July 5, 2012, on this blog: Evangelical tribalism on display (with photos)
I suspect, mainly, the absence of more explicitly anti-gay material at Creation is a function of the same impulse we saw in Halee Gray Scott’s “I Am Not Charles Worley” article — the desire to be anti-gay and anti-legal-equality while still being perceived as a “nice” person.
But maybe also — maybe — the lack of anti-gay merchandise at Creation also reflects the raw profit-seeking that seems to drive so much else of what those vendors are all about at Christian festivals. Ministry schministry — those vendors are driven by supply and demand and they’ll sell whatever they think this audience would be willing to buy. So maybe they’ve learned that the younger generation that makes up the bulk of Creation’s market just isn’t interested in buying anti-gay T-shirts and that carrying that stuff only takes away valuable selling-space from more profitable T-shirts, bumper-stickers, “scripture tags” and other sorts of tribal totems.
Maybe that’s part of it too. I hope.
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