hmmm.....

I have been working on a paper in my Sexuality class for awhile now, and I have been trying to think of a way to politicize religious art in a way that is not offensive. Is that possible? Is religion too touchy to touch? It reminds me of how people will argue with anyone except their family, when it seems most obvious that if anyone is going to listen to you, it should be the people who you know best. Religion is much like heterosexuality in that it constantly is reinforcing itself through social control and reminding people of its importance when really, if it was so all-knowing, powerful and natural shouldn't it be confident enough to shut the fuck up and not condemn anything that appears to deviate from it? There is a quote from a book that I wrote down in my journal a few years ago that I go back to every once and awhile:

"There are always those who take it upon themselves to defend God, as if Ultimate Reality, as if the sustaining frame of existence were something weak and helpless...they should direct anger at themselves. For evil in the open is but evil from within that has been let out. The main battlefield for good is not the open ground of the public arena but the small clearing of each heart. Meanwhile, the lot of widows and homeless children is very hard, and it is to their defense, not God's, that the self righteous should rush." - Life of Pi

Anyways, apparently I am a preacher at heart, but my point is that it is so difficult to make people see beyond what they base their entire life upon. How do you disarticulate something that millions of people would die for? I mean, riots were started over cartoons in a newspaper last year...this is serious shit to fuck with. But I honestly think it still has to be fucked with because so many problems stem from it. I found one example of what I think successfully refunctions religious doctrine in regards to a specific issue, and it is funny as hell. Check it out. Sorry about the sermon guys.
Oh, something else interesting that I found in my travels, apparently Ted Haggard, the president of the NEA (National Evangelical Association) which has over 30 million followers, and a congregation in Colorado of 14,000 members just resigned. He is a real prize...he wanted a cultural war on homosexuals and abortion rights and believes in biblical inerrancy and biblical literalism (is that not the most terrifying thing you have EVER heard??!?). Anyway, he stepped down because his male prostitute who he has been paying to have sex with him for the last three years just came forward. After denying it for awhile, then failing a polygraph he admitted that he was guilty of 'sexual immorality'. Oh, sweet irony.