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writings by
Tommi Avicolli Mecca
tommi@avicollimecca.com
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 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
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.
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?
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