Yi-Fu Tuan - Dear Colleague

April 5, 2005

Dear Colleague,

I picked up The New York Times (March 31, 2005) and saw on the front page what looked like a picture of a biblical pageant. Closer look showed it to be a picture of the religious leaders of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. These dignitaries, normally at odds with one another, met in Jerusalem in solidarity against a great evil that is threatening the Holy City. And what is that? The plague? Starvation in Dafur? Global warming? No. The threat is a proposed festival of gays to be held in Jerusalem in August. Such an event, the hierarchs said, "would desecrate the city... it hurts all of the religions. We are all against it." A Sufi sheik added, "We can't permit anybody to come and make the Holy City dirty." Though no American is on the panel, an evangelical pastor of San Diego was the power behind the scenes, the organizer of the event. As for John Paul II, he was too sick to make a pronouncement, but there can be no doubt as to what he would have said. When a similar gay pride festival was held in Rome five years ago, the two major sources of opposition were the Vatican and the neo-fascists. The neo-fascists threatened a counter-demonstration, but relented and allowed the march to go forth peacefully. The Pope showed less Christian charity. He expressed his "bitterness" that a gay festival had been allowed to go forth, calling it "an offense to the Christian values of the city." The Pope is forever saying that every human being is made in the image of God. Has he forgotten that? Or are some people so totally beyond the pale that their very presence in the city is an "offense to Christian values," a desecration, a pollution?

The picture printed in The Times may turn out to be a PR mistake for the hierarchs. They looked far too well-groomed in their sacerdotal robes; some sported neatly trimmed beards, others showed clean-shaven jowls that, in my imagination, glistened with after-shave lotion. Would the Jewish rabbi Jesus feel comfortable in their midst? Would the hierarchs, on their part, welcome someone who consorted with lowly fishermen, tax-gatherers, women of ill-repute, and giggling children? On that day in Rome five years ago, would Jesus have stood by the Pope's side and condemned a people who happened to have a special tenderness for members of their own sex, and who, by the way, are the only human group remaining in the world today that is still officially OK to exclude or condemn?

What does it take to enter the Kingdom of God? Well, for a Christian, the answer must be obedience to the two greatest commandments, enunciated by Christ (Matthew 22:34-40). The first is, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind." To me, this means, first of all, loving God in his creation, everything from the DNA to the Black Hole, and beyond that loving him in all his mystery and otherness. I bet some scientists are better at obeying this commandment than are members of the Jerusalem panel. The second commandment is, "Love your neighbor as yourself." (Of course, self-righteous Christians claim to love their gay neighbors, provided they don't insist that they too--yes, even their sexuality--are made in God's image). How sublime and timeless these two great commandments are, in comparison with which the anathemas of the hierarchs are as archaic as their camphor-scented robes.

Best wishes,

Yi-Fu