"Then a few people destroyedwhat many created with so much joy."
From THE LOCAL (Germany):
A Munich gay group filed charges this week after unknown vandals took a paintbrush to the city's first gay-themed maypole. Spattered with grey paint were depictions of gay life in Munich's Glockenbachviertel neighborhood, where hundreds of gay and straight residents gathered last Thursday to erect the maypole, said Conrad Breyer, spokesman for the Gay Communication and Culture Centre of Munich (SUB).
"It could have been a stupid youth prank, but everywhere there were gay motifs - like a rainbow - exactly those points were painted. One could assume it's an anti-gay act," Breyer told The Local.
SUB organized the maypole with the cooperation of neighborhood officials, commissioning artists Robert C. Rore and Michael Borio to decorate the tablets that hang from the pole's crossbeams. Following local tradition, other organizations were to commission tablets in coming years until the maypole is full.
The project required city permits and cost more than €1,000.
"We are upset to an inordinate degree about this act of vandalism," SUB Director Lars Fröhlich said in a statement on Monday. "Five days ago the entire neighborhood - not just gays and lesbians - was putting this maypole up together and celebrating it with a party. Then a few people destroyed what many created with so much joy. This is totally unacceptable and makes us sad."
The grey paint cannot be washed off, Breyer said. Organizers are weighing whether to ask Rore and Borio to paint the tablets again or to leave the vandalism intact as an object lesson.
They are jealous of beauty and hate the joy it brings. When they see beauty their overwhelming urge is to destroy it.
A Munich gay group filed charges this week after unknown vandals took a paintbrush to the city's first gay-themed maypole. Spattered with grey paint were depictions of gay life in Munich's Glockenbachviertel neighborhood, where hundreds of gay and straight residents gathered last Thursday to erect the maypole, said Conrad Breyer, spokesman for the Gay Communication and Culture Centre of Munich (SUB).
"It could have been a stupid youth prank, but everywhere there were gay motifs - like a rainbow - exactly those points were painted. One could assume it's an anti-gay act," Breyer told The Local.
SUB organized the maypole with the cooperation of neighborhood officials, commissioning artists Robert C. Rore and Michael Borio to decorate the tablets that hang from the pole's crossbeams. Following local tradition, other organizations were to commission tablets in coming years until the maypole is full.
The project required city permits and cost more than €1,000.
"We are upset to an inordinate degree about this act of vandalism," SUB Director Lars Fröhlich said in a statement on Monday. "Five days ago the entire neighborhood - not just gays and lesbians - was putting this maypole up together and celebrating it with a party. Then a few people destroyed what many created with so much joy. This is totally unacceptable and makes us sad."
The grey paint cannot be washed off, Breyer said. Organizers are weighing whether to ask Rore and Borio to paint the tablets again or to leave the vandalism intact as an object lesson.
COMMENT: Homophobia and the need to destroy that which is beautiful go hand in hand. Within the Church, homophobes exclude, and if they don't get their way they tear the church apart by schismatic actions - their actions are never positive, they are never loving. They say that God's creation is beautiful, but they lie, they see no beauty. They prefer dry, uninterpreted text to art. That is why so many evangelicals are homophobes. They have the same mindset as the Iconoclasts, the puritans and the nazis.
They are jealous of beauty and hate the joy it brings. When they see beauty their overwhelming urge is to destroy it.
