Do You Feel Lucky?

(and feel free to comment! My older posts are certainly no less relevant to the burning concerns of the day.)

Saturday, February 14, 2009

In the Solemn Observance of St. Valentine's Day

Happy St. Valentine's Day, everyone! A day to honor a Roman criminal who, at the risk and cost of his own life, defied civil authority to marry young people (to each other) in an age where tyranny and oppression barked furiously at love's treed cat!

But now, down all these centuries, in this day and age when marriage itself as an institution is all but on the ropes, perhaps the time has come to reevaluate this "St. Valentine," and his true role in the process?

Was St. Valentine in fact merely a tool of the burgeoning patriarchy, tying women to the men who would then marginalize and enslave them in the bonds of a one-sided institution?

Was St. Valentine in fact a homosexual - a pioneer who, in addition to the many covert straight marriages he performed, also used subtle and underground methods to encourage and promote gay marriage - but whose efforts on that score have been scrupulously expunged from the historical record in favor of the whitewashed version?

Or was this pious "St." in fact a myth - constructed out of whole cloth by the church with an eye toward the future establishment of a GREETING CARD EMPIRE? A dream that, alas for them, was ultimately secularized and co-opted by the Hallmark Corporation.

And perhaps it is also time to reevaluate the role of this cute little holiday we have here. What do people think about that?

Happy Valentine's Day!

2 comments:

Jamie said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
dogimo said...

I appreciate at least two of those sentiments.