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Week after week, it’s a different cock in a frock rolled out to say something nasty about the gays, so it was with rolled eyes and resignation that I read the headline Gays ‘will never go to heaven’: cardinal. But then I stopped in my tracks. Let’s not tar this chap with the muppet brush too hastily…
Last week we learned all about the concept of ‘mental reservation‘ in the Catholic Church; a neat little trick that allows people such as the otherworldly Cardinal Desmond Connell to have a blemish-free conscience when allowing people to believe that which is not strictly true (kinda like when you were a kid and you believed that it was ok to tell porkies if you crossed your fingers behind your back).
This got me thinking. Surely Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan (me neither) couldn’t really believe that the GLBTs couldn’t get into Heaven? Surely a man of his education wouldn’t baldly state something like homosexuality is as a result of an ‘education issue’ or an identity disorder stemming from adolescence? I checked the calendar; it is indeed almost 2010 – so how can we explain his rather fruity statement?
Mental reservation of course! Let’s look more closely at his statement. The bits he certainly reserved mentally are in square brackets (more manly than those faggy roundy ones {and don’t get me started on the frankly outrageously camp squiggly brackets…}).
VATICAN CITY — Homosexuals and transsexuals “will never enter the kingdom of heaven [without a red carpet]“, a leading Roman Catholic cardinal said on Wednesday.
Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan said that while the Church regarded [outmoded notions of the wrongness of] homosexuality as an “insult to God”, this did not justify discrimination against gay and transsexual people.
“Transsexuals and homosexuals will never enter the kingdom of heaven [without a red carpet, paparazzi and some kind of Cirque du Soliel thing happening] and it is not me who says this, but Saint Paul [the Bible's very own prolific spambot] ,” the cardinal said, in comments reported by the Ansa news agency.
“People are not born [fabulously] homosexual, they become [beautiful, divatastically] homosexual, for different reasons: education [about grooming] issues or because they did not develop [unhealthy relationships with the handsy parish priest who obviously had some issues with] their own identity during adolescence. It may not be their fault, but acting against [their fierce beeatch] nature and the dignity of the human body is an insult to God [or 'Tyra' as we sometimes call Her],” he said.
There, I hope that clears it up. I think with this mental reservation concept, the Church will be able to get away with, well, just about anything now! Hurrah!
I learned this morning that my aunt Josie died last night after a long, nasty struggle with the Big C.
My dad’s sister-in-law, she was something of a maverick. One of those wild women who wasn’t to be approved of when I was a kid, was pretty hip when I was a teen and then, as happens, fell away from contact when I flew the nest.
Anyway, I’ll associate her with dark smoky pubs, cigarettes and that glint of mischief in her eyes as she dragged me Very Proper Me onto the dancefloor to jive to bonkers country music.
Rest in peace.
Track: Sweetheart, Darlin’ Of Mine by Claire Lynch (from Silver & Gold).
“This is a journey into sound”
“I know you’re gonna dig this”
Etc etc…
While I still love me a good housey housey mix, I’ve always wanted to have a go at a silly/bonkers eclectic mix a la DJ Yoda or Erlend Øye’s DJ Kicks comp. So let me present Radio Daddy or Chips Volume 1: a journey into some very silly collisions, ropey segues and a giggling BBC Radio 4 newsreader.
Tracklist can be found in the comments. I’ve had stuff taken down, so I want to confuse the partypooping bots that trawl blogs looking for stuff to report. *shakes fist at bots*
A cheap laugh, sure (after all, I’d be quite happy to have an academic book in print), but this did make me titter.
via Robert Popper
Anyone ambivalent about Mika might be pleasantly surprised with this gorgeous performance from last night’s Mencap Little Noise Session in the sublime Union Chapel (it’s a church – and it’s got a bar! I heart England.)
Mika headlined and I tip my cap to him. He was a riot. (Alas, Paloma Faith had to cancel – although most people seemed to be there for Mika so weren’t too disappointed.) We also got a taster of 18-year-old Alex Gardner, a Xenomania popstar in the making (and who was being naughty outside smoking and playing guitar at all hours of the night – I can report though, that he was wearing his scarf like a good boy should).
Anyway, small, intimate venue (fab acoustics obviously) and all for a good cause.
More info: http://www.littlenoisesessions.org.uk/
EDIT: Welcome to all the folk from the Mika Fan Club Forum. Nice to have you on board. I’ve some other snippets of video to edit and upload, so keep checking back over the next day or so.
Poor Thierry Henry. Sales of Gillette shall plummet in Ireland now. Which is a good thing, because it’s Movember!
And let’s all say hello to Bishop Janusz Kaleta, who has decided that the gays are not welcome to visit the Vatican.
I consider if someone is homosexual, it is a provocation and an abuse of this place. Try to go to a mosque if you are not Muslim. It is abuse of our buildings and our religion because the church interprets our religion that it is not ethical. We expect respect of our church as we expect to respect that a person does not have to belong to the Catholic Church. If you have different ideas, go to a different location.
He doesn’t sound very nice, does he, readers?
(via ETurboNews)
‘A marriage shall be considered valid only if the wife is a virgin. If the wife is not a virgin, she shall be executed.’ Deuteronomy 22:13-21
This is the first in an occasional series in which we let It Was Ever Thus explore some aspect of contemporary life. Here he muses on the pursuit of Pilates amongst certain posh postcodes of London. I find his musings edgy, occasionally sweet and sometimes difficult to take.
Like snorting sherbet. We hope you like it too….
Cellular Memory
We apologise in advance to those who might have Googled ‘cellular memory’ in search of stories relating to bits of other peoples bodies inside them (which is to say bits within and not bits attached to others without – that’s an entirely separate and, frankly, somewhat oversubscribed internet category). We speak here of the memory of what we physically had which like most memories is distorted by present events so as it may more accurately reflect what we might have always wanted to be. 
In thus fashion has an industry been created to cater to this memory or aspiration to memory. I exclude from this discussion those fat kids who in memory terms remain forever rotund and though possessed of bodies of the gods have that forever goblin on their shoulder to remind them of the skin sloughed off . You can usually identify this person through their baton-charge-ugly lover who clearly would never leave them out of sheer gratitude.
As with most things the gay man takes the premise and ramps it up – why be interesting when you can be FABULOUS? So the protein shake guzzling, chicken breast eating, is-this-fennel-is-their-fat-in-fennel faggot is the guy in the artfully-coordinated gym gear with the just out of bed tousled hair that took three hours to gel into place. He has the body born to be displayed at Vauxhall, and while much of it is achieved through pain and sheer dint of will, much is also achieved through mechanisms that make his donor card an accessory rather than something that will be executed on.
The day will come when the Vauxhall arches close in, the spotty back not such a good look, the porn star coupling with fellow hard bodies easily achieved but maintained with difficulty. The lure of the North London dinner party and arch conversation over glass tables proves irresistible and, while he yields the bitch tits to the mists of time, his cellular memory convinces him that toning and stretching and paying sixty quid an hour will somehow hold and encage the inner fat child reasserting his dominance over your gay middle ages.
Welcome to Pilates.
