Cedarburg's school board managed to dodge quite a bullet the other day when it voted to completely paint over a middle school mural that would stand as a reference to gay people. It found a bureaucratic barrier in the weeds, then underscored it with an uncompromising, decisive condemnation.
The sin, it will be officially declared, is not the message--to quote the sitcom "Seinfeld:" not that there's anything wrong with that--but the failure to ask if it could be created.
Fine and dandy. You can envision pairs of hands flicking each other. Took care of that.
Nothing preventing the artists from going through proper channels and asking to recreate the mural, right? Just try it, the school board is saying with fixed stare: We'll be happy to consider your request.
The temerity must have stunned them. Why, you can't admit openly that there are gay people here! What a blow to our prestige! (There aren't any, are there?)
And what a message: Love Is Universal. You mean everywhere? Okay, but we get to tell you where the love is and where and how it should be directed. We have nothing against love, you know. It's like ice cream: It's mostly good for you as long as you don't have too much of it.
Don't overdo. It makes a mess. That's not the way this town is. Things are in their proper places. Look at Washington Avenue: Neat and clean with no garbage, well prepared for the retired folks who come up in busses from Chicago to buy trinkets and view what a really nice place this is.
Just think of how that image would be shattered if two gay people were spotted holding hands. Put them in the park, for heaven's sake. Nobody looks there.
It's the American answer to Singapore: Well-appointed, but don't alter the landscape. Free speech has never been free there and will never be. The Cedarburg creators stepped out of line. Mustn't do.
The mural's a good example of that, now isn't it? They had to go painting something that surprised people. Well, here's another surprise: It's now buried beneath whitewash. Put that in your hookah pipe, you hippie radicals.
We have happiness here, yes, but it has to be measured and moderate. We allow joy, but please keep it to yourself.
Anyone familiar with Cedarburg's pedestrian hypocrisy--I taught there for 30 years--knew very well what was going to happen. The immediate reaction was, and always has been, abject fear: Fear, this time, of being maybe a haven for homosexuals. That parents of gay kids would want to move in there and then what would happen?
How about--nothing? The same nothing that would have happened if the principal wouldn't have covered the mural when elementary kids came in during summer academy.
Oh, maybe the kids would have asked questions. But then answers would have to be provided. More messes. Too complicated.
Who knew what could have happened? It could have created gay people. Right then and there, ten-year-olds would have changed their minds about their sexuality and everyone would have been really, really confused. Or, not.
We can't punish gay people the way they do in other countries; the Taliban is, once again, licking its chops in Afghanistan. But we can hide them and assume God will punish them. When she gets around to it.
The kids will be back in school soon. How will the teachers deal with this? Will they speak of it? Will they be cautioned not to? Or will they wait until someone does and then gets chastised to set an example to the rest?
Let's see what happens. Let's see if that gets put in the closet. Too.
Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask indoors. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
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