Badpuppy Gay Today

Monday, 7 April 1997

The Charlotte Observer's editorial, April 3, says it all. Its editors have been privy to a harsh, divisive and noisy citywide debate about whether the Mecklenburg county commissioners would continue to aid local arts organizations through a single grant to the Arts and Science Council. "But the agenda masked the true issue," according to the Observer, namely, "how will this community treat homosexuals?"

On April 4, an Observer columnist, Doug Robarchek, asked "What really makes us laugh is hearing fundamentalist Christians say that homosexuals want to convert us to their lifestyle. Is this a great argument, or what? Hey, we've had a lot of Christians come to our door with literature, but not one homosexual." Robarchek quoted the recently-deceased and beloved San Francisco columnist, Herb Caen, "The trouble with born-again Christians is that they are an even bigger pain the second time around."

What the Observer's editors noticed most, it seems, was an important divide between those who serve a God of love and those who serve a God of judgment. The divide was best illustrated by the behaviors of two different members of the clergy, one who stated that funding arts meant accepting the "homosexual agenda" which, in turn, means eradication of our "Judeo-Christian framework of ethical absolutes."

"The clergyman who spoke these words is, from any sane standpoint, a moron, and ought to remain nameless in your paper," a North Carolina resident told GayToday, "This namelessness could help him readjust just in case later-- he sees clearly-- that his stupid judgment's only a been a byproduct of his own lowdown sinner's nature, and he just might decide, thereafter, to change his mind."

The Charlotte Observer, however, did name the minister-in-question, telling how he'd objected to arts funding because "Angels in America" had received some funding help from the now accused and beleaguered Arts and Science Council.

Arts funding in the South, however, if left to the whims of backwoods parsons and deacons, might find itself overturned in more than a few "Dixie" locales. Free expression which truly means free expression is not acceptable to people who fear their own inner, semi-conscious urges. H.L. Mencken celebrated the artistic poverty of the South, in the title of his famous essay, "The Sahara of the Bozart"

He wrote: "And yet, for all its size and all its wealth, and all the 'progress' it babbles of, it is almost as sterile, artistically, intellectually, culturally, as the Sahara Desert.....If the whole of the Confederacy were to be engulfed by a tidal wave tomorrow, the effect upon the civilized minority of men would be but little greater than that of a flood on the Yang-tse kiang. It would be impossible in all history to match such a complete a drying up of a civilization....I say a civilization because that is what, in the old days, the south had, despite the Baptist and Methodist barbarism that reigns down there now. More, it was a civilization of manifold excellences."

The unnamed cleric who was derided in the Observer's editorial, was neither a Baptist nor a Methodist, however. He was a Presbyterian, not unlike old-line whippers in Presbyterianism that embraced slavery, causing a Presbyterian schism in1861.

The Observer's editorial spoke of another Christian, and in an appreciative way. An enlightened Roman Catholic vicar, this man, Gene McCreesh, has worked for years with the homeless and now ministers to many homosexuals. His mission, say the Observer's editors, is "to ensure that homosexuals who may be abused by their lives in hostile surroundings will find love and acceptance in their church." To Gene McCreech the anti-arts funding proposal has been "an effort to dehumanize homosexuals."

Accounts of the 700-packed commission meeting, both from gays and from the Charlotte Observer, were tales describing vicious scenes, shouting, rancor, pathos and anger, as well as bigotry on a self-righteous march to its bitter, if temporary, victory. After midnight the Mecklenburg county board voted 5-4 to erase funding for the Arts and Science Council. The feisty Observer called this decision "a retreat into bigotry and darkness." The Observer, however, says that this is only the first round in a battle that has only begun. Defining the perimeters of this battle, the newspaper's April 3 editorial stated that the commission meeting had been but a single barricade and only "the most recent skirmish in a struggle between religious authority and individual freedom that has ensued since the Reformation."