We Are So Glad the Ed Koch Bridge Does Not Go to Brooklyn
I repeat, ugh. Part of my problem with Koch’s opinion piece is in his comparison to what Act Up did in protest against the Catholic Church in 1989. Koch clearly uses the example to highlight the hypocrisy of those of us who support Pussy Riot now, but probably would have condemned Act Up all those years ago. However, this is bullshit. It’s bullshit because 1989 was the height of the AIDS epidemic. It was before antiretroviral drug therapy, it was before Magic Johnson became a public face of AIDS and it was before it was cool to wear red ribbons. And what was the Catholic Church doing then? Was it practicing some form of the charity and love for the thousands of people suffering? Nope! The Catholic Church was doing what it does best when it comes to something that is related to the topic of sex—the Church was pretending it was still the Middle Ages. The Catholic Church in NYC, and its leader at the time, John Cardinal O’Connor, wielded a huge amount of political and social power and used that power to denounce homosexuals, denounce condom use, and just generally be jerks at a time when thousands upon thousands of people were getting infected and dying from a disease that could at least be contained by practicing safe sex.
Who cares if a few Communion wafers were knocked over? Koch points out that, for Catholics, communion wafers are “the actual body of Christ. ” But guess what? In reality, they’re not. Communion wafers are not actually the flesh of a man who died two thousand years ago. Sorry.
Personally, whether it is the protest of a religious institution that ignores the plight of thousands of sick and dying people to stay true to its own incredibly flawed dogma or the protest of a church and political leadership that is oppressive and unjust, I don’t really care if protests and protesters are disrespectful. What exactly should they be respectful of? Why be respectful of a couple of cardboard-tasting wafers when an incredibly powerful institution refuses to support the prevention of a disease that has been responsible for the deaths of millions? Why be respectful of the Russian Orthodox church when it supports Putin, who has been responsible for an untold number of atrocities during his incredibly long and corrupt reign?
And why be respectful of a former mayor who has written laughably bad murder mysteries in his spare time, mysteries where the safety of NYC depended on the NYPD recruiting one Ed Koch to help them solve a dastardly crime?
This man should not have a bridge named after him. Ed Koch is not a Queens hero. If we can’t still call it the Queensboro bridge, at least name it after Joey Ramone. That’s a bridge I would drive on, if I had to go to Queens.
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