Continue reading Dumbest arguments against anti-discrimination laws, part 1
Tag Archives: lgbt
That’s not what persecuted means, part 2
None of that is religious persecution.
You know what is religious persecution? Having your grandfather and later your father arrested for leading a Bible study. Having the police show up at your school when you are nine years old and they take you into custody, put you in an interrogation room, and question you for hours about your parents’ religious beliefs, while your little sister is held in another room, and they tell you can see her again if you will just admit that your parents are preaching illegally.
I knew a woman whose childhood included those things. She was attending Seattle Pacific University and we had a class together. She was about ten years older than the rest of the students, wanting to finally get a degree, because she had spent her high school years (years) taking refuge in a U.S. Embassy in the Soviet Union.
Everyone looks great in purple!
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And everyone can be someone:
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And everyone can help:
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No one likes a bully (except just about everyone)
Of course we cheer, you say. He wasn’t just the bad guy, he was an extremely bad bad guy! No matter how egregious or overly cruel his final moments were, he had it coming! We’re just cheering the concept of justice.
I get it, truly I do. And I have certainly cheered many such scenes, myself.
However…
Continue reading No one likes a bully (except just about everyone)
Come out, come out, wherever you are!
Since I am still occasionally surprised to learn that someone I know or work with hasn’t figured out that I’m gay: my husband (Michael) and I are both men, and we’re very much in love with each other and happy together.
14 beats 11
During the American Revolutionary War (1775-83), the government of the state of Georgia had purchased a large amount of goods on credit from a merchant who lived in South Carolina by the name of Captain Robert Farquhar. At the end of the war, Georgia refused to pay the amount owed Captain Farquhar on the grounds that Farquhar had been a British Loyalist—not on the grounds that the supplies they received had been defective in any way, or that he had otherwise failed to deliver what he promised. It seemed to be nothing more than spite…
Stripes and stars
My coming out process had been slow and incremental. I spent most of my teens wrestling with the idea, trying to convince myself that I wasn’t gay. For a long time I tried to be either bisexual or resign myself to a life a celibacy. I don’t want to get into the psycho-social reasons that some of us gay people cling to a bisexual identity for a while (and the disservice that does to actual bi people). Julie and I became active in a very out lesbian & gay chorus while we were still married to each other. By then a lot of people knew that I wasn’t heterosexual. But a lot of people didn’t. Most of my friends who knew seemed to be all right with it, but no one in my family knew.
I had wanted to come out to the family (and some old friends who were still in the dark at the time) earlier, but had been talked out of it. After Julie and I legally separated and I was finally able to admit aloud that I was definitely not bi, I felt a need to make a definitive statement.
It’s the thought that counts
The recent remakes of V and True Grit, on the other hand…
So NBC has launched a remake of the ’70s detective series, Ironside, and they cast Blair Underwood in a role based very loosely on the character originated by Raymond Burr. I’ve watched the pilot, and it wasn’t awful. I’m not even sure I would call it bad. But mediocre certainly springs to mind. Supporting characters completely lacking in anything resembling a personality does as well.
Sometimes series (whether books or television) take a while to find their footing, so I’m going to probably give it a few more episodes. But by the time I finished watching the pilot, I needed something to cleanse my brain, and by chance I’ve had the TiVo recording re-runs of another Raymond Burr iconic series, Perry Mason. It was truly a joy to watch a 1962 episode.
One of the things I loved about the classic Mason television series, as well as the books, was how often Mason would quote specific principles of law. For instance, in the episode I watched that night, Della Street, Mason’s secretary, has been accused of aiding and abetting a felony murder which may have been committed by an old friend. Mason points out to the officer that in order for her to be found guilty, they have to prove that she knew her friend had committed a felony before she acted, that she willingly assisted the friend, and that both she and the friend were doing what they were doing with the intent to avoid arrest for the crime.
Which is true of many of our laws. What you’re thinking and why you’re doing what you are doing determine whether the act is a crime. It is seldom just the action, but also the intent. This is a legal principle that has been with us since at least the times of the Ancient Sumerians…
Try to stop me!
The person specifically referenced the post and said they hoped I would keep writing. I hadn’t intended to say anything that indicated I was considering not posting, but I know that sometimes when I’m writing a post in a hurry that I phrase things weird. Even when I’m not in a rush, I make odd typos (the words I type are correctly spelled, but they are the wrong word, usually a related word, but wrong), which can also lead to misunderstanding.
So I re-read the post, and read it again, and couldn’t find anything weird.
Then I got a second email from a different person, with the same sentiment…
Loving condemnation
So everyone was quoting some statements that the newish Pope made in a very long interview this week, where he said that “we” shouldn’t focus only on fighting gay rights, stopping abortion, and stopping people from having access to birth control.
The shallow media reported it as a huge shift away from the church being politically active. The liberal blogosphere touted it as an admonishment of groups such as the Catholic League and the National Organization for Marriage who spend 99% of their time harping on those three subjects. The pseudo-liberal blogosphere touted it as a significant shift in both tone and objectives. And the various forces on the right, including those anti-gay, anti-abortion, anti-women’s rights organization all insisted that the Pope wasn’t changing anything at all.
Folks like the blustering jerk from the Catholic League, Bill Donahue, took the statements as encouragement to double-down on the hate and denial. He insisted, in fact, that organizations like his aren’t obsessed with only being anti-gay, anti-abortion, and anti-women. No, according to him it’s the liberal media and the Obama administration who somehow make it seem as if all the Catholic League cares about is gays, abortions, and birth control. Those things are still wrong, and they need to be fought, but the fight needs to continue as part of the overall mission of the church to love everyone, no matter how sinful.
And the thing is, the rightwing anti-gay catholic spokespeople are correct. That is much closer to what the Pope said. Maybe he is admonishing the most vocal political action organizations to soften their tone a bit, but the very best spin you can put on his words is still, “hate the sin, love the sinner.”
It reminds me of a sequence from the Sandman graphic novels by Neil Gaiman. There’s one long story line which involved the Devil resigning, kicking all the lost souls and demons out of hell, locking the gates of hell, and then handing the key over to Dream, who does not want it. At the end of the story, two angels receive a message from God to take the key, re-open hell, call all the souls and demons back, and start running it again.
There’s a scene after that where some souls are being tortured by a demon, and one of the two angels now in charge interrupts to admonish the demon. He explains to both the demon and the tortured soul that all of this is part of the creator’s plan. The souls sent to hell aren’t being tortured out of cruelty and hatred, but out of love. The demon will continue to torture the souls exactly the same way that they always have, except now they are doing it out of love. Because god loves everyone, even the souls he has condemned to an eternity of torment in hell. So the torture isn’t being administered for cruel reasons, but out of love.
As the angel departs and the demon resumes the torture, one of the souls says, “Actually, that makes it worse.”
Yes. Yes it does.
Update: This post rounds up more of the details in case you don’t understand just how anti-gay the pope’s position still is: Pope Francis Says More Nice Words About LGBTs, Changes Nothing
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