Via James Taranto comes news from the art world :
Gay Artist Burns Rare $60,000.00 Koran
Charles Merrill, the artist who recently edited the Holy Bible with a black marker and pair of scissors, has lately burned a rare Islamic Holy Book, The Koran, valued at $60,000.00, in an undisclosed Chicago location. “The purpose of editing and burning Abrahamic Holy Books is to eliminate homophobic hate,” Merrill stated. “Both ancient books are terrorist manuals.”
He continues, “I inherited the rare Islamic book from my late wife, Evangeline Johnson Merrill… Evangeline was given the rare manuscript by the late King of Jordan when she was on a mission for the United Nations in the 1950′s.” “Airplanes are flown into buildings because of words, and hate crimes against gays,” Merrill said. Merrill is a self-made millionaire, artist, fervent atheist and cousin of the co-founder of Merrill Lynch. Broadway Gallery is pleased to present Charles Merrill, artist, gay activist and iconoclast. Merrill’s exhibition incorporates themes of LGBT activism and the spiritual customs associated with indigenous cultures in his work.
So he’s not that fervent an atheist when it comes to the non-Abrahamic scene:
“In Native American culture, the Berdache, or two spirit ones, were gay or bi-sexual men and women accepted by the tribes as leaders of the spirit world, Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse for example.” Merrill uses Cubist-like lines to refer to this influence rather than to depict the original symbol, the swastika, which included Berdache as part of its meaning, because it was perverted by the Nazis.
Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse were bi-guys? Apparently so. (Do your own Little Bighorn/Hunkpapa Sioux/Running Bear jokes.) From the Metropolitan Community Church’s filings on gay marriage to the Ontario Superior Court of Justice:
Perhaps the best example of the changing nature of conceptions of marriage through history is in North America itself. Before the introduction of European religions, values and laws, First Nations did not regulate marriage in the same manner as Christians. For example, history records that great Lakota chiefs and warriors such as Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse had many wives, including male winkte spouses. Thus, it may be fairly said that polygamy and same sex unions are, or at least were, more “traditional” in our country than monogamous heterosexual unions, because these forms of marriage pre-date the introduction of the Christian conception of marriage to this country by millenia.
Shouldn’t the Koran at least get some credit for being Abrahamic but polygamist?