I slowly lost
my voice on Christmas Day as I spent the afternoon and evening nursing a head cold
in the company of a few friends, sitting around a backyard fire, eating a huge prime
rib dinner and then watching “It’s a Wonderful Life” on TV.
On Christmas
Eve, when I thought I was in recovery mode from this particularly nasty bug, I
treated myself to a latte at Starbucks. Somebody left behind a copy of the day’s
New York Times and in perusing its
sections, I came across this startling headline from the cover of Thursday Styles: “Diversity Comes to Superheroes; Creators explore
gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender narratives.”
The article
informed that in recent Marvel comics “a transgender friend of Batgirl, and her
girlfriend Jo were married in a simple ceremony unmarred by super-villainy. Peter
Parker, perhaps better known as Spider-Man, attended the wedding of Max Modell,
his scientific mentor and gay colleague. Wiccan and Hulkling, a superpowered
gay couple, joined a division of the Avengers along with Hawkeye and Songbird.
In August, Wonder Woman officiated a lesbian wedding.
NYT writer George Gustines reasoned, “The
growing depiction of L.G.B.T. characters comes at a crossroads of passionate
fandom and concentrated efforts by publishers to attract broader audiences. Gay
fans have long admired the impossibly perfect bodies and chiseled features of
their heroes and felt a kinship with some like the X-Men, who fought for
acceptance in a world that feared and hated them simply for being mutants.
“And
publishers, in an attempt to reflect modern times, have introduced a plethora
of champions who are no longer primarily straight, white and male under their
masks. They include the teenage Muslim Ms. Marvel and Thor, a lesbian Batwoman,
a Mexican-American Blue Beetle and many more.
“This quest for
diversity has not gone without some missteps. Last December, the creative team of Batgirl apologized for how it
revealed that a villain impersonating the heroine was male. Some readers found
the depiction, and Batgirl’s reaction, transphobic. Reprints of the story have
softened her dialogue.
“In July, there
was a dust-up concerning the sexuality of the Marvel hero Hercules. Some
fans believe he is bisexual and were put off when it was not confirmed.
(Hercules had a relationship with Wolverine in an alternate-reality story;
there was also some innuendo about a dalliance with Northstar, the mutant hero
who came out in 1992.)
“Iceman was
certainly not known for being gay when he first appeared in 1963, but that is
true for most superheroes back then. But what will come next?
“Every
character has to carry the weight of everyone’s expectations, because there
just aren’t enough characters to represent a diverse range of desires and
experiences,” wrote Andrew Wheeler, the editor in chief of Comics Alliance,
a website that covers the comic book industry. “We need to get from some to
enough. And really, we’ll know we’ve achieved success when Captain America can
have a boyfriend, and Wonder Woman can have a girlfriend. For queer
representation in superhero comics, that’s what success looks like.”
******
Also left
behind at the Starbucks was a copy of the Chicago
Tribune. Check out this passage from the page 2 opinion column by prominent
Tribune writer Dahleen Glanton:
While Wheaton
(College) might have had a legal right to suspend Hawkins, it cast the liberal
arts college in a bad light in the midst of a heated national debate over how
Muslims should be treated in America. Instead of opening the door to an
exchange of ideas, the college slammed it shut on any meaningful discussion.
We are used
to Trump's coalition of anti-Muslim crusaders spewing hatred and painting
anyone who follows Islam as a potential terrorist. Most Americans loathe their
loud, ruthless rhetoric and reject their mission to cultivate fear.
But when
bigotry comes disguised as theology, it can throw us off guard.
It reminds
us, though, that there is a quiet undercurrent of anti-Muslim sentiment
operating in some religious circles, one that rejects any reference to
similarities between Islam and Christianity. It places Islam, the
fastest-growing religion in the world, in a cultlike realm and admonishes
anyone who dares to refer to God as Allah.
To accept it
as a religion of equal standing would mean those who want to paint all Muslims
as terrorists would be forced to acknowledge that Islam isn't the real problem.
It's the extremists who have hijacked the religion.
These
extremists are no different than so-called Christians who use religion as an
excuse to burn down black churches in the South, shoot victims outside a Jewish
community center in Kansas or plant a fake bomb inside a Virginia mosque.
I
asked a theologian at Yale University what he thought about what happened at
Wheaton. Miroslav Volf, an author and founder of the Yale Center for Faith and
Culture, says a great many theologians agree that God and Allah are different
names for the same Supreme Being. Arabic-speaking Christians, he pointed out,
also use "Allah" to refer to God.
What happened
at Wheaton College, he said, was not about theology and orthodoxy; it was about
enmity toward Muslims.
He explained
it this way: "Christians and Muslims disagree about immensely important
things about God, but they are disagreeing about 'God,' not between 'gods,' so
to speak."
It's
interesting that in the midst of bitter debate over whether America should
welcome Muslim refugees fleeing war-torn Syria or ban every Muslim from the
Middle East from crossing our borders, an unusual image of Jesus is circulating
around the world.
According to
scientists who used forensics to reconstruct his face, Jesus looked like a
typical Middle Easterner with brown skin and short, curly black hair.
Of course, no
one knows what Jesus looked like. There are no pictures and no human remains to
test for DNA. For centuries, all we have had to go on are illustrations derived
from the vivid imaginations of artists. In the West, that was enough to
convince the masses that Jesus was a white man, with light-colored eyes and
long, straight brown hair.
According to
a 2002 article republished this month in Esquire Magazine, British researchers
used forensic anthropology — similar to techniques used by police to solve
crimes — to recreate what some experts say is the most accurate image of
Christ.
Some cannot
fathom that Jesus might have looked more like a Syrian refugee than Jim
Caviezel in "The Passion of the Christ." For them, a Middle Eastern
Jesus is as implausible as the 20-foot tall black Jesus sporting a big Afro and
a dashiki depicted on a mural in the sanctuary of St. Sabina Catholic Church on
the South Side.
Indeed, we
are living in a difficult time when terrorism poses a real threat. But a very
important element of the Christmas story is that Jesus was born in the midst of
political strife.
Embracing
solidarity with Islam as Hawkins tried to do on Facebook might be America's
best weapon against the army of bigots that has formed under Trump's tutelage.
If we can
focus on our commonalities, it might not be so difficult to accept the idea
that Jesus could have looked entirely different than we imagined.
The Bible
says that Jesus, a man born in the Middle East, is coming back one day. Let's
pray that some folks don't mistake him for a terrorist.
(Editor’s
note: new article tomorrow)
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