What with all the weather and all, I missed this little gem of a letter in the Beaver County Times that was penned by Paul Kisiday of Freedom (ironic, no?).  Paul decries the sissification of contemporary society as exemplified by complaints over Super Bowl ads.  It seems that all the furor over distraught robots, homoerotic chocolate kisses and K-fed's diss of fasfood workers has pushed Mr. Kisiday over the edge and he's determined to save us from ourselves:

Sorry to break the news, but there are winners and losers in life and people do get their feelings hurt. In the adult world, the better person gets the job (in most cases, excluding affirmative action, which is another way our society is sissified).

As a species, we dominate the planet. It's about survival of the fittest, with the strong on top. We are getting away from that and setting a bad example for our youth.

They need to realize it's not about free handouts, that you need to work hard to achieve your goals and that sometimes you will have your feelings hurt.

So get over it and move on.

Wouldn't it really be awesome if the better person always got the job?  I mean I could live well in a society like that; I'd be able to offset feeling bad about being passed over if I could truly believe that the majority of jobs impacting my life are filled by the best person.  Not the whitest person.  Not the most masculine.  Not the best connected person.  Not the one capable of consuming the most alcohol.  Not the one most likely to end up in the boss's bed.  The best person.

Too bad Mr. Kisiday have never actually read Darwin or, apparently, any of our Founding Father -- a bunch of the "fittest" who set up a system not based on keeping the strong on top. 

Andrew Anthos, a 72 year old Michigan gay man who was viciously beaten with a pipe outside his apartment, has died from his injuries.  He survived for several days, paralyzed and barely able to breathe.  Here's my post on the original attack.

This man was riding home from the public library on a public bus.  You don't get more benign than that.  Then he helps a wheel-chair bound person manage through the snow.  Then he gets hit on the head with a pipe and left for dead by someone who thought he was gay.

That's what you get in a society that wants to keep an entire group of people in second-class status.  When you say we don't deserve to be married, we don't deserve civil rights protections, we don't deserve respect and dignity and freedom ... you send a clear message to the maniac pipe-wielding idiots in society that we are fair game. 

I'm looking forward to the Christian right wingers speaking out to condemn this act of violent hatred.  I'm looking forward to the bus driver and the other riders helping to identify the murderer.  I'm looking forward to a local church starting a fund to help the Anthos family.  The gay community has already stepped up on that one so maybe the local churches can join that effort. 

God rest Andrew Anthos. 

h/t Pam's House Blend

The Post-Gazette has a thoughtful piece on Dreams of Hope, a local drama troupe for LGBTQ teens and their allies.  Their performance theme this year is "Gay Youth in Good Faith."

"One of the biggest themes is the personal issue of sin, of how something that is so natural and doesn't seem like a bad thing, can be seen as horrible and people reject them for it. That is a big issue that most of them are dealing with," said [founder]Ms. [Susan] Haugh.

One need only read back posts on this blog to verify that the intersection of faith and sexual orientation can be treacherous. It can also be uplifting and magnificent as our own local Reverend Janet Edwards has demonstrated. 

The youth themselves have different experiences of faith -- in some cases, acceptance by their faith community while others have been cast out by their very own clergy-parents.  What's cool about these young people is that they channel those individual experiences of faith into a constructive dialogue for the larger LGBTQ community. 

What a great gift for those of who aren't so much youth any longer.  These kids are creatively exploring these intersections of identity that perplex the hell out of most adults, particularly gay people of faith in non-affirming communities. 

Kudos to Dreams of Hope for being a few steps ahead of the rest of us, but inviting us along for the journey. 

One scene re-creates a bus ride two actors took during which another rider condemned them by reciting Bible verses.

"That really hurt me, because I believe in God," said Renee Ballard, 20, a pastor's daughter from the North Side, who was on the bus.

Ms Ballard said that when she came out as a lesbian, her relatives rejected her, asking how she could still call herself a Christian. But there has since been reconciliation, she said.

"I told them I believe in God and God is in my life no matter what I'm doing. God loves me, no matter what. My sister came and said that she would also love me, no matter what," she said.

Check out Dreams of Hope at their website.