You Don't Have to Like It, You Just Have to Tolerate It

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2010/06/01/my-take-defenders-of-dont-ask-dont-tell-want-to-impose-their-religion/

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2010/06/01/my-take-ending-dont-ask-dont-tell-would-undermine-religious-liberty/

With Don’t Ask Don’t Tell closer to revision and repeal, people seem to be almost unified in support of the repeal, even if they might not agree with homosexuality as moral or acceptable. And that’s definitely something to inspire greater unity. The only people that even remotely make me feel disappointment are those like the author of the second article, Tony Perkins, who suggest that ending DADT will somehow infringe on their religious freedoms and more precisely their 1st Amendment rights. I should probably get my criticism out of the way by pointing out the most problematic angles of Tony Perkins’ argument. First, he seems to think that the repealing of DADT will somehow lead to a slippery slope that will reinforce the alleged “gay agenda” (as opposed to a straight agenda?) in the military. Both new recruits and those already in the service will apparently be indoctrinated into brute acceptance of homosexuality as normal. Somehow, I doubt this sincerely. Just because a company allows women or racial minorities or even gay people to be hired doesn’t suggest that the company is advocating non minorities as somehow less important. Beyond quitting or choosing not to be employed in the first place, there are few other options besides trying to change the policy through legal means (unlikely in the long run), pressuring gays out of the military through persecution within the ranks (which is just cowardly) or just going along with it and focusing on the primary duty of a soldier: protecting your country from enemies. Even a child could understand how immature and pointless this argument is. They’d just ask their parents who object to homosexuals serving in the military, “Isn’t a soldier supposed to beat up the bad guys? Why should they care about what they do in the bedroom like mommy and daddy?” Just imagining it probably wouldn’t compare to actually hearing a child tear down this kind of bigotry. There are people suggesting that because showering together with gays will make straight soldiers uncomfortable that the repeal of DADT is wrong and would reduce morale and cohesion within the military. That’s what James Conway suggested indirectly a few months ago, though not so explicitly in terms that suggest latent homophobia. But what’s worse here is Tony Perkins pulling the First amendment card to try to justify his position.

The gist of this angle is that if homosexuality is said to be acceptable (which isn’t what the repeal of DADT is doing) then the military chaplains will be silenced in their right to say that homosexuality is wrong or immoral and counsel soldiers about potential relationship issues. But like I “subtly” pointed out two times before, repealing DADT doesn’t suggest that the military thinks homosexuality is moral or good. It is merely saying that they accept homosexuality as something that is a part of their soldiers as much as their sex or race. I doubt all the high ranking officers would agree that homosexual behavior is condoned by their faiths but they would at least see that it is unreasonable to make homosexuality something that people should keep hidden or be deceptive about in order to maintain honesty and integrity in the military. The discipline and training a soldier acquires would first and foremost emphasize (I imagine) that self control and responsibility are invaluable to a soldier in their unit. Regardless of if they disagree with a fellow soldier’s faith or lack thereof, their race or in our contemporary context, their sexual orientation or gender identity, the primary concern of a soldier should be cohesion and trust. If you cannot trust someone to protect your life on the battlefield just because you think they are sexually attracted to you, you have two issues. 1) You’re paranoid and have trust issues towards people different than you and 2) You have an unhealthy sense of self worth to think that every gay person, male or female respectively, is attracted to you. They may very well think you’re butt ugly, or more likely you’re just not their type. And even if you were, I would think the vast majority of gay or straight people would have the sense to keep such romantic fraternizations to a bare minimum and outside of the context of combat and also respect your not returning their attraction if it exists.

People are also suggesting that gays would use this repeal of DADT to gain some special status to protect them, which is also absurd. The gays that flaunt themselves in pride parades are hardly the same gays that are patriotic. And even if there were some that happened to have gay pride, I doubt they’d be so obnoxious as to use their sexual orientation as a crutch to make themselves feel special. As one person noted, being in the military is not a right, it’s a privilege, you choose to enter. A gay person entering the military would likely know that they are not treated differently because they are gay once DADT is repealed and the policies of discrimination are altered to include sexual orientation. For gay people to be more motivated to enter the military should be a boon to the army and such. Losing bigoted people like chaplains who don’t think homosexuality should be tolerated at all is hardly going to be the primary concern of the military.

All in all, a person’s right to free speech shouldn’t stop at offending others, but it shouldn’t require them to legislate restrictions on the free speech of others either just because some of their free speech might offend them. Chaplains don’t have to agree with the choices of faith that a fellow soldier makes, since their primary job is not evangelism in the military context; it’s counseling and general encouragement of fellowship between soldiers in the situations that would have otherwise stable people desperately need human companionship on some level. You can disagree with homosexuality, but there’s no reason to discriminate against them in the military any more than in the workplace. The differences are accidental. You could just have easily been born with predisposition to same sex attractions, so why not just sympathize and find common ground instead of drawing battle lines because of what gets your rocks off? Until next time, Namaste and Aloha

A Conservative Approach to Gay Marriage

http://www.newsweek.com/id/229957/page/1

I started my blog too late to lament the issues regarding the passing of Prop 8 in California in opposition to the legalization of gay marriage in that same state, but with a 3 month old article from Newsweek, I rediscovered what I thought was a well written and thorough argument for justifying the acceptance of gay marriage in a conservative political worldview. Of course, many conservatives would denounce the writer and have done so based on their own way of thinking that promotes what I view as less than fair minded and reasoned consideration of the Other in relation to what is allegedly a Judeo Christian mindset, where as I recall the Other is not to be excluded or marginalized, but welcomed and cared for to the benefit of a larger community. Admittedly this call is not always viewed in the same way, but when you start denying a certain minority group the same rights that you give the majority, it becomes alienating to those same people and they feel they must distinguish themselves in progressively more extreme ways.

The first point the writer puts forth is probably one many conservatives may not consider at first. If marriage is indeed a conservative value and supplants what is commonly a larger value of family and community, then the fact that gay and lesbian individuals want to get the status and appellation of marriage to their relationship would seem to suggest that conservative values are still demonstrably popular in this country. There are those that denounce the institution of marriage, but even in relation to my last post on how the institution of marriage has aged awkwardly, I would agree it has value as a form of social cohesion and uniting people to be concerned about things apart from a narrow group interest. No institution is perfect, and there will always be some room for improvement in order to make the principle of equality actualized in the practice of the institution itself.

In marriage’s case, one step towards further affirming what is in the Declaration of Independence, that all men [and humans by association] are created equal, would be to extend the institution of marriage to those that happen to be gay and lesbian. To try to argue otherwise about equality strikes me as what I observed with Mike Huckabee. Just because gays are not in the American “ideal” of families having kids, raising them to be straight and perpetuate the meme of marriage implying a connection to childrearing (when it doesn’t) does not mean they should be treated as less and given discriminatory terms to describe what their relationship is. Marriage in terms of etymology doesn’t even imply that it is strictly a male/female coupling, though it does seem to suggest that originally it was little more than an exchange of property and a giving of something to another. Equality doesn’t imply one has to agree with the practice of homosexuality or condone it or even see it as morally permissible according to alleged divine laws, but it does suggest that you should treat those people with the same respect you give to those within your own group. Even though they are strangers in your land, I recall in the Biblical narrative that the ancient Israelites were strangers in Egypt and then were made strangers in their promised land of Canaan. Therefore, the admonition to treat strangers with hospitality rings very true in regards to the alleged Judeo Christian origins of marriage (even though they may be much older than that). To ascribe less than equal treatment in relation to marriage seems to me unfair and to any fair analysis of the Constitution as against its principles of a group of otherwise different people uniting together for the purpose of creating a free and equal society where people are not treating unjustly because of things that are beyond their control or are intrinsically part of their identity in most cases (religion and sexual orientation both involving some amount of choice, though both can be a matter of compulsion as much as volition).

With marriage being both a civil bond on the one hand of secular considerations and a sacred unity on the other hand in religious considerations, this does create something of a difficulty. But this only comes about if you make the argument that all religious rites and services must be equally recognized in a civil or state context. No one recognizes a priest as a priest in regards to the state; they are only officiated and made so by the religious organizations themselves. And even if one chooses to have a marriage ceremony in your church, this should be no reason for the church in question to hold the final authority for what marriage is considered or whether the marriage itself is legal and binding under the civil and secular law, in principle considered apart from religious advocacy. Marriage’s traditional association with religious sacrament does not imply it should only be considered in that context. On the contrary, it should be considered as an all encompassing institution that crosses barriers that exist between people: religion, race, ethnicity, and even sexual orientation. It doesn’t affect my desire to get married if two gay men or women want to get married. Heck, it wouldn’t affect me if one man and 3 women wanted to get married. The principle I desire is equality and moderation of such a widespread institution, not whether it is convenient for the majority that doesn’t want a minority infringing on their supposed rights to solidarity in their age old tradition of man/woman only marriage.

The arguments against gay marriage are noted by the author to be quite mistaken. The argument from tradition doesn’t work by the same reason that the argument from authority doesn’t work. Just because it is a longstanding tradition to lynch African Americans, Jews, homosexuals and the like does not make it right or even justified to keep around. Tradition is a persistence of a cultural practice and only exists as long as there is a majority that agrees it is correct. In short, it is contingent upon popularity and when its popularity fades, so does its applicability. Not that popular opinion is universally applied except in a moderated fashion within the representative democracy system we use in voting. The majority does not get unquestioned dominance over the minority it was victorious over. In fact, in a sporting fashion, the victor is gracious and does not oppress the loser in any sense, and in fact congratulates them for their strong effort in competition.
The other two arguments can be lumped together under the suggestion that if gays get married it will negatively affect straight marriage and the associated values it has, such as family and procreation. Even from my own opinion alone, I see no reason to imply people are so superficial that they will stop getting married or be less motivated to have children just because two people of the same sex get together in the state of marriage (which I must emphasize does NOT imply having children or even having sex for that matter). I know I’d still love my future partner even if I knew gays and lesbians would also have the right to love their partners and share property along with the other associations that come with marriage as an act of sacrifice and unity in the same instance. Just because other people can own a car doesn’t reduce the value you place on your own, does it? Nor does other people being free and able to get the same job as you with the right credentials and experience reduce your enjoyment and merit you find in that same job. We’re told to share things as equally as possible as children and then when we grow up we start becoming attached to such abstract concepts as “traditional marriage” and the “sanctity of family” that we forget that marriage and family are evolving “traditions”. Do people really and sincerely think that a family has to be just a mommy and daddy and associated children? It can be two women or men that are sisters/brothers or lifelong friends, it can be grandparents, it can be uncles or aunts, and it can be the state foster child system even. With the idea of family being so diverse in even its very essence, let alone the accidental manifestations that can occur with tragic events like losing your parents in a plane crash or parents being incapable of raising you, it’s hard to suggest two males or females that love each other and want to raise a child cannot be considered a family just because they happen to have sex a different way or may very well not feel the need to have sex in some cases (as mentioned before). Not to mention I see no reason why I would be deterred from wanting children just because two people that cannot procreate happen to be married. Maybe it’s just the reasonable part of me realizing that marriage is a primarily unifying event and institution, not a free sex and/or children card. Sex can be done responsibly by cohabitating mature adults and children can be raised by otherwise unheard of people. Either of these instances does not reduce the importance of sex as a procreative act or a unifying act between people committed in marriage nor does it suggest children should not be adopted by couples that are either unwilling to have children or unable to in some cases. Differences do not make things incorrect; it is willful misuse to the detriment of others that creates things that are wrong and otherwise evil. Until next time, Namaste and Aloha.

Mike Huckabee on GLBT

http://www.aolnews.com/story/huckabee-likens-gay-marriage-to-incest/984268?cid=10



Well, this isn’t the first time I’ve heard Mike Huckabee referring to gay marriage as equivalent to incest or polygamy, but now I have an article to tear apart piece by piece with every quote noted. And apparently he’s a potential candidate in people’s eyes for the GOP in 2012, out of 193%, I might add. (Yeah, apparently Fox News has special math skills)





But let’s focus on his rhetoric for why gay couples shouldn’t adopt and why we shouldn’t give fair and equal treatment on the great “tradition” of marriage. He replies to why gay couples shouldn’t adopt that “children aren’t puppies”. Well, I’m glad he knows the difference, but I fail to see what the point of such an obvious distinction is. He’s making more equivocations by the second; now all gay couples are like kids who want a pet and don’t realize the responsibilities. I can’t speak for any gay couples, but I seriously doubt they’re so immature that they’d just want a kid to fit in, though some might think that’s a reason these days. Though his quote might also indicate he thinks that gay couples would treat a child like a pet, which is equally silly. But I guess he’s mostly afraid they might “turn” the kid to *gasp* homosexuality. As if that’s more than a drop in the water in the long run.

He then proceeds to suggest that not every group’s interests should be accommodated. Initially this is something I might agree with until he qualifies this by saying that we should only accommodate groups that are in what he calls “the ideal”. Now I can’t imagine what he means by that, but I’d have to guess Protestant straight middle/upper class conservatives. But why would he want that? That sounds suspiciously elitist in that he just wants representation of only the groups that he thinks are worthy of it. But couples that just want to adopt kids but happen to be two men or two women in a committed relationship are not in his “ideal”. He only wants majorities, not any pesky minority he’d have to support. The bigger problem here is that he assumes accommodating someone equates to agreeing with them. I can accommodate the practice of praying before Congress meets and the Christian majority’s very existence (in the form of churches getting tax exempt status for instance) to an extent, but that does not mean I agree with them or am in line with them on many policy issues. Similarly, Huckabee doesn’t have to agree with gay marriage, but if he supports any conservative values, such as the limits on the government to not legislate morality for the country, then he will have to swallow his pride and accept that gays eventually will adopt, if only because less and less people are intolerant of them. Incest and polygamy are on a road I won’t discuss here, since my primary focus is on the man’s bigotry towards what is demonstrably a harmless group with few ill effects on society.

He asks an obviously rhetorical question about gay marriage in the vein of "Why do you get to choose that two men are OK but one man and three women aren't OK?" Well, first off, something being OK doesn’t mean it has to be the majority practice. Not everyone practices missionary position only, and just because there are people that are so sheltered they only perform one sex position doesn’t mean that they’re not OK; they’re just different. And likewise with gay and lesbian couples: they have sex in different ways (and like some straight couples, don’t even view sex as necessary to their relationship) but that doesn’t suggest they’re not ok; again, they’re just different.

He then shifts the burden of proof on gay marriage activists to prove gay marriage is successful, while apparently just begging the question from the start that it doesn’t matter, since they’re not the same as straight marriage. "I don't have to prove that marriage is a man and a woman in a relationship for life," he said. "They have to prove that two men can have an equally definable relationship called marriage, and somehow that that can mean the same thing.” There’s just 2 problems here: 1) Yes you do have to prove marriage is only a man and a woman in a relationship for life, because you make a positive claim requiring proof and clearly marriage wasn’t always the case even in so called Biblical times (the woman was for all intents and purposes property in the time of Abraham for instance) and 2) They could prove it if you stopped purposely sabotaging any attempt they have by automatically judging any deviance as failure from the start. Just because a gay couple is not as popular with people doesn’t mean it can’t work in both principle and practice. Continuing to perpetuate the idea that any abnormality justifies exclusion is only further alienating people that can’t always change what makes them abnormal in people’s eyes (including what sex they are aroused by). Sometimes people just have to look past the surface.

He notes that the country should not "legitimize immorality," although frankly legalizing rape or murder is hardly something any self respecting legislator would do. Gay marriage is hardly agreed to be immoral, thus it is not something that can be presumed to be such. If you interpret a sacred text to say otherwise about gay marriage or homosexual behavior, it does not give you the right to say the country should follow your group, even if it’s in the majority. Otherwise I’d probably be scared for my life since they’d have legislated some policy that suggests I’m less than human because I don’t have any belief in God or have abandoned my church and as an apostate deserve death or exile.

I don’t even need to quote him saying homosexuality is aberrant, unnatural and sinful since that already presumes too many things from the start about how psychology, biology and ethics work. The last thing he says that I’ll quote is suggesting that the government should isolate AIDS patients from the general public to quarantine "carriers of this plague." So then why don’t we just put away everyone that’s HIV positive too if you really don’t like AIDS and believe it’s some sort of “gay disease”? But he’d find out it’s not a gay only disease even if he got his wish to ostracize AIDS patients from the public. Not to mention AIDS isn’t even remotely like the plague. The plague was transmitted through fleas and is bacterial, while AIDS is transmitted through mainly bodily fluid contact and is viral. Please do a little research on immunology before you start suggesting that AIDS is going to kill the world, Huckabee, when it isn’t.

As frustrating as this is, it is something of a relief to find that fewer people seem to agree with Huckabee’s ideas in practice, even if they agree that homosexuality is somehow “bad” or “wrong”. The notion of seeing GLBT people as irreparably damaged or so deviant that they can’t be considered as equals of other individuals in society disgusts me. The fact that I spent time probably every day of the week with GLBT individuals in college made me realize that there is very little different about us in terms of humanity. To bring up the Aristotelian distinction, it is only in accident that we are different, not in essence. We both suffer loss, we both feel happiness and we both seek purpose, all part of the human nature. But I (to my knowledge) only get off on the opposite sex, and they either get off on the same sex or both sexes. And that difference doesn’t bother me, because of one obvious reason: it doesn’t affect my sexuality as to what theirs is. They want tolerance and understanding, not bigotry or willful ignorance, which is little different than stupidity. So if you have a Gay Straight Alliance or some similar group at your high school, college or in your community, go to a meeting. Just talk with them, no preconceptions, just talk with them as a fellow person. Maybe you’ll see things you didn’t think were there before. Until next time, Namaste and Aloha.

American Atheists Convention On Easter

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/04/03/easter.atheists/index.html?hpt=T2

While Easter Sunday is nearly to be celebrated (early in the day, no doubt) by Christians across the world, on this same weekend, the American Atheists are meeting in their 36th convention. This year’s goal in particular is to note that while there are still widespread stereotypes about atheism (one of them especially mistaken, since worshipping Satan as a god would decidedly negate the idea of atheism, lack of god belief) atheists are becoming more accepted, albeit in limited ways. The main way David Silverman, best known as an animator for The Simpsons, observes the change is in the publishing of books such as The God Delusion and The End of Faith by authors Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. While this is a step forward, the dominant stereotype does seem to be ironically reflected in a sense with the group itself. The stereotype that atheism is somehow a religious or ideological movement seeking to destroy Christianity would potentially be seen as validated with the existence of groups such as American Atheists and the Rational Response Squad (popular for the Blasphemy Challenge online). But this line of thinking is mistaken on a few levels.

Groupings of a group that share certain beliefs or lack thereof in the case of atheists does not suggest they are actively seeking to eliminate groups that differ from them. Otherwise the suspicion of Christian bible study groups or the like trying to erase Jews, Catholics and Muslims from the map would probably have some credulity. Yet it is a minority of those groups that seek to eliminate some group, such as Army of God advocating the justified use of violence against abortionists. I have yet to see a group of atheists that is well known in public having any agenda to eliminate religion as a phenomenon from the world (except perhaps the Brights, but I’m not sure of that). If anything, the advocacy is more along the lines of fair treatment of atheism as a minority position in America, alongside such like minded beliefs as Buddhism, Jainism or Laveyan Satanists, all decidedly minorities in this country and all lacking a belief in any deities. The American Atheists want to be recognized equally as Americans alongside Protestants, Jews, Catholics and Muslims, though modern thought doesn’t exactly grant them a lot of trust as I’ve observed. But when Mormons and homosexuals (supposedly viewed by Christians as blasphemers or abominations respectively) are trusted more than atheists (many of whom were more than likely raised Christian), the issue lies with education. If people are told such deceptions as atheists being without an objective source for morality or being against capitalism or other American pastimes (even though there is such a thing as Christian communism), then it’s no wonder atheists are treated like black sheep in America.

Not to mention people have the wrong idea about why the convention for American Atheists is held on Easter. It’s demonstrably paranoid to suggest that they’re using the weekend as a venue to attack Easter. Makes sense for them to choose that weekend, since as Silverman puts it. “The hotels are cheap, and everybody has time off." The choice is little more than an economic expediency, like someone hoarding their sick days and then using them all up for a holiday, not something uncommon to Christians and atheists alike within the right job, I imagine. Until next time, Namaste and Aloha.

Give a Damn About GLBT

http://tv.yahoo.com/blog/true-blood-star-anna-paquin-uses-surprising-medium-to-reveal-sexual-orientation--1126

As hard as it is to keep up with every idol’s sexual orientation, or lack thereof, the revelation about Anna Paquin being bisexual is not what surprised me in the videos for the website http://giveadamn.org, promoting sexual and gender equality. Lady Gaga saying she was straight was what stunned me, though I admit my so called “gaydar” is terrible. In the advertisements in the link at the start, the equality is advocated for LGBT people who are discriminated against in the workplace, in public, even threatened with violence against them just for something that is innately part of them, like their race or their fingerprints (though admittedly some would say that both are fluid today with plastic surgery or the technology to remove fingerprints from your digits). Not to mention the persistent debate regarding the degree to which environment affects the development of sexual orientation and such in relation to how much is genetically predisposed in physiological and chemical processes. But regardless of where you stand, it seems reasonable and fair to care about people’s sexual orientation, even if it’s not to the same degree as others. No one’s asking for people to be interested in every facet of your sexual nature or praise you for being straight, gay or otherwise. But knowing that a person happens to be attracted to the same sex, opposite sex, both, or none does help with improving human relationships. If you know these things, you’re less likely to make a person uncomfortable with an advance that is undesired and likewise with people knowing that they shouldn’t make unwarranted advances on you.

Disagreement about the moral permissibility and nature vs. nurture arguments aside, the GLBT community is a minority and as I recall, protection of minorities against the majority’s dominant hegemony in culture is a particularly American ideal. So why would one insist that a certain minority doesn’t deserve consideration or fair treatment because you believe they can “change”? Seems a similar reason why slavery going away only made people demand that blacks needed to “go back where they came from.” Once you start granting protections to a minority, people’s protests go to the level of trying to eliminate the group in one form or another. The Matthew Shepard Act’s passing was a catalyst for people to justify more extreme measures, saying that they are being denied some right to protest or being forced to tolerate the existence of something their particular deity views as an “abomination,” Except there is no provision within even the Constitution to form any kind of vigilante militia or to go on some crusade because someone happens to be protected by the government from being lynched, persecuted or assaulted (physically or mentally) by people that feel strongly about such an issue. Similar to the murder of George Tiller, there is the possibility you take both an issue such as abortion and your own beliefs regarding the ethical permissibility of that issue’s continued protection so seriously that you will override the sanctity of life you hold so dear and insist that some people have lost that attribute by their own actions. It is important to care about these issues, though the degree to which you do it is central to how the issue will change. Killing or hurting others because they disagree with you or vice versa doesn’t motivate anyone to real change. It compels people to continue to act based on fears, on paranoia, on dysfunctional thinking about the world in general. So please “give a damn” about GLBT, but don’t damn these people from the start. Give peace a chance, as John Lennon said, before he got shot. I certainly hope more death isn’t necessary to make this issue more important than it is today. Until next time, Namaste and Aloha.

Jesus Loves The Little Children (Except If Their Parents Are Gay?)

http://abcnews.go.com/WN/colorado-catholic-school-kicks-student-lesbian-mothers/story?id=10043528

http://www.coloradodaily.com/cu-boulder/ci_14682284#axzz0iykXRdZu

http://www.fatherbillsblog.com/

http://www.boulderpride.org/documents/StatementfromtheParents.pdf

I know this is quite late in response, but its importance has redoubled in recent weeks. As you can see, I’ve tried to look at this from both sides as well as I can and yet I still cannot agree with the decision on the Bishop’s side. This is for a number of reasons, the most obvious involving my own previous enrollment at a local Catholic school in my own area. Which I hardly remember, since I went to mass two days a week at the school and yet also went to a Protestant church on Sundays. And my parents will tell you of an incident (not a huge one, methinks) where after the children’s service with the minister, I crossed myself out of habit and apparently the congregation was a bit stunned. I can’t imagine why they’d be so stunned, unless they were so sheltered and willfully ignorant that they just didn’t know there was a Catholic school two towns away. There’s no excuse besides a pathetic idea of community solidarity that keeps a group of otherwise reasonable people from acting normally when a child raised Protestant and yet going to mass during the week makes the sign of the cross out of a behaviorally induced habit.

But there’s a whole other problem with Catholic interaction with non-Catholics in the community. I was accepted into this Catholic school, since according to the website they accept other faiths, but if it’s anything like the school in Boulder, it stipulates that the parents accept a few points: 1) their child will go to mass during class hours two times a week and 2) the parents will not object to the Catholic mission of the school itself. My parents didn’t have a beef, since it was a good education. The issue stands though that the church in Boulder is cherry picking what is an issue. The justification hinges on the idea that if you are raised by gay or lesbian parents then you will be “confused” and you will think that your parents are bad because the teacher says so in confirmation class or some such nonsense. But I would think they can excuse such a thing as long as the parents are not in a direct conflict with the Catholic Church itself. Being GLBT and Catholic is one thing, being GLBT and protesting the Catholic teaching would be a different thing entirely. The parents in question are incredulous, and for good reason, because their two children had been going to this school for three years and there had been no problem. But apparently once a child goes into kindergarten, then the GLBT-Catholic issue comes to the foreground. I can’t imagine why, since I don’t remember learning anything about Catholicism as a child that wasn’t erased from my mind in consistently going only to Protestant services afterwards. The sign of the cross, the taking of “Eucharist” instead of “Communion”, and maybe the funny collars that I remember seeing the priests wear were the only things that probably stuck, minus the crossing which I probably never did again unless I was at mass.

The argument from the bishop himself continues in the vein that he is defending Catholic teaching along with protecting the children. There is no reason to argue on that point if this was about parents that argued that there is nothing in Catholic teaching against GLBT, which they weren’t. In fact the parents are both baptized Catholics and one was raised in Catholic school consistently. If the school let the kids go to the preschool for three years while knowing their parents are lesbians and thinking to yourself “Hey, isn’t that against Catholic teachings?” and then deciding when they’re going to kindergarten, “Nope, we can’t have that,” then they’ve already shot themselves in the foot. I don’t see how there’s a large difference between preschool and any grade afterwards. The obvious answer though would be confirmation, which usually occurs around the age of reason, which most churches put around 7 or 8. I’m surprised they didn’t start confirmation classes around 3rd grade, which for me would’ve been around the corner. But if that’s the case, then I would think Catholic schools would only have a problem admitting children of GLBT couples around that age. Beforehand, I don’t see why it’s an issue. Even if they teach that marriage is between a man and a woman, the child can distinguish that the Catholic Church can be right in one sense and yet their parents still love them and that “God” loves them as well, even if they’re different. Wouldn’t the Church perform a dual rejection of the child and the parents, where both the child and the parents are not allowed to associate with the Church until they “change their ways,”? Instead they seem to suggest that the child can’t go to the school and yet to my knowledge they don’t have a problem with the child or their lesbian parents taking communion. If they want to apply this universally, they shouldn’t have allowed me into the school, since I would just be “confused” by the Protestant teachings that I was raised in on Sundays. They can allow that “heresy” to continue, but a gay/lesbian family is somehow worse; except it’s not. The hairsplitting of mortal or venial sins only makes one reject the theology all the more in that it tries to micromanage such a thing that’s to be taken on faith and yet can be explained rationally to the point where the wall of mystery comes up. Even if this situation changes, I doubt it will matter, since the point would stand. Catholics have the right to discriminate about whatever they can justify as against their teachings and yet also have a duty to ignore people in contradiction of the faith as well in the spirit of tolerance (not acceptance). And yet here we have them accepting the family in communion and mass and deciding that they can’t allow them into the school, even though the children have been baptized in the Church. Why alienate the child from the school when they already feel a part of the faith community? Just a Colorado Catholic thing, I suppose. Until next time, Namaste and aloha.

GLBT In H.S. Prom=Educational Distractions?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_lesbian_prom_date


I didn’t go to my high school prom and if anything similar to this incident happened at my own high school, it would’ve made me that much less motivated to go. A lesbian teen asked the school to allow her to bring her girlfriend in a tuxedo to the prom in order to get around a prohibition in the rules that required the date to be the opposite sex. Though that may not have been her intention it seems a reasonable compromise to at least conform to some outdated idea of gender roles and have one partner wear male clothes to the prom. But instead of the school rejecting her request and returning her money, getting back the prom tickets and solving the problem without a big ruckus, they CANCEL THE PROM ENTIRELY. I don’t know what the administrators could be thinking when they are quoted as cancelling the prom "due to the distractions to the educational process caused by recent events." Because a lesbian couple distracts from the educational process in Mississippi more than it distracts anywhere else, it seems. We had a gay student at my high school and we’re not exactly in the most enlightened area of Tennessee ourselves and there was no issue in terms of him being at the school, let alone coming to the prom. But I seem to remember he came alone; or he may have transferred because of similar issues with prom rules that exist in our own district.


The point comes across negatively in that the administration seems to think that just because two women who are romantically involved come to a prom, albeit in gender divided clothes, it will distract from the educational process; even though the high school educational process that they no doubt speak of isn’t at a prom in the slightest. One has to wonder why they allow the “distracting lesbian” to even go to the school if she is such a problem to the prom. Though a bigger question remains as to how a prom getting cancelled or having a lesbian couple attend it would even affect educational process. The students must be that focused on whether everyone at the prom is paired up male and female that when the prom has one female/female couple they just can’t focus on their work because their latent homophobia is flaring up. Or they just think a prom is more important that getting an education in general. Not to mention the students are focusing some resentment towards the girl in question, since she supposedly “ruined their senior year”. Yeah, because a prom is what makes your senior year important: not the graduation ceremony and wearing the caps and gowns and being supportive of your fellow students for working hard. No, I suppose that whole process of getting the diploma is bollocks compared to dancing in a crowded room to bad music with hormonally challenged teens trying to get into the fairer sexes’ pants afterwards. Must be my imagination to think students favor a prom over graduating itself as the exemplar moment of their high school years.


The aftermath of this incident suggests that the ACLU is still pursuing the lawsuit against the school for violating the student’s rights. And the school’s suggestion has some merit; that is, allowing a private sponsor to hold the prom in lieu of a public school funded one.And according to the lesbian student she’d probably be excluded from that function as well, since it’s an old generation with money that doesn’t agree with GLBT in general. But one has to wonder why they even bothered to use school funding to sponsor a prom with a rule that they knew one GLBT student could violate with their same sex partner which would they cause them to inevitably cancel the prom entirely. Any student continuing to gripe to the teen in question must have too myopic a standard to consider their fellow student’s feelings about something that they didn’t want to ruin for everyone. One same sex couple at a high school dance shouldn’t rock the boat so much that the party gets cancelled. Students getting exposed to such a thing at their age is part of a larger educational process that the school alleged was being affected. There are going to be minorities in the real world that you don’t agree with, so you should get used to tolerating them even if you don’t agree with them. But this is Mississippi, so I’m not holding my breath that this is going to change anytime soon. Even if the ACLU’s lawsuit succeeds, the school may just elect to their idea of making a private prom instead. And if that occurs, the girl should just move on, in my opinion. This whole incident isn’t worth holding a grudge against inbred Podunk retards that think that two women or men having a committed “Biblical” relationship is still an abomination or some such rubbish. Move on and leave the state if necessary; real friends accept you as you are, as an individual who can change and progress in the world. Real friends don’t bitch at you for happening to love the same sex and wanting to go to the prom like other high school students.

Tennesee + Racism + Obama=Awkward Emails

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35743820

While I had only heard about these emails in passing, reading this article reminded me that this has happened three times. I’m not certain of the contents of the email regarding so called “white pride” but it could be construed as less than favorable towards the situation of the United States as having a president with African American ancestry since it suggests that whites have to band together on white pride. Although that could be taken as simple racial solidarity, it’s bad wording on the part of whoever started the notion. I do remember reading explicitly about the email that has President Obama’s eyes as the only thing visible in a black background. I believe it had something to do with him hiding (from responsibility?), but I can’t be sure without further research. The conversation is revived with this recent (in fact Sunday morning) article that speaks of a representative of Tennessee hotels and restaurants as well as a CEO of the Tennessee Hospitality Association sending an email to various people, including close friends. The contents involve comparing the First Lady to a chimpanzee, the partner of Tarzan Cheeta if I understand correctly. Now in all fairness this isn’t exactly uncommon emails between close friends who happen to be conservatives and if that was the case, then this wouldn’t be on the news. The fact that this person sends the email to people in the media and local governance sends a message that isn’t going to be changed so quickly in a few days or even weeks.

Tennessee’s notoriety for racism and white pride is not unjustified, but my own personal experience of these things in relation to black people is only representative of what is a medium sized town’s tri-county high school. And prior to starting this rant of sorts, I don’t consider myself a Tennessean proper or an American. These things are relative and I could’ve easily been born elsewhere in the world, so my comments on how these incidents affect Tennessee are more an issue of race relations than stereotypes of the Southeast.

There were many jokes on the bus involving the n-word as well as a common affirmation that the Confederacy was something to idolize, though one doubts if these people necessarily appreciate the Old South for the same reasons historical and literary scholars do. I can’t say this reflects anything beyond a context of ill educated and otherwise impoverished home life in my humble opinion, but with these emails, the notion of Tennessee being as bad as Kentucky or Alabama or even Mississippi in terms of race relations becomes relevant. Sensitivity and consideration are necessary in sending these emails around. I myself don’t do much in the way of passing around chain emails or sending out messages with some humorous/satirical image about a person in the media. But when I do get such emails they’re of a personal nature (and not really making pseudo racist statements about people of color).

When a representative of state government and relations sends out an email and forgets that they’re sending it to people that work in journalism (those in particular) and thinks that it will be fine is not taking things seriously enough. I can get a chuckle out of otherwise offensive jokes within the right context (Family Guy, South Park and the like come to mind) and when the news media isn’t involved, the propagation of internet memes is an intriguing and creative way to spread around culture through the wide expanse of the World Wide Web. But it smacks of brute idiocy or degeneration of empathy to think you can send this email to anyone and they’ll just chuckle about it and not say a thing. Especially if you’re in a position of responsibility to both represent your state’s image (albeit in the form of hotels and restaurants) and also heading an organization promoting hospitality, which doesn’t come across well in sending out such a set of pictures. Aren’t CEOs a bit too busy to use their time in the way a college student or political activist would be doing in the same context? Or maybe it’s easier to do that job than I think. Either way, I doubt this will stop anytime soon and people will be more interested in news involving shootings in churches or other such stories and forget all about this “minor” issue, sweeping the issue under the rug, proverbially speaking. Until next time, Namaste and aloha.


(Here's an example of this new satire of Michelle Obama that I found)

Being Pro "Life" or "Anti" Abortion

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/opinion/28kristof.html?em

While I consider myself a general moderate on issues of abortion and valuing a combination of liberty and affirmation of life, it can be frustrating to hear the same people who complain about how "abortion is murder" or how homosexual activity is "destroying the family values" or some such drivel will also support war in any form or force people to go through grueling anguish and suffering to bring children into the world that will not survive beyond their 5th year or more. It's that combination of willful hypocrisy and self imposed compartmentalization that makes me think it's just a matter of clever labels that avoid implied positions like "anti abortion" or "anti GLBT". Instead they call themselves "pro life" and "pro family" to avoid the fact that there is little connection of pro life to valuing the death penalty or waging war in lieu of nonviolent means; and similarly that being pro family does not involve denying gay couples the right to adopt children and give them a family they'd otherwise be without because of the red tape and waiting lists that come with adoption agencies simply because they are two men or two women.

With pro life, it seems like it should be affirming life as a valuable thing in and of itself. Not just in the context of a potential life or the preservation of it to the detriment of other lives interconnected with it (maternal death due to poor medical care for instance or the demonization of abortion only pushing women to get back alley procedures that only cause them more suffering than necessary). Pro life should reasonably say that even a murderer should be given life in prison to ruminate on their crimes and misdeeds instead of saying that we can take their life in our hands and use it in whatever way we see fit to fulfill a twisted sense of justice. And instead of trying to force abstinence only education on children, perhaps it would be best to approach sex as a natural process that leads to life, but also teach teens responsibility for such an act that carries that value. Pro life in short, has to be expanded beyond what is a thinly veiled hatred of abortion that spreads misinformation or general bigotry towards a procedure that while objectionable in some theological manner, does not automatically become the ethical equivalent of me pulling a gun on a stranger and repeatedly shooting them. Especially considering the so called "child" is commonly a child only in the eyes of parents who love it, not every woman who happens to be pregnant and in many cases scared beyond imagination.

And with pro family, there is a parallel need for expansion of the position beyond saying that gays and lesbians cannot adopt because two men or two women can't bring up a child with distinct gender roles and also a clarification that sex is only part of a meaningful relationship of people who love each other. It could stand to expand the idea of family to transgendered individuals as well, though one might have you believe they're confused or trying to play God with their biology. Not to mention the idea that any family that isn’t a male and a female seems doomed to failure in the eyes of this position. Not even a single parent is as esteemed as two people who only feel obligated to stay together because of divorce being anathema to them or a so called duty to society that overrides keeping their children happy and well cared for. But as long as people insist on keeping ideas of life or family within narrow and purposely ignorant constraints that keep out minorities of one stripe or another, the real essence of their message is mangled beyond recognition. Not unlike tearing me apart and saying that I'm only a valuable person because of the part of my brain allowing me to think critically on topics such as this. But I kind of need my hands and arms and torso and eyes to sit at this laptop and put this together, don't I?

Not Straight? In My Military? Sure, Why Not?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100223/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_military_gays;_ylt=Aj1bOZFAxjXBJQMrFTzMro.s0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTNoZHRpbHVwBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTAwMjIzL3VzX21pbGl0YXJ5X2dheXMEY2NvZGUDbW9zdHBvcHVsYXIEY3BvcwMzBHBvcwMxMARwdANob21lX2Nva2UEc2VjA3luX3RvcF9zdG9yeQRzbGsDY2hpZWZzd2FybmFn

After waking up quite late and checking Yahoo News, I found a compelling story to mull over. The gist of the article is that the Chief Officers in the various subgroups of the U.S. Army are less than enthusiastic over the President's goal to repeal the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy. Part of this no doubt has to do with tradition and general army deprogramming of certain interpersonal relationships (such as tolerance of explicitly different people: race, creed, sexuality, etc.) But the primary issue does seem to be practical for the motivation of the chiefs to advocate a slow process of change. With the U.S. in two wars (I thought we were in just one, but two sounds about right) the change of allowing openly gay people or gay people at all in the armed forces would apparently be difficult to implement.

Now, I understand these guys are uncomfortable about the whole idea of having GLBT people in service of the traditionally straight or nonsexual groupings within the army. And I realize they're probably in my parent's generation, who still refer to GLBT with such euphemisms as "a little funny" or "overly feminine" or the lovely one that's still around, "queer". This only makes me realize the idea of change would probably have to wait until they're all replaced or just have a moment of realization that gay people are just like everyone else and should be treated as such.




The implementation of change would no doubt cause even people that are within my own generation that serve in the army some unease. But somehow I doubt that just because there are people serving alongside you that "play for the other team" in a manner of speaking, that you can't swallow your pride, suck it up and stop whining to God about it and do the primary job you signed on for, protecting the country and the ideals it stands for. And isn't one of the primary ideals of the U.S. that oft quoted set of rights: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? If all the majority of straight men and women in the military can suppress their sexual desires, then what makes you think the GLBT can't do the same thing? Misinformation, superstition and other forms of self deception, that's what!