roachboy

if the xtian right followed ustwo's advice, maybe there would emerge new fundamentalist christian joy divisions.
they would bone for jesus, based on an institutionalization of the idea of the mercy fuck.
great idea.
i would enjoy watching the rationales for this.

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i dont know about the relativizing move in this case---i am not sure that i understand how routing what i at least take as a variant of bigotry through a belief system that is in many more important ways about acceptance and love could be confused with somethign that represents christianity as a whole---i see the re-education camp idea as an outcome endorsed by a particular position within the huge range of possibilities that christianity could equally easily support.

so i think you can separate the notions that underpin the re-education camp idea, and the attempts to pathologize homosexuality, away from the idea that somehow the people behind both represent christianity as such. they dont.

if make what i think are basic separations, then it seems prefectly reasonable to pass judgements on the whole policy of re-education camps for the children of fundamentalists who happen to be gay.

but what if you dont make that move?
every bigot truly believes that there is a basis for his or her bigotry. it is not an arbitrary position pulled out of the sky.
if you cannot pass judgement on the beliefs of others, then, at one extreme, you could argue that the khymer rouge, who truly believed that urban intellectuals--denoted often by people who lived in cities and who wore glasses--were a real danger to the well-being of society as they understood it--faced with the consequences of this belief that the khymer rouge truly held, you would really have no choice but to say that well the outcomes are kinda fucked up but the beliefs themselves...different strokes for different folks.


at the other end, relative to this story:

do you really think that you have to accept the pathologization of homosexuality simply because a narrow segment of christians have decided to treat it as a kind of mental disorder?
if you acquiesce on these grounds and do not pass judgement on this, are you in effect conceding that the homosexuality=mental disorder is a legitimate way of interpreting homosexuality?
is it? on what possible basis?

does the routing of the justifications for bigotry through the bible make that bigotry ok?
would you apply the same stadard to any other type of campaign waged in the name of the same texts?
would you adopt the same relation to the crusades, say?
the long history of persecuting heretics?
the long history of antisemitism?
would you have to suspend judgement in the same way when you thought about the curiously comfortable relationship between the catholic church in italy and mussolini because of the coincidence in their respective theories about an organic division of labor?

does that fact that these beliefs have been translated into an institutional structure (these re-education camps/programs) make the camps ok?

to my mind, the entire rationale for such an approach to homosexuality is bigotry straight up and nothing more.
the frightening thing within the story is that the creation of institutions rooted in this bigotry has the effect of normalizing it within the fundamentalist christian community. the surprising thing in this thread is the extent to which judgements about this appear to be problematic because the people who believe this nonsense route their beliefs through biblical sources.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite