Anglicans Make Big Show of Homophobia...Yawn.

This whole Peter Akinola homophobia thing is getting kind of tiresome, so I'm not going to write much about it, but Akinola, the leader of the Anglican church of Nigeria, and 6 other church leaders from developing countries refused to take communion with the U.S.'s bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori, at an international church meeting in Tanzania, the Washington Post reports.

I've written elsewhere about what a raging homophobe this guy is, and how the American Episcopalian churches that have spurned Jefferts Schori's leadership for his are completely nuts.

But what I haven't said elsewhere is that the rift in the Anglican/Episcopalian church actually began when women were allowed to join the clergy, so it's especially fitting that Jefferts Schori be the one to hold her own against the secessionists.

Blogging about this same issue for the fourth or fifth time, it also occurs to me that perhaps the press could do a better job of covering gay issues than to have their coverage focus on churches that reject homophobia. Yes, it might take a little bit of work and may even involve a tiny bit of an agenda to decide to cover something rather than letting events wash over you in Zen fashion, but it's ignorance about gay people that allows hate crime and bogusly unconstitutional legislation to bloom—and journalists either care about the constitution or they like to use jail stints as street cred.

Now this second part isn't ground for the Washington Post, but has anyone done a really good analysis of what the Bible actually says about homosexuality? Because the Bible says a lot of shit, and I know it includes coveting thy neighbor's wife and taking the Lord's name in vain in its top 10, from which gay sex is markedly absent. Since those two seem more sinful and are also more common, maybe we should stamp them out before we even consider homosexuality? Just a thought.

Use the Colonizer's Hate Against Him. And Merry Christmas to You.

The New York Times has taken a lot of heat from liberals since the invasion of Iraq. But in the kind of coverage that makes me a loyalist, the Times has chosen Christmas Day to run a profile of Archbishop Peter Akinola, the notoriously homophobic leader of the Anglican Church in Nigeria who was tapped to lead the Virginia Episcopal churches that recently seceded over the appointment of an openly gay bishop.

The story begins with Akinola telling the story of the only time he has knowingly shaken a gay person's hand and how "he sprang backward the moment he realized what he had done."

But it doesn't lapse into crude caricature of Akinola. No, it puts his gay-hating in a post-colonial context. Akinola is using American churches' paranoid homophobia to fuel his grab for power in the global Anglican church, whose center is Canterbury, England. Church leaders from developing countries have long felt marginalized, the story says.

Indeed, Akinola's rabid intolerance of homosexuality is close to the cultural norm in Nigeria, a country that is debating laws that would punish any expression of gay identity—including two gay people sharing a meal in public—with jail time. The article quotes Archbishop Drexel Gomez of the West Indies saying the Christian church in Nigeria "is in the midst of Islam. Should the church in this country begin to teach that it is appropriate, that it is right to have same sex unions and all that, the church will simply die."

So homophobia is a weapon against the colonial power—which is itself fairly ambivalent on the issue—in a battle to hold onto the colonizer's faith. The seceding Virginia churches have allowed Akinola to colonize a little on his own. But those churches have a long, distinguished political history in the U.S. (George Washington attended one), and it seems quite obvious that Akinola's power over them will end as soon as it becomes inconvenient. But for now, they are more comfortable aligning themselves with Akinola's views of homosexuality than with the Episcopal church's.

This is the Times' Christmas coverage of religion. Peace on earth and goodwill to men. And women.

Things That Go Huh? in the Night

Two D.C.-area Episcopal churches seceded yesterday, establishing themselves as a jerry-rigged Virginia branch of the African Anglican Communion under the leadership of Archbishop Peter Akinola. Akinola is Nigerian, and supports that country's laws prerventing gays from meeting in public and sentencing them to jail time for their private encounters. The churches' votes were a reaction to Episcopalians' growing acceptance of homosexuality, which culminated in the 2003 election of an openly gay man, Gene Robinson, as bishop--a move which was obviously more extreme than joining a ravingly homophobic church from another continent.

Santhi Soundarajan, 25, took the silver medal for India in the women's 800-meter track event at the Asian Games last week. Afterwards, she submitted to a voluntary gender test. What exactly a gender test is remains a mystery, but Sports Illustrated reports that "a gynecologist, endocrinologist, psychologist and internal medicine specialist" conducted it. An Indian official indicated that Sounderajan appeared to have (quoting SI) "more Y chromosomes than allowed."

Where to start on that one…than allowed? By whom? It's not clear what the Asian Games' standards on gender are. And it seems that the chromosomal abnormalities that more or less resemble the official's descriptions do not have any bearing on how fast someone might run. (Research, thanks to Wikipedia, here and here.)

However, South Asian Media Net quotes former International Olympic Committee member Ashwini Kumar saying that “the prize money is so high that athletes take to shortcuts to win." So perhaps there is some chromosomal abnormality which is both a cinch to bring on and makes you incredibly fast.