Addicted to the Cure?

I have nearly completed the Lincoln Kirstein bio which has yielded numerous interesting new insights on his era and circle (fuller "review" to follow").

Though inserted quite randomly, there is a most curious indirect reference to Aimee Semple McPherson, a precursor to today's ruling religious wackos.

I never knew that much about McPherson besides portrayals of her in films like the trashy Disappearance of Sister Aimee with Faye Dunaway and Bette Davis back in the 1970s and her thinly disguised counterpart, Sister Sharon Falconer, in Elmer Gantry. Recent books on her life have revealed how her many wrong-headed ideas were infesting the American psyche nearly a century ago but took many decades of brewing before they took such a hold on the political system. Queers were not front and center of her various campaigns the way her ideological spawn would ultimately use them with such insane zeal during the last quarter of the 20th century. However, her ilk already had their eye out for us as evidenced in this amusing reference from the book on Kirstein:

• While in California, Lincoln heard a great deal about a woman who had taken as her mission in life to 'unqueer queers' -- a sort of secular Aimee Semple McPherson (whom Lincoln referred to as 'Jesus' little bitch'). The heterosexual missionary's 'scientific' technique was to extract semen from '100% butch normal males like firemen, lifeguards, truck drivers,' grade the semen (90 percent, 80 percent and so on) and then inject it into 'queers whose corresponding ...[quotient] is only, say, 5% or 10% or 15%' -- and 'voila! they're even butcher than the other non-bitches.' How she extracted the fluid remained a mystery Lincoln was unable to penetrate, though he entertained a string of fantasy scenarios. The woman missionary had managed to persuade the Pasadena chief of police and a judge to let her inject queer prisoners in the local jail -- 'over their furious protests.'

Funny, I've been extracting semen from a number of cops and truck drivers over the years as well. Perhaps it has increased my butch quotient just a tad, but it has made no impact except a desire to repeat the exercise. Or as they say: Addicted to the cure.