And Another Thing: Holy World War III

By Carole Taylor


Now this is truly not a new concept, but in my last column I wrote about the problems caused throughout the centuries by nasty little things called holy wars. I was thinking at the time just that the holy wars in the Middle East and in the Near East are so dangerous that they may put an end to war, and rights, altogether by putting an end to people altogether.

But one of my readers reminded me of something I’ve written about briefly before: There is a holy war going on right here in this country and has been for decades.

Gays and lesbians are the victims of domestic terrorism in nearly every city and town in this country. We’re fighting as involuntary soldiers in the ‘holy’ war that right wing religious types wage against us every day and twice on Sunday--Christians and Jews and Moslems alike. Their hate speech is what fires the torches of the cross-burning, white/straight supremacists; it’s the adrenaline pumping through your average, red-blooded American gay basher.

God told them to do it.

Well, not exactly. Not directly. They heard it from some politician, who heard it from some preacher, who heard it from some other preacher, who heard it from some bishop, who read it in some book whose author may or may not have been God. That trail of hearsay wouldn’t even stand up as evidence in a circuit court in Alabama.

When anyone invokes the name of God, or Godde, or Jesus, or Allah, or Vishnu, or whoever else may require that His or Her pronouns be capitalized, that politician or minister has you by the short hairs. If a politician or anyone else out to grab power says that God told him to do or say yada yada, that it’s in the Bible or the Koran, you can forget about it’s being in the Constitution. Reason and law are both beyond superfluous if God has been called to have a seat in Congress. There will be no discussion here, because that’s not the side of the brain that will be engaged. The left side reasons and discusses, the right side feels and lights fires.

It’s like playing the national anthem or “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” in the background behind Private Ryan. You don’t see the blood or feel the pain. You only think about the patriotic phlegm that music is intended to pour down your throat. It’s hard to swallow, but you do it. That’s what that lump is. Music touches the right side of your brain. So does religion.

Because religion is about nothing if not about nothing. Nothing you can see or count, that is. If you can’t take it on faith, you can’t take it.

So when the jackboots come for gays and lesbians, they have to quote scripture as their cadence. Theirs has to be a holy war, because they don’t want anyone really thinking about what they’re saying. They don’t want anyone realizing that he might know someone gay, like someone gay, even love someone gay, might even BE someone gay.

And when George W. talks about fighting terrorism, let’s ask him if he means ALL terrorism. You and I live with the possibility of it every day, and this violence is not delivered by someone on an FBI watch list. The soldiers in this holy war may be our own parents or best friend.


Carole Taylor holds a masters degree and most of a doctorate, which she used as a university administrator for much too long by all accounts. She has been a commercial artist, a journalist, a grants writer, a house cleaner and a Renaissance woman. She also wrote a fantastic must-read novel, called
"A Third Story". You can email her here.