Purists rise against girls cross diving among boys
By MARY JO MELONE
Published January 13, 2004
Some days, what I write strikes a nerve. Last Thursday was one of those days.
I wrote a column about the annual dive for the cross at Tarpon Springs. I raised a question: Will girls ever be allowed to dive?
A few brave atta-gals followed from women who had the same doubts. But they aren't Greek Orthodox women. They aren't steeped in centuries of religious ritual, in traditions that they observe, as their parents and grandparents and generations before them did.
For those few, the answer was simple. It didn't matter to them that the dive has religious significance. They saw it as a symbol representing just another way in which women occupy society's second tier - and saw the act of asking about it a tentative step forward.
"If it raises questions in a few minds then you have planted a seed and who knows what flower may come of it?" wrote Elizabeth Denlinger of Seminole.
But it was all downhill from there.
Readers called me a feminazi, a man basher, an ignoramus who didn't understand one of the world's great religions.
Let's start with Jason Ramage of Largo: "Why some people in this world think that women have some "right' to do everything alongside of men is beyond me."
Said Frances S. Scott of Tampa: "I am a Christian woman. I see the tossing of the cross as a great church event that draws attention to Christ's water baptism ... It has nothing to do with equal rights, girls participating in every single thing boys do, or any other of our modern litmus tests for political correctness."
Then came the believers in Greek Orthodoxy. Not surprisingly, they were angriest of all. They spoke of their church's centuries of tradition. They declared their pride in the church's consistency. More than one said that my suggestion that girls participate in the dive was a slap in the face to the faith.
"I am growing ever more tired of the feminists such as yourself trampling upon sacred ground," wrote Jason Heironimus of Pinellas County. "Who are you to suggest (changing Greek) traditions? Are you of the church? If you are not a member of the Greek Orthodox Church, then is it really any of your business?"
Mary Koulianos of Tarpon Springs called the column "a crock."
"Females do not dive because the "TRADITION' is boys only! Why? Because Jesus was a male."
"A changed tradition is an oxymoron," wrote lawyer Nicki Spirtos."I always thought the girls were smarter for staying dry and warm on the shore, while the boys plopped like ice cubes into the freezing bayou."
Diving for the cross in Spring Bayou is not the only place from which women are barred, wrote Michael J. Raptis of Tarpon Springs. "Did you know that females are not permitted to even step into the altar, where all religious services in the church are conducted? ... Do you propose to change that, too?"
"This is not a "women's lib' thing," Raptis said of the dive. "It is a law in our church that was told to us at the very beginning of Christianity."
Law may be too strong a word. Tradition certainly will do.
The cross being tossed into Spring Bayou every year represents Christ being immersed in the Jordan River to be baptized. The boys diving for the cross represent St. John the Baptist pulling Christ out.
The Tarpon Springs dive is believed to be the biggest in the nation. But it is in the process of becoming a throwback.
In some other cities, girls are participating in similar dives. According to Nikki Stephanopoulos, spokeswoman for the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, a girl captured the cross last year in Long Beach, Calif.
Someday, Stephanopoulos predicted, Tarpon Springs will face the same choice and go the same way.
"It's going to change, sooner or later," she said. "They'll decide on their own when the time will come."
For now, Tarpon Springs holds on. There is no other place in America quite like it, insulated, thick with immigrants, and rich with history. Traditions will naturally die hard here. Change will be seen as a threat.
In writing Thursday's column, I meant no threat, no condemnation. I was talking only about the possibility for change. Someday.
