Subscribe to Breaking News
Loading ...Drag Mary angers Dutch Christians
12.22.2008 10:46am EST
(Amsterdam, Netherlands) Amsterdam hosted a Christmas celebration for its gay community on Sunday featuring a nativity tableau with a male Mary in drag that church organizations denounced as an affront to traditional values.
Organizers said the event was meant to raise Amsterdam’s profile as a gay capital at a time when homosexuals feel threatened.Christians for Truth, an independent religious group, had asked the city council to cancel the “Pink Christmas,” event, saying it made a mockery of Christian tenets. The city did not comment.
A male entertainer known as Wendy Mills posed as Mary in a blonde wig and high-heeled black boots and holding a plastic doll. Another man played Joseph in black leather trunks and a silver shawl.
The five-person manger scene was staged off the street, in the courtyard of a nightclub. Visitors were invited to be photographed with the group. The first was 3-month-old Lily Pink Albers, Mills’ niece.
“By portraying Joseph and Mary as homosexuals, a twisted human fantasy is being added to the history of the Bible,” Christians for Truth said in a statement ahead of the event.
A few dozen visitors wandered through the 100-yard (meter) long Pink Market past stalls selling leather goods and Christmas cards with gay themes on a downtown street known for its gay nightlife and popular restaurants.
Frank van Dalen, chairman of Pro Gay, which organized the event, said gays were not satisfied with being tolerated, but wanted to be “socially accepted as an indivisible part of society.”
He said the Amsterdam city council sponsored the euro15,000 ($21,000) event, which he hoped would become a regular event, like the annual floating summertime gay pride parade through the city’s canals that attracts tens of thousands of visitors.
“Our objective is not to be offensive. This is about visibility,” he said.
Van Dalen pointed to a report last month that said homophobia was an ingrained problem in Amsterdam, despite the city’s freewheeling reputation.
The study by the University of Amsterdam reported 67 violent attacks against gays in 2007, which police said was about average.
Van Dalen said gays were feeling increasingly uncomfortable in public in recent years, and that they perceived Dutch society as more assertive about “classical values.”
Do I detect a hint of the Pots and kettles syndrome coming from these Christians? Not a week ago their leader attacked gays just out of the blue and denied it, the minute we do anything they are quick to judge and condemn us all to hell?? And here’s me thinking Christians were the ones preaching forgiveness Hypocritical to the point of nausea
Trace, there are those who’d say it’s similarly apocalyptic to depict Mary as a drag queen. The Danish cartoons were just that–cartoons. When religious imagery is sacrosanct, it leads to the death of the spirit. Another example: remember all the people picketing theaters when “Last Temptation of Christ” came out, 20 years ago? I finally saw it years later–and if there was ever a movie that could induce me to cultivate a spiritual interest in Christianity, that was it. But it was “blasphemous” –not if you paid attention to the movie. Nobody is going to evaporate or be Raptured by a humorous or even rude depiction of a religious image. Back on the Mohammed cartoons, have you ever noticed that Islam is the culture that preserved ancient knowledge and later transferred it to lice-ridden European monks, but today it’s Islam in a wretched state? It’s not because Islam is wretched, because that’s not true; it’s because a few people who are fearful and controlling have got hold of Islam, and so far it’s had nothing like the Reformation, nothing like the full scope of freely-held views that you find in other religions. People who are aggressively “Christian”-identified are no different, and they scare me more than any mullah or ayatollah ever will.
>“By portraying Joseph and Mary as homosexuals, a twisted human fantasy is being added to the history of the Bible”….
Yeah, the Bible–with its contradictory accounts, accounts that go against science, support of brutal punishment, support of slavery, and support of oppressing women–is not a twisted human fantasy itself? What’s wrong with replacing one fantasy with another? What’s wrong with creatively working off of an original story, changing parts of it, to create a new story?
(These are rhetorical questions.
)
Christians for Truth, if they are for truth, should first of all acknowledge the multitude of “sinners” and “heretics” that the traditional churches have killed over the centuries, and all the lies they have told the people.
drewski, I believe that the issue with the Mohamed cartoons was the bombings, beatings and murders associated with the Muslim “outrage.”
Now wait…I seem to recall that when a Danish paper had pix of Muhammed, there were many Westerners who said it was so much nonsense. Here come people in a Western country and they wanna be offended by a depiction of Mary (and Joseph). If Muslims are expected to suck it up, why aren’t the good christians?
Who is going to go into business making or selling crosses of which the 4 pieces actually look like dildos.
Given the monstrosity the Catholic church has been throughout history – they would do hitler proud, and he was born a catholic by the way, it would be a proper symbol. And a proper symbol for the right wing christians who forgot about the so called reformation, and took the old baggage with them.
The proper name of Christmas should be
Xmas, with the emphasis on the X.
Of course it’s an affront to “traditional Christian values”. Absolutely no question of it. That was kind of the point, wasn’t it? The objective may not have been to cause offense, but only an idiot would not consider the possibility that devout Christians would be offended.
Then again, those same Christians are offended by our very existence, so I don’t give a flying fuck.
The Christmas Fairy-tale is a Myth.
Christians are offended? And why was it that I should care?
‘the history of the Bible’
just how much of this original pulp fiction can be historically verified?
‘male Mary in drag that church organizations denounced as an affront to traditional values.’
was it not tradition for males to play the female roles in ancient Greece?
the Christians should be please that anyone would help to perpetuate the myth of christmas at all.
I think the brand of “traditional values” that groups like Christians For Truth claim to protect are, an affront to common sense and true equality.
I think the Virgin Mary should of worn simple 3 in. black heels…wait, Mary was a blonde? Hope the wig had a pretty hairstyle, even though you normally don’t ever see her hair.
The whole idea shouldn’t offend anyone but PETA, but nobody cares about them. I would of love to see the nativity scene. Maybe it should include the Star of David since Mary, Joseph, and Jesus weren’t even Christians.
The fact is, there is no way of knowing if Jospeh and/or Mary were homosexual or heterosexual. It wouldn’t be the first “marriage of convenince” history. “Christians” for truth is something of a contradiction in terms, isn’t it?