Rescue me ...

"I believe there's a hero in all of us." -- Spiderman II

And let the pathology begin!!! It's been 5 days since I saw Superman Returns, and yet the feverous obsession initially sparked by a man in tighty-reddies (although I've been told the shade was maroon) has relentlessly gripped and crushed me into a wriggling giggling school boy with an insatiable desire to ... well, let's just say that I'm curious to know if the man of steel lives up to his reputation.

The movie itself was very convincing. I was so captivated that I even caught myself wondering "Where are you Superman?" when Gotham was in utter chaos. It seems that the belief in a superhero is not so farfetched, despite Wonderboy's lack of fashion sense (although you will hear no complaints out of this one, digital reductions aside).

This hero theme and the idea of being rescued seems to have followed me closely the past week. I just saw an episode of Sex and the City where the girls acknowledged that they wanted to be rescued from their imprisonment of singleness and solitude. And I'm currently reading "Sanctity and Male Desire - A Gay Reading of Saints", which idolizes the masculinity and salvation of the hero saints in Catholicism.

I started to wonder about the author and his strange obsession with the saints. According to him, this is not an uncommon occurrence for gay men. To which I thought- neither is the obsession with superheroes. Where in the psychology of being gay is there this need to be rescued, to be saved from the impending doom of a natural disaster or evil villain?

Or are they desires to be saved from situations that we (gay men) cannot control? Like a society that continues to deny us our rights, ignoring discrimination and hate crimes, and labeling us as an afflicted population ...

Undeniably there is a huge chasm between Superman and the scantily-clad saints of the Catholic church (or superheroes of any faith).

The difference is simple: Superman does not discriminate between race, gender, orientation, or any other human uniqueness. Everyone is a likely candidate for disaster, and everyone has an equal right to be rescued.

I cannot say the same for the Church.