Church Lady Refuses To Do What Jesus Would Do

LOVE

BY STU BYKOFSKY OF THE DAILY NEWS Just before tourist season began, the American Family Association of Pennsylvania, in Franklin, tucked into the northwest corner of the state (aka, God’s country) warned people to steer clear of Philly. It was not a formal boycott, says AFAP President Diane Gramley, a pleasant, God-fearing woman.

She wanted to spawn what I call a Boycott Lite because the city went “overboard,” she says, to lure gay tourists (aka Sodomites), through advertising to gays, such as the 2004 Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation’s “Get your history straight and your nightlife gay” TV commercial campaign. It cost $1.7 million, and GPTMC estimates a return of $153 for every $1 invested in gay tourism marketing.

My condo towers are in the middle of the Gayborhood. The majority of my neighbors, like me, are straight, but aren’t intimidated living among people with a superior sense of style. Nor do we find them scratching at our doors after midnight or baying at the moon. (Despite Boycott Lite, June hotel occupancy was 7.3 percent higher than the previous June, according to GPTMC President Meryl Levitz.)

While she sometimes quoted scripture, Gramley more often quoted the Philadelphia Gay News, which reported gays would “feel safe walking hand in hand down the streets” of the Gayborhood. “Why should parents be put in a situation where they have to explain that to their little kids?” she asks. It’s parents’ job to explain things, I say.

Besides, same-sex hand-holding isn’t all that common in the Gayborhood.

“How do you think the Founding Fathers would react to what’s happening?” she asks.

My guess is they’d keep their noses out of peoples’ privates.”

“Thomas Jefferson authored a bill that penalized sodomy by castration,” says Gramley.

Jefferson also kept slaves. I think he’d agree he was wrong there, too.

BYKO: Church Lady Refuses To Act Like A Grown Up About Human Sexuality
AMERICAN FAMILY ASSOCIATION OF PENNSYLVANIA: Keeping Christianity Intellectually Dishonest And Psychologically Adolescent Since At Least 2006