Dumb All Over

And even a little ugly on the side.

Yesterday Hampshire Gazette/Amherst Bulletin writer Mary Carey jogged by me in downtown Amherst, but paused long enough to snap a pic. 

Today was graduation day at Amherst College. 

In the parking lot there were occasional reminders of the role Amherst College has always played as a prime school of choice for the children of America's power-elites.

Downtown businesses were catering to their customers one last time before they disappear for the summer. 

They needn't worry, a new crop of suckers, um, I mean customers will be arriving in the fall. Until then, it is time for us townsfolk to kick back and enjoy the sunshine!

I must admit I would enjoy my days more if I didn't get so much hate mail. I don't mean the perfectly reasonable people who disagree with me or think my blog sucks or whatever, but the people who think they need to write to me about my sexual orientation to tell me that Jesus hates me and that I will burn in hell.

I once had neighbors who were religious fundamentalists, and they were so religiously strict with their kids that I had to believe that the children would one day rebel. Sure enough the eldest daughter, inspite of (or perhaps because of) having had the so-called virtues of chastity drilled into her head by her parents, suddenly ran away from home. She left a note saying that despite being only 16. she was leaving home for good and intended to work as a prostitute. When the police picked her up three days later for loitering at the Peter Pan bus station in Springfield, she refused to reveal whether she had achieved her career goals, but it was hard to assume she had not.

Another example is a friend of mine who once coaxed a born again Christian out of the closet and taught him the gay way. By the time he was done his young lover was working as a dancer at a strip club in Hartford. My friend told me he got a special thrill out of transforming a religious fundamentalist into a dancing cock-crazed slut.

I don't approve of what my neighbor's daughter did in becoming a prostitute or my friend turning his religious lover into a go-go boy. Yet I understand why they did it. Don't these people who are always pushing religion realize that their efforts have the opposite effect of what they desire? Instead of drawing people to religion, their harsh condemnations make you want to rebel against religion completely. And to condemn people on sexual grounds, where the sex is consensual and hurts no one, is just plain stupid.

Any two people in love are morally superior to any third person pointing at them with hatred.