The Gay Agenda Under Siege
Dave Muskera, M.A.
November 28, 2007
Of late, I’ve begun to believe that some very vocal members of the Christian faith, variably referred to as “Far Right Fundies”, or Fundamentalist Against Religious Trashing - FART for short), are really not going to be content unless they somehow recapture the persecuted position of early Christianity (before Constantine). You know – the times long ago when Christians where thrown to the lions, beheaded, stoned and martyred and all such things. Maybe there is something about being persecuted that turns these folks on….a sort of social masochism generated by the idea that their religion is under siege by the culture at large. A masochism that helps pump-up their adrenaline to levels previously only attained during prior years when they were drum-beating about gay marriage or the gay agenda - topics that now seem old hat.
I feel confident that most people, whose social awareness exceeds that of a pond frog, are already struck by the frequency and intensity of Christmas or Christianity under attack outcries. FART groups, especially at this time of year, continue lamenting the demise of Christmas in Christmas and the many plots to scuttle any mention of Christmas during the holidays…ump…I mean Christmas season. Actually, for several years, we have been regularly warned that “secular progressives” are promoting a wide spread attack on Christmas. The “sinister intent” or so it goes, is to “marginalize” religion in general and Christianity in particular. FART spokespersons - such as Bill O’Reilly on FOX News - have pontificated for several years that Christmas is “under siege”. He has even devoted segments of his terribly informative show “The O’Reilly Factor” to push this concern. If you Google the phrase “Christmas Under Siege” you come up with over 2,700 hits. Wow…something this fantastically large must be real. Right?
Well let’s examine the FART claims about Christmas and Christianity just a bit more. It doesn’t take expensive surveys or hidden microphones at store check-out counters to see if clerks say “Merry Christmas” as opposed to Happy Holidays. No, all it takes is a bit of everyday observation and common sense deduction.
Let me start with a quick word-based virtual tour of my own little home-town city of about 50,000 people and its immediate surrounding area. I don’t believe we are greatly different here from other parts of non-big city America.
We have one Jewish Temple, One Unitarian Fellowship House, three Greek Orthodox churches, one Muslin mosque and 217 Christian churches listed in our friendly yellow pages under 33 different denominations including Catholic and Mormon. One of the main streets through our downtown area is known locally as the Avenue of Churches (all Christian of course) as there are so many of them - block after block. We have several still growing mega-churches nearby with parking lots the size of the long-term parking areas at Chicago’s O’Hare airport! On any given Wednesday evening (church night in this part of the country), the local Wal-Mart might as well shut down till after 8:00 PM as so many customers are attending mid-week services. During the Christmas Season you can bet on being accosted at every retail store by Salvation Army bell ringers wishing everyone within ear short a “Merry Christmas” and at least five area organizations offer their version of a “Festival of Trees”…most all of which depict and celebrate the Christian spirit of the season. Christmas plays and concerts abound. On every other corner starting around December first, you’ll find a “Christmas Tree Lot” selling fresh cut tress. I’ve yet to see a sign at one of these lots that harkens buyers to come get a “Holiday Tree”…..now it may be there…but I’ve just not seen it. Isle markers at local food stores beckon customers to buy “Christmas” cards and “Christmas” decorations. And if I hear “The Twelve Days of Christmas” one more time, I think I’ll join the local troop of Blackwater mercenaries, learn to use an AK-47 and then take out those pesky public speakers in stores that douse us over and over with “Christmas” music - beginning, no less, the day before Halloween . No, I really don’t mean that last part. Actually, I like most Christmas music….just not the “Twelve Days of Christmas.” Notice, by the way, its not called “The Twelve Days of Holiday” - now is it?
I’ve rarely heard anyone say they were putting up “holiday lights” around their front porch hedges – and, as of yet, I’ve not seen nor heard of anyone trying to steal baby Jesus from his plastic manger down on the front lawn of the local church.
Does any of this fit the idea you have of being under siege?
With a U.S. Christian population well in excess of 80% and with literally millions of Christian Churches and organizations from coast to coast, it seems highly improbable that Christianity is under any real threat. If it is a siege, it may have the equivalent impact on Christians that one would expect from a single tax cheat on the productions of the military industrial complex.
Truth is most of this “Christmas under siege” is henny-penny the-sky-is-falling hype. Maybe it’s as simple as just having a need to feel persecuted. But then again, maybe there this some other agenda driving this nonsense.
By this point - and rightfully so, you might be wondering why this article is titled “The Gay Agenda Under Siege”. Considering the content so far, the title appears misleading. Well, for one thing, I wanted to get your attention. Yet another article about Christmas under siege might have caused you to skip on by. I hope you’ll forgive my little deception. Stick with me and I’ll attempt to redeem myself. Just a few more short paragraphs.
On the more serious side, I really hope to encourage readers to think about just what and who is really under siege in this country. I hope, in some small way, to prompt folks into looking past the smoke and mirrors of the entertainment complex we call the “mainstream media” and to become skeptics of henny-pennyism in all its forms - if they have not already done so.
Unless I’ve got my facts way off, it was not Christianity or Christmas in the 2004 elections that got banned by constitutional amendments in eleven states. It also never took a Supreme Court decision to de-criminalize the existence of Christians in this country. Christians have not had to beg for equal treatment under the law or risk being fired or denied housing because of who they are or what they believe. Rarely is a Christian beaten and left to die - hung out on a fence like a discarded rag just for being a Christian or for having a manger scene in their front yard.
Gay people, on the other hand, can be spit on and called names just for holding hands in public. Other displays of affection risk assault – sometimes of a physical nature. Gay people are denied employment and housing just because of who they are and, in most jurisdictions, there is no legal recourse. Gay citizens pay taxes, stop at traffic lights and put up Christmas trees yet their committed relationships have no legal weight in most of the United States - no matter how many years they may have been together. Gay couples do not benefit from survivors benefits from Social Security. Hey, we can’t even get family memberships at the local Y. It’s still OK to taunt gay kids in school and use slang like “That’s so gay” (meaning dumb and stupid). I wonder how long it would last if the line was “That’s so black”?
The last time I checked, I could not find even a single gay agenda “meeting house” in my neighborhood, much less over 200 of them. If all the gay folk I know (or even think might be out there) stayed home on Wednesday evenings, Wal-Mart would continue operations without missing a stroke of the cash register.
In any event, I have come to believe that for some, religion just doesn’t feel comfortable unless they perceive someone is trying to take it from them. They see threats behind every church building and project fear and suspicion at every opportunity. Or, these tactics are used to stir the flock into a stampede, usually one in which a great many more dollars are dropped into the baskets passed along the pews.
Well, as to Christmas being under siege, more than likely, as soon as December 25th passes and all the Christmas trees and Christmas decorations are put-up for another year, the FART groups will take out their alternative mission statements and once again put the big bad gay agenda into the top five of their siege list. What else are they going to do?
By the way...until this article is posted, if you Google "Gay Agenda under Siege" you'll get exactly a big fat zero number of hits.
I feel confident that most people, whose social awareness exceeds that of a pond frog, are already struck by the frequency and intensity of Christmas or Christianity under attack outcries. FART groups, especially at this time of year, continue lamenting the demise of Christmas in Christmas and the many plots to scuttle any mention of Christmas during the holidays…ump…I mean Christmas season. Actually, for several years, we have been regularly warned that “secular progressives” are promoting a wide spread attack on Christmas. The “sinister intent” or so it goes, is to “marginalize” religion in general and Christianity in particular. FART spokespersons - such as Bill O’Reilly on FOX News - have pontificated for several years that Christmas is “under siege”. He has even devoted segments of his terribly informative show “The O’Reilly Factor” to push this concern. If you Google the phrase “Christmas Under Siege” you come up with over 2,700 hits. Wow…something this fantastically large must be real. Right?
Well let’s examine the FART claims about Christmas and Christianity just a bit more. It doesn’t take expensive surveys or hidden microphones at store check-out counters to see if clerks say “Merry Christmas” as opposed to Happy Holidays. No, all it takes is a bit of everyday observation and common sense deduction.
Let me start with a quick word-based virtual tour of my own little home-town city of about 50,000 people and its immediate surrounding area. I don’t believe we are greatly different here from other parts of non-big city America.
We have one Jewish Temple, One Unitarian Fellowship House, three Greek Orthodox churches, one Muslin mosque and 217 Christian churches listed in our friendly yellow pages under 33 different denominations including Catholic and Mormon. One of the main streets through our downtown area is known locally as the Avenue of Churches (all Christian of course) as there are so many of them - block after block. We have several still growing mega-churches nearby with parking lots the size of the long-term parking areas at Chicago’s O’Hare airport! On any given Wednesday evening (church night in this part of the country), the local Wal-Mart might as well shut down till after 8:00 PM as so many customers are attending mid-week services. During the Christmas Season you can bet on being accosted at every retail store by Salvation Army bell ringers wishing everyone within ear short a “Merry Christmas” and at least five area organizations offer their version of a “Festival of Trees”…most all of which depict and celebrate the Christian spirit of the season. Christmas plays and concerts abound. On every other corner starting around December first, you’ll find a “Christmas Tree Lot” selling fresh cut tress. I’ve yet to see a sign at one of these lots that harkens buyers to come get a “Holiday Tree”…..now it may be there…but I’ve just not seen it. Isle markers at local food stores beckon customers to buy “Christmas” cards and “Christmas” decorations. And if I hear “The Twelve Days of Christmas” one more time, I think I’ll join the local troop of Blackwater mercenaries, learn to use an AK-47 and then take out those pesky public speakers in stores that douse us over and over with “Christmas” music - beginning, no less, the day before Halloween . No, I really don’t mean that last part. Actually, I like most Christmas music….just not the “Twelve Days of Christmas.” Notice, by the way, its not called “The Twelve Days of Holiday” - now is it?
I’ve rarely heard anyone say they were putting up “holiday lights” around their front porch hedges – and, as of yet, I’ve not seen nor heard of anyone trying to steal baby Jesus from his plastic manger down on the front lawn of the local church.
Does any of this fit the idea you have of being under siege?
With a U.S. Christian population well in excess of 80% and with literally millions of Christian Churches and organizations from coast to coast, it seems highly improbable that Christianity is under any real threat. If it is a siege, it may have the equivalent impact on Christians that one would expect from a single tax cheat on the productions of the military industrial complex.
Truth is most of this “Christmas under siege” is henny-penny the-sky-is-falling hype. Maybe it’s as simple as just having a need to feel persecuted. But then again, maybe there this some other agenda driving this nonsense.
By this point - and rightfully so, you might be wondering why this article is titled “The Gay Agenda Under Siege”. Considering the content so far, the title appears misleading. Well, for one thing, I wanted to get your attention. Yet another article about Christmas under siege might have caused you to skip on by. I hope you’ll forgive my little deception. Stick with me and I’ll attempt to redeem myself. Just a few more short paragraphs.
On the more serious side, I really hope to encourage readers to think about just what and who is really under siege in this country. I hope, in some small way, to prompt folks into looking past the smoke and mirrors of the entertainment complex we call the “mainstream media” and to become skeptics of henny-pennyism in all its forms - if they have not already done so.
Unless I’ve got my facts way off, it was not Christianity or Christmas in the 2004 elections that got banned by constitutional amendments in eleven states. It also never took a Supreme Court decision to de-criminalize the existence of Christians in this country. Christians have not had to beg for equal treatment under the law or risk being fired or denied housing because of who they are or what they believe. Rarely is a Christian beaten and left to die - hung out on a fence like a discarded rag just for being a Christian or for having a manger scene in their front yard.
Gay people, on the other hand, can be spit on and called names just for holding hands in public. Other displays of affection risk assault – sometimes of a physical nature. Gay people are denied employment and housing just because of who they are and, in most jurisdictions, there is no legal recourse. Gay citizens pay taxes, stop at traffic lights and put up Christmas trees yet their committed relationships have no legal weight in most of the United States - no matter how many years they may have been together. Gay couples do not benefit from survivors benefits from Social Security. Hey, we can’t even get family memberships at the local Y. It’s still OK to taunt gay kids in school and use slang like “That’s so gay” (meaning dumb and stupid). I wonder how long it would last if the line was “That’s so black”?
The last time I checked, I could not find even a single gay agenda “meeting house” in my neighborhood, much less over 200 of them. If all the gay folk I know (or even think might be out there) stayed home on Wednesday evenings, Wal-Mart would continue operations without missing a stroke of the cash register.
In any event, I have come to believe that for some, religion just doesn’t feel comfortable unless they perceive someone is trying to take it from them. They see threats behind every church building and project fear and suspicion at every opportunity. Or, these tactics are used to stir the flock into a stampede, usually one in which a great many more dollars are dropped into the baskets passed along the pews.
Well, as to Christmas being under siege, more than likely, as soon as December 25th passes and all the Christmas trees and Christmas decorations are put-up for another year, the FART groups will take out their alternative mission statements and once again put the big bad gay agenda into the top five of their siege list. What else are they going to do?
By the way...until this article is posted, if you Google "Gay Agenda under Siege" you'll get exactly a big fat zero number of hits.
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