Another case in point
In my previous post I suggested the fervor of ex-gay evangelists probably had more to do with the need to convince themselves of the correctness of their course than it does to convert others to their cause. This wasn't a random or mean-spirited accusation. It seems those with the most to hide are often the ones most loudly proclaiming their virtue.
Only under Khrushchev did the first woman appear in the Politburo--Ekaterina Furtseva, known as Catherine the Great. As Minister of Culture, she believed unquestioningly in the slogan: "There is no sex in the U.S.S.R.!" and fought mercilessly for morality in art. Yet the entire elite was well aware of her torrid affairs: scarred veins on her wrists bore witness to her ill-starred passion.
Ekaterina is hardly alone with her inner struggles. Nor is she alone externalizing her personal struggle and turning it into a public crusade: Jimmy Swaggart, John Paulk and Jim West come immediately to mind. In the words of the immortal bard, "Methinks thou doest protest too much."
Unnecissarily harsh
I've been thinking about the letter(s) to which Jason responded. It's easy to dismiss such people as loony and I must apologize for using that word. If you missed the reference in the title of my previous post, I do understand his words were well intended, though I'm not sure if he was trying to convince Jason of the proper path for Jason's life as much as he was trying to convince himself of the proper path for his own life. Perhaps most sobering for me is I am personally acquainted with such individuals.
Several years ago, when I was first coming out and coming to grips with my own sexuality, I penned a web site called One Gay Mormon. Yes, you can find it still at www.onegaymormon.com. I have left it as is. I think it has value as a snapshot of the early stages of my coming out. I'm sure there are others in the early stages of their own coming out process who will be able to relate to the thoughts and feelings expressed there. Indeed one friend of mine continues to quote that web site on a fairly regular basis. I mention it because things in Jason's post reminded me of things I wrote there.
I know what you've been through: the one-night stands, the insincere, unfaithful partners, the men you don't really like but sleep with anyway, and all that desperate searching for your next sexual fix. You've got to end it, for your own good and for the good of those around you.
You need to realize that the men you are having sex with don't really love you. In fact, they hate you. They only use you for their lustful purposes, not for any higher form of love.
Unlike homosexuals, heterosexuals sacrifice themselves and their personal desires for the sake of their partners. They commit to each other and care for each other even when times are difficult. Being “gay” is only about sex, and that’s no way to have a life. Real love is nurturing and fulfilling. It’s something that two men just can't have for each other. You might tell yourself you have a real love, but real love is heterosexual according to God’s plan.
I have always believed and continue to believe that being gay is what you make of it. What expectations do you have for your gay life? Do you buy into the myth that men are not capable of making lasting relationships with each other? Do you believe that there is someone out there who can be committed and loving? Is monogamy important to you? Or not? You will find what you look for.
Evergreen was no different. Three times I listened to conversations that can be summed up like this: "I just can't imagine living together with a guy. That's so gay." Finally the third time I stopped them and said, "Guys, I wouldn't do it any other way. I don't want sex. I want to fall in love. I want to settle down. I want to find a mate." I didn't ask them why living with a life partner was somehow more gay than cruising for your next lay, or why it was somehow worse. I already knew that answer. You see as long as the sex is meaningless you can justify your behavior as "a phase," an aberrant predilection for a type of sex. In so doing you also marginalize and diminish what you are feeling. You don't have to face the fact that your feelings are much deeper than mere desire or lust. You can convince yourself that it and you are wicked, evil and wrong.
I know of a gentleman who has accepted the fact that he is gay, that he will never be able to form a lasting, fulfilling relationship with a woman, but still insists that celibacy is the right choice, at least for him. His reasoning is he was not impressed with life in the gay community. When questioned further one discovers the only gay "community" he's had any experience with is at BYU, the Mormon equivalent of Boston College. This means everyone is semi- to severely closeted. He has two options at BYU for expression of his sexuality. One is anonymous sex, with the attending fears of being caught, or of being fingered by a trick who gets caught and caves to pressure to name those with whom he has dallied. The other is "dating on the sly," afraid to spend too much time together lest someone become suspicious and turn them in. Either way, this aspect of their life remains a huge secret, the discovery of which could (and most likely would) lead to expulsion from school and being shamed by his religious community and family. Great way to live, don't you think? Is it any wonder he doesn't want to be a part of that community?
These men, like those who have written Jason, bought the myth that gay men are not capable of lasting relationships. They believe their attractions for men are wicked and therefore incapable of bringing peace and joy to their lives. They may also harbor a deep seeded belief that because of their desires they themselves are unworthy of love. How do you expect to form a loving relationship with someone if you believe that love is tainted and evil? So many men jump into the gay world expecting the expression of their sexuality to be some balm of Gilead and magically erase scarring from years of fear, self-doubt and self-hatred. They don't understand that what you hope for and what you are looking for can be two completely different things. They found what they were looking for: confirmation of their base nature.
The other myth that people buy into and perpetuate is the Myth of the Gay Lifestyle. There is no such thing. People hear about (or visit) a bathhouse and assume that all gay men frequent bathhouses. They hear about wild sex parties and assume that is how all gay men spend their weekends. Get real, people. Have you ever thought that bathhouse and orgy stories are simply more useful to gay detractors than other more mundane aspects of gay life? It's kind of hard to preach hellfire and damnation, trying to prove the evil nature of homosexuals by using a group of friends meeting after church services for coffee. For all you ex-gays out there, how hard did you look to find what you thought you wanted? How quick were you to give up?
There are as many different kinds of relationships in the gay world as there are in the straight world. Some straight couples function as equals. Some are dominated by the man who expects his wife to clean his house and cook his meals. Some are dominated by the woman who wears the pants. Some remain faithful their whole lives. Other's have not remained faithful. Still others have open marriages, America's dirty little swinging secret. Some never get married, unless they happen to live in a common law state where it kicks in automatically. Then there are the polygamists, both in Southern Utah and Saudi Arabia.
There are predators and users in the gay world, just as there are predators and users in the straight world. There are men and women on both sides of the fence who have more baggage than in conducive to a relationship of any kind. My straight lady friends have as many dating nightmare stories to tell as I do.
To say that gay men are all the same and capable of only one kind of relationship is absurd and dishonest. Perhaps the complexities of homosexual attitudes about sex and relationships are material for another post. Suffice it to say, you can find anything you want in the gay community, whether it be copious, anonymous sex or a man who wants to share his life and his love with you. You just have to be honest about and fully conscious of what you are looking for.
Pavers on the Road to Hell
Jason Kuznicki posts an absolutely poetic response to an ex-gay loony.
Definately worth a look. Also be sure not to miss the essay mentioned in his post.
Of carts and horses.
Apparently a 28 year old man has died in South Korea after neglecting his nutritional requirements in favor of playing video games on-line. This, of course, has authorities worried about Internet addiction and will, I'm sure, add more fuel to the fire burning over the deleterious effects of video games.
I'm not convinced that the Internet or video games has any more addictive power than cocaine, meth, alcohol, sex or even ice cream. There may be tendencies toward addictive behavior in an individual, but it's my personal, uneducated belief that there is something deeper at work when it comes to addiction. Instead of demonizing video games—which I love to play, but will freely admit have little or no-redeeming social value and many are beyond tasteless—people should be asking why this man found life on-line preferable to reality. One could also ask why an individual prefers life in a bottle to reality. It seems to me that people tend to prefer to medicate than deal with pain, whether phyical or psychological. The Internet was simply this man's drug of choice.
No one started talking about the deleterious effects of employment by the United States Postal Service when one of its employees snapped and gunned down several of his co-workers, this despite the fact that "going postal" is now a part of the vernacular. For every Internet addict there are at least hundreds if not thousands of people who manage their time on-line in a healthy manner. For every alcholoic there hundreds if not thousands of people who drink responsibly. For every gamer who makes violence a part of his reality there are hundreds if not thousands of gamers who lead quiet, peaceful lives. Stop blaming the substance or object of addiction. Blaming video games or the Internet for this man's death seems to me like blaming the dead bolt for a person's OCD.
Growing Up And Growing Old
Meandering through the blogosphere today I came across this little gem:
In grad school, when I was around 26 or so, my friend V. was dating a guy in his mid-30's. I made the same kind of jokes about how he was dating a senior citizen. Again, these jokes were not appreciated by the mid-30's boyfriend.
I didn't really get what all of the fuss was about. I didn't really think that these guys were too old (in fact, I had pretty major crushes on both of them). For me, 30 or 35 was just another stop on the seemingly endless life that was stretching out in front of me.
What I don't think I understood then is that 30 or 35 IS old. We become old once we really understand how short life is and how quickly the years pass by. A 23-year-old cannot understand this. A 30-year-old often can, and once you hit 35 or so, you definitely realize how short and precious life is. In this way, 35 is closer to 65 than it is to 25. So what we really envy in younger people isn't their energy, optimism, or taut skin (I only ever had the last one anyway), but their IGNORANCE. That's something we'd really like to recapture: the feeling that we have our whole lives ahead of us, and that anything is possible.
Reading this fellow's philosophical exposition about his mid-life crisis struck a chord for me. I turned 38 last month. For the first 37 years of my life one birthday was pretty much like the next. When I turned 18 I expected some, if not radical at least noticeable, change in the way I felt about myself, life or at least Saturday morning cartoons. Nope. Twenty-one was the next marker that came and with without so much as a ho hum. Then thirty. By the time I was 35, I didn't expect much from birthdays or aging, the inexorable march of time being slow enough as to pass by unnoticed.
Needless to say I was caught off guard when 38 felt different than 37. I have joked it must be because I am now officially "pushing 40." I don't think that's it, though. I don't necessarily feel old. In fact, based on where I am in life, I think my outlook is more like the twenty-somethings from above. I do feel like my whole life is still ahead of me. In fact, given the course my life is taking at the moment, I'm in much more of an early twenties stage of life than a late thirties stage. Having said that, I don't necessarily feel young either. I look good for my age. I always have. The margin of error in people's estimation of my age is decreasing, however, but that doesn't bother me too much. Not to mention, I've been married and divorced. I have two kids, a nominal career and a mortgage. Carefree doesn't really describe my life anymore. What I think has happened is something has finally clicked, sort of like when you get on the freeway an your automatic transmission makes that final shift into overdrive and the pitch of the engine drops to a comfortable hum and you know you're set to just cruise along...if that makes any sense.
So, anyway, here's to the remainder of the road trip and the unexpected turns, interesting stops and broadening horizons to be found along the way.
Beam me out, Scotty.
I occasionally joke with my Trekker friends about waiting for someone to invent the transporter. I can't imagine any one thing that would more radically alter our economy. Admittedly, I don't try very hard, but think about it. If you want to live in B.F.E. Montana and work in Los Angeles, New York or even Tokyo, what's to stop you? You could get up, shower, have breakfast, take a deep breath of fresh mountain air and beam in in time for your 10 o'clock meeting with your clients. Need to be in Tokyo to put out a fire? No problem. Be there in five minutes. (Scotty always did move those sliders very deliberately.)
Obviously the auto and airline industries would become obsolete. Ouch. But think about what it would do to real estate as well. The definition of prime real estate would be radically altered. Now, I'm not so naive as to think this would come into our world in a Trekish utopian fashion. I can't see government being able to build any kind of consensus on something that would tank and/or radically alter several major industries. It would end up being a private industry. I'm sure there would be a very long time when teleporting would be the province of the wealthy and corporate big wigs, and the masses would still end up on a 13 hour flight to Tokyo, not unlike today's private jets vs. cramming into coach on a commercial airline.
It's a fun idea to toy with, but that's about it. However, I read something today that made me wonder if we weren't closer to this future than we might think.
I guess I'm just weary of hearing that beating terrorism means doing what we've always done but a whole lot harder, with more firmly gritted teeth. That's what Iraq's about, it seems to me: fighting the Gulf War over again, but this time with feeling. It's like rebuilding the World Trade Center and calling it The Freedom Tower or whatever. Why not call it the Lack-of-Imagination Tower?
I live in Montana, way out in the country, near towns that have been abandoned and depopulated and could use a few resources from the threatened cities that have made themselves sitting ducks for sabotage by building their infrastructures so dense and tall that a pellet gun could knock them over. There's a price for supersaturating small areas with people, wealth, and technology, and now we're paying it by trying to secure in thousands of ways targets that are inviting as they come.
Ideas, please, the kookier the better. Mine, as I've said, is scatter, reduce our profile, go to work in our homes as much as possible instead of converging every morning on Wall Street and Times Square, and let them try to hit a moving target. And don't build that foolish Freedom Tower thing.
I have also said from time to time if I could telecommute, I'd move farther out and get away from the city. There are two issues with telecommuting. Businesses did flirt with telecommuting for a little bit in the late 90s. However inviting from a monetary/flexibility standpoint telecommuting first appears, the fact still remains that people like face time with their colleagues. That is going to be a big issue to overcome. I kind of think we are hardwired for personal interaction. Perhaps as broadband and web cams become more ubiquitous, and bandwidth improves...so...that conver...sations...have a more...real...time feel to... ... ...them, we'll learn to adjust our need for personal interaction to video conferencing. Can't decide if that's a good thing or not. It's hard to predict how that would affect human development. On the other hand, I know people through the Internet I would call friends whom I have never met in person. So maybe we've already started redefining that paradigm.
The other issue is quality of life. You can take the boy out of the city, but you can't take the city out of the boy. I have a good friend who is definitely an urbanite. He grew up and lived most of his life in Manhattan, with some time spent in Tokyo. He recently moved to Palm Springs for his retirement years looking for a more relaxed lifestyle than he had. However, even more recently he rented an apartment in San Francisco so he could "escape" to the city. For some people, the breathtaking scenery and the fresh air of western Montana is all they need. Good friends, BBQs and a local watering hole is enough for their contentment and satisfaction. Other people need more diversity, more energy. There is no symphony in Palm Springs. No opera. There are good restaurants in Palm Springs, but no where near the choice San Francisco offers. Even less in western Montana, I would think. Given the choice, how many would really want to flee the cities? How many would jump at the chance to get out of the rat race and hellish commutes, only to end up missing other aspects of urban life and moving back? How long would it take Bozeman to morph from a rural college town to something a little more cosmopolitan? Do residents of Bozeman want that to happen in the first place? Then there are questions of resources and infrastructure, creating a time zone hell and so on and so on.
Telecommuting isn't the panacea it initially appears to be any more than scattering to the country is a very practical suggestion, nice as it is to ponder. Telecommuting does have the virtue of being a more realistic avenue of thought than waiting for Scotty to be able to beam you in and out of the city.
AARRRRRGGGG!!!
I got on-line this morning to make a credit card payment only to discover that my checking account was in the red by $233. I'm the sort of person who usually knows to within $100 what my checking account balance is. Since I was expecting a number closer to a positive $1400, it goes with out saying I was somewhat taken aback.
Pulling up my transaction history I found 11 ATM transactions totaling about $1900, transactions I absolutely did not make.
Obviously I'm upset about having been robbed in this way, but what really irritates me is the bank did not catch it and stop it. I've done enough work with e-commerce to know what kinds of behavior will trip fraud alarms and prevent a transaction from completing. I also know that most fraud detection is done by third party vendors, but occasionally the bank itself will refuse a transaction. What happened to my account is classic fraudulent behavior: multiple transactions in a short span of time—probably less than 12 hours, certainly less than 24—several with identical transaction amounts.
In the past VISA has called me based on purchase patterns they found suspicious. I swim with a local team and usually buy my speedos from a company in Australia. Once I happened to also purchase CDs from BMG on the same day which shows up as New York. Independant purchases in far flung locales is indeed a trigger a fraud alert, but still within the realm of possibility in today's cyber world and no where near as suspicious what happened this time.
What gives? Am I to assume Washington Mutual doesn't have basic fraud detection procedures in place? I don't know enough about the relationship between banks and their debit cards and the credit card companies to know where I should direct my frustration. I've been largely happy with Washington Mutual, but this is definitely raising questions about whether or not I wish to continue banking there. We'll see if they manage to assuage my concerns before this is all over.
UPDATE:
WaMu did resolve things in fairly short order. It took them four business days to give me a provisional credit, pending resolution of the inquiry. I was told it could take up to 45 days to resolve the matter. I had a letter making the provisional credit official two days later. Not bad. Still bugged more wasn't done to stop it, but in the end, I guess it's their money that was stolen. I guess I should let it go.
More blinders. More hypocrites.
In many British cities, there are now demands for sexual segregation in schools and for separate sharia courts to try Muslim defendants. The electoral strength of Muslims is great enough to encourage pandering from all three parties.
I do not understand this. Can I ask one simple question? Why did you move to Britain? I suppose some might prefer Britain’s climate to the desert. I can't imagine anyone preferring boiled beef to ... anything. Islam isn't very alcohol friendly so I wouldn't imagine it would be for the Guinness. So why did you leave your native land and move to a foggy, damp country ridiculed for its atrocious cuisine?
In the Norwegian class I took last year at the state-run Rosenhof School [in Norway], I made friends with students from Muslim countries who were easygoing and open-minded. Yet they were the secularized (or, perhaps, semi-secularized) exceptions among the immigrants from their part of the world; that was why they were in a class made up of people from seventeen different countries in Europe and Asia (plus me, the sole American), all of us with educated backgrounds and at least a smattering of English, rather than in one of the many sexually segregated, Muslim-only classes down the hall. In those classrooms, women sat swathed in fabric, with male relatives at their sides, providing the family escort without which they were prohibited from leaving the house.
Why Norway? Again, probably not for the weather, though I'd be willing to bet that women forced to wear burkas are secretly relieved to be in a country where a burka might actually work to their advantage. However, since women in burkas generally are not allowed to have a voice in family matters, it is highly unlikely that she pressured her husband to move to cooler climes.
So why did you leave your native lands? Was it for financial opportunity you could not have in your own land? Was it for freedom of expression you could not have under your dictatorial/theocratic governments? Was it to escape the fear of being the next victim of a capricious and repressive regime? Then next question is: Why do you want to recreate that now in your new home?
The West is hardly perfect. Churchill has been quoted as saying, "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others," and yet, we must be doing something right or all the Pakistanis living in Norway would have opted for Jordan or Iran or Indonesia where their religion is securely enshrined in culture and politics.
In typical fundamentalist fashion, however, no personal responsibility is accepted for the state of one's life. It's not because your culture and beliefs are backwards, oppressive and counterproductive. It's because someone else is holding you back. It is because of a world of infidels that corrupts the "true order" of things. They see no hypocrisy in living among the infidels. They will not see that it is weaknesses in their own culture and belief system that led to an inhospitable political/social/financial environment.
This is not unique to Islam. Look at our own Senator Santorum, blaming liberal ideas for the corruption of Catholic priests. It had nothing to do with the backward Patriarchal Protection Society that drives the Catholic church. It had nothing to do with an organization run by a man believed to be infallible and therefore highly resistant to admitting fault or showing weakness.
Perhaps this is some kind of organized invasion. Are Islamic families being asked to endure the company of infidels to plant the seeds of Islam around the globe? While it sounds like a great premise for a Tom Clancy book, I rather doubt it.
The biggest question is what are we in the West going to do about it? At what point do we say, "No, this is my country. You moved here. If you don't like the culture here, if you don't like the values we have here, then we would appreciate it if you would find somewhere else to live more to your liking." Is it when groups of young Islamic immigrants begin perpetrating violence against native peoples who don't conform to their ideology? Is it when politicians who dare to speak out against such behaviors are assassinated? Is it when Islamic fundamentalists demand their own Shari’ah court system and expect to be exempt from Western law? Is it when our women are forced to wear burkas for fear of physical violence on the streets? Do we just surrender to political correctness until we are the ones begging a boon of our now Muslim dominated societies?
These are questions that we ask of an ideology becoming more and more visible through it's vitriolic and violent actions and speech. There are some who think we should be asking similar questions of our own ideologues.
Worth reading:
Getting Messy.
David Parker is back in the news as he gets ready to go to trial for is arrest for criminal trespassing. Honestly, this whole thing has entered the realm of the ridiculous. Parker's "simple" request to be notified of anything he deems inappropriate for his child is just inane. Yeah, there's a law, but it's one thing for a school to send out a mass mailing before a scheduled event and something entirely different to have to keep track of each parent's preferences and force teachers to check their lesson plans against that list, and to make the school provide alternate supervision for that time period, since I'm sure turning them loose on the playground for a while wouldn't go over so well. If you don't like what is being taught in the public school system, you are completely free to school your child at home or enroll them in some private institution that enshrines your belief system.
The flip side is the vigor with which the school district is prosecuting Parker. If the lady writing her opEd piece on Fox is to be believed , the school district is looking at a widespread ban on Parker's presence. Also stupid. He's been arrested. He's going to trial. Defend yourself in court. Maintain a professional demeanor. Otherwise ignore him. If he becomes a disruptive presence to district government functions, which he is not at this point, fine. Ban him.
All this is now is an immature pissing contest.
What really gets my ire up is these people who play the I'm-not-a-homophobe-my-best-friend-is-gay card. Oh, really? Earlier in the article we read:
Parker expressed his belief that gay parents did not constitute "a spiritually healthy family"; he did not wish his son to be taught that a gay family is "a morally equal alternative to other family constructs."
Have you expressed that belief to the face of your gay best friend? Your best friend? You might think he's your best friend. Does he feel the same way? Does he also believe that he is incapable of establishing a spiritually healthy family? Does he believe your relationship with your wife is morally superior to his (perhaps future) relationship with his boyfriend?
What a jerk.
Hattip: Balloon Juice