And Tango Makes Controversy

So, many years ago, I was rather proud to say that my blog was one of the leading sources for introspective posts on the subject of gay penguins. I wanted to talk about gay penguins again, because it seems to be a topic that never ceases to be a fount of subject material.

 

In particular, I wanted to talk about book banning and the children's book And Tango Makes Three. It's a delightful book based on the true story of New York Zoo penguins Roy and Silo who paired up for mating season; both were male penguins. The zookeepers, noting that obviously Roy and Silo could not produce an egg, found an egg that was not being tended to and gave it to the couple. The egg hatched into a baby girl penguin named Tango, and they were a penguin family with two dads. It's a cute true story about some penguins, who wouldn't love it?

Well, And Tango Makes Three was the #1 most challenged book for 2006 through 2010 (except for 2009, when it was merely #2), and continues to be a target for book banners in 2025, twenty years after its initial publishing. What's so offensive?

It's conservative Christians' belief that any media that touches on the subject of LGBTQIA+ individuals (even animals!) is immediately classified as pornographic. This is a very strange viewpoint which defies logic other than the logic of bigotry.

See, apparently if you talk about two men being in love with each other, it's inherently implying the existence of gay sex, and sex is porn. Never mind that the existence of heterosexual couples likewise implies the existence of sex (especially if the couple has children), but of course, straight sex is somehow less pornographic than gay sex. Oh, and transgender people are also somehow pornographic by their very existence, even though gender is separate from sex. (Imagine if Finding Nemo had given mention of the fact that clownfish are transsexual in nature; there goes your G rating, right?)

A part of this aversion to LGBTQIA+ subject material for children is this strange idea that exposing children to the idea of gay people (and penguins!) will make them turn gay, and exposure to transgender people will make them turn transgender. This is despite the fact that science continues to assert that sexual orientation and gender are determined before birth, and the fact that children who are exposed to exclusively cishet media still turn out LGBTQ. Listen people, you're not protecting children; you may in fact be hurting children who are enriched by the existence of diversity in the media they consume. And LGBTQIA+ children (who, sorry, not sorry, but they do exist) will love to have representation in the books and films they see.

Anyway, in the end, it's not really about protecting anyone from inappropriate material, unless of course you have a warped idea about what constitutes "inappropriate" based on bigoted ideas of of what's acceptable. There used to be (and still are) a lot of people who felt that media portrayal of mixed-race couples was inappropriate. We've mostly evolved as a society past that, and we need to evolve past stigmatizing LGBTQIA+ people. And penguins.

Christian Buddhism

I've been considering the possibility of becoming a Buddhist without leaving Christianity. I know there are a lot of people who would view this as nonsense, or even blasphemy, but I've thought for some time that the idea has merit.

Back when I was in college, I took a philosophy course in which we examined eastern religions/philosophies (there's not really a clear delineation for most of them). I found them all very interesting, but I was particularly taken by Buddhism, and even way back then, I thought that so much of Buddhist thought was rather compatible with Christian thought within the practical realm, although obviously not the theological. Still where Buddhism in its original form was essentially atheistic, believing in the non-existence of higher beings, in that gap, one could place the God of Abraham and have a pretty solid system of morality that was quite compatible with Christianity.

At the center of Buddhism was the idea of following the Noble Eightfold Path, which I present here, cribbed from Wikipedia and edited for clarity and brevity:

1. Right View: recognizing our actions have consequences, death is not the end, and our actions and beliefs have consequences after death.
2. Right Resolve: striving toward non-violence and avoiding violent and hateful conduct.
3. Right Speech: no lying, no abusive speech, no divisive speech, no idle chatter.
4. Right Conduct or Action: no killing or injuring, no taking what is not given, no sexual misconduct, no material desires.
5. Right Livelihood: no trading in weapons, living beings, meat, liquor, or poisons.
6. Right Effort: preventing the arising of unwholesome states, and generating wholesome states.
7. Right Mindfulness: a quality that guards or watches over the mind, the stronger it becomes, the weaker unwholesome states of mind become, weakening their power "to take over and dominate thought, word and deed."
8. Right samadhi: practicing meditation, culminating into equanimity and mindfulness.

While certainly there are values here that Christianity doesn’t uphold, like the avoidance of meat, they are not incompatible. Of particular importance is that all of these things are values I nonetheless hold for myself (I am a vegetarian, for instance).

As always, the thing I strive for in a post is feedback and dialogue. In this case, I would particularly like to hear from both Christians and Buddhists as to what they might think. (I don't personally know any Buddhists, but I'd like to.)

About the pain

I pretty much never talk about it, but I think I'm underestimating the effect my chronic pain is having on my life.

For the past six years I have had chronic pain, nothing seems to work against it, and as time goes by, it seems to get worse and worse. I don't talk about it for two reasons. Firstly, I hate to complain about personal problems, and it's almost impossible to talk about it without sounding like I'm complaining. Secondly, the world is so screwed up right now that despite the intensity that the pain often reaches, it's not in the top five of the list of things that I'm worried about right now.

The reason I'm bringing it up now is because I am considering the possibility that the pain is having an effect on dealing with those things that are more important. When you feel like your head is simultaneously in a vise and on fire, it's difficult to find mental clarity to deal with life in general. The problem is that I don't know if putting more focus on the pain is going to lead to a solution. I've already talked to several doctors about it, including a neurologist who has tried about a dozen treatments to zero effect.

The nature of the pain is odd, partially because it's not all pain. Sometimes I describe whatever the condition is as "A smorgasbord of unpleasant tactile hallucinations." Usually the only thing that makes it go away is falling asleep, which is difficult to do when I'm in pain, but I almost always wake up symptom-free. Then once I'm awake, the symptoms eventually creep back up on me.

I used to call it "long COVID" and who knows? Maybe it is. It pretty much started when I got COVID, and at first it was mainly COVID-like symptoms, but over the years, the symptom list has gotten longer and stranger:

Headache, sore throat, coughing, sneezing, sore teeth, sore lips, sensation of teething, sensation of plugged sinuses, sensation of plugged nostrils, sensation of having been punched in the nose, sensation of hair being pulled out, sensation of difficulty breathing, sensation of tongue being pulled out, burning eyes, burning skin on my face, sensitivity to spiciness, tasting things that aren't there, feeling hunger when my stomach is full, sensitivity to water on my skin, burning in the soles of my feet, feeling like there's a piece of string wrapped around one of my ears, feeling like my teeth are razor sharp and cutting up the inside of my mouth, back and neck pain, sugar burning my mouth, salt burning my mouth, hair burning the side of my face,

All of these symptoms come and go at random, although once again usually later in the day. I feel fine in the morning, and a few times I have managed to make them go away with a nap in the afternoon. On a handful of occasions, they have gone away on their own, at least two of those times exactly at midnight (and one time I wasn't looking at a clock). It usually seems to be stress related.

Anyway, once again, I'm starting to seriously consider that this condition is standing in the way of more than just enjoyment of life. Maybe it's standing in the way of being functional in general. But I don’t know how to fix it. So what do I do, then?