Wednesday, March 21, 2012

If They're Yearning to Break Free, Why Are They Huddling?

Emma Tietel, MacLean's token young person columnist (look kids, aren't newsmagazines cool?) wrote a piece recently decrying the neutering (as it were) of gay-straight alliance clubs by Catholic school boards in Ontario.


You can just see it in lights: the club's mission statements, and the Catholic boards' iconoclastic revision to Emma Lazarus's legendary sonnet: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to break free...oh yeah, also your gay, bisexual, transgendered...anyone with acne."


Not sure I get that. But anyway, speaking of iconoclastic revisions, when the French sent over Lady Liberty, the poem on the card that was attached to the gift bag spoke of "huddled masses yearning to breathe free."