Music fans who have been wondering why the studio output of recording legend and British national treasure Sir Elton John has been woefully sparse for the past decade or so may have finally found their answer: the Russian Orthodox church apparently claimed that Sir Elton’s homosexuality has succeeded in sapping him of all creative impulse. According to Interfax-Religion, a Russian news agency, Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin said: “Homosexuality changes a person’s psychology, his public and private priorities. It is characteristic not only of this sir, but also of many others, especially representatives of gay community, we have them in our culture, our media, and in authoritative bodies.”
It’s hard to say exactly when Russian officials made the conscious decision to turn their culture of their country into an extended Borat segment, but hey, it beats worrying about whatever they’re doing in Syria, I guess. (I’m still not clear on exactly what they’re doing, except that it’s terrible; Truman Capote’s famous quote that a person loses an IQ point for every year one lives in Los Angeles has actually turned out to be true.) It’s ironic for a country whose leader is continually shirtless, like something out of a Tom of Finland: Daddy Edition catalogue (Jack Donaghy can eat his heart out; Vladimir Putin is the ultimate daddy bear). And it’s ironic for a country whose collective taste in decorating is roughly on par with that of Liberace to find it so necessary to continue to denounce any strain of gayness that is so undoubtedly present, however tamped, in its own culture. These are the people, after all, who invented Faberge eggs, ballet dancing, and vodka cocktails! Own it, gurl!
What’s interesting here is how deftly the Russian Orthodox church—and Putin’s Russia in general—has mastered the totalitarian impulse to ignore the most likely (and human) explanation for something in order to draw a labored association between to things that serves their own irrational worldview. Global warming isn’t actually a threat, because scientists are godless heathens who want you to eat vegetables, like Michelle Obama! The worldwide depression wasn’t caused by a crippling World War and unregulated financial system, but instead by a shadowy cabal of Judeo-Bolshevik capitalists, even though those two ideologies together in one person is a logical impossibility!
I’m kidding, sort of, but it is a rhetorical device that is depressingly familiar to every marginalized group—here and now homosexuals such as Elton John—that has found themselves scapegoated for a crime they didn’t commit. Jews, in particular, know this all too well. Believe me, we’re experts at that sort of thing, having been accused of everything from masterminding all the wars in the world to being responsible every time some crank on the Internet doesn’t like a television show (because you know, Hollywood.) So when we hear some Russian priest say how Elton John’s creative input hasn’t stalled somewhat because he is a married 68-year-old father of two who already has more money than God, but because he’s tired out from his gay gay gayness, we have to remind ourselves: it’s funny, but it’s also a short step from here to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Or whatever the gay version of that is. I’d need a couple of days to figure it out, but I’m pretty sure they meet in a piano bar.
So as an official expert, allow me to offer this hypothesis on Sir Elton’s stalled output to the Archpriest, who as probable celibate who has taken a vow of poverty may not know this: There is nothing like the unholy triumvirate of age, children, and vast material resources to keep you from doing anything you don’t want to do (and used to do famously). Believe me, it isn’t the homosexual orgies that’s keeping Sir Elton away from the studio at night. Then again, maybe all this is just a clever ploy to denigrate “the sir” that his rivals may eclipse him. Putin has always struck me as more of a Billy Joel guy.
Rachel Shukert is the author of the memoirs Have You No Shame? and Everything Is Going To Be Great,and the novel Starstruck. She is the creator of the Netflix show The Baby-Sitters Club, and a writer on such series as GLOW and Supergirl. Her Twitter feed is @rachelshukert.
