deepest sadness

Axiomatic

In 1964 while we were stationed in Yokosuka, Japan, a decree went out from the base commander, a rear admiral, regarding the automobiles driven by American military personnel. Haughtily, officiously it began, “It is axiomatic that …” and went on to assert that people who drive ratty looking cars are also the careless drivers who cause wrecks, and therefore such cars would be targeted for stopping, their driving privilege revoked, their base decals removed, and they’d no longer be able to drive the car. 

What stuck with me was the word “axiomatic” and the thought that the letter had been written for the admiral’s signature by some pompous ass. Or perhaps the admiral himself was a pompous ass. That was more than half a century ago, and because of which I have never once used the word axiomatic until now:

It is axiomatic that those men who rant and spew hatred of gays are themselves deeply homosexual, closeted, self-denying, self-deluding, self-hating. There are no exceptions to this axiom, it is total and absolute fact. It was so of Jerry Falwell, whom I heard rant against gays numerous times. It was incontestably true of Fred Phelps, who started the Westboro Baptist Church with their sickening homophobic theology of vicious hatred. My inclination Sunday and Monday was to point this out of Omar Mateen, the creep who massacred the gay bar in Orlando, but I decided WTF WTH what’s the point. Now it turns out investigation reveals that he was a regular at that gay bar, reportedly going about twice a month for the past several years. 

It is axiomatic that we are that which we most vehemently, viciously, vociferously hate. For Omar Mateen, it was himself. And he has loved others accordingly. Kyrie, eleison.

Hear what our Lord Jesus Christ saith: the First Commandment is this: Shema, Yisrael, Adonai Elehenu, Adonai echod, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is One; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength; and the Second is its equal in every way: you shall love your neighbor as yourself. 

The summary of the law works in many directions and on many levels. 

Sadness. Deep, deep, deepest sadness.

DThos+