Speaking of lost, deluded people ...

(Above: please, no correspondence about stereotypes. It's on NPR, cousin of PBS, a Koch Brothers approved service, here).


Sometimes it takes time for the pond to catch up with old comedy items.

That's comedy with a sinister, vile twist, as under Putin, Russia lapses into a dire Russian Orthodox conservatism that turns black into white, and Tchaikovsky into a straight who never met the right woman:

Russia's culture minister has denied that composer Peter Tchaikovsky was gay, discarding what has long been regarded as historical fact. Vladimir Medinsky claimed that there was no evidence to suggest the 19th-century composer was anything other than a lonely man who failed to find a suitable woman to marry. 
Medinsky was asked about the composer's sexuality after news emerged that a film biopic of Tchaikovsky being made with Russian government funding would ignore the composer's sexuality. The script was apparently revised to remove references that could have made it vulnerable under Russia's controversial new "gay propaganda" laws. (Tchaikovsky was not gay, says Russian culture minister)

It's a nonsense of course, as the story itself points out:

"In the case of Tchaikovsky his homosexuality is so well documented by his own writings and the writings of others that it is simply ludicrous to suggest otherwise," said the author Konstantin Rotikov, who has written a history of gay Saint Petersburg. "It's a historical fact. History doesn't change just because we are trying to push a certain agenda today." 
Russia's parliament this summer passed a law that outlaws "gay propaganda" among minors. Essentially, it means any positive portrayal of homosexuality, or any claim that gay relations and straight relations are equally valid, is illegal. 
Medinsky said the film should be about Tchaikovsky's life as a "genius" and "a great Russian composer" and not focus on "rumours" about his private life. Others say the evidence amounts to far more than rumours. "Suggesting he was not gay is similar to suggesting he wasn't a good composer," said Rotikov. "You could try, I suppose, but it would be quite hard to get people to believe you."

When last we checked, the hapless Russian director involved in the nonsense, Kirill Serebrennikov, was looking for finance outside Russia (Russian director forgoes local funding of Tchaikovsky biopic after gay row, behind the paywall, but can be googled).

Meanwhile, if you don't mind trawling Gawker, you can find Stephen Fry dishing it out to the Ruskis, in Stephen Fry Hands Anti-Gay Russian Lawmaker His Ass.

There's a bonus on that page, because if you scroll down, you can see Richard Dawkins interviewing Wendy Wright, delusional head of Concerned Delusional Women for Delusional America ...

The pond had to give up watching the clip because it was like watching a squirrel in the headlights (if you don't Gawker, you can catch the full catastrophe here on YouTube).

The point of all this?

Well there's a reason the Olympics, Hitler and Putin got along so famously on an ideas level ...

Which inevitably brings the pond to our very own religious ratbags, and why look further than the Pellists for aggrandisement, as you can discover in last week's ramblings for the Sunday Terror, Religion and Politics.

Pell claims Bob Menzies, John Howard and Paul Keating for the Christian cause - Keating wins kudos for being anti-abortion - but strangely doesn't dare to mention Tony Abbott, perhaps because the connection is too raw, naked and obvious.

The homily concludes with a snipe at Gillard:

Australia needs more conviction politicians from right, centre and left, rather than those with no firm beliefs other than following the latest poll or getting re-elected. 
No senior politician will try to foist particular denominational doctrines on the public, but politicians' policies are shaped by their beliefs. I regularly encourage young Christians to enter both sides of politics because...

Let's complete that for him shall we?

... because you can never have enough politicians on both sides of the aisle, to kick gays, gay marriage, abortion, women's rights, a woman's right to control what happens to her body, shelter deviant priests, and do all the rest needed to maintain the bigoted Catholic church agenda ...

Oh sorry, here's how Pell ended it ...

... because the Judaeo-Christian tradition is both the core and foundation of Australian life.

Actually there's a good solid argument that the Greek and Roman pagan and legal traditions are the core and foundation of European and therefore non-Aboriginal Australian life, and all the Christians did is rip them off and take the credit, in much the same way as the Popes ripped off the marble from Roman buildings to give St. Peter's a fancy air ... (the original marble seats at the Colosseum were stolen to make the steps for St. Peter's, and that was just one of many gigantic rip offs, right down to the pagan festivities around Easter and Xmas and the philosophical looting and scavenging conducted by church theologians of Greek and Roman philosophers).

Meanwhile, now that the sting has gone out of the Jensenist conspiracy, the Sydney Anglicans sound a little lost, and so have resorted to tub-thumping exceptionalism and vain, preening boasting.

Vanity, all is vanity ...

Our diocese, the Anglican Diocese of Sydney, is loved or loathed throughout the world as the most consistently evangelical diocese in the Anglican Communion. 
There are, of course, evangelical Anglicans in other dioceses and other parts of the world ... (here)

But none as rootingest tootingest dang blasted gay bashing, women's rights alienating evangelicals as a Sydney evangelical doing his or her best to make life hell for gays and women in Africa.

We are the champeens of the world, as loved or as loathed as Manly or Collingwood. Go mules ...

But steady Sydney evangelicals, let's give credit where credit is due, such as Trinity Christian School in Canberra, scoring a big win, as reported in Gay students say school tried to correct them.

Ah yes, Putin's Russia and the ACT, team tagging together to make life hard for those who see the world a little differently ...

Never mind, it turns out that Sydney is full of lost people, and so while much has been done, much remains to be done by the Sydney Anglicans to alienate even more people ...

1. Our diocese is still full of lost men and women. The word ‘lost’ seems to have fallen out of the vocabulary of some Christian people. It sounds so judgemental. It’s so negative. No one likes being described as one of ‘the lost’ and so to talk like that or even to think like that is bound to stymie us right at the start. However, it is, of course, the language of the Bible.

So naturally the Anglican geese go on squawking in a judgemental, negative way about lost people ...

Talk about clueless, way more clueless than Alicia Silverstone ...

It turns out that the Anglos have realised that they're running Anglo Outposts? and they need more lebensraum out in the sticks so they can attract the hicks, by acquiring new land parcels in new estates...

Which brings us to the most forlorn sight of the week, hapless old people, still true believers, betrayed by their church.

You can read about it, and watch the video story here:

Devastated Uniting Church members have attacked the church hierarchy over plans to sell off dozens of properties to cover debts incurred by the financial collapse of a Melbourne school. 
Congregations across Victoria were told this week that their churches - some of them decades old - would be sold to fill the $32 million hole left by the failure of Acacia College, which was shut down last year, leaving hundreds of students without a school.

It's like a miniature of the Sydney Anglican collapse, where millions were pissed against the wall on delusional stock exchange gambles ...

It was wrenching to see the old folks suffer.

The upside of course is that there's less money to torture gays and torture women about their rights ...

And finally, so we don't leave out the Islamics, we should note the splendid efforts of a Malaysian court to trademark 'Allah', as you can read in Malaysian court rules use of 'Allah' exclusive to Muslims.

It's a profound nonsense, of course, a denial of religious history astonishing in its ignorance, and Waleed Aly tried to spin it by explaining that it was all to do with the country's identity politics, in Allah edict masks power play.

But explaining doesn't excuse.

You could just as easily argue that Putin's gay bashing alliance with Russian Orthodox conservatives is just a bizarre new and ugly twist in that country's identity politics.

It's a lot simpler to say that fundamentalists and religious freaks are fucked in the head, and seek the opportunity to deny reality whenever they encounter it.

Some things can never be said enough.

Tchaikovsky was gay, live with it, Allah isn't for the exclusive use of Muslims, it was in use long before Islamics strutted the earth, creationists are silly, dinosaurs didn't cohabit with Raquel Welch, and speaking of dinosaurs,  it's profoundly sillier to boast about being loved and loathed more than anyone else in the world, as if being a Manly or Collingwood supporter was something to envy and emulate.

You might as well boast about how Mormons and Mitt Romney's clan have infiltrated Pinterest, and turned it into the most hideous source of obesity-inducing recipes known to humanity ...

Phew, just managed to squeeze in the Mormons. Next week, Scientology ...

It's a bit like that old joke:

Christians today might say, I don't believe in Zeus, that was a silly superstition. Yet for many people that was a real god. So it turns out there are 10,000 gods and yet only one right one. That means we're all atheists on 9,999 gods. The only difference between me and the believers is I'm an atheist on one more god. (and more on that joke here)

Meanwhile, if the Sydney Anglicans want a real insight, here it is.

Fundamentalists of all persuasions, especially Republican, and Sydney Anglican, are the truly lost people of the modern world ...

Now would you like a marshmallow cookie sandwich to go with that?