There was an event that happened on Sunday, November 9, 2008, in Lansing, MI, that appears to have slipped under the radar of most Michigan and national news.

According to Catholic Online, which appears to give the least biased account of the happenings at Mount Hope Church in Lansing:

Okay, while nothing too violent appears to have happened during this confrontation, I disapprove of involving children on either side of a radical event. Right or Left.

And I'll point out that while we cannot claim that Jesus was homosexual with any definity, he was certainly raised in a homosocial environment. Seriously, look it up.

Back to the action

According to Bash Back! Lansings "Points of Unity", as listed on their MySpace account , all members must agree to:

Which, again, why do 'Anarchist' groups have rules, tenets, or manifestoes?

Again, why portray this group as 'Anarchists'? They obviously had a plan, brought the press, had two groups in action, one as an "inside" team that wore suits and carried bibles and the "outside" team who brought in the demonstration gear. They were also wearing Secret Service style earwigs to coordinate the action.

Apparently Nathan Harris, a reporter for 'City Pulse', had prior knowledge of the event and was there to document it.

But there were no reports made of physical violence, just a disruption of services, a bit of lewdness, passing out of flyers and glitter. Actually something I would have prayed for when I used to have to go to church.

However, there was some indecency involved.

Some members of the operation held back and reported what their demonstrated had wrought.

To which members of Bash Back! Lansing reponded by saying:

However, journalist Kyle Bristow points out that:

Which is not the point of the story of the moneychangers, but why let reason seep in when it comes to religion and legitimizing your instinct to retaliate.

That would be falling into the argument of the Bash Back! organization, legitimizing their claim that Mount Hope Church is bigoted against the LGBT community.

Nor was there a need to put in the beating of Matthew Shepard in there.

Again, terms like 'Fascism' seem a little heavy handed for what went on and deals more with a econo-political structure, but why worry about words.

There is surprising little video out there of this event, just people commenting on it, such as Jason Goldtrap, a novelist in Florida.

I will admit that there was more, from what I gather, a paramilitarian aspect of this event, the first group who looked like "normal" folk, the second group who were wrapped in pink kuffiyas (a headdress more commonly now associated with terrorists, unfortunately), and a third group who reported back to the main group the after effects of event. Plus the earwings. Seriously, that's organized.

Actually, this reminds me more of what William S. Burroughs wrote in The Wild Boys: A Book of the Dead and The Red Night Trilogy.

Burroughs claimed that what the GLBT community was not expressing themselves as they really are, but by "reclaiming" what is thought to be homosexual is to fall into the trap of accepting the role the heterosexual has already defined for you. I believe I read Bash Back! make a similar claim that the regular GLBT community is simply opting for assimilation, not identity.

Hence, Burroughs has never really been given his due as a writer who was writing both as a junkie and a homosexual during the 1950s on. He's usually written out of the gay canon as an oddity whose identity was tainted by a male-dominant role, whereas his novels project an anti-straight and anti-assimilated gay society where wild boys can run free being equal, no dominant/submissive roles, no male/female roles.

Just the perfect society before societal rules are assimilated.

Happy 200! Hope to hear some response to this.

UPDATE: Bash Back! Lansing bash redefined