Photo courtesy of Lady Gaga's Video "Alejandro"
Bill Donohue of the Catholic League has been busy this week. While there is usually no shortage of moral outrage and ridiculous claims of “Catholic Bigotry” (as if there is such a thing), this week Bill Donohue is on fire. I wonder if there might be some kind of scandal involving Catholics Priests and the Pope that he might be trying to distract people from.
To start with, this week Donohue continues his “protest” on Comedy Central from last week relating to their upcoming animated series about Jesus. It seems from their website that no new progress has been made on that front.
The Catholic League is now morally outraged at Lady Gaga’s newest video "Alejandro" off of her new album “The Fame Monster.” The video actually starts off quite boring, but toward the end, Gaga is dressed in a latex Nun outfit complete with an inverted cross over her private area. Combine this with the marching half-naked men reminiscent of Nazis and you get some reminders of the current Pope’s brief stint in the Nazi Youth. Here is the video for your viewing pleasure or moral outrage:
While this video is of course somewhat inspired by Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” video (which also got moral outrage from many Catholics), it is important to note that while the song makes no sense (at least no sense that I can discern) the title of the album is “The Fame Monster.” It seems obvious that Lady Gaga is trying to make a statement with this video and it is one which the Catholic League is proving by their moral outrage.
Finally this week (although the week is not yet over), Donohue has asked… demanded that The Empire State Building light up their lights to blue and white on August 26th in honor of the one hundredth birthday of Mother Teresa. The Empire State Building said no:
The Empire State Building is a privately owned building and so they have the right to either honor the request... demand or not. Contrary to this CNN report, Anthony E. Malkin of Malkin Holdings the company which owns the Empire State Building did issue a statement to “explain why no place of honor for Mother Teresa.”
The Empire State Building celebrates many cultures and causes in the world community with iconic lightings, and has a tradition of lightings for the religious holidays of Easter, Eid al Fitr, Hanukah, and Christmas. As a privately owned building, ESB has a specific policy against any other lighting for religious figures or requests by religions and religious organizations.
The fact that Bill Donohue was able to get a New York City councilwoman to propose a law that if passed would force private building owners to bow down to him on this one is surprising. The fact that her reasoning was that they are both Catholics is quite frankly why we have a Separation of Church and State in this country.
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Comments
Staks, I hope you find some peace. You are about as angry as a nest of red wasp. Gaga and Madonna got what they wanted - shock factor. It's sad when you have to do that because you don't have enough talent to keep the facade up. It's even sadder that people fall for it. Off subject, I read one of your other posts where you said something to the effect of, you're pretty sure once you die that's it. Pretty sure doesn't sound so great, I hope that if you really think that, you're absolute that's it. If you know what I mean. Take some time for yourself to find where your anger/and or hurt stems from....
Yep, no anger here except for the justified anger. Please see my article on "Why atheists care about religion" in the atheist 101 section.
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