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The New Mortal Sins
The Progressive, June 10, 2008
Now that everyone can shoot cell phone or flip-cam videos and pop them on YouTube, maybe God, chief all-seeing enforcer of good behavior, can kick back and relax a bit. Maybe see some baseball.
Remember George Allen’s “macaca” moment? This new citizen surveillance makes the Bush wiretapping seem like clothes-pinning onto a frayed string between tin cans.
Republican Representative Sally Kern, from Oklahoma, was recently recorded at a district fundraiser explicating the homosexual agenda. In the audio recording, she sounds like Mr. Mackey, the South Park guidance counselor, who ends sentences with a nasal “m’kay?” As cutlery and dishes clank in the background, Ms. Kern tells her peacefully masticating listeners that homosexuality is a bigger threat than terrorism or Islam, which is pretty big, m’kay?
It sounded like a dinner theater performance nightmare I had once. The audience munched contentedly and was completely passive as Ms. Kern listed gay outrages. Gays are recruiting children two years of age. That’s why they want early childhood education. They are infiltrating city councils in Florida and even Eureka Springs, where they have that Passion Play, m’kay? Homosexuality is like cancer in your little toe. It is deadly and spreading. It is not a healthy lifestyle. The gay lifespan is shorter because of suicide, illness, and discouragement.
Ms. Kern said she was not gay-bashing. She also noted presciently that even talking like this could put her in jeopardy. Nevertheless, she plowed on courageously, m’kay? The audio of her talk was posted, whipsawed around the Internet, and was picked up briefly by CNN. Many gay organizations and their allies are demanding her removal.
But otherwise, Ms. Kern’s comments and the murder of Lawrence King, a gay middle schooler in Oxnard, California, barely make news. After being the wedge issue in many of the last elections, the eerie silence on LGBT issues in this current campaign has been unsettling. “Go to my website,” is not an acceptable candidate explanation for the absence of LGBT issues.
While some of my colleagues like getting things done below the radar, like Mae West, I’ve always felt it’s better to be looked over than overlooked.
God is kicking back. Through His spokesman here on earth, Pope Benedict (don’t tell W!), He released a newly upgraded list of sins of the globalized world at a Lenten Apostolic Penitentiary Seminar. The Pope had power-pointed the more venial sins of road rage, drunkenness, and rudeness in an earlier address last summer.
The new mortal sins are not to be replacements for the traditional one-word individualistic sins of pride, envy, gluttony, lust (Eliot Spitzer did not get that memo), anger, greed, and my personal favorite, sloth. They are additional multi-word “socially resonant” sins like carrying out morally debatable scientific experiments, taking or dealing in drugs, or excessive accumulation of wealth. Think social networking with hell time. I know I do. It was not clear if confessionals would be renovated for higher occupancy.
I confess to quickly scanning the list, looking for the sin of homosexuality. It was not there! Maybe it’s understood. It was like being dropped from the big annual Papal Magazine “Sinniest Sins Alive” special double issue. For a while there, homosexuality was like being cover-boy Matthew McConaughey doing his buff beach workout. Nunc nihil.
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