By Gary Barlow

Backtracking

Well, it’s clear now—if you want to say something stupid, do it in a foreign language so after it dawns on you that everybody’s laughing at you, not with you, you can come back and say, “Wait a minute! You think I’m that stupid? No, no, no—it’s my interpreter who’s stupid.”

At least that’s Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s story.

Last month, you’ll recall, Ahmadinejad spoke at Columbia University and, in response to questioning about gays being treated harshly in Iran, said that doesn’t happen because there are no gays in Iran.

“In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals like in your country,” Ahmadinejad said.

Yeah, everyone said, we suppose that explains the press stories by your state-controlled media about people being executed and lashed for being gay.

Wait then, Ahmadinejad’s press people said last week, the president never said there were no gays in Iran. The interpreter got it wrong, they said—what Ahmadinejad really said was, “We don’t have many homosexuals.”

Not that we should wonder why it took a couple weeks for his press people to come up with that explanation, right? Maybe they don’t have many good spin doctors over there either, huh?

Holy spin

Speaking of spin doctors, the guys at the Vatican were at it last week after one of their own went on Italian TV and said, “Sure, I’m gay and that means me and my pals have sex with each other.”

The priest worked in the department responsible for managing clergy around the world—we say worked because others in the Vatican recognized his office in the background and promptly got him suspended.

Now, it seems, the priest has recanted what he said. “I’m really not gay,” he says now, claiming he was just posing as gay to better understand being gay. Uh-huh…oh, well—all he did was say what everyone in the world knows. There are gay priests who have gay sex, lots of them, in fact. People have known this for—well, probably since there were priests.

So now what is the Vatican punishing this priest for again? Oh, yes, for telling the truth.

Yeah, I suppose that’s the message Pope Benny wants to send out: Keep your mouth shut and nobody gets hurt. Tell the truth, on the other hand, and you get sent to the clerical version of Siberia. Got that, kids?

The plain truth

Maybe stories like the last one go a ways toward explaining why youths today see Christianity as full of hypocrisy.

That’s the conclusion of a study detailed in a new book, “UnChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks About Christianity.”

The author, David Kinnaman of the Barna Group, discusses the results of a survey of 867 American youths. Slightly more than half said they weren’t Christians, and of that group, 91 percent said Christianity is anti-gay and 85 percent said it’s hypocritical.

Even among those who said they were Christians, 47 percent said it’s hypocritical. One in every four youths said today’s Christianity isn’t “like Jesus.”

Wonder how the kids arrived at those conclusions? I mean, after all, they have such wonderful examples in the clergy who show them day after day how to use the Bible to raise millions and build potent political machines. Come on, kids, being a Christian has never been more profitable.

Sparklers, bottle rockets, dildos

Well, at least the good Christians down in Alabama can rest easy. If you want a sex toy in that state, you’re gonna have to either leave the state to buy one or do it the old-fashioned way, with corncobs or something.

Yep, a judge last week upheld the Alabama law that makes it illegal to buy a sex toy in the state unless it’s for a “bona fide medical purpose.” I’ll have to check on what purposes that might cover but I have a hunch that any doctor in the “Heart of Dixie” who starts prescribing dildos is going to get mentioned in the pulpit at the local Baptist church.

One problem for people in Alabama who want sex toys is that they’ve got similar laws in neighboring Mississippi and Georgia, meaning Alabamians have to drive to one of the heathen states—Florida or Tennessee, I guess—just to get a dildo.

Oh, well, it’s good for some folks—it’s got to be a great time to move to Florida and set up a dildo stand next to the fireworks stands off I-10.