[lbo-talk] Last Supper, in a leather harness

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

On 9/26/07, Mr. WD <mister.wd at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/12/opinion/12fish.html
> February 12, 2006
> A Cartoon in 3 Dimensions; Our Faith in Letting It All Hang Out
> By STANLEY FISH
<snip>
> The first tenet of the liberal religion is that everything (at least
> in the realm of expression and ideas) is to be permitted, but nothing
> is to be taken seriously. This is managed by the familiar distinction
> -- implied in the First Amendment's religion clause -- between the
> public and private spheres. It is in the private sphere -- the
> personal spaces of the heart, the home and the house of worship --
> that one's religious views are allowed full sway and dictate behavior.
>
> But in the public sphere, the argument goes, one's religious views
> must be put forward with diffidence and circumspection. You can still
> have them and express them -- that's what separates us from
> theocracies and tyrannies -- but they should be worn lightly.
<snip>
> This is itself a morality -- the morality of a withdrawal from
> morality in any strong, insistent form.

Replace the world "religion" in Stanley Fish's column by "anarchism,"
"communism," or the name of any other politics that aims to overcome
capitalism, and the problem of liberalism becomes all too clear.  What
privatizes religion also privatizes politics of the Left.

When politics and religion get privatized, they both tend to focus on
sex, having ceded power over economy, environment, etc. to the market.

 The result is sex panic: "there are more than 600,000 registered sex
offenders in the US, including individuals convicted of non-violent
crimes such as consensual sex between teenagers, prostitution, and
public urination, as well as those who committed their only offenses
decades ago" ("US: Sex Offender Laws May Do More Harm Than Good: End
Registration of Juveniles, Residency Restrictions and Online
Registries," 12 September 2007,
<http://hrw.org/english/docs/2007/09/06/usdom16819.htm>).

On 9/26/07, Mr. WD <mister.wd at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/26/07, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> > [pic at <http://www.cnsnews.com/cns/photo/2007/092507FolosomFull.jpg>]
>
>
> Not long ago, I would have thought this was hilarious.  These days,
> though, blasphemy against any religion just strikes me as desperate
> and deeply insecure.

What is the Last Supper in Leather at the Folsom Street Fair?  It is a
perfect symbol of American capitalism which remakes both sex and
religion for profit.  This is not blasphemy -- it's just dominant
ideology, one of whose sponsors in this case is Miller:
<http://www.folsomstreetfair.com/fair-sponsors.php>.


> Second, consider, for example, the reports of U.S. interrogators
> flushing of the Koran down the toilet to extract information from
> Muslim prisoners.  Is there anything wrong this this practice in and
> of itself?  Or are we only to be offended at the nature of the
> detention and other forms of torture the prisoner is subject to?  My
> sense is that there's something wrong with this (akin to the Nazi
> humiliations of religious Jews: making them shave their beards, etc.)
> although I can't exactly put my finger on it.

By flushing the Koran down the toilet, the USG, intentionally or
unintentionally, communicates to the detainees: it is not because we,
representatives of the American people, suspect you of membership in
terrorist cells but because we intend to destroy your faith and your
kind that we imprison you, torture you, and kill you.  When the story
gets out, (as it did in the real world), the same message is
communicated to all Muslims.
-- 
Yoshie