SINCE I've been to enough Gay Pride parades to last me half a dozen lifetimes, I decided to give this year's exercise in public deviance a miss.
As a Catholic, you can take only so many spectacles like the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, the grotesque mockery of the pope, cardinal and church, the celebration of perversion, and displays of unimaginable vulgarity before you call enough.
Television's lying, dishonest, double-standard coverage is even worse. Every year, the city's TV stations send their cameras, producers and reporters out - and they all come back with glowing accounts.
With almost conspiratorial censorship, all six stations automatically delete the lewdness, nudity, profanity and blasphemy that are the intrinsic ingredients of the parade.
They block out the dirty placards, the insulting banners, the violent, anti-religious themes.
Instead, they present the parade as a fun festival, rich in color, pageantry and pride. The distortion is a criminal abuse of truth.
The TV propagandists were at it again Sunday night after the 29th parade down Fifth Avenue.
Here's WNBC/Channel 4's intro: "They're celebrating with pride and parades, a rainbow of flags, floats and festivities ... They kicked off in high style ... and remained spectacular to its end."
The WABC/Channel 7 anchors could hardly contain their enthusiasm. "It was a wild and fun afternoon ... a fun affair."
None of them told of the reported half-dozen men who were stark naked except for their green condoms. None told of the bare-breasted women prancing down the avenue. None showed the lurid excesses of the drag queens and cross-dressers.
None find it offensive that this essentially obscene promenade starts at 52nd Street so it will pass the front doors of St. Patrick's Cathedral and dishonor the religion it represents.
The anti-Catholic thrust of the gay parade is recognized by the mayors (Ed Koch and Rudy Giuliani) who invariably join the march at 48th Street, past the cathedral.
They wouldn't dare join this parade at any point if it insisted on passing and desecrating a sacred black church or synagogue. Indeed, if the media thought the Gay Pride Parade was racist or anti-Semitic in tone, they would pour the fires of hell on it. Let it be anti-Catholic, and it's suddenly fun and festive, a tribute to the First Amendment.
Public acceptance of the double-standard is part of the virulent Christian-bashing binge that seems to be sweeping the country.
It's in the movies, on television, on the stage, in art, in politics ... everywhere.
I'm tired of it. So is William Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. "Could you imagine, say, a pro-life demonstration with some lunatics going naked in the streets?" he asked. "It would be front page everywhere.
"Puerto Ricans, Irish, Italians, Jews, Poles, West Indians all have parades, but none feels compelled to disrobe. The Gay Pride Parade itself demonstrates it is genitally derived."
Donohue, one of the great lay defenders of the faith in this city, will celebrate his fifth year on the job tomorrow.
"In those years, I have seen an increase in the volume and in the intensity of the hate directed at the Catholic Church," he said. "Messages left for us every day and the threats on my life indicate a rising viciousness out there."
Why? What's behind it all?
"I believe it all comes down to sex," Donohue said. "The church teaches restraint, its opponents want to abandon restraint, so the church is an impediment to their libertine understanding of sexuality."
Donohue, ever the optimist, is encouraged by a corresponding rise in support. "The Orthodox Jewish community has been a great support in the "Corpus Christi' controversy," he said.
That's the play by Terrence McNally that depicts a Jesus-like character as a homosexual who has relations with gay apostles. As we all recognize, McNally and the social anarchists, freaks and theater nitwits who support him would not dare write a play depicting Dr. Martin Luther King in the same way. That would be racist. But Jesus and the Christians are fair game.
Advance insights into the play assure it is pure poison. Yet the only thing holding up its production, apparently, is finding a "name" actor to play the Jesus character.
The play is to be produced by the Manhattan Theater Club, whose major contributors include AT&T, American Express, Bell Atlantic, The New York Times and Reader's Digest.
Donohue is about to write them all and ask whether they want to be known as financial backers of one of the most vicious anti-Christian diatribes ever written. Perhaps they could find a worthier cause for their money.
Nearly all the major playwrights in America support "Corpus Christi" under the First Amendment umbrella. Donohue has challenged them to a TV debate. All have declined.
What would happen if a bigoted playwright concocted a theater piece ridiculing, say, the Holocaust? Would the Manhattan Theater Club produce it? Would big corporations contribute to it? Would social crackpots like Frank Rich defend it?
I don't think so.
But when Christianity is the target, free speech excuses everything. It's time the Christians stood up and fought back.