Men in tights, then and now

‘No’ voter David Mansfield, director of the Archbishop of Sydney’s Anglican Aid, recounts a then-and-now experience with the cultural Left. When his daughter was young, in the 1980s, she was cast in a school play that ridiculed homosexuals and promoted drug use. In those days your typical hip-dude teacher’s goal was simply to assault bourgeois conceptions of what is right and proper. That still applies, of course, it’s just that penis-tucking and encouraging transgenderism in six-year-olds is so much more effective.

Mansfield and wife Helen objected to the production and encountered the ever-fashionable educational establishment’s disdain for spoiling its gay-bashing fun. Here he describes the plot:

… the play, entitled ‘Crooks’, was, in part, about Robin Hood and his ‘gay’ men. 

Robin Hood spoke with an effeminate voice and his gay men were to wear, stereotypically, pink costumes. They were to act with limp wrists. When they spoke they were to spittle all over the stage.

Robin Hood’s girlfriend was named Maid Marijuana and our daughter was cast in the role of one of the Sheriff of Nottingham’s men. She was to be undressed seductively by the sheriff to the tune of The Stripper but, she told us reassuringly, that she would only be stripped down to her leotard.

I know what you’re thinking. We couldn’t believe it at first, either.

The script was changed at Mansfield’s demand and what would today be described as its homophobia muted. In effecting that change, Mansfield explains he was doing no more than exercising his Christian faith. Now, as someone who has defended homosexuals from gratuitous ridicule but does not wish to see the definition of marriage changed, he and those of likewise opinion are denounced and vilified.

… in recent years politically correctness, popular culture and personal choice have blown a gale in a different direction and it seems easier to be blown along than to take a stand…

…Thank God that I live in a society that, at least for now, allows me freedom of conscience, speech and to vote no to same-sex marriage, despite the unreasonable raging of some.

Mansfield’s short essay can be read, should be read, via the link below.

— roger franklin

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