Give Mankind Enough Time

A member of our troupe was named after St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland. He claims that St. Patrick’s Day used to be a day when people the world over would commemorate the man who brought Christianity to Ireland. Now it’s all about corned beef and cabbage (not Irish), “Kiss Me, I’m Irish” T-shirts (probably not Irish), Mardi Gras style shamrock necklaces (not Irish), green beer (definitely not Irish) and public drunkenness (well, okay, that is Irish).
We here at CoBaD think that the LGBTQ+ movement is no laughing matter. The mass commercialization associated with the aforementioned movement and its resultant fallout, however, is a laughing matter, and is therefore the subject of this skit. It shows what Pride Month would be like if it followed the path of St. Patrick’s Day. It is partially aided, of course, by a resurgence of a selectively listening, all-powerful, stumpy-armed and masterbate-ingly-challenged devil, a weak-willed politician who made the supreme sacrifice of wetting himself when no one else had the lack of courage to do so, and a complete and utter makeover of the Gregorian calendar. But it’s also partially due to the fact that, thanks to commercialization, folks everywhere have become so swept up in the tangible aspects of the month (image conscious photo ops, parades, flashy clothes, food and drink, souvenirs, TV specials, etc.) that they have completely forgotten the movement’s true meaning.
Some of these efforts can in fact do more harm than good. The jokes concerning the “Am I Gay?” clickbait questionnaire and the “Pride Starter’s Kit “referred to in the skit, for example, were based on actual quizzes and products encountered on the internet, respectively. The “Am I Gay?” quiz, for example, has an individual answer five (5) multiple choice questions. The questions were about topics completely unrelated to the subject such as getting haircuts, texting friends and exercising. A male member of our troupe took the test. Upon taking it the first time, it said that he was a closet gay. Out of curiosity, he took the quiz again making sure to give the exact same answers to the exact same questions. It then said he was definitely gay. He took it three more times (again with the exact same answers to the same questions) and it said that he was definitely gay, definitely gay, then a closet gay again (he is actually not gay). An attendee at an October, 1981 Al-Anon meeting famously quipped “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” What does it mean when one takes the same quiz over and over again giving the same answers and gets different results? Maybe it means the people who created the “Am I Gay?” quiz are insane.
While the old adage “Together we can make a difference” may ring true in a positive sense, it can also be true in a negative sense as well, especially for extended celebrations such as Pride Month. “Holiday Fatigue” (both in the physiological and psychological sense) is a very real phenomenon, partially due to its sheer length. To a lesser extent, “Rainbow Fatigue” and “Pink Fatigue” (in reference to October’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month) may be as well. Unless this is addressed by, say, scaling back celebrations to a week, these prolonged activities have the potential to ultimately diminish the long term impact of otherwise noble causes, leaving individuals to look forward to the events with a sense of “oh, no, not again” rather than a sense of eager anticipation. As the old cliché goes, sometimes less is more.
In Book 3, Chapter 1 of “The Discourses,” Niccolò Machiavelli talks about how religious groups and republics from time to time require renewal, or “return to beginnings,” because their goodness on which they were founded becomes corrupted over time. I think Machiavelli’s observation applies to all forms of organizations, not just religious or geopolitical ones. We here at CoBaD certainly hope Pride Month doesn’t get away from its beginnings and turn into something “corrupt” like St. Patrick’s Day. However, given that mankind (particularly the “profit first, publicity always” folks of the corporate world and their overzealous consumers) has a proven track record of hopelessly corrupting other days of the year such as Easter, Independence Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas, perhaps CoBaD's hopes of a “renewal” are just wishful thinking.
The head of Lucifer in this sketch was taken from an illustration in an edition of Dante Alighieri’s “Divine Comedy.” The illustration was by William Blake (1757-1827). In the book, the three headed Lucifer chews on three traitors (Brutus, Cassius, and Judas) for all eternity. The body of one of the damned souls can clearly be seen in Lucifer’s center mouth.