Anti-Prop 8 Protesters Target Oakland Mormon Temple

According to an SF Gate post a little more than a half hour ago, a few hundred folks have come out to the Oakland hills en masse to protest the church's role in providing the Yes on Prop 8 campaign with millions of dollars.  I have to confess that my applause for the protestors is silenced and overridden by a sense of wonder at the fact that the Oakland Mormon Temple is finally the site of something relevant.

See, I've always been curious about it.  When I was a wee child, I thought it was Disneyland, and my Mom was always quick to correct me.  The temple can be seen from just about any part of Oakland, and it's not a little curious that in a city that is predominantly black and non-Mormon, one of the most prominent, spurious presences day or night should be a massive, white, phallic Mormon church.  It's kind of like walking into a Synagogue and telling everyone your name is Adolph.  That might not be the best simile, but apparently good similes are taking Sundays off for awhile. I've come across two bad ones this morning and I'm not having much luck either.

But perhaps more ironic is the fact that the Mormon Church, which is widely known to have a few unconventional marriage practices of their own--polygamy and child marriages and the wearing of weird underwear--has spent millions of dollars on a campaign to keep the traditional definition of marriage in place.

In any case, I'm glad to see that the OMT is making headlines, perhaps nationally.  We have this beautiful, majestic piece of architecture that overlooks the city, but its occupants are really out of place.  The world needs to know that it's going to waste.  People might finally wake up and say, "What the fuck?  Remind me again why that's NOT a roller rink!"

"A roller rink, you say?  Why a roller rink?"  Need I remind you that roller rinks today are just as awesome as they were in 1978, but a lot more rare?  Where's your head at?

For those of you who don't know, Oakland has been a hot spot for the revival of what is probably the greatest sport of all time: roller derby.  

Why roller derby has never been made an olympic sport, I'll never know.  It's traditionally consisted of young women on rollerskates wearing short shorts trying to physically best one another by knocking their opponents over.  Plus, they have really kick ass names--Lemmy Chokeya, Jennacologist and Jane Hammer to take a few from the Oakland Outlaws roster.  I've searched and searched, and I'm convinced that life offers few things that are better than roller derby.  And before the sexist card is pulled, allow me to point a couple of things out: First, most of the leagues today are run by women and are not-for-profit.  The roller girls do it out of love.  

Secondly, a handful of leagues are co-ed .  That means men knock down women and women get to knock down men.  Put that in your hyper-sensitive feminist agenda pipe and smoke it.  Your gender politics are null and void, because that's equality in action!

It's my understanding that a major hurtle for the Bay Area Derby Girls organization has been finding a fixed place to compete.  I seem to remember reading some time back that they were competing at Dry Ice, but the maximum capacity wasn't big enough for the massive crowds coming out, and it was deemed a fire hazard by the Oakland FD.  

How awesome would it be if the inside of what is presently known as the Oakland Mormon Temple looked like this:

                       

I admit that the gay marriage issue is the more pressing one, but I think running the mormons and their institution of bigotry out of Oakland for a higher, more awesome purpose (complete with daytime matinees and beer on tap) should be next on the agenda.

A belated congratulations to the Oakland Outlaws, who pwned their way through the 2008 season and are this year's champions.