hoopla

Some time ago I completed a year long programme called a Tus course.
Tus is the Irish word for beginning.
The course is intended to help long term unemployed people return to the work place
During the period I was on the course, I occasionally dropped into a local Tus office to get some paperwork signed by the area supervisor of the programme, a former elected councillor called Pat Black.
In getting the paperwork signed, I never had any real conversational contact with this individual.
Civil enough. No chit chat. Just business.
On the last day of the course I dropped into his office to collect a letter from him confirming I had completed the course.
He motioned me to a chair and began tapping at his computer.
I waited.
Out of the blue he asked me a question about a corrupt cop who had been stationed in the town for some years.
Why on earth was he asking me this?
He surely couldn't be taping me.
I considered his question inappropriate and did not trouble to answer it.
Pat Black continued to fooster at his computer.
Presently he said: "My son is gay. Nothing wrong with it. Perfectly natural."
This too I considered an inappropriate topic of conversation to be raising with me.
Of course often I'll talk to anybody about anything.
But I'm less inclined to do so if I have a paranoid delusion about them taping me.
Now if an individual I adjudged to be sincere, asked my advice about sexual orientation issues, I'd rabbit on till the cows came home, that is to say I'd talk and I'd listen.
I'd say the gay rights movement and the media haven't figured out everything or indeed anything.
I'd say take some time to read the New Testament, the whole thing.
I'd say the only truth I've ever found on earth has been Jesus Christ.
I'd say the world is imposing notional identities on people through a hyper sexualised hyper speculative hyper atheised culture.
I'd say children are bullying other children into notions of themselves which are not true.
I'd say that the glut of louche sexualised imagery in our society is acting as aversion therapy on the young and on adults, feminising the males, masculinising the females, and neutering the rest of us.
I'd say that there are people who claim to be sexually attracted to chair legs. We don't call them chairosexuals. We don't suggest they marry a chair. We don't say it's genetic. We don't say it's who they are. And we don't say it defines them. We recognise it is as a thought that has entered their minds. They should not act on it. And they should not accord it definitional seriousness or legitimacy
I'd have pointed to the disruptive effects on human sexuality of pornography.
I'd have pointed to the disorienting effects on human self image of drug use.
I'd have pointed to the possible effects of hormonal contraceptives finding their way into the food chain via bodily waste excretions in the environment thereby again  feminising males and masculinising females.
I'd have pointed to similar effects arising from the entry into the human food chain of illegal growth hormones that farmers buy from the IRA mafia for their cows. (I'd also suggest that Mad Cow Disease and much of our Alzheimer style illnesses are arising from the presence of these IRA mafia supplied illegal growth hormones in our food supply.)
I'd have pointed to observable masculinisation of males and feminisation of females occurring in the broader animal kingdom, possibly arising from chemical pollutants in some way, and I'd have suggested if some pollutant by product is affecting animals thusly it will also be affecting us but it's not the arbiter of our personhood.
And I'd have said this may not be who your are.
And I'd have said: "God made you and he didn't make any mistakes."
And I'd have said this is my honest testimony to you not based on what you want to hear or on what conformists permit me to say, but based solely on caring enough to make an effort to speak the truth to you as I see it as sincerely and gently as I can, from the heart to the best of my ability.
I'd have said all that if I wasn't talking to Pat Black.
What on earth was he playing at?

There he was still tapping at the computer.

How hard can it be to print off that letter he's supposed to have had ready for me?
Is he fondling the blooming computer?
Maybe he's computersexual, or ray, as they call it.
I remained stoically silent, gazing into the middle distance.
After a few minutes Pat Black said apropos of nothing at all: "About time we legalised abortion. Long overdue. Absolutely necessary. I know Rhona Mahoney personally. She saved the life of a friend of mine."
Rhona Mahoney was a leading abortion activist in Ireland at the time. She was the Manager in Charge of the National Maternity Hospital on Holles Street.
The following year I would accuse her in print of being responsible for the cover up of the murder of Malak Thawley on the operating table at her hospital.
But all that was in the future.
I smiled ruefully.
His latest conversational gambit was as inappropriate as everything else he'd said.
But I wasn't laughing at Pat Black.
I was laughing at myself.
Here I was thinking this fellow was taping me and determined to say nothing of interest, nothing amusing, nothing insightful indeed nothing at all, to him.

Here I was thinking he was holding up a hoop up for me to jump through.
But he'd found the one subject.
I was smiling because I knew I would speak.
I would jump through his hoop.
"If you legalise abortion," I said quietly, "you will bring down the wrath of God on Ireland. There will be nothing left. The good will die with the bad. The glittering cities will crumble in dust. All you Irish Times types will be wringing your hands and whining: 'How could a merciful God let this happen?' But it's not God who will have destroyed us. It's you. You will have done it. You will have destroyed all that Ireland is or was or might have been. By embracing evil, you will give evil power over us. By rejecting God you and RTE and the Irish Times and Independent Newspapers and Rhona Mahoney will put us beyond his help. You will have rejected his protection from the cosmic evils that will lay waste this green and pleasant land. It will be your work."
Pat Black coughed, shifted in his seat, and handed me a letter confirming I'd completed the Tus course.
I left his office.
A few months later I saw a picture in a magazine of Pat Black and Officer Kadorskey at some public event.
They looked awfully happy about something.
Like a pair of old rays basking in their depravity.