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Multiple blogs and media reports about the displacement of citizens because of gentrification have been covering this and asking who the ghost investors are.

In those two months no one from City Hall has contacted anyone affected.

At the most recent housing committee meeting, the topic never came up.

Seems either this indifference is based on apathy regarding what is happening to the Great Unwashed, or, perhaps, people in City Hall really don’t want people to know who the ghost investors are because they already know who they are.

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If you were raised Christian, studied history, or have been to Rome, the catacombs are familiar things.

For those not familiar, the common understanding is that the catacombs were where the persecuted early Christians would hide, hold their services which were thought, to a certain extent, by the general public to involve cannibalism as the teaching of the Last Supper and the rite of worship were based on the invitation of the dinner host to eat his body and drink his blood, like he was at some sort of Progressive Democrat Party ritual.

The fact that the Christians refused to pay taxes to Caesar and that they apparently ate other humans was the main reason of dislike as the Romans were known for allowing people to worship however they wanted provided they helped with the upkeep of the empire in which they lived.

Whether we really know why the catacombs were needed as opposed myth and tradition, the obvious number of resting places for the deceased could be an indication it was not a regular hanging out place, but one with utility to comply with the Roman law forbidding graves within city limits with this obviously applying to the non-Romans and their religions as Romans cremated their deceased.

This was not persecution but hygiene in a crowded city.

Having Christians prepare for resurrection of the body on the last day would mean rather unhygienic conditions being forced on the majority in the demand for respect of religious belief.

As far as digging catacombs, other religions who required bodies be buried intact, like the Jewish religion, did the same. It went back to a pre-Rome Etruscan practice, and there was no need to hide entrances, so, many where rather elaborate for what the modern mind assumes was a life-saving secrecy.

Often people would gather for large feasts in honor of the dead, and no one can miss a parade of food heading for a fancy door behind which would be the pot-luck.

It was a situation of forbidding graves in the city, so Christians got around it by building tunnels with multiple shelves for the deceased, not graves. They played the law, and that is annoying if they also do not pay taxes like the Son of God told them to.

Although the commonly accepted belief is that the Early Christians built them as safe places for believers, in all honesty, the Romans had better things to do then look for the catacombs whose entrances were clearly visible.

It was in the 9th century that Germanic invaders pillaged the Catacombs in search of artwork, jewelry and coins buried with the dead. Rome was pretty Christian by then, so it wasn’t part of any persecution.

Considering them martyrs for the faith, although most died of other causes like age and disease, churches at that point started moving the bodies to churches and thus the tradition of finding old dead bodies contained in boxes and large clear, glass showcases with bodies in them in churches throughout Europe.

If the Romans had any complaints about the Christians who by and large were just part of the wider community, It was easier to go after the bad Christians when they were out on the street, so the safe places remained really or perceptively safe.

Today we find fault with the treatment of Christians by the Romans, often exaggerating stories to create heroes as if lions only ate Christians and ignored all the other religions in the arena on those occasions when they would use animals to attack lawbreakers in Spectacles which because of the cost to obtain and maintain such animals were not regular things.

The lions were not partial to Christians.

Whether people know the real history of the catacombs or accept the romantic tradition, it is clear that Christians know the value of safe spaces and the fear of their being invaded and the wrongness of it.

Considering the importance of the catacombs to religious tradition, teaching, and history, and using the whole Roman persecution of Christians as an example of harmful bigotry, it does seem odd in this day and age the Christians are going after others who, because of the treatment from Christians, had to establish their own catacombs, not to bury their dead, but to be themselves out of the eyes and subsequent treatment from the bigoted.

The speak-easy structure of the Roaring Twenties gave way in form and in some places locations to Gay bars.

In my youth, many bars had entrances out of sight of the general public, such as Chaps in Boston whose entrance was in the alley behind the Boston Public Library, while quite often people gathered at house parties. New York City had the Meat Rack area in the meat processing district because being abandoned at night, men could make their assignations, the ones many wished they could have in their own homes with no fear.

People condemned Gay men because of the lengths that society forced them to go to find the same level of love and the expression of it that Heterosexuals so freely had.

Bars often got raided on claims of purifying society, but looking closely at the raids, most were politically or financially based. A person wanting votes would pledge to clean up the sinful parts of the city, or, since in many places Gay bars were illegal as was even serving a Homosexual a drink in any bar, someone missed a protection payment and there was a cost to that. The Stonewall Inn comes to mind.

Unfortunately, unlike the Romans who may have been creeped out by this new religion and found the cannibal part a little disturbing, just let things be, religious zealotry has people not only looking for, but entering Gay bars to harass and kill patrons or wait in parking lots for people to attack as they leave a place in which they had just been and had felt safe.

Sadly, those doing most of this persecution are inheritors of a tradition where catacombs played their part as safe spaces for Christians who were being allegedly persecuted because of their beliefs, and they are attacking people who are not adherents to those of the persecutors’.

The Romans left the tax-reluctant, cannibal religion alone for the most part. Many of the Christians “martyred”, with the exception of the big-name ones, were merely law breakers who were punished along with other law breakers of any religion or none, not being singled out until the tax thing bothered Nero and he started going after scafflaws, not specifically Christians. And when Nero wanted to change the infrastructure of the city against objections and just let it burn, regardless of the actual cause, he blamed the minority he had been spreading falsehoods about, and having sufficiently instilled prejudices in those weak enough to accept them to give some body to his fiction, it worked.

He was making Rome great again.

Other than that, those Christians martyred may have been symbolic as a rejection of the state religion, but a closer look shows it was more complicated than that and the major martyrs had violated many more laws than just the religious ones.

Gay bars are not only a welcoming place to party, but community partners hosting a variety of social and educational events for things like Breast Cancer Awareness, HIV/AIDS prevention, food and housing assistance, and a place to strategize in the fight for legal and social acceptance.

For an oppressed minority, these bars, like the catacombs are believed to have been used, serve to build solidarity and community, and to promote education not only about self and community, but wider areas like politics and, yes, religion.

But, unlike the catacombs that were left alone, Gay bars have been sites of violence and persecution from those who have forced Gay people to establish safe places.

Originally, what were referred to as Bomenian clubs were also frequented by artists, musicians, theater people, and other non-traditionalists considered outside the bounds of respectable society.

Unlike the catacombs of early Christians in Imperial Rome which the Romans left alone, these bars which are meant to be places of safety and community that foster Gay Pride, progress in legal, social, and political strength and acceptance, the feeling that you belong of belonging, solidarity, and joy are too often the scenes of horrendous actions carried out by those who in  their own history know the importance of such places of safety, but refuse to allow it for those unlike them based on their chosen religious beliefs and nothing intrinsic.

If these people had been the wielder of the sword in the Garden at Gethsemane, rather than putting up the sword when Jesus told him to, they would have just kept on hacking away.

But, then again, in the name of Jesus, they go after their own gathering places with guns, or to the religious gathering places of others, and shoot them up.

The sword was not put up.

The rhetoric in the media and politically that demonizes GLBT people for simply existing and being who they are does influence the way that people think and feel justified in acting with strength coming from God getting invoked.

And the largest charge levelled by those who baptize babies then hold them to religious beliefs or face the wrath of God for eternity in a fiery pit, constantly accost passersby on the street with pamphlets, interrupt forward progress as they get in peoples’ way to begin the spiel, have the temerity to actually come to your home to see if they can recruit you for their religion, and will go where children are, schools, libraries, the street, and playgrounds, to groom them to be Christian according to whatever the accoster’s religious beliefs may be.

Violence is a major part of LGBTQ people’s lives. I have witnessed it in its extremity in regard to others and in more subtle but pervasive forms personally.  

Christians need to leave the Gay Catacombs alone.

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In the old days since teaching was not a manly endeavor and taking care of children on any level and at any age was the purview of women, confusing education with parenting, an attitude that persists, teachers were usually women,  or men of questionable sexual orientation as was first presented in one the first literary works considered American, not British literature, Legend of Sleepy hollow perpetuating the less than many character of male teachers. Obviously young women were favored as they were more docile and would simply do as directed.

The pre-Teachers Union rules for teachers were not necessarily universally required in every state, but each shared certain requirements that bespoke the low regard in which these spinster teachers were held by those in power.

• Teachers are expected to live in the community in which they are employed and to take residence with local citizens for room and board.
• Teachers will be required to spend weekends in the community unless permission is granted by the Chairman of the Board. 
• It is understood that teachers will attend church each Sunday and take an active part, particularly in choir and Sunday School work. 
• Dancing, card playing and the theatre are works of the Devil that lead to gambling, immoral climate, and influence and will not be tolerated. 
• Community plays are given annually. Teachers are expected to participate. (in one requirement teachers were to avoid yet another requires participation}.
• When laundering petticoats and unmentionables it is best to dry them in a flour sack or pillow case. (So no one sees them hanging on the line to dry).
• Any teacher who smokes cigarettes, uses liquor in any form, frequents a pool or public hall, or (for men) gets shaved in a barber shop, (or for women) bobbs (cuts) her hair, has dyed hair, wears short skirts (could not be any shorter than 2 inches above the ankles) and has undue use of cosmetics will not be tolerated under any circumstances. 
• Teachers will not marry or keep company with a man friend during the week except as an escort to church services. 
• Men teachers may take one evening each week for courting purposes or two evenings a week if they go to church regularly. 
• Loitering in ice cream parlors, drug stores, etc., is prohibited.
• After 10 hours in school, the teacher should spend the remaining time reading the Bible or other good books. 
• Women teachers who marry or engage in other unseemly conduct will be dismissed. The teacher who performs his labors faithfully and without fault for five years will be given an increase of 25 cents a week in his pay providing the Board of Education approves. 
• Teachers will fill the lamps and clean the chimney each day
• Each teacher will bring a bucket of water and a scuttle of coal for the day’s sessions.
• Teachers must make pens carefully, whittling nibs to the individual tastes of the pupils.
• Every teacher should lay aside from each day’s pay a goodly sum of his earnings. He should use his savings during his retirement years so that he will not become a burden on society.
  
  

Up to the 1950s when I started school, it was common to say good-bye to a teacher when she let the students known she was getting married and would then be gone. In some more liberal places, female teachers could get married but at the first sign of pregnancy, which would traumatize the children when they realized the teacher had engaged in “unseemly conduct”.

These foolish and demeaning requirements lost out as teachers became more educated themselves and were more than brides-in-waiting.

The loss of the power over teachers by those who looked down on the non-manly profession of teaching, saw no value in a better education than just the three Rs while teachers saw the world and what is was beginning to require knowledge in, and who loved the revolving door of young women wanting a job, any job,  because they could be hired for cheap and fired on a whim, were threatened by the rise of Unions and saw it as an attack on their power.  

When individual teachers speak up for what their students need, they are too often ignored and with them the students’ educational needs with the reception of the proper idea subject to the whims of administrators or local norms that could be more limiting than properly educational. United there is a better chance to get the right things done as many voices speaking as one is more effective many times than one voice speaking as one.

yet when politicians want to demonize teachers they claim it is the teachers who are harming kids, not the politicians ignoring both the reality of teachers and that of real students.

Teachers are not betraying students, the politicians are and, since they cannot speak in specifics just as with claims about Blacks, Jews, old time Catholics, Transgender and Gay people, and any invented threat , they do so by presenting a huge, overpowering, nebulous entity  whose human members are constantly ignored in favor of the image of a huge cloud on the horizon.

Gool Lawd, as a teacher who happened to be Gay, I spent my adult life dealing with these overly broad tropes about me as a teacher on one hand and on the other me as a Gay man. In neither case was what was being levelled against my profession and orientation in any way close to the reality of either because it was all based on some undefined but often invoked reference to a  Gay Agenda, and as a teacher hearing all the stupidities people would come up with to attack public education and those who teach.

At one point during my Gay Student Advocacy that began because of another teacher’s concern about a student’s questionable death, and was, therefore, based on a presented need, I was accused of having no real concern for Gay Students, but was merely acting on the direction of some Nig Gay Entity.

It was just an attempt to justify not doing what needed to be done.

They did not have to deal with an important topic because they could dismiss it as coming from some Gay Mount Olympus.

The hatred of teachers unions is not based on the reality that while they deal with the hours, wages and conditions of employment of the teachers, and the first two may seem to deal exclusively with teachers, the conditions and education readiness of a classroom directly benefits the students who get the books, supplies, equipment, and environment that allows learning to take place.

Ichabod Crane and the spinster School marm died as teachers demanded more say in their profession and better conditions in their classrooms, better books for students, more modern approaches t the modern world, and less on being chained to the way it was in the past in relation to what is needed to learn and what teachers needed to make that happen in the classroom.

A proposed Texas bill, No Federal Funding for Teachers’ Unions Act, stipulates “no Federal funds may be provided to a labor organization the members of which are education professionals (defined as someone who is employed by an elementary school, secondary school, or institution of higher education.”

Ronny Jackson, who introduced the bill, justified it on his ignoring of reality in favor of the Bogey man approach.

“Teachers’ unions have a disturbing history of choosing self-interest over students and indoctrination over education.” 

He obviously has done little if any research choosing instead to refer to a monster under the bed.

His lazy babysitting and lazy politics was clear when he explained that unlike what is actually happening in the classroom, teachers are

“Promoting racist curriculums and gender confusion” and “this certainly doesn’t represent my values or the values of the parents, students, and teachers in my district”.

His solution is that

“The federal government should not give one cent to organizations that use their influence to empower Democrat politicians instead of students and parents. My legislation is an important first step to holding greedy teachers’ union bosses accountable and to restoring parental rights in education.”

He was praised for the bill by Corey DeAngelis, an education policy expert and head of American Federation For Children, who, after saying it was a good first step, went on the say,

“Public sector unions shouldn’t even exist. Teachers unions certainly shouldn’t receive any taxpayer funding, especially when they’re an arm of the Democratic Party that fights to trap kids in failing government schools. House Republicans should take it a step further and pass a bill to abolish the federal Department of Education. They should also pass a bill to revoke the National Education Association’s federal charter – and to empower families with school choice.”

As bad as schools and teachers are assumed to be, a recent national report card showed the largest decrease in reading scores in three decades during the Pandemic when students were largely homeschooled by those parents who claim they are the only ones who know anything about education. Math scores also decreased.

So, when teachers were replaced by parents, test scores and student progress were weakened unlike previously when the student’s education was provided by those who work with them daily in a classroom.

I guess dumber is referrable to the teachers’ indoctrinating kids on Math, Science, and Grammar, three subjects that just lend themselves to it.

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