Bohemian Rhapsody (a movie review post)

To be honest, this is going to be less a review and more a reflection. Just so you know.

I was never into Queen when I was growing up. It wasn't my kind of music. I grew up in a house where almost all the music that was played when I was a kid in the 70s was 60s folk music. Until I was about 15, my musical world mostly consisted of Simon and Garfunkel; Peter, Paul, and Mary; and Bob Dylan. With a little bit of Kenny Rogers, Glen Campbell, and "Believe It or Not" thrown in. It didn't help that the church we went to held to a view that rock music was of the Devil. I don't know that that was ever explicitly said (at least not until I was a teenager and started to listen to a bit of rock), but the attitude was pervasive enough that I didn't have trouble picking up on it.

That said, songs like "We Will Rock You" and "We Are the Champions" made me uncomfortable at best. However, it was "Another One Bites the Dust" that was the first of their songs that really entered my world. One of my best friends (who was a two grades ahead of me and someone I really looked up to) was really into Queen and that song in particular. A song that was the target of the religious Right as containing a secret backmasked messaged about the fun of marijuana. My friend had the album on vinyl, so we spent a not inconsiderable amount of time spinning the record backwards trying to hear it. Yeah, we never did.

Of course, that was only the precursor to the debate over Mercury's sexuality. One of many of similar debates including Elton John, George Michael, and, well, never mind... There was no debate over Boy George; everyone had already made up their minds, whether it was true or not.

Maybe if I had been more invested in the music of any of these people, then I would have cared more about the "discussions," but I didn't need to defend my listening choices against the attempted vilification of these people and their music by the "church." Not that I thought it should matter. Whether I liked the music or not had nothing to do with whom the singer (or members of the band or whatever) was fucking, and, if I liked it, I didn't much care what other people had to say about it, as was entirely apparent when I did discover rock music at 15. I didn't understand why it should matter to anyone.

But it did. To the point where my friend, the one who loved Queen, got into an actual fist fight over whether Freddy Mercury was or was not gay. It was very (very!) important to him that Mercury not be gay. The other boy was just taunting him over it. Imagine his surprise...

Needless to say, I have a much greater appreciation of Queen at this point in my life. Both for the band and for their music, even if "We Will Rock You" and "We Are the Champions" will never be among my favorite songs. I have an even greater appreciation for Freddy Mercury and who he was as a person. He may have been a musical genius, at least when he was in collaboration with his band mates, and he died too young. He was younger than I am now, which is difficult for me to grasp for some reason.

The movie was great. I won't go back to the theater to see it again (because there are too many movies we need to see coming out right now), but I am going to see this one again. Rami Malek was incredible. I'm not familiar enough with him to know how incredible, but he was outstanding. All of the actors playing the band members were great. By my standard of knowing a good movie by whether it makes my wife cry, this movie was great. I think she spent a solid 15-20 minutes in tears toward the end of the film.

I think this is one of those "must see" movies. If you like Queen, it certainly is. I think if you don't like Queen, it probably should be, too. There are too many struggles highlighted in the movie that we are still dealing with today for people not to see it. Of course, the people who probably ought to see it most, won't; because that's how that kind of thing goes. It doesn't mean they shouldn't see it, though, just that they are too closed-minded and uncaring to understand.

Oh, and I just have to say, the bit with Mike Myers over the song "Bohemian Rhapsody" was epic.

Here's my closing thought, one I had during the movie:

What if I'm not pretending to be someone I'm not but pretending to be someone I'm not yet.

It's Not About "The Gays": A Look at Abuse in the Catholic Church

First, I'm writing this post in August while the Catholic church is, once again, dominating the news with yet another sex scandal. Which is part of the problem, that we look at these as individual scandals when they are, in fact, not individual but part of a pathology within the Catholic church.

Second, I'm assuming that the current scandal will have dropped out of the news by the time this posts. I'm also assuming that nothing will have changed in the church, again, so this post is still highly relevant.

Third, it's not the Catholic church that is the root of this problem, but we'll get to that in the post.

* * *

In the United States, we tend to have this perception that homosexuality and pedophilia are linked. Like one begets the other. I'm just going to say that the root of this lies in the Catholic church. The root of the perception, that is, because that's what it is, a perception. It is not a true thing beyond the fact that men have this problem with seeking out young sexual partners, which actually has nothing to do with being Catholic or homosexual and usually stops short of pedophilia.

The truth is that most, the vast majority, of the priests who have committed these atrocious acts of sexual violence against children would not or do not consider themselves homosexuals. These are not "gay" acts of men against young boys. These are acts of aggression of men in power against the only outlet they have: boys.

Which is where and why it gets complicated and misunderstood. The public has only seen it as men abusing boys -- which may be the only way the public can see it -- and interprets that has homosexual pedophiles, which causes those two things to be linked in the collective consciousness.

Probably what is needed here is a history of the Catholic church and the practice of sending young men into the priesthood, basically, against their will. But let's sum all of that up by saying that sending men to be priests because it would be good for the family or sending away the troublemakers in hopes that it will straighten them out or sending men because they simply have no other prospects are all bad reasons for anyone to become a priest. None of these men are really signing up for the "required" celibacy, so it should be no surprise when they don't succeed at it.

The problem is that when they don't succeed at it, at keeping their sexual desires in check -- And when I say "desires," I don't mean the desire to have sex with other men or with boys; I mean the desire to have sex. Period. You men reading this should understand what it's like to be young and horny.* -- the only people they have around them with whom to express these desires, the only "safe" people they have around them with whom to express these desires, are young boys. I say "safe" because they can't express these desires with each other. Let's look at those reasons before I talk about why children are "safe" targets.

1. As I said, these men, on the whole, don't identify as homosexuals, so they're not actually attracted to their companions. Or to men.
2. The men around them are their equals, so their silence is not assured.
3. The attitude about sex in the Catholic church is that any sex not specifically meant for procreation inside a marriage relationship is sinful. Protected sex is sinful. Masturbation is sinful. Sex because you're horny is sinful. [I should point out, though, that it is perfectly fine for a man to rape his wife as long as he can say it was his intent to put a baby in her. The Catholic church is FUCKED UP. [I should also point out that many protestant churches, especially Evangelical churches, share these same views.]]
4. The Catholic church (and most protestant churches) view homosexuality as a sin. They, in fact, treat it as if it is somehow the worst of all mortal sins. So, though I said that these priests don't view themselves as homosexuals, they also know that having sex with their compadres would be a homosexual act.

It's pretty clear, I think, that the idea of approaching a brother priest with the idea of sex is more than just dangerous. Priests could get excommunicated for things like that or, at the very least, severely disciplined, and it would ruin any future prospects for anyone with any kind of ambition.

Which leaves only one outlet for their sexual frustrations, the young boys working in the church alongside them. Boys because that should remove all doubt of any shenanigans. Because, you know, homosexuality is so serious and surely no priest would ever engage in anything even suggestive of it. I'm going to guess and say that the issue of sexual abuse in the church would be even greater if they allowed, also, for altar girls.

See, the thing about kids is that they are easy to intimidate into silence. Then, even if they do talk, adults are so dismissive about what they have to say, especially if it's not something they want to hear, that it hardly matters that they tried to tell anyone. And, if someone believes one of the kids, say, a mother, then she has to break through the male power structure of the Catholic priesthood to have someone listen to and believe her.

Until recently, all of this has been insurmountable.

And it takes us back to the real problem: male power structures. Because this not just a problem in the Catholic church; it's a problem everywhere you have men in power. You don't have to look any farther than our own #fakepresident to know as he gleefully boasted about how he could grab women by the pussies and they would just let him do it. And Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby and and AND! So many ands.

It's clear that anywhere you have men in power that they will abuse that power, frequently in ways that damage other people, especially if they have other men around them to help them cover up those abuses. The Catholic church just happens to be the greatest bastion of male power on the planet, so it has become the bastion of the greatest abuses.

Oh, yeah, I hear you people out there saying that women aren't any better and that they would also abuse power if they had it. But here's the thing: You have no real empirical evidence for that. You can't, because women have so seldomly been in power. And, when they do abuse power, it's almost never against people. None of which matters, anyway, because it's just a deflection from the point.

The point being that male power structures, having been built up over centuries, have a rotten core and need to be replaced. I'm not advocating for any specific replacement, but, as far as I'm concerned, the entire priesthood of the Catholic church -- including the Pope, and I like him! -- probably ought to resign. If they had any amount of honor in them and empathy for people the church has been raping, literally and figuratively, for hundreds of years, they would all step down. Unless they believe that raping children is what God's work is all about.

Then we can move on to all of the other churches where men hold all the power. And all of the other institutions and government structures.

*I once had a friend tell me that when he was horny, he was almost willing to fuck anything with a hole in it. And I had another friend who kept a special Coke bottle in his room, the old glass kind that used to come in soda machines before they switched over to cans.