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.

Trump’s America

There are a lot of people, probably mostly liberals, who are really quite shocked to find us where we are in America today. How did a terrible man like Trump become our President? This is not who we are as a country!

I think this sort of thinking requires a denial of the reality of United States history, both in the long view and in the more recent. Trump is, in many ways, the quintessential American President. Trump is America with the mask of politeness taken off and discarded.

Perhaps the most obvious thing about Trump that is so American is the racism. While we love to think of America as the "melting pot" of cultures, we're a nation pretty much founded on white supremacy. We were created by the genocide of indigenous Americans, and built by the forced labor of people stolen from Africa. The White House (so appropriately named) itself, the home of our nation's leader, as pointed out not too long ago by Michelle Obama, was built by slave labor. I myself am fond of reminding people that the founding fathers were made up of two groups: rich white men who loved Black slavery, and rich white men for whom Black slavery wasn't a deal breaker.

Trump’s sexism is also very American. We became an independent nation in 1776, but women weren't federally given the right to vote until 1920, nearly a century and a half later. (Oh, and that was only white women, of course.) And voting is just one right of many denied women; the right to own property, the right to have a bank account separate from their husbands, the right to not be discriminated against for employment or housing? All of those came later. Of course, one of the most important rights, the right to be able to control their own bodies and their reproductive choices? That one's still up in the air, as women are effectively given less bodily autonomy than a corpse.

What else defines Trump? Xenophobia? I would call it selective xenophobia, as ICE raids places known to have immigrants with black and brown skin, but makes no moves against communities of undocumented white immigrants. We build a wall on our southern border, but largely ignore undocumented immigrants coming across the northern border. Why? Well, those immigrants are white, aren't they? I may be wrong, but I believe the very first law in the United States limiting immigration was the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, because we can't have non-Europeans in the U.S., can we? Of course before that, when the United States won a large portion of the southwest from Mexico in the mid-19th century, Mexicans in those territories were assured on paper that they would be American citizens, but apparently in practice, most of them were driven off the land, deprived of property and rights. America has never been keen on accepting non-Europeans, so Trump’s xenophobia is really nothing new.

Oh, and putting the rights and needs of rich people over those of the poor and middle class? That's just capitalism, which has also always been us. White capitalists have always ruled this country, and pretty much every President has been at least a millionaire. Bigotry against LGBTQ people? That's a western cultural norm. We used to (really still do) have laws against them existing, and barely have half a century of progress towards equality, but conservatives will constantly make up stories about how drag queens and transgender women are attacking children despite the fact that the observed reality is that the people children have to fear are religious leaders and their own parents.

This unfortunate conglomeration of lies and bigotry is what America is, has always been, and it's that reality that Trump represents. Can we change? I hope so, and so do many other Americans. But no politicians from either of the two major political parties seem to be willing to make those changes. I believe it's going to take a major shake up of the status quo that's going to require either some restrategizing in the Democratic party, or a rejection of the outdated Democratic party for a newer, more progressive set of politicians. Really, it may take a revolution of some sort, because the status quo needs to be completely rejected, and that's hard to accomplish.

If you, like me, don't want Trump’s America, then don't wait for voting in the midterms in 2026. Start strategizing now, and pushing for changes that can happen now. It's going to take a fight to reverse 250 years of history, but it's not impossible if we put in the work.

Another generation

Recently on Facebook, I saw a post about how Babe Ruth, back in the 1920s, used to play baseball games with players from the Negro Leagues. Even though he was one of the greatest baseball players of all time, when he retired, he never got a job as a manager, because people were afraid he'd integrate major league baseball.

My point? Sometimes the excuse that “they were raised in a different generation” only holds so much water. There were always people who weren't bigots even when bigotry was the norm.

I'm not trying to attack your parents or grandparents here; my mother, who isn't bigoted in any way, has nonetheless said things that were offensive because she simply didn't know better. It's just that it's the 21st century, and it's time for people to know better.

The Nashville Statement: Sexual Heresy

For the sake of clarity, let me preface my argument by stating that I am a cisgendered evangelical Christian male married to a cisgendered evangelical Christian female. I have no need to oppose the Nashville Statement for any personal gain, but only oppose it for the cause of supporting right doctrine within Christianity.

This is my final argument concerning the Nashville Statement, I believe, because I feel confident it will prove there exists an inevitable logical choice between two options: (A) The Nashville Statement is logically inconsistent, or (B) Christianity is morally inconsistent. I will of course choose option (A).

The Nashville Statement (hereafter "NS") makes a number of statements I take issue with, but here I address only four:
1. Same-sex marriage is a sin. (NS Article 1)
2. Transgenderism (i.e. choosing a gender identity that does not match your biological gender) is a sin. (NS Article 13)
3. People who do not have an easy-to-identify biological gender must conform with the binary gender paradigm, and act as though they are the gender their genotype would suggest or they are in sin. (NS Article 6 and quote below)
4. Disagreeing with any of the above (or any other part of the NS) causes one to be in a state of sin. (NS Article 10)

As evidence, I put to readers that there exists a medical condition known as Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (hereafter "AIS"). People with AIS are genetically male, having the sexual genotype "XY", but without genetic testing are almost impossible to differentiate from a sterile female. In fact, while I cannot prove it to be so, I suggest it to be laughable to deny that at various times in the past (and even present) men have married and had sex with (although society has always considered them "women", Denny Burk, one of the main authors and #1 signer of the NS would tell us they are "men"*; remember that according to NS Article 10, you cannot disagree with this assessment) who have AIS. This includes couples in which both partners were professing Christians.

Here is the logical/moral dilemma. If these are men with AIS, then these were/are same-sex marriages. The NS tells us that this is sin, and therefore...what?

If engaging in a same-sex marriage is an unpardonable sin no matter what, this implies that God had to send these people to Hell for committing a sin without knowing they were doing it. Result: God is not just.

If the fact that they did not know they were doing it excuses them, that implies the sinful nature of same-sex marriage is a subjective matter and same-sex marriage is not a sin if you don't believe it is. Result: The NS is wrong about same-sex marriage.

If this was not same-sex marriage because the man with AIS identified as a woman, then either transgenderism is acceptable, or intersex people do not have to conform to the gender suggested by their genotype; possibly both. Result: The NS is wrong about transgenderism, intersex, or both.

If there is a fourth possibility that saves both the just nature of God and the integrity of the NS, I cannot imagine what it is, but I am open to discussion. Note that I am not denying the truth of statements 1, 2, or 3, but since they cannot all be true at once, I suggest that one or more of them must be rejected, and one must certainly by all means reject statement 4. Good Christians can and indeed should disagree with the Nashville Statement.

*"Try to determine as soon as possible the chromosomal makeup of the child. If there is a Y chromosome present, that would strongly militate against raising the child as a female, regardless of the apperance of the genitals or other secondary sex characteristics." Denny Burk, What is the Meaning of Sex?, page 81,

Xenocidophobia

So, I'm reading a new (for me) book by Orson Scott Card, and while I'm generally managing to enjoy the book just for itself, there's something that keeps popping up at the back of my mind, and it's pretty much this:

The short version of the above video (uploaded to YouTube just a few weeks ago but originally made and published elsewhere at the height of the Chick-fil-A anti-gay marriage controversy), which you don't need to watch to understand my point here despite being a very insightful video, is that Orson Scott Card is simultaneously one of today's finest and most popular science fiction writers and one of the more prominent critics of homosexuality and same-sex marriage. If you're not familiar with Card, I would say you're missing out on both/either some excellent writing and/or fascinating culture war. Lindsay Ellis, a.k.a. "Nostalgia Chick" is right that it's a bit overboard to think of Card's writing as fascistic, but I want to suggest that as polite and reasonable as she's being, there are some aspects of Card as a person that can stand being looked at both more deeply and kindly, and I think it's worth doing.

The thing is, I talked about this sort of thing before, but in that case I was only tangentially talking about things that were deeply and more explicitly evil, while here I want to get more in depth with the casually offensive. For the short version there, you can find the single sentence in the linked post that mentions Hitler; I'm going to compare Card to Hitler, but as weird as it sounds, I'm going to do it in a nice way.

So Card is homophobic. So what? A lot of people are, so why do people care so much about Card's homophobia? Hitler was homophobic, but it mattered very much because along with his racism, it led to the deaths of millions. Card isn't killing anyone, but his homophobia matters to people because as a famous person, the statements he makes in the public sphere have more influence than Joe Schmo who would tell the world how much the thought of two dudes kissing grosses him out if only anyone would bother to ask him his opinion on it.

Fame is definitely a part of it, and it's a funny two-edged sword. If you're famous, regardless of the reason, when you speak your opinion people listen. If they agree with you, then they say, "This famous person is terrific; everyone should be listening to this!" If they don't, they say, "This famous person is an idiot; why do famous people think that just because they're famous they get to tell others what to think?" I definitely believe that Card's fame is a big part of why he has a platform that allows so many to know what his opinion is, and since so many know, there is a sense in which the outrage over his homophobia is proportional to the size of his audience. But I don't think that's the whole story.

In the video, the homophobic* things that Card has said are labeled as "dumb shit" by Ellis. Okay, but what makes them "dumb"? I am of course making an assumption that may be taking her statements in as shallow a manner as I'm more or less accusing Card's detractors of taking his, but I assume that what makes them "dumb" is simply that she disagrees with them.

I can't speak for whether Card's views on homosexuality are smarter or stupider than anybody else's since I've never bothered to read them; I am one of those people who chooses to view art (visual, written, or musical) on its own merits rather than through the filter of what sort of a person the creator is, for better or for worse. What I think I can say is that there are a lot of stupid arguments against same-sex marriage, but that doesn't mean that every argument against same-sex marriage is stupid. For every dozen or so arguments on par with "legalizing same-sex marriage will lead to people having sex with ducks," there is somebody pointing out that same-sex couples being unable to procreate suggests something not quite in line with the natural order. Yeah, the latter argument has flaws, but at the very least it feels like there's a nugget of logic in there, you know?

But this is the thing, and in my mind, it's the real central issue of the problem that fans of Card's writing have with Card himself: Card is not stupid. His books almost invariably contain protagonists that are incredible geniuses, and while of course being able to reason your way out of a sticky situation is potentially less impressive when both the problem and the solution come from the same mind (Card's, that is), there is still the strong feeling that the person writing the story has got to be pretty darn clever. Why is this a problem? Because people who denounce things like racism, sexism, and homophobia have the unfortunate (in my opinion) tendency to label those things as "ignorance".

So this is where it all ties back to Hitler, and try and follow me on this because it is weird. In the post I linked to above, I pointed out that as much as people like to label him a "monster", Hitler was a human being, just like you and me. Sometimes you hear people say of politicians these days that "He's the sort of guy you could hang out and have a beer with!" I have no doubt that Hitler was a guy that you could hang out and have a beer with--so long as you weren't a member of one of the groups that the Third Reich tried to exterminate. And what's more, who could really think that Hitler was an idiot? He nearly took over the whole world, which doesn't sound to me like the sort of thing that idiots tend to do. No, Hitler wasn't ignorant; he had an oddly well-informed hatred.

So like I said, I'm drawing some parallels here between people of varying levels of tolerance. I would probably enjoy sharing a beer with Adolph Hitler, Orson Scott Card, or Lindsay Ellis, (although I surely won't because one is dead, one's a Mormon, and the last I'm unlikely to ever meet in person) but that's not necessarily a reflection on their value as a person, nor the value of their personal beliefs. What it is a reflection on is that I have no doubt any of them would be an interesting person to have a conversation with.

My belief--and this doesn't necessarily make me a better or more tolerant person than anyone else--is that when you dismiss anyone's viewpoint as stupid, you're the one who has closed yourself off to learning and growing. This is one of the reasons why I blog, and wish I was more diligent in responding to comments: I want to reach out to people who have opinions that differ from my own, because even if neither of us changes our position, I believe we can learn from each other.

So if you don't like Card's stance on same-sex marriage, you might consider reading more of his writing if only to understand why someone would have the stance he has. In the meantime, it's a free country, so write all the Wiggin/Delphiki slash fic your heart desires.

*I'd like to say that I've never liked the term "homophobic" as a blanket term for anything anti-GLBT. It seems to imply that a "homophobe" is afraid of people in the GLBT community, when often that is not the case. There were times in the past (and maybe even now, depending on how you feel about this post) that I've held and even expressed attitudes that would be labeled as "homophobic", but I don't have any fear of homosexuals. I've always felt that there ought to be term along the lines of "racist" or "sexist" in order to reflect somewhat more accurately the more general concept, such as "orientationist" perhaps? Oh well.

Queer voting: Don't ask, don't tell.

Well, let's just have one last talk about Proposition 8, but then that's it. (At least until after the election; then I'm sure I won't be able to resist.)

I've said it many times, both in conversation and in writing that I realized long ago I simply can't retain my sanity and get involved in certain discussions. Politics and religion, those general topics that many people say ought to be avoided in polite company, are some of my favorites, but there are more specific topics that are like Plutonium. Abortion is the most prominent one, the fact being that there are enough people in the world who feel strongly enough about the subject at either extreme that open discussion of the issue is impossible. Suggest the slightest shade of grey to the issue, and you may be reduced immediately to the rubbish bin in people's esteem relegated for child molesters and telemarketers. (Sorry telemarketers, I couldn't resist a line like that, and lawyers need a break now and again.)

Anyway, I've come to realize (unfortunately too late for a handful of conversations already let out of Pandora's Box) that Proposition 8 and the legal status of same-sex marriage is one of those conversations. It's a topic I've talked and written about many times, and yet something seems to have shifted. Maybe it's the bringing of the topic to the forefront of the culture by putting it on the ballot yet again, but suddenly, it seems to be undiscussable.

You see, I'm in a difficult position of having a foot in both camps due to the company that I have kept in my life. Let me make it clear that I make no apology for either group nor my associations with them, but a fair portion of my friends are conservative Christians, and at the same time, a fair portion of my friends are gay/lesbian/bisexual. What's a guy to do? No matter how I vote, I'm going to offend some people I care about very deeply. I simply can't avoid it.

I briefly considered abstaining, but then I realized that was a copout. Not just a copout, but one that would be counterproductive. Abstaining would solve no problems, and it would simply offend everyone, I imagine. It reminded me for a moment of Bill Clinton and "Don't ask, don't tell." In an attempt to please everyone, a solution was arrived at that pleased virtually nobody. Homophobes want to ask. Homosexuals want to tell. Nobody's satisfied.

Clearly, I had to make a decision, and I wanted it to simply be the right one, not the one that society (or any subsection thereof) told me I should choose. Don't think I'm going to tell you here, because in case I didn't make it clear, part of my process was eventually deciding that whatever I chose, I would not tell a soul. But still, there was something that needed to be said. What people on both sides of the issue agree on is the fact that it's an important issue.

There were plenty of reasons to vote Yes. As a Christian, I do believe that the Bible, the basis for Christian morality, teaches that certain sexual relationships are not to be condoned, and allowing a person to legally call certain of such relationships "marriage" would be condoning. There were plenty of reasons to vote No. Our government is secular, and has no compelling reason to bow to religious morality, and finding a reason for this law outside of that realm of thought is difficult. Yet if morality is not our basis for deciding our vote, then what is? Yet what good does it do to impose one's personal morality on another? You can go back and forth all day.

Furthermore, I'm often left with the impression that despite the supposed importance of this law, the outcome of this vote isn't really going to change anything. The proponents of the law said as much, which was an odd argument to my mind. (I've always said that if you had a choice between two religions, one of which says, "believe in me or suffer," and the other says, "believe whatever you want, it doesn't matter," then it seems believing in the former is a manner of hedging your bets, so to speak.) Long before same-sex marriage was declared to be legal, I knew many same-sex couples that had weddings and considered themselves wife and wife. It seems that with legal domestic partnership, this law is really a matter of semantics. You can be married, but you can't technically call yourself a "married" couple is what the law says, which in some ways is ridiculous, since the name was all that same-sex couples can really get away with without having to get government sanction. You call anything whatever you want to call it; that's free speech.

However, it appears that what one is not allowed to say is that one is a Christian, and yet votes No on 8; or that one is friendly to homosexuals and yet votes Yes on 8. I hate it, and yet, it seems a fair enough evaluation, which puts me in a quandary. Do I lie? No, that's wrong as well. Do I say nothing? It seems the safest, although with the way I end up talking about the subject so often, almost everyone who knows me at all well knows I'm on the fence, or at least near it, and would be rightly curious of my choice. I don't want to lose friends and create enemies.

Or do I? I started to think about it. Do friends really break off their friendships over politics? Well, maybe they do, but I hope it's over something of great depth. I would like to think that in Nazi Germany (Godwin's law again, sure, but it's always a great example) there were people who were moral and brave enough to break off friendships with friends who joined the Nazi party. I'm sure there are lesser issues that might apply, but not many, in my mind. If I had voted for President Bush in 2004, are there people who would have refused to ever talk to me again after hearing such an admission? I know a few people who seem to feel as strongly as that about him, but if they weren't exaggerating their feelings, I imagine they would have moved to Canada by now.

Although I don't feel so strongly, I almost understand how someone could feel very strongly about the abortion issue, on either side. Actually, the fact that I can understand both sides no doubt has a lot to do with why I'm not at either extreme. What I really have a hard time understanding is why people feel so very strongly about an issue that really is just semantics. If you really think that homosexuality is so evil that it can't be allowed, then this law ought not to be enough for you; you ought to be pushing to outlaw same-gender sexual relations entirely. If you really think that gay people ought to be allowed to be married, then damn the law, and get married anyway!

If you are a person who has a strong opinion on this issue, and you want to know how I'm voting, I've decided what it is I want to say to you: Please assume that I voted the opposite of how you voted (or would have voted, had you the chance). Treat me accordingly. If you don't judge me on my voting record (and I'm not a politician, so I'm not sure you should) then fine. If you do, then judge away, but for now, I'm done talking about it.

I've got issues...

Let's revisit Proposition 8, shall we?

As is usual in my writing, I don't think the real point I'm trying to make is going to be right here in the beginning. Whether or not Proposition 8 should be passed or not is not really the main issue, but really, it's sort of a sub-issue, if you will. Shortly after I last wrote about Proposition 8, I had someone tell me that all good Christians should, as a matter of principle, vote against legalization of same-sex marriage. Assuming that you are a Christian who believes that same-sex marriage is a bad thing, there's some level of logic to this. As I myself have argued, "You can't legislate morality!" is a poor argument. I really do believe that morality is the only thing we really legislate, in one way or another. If you really believe that government has no place to pass laws that dictate moral choices, then may I suggest first that you really ought to be a Libertarian, and second that such a belief is really a moral choice itself. Make of that what you will.

For most of us, when we try to make choices about how we're going to vote, or what energies and/or donations we're going to give to various causes, we're thinking of moral choices much more overtly. I know a lot of people, usually Christians, who feel that the abortion issue is of tantamount importance, and will invariably vote for whichever candidate most strongly opposes abortions. Of course, there are also plenty of voters who take essentially the opposite tack. For many other people, the choices involve the weighing of various issues and finding the candidate or set of issues that best makes sense. For me, I tend to strongly favor propositions that support public transportation, and while there is a proposition on the ballot supporting the building of a new rail system here in California, in this case, I've been getting the feeling that the benefits may not warrant the amount of money being proposed for the cause, nor the manner in which the money is to be raised and spent. Even pet issues have to be tempered with an understanding of the bigger picture. At the risk of invoking Godwin's Law, I'd like to point out that Hitler was against abortion; this is not to say that banning abortion is immoral, but that no matter how bad you think abortion is, I hope you realize there is potentially an overriding issue. (That does, of course, go for the other side, as well as potentially any other issue.)

Well, what is it about same-sex marriage that supposedly makes it one of the few cut-and-dry issues? The belief that the Bible treats it as such, saying that homosexuality is unambiguously immoral. If the Bible doesn't mince terms, then why should we, as believers in the Bible, do any less? Well, it's tough, because there are a lot of things that the Bible unambiguously calls immoral, and if we're going to deal with one, we have to deal with all of them. When I talk about this, I'm not taking the tack of some skeptics who point out that the Bible bans the eating of shellfish and wearing of mixed-fiber clothing; that's a red herring. Whether skeptics choose to recognize it or not, there are some parts of the Law (referring to rules given in the first five books of the Bible by way of Moses) that apply only to ancient Israel. I would argue that most of these laws still apply to Jews, although the manner of enforcement may be questionable; many of these laws do not apply to gentile Bible-believers. (One of the rules that I would argue still applies to all people is that blood should not be ingested, but I'll readily admit that I'm guilty of enjoying a bloody steak or a bit of gravy from time to time. Feel free to skewer my hypocrisy.)

One of the areas where the moral code of the Old Testament carries over to non-Jews is in sexual morality. While homosexuality does seem to be a part of this, I think a lot of people get very worked up over the supposed evils of homosexuality while winking at heterosexual sin. I do believe that if a married man in my church were to run off with another woman, his friends within the church would encourage him to break off the affair, and (if his wife was willing) to return to his wife and be reconciled. If the same man ran off with another man, I do think a few people would react in the same way, but suspect that there would be more than a few that would write him off as a loss. Depending on your point of view, it may be either a shame that people give up on such a person, or a shame that they don't simply accept his newfound sexuality. Anyway, people of many a personal philosophical bent find themselves unable to treat homosexuality the same as heterosexuality, even if they don't accept the spiritual concept of "sinfulness", although intellectually it's been assented (by some) that there is no difference.

Anyway, sometimes it may seem that there is some inequality in law as well. After all, heterosexuals are pretty much allowed to marry any member of the opposite gender, but homosexuals are not allowed to marry members of the same gender, or at least they weren't until recently, and they won't once again when Proposition 8 passes (assuming it does). If you take this from a conservative Christian point of view, there is some small validity to this claim of inequality, but very small. Marriage between two people of opposite gender can be used in the Christian view, to legitimize their sexuality, whereas homosexual sex is never legitimate. Where the sliver of validity comes in is in the fact that there are no laws banning, say, heterosexual cohabitation or extramarital sex. That's only a sliver, though, at least in California, as I believe that the only thing homosexual couples have been banned from doing is getting married. In states where homosexual intercourse is banned, it perhaps seems that it might make sense to give the same penalties to "illicit" heterosexual intercourse. I don't know though, there may be places where this is the case. (Actually, I could be wrong about California law!)

I think one of the real problems with letting our morality inform our political choices is that it's hard to avoid being hypocritical. On some level, I can actually accept the logic that we should vote against homosexual marriage because the Bible says it's bad, but this presents a conundrum. I can be in danger of overgeneralizing, I suppose, but it seems to me that when it comes to the issues of banning homosexual marriage and abortion, your supporters are largely going to be Republicans, conservatives, right? Okay, no surprise there, but what happens when we talk about issues like welfare?

The Bible teaches far more unequivocally than it teaches about homosexuality that we should be doing all we can to reach out to the needy and less fortunate and help them. Shouldn't we be voting for expansion of welfare programs, helping out the homeless, single parents and needy children? The argument I seem to most commonly hear is that the church should be taking care of this, and it's not the business of the government to be "redistributing wealth". Am I the only one who sees the problem with this logic? Once again, in itself, there's something to it. While a lot of us agree that something should be done about people on the low end of the economic spectrum, it does seem there ought to be something voluntary about the solution. If someone has no interest in helping out the homeless, then taking his money and giving it to a homeless person is hardly going to make him more sympathetic, and in addition to helping people out, increasing the general level of sympathy for those less fortunate seems like a good thing. If the rich (or the middle class) are being stolen from, or at least feel like they're being stolen from, there's something wrong with that on some level.

It comes together with the more overt moral issues to create a clash of rational viewpoints. If we are so adamant that it should be left to individuals and various benevolence organizations such as churches to determine how and in what manner the needy are to be helped, why can't we leave it to the same to determine sexual morality? If my church wishes to not recognize same-sex marriage, and the church down the road is just fine with them, can't we agree to disagree and leave the government out of it? The truth is, we're happy to let individuals and localities decide for themselves how to live their lives so long as we're convinced that they'll probably decide in a way we approve, aren't we?

This is a hypocrisy we all share, both Republicans and Democrats. The breakdown in logic goes both ways. Democrats believe in freedom: freedom of individuals to make their own choices in how they live their lives, but they'll raise taxes to make people with more money pay for the freedoms of those with less. Republicans believe in freedom: freedom of the market and allowing businesses to make investment choices, but they don't like people making individual choices that threaten the conservative values that they treasure, and their freedom to live life as they see fit. Both groups want to have their cake and eat it too, but it tends to feel like, "We want to have our cake and eat yours!"

Perhaps that's the real reason that despite the fact I've been a fundamentalist Christian for over 10 years, I'm still a Democrat. Like many of my friends, both Christian and non-Christian, have realized, neither party is really going to serve exactly the causes that you as an individual want them to serve. Every single individual among Obama, McCain, Palin and Biden has positions on issues that I respect and agree with, but none of them is exactly what I want in my government. Furthermore, while we tend to view the President as the single most powerful individual in the nation, to be responsible for the overall wellbeing of our nation, the federal government has two other branches that keep the President's power limited, and even the perfect Presidential candidate who agreed with me on every single issue isn't going to transform government into utopia in a single four-year term.

Furthermore, individual issues and propositions are in many ways in the same boat. If Proposition 8 passes, next year we'll see some group of people bring about Proposition 18 (or whatever) to repeal Proposition 8. If it fails, the same group that brought this one will bring Proposition 8 (with a new number) right back and try again. There will always be homosexuals that want to get married, and there will always be people who think they shouldn't be allowed to do so. Same-sex marriage may be a cut-and-dry issue with individuals, but I highly doubt it will ever be a cut-and-dry issue in the political arena within our lifetimes. My condolences to homosexuals and fundamentalists alike.

A: Lipstick! Get it?

I suppose after having spent so much time and energy expounding on the state of legalization of same-sex marriage in Colorado, I ought to at least take a moment out of my busy schedule of doing nothing of value to give my thoughts on the state of the legality of same-sex marriage here in my own state of California. I was actually thinking I'd put in a longer rant covering all of the full dozen initiatives set to appear on our ballot come November, and maybe I still will, but experience has taught me that it doesn't matter much what I write, nobody seems to be reading.

Speaking of nobody reading, every time I receive my official Voter Information Guide, I take some time to sit down and read through the thing, wondering as I do what segment of the population I fit into by doing so. I find it hard to believe that many people actually do take the time to read the thing, partially because nobody I've ever asked about it has said to me, "Oh yeah, I totally read that thing, too." Of course, maybe it's not apathy; it could be a form of mental self-defense. The guide is confusing and often self-contradictory because there is no requirement that the pro and con statements contained within it be checked for accuracy. Also, there's the annoying fact that since the arguments for and against the propositions are not given the option of using boldface type, virtually every argument writer opts for the (annoying long before the advent of the WWW) use of ALL-CAPITALS STATEMENTS so that they can scream from the page about how much this proposition will COST TAXPAYERS, and how they URGE YOU TO JOIN US IN OPPOSING THIS FLAWED PIECE OF LEGISLATION. But that's a more generalized rant, and I was intending to focus on the single issue of Proposition 8, the "California Marriage Protection Act". (Although the issue of SHOUTING TEXT will come up.)

It's funny, because for myself, as well as a number of other Californians, this proposition comes with a sense of déjà vu. As is said repeatedly in the guide, this is essentially the exact same law that was passed by California voters in March of 2000 (then Proposition 22). As the supporters of the law love to point out, it's just 14 words, which allows me the easy luxury of giving the whole text right here: "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California." Before I try to dissect that in any way, let me give the history supplied in the guide just in case you're not familiar. This law, having passed in March 2000, stayed on the books for about eight years until the California Supreme Court said in May of this year that the law violated the equal protection clause of the state constitution.

Law is a fascinating thing to me for various reasons, one of which is the fact that it has the tendency as it grows to become self-contradictory. We try to build systems that deal with such problems, one such system being the various courts of the land, which--despite the way it makes some feel--are in many ways the final authority on all things legal. When the courts make a controversial ruling like overturning Proposition 22, they're either "activist judges" or "doing their job", depending on how you feel about it. Yes, how dare the California Supreme Court interpret law? Who do they think they are? It's all part of that "checks and balances" thing we hear about now and again, but it works both ways: the Supreme Court can overturn laws, but since they answer to the Constitution, it's possible to go over their heads, which is why Proposition 8 is a Constitutional Amendment. (As far as I can tell, the difference between an "initiative statute" and an "initiative constitutional amendment" is the number of signatures needed on your petition.) If this passes, the Court pretty much just has to accept it.

I find it interesting that we're going this route for various reasons. I mean, on some level it's certainly no surprise that people who feel very strongly about those 14 words are miffed that they got shot down, and so are trying to push them just a little bit harder. I'm sure more than a few people are of the feeling that it's a little unfair that when we pass a law it doesn't just stay passed, but hey, when we vote in a Governor, he doesn't just stay Governor (even if the debate over this amendment trots out the gay penguins, I seriously doubt it will halfway meet the level of bizarre that the 2003 recall election gave us), so it shouldn't really be a surprise. The thing that's so odd about this path is that while I suspect it has a lot to do with indignation and moral outrage that surely Proposition 22 was right and the will of the people, the supporters of Proposition 8 seem to be giving a pretty soft sell for this one. The argument for it seems to be taking the confusing position that Proposition 8 will essentially change nothing, and yet in changing nothing, it is still of supreme importance. I quote:

"Proposition 8 is about preserving marriage; it's not an attack on the gay lifestyle. Proposition 8 doesn't take away any rights or benefits of gay or lesbian domestic partnerships."

So essentially, same-sex couples get everything except the word "marriage", and that's of supreme importance as it somehow "protects our children". Maybe more on that later if I can make any sense of it.

Now the thing I find interesting in particular about those who stand against Proposition 8 is a single statement in their rebuttal to the argument for the proposition--a statement that stands in direct opposition to the point above--that was apparently worth putting into caps:

"CALIFORNIA STATUTES CLEARLY IDENTIFY NINE REAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MARRIAGE AND DOMESTIC PARTNERSHIPS."

Wow. I mean, that's significant, isn't it? You might wonder what these nine differences are. I know I do, because nowhere in their rebuttal do they list a single one. Really, I was curious enough to visit noonprop8.com, feeling surely such a list would be posted there prominently. If it's there, I can't find it, nor did any Google search terms I could think of turn up such a list. (Maybe if there is someone who actually reads this who knows something I don't about these "NINE REAL DIFFERENCES", they could give me a heads-up. [EDIT: Found them!]) Really, if such a list exists, I think it would be excellent ammunition in this debate, so why hold it back? Even Republicans can list at least one real difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull, and I wasn't aware that anyone was even asking.

What are we asking? We're asking for the law to protect us, aren't we? But from what? Those in favor claim that if Proposition 8 fails to pass, the public school system will start "to teach young children that there is no difference between gay marriage and traditional marriage." The detractors deny this, but neither side says why this is significant. Maybe to you, my theoretical reader, the answer is obvious, but I suspect that if you're a person who finds the answer obvious, you're not a person who needs to be convinced that same-sex marriage should be disallowed. Aren't both arguments here really "preaching to the choir"? It's weird, because while I do feel it's the case, at the same time I wonder why if it's so, it's done so subtly.

Contrary to popular opinion concerning the fervently rabid homophobia that runs through evangelical churches, homosexuality is not a topic that's talked about much in church as far as I've experienced. I've been a Christian for over 13 years, and in all that time, I think I've experienced less than five sermons on the specific topic of homosexuality, and the topic has come up tangentially at most maybe a dozen times, but I doubt it's even that much. That being said, within the confines of the church walls, you won't find pastors pulling punches on the subject when it does come up. Sure, all sermons are (rightly) tempered with the admonition to remember that God loves everyone, regardless of sexual preference or any other characteristic, but most pastors will come right out and say that same-gender sexual relations are sinful, period. Meeting up with the average congregant on the street, ask their view on the matter and they will probably say likewise without reservation. Does anyone really believe that Proposition 8 is about anything else but moral indignation? Aren't there really only two types of people who oppose same-sex marriage? There are people who feel that God has said "no" to it, and people who just personally think it's gross, I guess. (Yes, there's overlap between the two groups, but in my opinion, it's a long way from total.) Yet nowhere in the arguments (for or against) will you find the words "morality" or "sin".

Do the supporters think that if they don't put the thought into words, that people won't know it's there? On the other hand, if it's not there, then what's the point of the argument at all? Aren't we left with the nonsensical line of "reasoning" that since things have never been the way they've been since the Supreme Court ruling in May, then they should continue not being that way? The "for" argument mostly stays away from using all caps, but does have one sentence, "CALIFORNIANS HAVE NEVER VOTED FOR SAME-SEX MARRIAGE." See, it's not about morality, it's about how since we never voted FOR same-sex marriage, we therefore obviously ought to vote AGAINST it.

It was very entertaining for me to try and put myself in the fantasy neutral mindset of someone who's been living in a cave* and has no opinion whatsoever on gay marriage, but now finds himself beset with the task of sorting out how to vote on this proposition. (After all, I can't imagine who else is supposed to be swayed by these arguments.) PRO: Apparently, this law was considered to be a good idea by most people, but the courts said that it wasn't, so we have to make it a good idea, or else our children will suffer the consequences: being taught that same-sex relationships are okay, not that we're saying that they aren't okay. Basically, gays don't have the right to redefine marriage, so we're going to instead, and if they wanted that right, they should have excercised it. CON: Everyone should be treated the same, but if this passes, everyone won't be treated the same, because this treats people differently, in different ways. Domestic partnerships are different in many ways; many, many ways indeed. Different people are different, but that doesn't mean they're different and should be treated like they're different, which this law does, and that's not what we need.

Who knew 14 words could say so much and yet say nothing of substance whatsoever? You'd think the California Constitution was written by bloggers.

(*Last night on The Daily Show, Jon Stewart said, "For anybody who has been living in a cave, let me just say this: congratulations! You've apparently made the soundest real estate investment possible. Once again, bin Laden wins.")

For what it's worth, congratulations...

So today begins in earnest the legalization of same-sex marriage in California. We can all expect to see a lot of footage on the news of same-sex couples standing and facing each other with big smiles while people stand at a distance with placards reading a variety of messages, the most common word probably being "sin". It's an odd day in California for me in particular, because nominally, I'm a person who has lived in both parts of that picture.

I think it's obvious to most people who know me presently, even if it's just through my blogging, that I'm one of those "fundies", or whatever society likes to call us this week. What is less obvious is that there was a time in my life when I had more gay than straight friends, few of which (among both orientations) were Christians. There's a certain emotional investment in my life on both sides of the debate, and I know virtually nobody was asking, "Hey, where does Brucker stand on this issue?" But I'll share anyway.

As loyal followers of my blog should know, I'm an ordained minister, and the day I became an ordained minister, I suggested here that ministers that support gay marriage and the separation of church and state should be performing ceremonies for same-sex couples regardless of the legal ramifications. I don't think I've expressed it in this blog, but really, if two people want to be together and simply say that they are a married couple, the government can refuse them certain rights, but they can't refuse them the right to simply say it, and live as if it were so. Same-sex marriage, polygamy and other alternatives to "traditional" marriage are being practiced whether the government sanctions it or not.

On a more personal level, though, I came to the realization a couple days ago that I am once again in life coming across a situation where my political beliefs and my religious beliefs are in conflict. Like times before when I've had to balance the concept that I have a duty to do what I am asked by my employer with the concept that my employer may be asking me to do something I morally oppose, there's a conflict. (I recall stories in the news of pharmacists who refused to fill out prescriptions for drugs they morally opposed; I think if you're morally opposed to something that's simply part of your job, then your duty is not to fail to do your job in that area, but find a different line of work.) I saw that as an ordained minister who is not under the authority of my church in any palpable way, I could very well go out and perform same-sex wedding ceremonies. Really, given the landslide of such ceremonies we're likely to see in the next few days, it would be an opportunity to make some quick, easy money simply by being there to say a few words to make people happy. Is that so bad?

I realized that, even though I have no strong political opposition to this ruling, even though I have friends that will likely be taking the day off of work today to stand in line at a courthouse somewhere to finally claim government recognition of their dedication to one another, and I am happy for them, even though I am a lover of controversy and would enjoy being there in the middle of it...I simply couldn't do it.

In the end, my religious beliefs won out. I see God as saying, no, this is unacceptable. Despite what I may feel about individual couples on a personal level, and despite my support of separation of church and state, I really could not condone it.

Does that make me more of a hypocrite for not sticking to my political beliefs, or does it make me less of a hypocrite for clinging to my religious beliefs? I can't decide, but I think it's good. I mean, in the end, don't we all need to cling to what we think is right?

Anna Quindlen says in Newsweek that "The gay-marriage isssue is over and done with." Oddly (to me at least) she quotes from a second-century poem about two men getting married in Rome. If it's so over and done with, then why are we still fighting it 19 centuries later? Why is it that pointing out that same-sex marriage has been around for two milennia bolsters the case for it while people argue about the outdatedness of Biblical principles for the very same reason? Despite the fact that Quindlen is delighted her children are so accepting of homosexuality, it neither means that homosexuality is morally acceptable nor that the matter won't still be debated long after her children are dead and gone another two milennia from now.

If this single issue is complicated enough that it can't be fully sorted out even within a single mind without being oversimplified, what makes anyone think this is even close to the end of the matter?

One government, two worlds

Many years ago, I had a pastor that was giving a series of sermons on hot topics of the day. Of course, many of those topics are still big, not least of which is the topic of abortion rights. You can probably guess what side of the issue he came down on, but many people might be surprised how he approached it.

Rather than simply standing up and blasting the opposition to his personal view, he took time to point out some things that most people don't think of. A person's views on abortion are really formed largely upon their opinion of the nature of what an embryo/fetus really is. If you believe it's a human being, then you're most likely going to want to see it protected. If you believe that it's just a lump of tissue on the wall of a woman's uterus, then removing that lump and disposing of it is no more of a moral issue than getting a wart removed. Until you take the time to understand those two viewpoints, you'll never understand those who stand on the other side of the issue from you.

My main point here is not about abortion, but about understanding the opposition on many, many issues. I find myself so often confused as to why the Republicans and Democrats seem to have so much animosity towards one another when there really seems to me to be very little difference between them. Where does this animosity come from?

I was thinking about the Libertarians, and I remembered something one of them once told me. (I have a lot of respect for Libertarians, although I myself am not one, because I tend to see them as perhaps the least hypocritical party for reasons that may become clear here.) This Libertarian pointed out that Democrats seem to think we can use government to solve all our problems, and openly admit it. However, while Republicans say that they are against "big government", if you watch them, you'll realize that they simply want a different kind of big government than the Democrats. I think there's a deep truth there.

We're not talking about a fetus now, we're talking about our government; what is it that Republicans and Democrats view the government to fundamentally be? I think that it's that view of government's fundamental purpose that not only forms the two parties' policies, but is the root of the animosity they have toward each other.

Take two issues; taxing the rich on the one hand, gay marriage on the other. Generally, Democrats are for both of these, and Republicans are against them. Why? The Republicans look at the government and ask, "What can the government do to protect me from things I think are wrong?" We don't like to see our money being taken, so less taxes for everyone. We have a moral system that says homosexuality is wrong, so we're not going to budge on that. The Democrats look at the government and ask, "What can the government do to create situations that I think are right?" We need money for social programs which the rich can afford to fund, so more taxes for everyone, especially the rich, and whatever my personal views on homosexuality may be, equal rights for everyone is a good idea.

So many Republicans and other conservatives seem to have this idea that liberals feel that wealth is evil. Why? Because they seem to want to just tax that evil right out of the rich. Now I'm sure there are a few people who do believe that, but not the majority. Where do Republicans get this idea? It's from their view of the purpose of government. The action of raising taxes on the rich implies to them that rich people must be wrong. That is not why Democrats do it.

Likewise, Democrats seem to feel that conservatives feel it's right to squelch the rights of others. Why? Because they don't take every chance possible to expand equal rights to everyone at every time. Once again, I'm sure there really are people who enjoy stopping those they dislike from enjoying their full freedom, but the aim of most conservatives tends to be different. They just want to stop what they view as being immoral. Democrats assume hatred of freedom and hatred of the poor on the part of Republicans because of a refusal to see eye to eye with them. But Republicans are just following their moral conscience, just like Democrats.

How do Libertarians view the government? To them it's just a tool for people to force their own morality on others, which is exactly what the Democrats and Republicans both do, albeit in different ways. My view? Does it matter? The fact is everyone thinks they're right, and the opposition is wrong, and it's all based on opinion. All I hope for is that people will stop mistaking a difference of opinion for a lack of morality, because there is nobody who is completely moral or amoral. We're all just trying to make things right.

Hindsight is 20/20 and color-blind

Sometimes when I write these posts, I mull over a subject for a few days, and then commit my thoughts to the blogosphere, where surely few will read them, but at least they're out of my brain for a while. Today, I'd like to rant on something that either has occupied my mind for less than an hour (I was sparked into considering this subject by something I caught on television less than an hour before I started typing) or for most of my life (this subject has interested me since I was a kid; I guess I've always been a bit of a cynic).

Racism and closely related topics are often difficult to talk about for a number of reasons. It's a sensitive subject obviously. It's something ugly that we would rather just go away. It's something that most of us harbor in some form, although we hate to admit it to ourselves. Let me come out and make an admission: I have a certain amount of irrational fear and hatred towards Germans. I think admitting it to myself helps me deal with it, but it's still there. Being raised Jewish, my older family members and people within the Jewish community talked a lot about Nazis. As a young man, I didn't really understand what the term meant, other than knowing that in my father's lifetime, a lot of Germans killed a lot of Jews. Thus I associated an (arguably) irrational fear of Germans, making an internal association due to a limited grasp of history that rationally I know to be false, in general, but still get the creeps about nonetheless. So there's that off my chest.

(For some people, it's not racism, but some other form of prejudice: I once knew a guy who had had a bad employee who had graduated from a certain college, and ever since had not liked anyone he met who was from that college. A lot of us have a certain degree of sexism as well that manifests in many differing ways.)

Maybe is just that I am a cynic, but I think if we are honest with ourselves, we won't look at racists and say, "I'm so much better than them," but rather,"There but for the grace of God..." The thing that sparked me this morning was a children's program talking about racism (I think; I only caught about a minute while channel-surfing). A young white girl was asked to imagine herself living in the early part of the 19th century, in a family that owned slaves; how would she feel? She responded, "I would feel really bad about it..."

Would you really, though? It seems more likely to me that you would take it in stride. Obviously most of the people who lived in what would later become the Confederate States of America took it as a given that slavery was acceptable, proper and even good. It was necessary for the thriving of the cotton plantations and other agriculture to have a constant supply of cheap labor, and so slavery continued. Tell me, do you feel bad for migrant workers in 21st-century agriculture who work all day in the hot sun for less than minimum wage to feed their families, knowing that they will probably never be accepted by mainstream culture? When you think about it, it's a lot like the early days after the abolition of slavery in the South, when many former slaves had to stay working on their old plantations without pay because it was the only way to make a living in a culture that didn't want you to get ahead, slavery or not.

Why do you suppose it is that it seems so obvious to us today that slavery is wrong, and yet there seems to have been few people who voluntarily gave up their slaves before abolition? In Santa Cruz, there was a local historical figure named London Nelson who was a freed slave. His first master died and left him to his eldest son, who continued to use him for cotton picking. Eventually, Nelson was set free when his new master decided to go west in the Gold Rush. The story interests me because it seems to illustrate the point that on the whole, the way we humans treat our other humans has less to do with what we feel to be morally right, and more to do with what will bring us economic prosperity.

I actually recently discovered that there is a shocking (but perhaps not surprising) strategy that some businesses use to dispose of wastes of certain kinds. Electronic equipment is recognized to be very dangerous and toxic, being filled with lead, mercury, cadmium and other deadly substances. It's illegal to put electronic waste in American landfills, so the preferred method is to break down old computers and extract the toxic substances, recycling them into new computers. That's difficult and costly to do, however, so many companies have found a cheap alternative: ship the stuff to India, where there are no laws about dumping these substances. Thus, our toxic chemicals end up in landfills sometimes literally in the back yards of impoverished Indians. I found myself thinking: the Nazis killed off millions of Jews out of hatred, but if Americans kill off millions of Indians out of mere convenience, who is worse? I don't know, but it really bothers me. If I am a person who stands by and lets this happen, am I any better than the average German citizen who didn't stand up to the Nazis? Heck, my life wouldn't even be put in danger to stand up to this sort of evil!

One of the unfortunate things about prejudice is the fact that most of us don't notice it or confront it unless it's directed at us. Remember the movie Philadelphia in 1993? Tom Hanks plays Andrew Beckett, a gay lawyer with AIDS who sues his firm for wrongful termination because he believes he lost his job in part because of homophobia. On what does he base his claim that his employers were homophobic? In a flashback, we see a group of lawyers together at a gym, swapping jokes as follows:

What do you call a woman who has PMS and ESP at the same time?

I don't know, Roger, what do you call her?

A bitch who knows everything.

Sounds like someone I know.

Hey Walter, how does a faggot fake an orgasm?

He throws a quart of hot yogurt on your back.

The thing that bothered me about this scene from the first time I saw it was the fact that Beckett is laughing along with the others when the sexist joke is being told, but the smile melts away when the gay joke is told. I wanted to step into that scene and ask him, "So Andrew, it sexism better than homophobia? If telling a joke about 'faggots' means they must hate you, does that imply telling a joke about 'bitches' mean they hate women? Why were you laughing before, and why did you stop now?"

I remember a time when I was at work alone with a co-worker who said, "Hey, all the women are gone, let's tell some politically-incorrect jokes." He proceeded to tell a black joke, a Polish joke, and a Chinese joke, laughing up a storm. I laughed too, then I told him an Italian joke. My (Italian) co-worker said, "Ouch..." and joke time was over.

Don't think you're better than anyone else just because you're not a Nazi. Most of us aren't Nazis, and most of us aren't particularly nice.

Tolerance, but only for the tolerant, of course

So in the ongoing saga of the sexy penguins, I decided to check out Google today (I would have done it earlier, but I was having technical difficulties) and found out that sure enough, a Google image search for "sexy penguin" pulls up a link to this blog as the #2 match. For those who might care about the numbers other than myself, I'm trying to keep a running total, and I've presently got 126 out of 157 hits, or roughly 80% of my visitors being people looking for a picture of a sexy penguin.

However, I'm not here to rant about sexy penguins and the people who love them...this time. I am going back to retouch on the original topic in order to use it as a launching point into another topic that's always bugged me.

Quick recap for those who can't be bothered to read the original post: A pro-same-sex marriage organization launched a campaign in Colorado based on the idea that a person who was sexually attracted to members of the same gender is just as normal as a dog that goes "moo". An anti-same-sex marriage organization, rather than pointing out the ridiculousness of this argument as I would have done, launched a counter-campaign to inform the public that dogs in fact do not go "moo". This high level of debate truly shows how serious this issue is.

Well, in tracking down the Google image search result for "sexy penguin", I noticed that under the picture, there was a snippet of text from my blog reading "...mooing dogs and sexy penguins." Curious, I tried a new image search for "mooing dogs", which my blog came up as the #1 hit! (Note that this is only on an image search; a regular web search did not give a link to my blog in the first 150 hits. The first blog hit was for this site, which rants about thwarting the "Heterosexual agenda" because "Dogs are really hard to milk." Good writing.)

As usual, I'm taking far to long to come to my point. Not too far down in the list of hits, I came across this article. Apparently a family in Colorado Springs has had their lawn repeatedly vandalized for having the audacity to put signs on it that feature a picture of a dog saying "Woof." The unknown people who vandalized the lawn and the signs by either stealing them or defacing them actually left notes for the family telling them that "YOU ARE NO BETTER THAN A TERRORIST BECAUSE YOU DISPLAYED THAT SIGN!" They even went so far as to specifically compare them to the September 11th WTC attackers.

I've got to say that this perplexes me on many levels. While I see no evidence in the article that the vandals ever used the specific word "tolerance", the concept was there, as they had written "STOP THE HATE" on the street near the house. I realize that this story was published by a news outlet that is affiliated in some manner (I'm not sure how closely) with the publishers of the "No-Moo-Lies.com" web site, and as such, it is doing its darnedest to paint this conservative family in a positive light, but still, the only "hate" I'm seeing here is on the part of the vandals.

While the family with the signs is indeed sending out a message (albeit fairly subtly) that many may find offensive, all they are doing in the end is expressing an opinion. The vandals are trespassing, damaging private and public property, and probably could easily be construed as threatening the physical safety of others. Why would they prefer to do that rather than pursue a number of perfectly legal and reasonable countermeasures? They could put up signs in their own yards. They could write letters to the family telling them intelligently why they disagree with their position and why they feel it is offensive. They could write letters to local newspapers. They could peaceably conduct a protest in the street in front of the lawn with the signs. And of course, they could vote, and I hope they did. One of the neat things about each of those is that they don't require sneaking around in the middle of the night.

Legality and even morality aside, though, there is a social phenomenon that I've found rather odd lately. I think most people tend to think of the freedoms outlined in the First Amendment in terms of a protection for the liberal free thinkers of our society. If I want to say that George W. Bush is an idiot, I can do so freely. If I want to have my children go to school and not have to practice some sort of state religion, then I'm all set for that, too. Lately it seems like a reversal of that sort of thinking has happened, though. In our society at large, you aren't allowed to like the President because we should all agree that he's evil. You aren't allowed to make any public expression of your religious beliefs lest it offend, because we should all value multiculturalism over all other values. You aren't allowed to think that morality as defined by your personal beliefs has any basis or right to be addressed because we should all with uniform assent that morality is relative.

That's what it really boils down to, and don't you see that there is an inherent hypocrisy and/or lapse of logic in that position? The only absolute value is relativism. All viewpoints should be allowed except for those that question whether all viewpoints should be allowed. Society should have no tolerance for those that practice intolerance. Argh... It makes my brain hurt sometimes.

Look, it's an opinion. Some people in Colorado think same-sex marriage should be allowed; others think it should be disallowed. These are just opinions, same as the opinion that people shouldn't judge others for their sexual orientation. Who is to decide which opinions should be allowed and which should be silenced? It's not simply a matter of being offended, because I assure you that on 99.9% of all issues, there will be somebody offended by either position.

There are a lot of people (and while I tend to feel "homophobia" is an overused term, it seems appropriate here) that are absolutely appalled at the thought of a gay pride parade, but is that single fact good enough reason to disallow such a display? I really feel that the First Amendment allows for people to hold a parade for any reason (so long as they avoid undue disruption of, well, traffic, I guess) be it the local high school's homecoming, abortion rights, a war protest, or even if your local chapter of the KKK wants to put on a show. Excepting probably the first of those examples, there's going to be a lot of people upset by such parades, but my advice is if you don't like it, then stay away, or go and organize a peaceful counter-demonstration. If you show up at an event and hassle or even attack the people there, you just let them believe they are some sort of martyrs for a great cause.

Did you read the article about the family with the vandalized signs? In the end, who wins that moral struggle? Isn't it the poor victimized folks with the peaceful signs on their yard? Completely disregarding what their signs say, and the ideas they are intended to convey to passers-by, aren't they the ones with the moral high ground because the opposition took the position of oppressor? Whoever it was that took those signs, they ought to know that they may have set their cause back more than No-Moo-Lies.com ever could.

The myth of homosexuality

Love that title? I thought it would be an attention-getter. Don't judge too harshly before you read, but do know that this may get a PG-13 rating if not worse. I started to write this entry on Monday, and as so often seems to happen, I get a fair way into a bit of clever writing and somehow manage to do something to screw it up and lose it. In this case, I shifted in my seat and kicked the computer's plug out, losing not only my writing, but other documents that had actual importance. Still, I had this clever bit about how I should rename my blog "Theologian Rants Always on Something Homosexual" since it seems to be a far too prominent topic for what I had intended this blog to be; oh, well. On the positive side, I've decided to take a different approach to the topic here which I think will cover a broader topic than my initial attempt. But I ought to get to where I'm going.

Ted Haggard. You've probably heard of the guy. If you didn't, here's what you need to know: Ted Haggard was (and perhaps still is) the leader of a prominent evangelical organization that had a lot of the standard fundamentalist views on homosexuality and drug abuse; in any case, those views were expressed in Haggard's sermons, that much is for sure. Then not so long ago (about a month or so) the story broke that Haggard had had an affair with a male prostitute from whom he had also bought drugs. Haggard claimed that he had only gone to this guy for a massage, and while he had indeed bought the drugs, he had not used them.

Whether or not Haggard had indeed had a same-sex affair or been a user of illicit drugs is not the issue. He and the other leaders of his organization agreed that he had done something wrong, and needed a time to himself for repentance and healing. The public had largely cast its judgment as well, and many of them had decided that clearly, Haggard was a closeted homosexual. It's this judgment that I really wish to focus on here.

Some have said, and I don't think that the view is so very alien and uncommon, that the root of the problem was Christianity's decision to treat the "sin" of homosexuality so harshly, or even to consider it a sin at all. No doubt, Haggard was gay, had always been gay, and had simply spent most of his life burying his true desires under a persona of religious zealotry. If only he had been allowed to live freely, he would have had a simple, happy life as an openly gay man.

I don't buy it. The guy has children, and has been married for a long time--to a woman, natch. A guy spends most of his life having a woman as his sexual outlet, and then has a single same-sex affair, and that means he's gay? I can think of a number of other possibilities that seem more likely, at least to me. Sure, he might be gay, but then, he might be bisexual. Or he may even be a straight man who somehow got tempted to try something that didn't immediately seem pleasing. Sure, the latter seems at face value to be very far-fetched, but I don't think it's out of the question; smoking tobacco is not a pleasant experience for people who try it at first, but many people do it anyway.

In thinking about this topic, I spent a fair amount of time thinking about the word "pervert". Generally, the word is used to refer to someone who has an unnatural sexual desire, but since there is a great deal of debate as to what is "natural", this generally gets used to mean: "Someone who has a sexual desire that *I* don't like/approve of." It's far too arbitrary in that sense, but I think there's something telling in what the word means in a more technical sense. Stripping away the moral implications of the word (which is hard to do, since it's a big part of what the word is about), the idea is that perverting something is to redirect it away from its intended use in an unexpected way. (Now, if you're certain that God intended sex to only be between a man and a woman, then any homosexual is a "pervert" in that sense, but I'm not trying to simplify this issue; I'm intending to hugely complicate it!)

Morality aside, if indeed Haggard is gay, and indeed being homosexual is a characteristic that you are naturally born with, then the perverted thing that Haggard did was to get married to a woman! Someone who is truly homosexual should not try to pervert those natural desires by pretending and/or attempting to act in a manner consistent with heterosexuals. But then, if they find they are easily able to do so, perhaps they are not homosexual? They must be bisexual; but then, if we as a society only accept monogamy, how does a bisexual stay true to their sexuality?

Now I've ventured back to the arena of morality again, and I do want to view this issue both from within that arena and without. There is a tendency I feel I have seen in society as of late, and I don't know how prevalent it is. I don't exactly hear about this sort of thing happening very often, but then, it probably doesn't happen so often anyway. The scenario is presented of a man who has been in a long-lasting marriage that to all outsiders seems to be a happy and successful marriage, but then one day, he admits that he has spent his life as a closeted homosexual. Essentially, he says, "I have realized that I need to be honest and true to myself. My wife is a good woman, but I have a desire to have sex with men, and as such, I am leaving my wife to be with a man." A large portion of society seems to applaud this decision. The man is liberated, he's being true to himself, and casting off the chains of an outmoded societal standard that was keeping him from the pursuit of happiness.

Now let's take another man, a man in the same situation before the revelation. He comes to a realization about his true desires, and he decides it's time for him to likewise cast off the chains of outmoded morality and pursue his happiness. "I have realized that I need to be honest and true to myself. My wife is a good woman, but I have a desire to have sex with twenty-year-old blondes, and as such, I am leaving my fifty-year-old brunette wife to be with one." Does society applaud this man? I don't think so. But really, is there such a difference between him and the previous one? If you're in a long-term committed relationship with another person, I think you have a responsibility to stay true to that person. That doesn't mean that separation is never an option, but it's something that shouldn't be taken lightly, regardless of the issues involved. (I'd even go so far as to say that goes for a same-sex couple in which one partner becomes convinced that homosexual relations are immoral; I don't think I'd advise such a person to just "drop their partner like a hot rock," so to speak, but find a way to make the transition out of the relationship as smoothly and respectfully as possible.)

But perhaps you'll claim that in the latter case this is not a matter of a person's orientation, but a matter of a "dirty old man", but that's subjective. The fact is that society as a whole, and various sub-sections of society make up their minds as to what is perversion and what is not, in both a moral and non-moral sense. It's not just Christians that do it, everyone does, and really, I don't think that's wrong per se. We have to judge others because that's how we interact personally; and we have to likewise judge ourselves, because that's how we make moral decisions. What makes choosing a sexual partner based on gender right, and choosing one based on age wrong? Isn't that just another kind of "sexual orientation"?

My big realization (while it may be complete crap, as I'm sure so much of my writing is) is that I was both wrong and right about something I used to think years ago. See, I used to think that people were not born homosexual, but to be fair, they weren't born heterosexual, either. I figured they were born bisexual (although perhaps "asexual" is more to the point) in that what sort of sexual partner one would prefer in adulthood was largely a preference formed by a variety of childhood experiences. Most people ended up going one way or the other, although some people stayed somewhere in the vague middle. I think now that I was right in that potentially each person would be open to a variety of placements on the sexual spectrum based on their early psychosocial development. But I was wrong in a bigger way.

I think I am now convinced that "sexual orientation" is a myth.

Because we as human beings like to judge people and pigeonhole them, we look at a man like Haggard and put him in a box. We say, "He's a homosexual." Really, that's where the word came from, as do many words; there were people that acted in certain ways sexually, and we wanted to put a simple handle on this behavior and build a box where we could contain it. Homosexual. As opposed to heterosexual. But this pigeonholing of people causes the sorts of problems that we have with gays in the military. The people against gays in the military feel that homosexuals will cause morale problems. Why? Because a soldier will always be wondering if there's some guy in his platoon who wants to have sex with him, although he has no interest in that, I guess.

Look, though. Where did the assumption come from? We say, "homosexual males are sexually attracted to other males," and it frankly must sound to some homophobes that there must be thousands of gay men out there somewhere who would like nothing better than to catch you with your pants down, right? But do you assume that every heterosexual woman in the world is looking to sleep with you? Do you want to sleep with every single woman in the world? (Maybe you do, and maybe there are indeed gay men who likewise would be amenable to sleeping with any other man, but it's certainly not the norm.)

The simple labels that we put on sexual orientation make the subject look like it's a simple matter, but it simply is not. The number and scope of the issues are huge enough that several books could be and have been written on the subject. If a person enjoyed masturbation, isn't that sex with a person of the same gender? Is a bisexual really a bisexual if they've never had sex with a member of the same gender? People say that pedophilia has nothing to do with homosexuality, but I wonder; aren't there male pedophiles that only molest young boys? Aren't there others that only molest young girls? Might one say that the former is a homosexual pedophile while the latter is a heterosexual one? Nobody wants to be associated with pedophiles, so if you're in the homosexual "box", you don't want (homosexual) pedophiles in the box with you, surely. Is sexual orientation about finding certain people attractive, desiring to have sex with certain people, or being sexually turned on by certain people? I once knew a woman who was a lesbian, but she was turned on by watching gay men kiss; what does that say about her "orientation"? What about the whole can of worms of the sexual orientation of transsexuals and intersexed individuals?

The fact is, the world does not consist of merely two types of people, homosexuals and heterosexuals. The world consists of six billion individuals each of whom has their own particular sexual desires. This is neither right nor wrong, it is simply a fact. Perhaps each and every one of us is a "pervert" in someone else's view?