennis star, 20th c.
Roberta Achtenburg, U.S. politician, 20th c.
Barney Frank, U.S. Congressman, 20th c.
Gerry Studds, U.S. Congressman, 20th c.
Hans Christian Andersen, Danish author, 19th c.
Tom Dooley, U.S. M.D. missionary, 20th c.
J. Edgar Hoover, U.S. director of the FBI., 20th c.
Frida Kahlo, Mexican artist, 20th c.
Suleiman the Magnificent, Ottoman ruler, 15th c.
Rock Hudson, U.S. actor, 20th c.
Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, Mexican author, 16th c.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. author, 19th c.
Candace Gingrich, Gay Rights activist, 20th c.
Margarethe Cammermeyer, U.S. Army Colonel, 20th c.
Zoe Dunning, U.S. Military Reservist, 20th c.
Tom Waddell, U.S. M.D., Olympic star, 20th c.
Kate Millet, U.S. author, 20th c.
Janis Joplin, U.S. singer, 20th c.
Rudolf Nuryev, Russian dancer, 20th c.
Waslaw Nijinsky, Russian dancer, 20th c.
Ernst Röhm, German Nazi leader, 20th c.
Dag Hammerskjold, Swedish UN Secretary, 209th c.
Aristotle, Greek philosopher, 384-322 B.C.
Paula Gunn Allen, Native American author, 20th c.
Angela Davis, U.S. political activist, 20th c.
June Jordan, U.S. author, activist, 20th c.
Rainer Maria Rilke, German poet, 20th c.
James Dean, U.S. actor, 20th c.
Montgomery Clift, U.S. actor, 20th c.
Baron Von Steuben, German General, Valley Forge
Edward II, English King, 14th c.
...There may be a few others I might have left out. My memory goes back only so far. And yes, some of them were more notorious than famous, and some who swung both ways.
But the bottom line is that some of the greatest people who ever lived just happened also to have been gay, and made us just a little better for it.
John
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