From the beginning,
Christian faith has been sacrifice:
sacrifice of all freedom, of all pride, of all self-confidence of the spirit;
it is simultaneously enslavement and self-derision, self-mutilation.

There is cruelty and religious Phoenicianism in this faith,
which is expected of a worn-down,
many-sided, badly spoiled conscience.

Its presupposition
is that the subjugation of spirit causes indescribable pain,
and that the entire past
and all the habits of such a spirit resist the absurdissimum
presented to it as “faith.”

Obtuse to all Christian terminology,
modern people can no longer relate
to the hideous superlative found by an ancient taste
in the paradoxical formula
“god on the cross.”

Nowhere to date
has there been such a bold inversion
or anything quite as horrible,
questioning, and questionable
as this formula.

It promised a revaluation of all the values of antiquity. –

Beyond Good and Evil, by Friedrich Nietzsche, trans. by Judith Butler, aphorism 46

Spent the weekend in Louisville. We make the five hour road-trip south annually. It is a much anticipated ritual of family, and of solidarity with a wider community. The Pride parade, and the following festival in the park by the Ohio River is unique for the attitude of welcome, of warmth and delight simply in the human experience. Perhaps that sounds too trivial, too inconsequential, hardly meriting notice. Ought we not to note though, how extraordinary to exist as a human being? And how varied, how wide the spectrum of human experience, to be celebrated than any of us could possibly explore, to absorb to limit, in a single life time!

Today a wave of fundamentalist Christian resistance grows, a blow-back of authoritarianism opposing habits, patterns of life, attitudes, tastes – which rule-based communities are unable to understand. Failure to understand what is different, alternative, an aggregate of values weighted differently, is simply human.  On the other hand it needs be said that hostility, the will to disadvantage, to wound that which you have yet to understand is neither compulsory, nor acceptable.  That’s cruelty, religious Phoenicianism.

Aggression is no moral response to anyone who presents themselves in an alternative manner, – subtle or open and unashamedly, to what I consider the norm of human appearance or behavior. The annual Pride Parade and festival day is an expression of resistance.

We have nothing (perhaps some self-loathing) to lose by a revaluation of all values of our American experience.

Join the party and enjoy! Admittedly change is difficult and takes time, but the company is fine!

These photos were taken at the parade and the following festival: