Anti-gay activists including Rush Limbaugh, Fox News’ Todd Starnes, and the American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer and Tim Wildmon have been having a field day this week attacking the Grammy Awards for hosting a performance involving a mass marriage that included same-sex couples. Today, the Illinois Family Association, the state affiliate of the AFA, joined the fray, sending out an email attacking the awards show for contributing to the “destruction of marriage.”
IFI’s “cultural analyst” Laurie Higgins writes that the Grammys were “a tragic freak show” and “a gawdy[sic] spitball hurled in the all-seeing eye of a holy God.”
The wedding ceremony, Higgins writes, was “a sorry, sick, non-serious ceremony that looked like something from the garish dystopian world of the Hunger Games” and “a non-wedding festooned with all the indulgent gimcrackery [sic] of Satan’s most alluring playground: Hollywood.” She particularly attacks “homosexual faux-pastorette” Queen Latifah and “the Dorian Gray-esque” Madonna for taking part in the proceedings.
But Higgins disapproval goes beyond the same-sex marriage portion of the entertainment. She also criticizes Beyoncé — the object of a fewrecent tirades from the Right — for providing a “vulgar anti-woman, anti-marriage performance” that Higgins compares to “soft-core porn.”
“Beyoncé has abused her power as a beloved role model for young girls to teach them terrible lessons about sexuality and marriage,” Higgins writes. Her anger extends also to Beyoncé’s husband Jay-Z, whom she claims “seems to revel in the lustings of strangers for his wife.”
“Is it money that motivates his eager embrace of his wife’s immodesty, or pride that he has access to her body when all other leering men do not?” Higgins asks. “If it’s money, how is he different from a pimp?”
This past Sunday night’s Grammy awards was a tragic freak show that demonstrated the entertainment industry’s arrogance, ignorance of marriage, and disregard for children. It was a gawdy spitball hurled in the all-seeing eye of a holy God.
The spectacle was bookended by a soft-core porn performance by the not-single lady Beyoncé who twerked and jerked her half-revealed derriere in a series of “dance” moves that simulated sex and stimulated sexual appetite, while the crowd cheered in puerile excitement.
Beyoncé was later joined by her husband Jay-Z who seems to revel in the lustings of strangers for his wife. What kind of man gets pleasure from his wife’s flaunting of her sexuality and from the certain knowledge that men desire to do things to his wife because of her arousing dress and actions? Is it money that motivates his eager embrace of his wife’s immodesty, or pride that he has access to her body when all other leering men do not? If it’s money, how is he different from a pimp?
Beyoncé’s performance reinforced the cultural deceit that modesty and the notion that conjugal love is private are archaic puritanical irrelevancies. Beyoncé has abused her power as a beloved role model for young girls to teach them terrible lessons about sexuality and marriage. Her performance raises many questions:
- What motivates a young, married mother to flaunt her partially-exposed sexual anatomy to the world and simulate sex movements?
- Deep down is this what she truly wants to do?
- Deep down does she really want her husband to delight in the objectification and commodification of her body for the prurient pleasures of other men?
- Would Jay-Z and Beyoncé want their daughter to one day perform like her mother for the pleasures of men? What would they think about an 18-year-old Blue Ivy recreating her mother’s performance but in a seedy club for the eyes of less expensively attired and botoxed men and women?
- Is Beyoncé comfortable with her father watching her performance?
- What kind of mixed message does this performance send to children? Parents and pediatricians tell children that parts of their bodies are “private parts” that only parents and doctors should look at or touch. We convey that message to them from the earliest prepubescent ages. So, what happens after sexual maturity? Do those “private parts” suddenly become public parts?
- Is modesty in dress the same as prudery, or is it a virtue to be cultivated?
Beyoncé’s vulgar anti-woman, anti-marriage performance foreshadowed the climactic setpiece of the evening: Queen Latifah, long-rumored to be a lesbian, officiated at the “weddings” of 33 couples, many of whom were same-sex couples, while accompanied by the preachy, feckless song “Same Love” by Macklemore and the song “Open Your Heart” by the Dorian Gray-esque Madonna. It was a sorry, sick, non-serious ceremony that looked like something from the garish dystopian world of the Hunger Games, replete with a cheering sycophantic audience, faux-stained glass windows, a faux-choir, a homosexual faux-pastorette, and “Madonna” with her faux-face. It was a non-wedding festooned with all the indulgent gimcrackery of Satan’s most alluring playground: Hollywood.
