Sermon On The Mount? I Think Not!

I say this is as good a place as any for it to begin and perhaps better than many.  We are a community of artists. We are a community of artists that have come together under the a banner that proclaims we are deviant-artists.   Deviant, one who deviates from the norm, I think we all understand that the norm from which we deviate is not some artistic one and deviantart is not a school or class or style or movement of art like Impressionism or Cubism or Renisence or Pop Art or Realism.  To deviate, to be a deviant, is to differ usually from the sexual norm.  There are many  different ways to deviate from the norm of sexual behavior, but just about all of them no matter how unlike they may be in other ways are alike in at least one very important respect, that of having been or being illegal or heretical, against civil law or theological law.

     There is a segment of the deviant community at large, indeed a segment that most of the norm think of first when they hear or speak the word deviant, that has been manning the barricades and charging the walls of the en-castled norm, bearing the brunt of the labor to change society to a more open and accepting, mature and responsible and fair society, the LGBT members of that same closed minded, biased, and repressive society.  From the eras of "the love that dares not speak it's name" to the post Stonewall riots era, to the striking down of sodomy laws, to the end of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and at last the right of gay men and women to openly serve in their countries military as they had served in secret in ever war since it's founding and beyond, to slowly gaining Equal Rights to marry, this segment that once was nearly invisible has  visably and courageously reshaped the landscape of  American and Western society for the better.

      A few days ago in a church in North Carolina a minister took to the pulpit to deliver the Sunday sermon {*see note, bottom of post} (Charles L. Worley of Providence Road Baptist Church in Maiden, N.C) and from his position as a respected man of God and as head of a church of that God and in that sermon spoke saying that gays should be rounded up and put behind an electrified fence from which they could not escape ( He suggests building a large fence -- 150 or 100 miles long -- and putting all the gays and lesbians inside it.
"And have that fence electrified 'til they can't get out,"

  As we approach a holiday here in America that honors those who have laid down their lives in defense and support of the idea of liberty and justice and in particular those who gave their lives in battle against one of the most insidious evils every to befall humanity in which millions the world over died as victims or combatants am I the only one who feels the ghostly tramp of Jackboots and the spectral shouts of Sieg Hiel and the moaned words of Treblinka and Auschwitz that rise from that pulpit?

      Reverend Worley did betray his Christen leanings though by allowing those so caged to be fed.  In short order he also revealed that he must have attended one of the school systems that was an early abstainer from sex education because he went on to say that those confined humans would die out and when they did that would be the end of the problem "because they an't reproduce (" he says. "Feed 'em. And you know what, in a few years, they'll die out. Do you know why? They can't reproduce.").  Although the word "gay" is applied as a catchall phrase for all Homosexuals of any gender, it is in the public mind much more aligned historically with meaning Male Homosexuals; Lesbians and Trans-gender persons are an afterthought in that mind of the norm almost separate from the "gay" idea. In light of that more widespread connotation of the word "gay" I have to wonder, and would if I could ask, the Reverend Worley when was the last time he saw a pregnant guy?  Reverend Worley is correct, in so far as homosexual males are concerned, as long as they continue to engage exclusively in homosexual activities cannot reproduce; but if every known, every confessed, every closet, every possible, homosexual was caged and did die off the Reverends' problem would still exist and homosexuals would still be born just as they are now from the sexual activity of heterosexual people.  I understand that the Reverend Worley has been married some twenty years and evidently has children, so at least his wife had some understanding of the human reproductive process even if apparantly he did not.

      When hell was in session and evil had a comfortable seat at the table of men, not only were Jews assigned to the slaughter yards of the camps but gays and "other deviants" were as well.  As Jews had to wear a yellow star of David inside and outside the camps so too did homosexual and other deviants have to wear a pink or blue triangle inside and outside the camps.  What I am suggesting is that we, as a community of artists and in particular a community of "deviant" artists, ought to remind the Reverend and his church  that at another time and another place a leader suggested a similar solution to a similar "problem" a solution that shocked and horrified the world and that the idea still has the power to shock and horrify the world that has not forgotten,  and that we do this by each of us (and as many others from anywhere as we can enlist) making a yellow star of David and a pink and a blue triangle of any material or medium the individual chooses and mail our creations addressed toThe Reverend and his church. No words written, no phone calls, no emails,  just the silent, stark, and very telling reminder of that same evil that once was, we hoped, forever silenced and will not be allowed to once more find comfort at the table of mankind.




*Note the video of the sermon can be found here www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2n7vS…