One of the many ironies in academe is the degree to which academics invert reality. This tendency is usually on full display at the Modern Language Association (MLA) annual convention at which thousands of English professors from around the world gather to see and hear previews of the latest courses and “studies” that proliferate in academe.
For example, at the latest gab fest in Philadelphia, GerShun Avilez of the Department of Sexual Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill quoted at length from a poem nearly three decades old by a noted, at least at the MLA, lesbian poet named Pat Parker.
The poem is entitled “Where will you be?” and goes, in part, like this:
Boots are being polished
Trumperters clean their horns
Chains and locks forged
The crusade has begun.
Once again flags of Christ
are unfurled in the dawn
and cries of soul saviors
sing apocalyptic on air waves.
Citizens, good citizens all
parade into voting booths
and in self-righteous sanctity,
X away our right to life.
I do not believe as some
that the vote is an end,
I fear even more
It is just a beginning.
So I must make assessment
Look to you and ask:
Where will you be when they come?
Of course, at the MLA, this poem with no rhymes was treated like the Battle Hymn of the Republic. With all due respect to the late poetess and Mr. Avilez and his studies, Christians from what you call the “heteropatriarcy,” are not coming for anybody.
Indeed, it is activists and lawyers who demand endorsement of a lifestyle many do not share who are suing, boycotting and attempting to put out of business Christian vendors willing to serve any customers, short of endorsing what they do not believe in.
Just ask Barronelle Stutzman..
