writings

	Evangelists: Cashing in on Hard Economic Times published at beyondchron.org‚ Dec. 15‚ 2008 by Tommi Avicolli Mecca When times get tough, as they are now, people turn to all sorts of things for comfort, drugs and alcohol among them. According to a recent report in the New York Times, they also traditionally find comfort in that great opiate of the masses: religion. Especially of the evangelical kind. Evangelical churches are reportedly booming because of the fear and uncertainty that people feel at a time when unemployment is at a record high and more people in this country are hungry, homeless and without healthcare than ever before. Catholic and Protestant congregations are experiencing a windfall as well, but not to the extent of the fire and brimstone religions that make their preachers into media stars, not to mention very wealthy men. It’s a good time to be in the business of that old-time religion. As one evangelist preacher told the Times, “We have the greatest product on earth.” The world’s oldest profession might dispute that. Upsurges in evangelicalism during difficult times are nothing new. In 1857, during the great financial panic that started with a bank failure (sound familiar?) and a sunken shipload of gold and led to railroads collapsing, a prayer revival meeting in Manhattan eventually prompted the conversion of tens of thousands and the creation of the Salvation Army. David Beckworth, an assistant professor of economics at Texas State, in his recent study of evangelicalism and economics (Praying for Recession: The Business Cycle and Protestant Religiosity in the United States) recounts that during downward swings between 1968 and 2004, membership in evangelical churches increased by 50 percent. Mainstream Christian denominations did not fare as well. As one businessman (a former Catholic) described it, by joining a fundamentalist church he’s found a sense of “God’s authority over everything -- I feel him walking with me.” That’s all well and good, but will God pay the mortgage to keep the bank from foreclosing on the house? Beckworth’s study didn’t go unnoticed by the evangelical preachers who make their living peddling sin and salvation and donations to the collection plate. One of them called Beckworth to thank him for the info. This Seventh Day Adventist told the Times that fundamentalist preachers need to “leverage this moment.” As any good businessman would do. Religion is big business. And business takes advantages of people’s weaknesses. Nowhere is this more evident than the teen market. Teens are manipulated into buying all sorts of crap they don’t need, but if they don’t keep up with the kids in their class, they suffer from major self image problems. Not to mention lack of popularity or dates or both. Adults do the same thing. They walk around with all sorts of must-have gadgets attached to their bodies -- everything from cellphones and ipods to beepers and headphones. In the 60s, it was called “keeping up with the Joneses.” Now it’s just plain old crass consumerism. Religion is just another crass thing we consume when we feel helpless and alone.
	No Missionary Position for these Mormons published at beyondchron.org‚ Aug. 06‚ 2008 by Tommi Avicolli Mecca 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 published at beyondchron.org‚ Aug. 01‚ 2008 by Tommi Avicolli Mecca 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.
	Body of Christ Held Hostage in Plastic Bag published at beyondchron.org‚ Jul. 14‚ 2008 by Tommi Avicolli Mecca 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?
	I’m a Faggot Too, Ann Coulter published at beyondchron.org, March 6, 2007 by Tommi Avicolli Mecca Dear Ann Coulter: You really caused a stir at the Conservative Political Action conference in Washington, D.C. last week. You said what your right-wing audience was probably thinking: That Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards is a faggot. Their wild applause certainly suggested that they weren’t offended by your comment. Faggot is still the putdown of choice these days. Listen to teens in the school yard. Faggot isn’t just about being gay. The word is also used to say that someone is weak and ineffectual. I’m not sure whether you meant to say that Edwards sleeps with other men or is simply a man without cojones. You probably don’t know the origin of the word faggot. Middle Ages. Witch burnings. A faggot was a bundle of sticks. No one seems to know exactly how it came to be associated with gay men. According to the writings of early gay liberationists (which I can safely assume you’ve never read), known homos from the village were tied together at the base of the stake as kindling for the fire. The reason? A good conservative should love this one: The stench from the burning of all that fag flesh would be so repulsive to god that there would be no chance of redemption for the witch’s soul. I’m a faggot. When I was growing up, that word was used against me many times. I wasn’t the most masculine of guys. I never understood this obsession with gender. Just because I had a few extra inches of flesh between my legs, I was supposed to like playing sports and beating up other boys. And I couldn’t wear something pretty like my sister’s blouse. It hurt a lot. Imagine being a ten-year-old grappling with all of the problems of that age group and on top of it being ostracized because you didn’t follow the crowd. I’ve gotten over it. I like the word faggot now. It makes me sound threatening. A sexual outlaw. Why am I telling you this? Because you seem obsessed with queers. Last year, you commented that Bill Clinton exhibited “latent homosexual tendencies” because of his sexual exploits with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Your rationale? He was behaving as if he were in a gay bathhouse. As if there’s something wrong with bathhouses. At least he’s not preaching against gay marriage and sneaking off to see a call boy, like that good old conservative preacher Ted Haggard. But you don’t think queer activists should out closeted gay folks who work against queer rights. Oh, wait, they’re all right-wingers. Then there was your support of the decision by the national Boy Scouts organization to exclude queers. After all, the agency was just protecting itself from child molesting homos, you wrote. Have you ever heard the word “stereotype?” You joined the Vatican in blaming gay priests for the problem the church is having with all those lawsuits by people claiming to have been molested in their youth by their neighborhood clergyman. You even called former Vice President Al Gore a “total fag.” When it comes right down to it, the right you represent is the right to hate.
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