Santa Claus Conquers the Homophobes Read Online Free PDF Page A

astonishing his third-grade teacher with the wisdom of an answer, soothing a little girl with a scraped knee until her parents rushed to her aid.
    “Okay, now watch.”
    Wendy gave a barely perceptible nod.
    * * *
    In the moments that followed, Wendy watched Santa lose his innocence. It was heart-wrenching. She berated herself, yet she went on, needing to share her terrible knowledge and to seek her stepfather’s guidance.
    First she showed him a schoolyard skirmish, more hurtful to Jamie emotionally than physically. “Sissy Jamie, Sissy Jamie,” taunted the boys. A fifth grader, Freddy Maxon, held him down and pinched his ears.
    “But I visited little Freddy’s house,” said Santa, the wind gone from his sails. “I visited all their houses.”
    “There were more such incidents,” said Wendy. “Then this.”
    Dusk. An older taller Jamie, carrying a bag of groceries, walked past a vacant lot. “He’s twelve.” The lot wasn’t so vacant after all. “These three kids hang out together. The one in front is Matt Beluzzo. Held back twice, a ninth grader here, sixteen.”
    Jamie looked up, startled. When he made to bolt, the two others grabbed him from behind and his bag spilled onto the sidewalk. Matt jabbed a finger at Jamie’s face. “You’re a queer boy,” he said.
    “I’m not,” protested Jamie.
    “Yeah, that’s it, only a queer boy would brownnose the fuckin’ teachers like you do. You got a queer boy’s name. Not like me. Matt. A good, solid name, as solid as my fist. You like lessons. I hate ’em. But I got a lesson for you. Right here and now.”
    Then the beating began.
    Wendy shut it off. “Daddy? Are you all right?”
    “You see why I prefer the company of young children.” He pulled out a handkerchief, blew his nose, and dried his eyes. “But I can take it. Show me more.”
    Wendy told him that Jamie’s face was bloodied and bruised and he walked with difficulty for days, but no bones were broken. Beluzzo had threatened worse if he told, and Jamie hadn’t told. Wendy brought up Jamie’s father, red-faced, standing before his son, shouting at him, “You gotta stand up to bullies. They’re cowards. They deserve reform school is what they deserve. You tell me their names and I’ll sic the cops on them.”
    “Walter Stratton, all grown up,” said Santa with scorn.
    “He means well,” said Wendy, “but he’s...he’s distant from Jamie. A sports fanatic. Closer to his other son.”
    “The older brother. Kurt’s a great kid.”
    Wendy agreed. Then she said, “There are three critical factors that lead to...to what I’ll show you at the end. The beating was one of them. The second was the cumulative effect of hearing this next man Sunday after Sunday.”
    Before them thundered a tall, thin, white-haired preacher, mute now, behind a podium. “Ty Taylor. Over there, seventh pew on the right, are the Strattons, Kurt on the aisle, then Dad, Mom, and Jamie.”
    “Ty was a nice little boy, very neat, happy, and obedient. I put a rocking horse, a cowboy hat, and a cap pistol under the tree when he was seven. What’s he all worked up about?”
    “This.” Wendy turned up the gain.
    “I see before me a vast multitude of families,” said Ty Taylor, “the proud bulwark of the church and of what’s left of virtue in this sad secular society. But the family is crumbling. And upon the sand of weakened families, the house known as the United States of America shall crumble and fall. Unless, my friends, unless righteous followers of Christ hold back the floodwaters and shore up the levees of this nation’s moral might, unless we renovate and rebuild in God’s image.
    “Gays and lesbians, they call themselves. But call them what they are. Sodomites, sinners, sheep strayed into the wolfish wilds of homosexual misbehavior. They have the temerity to tout their ungodly ways, strutting and preening like peacocks, and setting up so-called churches of their own. But creatures of Satan can only