It's religious zealot time on campus again. Like the asian beetles, they return every year to make life difficult and generally stink up the place. (Not a good metaphor overall, but, whatcha gonna do?) I have no idea from which church these people come, but I know it gets bigger every year.
My freshman year, it was just one guy standing outside the union screaming at everybody that they were bad, evil sinners and everything was wrong. It was funny, because even religious people on campus would stop to argue with them and they would learn that they were going to hell too. Apparently, the way to get to heaven was to hate everyone who, er, didn't go to the guy's church?
The second year the guy was cut short early because things got out of hand and he was forced to leave, probably for his own safety. I don't know what happened, but I know he was only around for two days instead of the customary week.
Last year I never went down to the Union anywhere near lunchtime so I never saw him. I understood, though, that he had expanded the repetoire to include phamplet hander-outers. They were goofy little, "We love Jesus, and we actively love him! That's why we hate gay people!" cartoon books. A couple of my friends were trying to "collect them all".
This year, he's become my personal pain in the ass. The Union stands in a really central part of the campus- it's the Pyramid to the Louvre (it's also a modern structure in a very classically styled university). Anyway, you cannot walk from one side of campus to the other without going through the place. Capitalising on this, he's got people standing on all of the walkways handing out fliers. He's got people holding signs and wearing sandwich boards circulating, and there are a few little kids, maybe four and five years old, handing out phamplets to people.
I don't want to have to pay attention to this. I just want to go to my classes and not be accosted by people who will give me a hard time if I don't want their phamplet. It's not even so much about the religion, fine, they hate everybody, great, why don't you go join the terrorists because it seems you've got a lot in common? Just let me go to my class on this public school campus in the free and (still) democratic US of A so I can learn about the history of oppression and tyranny in Russia.
I'll bet if students would refrain from having three hour screaming matches with these people they would go away. But because they cause a sensation, here they are every fall again.
Sometimes I wish I understood the people I deem closed-minded. Only sometimes. I'm not a good enough person to admit that all points of view have value because some people are full of crazy talk. But every now and again I wonder where this stuff is coming from.
In the theatre department, it's a requirement for most classes that we attend the shows (if we're not already involved in some way). Last year we did three plays that had the opportunity to be offensive. Ubu Roi in which the first line in the original language is "Merdre!"; then a play that might've had nudity in it though it ended up without any, and finally Wit, in which the main female character appears in a nude full back (also called an ass-shot, for those who mightn't recognise it otherwise) at the very end.
There was a girl who went here for a year and a half and she was absolutely horrified by our choice of shows. Her first year, I guess, things weren't so bad and she hadn't gone to a summer theatre in Utah from which she came back a Mormon. Anyway, she stage mananged Ubu and even though it was done as a children's circus I think she still managed to be offended. She refused to go to the second show because (rather than nudity) one of the set pieces was the torso of a man, or something. She claimed there were exposed nipples and that was offensive to her. Man nipples? My girl, have you ever been to a beach? She also found Wit to be OK up until the end which was obscenely offensive. My girl, are you offended by your own female body, or just someone else's?
Everything horrified her, but she ran off to Utah and married her Mormon. I wonder if his nipples offend her, but the story is that she's pregnant. She's a bad choice for a Mormon bride because she's built like a pencil. Seriously. If the first kid doesn't kill her it'll probably kill the kid.
I just wonder how she ended up like that. How do you live life in this country in this world and still manage to be offended by it? Well, you know, moreso than the average person is?