The Waiting Man

There are, as you'd know, many things that grind my gears, but today it's a recurrent 'favourite' - religious hypocrisy... as practised by its blinkered masses

A couple of weeks ago, for the 'Women In League' round, my local NRL (National Rugby League) team, the Manly Sea Eagles, designed a special jersey to be worn for that week's game, where the usual white stripes were replaced by rainbow stripes, as a gesture of support to the LGBTQI+ communities. Almost as soon as this one-off jersey was announced, 7 players from the team declared they would not wear it & wouldn't play in the match, leaving Manly, already a long shot to make the semi-finals this year, clutching at every straw the reserve & junior grades could provide in order to field a team. The 7 players were mostly Pacific Islanders who were raised in the 'evangelical' faiths introduced by missionaries over 100 years ago & have swallowed its repressive, narrow-minded, bible-thumping bullshit without question. Their religion doesn't like gay people & therefore they won't play. Quite what their version of the Imaginary Friend upstairs would have to say about their playing for a football team whose major sponsor is a gambling service & whose home ground is named & branded by a local brewery, is not something that seems to have occurred to them

Of course, my team lost the match & with it any real hope of extending their season beyond the regular rounds. The next week, all 7 players were back in the team, despite some reported rumblings from players who don't give a fuck about what some god says & did the right thing by their team, their club & the non-brainwashed majority of the community. We lost that game too, with a pretty lacklustre effort that laid bare the cracks in the team's unity

Fast forward a couple of weeks & an erstwhile Manly player has been found guilty of stabbing a Mormon pastor in the back at a church function, apparently connected with some sort of 'gang' turf war being fought in a few of Sydney's more Islander populated suburbs. 3 of the 7 'religious' players have shown overt support for their guilty 'brother' - both on the field & on social media throughout the trial & since the verdict. Apparently, their Imaginary Friend upstairs doesn't mind a bit of gang violence along with gambling & alcohol abuse... just as long as you're not gay!!!!!

I support my local Club - I've been a Manly Sea Eagles fan my whole life & I love to see them win. I love seeing them do well & I accept the tough times when they don't. But if the Club doesn't throw some kind of book at these hypocritical wannabe-gangsters who think they can pick & choose the times when they want to play for the Club that's paying them X amount of thousands of dollars each for 80 minutes work per week, then I'll be sorely disappointed... & may start wearing the colours of my favourite AFL team instead

Harry's view...

The view from the base of the cross on top of Mt Davidson, San Francisco - something I'd always wanted to see, since the first Dirty Harry movie was on late night TV back in the day

I'm not what anyone could call religious, but I do have a fascination with religious iconography... the gods seem to get all the good sculptors & architects. It all seems a little hypocritical - flaunting power, influence & wealth in the name of a god that preaches love, tolerance & the common good - & not a little Tower of Babel as well, building such grand edifices that strive to touch the heavens. The fact that this is the 4th cross erected on the Mount, after 3 others burned down, would suggest that whoever's up there isn't all that impressed with it