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Focus on the Anus is back at it again, this time on its Citizenlink blog Drive Thru. Not content to just do a “Jesus is the reason for the season” kind of obsession, author “Candi” ludicrously accuses Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) of “revealing its dark side” and sexualizing Old Saint Nick.
At issue this time is a GLSEN fundraiser featuring a theatrical play called Santa Claus is Coming Out!
GLSEN’s fundraiser invitation says the play depicts “Santa in his heartfelt struggle to reconcile his romantic relationship with Italian toy maker Giovanni Geppetto.” Pictures on a Web site promoting the production depict Santa in not-so-subtle sexually suggestive situations. The play also mocks those who support traditional values.
It’s sad that GLSEN, which claims that it wants to protect kids, has chosen to use a fundraising tool that perverts the innocence of Christmas and sexualizes the longtime, child-revered icon of Santa Claus.
…Clearly homosexual activists like [the play's writer and performer, Jeffrey] Solomon have no qualms about using shock tactics to expose children to homosexuality. And it’s sad that GLSEN promotes these tactics.
Yawn. The fundies are breathtaking — they just throw caution to the wind and toss batsh*ttery so extreme out there, that only pushes the GOP further into the margins. Keep it coming, folks.
The NY benefit for GLSEN is on December 8th @ 6:00 p.m. Get your tickets today.
23 Comments
Uhhhh….
You mean the Glenn Beck christmas special has already aired? Damn, I missed it! But I’m glad you were able to get a screen snap of him as Santa. What did Kathie Lee Gifford sing?
Santa?I can understand (not agree with, but understand) getting upset about satirical rewrites on the Nativity story or the life of Jesus.
But Santa? Explain the tie in to good Christian values there?
Sure the Santa (wink, wink) brings toys story is a fun thing to play pretend about with your kids, but any of them over about, what 6 or 7, better know the real score, and any parent trying seriously to maintain it is breaking one of the Ten Commandments in a particularly cruel way by lying to their own children.
I have to assume that this fundraising evening is not open to young children. What adults do or don’t do around kids, even in the name of raising money for helping kids is immaterial to the protection of their precious little psyches.
“Longtime child-revered icon?” He watches their every move, waking and sleeping. Without ever actually contacting them, he judges and documents their behavior, and as part of a huge international system, annually breaks into their homes in the middle of the night to leave tempting toys as gifts. He’s a stalker, not an icon.
Or he’s Homeland Security.
Sounds a lot like their idea of GawdTo hell with fundies and their ideas of God and Santa Clause. For anyone who wants to support GLSEN, they’re in the running for Chase Community Giving on Facebook.
NOM has, thanks be, been declared ineligible for funds because they’re both discriminatory and under investigation in Maine. GLSEN, on the other hand, is a very worthy charity.
Facebookies, vote for GLSEN!
He Switched!from a pipe to a joint. MUCH BETTER!
And please! ”Christians” sexualize everything. If they’re not finding penises amongst the castles in The Little Mermaid, they’re hearing Aladdin whispering “all good kids take off your clothes”. It’s one thing to hear or see something sexual, but these guys deliberately try to make things sexual out of nothing.
Remind me…Did they protest Billy Bob Thornton when he played the lead in Bad Santa. I don’t recall…
Family GuyOr the episode of Family Guy in which Santa walks in on a couple going at it in the bed, and then he exposes his chest as if offering to join the couple before being told to “go away!”. LOL!
That’s what happens when you repress…Repression leads to obsession… Obsession leads to hate… hate leads to wrongheaded legislation. [/Yoda]
hee heePam, I love you for so many reasons, not the least of which is your use of words like “batshittery”. This is my new favorite word and I vow to use it daily!
The Pharmaceutical Companies Did It FirstPlease send them after the makers of that horrible ED commercial with the scary Santa and the women waiting to sit on his lap.
Interesting how it’s “sexualizing” to present a romance with Geppetto…But not with Mrs. Clause.
bingo!
Actually, all those fairy tales indoctrinate kids . . . . . . about straight sex and sexuality.
Let’s put it in persepective – the penguin book (“And Tango Makes Three”), King & King, Heather has Two Mommies, etc. DON’t teach kids about sex, they teach them about relationships that are real and really out there.
Take the “sex” out of elementary school, and they have to get rid of Aladdin, The Little Mermaid, Conderella, Snow White, etc., etc.
The Christianists want children to be IGNORANT, not INNOCENT. They want little gay boys to be confused into thinking they must “really” be girls because they have no role model other than a straight one, and if they feel that they want to marry a handsome prince when they grow up (perfectly natural for a gay 6 year old who doesn’t know anything about sexual activity, but does know something about relationships, at least the heterosexual ones), they might think it means they must really be girls. If they knew about gay people, they’d have enough information to know that maybe they can marry a boy when they grow up even if they are a boy.
If something like 4 out of 5 transkids aren’t really trans and turn out to be gay, it must be because they are not exposed to information about relationships other than straight ones when they are little.
The Christianists want our kids to be misinformed and ignorant. They want to teach straight sex to kids – for them, it really is all about sex – and they also want to make sure that when they do start having sex, they start making babies (which is why they don’t want kids to know about birth control, either), and maybe have shotgun weddings.
They don’t realize it really is not about sex as an activity. It is about human relationships like aunt, uncle, brother, sister, cousin, dad, mom, grandma and grandpa – not about actions and positions and who does what to whom (beyond kissing and holding hands, anyway).
And when they’re old enough to understand and have a need to know about sex as an activity – they do need to have all the tools they need to make intelligent, responsible decisions. It’s ignorant and actually immoral to “cover their eyes” and teach “abstinence only” – but they’re the ones who criticize us?
It’s becauseFundies tell their little kids Mr. and Mrs. Claus sleep in separate beds…
Dena
YEAH!If not for the fact that it works well in marginalizing us it we would be HYSTERICAL! Yuk, yuk!
Playwright RESPONDS to FOCUS ON FAMILY ANTI-GAY SANTA RANT!This is playwright Jeffrey Solomon, writer and performer of “Santa Claus is Coming Out” the play that was attacked by Focus on the Family Action Education Analyst Candi Cushman on her blog
December 3rd:
http://citizenlinkblog.com/dri…
I must strongly take issue with some misinformation, distortions, half truths and outright lies being disseminated in Ms. Cushman’s blog about my play.
I will address the charges and accusations in the order in which they appeared.
“Pictures on a Web site promoting the production depict Santa in not-so-subtle sexually suggestive situations.”
This is just not true. We have not marketed this play with sex. The play is not about sex. The play simply asks
a hypothetical question. “How would the world react, if Mrs. Claus were revealed to be a beard, and that Santa Claus was actually a gay man?”
The image i believe Ms. Cushman is referring to (see santaclausiscomingout.com) is of me, a grown man, sitting on Santa’s lap in a way that would suggest I am a boyfriend or spouse. We are reading a newspaper heralding the news of Santa Claus being outed to the world.
It is NOT a sexual image, anymore than Mrs. Claus and Santa Claus holding hands is a sexual image, or the Little Mermaid kissing her beloved Prince Eric is sexual.
I reject that classification categorically.
The very mention or the image of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people is not automatically sexual, unless you are viewing them with sex-tinted glasses.
“The play also mocks those who support traditional values.”
WRONG. There are many heterosexual characters in the play who live by traditional values, including: 1. Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, a solid family man/deer, all grown up and married to Clarise with
a happy nuclear family of fawns. 2. Pete, the Elf Foreman, Santa’s right hand man and solid family man/elf.
3. Anne and Frank Gray, the loving parents of a seven year old boy from Wisconsin, whose gender atypical gift request to Santa Claus has them worried their son may be a little “non-traditional.”
All of these characters are treated with dignity and love in the play.
“….perverts the innocence of Christmas and sexualizes the longtime, child-revered icon of Santa Claus.”
Santa Claus does not just belong to Christians, or even to Christmas. He is a global icon. I am a reformed Jew but my parents permitted me the Santa Claus myth as a child because i was so thrilled by his magic. My Dad even hired a SantaClaus to come visit me one holiday season bearing Hanukkah gifts and i was dazzled with wonder, until i looked out my bedroom window and saw him drive away in his V.W. bug. Let me assure you
that the innocence and magic of Santa Claus remains very much intact in this play, and is not perverted in any way. I love Santa Claus!
Finally, let me address Ms. Cushman’s central charge:
“Clearly homosexual activists like Solomon have no qualms about using shock tactics to expose children to homosexuality.”
The Play IS NOT INTENDED FOR CHILDREN. However, I must take issue with the use of the word
“expose” as if encountering gay people is the same thing as coming into contact with the N1H1 virus.
The tactics Ms. Cushman refers to here have to do with some marketing ploys i used to sell tickets to adults to the play in Provincetown, Massachusetts one summer. She quotes from an interview I did here with theatrescene.net:
“I was dressed as Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer, and I had a sign saying ‘Rudolph Supports Sexual Diversity.’ And the owner of the pharmacy on Commercial Street came out [shouting]. ‘I’ve got kids inside. Get out of here. They’re asking questions!”
I should explain, that in the play, Rudolph is the first person…er, creature Santa comes out to, by dint of his sensitivity to difference, and what i was trying to point out in that interview, maybe not so articulately, was the level of fear and anger from this woman and others that summer that was touched off by having to explain a gay santa claus to children, and how ironic it was that their reactions were similar to the world’s hysteria following Santa’s coming out in my play.
Incidentally, supporting sexual diversity in the animal kingdom is not such a big deal. Reindeer, and other creatures, don’t have a big hang up about it. Check the science. Sometimes male penguins love other male penguins and try to raise children together (though usually they are rocks). And sometimes lady seagulls mate for life. And sometimes Rams hump each other.
But on a much more serious note, My intention as a playwright was never to destroy Christmas for children like the gay Grinch, or to “expose children to homosexuality,” rather it was to ask adults, “Why is it still taboo to be open and honest with young children, about the existence of gay people?”
If you don’t believe that is true, notice the dearth of gay characters on children’s television.The child who may grow up to be gay, has no reflection of himself. There is no happily ever after in sight during his or her formative years. I was one of those children, and i can tell you that the fact that subject was unmentionable and invisible when i was a child caused me a lot of unnecessary pain and shame.
I have created in the play, the Santa Claus I needed. The one I wish I had known. There is nothing sexual about that.
You watch too much Fox
Ah, see…I used to think that kids didn’t really ask about that stuff, so there was no need to really explain it.
Luckily, the fundies have set me straight on that point: Apparently, any time children see adults in a close relationship, their minds immediately leap to the most lurid details of sexual congress. Those images are then only psychologically scarring if the relationship they are so vividly imagining is homosexual.
those damn dirty queers sexualizing Santa http://image.lightinthebox.com…
no homo
http://media.photobucket.com/i…
no homo
http://www.gringo-times.com/ar…
no homo
http://www.geek.com/wp-content…
no homo
Lest we forget
O_o
Dena
I thought of that CHUBBY SANTA, with a SACK FULL of Pride
Good thing FOTF hasn’t seen Jesus and the Apostles sexualizedin Corpus Christi
or In Paul Monette’s AFTERLIFE the main character does a performance piece MISS JESUS, (that is funny as hell!)
UnfortunatelyThis girl has one full of sadness.
O_o
Dena