Our friend Carol said we just had to read David Sedaris in the September 9, 2024, New Yorker – “The Hem of His Garment about his audience with the Pope. It was hilarious, she said, and so it was.
It’s an irreverent and self-deprecating account of the Pope’s invitation to comedians to visit the Vatican. And – because they are comedians – they share Catholic jokes –
A cop stops a car two priests are riding in. “I’m looking for a couple of child molesters,” he tells them.
The priests look at each other. “We’ll do it!” they say.
– and God jokes and highlights the absurdities of it all including his own in buying a cassock purchased from the Pope’s own tailor. He notes that the thirty-three buttons symbolize the years of Jesus’s life but leave you “wishing he’d been crucified at twelve.”
The Pope and Homosexuals
Apparently the Pope has been making friendly overtures to homosexuals:
Pope Francis can’t preside over same-sex marriages, but he created a firestorm within his Church by blessing gay people about to be married. “If they accept the Lord and have good will, who am I to judge them?” he asked, in 2013.
This is obviously not full acceptance but Sedaris thinks of it this way:
My feeling is that if you want a church that is a hundred per cent gay-friendly, go join one—there are plenty to be had—or start your own. “Yes, but I want Our Lady of Sorrows to celebrate Pride Month,” I can hear someone whining.
It’s like going to Burger King and demanding a Big Mac. If you want a Big Mac, go across the street to McDonald’s. Jesus.
Gay not Queer
Sedaris also comments:
I wasn’t bothered by the Pope’s use of “faggotry” because I’m not queer; I’m gay. The difference is that queer people are offended by just about everything. Gay people just wonder what they’ll wear to the Vatican at the crack of dawn, and what the proper etiquette is.
Gay, not queer. And yes there is a difference. Decades ago – when “queer” was a slur hurled most often at gay men and too frequently accompanied by violence – we marched in the streets and sometimes chanted:
We’re here, we’re queer
Get used to it.
Meaning homosexuals are a part of the world and stop with the discrimination.
These days “queer” – the noun – appears to mean people who think they are special in some way and who adhere to an ideology that encompasses every fetish, kink, and perversion imaginable. Seems queer to me.
To be “queer” is to make a statement that you wish to be seen as different from what you perceive as society’s imposition of normality and conformity. It seems to involve railing against the immutable and binary nature of human sex while wearing mismatched outfits and sporting loud hair dye. (Reality: We are all male or female. No one chooses their sex and no one can change it. there are three sexual orientations. The variety of human personality is infinite.)
No wonder that there is a growing movement to restore the meaning of #LGB and keep a distance from the antics of the rest of the alphabet. It makes sense as one group is about sexual orientation and the other a collection of chosen identities driven by the political ideology of gender theory.
On Xtwitter, @Serena_Partrick – who uses the name of the homophobic, misogynist musician Billy Bragg as her online handle – posted this:
Queer Theory, the reason so many people keep talking about “queering” everything, is a Trojan Horse for p*edophilia.
Never underestimate what highly motivated s*xual deviants can achieve.
Queer Theory, the reason so many people keep talking about “queering” everything, is a Trojan Horse for p*edophilia.
Never underestimate what highly motivated s*xual deviants can achieve.
‘Professor Derrick Jensen plays Queer Theory Jeopardy’ pic.twitter.com/le55A1k9nE
— Billy Bragg (@Serena_Partrick) September 18, 2024
All this is a long way from what i set out to write about – three classic mysteries all with a school or college setting and in all of which the word “queer” appears mostly in line with this definition from my copy of the wonderfully old-timey 1933 Westminster English Dictionary.
Murder in the Basement, Anthony Berkeley 1932
Death on the Cherwell, Mavis Doriel Hay 1935
The Horizontal Man, Helen Eustis, 1946
Murder, mischief, malice, and mayhem in schools. Such a rich topic.
Sedaris is very funny indeed – thanks for the laughes (and the clarification of queer and gay!)
Thanks Sue. It’s an important distinction. And yes – Sedaris is very funny indeed.
Oh goodness Josie I needed that. I love David Sedaris. The size of the Queen’s feet, the buttons, all of it!
Thanks Shelley. He really is very funny and this is among his best.
Not wishing to queer your patch i am up in early hours feeling a little queer and cetainly its a queer feeling i get these days..as yet undiagnosed. But i am not queer i am just me undefined and undefinable. How queer is that these days???
Why are you querying me? What do I know? I queered my pitch too long ago.
When I was a child my mother sometimes used to say she “felt a bit queer” but it meant something different in those long ago days!
This made me chuckle. It’s time people learned to relax!
Yes, it was a very funny article! And much needed.
What lurks in the TQ+ end of that force-teamed alphabet soup is problematic, to say the least. All too many have fallen for the long con of fetishists who have attached themselves, like limpets, to LGB. Sedaris has it right: “The difference is that queer people are offended by just about everything. Gay people just wonder what they’ll wear to the Vatican at the crack of dawn, and what the proper etiquette is.”