Alone and Palely Loitering

Before I start picking on Barry Walters's Mighty Real: A History of LGBTQ Music 1969-2000 (Viking, 2026), I want to stress its virtues. Walters is a longtime music journalist, and he's actively covered most of the period he wrote about in his book, interviewing many of the artists and attending their performances. The book is long -- almost 500 pages total -- and will probably come as a revelation even to many gay people who lived through those years, let alone the young. I'm ten years older than Walters and began reading the pop/rock press in the late 60s, so I was familiar with most of the music and musicians in the book, though some details were new to me. That won't be true for most of its audience, and none of my criticisms here should dissuade anyone from reading Mighty Real. It's a good read, and you'll almost certainly learn a lot.

What bothered me was the book's overall tone.  Part of this is because of the era: there were almost no openly gay pop musicians in 1969, though some were almost out, such as Little Richard, and a lot of innuendo and code got past industry censors. Broadcast radio was the main outlet for recorded music in those days, and Walters does a good job with this aspect of his subject. Double entendre and innuendo were rampant, not only in radio but in TV and the movies. In addition to that, song lyrics contain a lot of ambiguity by their nature: if the singer addresses "you," the listener can identify himself or herself regardless of the songwriter's intention.  One example out of many Walters gives early on (xiv):

Some songs are unintentionally queer, like the Partridge Family’s 1970 smash “I Think I Love You.” Although it was released on a label run by a gay man, Bell Records’ president Larry Uttal, it launched a fictional family rock group designed for mass consumption via a TV sitcom. That show begat the early ’70s’ defining teen idol, David Cassidy. But once you consider “I Think I Love You” as an LGBTQ song, it’s hard to hear it any other way.... Against all odds, this bubblegum ditty sums up the first step to coming out in an accidental but oddly articulate nutshell, depicting both the angst and the elation of going public with private truths.

I see his point, but I think he has it backwards in a symptomatic way. Fear of rejection, confession of what might be unrequited love for fear of being mocked, the joy of finding out that one's affection is returned after all -- these aren't specifically LGBTQ feelings or experiences. Rather than symptoms of our difference, they're evidence that we're not so different from straight people after all - at least not for these reasons.  I admit that I was in my thirties myself before it dawned on me that when I suffered from failed love, it wasn't because I'm queer (I was actually over that by then) or a neurotic loser, I was participating in the human condition. I've pointed out before that alienation is a majority if not universal experience, especially among adolescents.

I'm not denying that gay kids are still isolated, alienated, or endangered. Of course they are. What I'm saying is that rather than glamorizing those experiences by treating them as inherent to the LGBTQ experience, we should universalize them, and try to find ways to make them less damaging and painful.  This is a theme that runs through Mighty Real, and it bothered me. If you read it, see what you think.

As time went on, some musicians tried to move beyond innuendo and coding to expressing themselves openly. They encountered a great deal of resistance, not just from bigoted fans but from the people who ran the music industry itself and from the music press - and also their own closeted selves. As a result, gay fans worked themselves into ecstasy over every real or imagined dropped hairpin (as queens of my generation called such hints). Walters traces numerous examples of these, acknowledging that the practice is now called "queer-baiting," dangling the possibility that a given star or wannabe might be That Way to excite the fans, then pulling it back. It's hard to say when it's a cynical strategy orchestrated by agents and PR people and when it's really testing the waters by a gay performer, but it becomes less and less tolerable as time goes on.  Walters is too generous to his icons and divas for my liking, tripping lightly over Madonna and Sandra Bernhart gamboling on late-night TV, dropping the name of a lesbian bar they'd gone to for example without explaining what was really going on.  Maybe he doesn't know; that's the point.

I'm certainly sympathetic to performers who fear hurting their careers by coming out, especially forty and fifty years ago. I'm less sympathetic as Walters's history moves toward the twenty-first century and numerous stars have come out successfully. I also think more credit, indeed celebration, should go to those performers who came out early on, and less to those who went public reluctantly and resentfully, attacking unnamed activists and extremists who supposedly pressured them to stop lying and hiding. There's less opprobrium directed at industry people, from record label bosses (some of them gay) to management and pop critics, who pushed performers to go on lying and hiding.  Ricky Martin said it well when he came out, and uniquely as far as I know:

Many people told me: "Ricky it's not important", "it's not worth it", "all the years you've worked and everything you've built will collapse", "many people in the world are not ready to accept your truth, your reality, your nature". Because all this advice came from people who I love dearly, I decided to move on with my life not sharing with the world my entire truth. Allowing myself to be seduced by fear and insecurity became a self-fulfilling prophecy of sabotage. Today I take full responsibility for my decisions and my actions.

This was in 2010, outside the official scope of Walters's history, though he jumps ahead from time to time. He doesn't mention Martin.

The most obnoxious example of queer-baiting Walters mentions to my mind, though he doesn't call it that, is Diana Ross's 1980 hit "I'm Coming Out."  I remember the gleeful squees that resounded in my local gay bar when the first time the DJ played it. Walters describes the song's origin:

In recent years, [Nile] Rodgers revealed this indispensable hit’s inspiration. “One particular night I went to a club, the Gilded Grape, and I happened to notice at least six or seven Diana Ross impersonators. So I went outside to call Bernard and said, “You know, Diana Ross is revered by the gay community. If we wrote a song called ‘I’m Coming Out’ for Diana Ross, it would have the same power as James Brown’s ‘Say It Loud—I’m Black and I’m Proud.''

Wow, really?  I think a more accurate analogy would be if a white singer had recorded "Say It Loud -- I'm Black and I'm Proud."  And it gets worse.

Ross reportedly had no idea she was singing anything queer. To her, “I’m Coming Out” was about busting free from Motown’s formulaic confines. Miss Ross’s concert opener for the next several decades, it features a commanding yet funky horn fanfare befitting a Black queen. The song also functions as a women’s lib anthem. Even its unconventional vocal curves and melodic curls suggest bold yet nuanced feminine assertion. Because Rodgers understood that Ross had always disclosed emotions in her music that LGBTQ people couldn’t speak in the mainstream, he knew the singer could once again be a conduit for her audience’s aspirations. If they couldn’t come out in real life, they could get a taste of that emancipation on the dancefloor. 

Nah, I'm good. I don't think I ever encountered a gay person who believed that Ross was really coming out in that song; they were just excited that she had deigned to recognize their existence. And it turns out that nobody told her she was doing even that. Noblesse oblige has never done much for me. I don't want a taste of emancipation on the dance floor, I want emancipation outside and everywhere. Walters does too, but like many of us he's too grateful for any crumb of affirmation he can get, be it a song the singer doesn't even understand or a male singer's suggestive butt wiggle onstage.

“Dave Gahan has become an accomplished bum wiggler,” Neil Tennant once wrote before he and fellow Pet Shop Boy Chris Lowe made a thing out of standing still.

I'm not the only old gay person who misses the anger that drove Gay Liberation in the early 70s and Queer Nation in the 90s.  This weekend I finally got around to reading Armistead Maupin's memoir Logical Family, which among other things is a reminder of how human-hearted that anger can be. Walters pays tribute in Mighty Real to Vito Russo, the activist and chronicler of gay cinema whose righteous anger inspired me in the 70s and after. So Walters wasn't influenced by gay anger; everybody is different. But it's conspicuously absent from Mighty Real, and it bothers me that so many younger gay people are still more excited by straight allies and codes and double entendres than by openness.

What to do, though?  As I've said before, not all gay songs have to wear it on their sleeves.  Not all heterosexual songs do either, and as Walters admits, many song lyrics can be heard or understood as straight or gay.  I've been thinking about this while mulling over this post. The folk revivalists of the 50s and 60s and the old singers they learned from were often cavalier about song lyrics; singing a song from a woman's point of view was no big deal for male singers, and vice versa. Sometimes it mattered, sometimes it didn't.  But when I hear a song I like, such as Joni Mitchell's "Michael from Mountains," I want to sing it myself, and I see no reason why I should change the lyrics to heterosexualize it.  Sometimes, as with Peggy Seeger's "I'm Gonna Be an Engineer," changing the narrator's sex would change the meaning of  the song, so I leave it as written.  I soon found out that many gay men really disliked it when I sang songs addressed to men.  I think that's one reason why they made a drag anthem, "I Am What I Am," a hit only when it was recorded by a disco diva; my fellow gay men may enjoy playing with gender in some prescribed ways, but in other ways they're as rigid as many straight men. That's their hangup, and fifty-odd years after Stonewall they can get over themselves.

Now that radio has lost its primacy for promoting pop music, and many musicians are less reliant on major labels to distribute it, there's less reason except maybe habit to keep LGBTQ music closeted. I'm out of touch with the industry, I admit. Maybe Walters or someone else will follow the story past 2000. One thing I find encouraging: musical theater isn't my thing, but YouTube has brought me numerous videos from Broadway fundraisers in which stage performers sing standards with the sexes ... adjusted.  Sometimes they're too campy for my taste, but then the whole genre is campy.  I enjoy them.  There is hope; do this more often, people.

The Mock President

What with numerous prominent Democrats attacking Trump from the right on Iran, I shouldn't have been surprised by NPR's commentary this morning.  The perky A Martinez had a nice chat with White House correspondent Franco Ordoñez, and then NPR's Token Hoosier Steve Inskeep spoke to a seeming AI chatbot who supposedly was an assistant secretary of state during the Biden administration.

GAVITO: I think on one hand, it indicates that progress is actually being made, and I tend to think that that is true here. The only way to end this conflict is through a diplomatic resolution, and those take time. I think it's important to remember that the JCPOA - the agreement over Iran's nuclear deal - took over two years to negotiate. I think at the same time, though, this may continue to suggest that there is within the Trump administration a fundamental misunderstanding of the Iranian regime and its adherence - continued adherence - to its ideological red lines because it doesn't believe it's lost this war and it doesn't think it has to compromise...

I think he's inching towards progress. I think it's important to note that. But those last 5% of the negotiations are always the hardest. And I think that that's the moment that we're in right now...

Long term, there is certainly something in it. The Abraham Accords were a very positive development. That being said, I think that this is somewhat of an own goal. Saudi Arabia has been crystal clear that absent a pathway to statehood for the Palestinians, it will not normalize. And so President Trump has essentially laid something on the table that has eroded his chance of success.

What really startled me, howver, was this incoherent question from Inskeep:

What does it do to the United States when Iranians are able to mock our president and accuse him of manipulating the stock market, which does, in fact, move up and down with everything he says?

Why shouldn't Iranians mock our president?  For those who care about ranking, Trump is probably the most mockable US president to date, and we've had some doozies. He freely mocks other heads of state, so why shouldn't he be fair game as well?  It's perhaps somewhat painful that Iranians were able to mock him so cleverly and effectively.  That surprised a lot of people, including me, and nobody can fairly say Trump doesn't have it coming.

I suppose it's some kind of progress that NPR can speak openly about Trump's "whiplash diplomacy," but in both of these segments it would easy to forget that Trump (and therefore the US) is, along with Israel, the aggressor in this war. They're very concerned that Iran should submit to Trump and Netanyahu, should maintain a ceasefire, and should compromise (read: surrender) with its attackers. The question for NPR, as for the rest of the corporate media, is whether Iran can be trusted to keep its commitments, while pretending that the US and Israel can be trusted to keep theirs. This isn't a new stance, of course, but it seems that they're sticking to it as it becomes increasingly obvious that it's untenable.

Bloggiversary

Today is the nineteenth anniversary of this blog. It seems worth noting, even if I haven't been that assiduous lately; many other blogs have not lasted as long.  I have a new draft for something more substantial in the pipeline, however.

If You Come at the King, You'd Best Not Miss

I almost -- that's ALMOST -- felt a little sorry for Donald Trump after he was safely out of office in 2021.  One factor that hurt him seriously was not his doing and out of his control, namely the COVID pandemic.  This time around, he's done the things that have undercut his popularity, and he has no one to blame but himself.  If he hadn't started a war with Iran, his popularity would have sagged anyway, but the spreading effects of that war, from gas prices in particular to inflation in general, have made things worse for him.  Not, you understand, that I care, let alone sympathize; he should be in jail instead of the White House, and every reverse he suffers is fine with me.

I'm not optimistic, though. I think there's a good chance that the Republicans will lose control of Congress in November, and there is backlash evident at all levels of government.  But I don't expect that the Democrats will get the veto-proof supermajority they'd need to impeach and convict him. Even if he were removed from office, JD Vance would take his place, and the Democrats who've collaborated with Trump would be all too happy to work with Vance. Maybe a wave of Democratic insurgents could knock Chuck Schumer out of his leadership position, which could help, but it would depend on who replaced him. It will take an immense effort to undo the damage Trump and his gang have done, and there will be fierce opposition to any such effort from wealthy and powerful people who may not like Trump all that much but are happy to benefit from his policies, and will continue to back them and politicians who support them.  The non-elite people I know and talk to don't know much of what he's done, and aren't any more interested in informing themselves than they ever were. 

Meanwhile, centrist news media are blundering along at their usual level of incompetence, even if you leave aside the overt and explicit moves by far-right billionaires to make them worse. NPR continues to waste time on "what we can expect" and false equivalence.  Today, for example, Morning Edition ran two items on Secretary of State Marco Rubio's mission to meet with Pope Leo. The reporter referred to a "spat" (twice!) between Trump and the Pope, as if it were personal on both sides instead of springing from Trump's usual fury at anyone who criticizes him; they even acknowledged that Popes have objected to wars before in the same terms without setting off an international crisis, if this is one instead of another Trump tantrum.  In the second, they talked to a former US Ambassador to the Holy See, who bloviated without saying anything of substance. That's the kind of commentator NPR likes.  (I'll add some details later, when the transcripts are posted.)

More liberal outlets have exaggerated how much Trump has been affected by the obstacles he has encountered.  Some like to say that he has been "humiliated," which to the extent that it's true means little.  He responds to "humilation" by lashing out, and as long as he's in office he has to power to do more than merely humiliate his enemies.  A popular question in these precincts is whether Trump's MAGA coalition is "starting to crack."  Maybe so, maybe not, but it is still holding together overall.  One or two Congressional Republicans have voted with Democrats against Trump's actions, but they've been balanced by Democrats who voted for Trump.  The resistance by some Indiana State senators to Trump's call for redistricting was brave and noble, but most of those Republicans were successfully primaried by MAGA agents this week.  So far the coalition is intact, and while Trump is behaving ridiculously in every public statement he makes, he hasn't suffered any real consequences yet.  Get back to me when that changes.

Let Your Yes Be Yes, and Your No Be No

Just a brief addition to yesterday's post.  On Sunday, Doonesbury's "Say What?" department posted this nugget from Sean Hannity:

This was supposed to be an outrageous idea.  My "say what?" reaction wss "Wait, doesn't the Pope get questioned?" I don't follow Vatican news, but what I remember are a lot of stories where Pope Francis had told reporters something that was taken to be highly liberal and inclusive, like pets going to Heaven, or that homosexuals have a right to be part of the family, or that in some lost video interview he'd endorsed civil unions for same-sex couples. In that last case it turned out that before he became Pope he offered to accept such unions in Argentina as a bargaining chip to stave off legal same-sex marriage. He failed to do so, but his fans (even non-Catholics) were ready to celebrate him as an ally anyway.  When he said we have a right to be part of the family, he immediately added "That does not mean approving of homosexual acts, not in the least."

As I wrote on this topic before, "many people scour Francis's statements for what they 'hint' or may  'imply' or 'suggest,' as if he were the Delphic Oracle and no one has any business pressing him to make himself clear.  Part of the problem of course is that even when he is reasonably clear, they still overinterpret him to suit their own fantasies.  Maybe that's it: if they got him to clarify, they wouldn't like what he'd tell them."

I think it's perfectly reasonable to say that a Pope, like any other head of state, should have to face hard questions. While Hannity is technically correct that Donald Trump "takes questions all the time," Trump doesn't usually answer them: he lies, distracts, wanders off the subject, blusters; and if a reporter presses him, he turns nasty.  But then, the media don't know how to ask intelligent hard questions, and I don't believe Hannity would be any different.  Even secular US reporters would be too busy bowing and scraping and calling him "Your Holiness" to do their job properly. (I just thought of the time some US gay male activists were permitted to ask the Dalai Lama to clarify his position on homosexuality.  They were all Buddhists, if memory serves, and too thrilled at being in the Presence to push very hard; the DL was also less than forthcoming, and of course there was also the language barrier.  Yet the DL is much less pompous than most high-level holy men.  I should do a post on that encounter soon.)

I don't know, maybe Garry Trudeau, the creator of Doonesbury, is a Catholic too. But the reaction to Hannity's suggestion was just another example of the weird authoritarianism that's common among American liberals, the idea that commoners shouldn't get above ourselves when we're allowed to be in the same space as royalty.

The title of this post comes from Matthew 5:37, which I think is good advice, even though Jesus himself liked to dodge hard questions like "What is your authority to say these things?" or "Should we pay tribute to Caesar?" Pope Leo likes to quote the Bible at times, but he also gets rather woolly at others. But it would be rude to quote Matthew 5:37 to him - who do I think I am, anyway?

Yahweh Sabaoth Would Like a Word

While I was reading right-wing Christians fuming that the Pope should stay out of politics, it occurred to me that such people usually insist that separation of church and state is not in the Constitution, and that we need more voices of faith in the public square.  It wouldn't be fair to say that they've changed their minds, exactly, because the inconsistency would never occur to them.  They want what they want, and that's all that matters.

Still, it's clear that Trump's antics have made them uneasy, especially the Catholics among them. I happened on a Facebook comment thread this afternoon where the contradictions were heightened: I've been a Catholic all my life, but Pope Leo isn't my Pope!  He's a Communist and should be minding his own business! ... and so on.  I don't know how representative these people are. It does seem that there are some deep divisions among Roman Catholics at all levels, from the laity up to reactionary clergy.  Some of the latter have been disciplined.  They forget that the Church is not a democracy, it's a hierarchy.

On the other hand, liberals and even leftists -- Catholic and non-Catholic, theist and non-theist -- are reveling in that hierarchy, though they're confused about it too. Celebrity right-wing Catholics like J.D. Vance are being mocked for daring to criticize the Pope, especially when they're recent converts like Vance.  And it is funny that Vance would be so unself-conscious about it.  Luckily for him, he's not likely to have a date with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and even if he does he's not going to be tortured or executed. As the 19th-centurhy composer Hector Berlioz wrote, "Now that She [i.e., the Church] has ceased to inculcate the burning of heretics, Her creeds are charming."  I suppose Vance is aware of this somewhere in what's left of his mind.  I suppose his liberal mockers are too, but it feels to me like they actually believe that a mere layman has no business disagreeing with the head of 1.2 billion Catholics.  It's nicely summed up in this meme:

(If you'd like to see a buttload of baboon screeching and feces-throwing, here's the thread where I found the meme.)  If you think that religion is just a matter of book-learning, this makes sense.  But it isn't, and believers will be the first to insist that it isn't when it suits them. Of course the Roman Catholic Church has a lot of intellectual capital built up over two thousand years, and as a subject of that church, who joined it as an adult, Vance know that and should at least pretend to respect it.  It's his problem, not mine.

Derek Guy, whose timeline inspired that meme and that screeching, had a much more measured take.

Truly remarkable how many people have told the Pope, in some way or another, to "shut up and dribble." Or corrected him on the Bible, despite their thin education on theology. Or told him to stay out of US affairs, despite him being a US citizen. The hubris is amazing.

It's not just the Pope. I would never dream of correcting an Imam or a Harvard law professor about their fields of study using some bullshit I read using ChatGPT. Some people lack an appreciation for the depth of their own ignorance because they don't have expertise in anything.

I agree to an extent; after all, the same people who are telling Leo to shut up are telling him to defer to the political wisdom of Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, and Marco Rubio - a bunch of clowns who have no wisdom at all, whose incompetence is plain to see every day. Or they tell him to focus on morality instead of politics, as if they were mutually irrelevant spheres, as if an illegal war and terror against civilians had nothing to do with morality.  And, as Derek mentions, Leo is an American citizen, though he doesn't need to be one to criticize the US or any other country. He's also a head of state, of the Vatican City, and as such is a politician as well as a cleric.

I'm an atheist, though, and while I'll acknowledge Leo's learning, I'm not bound to defer to it.  His claims about his god and war are simply absurd.  The Bible contains many instances where Yahweh orders war, orders the massacre of entire populations and the enslavement of others.  But Leo doesn't care about that any more than Trump cares about his own falsehood.  He's laying down doctrine on his authority. (He's not declaring it ex cathedra, so he's not even claiming to be infallible - not that he would be.)  But only Catholics are bound by his authority.  Derek's reference to Harvard law professors is unfortunate too, since prominent Harvard law professors have made wildly false claims about the law.  I'm thinking, for example, of Obama's "Ultimately, I am confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress."

Nor do I feel any obligation, or even temptation, to defer to Leo's positions on homosexuality, abortion, contraception, women in the clergy, or other matters. I know that the Pope, or any other learned Catholic, can churn up a flurry of learned arguments to support those positions; I don't care.  These are not matters to be settled by scholastic discourse, and the justifications for them change as the church's positions change. Think of slavery, which the church not only used to justify but practiced.

Another response to Vance's insubordination has been some version of this:

QuoProQuid is a queer Catholic game designer whose posts I read regularly.  Mason Mennenga is a nice liberal Christian whose posts I see only intermittently.  His picture of lifelong Latin American Catholics is as much of a caricature as his picture of adult American converts. Most of not all of the worst right-wing Latin American dictators were lifelong Catholics; it didn't keep them from killing and raping and torturing - nor did it keep previous Popes (and American presidents) from being good buddies with them.  

I'm glad that Leo is opposing Trump and the war, but that means he's on my side (and the side of many other non-Catholics), not that I'm on his.  It's certainly a PR problem for Trump, and will further erode his already slipping support.  His base will stand fanatically firm, but not everyone who voted for him is in his base. I'm not indignant, as many atheists are, that Trump is attacking "an American Pope," as NPR's anchor people keep putting it - his nationality makes no more difference than his religion.  These details make it harder for Trump's insults to land. I don't mind Vance's insubordination against his religious superior, only that his criticisms are so inept; but who would expect any better from him?  Leo's low-key delivery of his criticism is pleasant too, but I don't make the liberal mistake of confusing moderation of tone with moderation of content.

The flip-flopping works both ways, as usual.  The same liberals who cheer Leo's denunciation of war were mostly silent when Obama bombed wedding parties and turned Libya into a slave market.  Many of them supported George W. Bush's wars too, and many embraced Israeli atrocities until they began to hurt their own chances of election or re-election.  The quality of mainstream discussion on these matters is, as usual, abysmal; and getting worse.

Theater of the Absurd

CECILY.
I have never met any really wicked person before. I feel rather frightened. I am so afraid he will look just like every one else.

[Enter Algernon, very gay and debonair.] He does!

[The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde] 

We live in interesting times, don't we?  It has been entertaining to watch the fuss over Pope Leo's opposition to war and the MAGA Right's fury over it, with JD Vance (a Roman Catholic convert) and other Trump toadies joining Trump in his outrage at Leo.  It's been less entertaining to see various non-MAGA non-Catholics cheering Leo on, expressing their outrage that anyone should dare to oppose the Holy Father.

Then, during the night, Trump posted another incoherent rant against Leo on his social media platform, adding an AI-generated image of himself in conventional Jesus robes, laying hands on a sick bedridden man who could be Uncle Sam or possibly Jeffrey Epstein.  Someone deleted the image soon afterward, but by then it had been copied and gone viral.  Trump later told reporters that he thought the image showed him as a doctor, and he was paying tribute to the Red Cross.

Naturally, many in Trump's base rallied to defend him, saying that obviously the image didn't depict him as Jesus, but it seems that he'd finally managed to upset a good number of his fans. The word "blasphemy" was flung around.  Trump's advisor Laura Loomer pointed out correctly that the US doesn't have blasphemy laws, advising Trump's critics to move to an Islamic country where the charge would have legal consequences. Nice try, but numerous Christian countries also have laws against blasphemy.

Still, it's been weird watching religious liberals and even atheists, like Friendly Atheist Hemant Mehta, in a snit over Trump's "blasphemy."  It doesn't seem that they're just pointing out Trump's hypocrisy.  Many of them seem to be sincerely outraged by his cloaking himself in religious imagery, as they are by his daring to speak harshly to the leader of a billion Catholics.

I approve of Leo's stance in this case, but since he's still the head of an antigay hate group, it's not because I recognize his moral authority.  This declaration of his, for example, is as laughable as anything Trump has spewed online: 

Brothers and sisters, this is our God: Jesus, King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war. He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them, saying: "Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen: your hands are full of blood" (Is 1:15). 

(Offer not good during the Crusades, the Spanish Armada sailing to England, or the Spanish invasion of the New World.)

I also support Leo's refusal to be cowed by Trump's ranting against him.  He's one of the few European heads of state who hasn't tried to make nice with Trump, hasn't offered him a shiny gold trinket to appease him.

Anybody has the right to disagree with, criticize, or protest a Pope or a President.  It's depressing, indeed infuriating, to see so many people who aren't Catholic or even theists demanding that Trump respect the Pontiff's autoritah. I must say, though, I wonder what is going through Melania Trump's mind today. She's a Catholic, though she married Trump in an Episcopal ceremony. Coming so soon after her tirade against Jeffrey Epstein, today's circus must be putting some strain on her determination to stand by her man.