writings by
Tommi Avicolli Mecca



iris





tommi@avicollimecca.com


matt
No Missionary Position for these Mormons
published at beyondchron.org‚ Aug. 06‚ 2008

 
Two years ago at Gay Pride here in San Francisco, I saw two young Mormon guys peddling their goods near the Faery Village tent. One of them was extremely cute, so I decided to give him a hard time. He also seemed gay. Probably wishful thinking on my part.

The cute one became flustered when I asked him for proof that Jesus had actually lived. I mentioned that the one-paragraph reference in the historian Josephus’ work was believed to have been added centuries later by overzealous Christians intent on writing their savior into at least one history book.

I also informed him of the lawsuit filed in the European Court by an ex-priest against the Catholic Church, charging the Vatican with promulgating a lie for 2,000 years. Church leaders, he claims, have always known that Jesus was based on John of Gamala, a Jewish freedom fighter crucified in 33 AD for leading an attempted overthrow of the Romans. Forget son of god, the guy was just trying to free his people.

Cutie wouldn’t hear of it, and walked away to continue with his missionary work. Which at that moment didn’t involve the missionary position. It crossed my mind that his photo would look good on my wall, especially if he discarded the unattractive garb Mormons wore when they were out proselytizing.

Of course, the idea of Mormon men posing nude for a poster that provokes lust in the hearts (and other parts of the body) of men and women everywhere was far-fetched. Until now.

Chad Hardy, an “entertainment entrepreneur,” as the news reports describe him, was recently excommunicated from the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints, as it is called, for producing (and putting on the web) a calendar of Mormon missionaries in their traditional pants, but sans the white shirt and the tie. Entitled “Men on a Mission,” it’s already sold 10,000 copies.

And no wonder. Some of these guys look like they’re on a mission, but not the kind their elders sent them on. Blonde model Brandon (there are two with the same name) might have provoked Mae West to ask: “Is that a gun in your pocket or are you just excited to see me?” James looks like he’s in a Biblical mood to do some of that begatting the Old Testament brags so much about. Kenny might well be the new kid in town on Gossip Girls.

In the end, the calendar is nothing revolutionary. It amuses me that it's shaken up the Mormon church so much. Unfortunately, it’s not going to stop people from believing in the Bible or religion. It won’t eradicate the “opiate of the masses.”

It might make folks look twice at those missionaries who knock on their doors when they’re making breakfast in the morning. “Uh, didn’t I see you in a calendar? You want a cup of coffee...or maybe something else?”



homeless woman
Homeless Study Deserves a Pulitzer for Fiction

beyondchron.org‚ Aug. 01‚ 2008
 


It’s amazing how much government tweaks the truth. It doesn’t out and out lie. It simply fits the truth it wants to tell to the facts it creates to prove that truth. Consider the first-of-its-kind study by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) on chronic homelessness in America. By now, you’ve seen the headlines: 15% drop in this type of homelessness since last year. A “chronically homeless” person, as defined by HUD, is someone who is disabled and homeless for at least a year or homeless four times in a period of three years.


It’s great news. If it’s true. Which it may not be. At least not if you examine how HUD came up with this statistic .

According to Newsday, the trick is in the changes that HUD made to how it counts the homeless. Instead of the old method of letting the local counters determine if someone is homeless, HUD required that each homeless person be interviewed before being added to the list. Any homeless person who declined to be interviewed was not counted. Of course any homeless person not in the social service network also didn’t end up in the tally.

HUD of course is denying that it placed this restriction on those who were doing the compiling of the data. A spokesperson for the agency said: “We really believe these numbers.”

He may as well believe in Santa Claus.

The chronically homeless are not an easy population to track. Many don’t want to be found or don’t end up in social services. There’s probably no way to really get an accurate count of the chronically homeless. Or any homeless group in the country.

Even if the study were accurate, there’s another problem: It only looks at a small percentage of the overall homeless population in America.

What about the people who are not chronically homeless? What about those couch surfing? What about families and individuals living in cars and vans? Los Angeles, for example, has a huge population of these folks. What about people piled into houses and apartments out of necessity and not because they want to be living together?

What about those who are victims of foreclosures?

These are all good questions that the HUD study doesn’t tackle. By limiting its scope to a small portion of the homeless population, it allows the government to paint a picture that is far rosier than it really is. It gives people a false sense of security. They actually start to believe that things are improving when they’re not.

Since future funding will be based on reports such as this one, it could mean cuts to how much the government spends to tackle homelessness, chronic or otherwise.

That would be not be good news.


JROTC is not a choice
recruiter poster


by Mark Sanchez and Tommi Avicolli Mecca
published in SF Bay Guardian, Aug. 20, 2008



To hear proponents of the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC) talk, it's a matter of personal choice for 14- and 15-year-olds to sign up for the Pentagon's military recruitment program, which is being phased out of San Francisco's public schools June 2009. The San Francisco Board of Education also recently voted to remove physical education credit from the program this school year. It had to: the retired military officers who teach the course don't meet the educational standards of state law, and the course doesn't meet state physical education standards.

Supporters of JROTC are taking the issue to the November ballot. Their initiative, albeit non-binding, would put San Franciscans on record as in support of the military program.

As Democratic clubs and other political organizations begin their endorsement process, progressives need to understand the importance of defeating this initiative. It's not a harmless measure. If it passes, the new school board can use it to reinstate JROTC. If it loses, it's less likely the board will change its course. Thankfully, last week the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee (DCCC) voted overwhelmingly not to endorse the measure.

JROTC is not summer camp or a harmless after-school activity. It is one more way the military finds bodies for its illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Denisha Williams can tell you that. The African American high school senior in Philadelphia told the City Paper that she left JROTC and opted out of the military having her contact info. It hasn't made any difference: "I have received phone calls, e-mail, three letters and a 15-minute videotape. I even received a phone call from a female recruiter asking if I was still interested in the Navy. I told her I wasn't and hung up. A week later I received another letter and the tape."

Capt. Daniel R. Gager, commander of the US Army recruiting station in south Philadelphia, said he and other recruiters were ordered by the US Recruiting Command to put more time and energy into recruiting high school upperclassmen such as Williams.

In San Francisco, at least 15 percent of the cadets have been placed in the program without their consent. It seems the military will do whatever it takes to get in front of our youngsters in our public schools.

Pressuring kids to join the military is wrong. International law says kids under 18 should not be recruited at all, and the ACLU agrees (see www.aclu.org/intlhumanrights/gen). Recruiters in every high school and at every mall in this country break that law every day.

Nationally about 40 percent of JROTC kids end up in the military. In San Francisco, proponents claim only 2 percent go on to military careers. They are wrong. According to the school district, no tracking of JROTC students is done.

Please work to defeat Proposition V, the pro-JROTC initiative.


communion
Body of Christ Held Hostage in Plastic Bag
beyondchron.org‚ Jul. 14‚ 2008
 


If anybody sees the body of Jesus, could they please stuff it in an envelope and drop it into the nearest mailbox? Address: UCF catholic ministries in Orange County, Florida. The Pope will most likely reimburse you for postage.

Before you go looking for some spaced-out, long-haired hippie with a beard and a bloody crown of thorns, you should know that the actual body of Jesus is not missing. What’s still at large is a wafer of bread called Holy Communion, something Catholics believe is the body of Christ.

Confused? You wouldn’t be if you endured twelve years of Catholic school, as I did. Nuns and priests drilled into our young impressionable minds that the little round stiff piece of bread (which sometimes stuck to the roof of my mouth) was indeed the actual body of Jesus and the wine that the priest drank during mass was his blood.

If the whole thing reeks of ritual cannibalism, maybe that’s because it is.

Desecrating the little wafers (or hosts, as Catholics call them) was the worst sin anyone could commit. Once the priest put it on your tongue, you couldn't touch it. If it got stuck to your mouth, you had to pray that it got loose so you could swallow it. You couldn't chew it. If it fell on the floor, a whole ritual drama ensued. How well I remember a Sunday morning in the late 80s when the radical group ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) demonstrated outside St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York while a homophobic and AIDSphobic cardinal was saying Mass. That cardinal opposed safe sex and condoms.

One ACT UP member went inside the church, walked up to the altar at the appropriate time, took communion and threw it to the floor as a protest of the cardinal’s bigotry.

Now a Florida student has gone one step further: He’s taken one of the wafers from a campus church after he was stopped from walking from the altar to his pew holding the piece of bread in his hand. Wester Cook, an avowed atheist who is on the student senate, was trying to show it to a friend who wanted to know more about the cannibalistic practice. Since he wasn’t able to do that, Cook popped it into his mouth and left the church.

A week later, he still has the wafer in a plastic bag. Hopefully, Cook had the good sense to put it in the freezer. Poor Jesus, shivering among the frozen vegetables.

Cook says he is upset that the university is giving $40,000 this year to the various campus ministries, money that comes out of student tuitions.

Catholics are concerned about the whereabouts of the body of their dead Jesus. They just want him to come home. "It is hurtful," local priest Father Miguel Gonzalez told WFTV in Orange County, Florida. "Imagine if they kidnapped somebody and you make a plea for that individual to please return that loved one to the family."

He does know that he's talking about a piece of bread, doesn't he?

           
 

peaches

                                                                   
homepage
                                  Italian.Queer.Dangerous

                                                                         ancestors piece

                                                                   godless commies

                                  shortstories

                                                                      bibliography