Gaga is in, Giglio is out, and the country moves on down (the road).
Across the country, as President Obama prepares for his inauguration on Jan.20, the pastor who was to have offered the benediction at the swearing-in has pulled out. The headline in yesterday’s (January 10, 2013) “Washington Post” read, “Louie Giglio pulls out of inauguration over anti-gay comments.”
The day before yesterday – like two decades ago – Rev. Giglio, pastor of Passion City Church in Atlanta, had preached a sermon in which he called for Christians to “firmly respond to the aggressive agenda” of some in the gay community and warned that widespread gay marriage “would run the risk of absolutely undermining the whole order of our society.”
But yesterday, when the Presidential Inauguration Committee was made aware of Giglio’s past statements on homosexuality, Giglio was gone.
Anti-gay was so-yesterday.
Meanwhile Gaga (I almost said ‘Lady’), unabashedly pro-gay, following a two-year hiatus once again will be belting out a sure-to-be raucous performance and “eye-popping fashion” spectacle on January 14th in our own backyard Tacoma Dome, not far from where the smelter once belched toxic waste.
Tacoma News Tribune Staffer Craig Sailor gushes “10 reasons to go gaga over Gaga,” one being a reference to Gaga having taken the “high road” and another to what we can hope to see – or not see – in the way of Gaga’s “trend-setting fashion and style”.
Gaga certainly made a “fashion” statement when she appeared nude from the waist down in a black-and-white photo of herself that accompanied the release of her album “Born That Way,” so-titled to indicate her support for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender causes.
As it turns out, “Born This Way” is also Gaga’s tour title, which U.S. tour begins infamously enough in the city upon which was recently bestowed the dubiously honorable crown: ‘Most Gay City in America.’ That distinction featured a description of Tacoma’s scenery “in fairy-tale settings” with a photograph taken of Mt. Rainier not far from where the smelter once belched toxic waste.
Next up for Gaga is a role in the film “Machete Kills” given an ‘X’ by one rating association, though Gaga evidently insists it’s not that violent, and should rather be rated an ‘R’.
Gaga is taking the “high road” after all.
As we go down that road - Gaga glorying in the gore of the summer release “Machete Kills,” another blood-soaked blockbuster to be shown to the kind of post-Newtown- massacre America that made “Texas Chainsaw 3D” number one in the box office this last weekend - we can also look forward to the inauguration, another spectacular spectacle that “will showcase the best that America has to offer" said Senator Charles Schumer, Chairman of the Presidential Inauguration Committee (PIC).
Schumer knows how to pick ‘em and Giglio isn’t one of ‘em as the pastor could hardly in good conscience bless the agenda professed.
