I didn’t feel like updating the story I did about the Grammys yet again (hopefully the link works this time), but two more things about it that I thought were interesting and might be of interest to y’all as well:
* A Christian rapper has done exactly what Christians have always done ever since the Middle Ages: appropriated another song and filked lyrics to it to convey a message completely antithetical to the original song’s meaning. What’s crazy is that in the “Same Love” song, the singer actually even says that if he were gay, he’d be sure the hip-hop community hated him–and this Christian rapper perpetuates that hatred without even a glimmer of self-awareness. Does he think gay people will feel loved by what he’s done? Or is he just justifying his own fear and hatred and making his audience feel smug in their own? I totally get that it makes marginalized communities upset when their metaphors and language get “stolen” by other marginalized groups, but this is not the Persecution Olympics. We’re all in this together, gang. We use the same language because the metaphors work because the effects and the harm are the same. As long as there is victimization of hated minorities, none of us can rest. Yes, atheists “come out of the closet.” Yes, what gay people face is almost exactly like what black people faced (and still face) right down to the same Bible verses being used to victimize them. Yes, yes, yes. We need to fight all of it. The real crime here is that a Christian rapper had to swipe a song about love and acceptance to turn it into a song of hate and exclusion.
It’s a shame there isn’t going to be a Judgment Day–it’d be worth going to hell for me, just to see all the Christians joining me with shocked looks on their faces. Don’t worry, Bizzle the Rapper. I’ll save you a seat if your sicko religion turns out to be the one correct one out of thousands of religions over tens of thousands of years of human history.
* Kirk Cameron has a sad that people got married at the Grammys because some of those people had matching gender identities. Also, he has a movie out. I’m more shocked by the idea that someone with so little acting talent is somehow getting work from anybody when great new actors and actresses seem to have trouble attracting the roles they deserve, than I am to see that he’s still a homophobic stain on the shorts of humanity who would, if his religion were even one iota objectively real and true, be joining Bizzle and me on the Helltrain.
Freebie: Queen Latifah is still on Cloud Nine after seeing that massive lovefest explosion of glorious devotion and commitment. I heart this wonderful woman so hard. She is a class act that a misogynistic slimeball like Kirk Cameron and a sleazy hatemonger like Bizzle can only dream of approaching. And I love that she takes the same tack with her own sexuality that I take with my spiritual worldview: that it doesn’t really matter to anybody but the people directly affected, that her ideas matter more in the public sphere. That’s how it should be. Her sexuality is her business.
I really think there is a time coming when we’re going to all look back at evangelical Christianity and think “Wow, how did we ever let that kind of disgusting hatred get so much cultural dominance?” And I really think that time is coming soon. Christianity’s big strength has always been its chameleon-like ability to shift to take advantage of cultural changes. When a big chunk of the world decided that fighting gay rights and limiting women’s progress was the most important thing about the entire religion of Christianity, a movement in Christianity arose to give those folks justification for their attitudes. When a big chunk of America decided that they needed to turn their religion into a theocracy that controlled everybody else, evangelicals rose to the challenge. And now everybody else is starting to see how well that worked out and we’re tired of it. Will Christianity make the shift needed to take advantage of this new cultural weariness with the hatred and intolerance that now mark the religion? It’ll be interesting to see, won’t it?
