Bad blogger.
So I quit my job. Mostly because I hated it. I'm doing the freelance thing right now, in part because I just can't get excited about working a full time job and in part because I won't have the time when school starts in August.
I thought that when I quit, I'd have more time to read and write blogs. It turns out when I get bored with work I just get up and do something else, not being chained to a desk anymore. That is actually what I was going for, but there seem to have been some unintended consequences.
I'll try and do better because I know so many of you are hanging on my every word.
Wherefore Pride?
'Tis the season to be fabulous. Pride celebrations are going on all over the country. Every year someone asks the question, "Is Pride relevant?" Someone complains that it doesn't adequately represent his "normal," suburban life. Someone complains about being associated with freaks and weirdos. I supposed you could say it's a complex issue, but when I read things like this, it becomes really quite simple.
We crossed the square to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Each of us was carrying a bunch of flowers. Unexpectedly, our way was barred by locked gates and lines of police. The Moscow mayor said it would be an insult to Russia's war dead to allow gays to lay flowers.
As we reached the locked gates and attempted to speak to the police guards, our small group was set upon by 100 anti-gay protesters, mostly hard-right nationalists and Christian fundamentalists. They began shoving, punching, kicking and pelting us with eggs.
Our flowers and rainbow flags were snatched from our hands. They abused us with chants of "No sodomy in Moscow," "Death to fags," "Russia is not Sodom" and "Put the pederasts on the iron" (a reference to an ancient Russian method of executing gay men by forcing an iron rod up the anus). Initially, the police did nothing to protect us.
As the authorities attempted to disperse us, we were repeatedly abused and assaulted by gangs of neo-Nazis and skinheads. Two Russians who were merely suspected of being gay were surrounded and given a severe beating.
About 20 of us reassembled on the edge of Manezhnaya Square and attempted to follow the planned Moscow Pride route up Tverskaya Street to the Yuri Dolgoruky monument.
Some Pride marchers did get through. We did not. Our path was blocked by groups of neo-fascists and ultranationalists screaming homophobic threats and hurling smoke bombs and tear gas canisters.1
Why should we celbrate Pride? Because we can.
OMFH.
One can argue about why the Democratic Party no longer seems to have a reason for being. I believe the reason is this: They have achieved what they set out to achieve in 1932, when the modern Democratic Party began. They got what they asked for, achieved what they fought for. They got a big government that offers a wide array of benefits and assistance; they got a powerful federal establishment that collects and dispenses treasure, that assumes societal guidance. They got Social Security and Medicare. They got civil rights (much murky history there, the Southern Democratic lions of the U.S. Senate having retarded the modern civil rights movement from 1940 through 1964; still, by the late '60s Democrats came to seem to own the issue, and that hasn't changed). They got what they stood for. They went on, in the 1970s and '80s, to stand for things about which Americans showed they had doubts and ambivalence: abortion, the modernist social agenda. By the time the Democrats ran out that string, they got tagged for the cost of their dreams. Big government is expensive, and the American people didn't enjoy being forced to pay, through high taxes, for the pleasure of being pushed around.1
This from party that wants to legislate decisions about life and death for Americans. This from the party who wants to use the Constitution as a club instead of the protection it was designed to be. This from the party that wishes my sex life was still a criminal act. This from the party who has run up a record breaking deficit. Who's going to get tagged for the cost of those dreams?
Unreal. I agree that Democrats have no vision, no philosophy and that it is hurting them to be merely an opposition party. (Would someone at the DNC finally get a clue? You can start by not hiding from religion. Jesus was a leftist radical for crying out loud! "Go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor" (Mark 10:21). Does that sound like a Republican to you?) But, please, spare me Republican delusions of grandeur. Republicans are in power because they've managed to scare the public into thinking the American way of life is in imminent danger, not because their "philosophy" has anything more meaningful to offer the U.S. over the Democrats.
Predictable
Jeffery Nielsen, a professor at BYU, recently pended an honest, heartfelt appraisal of the Federal Marriage Amendment. Recently a letter from the First Presidency, the presiding body of the LDS church, was read from every pulpit in the U.S. urging the members to contact their congressmen and voice their support for the measure. Nielsen felt that was inappropriate for the the church to do and said so.
When the church hierarchy speaks on a public issue and requests that members follow, it is difficult indeed if an individual feels the content of their message would make bad law and is unethical as well. I believe opposing gay marriage and seeking a constitutional amendment against it is immoral.
Currently the preponderance of scientific research strongly suggests that same-sex attraction is biologically based. Therefore, it is as natural as a heterosexual orientation, even if rare. It seems it might be caused by environmental conditions in the mother's womb, before birth, triggering the DNA to give the fetus a homosexual orientation. Neither the mother nor the child has any choice in the matter; it is a completely natural process.
Truly, God would be unjust if He were the creator of a biological process that produced such uncommon, yet perfectly natural results, and then condemned the innocent person to a life of guilt, while denying him or her the ordinary privileges and fulfillment of the deep longing in all of us for family and a committed, loving relationship.
Even if the scientific evidence does not yet establish this beyond reasonable doubt, it seems that virtuous moderation and loving kindness require us to exercise caution before making constitutionally binding discrimination against a whole class of people based only on fear and superstition.1
A fine statement in and of itself, but he doesn't stop there.
God is not the author of incoherence or injustice, but we humans often are. We in the LDS Church must be more honest about our history, including the past and future practice of polygamy in our official doctrine. This will be difficult, for it will reveal that we have been less than truthful in our public relations, and it will show our inconsistency with current statements opposing gay marriage.
We can no longer afford to teach only what is useful and hope people won't discover what is true. In this day of easy Internet access, a person can find more real history of the LDS Church in 30 minutes online than the same person would in a lifetime studying approved church materials.
This is not right. Too many individuals have suffered a loss of faith when they were forced to choose between the truth or their family after innocently discovering the discrepancy between genuine history and the official story of the church.1
It's certainly nothing that has not been said before. It's certainly nothing that some church members haven't thought and felt for some time. The sin, however, is giving voice to those opinions. My first thought when I read he was a professor at BYU was, "Wow. I hope he's tenured." Turns out he's only an adjunct professor, and, predictably, has been fired.2
Surely he saw that coming. I'm not sure how he could not have been aware of the risk to his job. Maybe he believed that critical thinking is encouraged in an university environment when the reality is "intellectual" is a pejorative on BYU campus. (I graduated from BYU, trust me.) At BYU thinking critically is encouraged only so long as your conclusions are in line with official church positions. Public statements of conclusions derived from such thinking in opposition to official statements of the church will get you, as a church employee, fired. The church is well within its rights, as an employer, to fire an employee who is in violation of policy. It's just supremely unfortunate that in a university context, speaking your mind is contrary to policy.
The Tribune article mentions possible action against his membership. Frankly, I see that as unlikely, though I'm sure one member of the church leadership—at whom "We can no longer afford to teach only what is useful" was a deliberate jab—would love to haul him before a church court, restraint not among his better known qualities. One statement of belief in opposition to official church policy is not enough to get you ex-communicated. If Nielsen continues to make such public statements, and makes efforts to sway other members of the church to his way of thinking, on the other hand... You can bet he'll think twice before making his beliefs public again.
2Hollingstead, Todd, "BYU fires teacher over op-ed stance," The Salt Lake Tribune, June 14, 2005, sltrib.com.
(Tribune articles are only freely available for seven days. After that a subscription is required to search the archives.)
Public service announcement
Sam, it's called Akismet. It's already installed with your Dreamhost package. All you have to do is run over to wordpress.org and get a free key. It does a great job of catching spam.
Now that was bizarre
Today, while getting some lunch:
"That will be $5.84, sir." I hand him my credit card. "Thank you."
A few moments pass. "Here you go, sir."
So far so good.
"What do you do for a living, sir?"
"Ummm...I'm a web developer."
"I see. Well, you look successful, so I thought I'd ask and see if it would help me be successful."
"O.K."
"Do you work for a company or for yourself?"
"Well, I work for a company, but Friday is my last day and then I'll be working for myself."
"Good for you, sir! You know I just realized something the other day, and I don't know why it took me so long to figure this out, but it takes money, not age, to retire."
"Very true."
"Well, it will be just a few more min...oh, here's your food now. You have a remarkable day, sir!"
"Thanks."
I look successful? I drive a dirty, aging Saturn. I suppose that's looking up to someone working the drive up window at KFC, but I've never had anyone say so before.
Where there’s a will, there’s a way
I read in USA Today yesterday that in Florida children must declare a "life major" before entering high school, thanks to a new law recently signed by Jeb Bush.1 What a phenomenal load of crap. Kids don't have enough life experience to be making decisions like that at such a young age. Most people don't even know what they want to do when entering college. Some few know what they want to do from childhood, but they are the exception, not the rule.
Who knows what that is supposed to achieve. I'm sure it's grounded in some conservation notion about idle hands being the devil's workshop and kids need to be responsible, contributing members of society or some such nonsense.
Self censorship
Over at Center of Gravitas GayProf pens a thoughtful entry on the pressures of being gay and how social and political pressures lead gays to become masters of reading a situation and evaluating the safety or necessity of being honest.
We probably don’t think much about the constant assessments we make everyday about our sexuality and the public. In thousands of ways, we have become masters of assessing our surroundings and trying to decide when we are safe and when we are in danger. It’s such second-nature to most us, we aren’t even aware of it.
We, as a queer people, can't even come to consensus about what the best level of “outness” should be. ...
Despite my claims of moral-superiority over liar ex (who told many lies), I also fail to live up to the ideal standards of outness that I create. It took me much longer, for instance, to tell my extended family than it should have.
At other times, I get lazy. As an example, I often purchase flowers for my desk in my never-ending quest to be more like Mary Richards. On the last occasion, the clerk commented, “Gee, your wife must be happy with all the flowers you buy.” Being in a hurry (or lazy (or just not in the mood)), I didn’t take the time to correct her that a) the flowers were for gay me and b) that gay me did not have a wife (or a husband – just a liar ex (who told many lies)).
For political reasons, though, I should have made the time to do so. Certainly I didn’t fear that the flower clerk had a shotgun behind the counter waiting to blow away flower-buying-queer-boys (The again, I do live in Texas). It would have been an opportunity to remind her that a greater diversity exists in the world. By being vocal and vigilant about our experiences, our fears, and our triumphs, we can show straight folk that we don’t wish either their pity or their contempt.1
I've had my own flower buying experience. One day while checking out at Costco, the clerk rang up the large bunch of flowers I had purchased and said, "Uh, oh. Some one's in trouble," with a wink. I could have told her, "Actually no, I'm single. I just like having fresh flowers on the table," but I didn't. Would even that have disabused her of her assumption that I was straight? Or would she have simply gone for the safer conclusion that I was eccentric? Does announcing your sexuality to strangers really help? If they don't have time to get to know you, won't they just file you away in the dusty, unused corners of their mind and forget about you in the next 10 minutes? In the end I just smiled and let her persist in her conspiratorial humor.
A more recent experience involved a freelance client of mine. Always in our telephone conversations I have been circumspect in discussing anything about my life that touches on sexuality. On part of me says it's none of his business. Another part argues, "He has no qualms talking to you about his wife and family. What's the difference?" Nevertheless, I generally would tell him generic things like, "Thursday isn't good for me. I have to pick up someone from the airport."
Then a couple of weeks ago, D and I were going to be spending the weekend moving him into my condo. (Yes, folks, D and I are living together now.) I couldn't see any way to generalize that in a way that would let my client know that I was, in fact, going to be extremely busy all weekend long and would not be able to do any work for him. So I told him. "My boyfriend and I have decided to move in together and we'll be trying to get that done this weekend." There was silence on his end of the line for just long enough to let me hear the gears grinding and my own inward sigh that even this guy, living on one of the most liberal states in the Union, had to stop and get his head around the fact that I am gay. He recovered a few moments later and things have gone on more or less unchanged.
It's enough work to be out at work, to be out to my family. For the most part, that's just not energy I'm willing to spend on complete strangers.
What next?
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Cheese Pizza
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Traditional and comforting. You focus on living a quality life. You're not easily impressed with novelty. Yet, you easily impress others. |
Who sits around thinking this stuff up?
On the uncomparable Ms. Coulter
Ann Coulter says what she says for attention. No one would know or care who she is if she didn't do the ideological Tourette's act. Maybe she realizes what a freak she's become and is milking it. Maybe she's not qualified to do anything else but throw poop at the spectators.
Dave Wright, commenting at Mouse Wax