Your Move

I reckon you’d need to be a self-flagellating nutbag to want to rise in the ranks of the sort of organisation that has woven a profound dislike of you and your kind into its fabric.

I’m not talking about Obama and the US Government. The organisation he has sought to rise in doesn’t have at its core proscriptive statements on gender, race or creed. The Founding Fathers were quite eloquent on the point that it wasn’t about that (even though a few of them were slave owners).  Obama can work there without having to pointlessly claw away at the very basis of the organisation on a daily basis. It wasn’t built to hate him. In his organisation, you get there and stay there by being popular - and he’s clearly that. His particular club is all about that.

No, if you are a woman or a gay and want to rise up in the ranks of a big church I reckon you’ve got to love wearing a hair-shirt. 

Even if you are unable to face the realities of an omnipotent being that supposedly loves you, hears your every thought, is interested in meddling in day-to-day human affairs, but is also willing to let gratuitous human suffering happen across the planet, at least you should recognise the realities of the organisation you have decided to devote so much time to.

It does not like you. It's worked so hard to keep you out.

That organisation is predicated around the idea that it has the sole line to the only true sky fairy, and in the main, this creator of planets tends to feel fairly threatened by the likes of you. (Even though He made you, the only reason I can see that He would be so anti-you, would be that He doesn’t want to get girl's germs or dress too snappily.) According to His infallible books, you are not liked or welcome - and this is not a democratic process.

So when Jon Stewart announced that his guest for last night’s show was going to be Bishop Gene Robinson, America’s first openly gay bishop, I turned the vacuum cleaner back on and kept dancing to “I want to break free.” (Did anyone else find Roger Taylor disturbingly attractive as a school girl in that clip? No? Only me? Ok, let’s move on.) But the vacuum was off when Gene was interviewed, and he knows how to bring the funny.

Jon Stewart was asking him about how the inauguration had gone. The Bishop said, “Blah blah history, blah honour to be there, blah, hope blah,” and then they got onto how many people had attended. 

While they were talking about the enormous crowds, Stewart quipped that it would’ve been doubly difficult in the throng for Robinson, because he was only allowed to move diagonally.

Laughter in the audience rises (slowly, as people catch on) and dies down.

Bishop Gene Robinson comes back with, “Jon, you’ve gotta remember, there’s also a queen on the board.”