Meredith's deep seated aversion to sexuality had to have been formed prior to this incident when he was 12 years old. His mind was already looking at sex as perverse.
I had dance classes all through elementary school and at no time was it sexualized with panting boys lusting after girls. Even dance classes at Ambassador did not lead to coeds fornicating in the Student Center mail room or the Frontier Room.
"Even back in the 1940s, my mother and her friends - no doubt like millions of mothers all across the United States - had pushed me and dozens of my classmates to attend "dancing school" - where we were taught to dance face to face and chest to chest with young girls barely entering puberty. We were just little children who wanted to play baseball and "kick the can." God does not forbid dancing, of course, but He does command us to "flee sexual immorality" (1 Corinthians 6:18). Why did our mothers push us into the kind of semi-romantic, semi-sexual behavior involved in that kind of dancing when we were only twelve years old?"
Uh...
"We were so embarrassed at holding these girls in our arms that we simply took off running - not knowing what else to do with ourselves. It would be several years before we were truly ready for such "romantic" involvements even in an innocent way. Why were our mothers pressuring us into this kind of precocious behavior?"
Uh...
Rod's childhood was traumatised by dancing lessons at age twelve? Rod - now a septuagenarian - still has unresolved issues with his mother?
As they say, "who'd have thunk it?"
Memories from the old Alumni Discussion board
He should know the answer to this one. He wrote the article "The Shocking Truth About Queer Men". Gee, Rod, Could your mother have naively thought that dancing would be more effective than vigorous calisthenics?
ReplyDeleteBB
I've been ballroom dancing for decades. It is not 'semi-sexual' in the sense of sexually arousing people. It cannot, because the mind can only think of one thing at a time. You cannot concentrate of the dance steps, and sex at the same time.
ReplyDeleteThe reason mothers push their children to do ballroom dancing, is that it socially builds them up. It teaches respect for the male-female role, and acclimatises people to the opposite sex.
I've met people in their twenties in the church, who do not know how to break the ice. They do not know how to introduce themselves. And not forgetting the social barbarians who have attended church.
Parents, encourage your kids to do ballroom dancing. Rod doesn't know what he's talking about on this issue.
We'd have to cut RCM some slack as a child. His perceptions at that age and his recollections about them were his to feel and process and we all have childhood stuff that affects us into our views, insecurities and issues as adults. We are talking about Missouri in the 30's after all.
ReplyDeleteI became a "fixer" I am sure in part because I spent every Sunday, ages 4-18, walking the halls of Newark State School for the mentally ill and disabled visiting my brother. With all I saw as a child including getting touched and hugged by or begged to "take me home with you," it takes a toll on the psyche as a child.
I know of a student at Bob Jones University who was expelled outright for catching a girl who was starting to fall down the stairs. He was told it would have been better for him to let her fall than to touch her. I always wonder how that boy as a man will feel when he touches a woman ever again.
Brains get wired young. Add fundamentalist , we only and the kind of self righteous religion that RCM found as young man and he finds himself in a place where he can never overcome it. He only gets to perpetuate it because it looks more righteous than facing the fear .
So what's the explanation of his becoming a Golden Gloves Boxer to beat the crap out of other boys, potentially causing permanent brain injuries?
ReplyDelete[Not that we'd admit that the senseless pounding on his own head by other boys didn't have something to do with his taking up with a brain-dead religion.]
apparently he sees sex as a "necessary evil"...and views most things in life from a sexual angle.
ReplyDeletewould probably require CPR if he was put in the bathtub with brother and sister like we were when growing up.....
A quote from the movie "Psycho" , might be appropriate for RCM ...
ReplyDeleteNorman Bates: It's not like my mother is a maniac or a raving thing. She just goes a little mad sometimes. We all go a little mad sometimes. Haven't you?
Marion Crane: Yes. Sometimes just one time can be enough.
Annon - 12:34 a.m. - I could not agree with you more. In centuries past, learning to dance was an essential part of childhood education and part of being "well-bred". Formal dancing has played a critical role in social construct and etiquette through the ages, and only recently, has it become a largely primal, undisciplined and unskilled activity. Historically, only the most repressed or perverse societies have forbidden formal dancing. RCM clearly has issues.
ReplyDeleteDennis, I disagree with your use of the label 'self righteous religion.' Ministers would accuse (attack) me of being self righteous whenever I disagreed with their 'advice.' In Herbs church, it's a club to lord it over members lives and faith.
ReplyDeleteWe got square dancing in grades 5 and 6 and we learned the fox trot and waltz etc.
ReplyDeleteWe girls didn't mind it but they boys hated it. Despised it in fact. Or at least they put on a show of hating it. I think they found it sissy stuff.
It can happen that dancing close with a strong alpha male can create sexual feelings.
Just happens that way.
So while dancing will not always do that, it definitely can and sometimes does.
Anonymous Anonymous said...
ReplyDeleteDennis, I disagree with your use of the label 'self righteous religion.' Ministers would accuse (attack) me of being self righteous whenever I disagreed with their 'advice.
Yes, I disagree with myself! What I said badly was that RCM was attracted to a legalistic church. Do and don't do etc which would appeal to him. "Self righteous" was not the concept or word I was going for. Thanks!
Meredith:"I had dance classes all through elementary school and at no time was it sexualized with panting boys lusting after girls."
ReplyDeleteThat is probably the only thing I would agree with Meredith on, the "sexualizing of children" that is getting worse in our culture. But then he makes the mistake of projecting his own "sexual" feelings on to situations and other people's subjective experiences of platonic and non-sexualized behaviour. For example, take someone who is obsessive about homosexuality and their overcompensating behavior of "I'm NO faggot!" when no one even asked them if they were. Any skeletons in the closet?
BlackOps said:"So what's the explanation of his becoming a Golden Gloves Boxer to beat the crap out of other boys, potentially causing permanent brain injuries?"
My freudian guess would be that he would never let the world know that he secretly loved touching other males in non-platonic ways. But then again, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
DBP
Several attending LCG's latest Winter Weekend report being uncomfortable about the way Rod Meredith talked about dancing with his adult great-granddaughter at the event. He made it sound sexual, then laughed about how he is far too old for there to be any sexual energy between them.
ReplyDeleteWe can usually only guess what secret thoughts or motives might be going through others' minds, Freudian, Jungian, cultic, or otherwise. Rod has forced this type of analysis because of decades of preoccupation with certain topics. But, all of us have different things that seem to be out of balance that perhaps we can't see for ouselves, different filters, and preoccupations.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny how perceptions often change, too. Using a secular example, when I first saw "Rebel Without a Cause" on TV sometime during the late 1960's, I saw James Dean's immediate circle of friends as being misfits who deeply understood and cared for one another. It was only later, as I read analyses of the different scenes in the film that I became aware that some people who saw the film perceived the interactions between James Dean and Sal Mineo as being homoerotic (a new term at that time). As more information has flowed from the Hollywood closet over the years, that has become more and more likely as one of the original intents of the writers and or director of the film. The general public in 1955 was relatively naive and sheltered, and any shock or critique would have been based on the delinquency elements of the film that were hyperobvious and in the forefront. There weren't a heck of a lot of guys driving around in '51 Mercury hotrods that thought of them as being "gay" cars. There is the annual James Dean run that the Mercury clubs put on to Paso Robles, and it is not a GLBT event.
BB
BB
ReplyDeleteThe car Sylvester Stallone drove in the Cobra movie was a modified 1950 Mercury. Hardly a gay car.
BB
ReplyDeleteFor car racing just stick to a good old messianic movie. Ben Hur and Massala.
nck
Barbara, you say that dancing 'can create sexual feelings.' I'm curious. Do you mean sexual arousal or physical attraction. After all, physical attraction is natural, no matter the environment.
ReplyDeleteWhere is the source for this Rod Meredith quote?
ReplyDeleteMust be a slow news day in the COG world for this website to dredge this up. Not only is the Meredith quote completely taken out of context, it also was published in 2007! "Banned" can provide better stuff than this. Come on guys.
ReplyDeleteI had a '51 Merc Coupe myself that I'd intalled a full Chevy drivetrain in. That was my hotrod of the '80s. It would smoke most of the Mustangs and Camaros and had at one time in its history held the record in its class for the flying quarter mile at Lions Drag Strip.
ReplyDeleteSly Stallone has always had good taste in cars. I imagine that him, Vin Diesel, and Jay Leno could have some awesome conversations. BTW, Sly's Merc had once been stolen, and he tracked it down and recovered it. James Dean in real life preferred sportscars.
BB
Oh chill out Anon 10:23! Who cares but you grumpy whiners! I remember Meredith discussing this many time during his sermons. The man has issues, deep seated issues that he needs psychological therapy about. He is a mess and has no right being a leader of a church.
ReplyDelete10.23 AM
ReplyDeleteMany current readers didn't know this site existed in 2007.
It's not just about you.
BB said:"It's funny how perceptions often change,..."
ReplyDeleteIn the 80's, Boy George was obviously gay. Yet, having seen Mick Jagger in that video "Dancin' in the Streets" he did with with Bowie, I never really thought of Mick Jagger as being gay. It just goes to show you that you can always re-spin a point of view. As a counter-example example, look at Billy Squirer. Kenny Ortega (the director of High Scool Musical), directed his "Rock Me Tonight" video and believe it or not but Billy is NOT gay.
DBP
LOL, just discovered this. Is this gay? This would probably be considered as gay today as Liberace was way back then! And with gay-marriage being celebrated today! I don't understand it.
ReplyDeleteDBP
John Mellencamp was being forced by his handlers into this kind of image, DBP. He always hated the name "Johnny Cougar", and finally was able to use the power of his fame to fire his original handlers and to change that image. By the time he did "Pink Houses", he had succeeded (if you remember the video). In fact, at about that time, he was doing a concert, and a biker in the audience threw his cutoff up on to the stage. There was a note on it that said, "You're the first thing I've been able to believe in since the plane crash!"(Skynyrd). I read this in Easyriders sometime in the mid '80s.
DeleteThere's been a lot of revisionism applied to iconic cultural endeavors over the past 25 years, and part of that involves people of different persuasions analyzing it, and overwriting their own thoughts and proclivities into these things. The funny thing is, you know how Rod is. Every contemporary star, every song, every movie, somehow he assumed that there was some sort of gay aspect, and regularly said as much. He and the other ministers didn't just stop with Rock Hudson or Tab Hunter, either. They assumed that everyone in Hollywood was gay and bisexual, and that that would soon infect all of society. It was another part of their end times scenario that has just never panned out.
BB
Anon 2:01 - The "2007" reference is a LCG article written by Meredith, not "this site". By the way, the article in question is called "Violence Against Women" and Meredith makes in very plain that the relentless violence against women and girls is linked at its core to the wider society's casual willingness to dehumanize women and girls, to see them first and foremost as sexual vessels—objects—and never, ever as the equals of men. As was said before, the Meredith quote (as usual) were taken out of context.
ReplyDeleteAnon 11:17 - The man clearly does not have "deep seated issues". He simply speaks with a 87-year old's perspective on how society has changed (for the worse mainly) since he was a little kid. And he clearly has valid points on these things if you will simply step back and not foment your venom for 2 minutes.
Anon from January 9, 2017 at 5:40 PM - I don't know of anyone who thought that or even said that. Ridiculous. I know many people who were at the Winter Weekend and who also watched the live stream sermon, and not one of them even thought this or mentioned it. Why? Because they don't believe such filth.
Been trying to find records of rod's boxing record and can't find anything. I believe he was a Golden Gloves champ like I believe bob speil has a Phd in theology. Liars all!
ReplyDelete5.32PM
ReplyDeleteWhat? Rod wrote an article entitled 'Violence against women.' Is this the same Rod who has been repeatedly accused by members and former ministers of being a cruel thug, the church enforcer. He didn't take up boxing for no good reason. From memory, Gerald Flurry called him cruel in one of his publications.
So it's the 'do as I say, but not as I do' thingy. Commonly called hypocrisy.
Rod is a great role model, of what not to be. You are obviously looking at him through rose coloured glasses. The word truth appears 237 times in my king James bible.
Anon 5:32, Rod wrote his "Violence Against Women" article after an argument with his wife Sheryl. It was his way of making peace with her, showing her that he cared about something she cared about. Now that Sheryl has died, Rod doesn't write or talk about that subject any more. Now, he commits violence against women and men by turning husbands and wives against each other to break up families.
ReplyDelete"...Meredith makes in very plain that the relentless violence against women and girls is linked at its core to the wider society's casual willingness to dehumanize women and girls, to see them first and foremost as sexual vessels—objects—and never, ever as the equals of men."
ReplyDeleteThe irony is, it was his mother who mostly led him down the road to patriarchy or at least to seek it out.
You are right BykerBob. I was already aware of his desire to drop "cougar" but now I know more of the reason why, thanks. When I saw that old performance, I thought less people would have considered it "gay" back than in contrast to today, even with homosexuality being much more normalized today. As to the authentic Mellencamp, good musicians and lyricists almost always get better with age.
DBP
"...Meredith makes in very plain that the relentless violence against women and girls is linked at its core to the wider society's casual willingness to dehumanize women and girls, to see them first and foremost as sexual vessels—objects—and never, ever as the equals of men."
ReplyDeleteThe irony is, it was his mother who mostly led him down the road to patriarchy or at least seek it out.
You are right BykerBob. I was already aware of his desire to drop "cougar" but now I know more of the reason why, thanks. When I saw that old performance, I thought less people would have considered it "gay" back than in contrast to today, even with homosexuality being much more normalized today. As to the authentic Mellencamp, good musicians and lyricists almost always get better with age.
DBP