Gay Angels Disturb Priest

Yeah, I'm serious.

Priest wants church painting removed because ‘angels look gay’

A Catholic priest at a Dominican Republic resort town wants to destroy artwork in his parish because the painting shows angels with “a homosexual expression”. This confuses the faithful, he argues.The painting named "Allegory of the Virgin of Carmen," was concluded 12 years ago by Dominican artist Roberto Flores. The artwork adorns the interior of the church of “Our Lady of Carmen” in the mountain community of Jarabacoa, an agricultural and tourist center located in the Dominican Republic.

The priest Johnny Duran sparked the controversy surrounding the painting, after promoting the adoption by the Jarabacoa City Council of a resolution that revokes an earlier statement by the same council that designated the mural as municipal heritage.

Explaining his reason to revoke the previous decision and destroy the mural, the priest argues that the church congregation feels uncomfortable by the painting and that the mural does not inspire religious sentiments because the angels there depicted have a “diabolical, homosexual look” in their faces. Further, he contends that it is not clear whether the angels are male or female.

Obviously the picture I posted is not the painting from the church, unfortunately I couldn't find a picture of that painting. So I did a google image search for the term 'gay angel' and found quite a few that looked similar to the one above. To me, that's not a gay angel, that's a stereotypical hunky male angel. I guess I understand how someone might 'look gay' if they're inundated with homosexual stereotypes, but somehow I don't think that a classical painting in a church has angels with rainbow accessories who are snappy dressers with great taste in art or whatever homosexual stereotype you want to imagine.

Look, you can't look at someone and know for a fact that they're gay. A painting is even more ambiguous because art is 100% subjective. What someone sees in art says far more about them than it says about the art itself. So, if the priest looks at a painting and sees a gay angel staring at him, I don't think the real issue will be dealt with by removing the art.