127. pettifog

pettifog, verb: 1. To bicker or quibble over trifles or unimportant matters. 2. To carry on a petty, shifty, or unethical law business. 3. To practice chicanery of any sort.

For a bunch of puritanical prudes who object to every manner of sexual deviance (at least according to their narrow and hysterical definitions), they certainly do seem obsessed with the subject.

To the point where I’m tempted to say, “the lady doth protest too much, methinks.”

In case you’ve been living in the darkest parts of the Peruvian jungle for the past year, there’s been a bit of buzz in the news lately about contraception and its moral turpitude (or lack thereof, depending on who you ask).

Last week seven states filed lawsuits against the federal requirement that religious employers offer health insurance coverage that includes contraceptives and other birth control services. Surprise of all surprises, the Catholics are at the epicenter of it all.

The “Blunt Amendment” (so named for its author, Sen. Roy Blunt, R-MO) would have achieved just that end, allowing “employers and insurers to opt out of portions of the president’s health care law they found morally objectionable.” Which could cover just about anything. Find some spurious support in your holy book for why your so-called god finds such-and-such practice morally reprehensible and voilà! you now don’t have to follow the same rules as everyone else.

Thankfully, today the Senate rejected the effort to reverse the Obama administration’s policy in a 51-48 vote.

The funny thing is that these employers and insurers have qualms about offering birth control to their female employees (merely offering, mind you, not requiring every single woman to accept it), but have no qualms about accepting government money to, for example, run hospitals. Including Catholic hospitals, which are not private institutions.

Talk about biting the hand that feeds you.

I’m all for freedom of speech and freedom of religion. The First Amendment is one of the core values of this country, that you can say and believe anything you like (given certain reasonable restrictions, of course—hate speech, inciting violence, supporting terrorism, defamation and infringing on intellectual property are not protected), regardless of how insane.

However, your right to free speech ends where it begins to tread on the right to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. You don’t have the right to kill me because your prophet commanded you to kill the infidels. You don’t have the right to lock me up and attempt to “cure” my gayness because you believe that homosexuality is a sin.

You sure as hell don’t have the right to tell a woman what she can and can’t do with her body. Which is precisely what republicans wanted to do with this amendment, and what conservative legislators wanted to do in Virginia by requiring women to submit to an invasive trans-vaginal ultrasound probing (I turned more gay just typing that) before they can receive an abortion. Fortunately, that bill was also shot down.

Mitch McConnell said on Rachel Maddow’s show last month that “[overcoming Obama’s opposition to their measure] would be difficult as long as [he] is rigid in his view that he gets to decide what somebody else’s religion is.”

Hello, Pot—meet Kettle. That’s precisely what they’re trying to do—imposing a Christian sexual ethic on the entire country. “Freedom of religion” does not come with an asterisk and the caveat, “*so long as Jesus died for your sins.”

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines chicanery as “deception by artful subterfuge or sophistry.” It defines subterfuge as “deception by artifice or strategem in order to conceal, escape, or evade.”

And that is precisely what is going on with these measures, with the One Million Moms movement, with John Piper, Michele Bachmann and the rest of the conservative religious establishment. They know that their bigotry wouldn’t stand up in court if they actually came right out and said that they just didn’t like gays, don’t like to see two men or two women kissing or holding hands, and certainly don’t like even the idea of a gay couple getting married. So instead they point to things like the historical tradition of marriage, and the fact that only a heterosexual coupling can produce offspring. When all else fails (though this is increasingly becoming their first line of offense), they drag out the First Amendment and claim that allowing gays to marry will infringe on their Freedom of Religion.

Even though lawmakers in Maryland specifically stated that no one would be forced to marry a gay couple, provide pre-marital counseling, etc.

Just as no one would be required to accept contraceptives from their employer. This isn’t Brave New World. Nowhere in the policy were “Malthusian belts” mentioned. Employers only have to make contraceptives available.

But that’s not what’s really going on, as any magician will tell you when explaining how to do a bit of slight of hand. Religious conservatives are trying to hold on to whatever power and influence they have. For almost two thousand years the Church was able to direct the personal and sexual lives of its followers with promises of heavenly rewards, and threats of divine, eternal retribution.

They are terrified now that people are taking more charge of their own lives and decisions, and like an overbearing, controlling parent, they’re threatening to take away the T-Bird. Only I think they really know that it’s not their car to take away, and that they only ever had as much control as we gave them.

But they’re not for a moment going to let on that they know that we know that they know.

On the issue of contraception and the federal mandate that all employers (not excluding the ones who don’t want to follow the rules like everyone else) must provide access to birth control through their health insurance plans—if you don’t want to do that, find another source of funding. If you’re going to accept government money, then like any employee you are obligated to do things your employer’s way.

126. bandy

bandy, verb: 1. To pass from one to another or back and forth; give and take. 2. To throw or strike to and fro or from side to side, as a ball in tennis. 3. To circulate freely.

Some days I stare forever at a blank screen and wonder what to write about.

Some days social media just hands it to me in a neat little package with a bow.

I was tipped off to the fact that this weekend (on Friday around noon, to be precise), John Piper, the homophobic pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in downtown Minneapolis, went on the following homophobic rant:

I’m not really sure what set him off this time, aside from Maryland’s upcoming vote to approve same-sex marriage, but I love the fact that he started his rant with a self-fulfilling prophesy. And that all this translates to: “The sky is falling!”

To briefly address each of these tweets one-by-one, as I just said, by quoting 1 Corinthians 4:12, he’s giving himself license to throw up his hands later and say, “We told them they were going to hate us!” He’s refusing to take responsibility for the wrong-headed, offensive nature of his theology that prevents him from accepting anyone who doesn’t live up to his notion of what a decent human being is supposed to be.

As to his second tweet (which rings mildly treasonous), as the Fifth Doctor said of the Daleks, “However you respond them is seen as an act of provocation.” Conservative fundamentalism is and has been living in a wartime mindset for quite some time, convinced as they are that we are living in the End Times and that the return of Jesus is nigh. They are also convinced that the person of Satan is actively working in the world to pervert it and incite the human race into rebellion (deliberate or inadvertent) against god. This tweet won’t make make sense unless you understand that very important point.

To the third—well, I’ll get to that in a minute.

To the last one, his definition of marriage is so narrow and based on something that is itself a fiction that to tie it into something as insoluble as “the glory of god” would be laughable if it wasn’t tragic. If you aren’t familiar with that phrase, one of the central themes of Piper’s teaching is the primacy of the Glory of God, a concept that is found throughout the bible, but may be more familiar to Catholic and Anglican readers from the answer to the first question from the Westminster Shorter Catechism:

What is the chief end of man?
Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.

Now, I may not be a deity, but if I handed you a list of ways I felt were acceptable for you to show your love for me, you’d be quite right to call me a narcissist. After all, that’s in the very DSM-IV criterion for narcissism.

I don’t have to tell you that I think Piper terribly wrong, or that he’s dangerous and a societal menace. But through his Pie In The Sky theology, he is directing everyone who listens to him (and there are a lot of them who literally hang on his every word) to be precisely the opposite of the qualities that the figurehead of his religion exemplified in the Gospels (if you leave out the crazy bits like cursing fig trees)—namely, showing love, acceptance, charity and generosity towards your fellow human beings.

And these are the people of my state who will be going out in November in droves to vote in the affirmative for the constitutional amendment defining marriage as only being between a man and a woman.

Tell me again that religion is harmless.

Now, to that pesky third tweet. The insanity of these reformed theology fundamentalists is how they pick and choose which parts of their bible they will apply to the rest of the world—as if the rest of the world was somehow supposed to recognize the authority of a 2,000 year-old book authored by a xenophobic Bronze Age tribe obsessed with blood and sexual purity. For instance, since they’re so hot for quoting Leviticus when they’re bashing gays:

“You shall not eat any flesh with the blood in it. You shall not interpret omens or tell fortunes. You shall not round off the hair on your temples or mar the edges of your beard. You shall not make any cuts on your body for the dead or tattoo yourselves: I am the Lord.”
— Leviticus 19:26-28 (English Standard Version)

How many Christians do you know who openly sport tattoos, trim their facial hair, read horoscopes and eat rare steaks?

“But that’s the Old Testament” the contemporary Christian whines. “Jesus came to fulfill the law and the prophets. We don’t have to follow those old laws anymore.”

Then it stands to reason that if he fulfilled the ones above, then he also fulfilled all the rest, including Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13; and if those have been nullified, then the whole rest of the case for homosexuality being a “sin” falls apart. And what is John Piper and that third tweet of his left with at that point other than prejudice and bigotry? For that matter, what is the American Family Association, Peter LaBarbera, James Dobson, Rick Santorum, Michele Bachmann and the denizens of fear and ignorance left with?

The sad truth is that they, along with the rest of America that refuses to progress, will be dragged kicking and screaming into obsolescence, watching in a prison of self-imposed horror like Elizabeth Báthory as their influence withers and wanes before their little despotic eyes.

If gays are allowed to marry, will that endanger heterosexual marriages? Nope. As it’s been observed, the only people threatening heterosexual marriage are heterosexuals.

If teens are taught about safe sex or *gasp* the existence of homosexuals in school, will they turn gay? Nope, although apparently the American Life League would seem to disagree slightly.

125. plenum

plenum, noun: 1. A full assembly, as a joint legislative assembly. 2. The state or a space in which a gas, usually air, is contained at a pressure greater than atmospheric pressure. 3. A space, usually above a ceiling or below a floor, that can serve as a receiving chamber for air that has been heated or cooled to be distributed to inhabited areas. 4. The whole of space regarded as being filled with matter (opposed to vacuum).

As if it wasn’t enough having four middle-aged men jerking off to the sound of their own egos, Franklin Graham (the son of the evangelist and sometime presidential adviser Billy Graham) had to remind people earlier this week that his opinions about anything still count for something.

A few days ago, Rick Santorum decided to call Obama’s religious convictions into question by, of all things, stating that his worldview “elevates the Earth above man,” which is a mind-boggling comment coming from the man who:

Is the only presidential candidate in the history of the United States to have a position on anal sex as part of his political platform;
Wants to elevate his Bronze Age, Judeo-Christian beliefs above the individual rights and liberties of millions of women and minorities; and
Thinks that Satan and his demons are attacking America.

Basically, Rick Santorum is saying that Obama isn’t Puritanical enough, which is funny since we haven’t had proper Puritans in America since, oh, the Revolutionary War. Their influence and their obsession, however, with sexual purity, disapproval of recreation (and all forms of fun), and desire to impose a theocracy on everyone in this country is alive and well to this day.

Franklin Graham, sensing an opportunity to carry on his father’s line of work as charlatan-in-chief to the president, went on MSNBC on Tuesday morning to say that, while he takes Obama at face value for saying that he’s a Christian, he doubts whether Obama has any true Christian faith. He then went on to say that he thinks that “[Rick Santorum] is a man of faith … His values are so clear on moral issues.” Graham also took the opportunity as part of the Obama-Is-An-Islamist-Puppet movement to raise the “Is He A Muslim??” question yet again.

Because we obviously haven’t heard enough about that already.

Graham stated in 2010 that Obama is a Muslim because “the seed of Islam is passed through the father like the seed of Judaism is passed through the mother.” Just like being the son of a famous evangelist makes you qualified to speak on matters of national and international importance.

He also thinks that Newt Gingrich, a serial adulterer and fat cat lobbyist (among other things), “could make a good candidate.” (He has obviously not followed Newt’s career, or listened to anything the man has said at any point in his career, let alone recently.) I guess if you show up for church on Sunday and say nice things about your imaginary friend in the sky, that’s all it takes to make you less repulsive of an individual.

First of all, why does the opinion of the son of a Christian evangelist matter one jot on the question of the suitability of a presidential candidate? (And why was Billy Graham ever a presidential adviser?)

Second, how the fuck did religion become the primary issue of this election? Why are we not hearing more about candidates’ stances on important issues like, oh, THE ECONOMY, job creation, Afghanistan, Internet censorship, defense spending, stem cell research, education, health care, energy independence, or the rising issue of Iran as a potential nuclear weapons holder? Those are issues of actual importance that we need to hear about!

What scares me is that many Americans will be voting largely based on their religious beliefs and affiliations in November. They might swing one way on international or fiscal issues, but in the end their pro-life or anti-gay beliefs will win out, and someone like Santorum could actually be elected president of the United States.

Arguing over who’s more Christian is tantamount to arguing over who’s a better Harry Potter or more devoted Twilight fan. You can be as fervent and as fanatical as you want, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s fiction and therefore not in the realm of reality. Supposing we were to reword some of those recent statements about faith:

“Obama has said he’s read Breaking Dawn, so I just have to assume that he has.”
“Most true fans of the books would not recognize the film adaptations as part of Harry Potter canon.”
“No question about it … I think Santorum is on Team Jacob.”
“Newt’s been married several times … but he could make a good candidate. I think Newt is a Hufflepuff. At least he told me he is.”

Nobody would take any of that seriously, and rightly thus. So why are we allowing religion to be the dominant issue of this election (aside from the fact that it makes for great ratings and readership)?

124. weltschmerz

This is not a word of the day, and frankly, I don’t care very much if it is or is not. I’m frankly tired of the self-imposed rules and standards I weigh myself down under.

Here’s my Word Of The Day, and it’s pretty apropos at that:

Weltschmerz, noun: 1. Mental depression or apathy caused by comparison of the actual state of the world with an ideal state. 2. A mood of sentimental sadness.

This is the word that sums up my mood.

Last night I watched the independent British film Weekend, with Tom Cullen and Chris New, about two guys who hook up at a bar and then try and decide if what they have is something more serious. It’s a totally non-traditional romantic drama in about every sense of the word; and very raw, in a way that will shock most Americans. There’s a scene towards the end where they make a wry joke about, “Is this our Notting Hill moment?” They both admit that they’ve never seen it, but figure that that particular moment is when someone comes running up in the rain to make a romantic declaration and everything gets wrapped up nicely.

Which it does not.

Which is a bit more like real life.

In real life, women get crushed by bulldozers. Tibetan nuns burn to death protesting brutal Chinese occupation. Children are molested by middle school teachers. There is no third act, no climax, no catastrophe leading to dénouement.

Freytag works great for describing what’s on paper—not so great off. Life is a bit too unpredictable, and most of the bits in between the exciting bits very boring.

How is a raven like a writing desk? They produce very few notes, and all of them flat.

Raised in American culture, in a media saturated with happy stories, we have these presupposed ideas about how life is supposed to go; and romantic dramas/comedies all start just before the big relationship of the protagonist’s life is about to begin. And we all seem to live in that place for whatever reason, our life stories written for us by the big Hollywood studios that bring us (and our dollars) back to the multiplexes and the Netflix instant queues again and again, like addicts looking for a fix of comfort and security of the hope that maybe—just maybe—life doesn’t suck as much as we secretly think it might.

There’s a bit from an Okkervil River song (“Our Life is Not a Movie or Maybe”) that goes:

No fade in: film begins on a kid in the big city. And no cut to a costly parade (that’s for him only!). No dissolve to a sliver of grey (that’s his new lady!) where she glows just like grain on the flickering pane of some great movie.

In life, we don’t matter. We are all the protagonists of our own stories, but no one else is watching. We are the lone author and audience. Everyone else is just extras, with a few people getting speaking parts and supporting roles. And we are the extras and supporting players in other protagonists’ stories.

For me, a gay man, I don’t have stories playing for me up on the alluring cinema screen. Those are stories for the straights, for the people whose lives have been written out for them if they choose to pick up that volume. I spent most of my formative years pretending that I wasn’t attracted to the other boys. This isn’t my era. The young people of my era are coming out now when they’re seven or eight. They’ll flirt with other young boys when you’re supposed to be learning how to flirt. Some of them will get hell, but in this changing climate most of them probably won’t.

I’ll never learn how to flirt, how not to not pretend that I’m attracted to a guy; to openly stare across a room at someone.

A few moments ago this guy who lives about a mile away asked me if I wanted to come over and cuddle. I don’t know if he meant any more or just that. As nice as that would be, to have someone, I don’t want just someone. Right now, I want to cuddle with a guy who knows me, who knows just by looking that I’m feeling bad and insecure and crazy. I’m so tired of being crazy and lonely because I’m crazy and can’t carry on a normal relationship with another human being because I’m broken because (cliché cliché) my parents fucked me as a child. (Not literally. Figuratively.)

But life doesn’t sort itself out into three neat little acts: exposition, introduction, dramatic premise, situation, inciting incident; conflict, obstacle, antagonist, low point; climax, falling action, equilibrium, resolution. Doesn’t work that way.

I need to be found. Not by some god, which is what they always told me I needed. I’m tired of other people telling me what I need, even though I don’t even know what it is I need.

I need to be found by someone.

But that probably won’t happen.

And don’t tell me that I just have to wait and be patient. The people who sell you that line are the people who got lucky, who didn’t have to wait, or who are on the other side. The other side always looks rosier once you’ve made it past the thorns, which seems to be the whole tenor of my life. The promise of roses, the potential for roses, but just thistles.

It’d be great if my life were a movie, but it doesn’t work like that.

In real life, the guy gets on the train and leaves for two years, and we never know if he comes back. No earnest, soggy, moor-top confessions of love. No last-minute interventions from a benevolent, sentimental author. No hero overcoming all obstacles in spite of impossible odds for sake of paramour. No convenient character arcs.

Our life is not a movie. No ‘maybe’ about it.

123. cordate

cordate, adj; 1. Heart-shaped; 2. (Botany) heart-shaped, with the attachment at the notched end.

it may not always be so; and i say
that if your lips, which i have loved, should touch
another’s, and your dear strong fingers clutch
his heart, as mine in time not far away;
if on another’s face your sweet hair lay
in such silence as i know, or such
great writhing words as, uttering overmuch,
stand helplessly before the spirit at bay;

if this should be, i say if this should be–
you of my heart, send me a little word;
that i may go unto him, and take his hands,
saying, Accept all happiness from me.
Then shall i turn my face and hear one bird
sing terribly afar in the lost lands
— e.e. cummings, Sonnets-Unrealities XI

On the subject of love lost, regrets and things that I should let go of, this is probably the one thing that the people in my life would most like to see me get over, as they are likely tired of both hearing and reading about it. I’m tired of dredging it up so often, and of it seemingly dominating everything.

Two years ago to the day, I was waking up with Seth, something I never would’ve thought happened. It was shortly after we first met for coffee, and I was rather taken with him and wanted to spend more time with him. So I went over to his apartment on February 13th with the intention of watching Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain, which he hadn’t seen. For some reason I couldn’t find it in my bag (I later found it buried behind something), but I’d brought the DVD of John Doyle’s 2007 revival of Stephen Sondheim’s Company. I ended up spending the night, we ended up making out until about 5am.

That was the first and only time I ever woke up with someone on Valentine’s Day. It’ll probably be the only time that I ever do that.

Yes, Valentine’s Day is a corporate marketing ploy. It’s empty ritual and shamelessly overt commercialism couched in gaudy romantic sheep’s clothing.

As a homeschooled kid growing up, we didn’t do Valentine’s Day. Sure, my mom baked cookies (but then my mom always baked cookies), and I still have a fondness for that pink icing that was slightly crispy on top and still moist the rest of the way, like a good crème brûlée. But unlike the rest of the kids who went to public school, my sisters and I never partook in the ritual of exchanging cards.

I think I’m afraid to let go of what’s left of my feelings for Seth, even though nothing will ever come of them and it’s a waste of energy. He’s a great guy, and he has a lot of great qualities (which is why I fell in love with him in the first place), but emotionally speaking it’s a dead end.

I’m afraid that I’ll never feel anything like that ever again, and thus far I haven’t. There have been people who have fallen in love with me, but it wasn’t reciprocal. Aaron, my first boyfriend, was crushed when I ended our relationship. In a way, the fiasco with Seth was somewhat karmic, although it’s probably just an inevitability of dating that you’re going to hurt people and be hurt in return.

I’m afraid that if I let go of Seth altogether that there will be no one to fall back on; that there is truly no one out there for me. The thought of that is unbearable, because my dating prospects have been disappointing thus far. The thought of waking up alone every morning, let alone on Valentine’s Day, with the memory of that one day, that one chance I ever had at something like that, is too awful to think about.

A relationship with another human being seems like the one thing that actually matters in life, aside from leaving an enduring legacy. We’re here for the blink of an eye geologically speaking, and then that’s it. No second chances. No great hereafter. No life everlasting. This is one of the major reasons why I finally chose to come out as gay, because I suddenly realized that life was too damned short to surrender my happiness to others.

Yet here I am doing just that with Seth—surrendering what could have potentially been a happy year to basically emotionally freeze myself in carbonite. However, I’m not sure that the alternative would be much better.

To be perfectly honest, I hate myself. Not some kind of stereotypical gay self-loathing or residual homophobic. It’s hard to explain, but it has to do with never feeling good enough to please myself, which means that I’m not good enough for other people, which has largely to do with the complete lack of acceptance that I felt as a child growing up. I’ve always felt like a contractor, trying to impress clients in order to keep their accounts—in this instance, people’s friendship, and that at any time they could find a better deal from the next guy. In the case of a boyfriend, the stakes are even higher.

And we all know that I don’t deal well with rejection. As a kid with extremely judgmental parents, I tend to take it personally.

So I’m a bit lost. I need to learn to love and accept myself, flaws and all—but how to do that when I can’t see my own face and don’t trust the mirrors that others hold up to me? And I need a guy who won’t give up until he’s convinced me that he truly loves me and isn’t going anywhere. Most of the guys I’ve dated over the last few years have left me feeling like that will never happen. And though I never dated Seth, of all of the guys he was the one who left me feeling the most undesirable and unlovable.

But I haven’t found anyone yet to take his place.

122. exoteric

exoteric, adjective: 1. Suitable for or communicated to the general public; 2. Not belonging, limited, or pertaining to the inner or select circle, as of disciples or intimates; 3. Popular; simple; commonplace; 4. Pertaining to the outside; exterior; external.

This morning I posted the following on Twitter: “If children aren’t allowed in an R-rated movie, children shouldn’t be allowed into churches where they read from an X-rated book.”

Having read the bible cover-to-cover many times (and in different translations!), I feel I can speak with authority on this subject. My parents were shocked when they found out that I’d read Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles as an eight-year-old. That actually began my long love affair with banned books, although I hadn’t known that it had been banned at the time. In places it’s pretty sexually explicit, so why my parents—as Evangelical Christians—had that book I’ll never know.

However, if you bother to look closely at the bible you’ll find x-rated material throughout, yet this was a book my parents encouraged my sisters and me to spend as much time reading as possible (which is partly why they objected to me reading Martian Chronicles, because it wasn’t the bible)! Here are a few sexually explicit examples (parents—you’ll want to send your children out of the room now):

Lot’s daughters get him drunk and rape him multiple times after they flee Sodom. (Genesis 19:30-36)
David commits adultery with Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite, one of his soldiers, and then has Uriah killed when he finds out that Bathsheba is pregnant with his [David’s] child. (2 Samuel 11:3-5)
Amnon, one of David’s sons, becomes infatuated with his half-sister Tamar (different Tamar) and rapes her after pretending to be sick and asking to have her bring him food. Tamar’s brother Absolom finds out about this two years later and kills Amnon. (2 Samuel 13)

That’s not to mention all of the other instances of rape, incest, mass slaughter, genocide, infant and child sacrifice, and horrific mutilations that are scattered throughout the “holy scriptures.” Eli Roth, James Wan and Wes Crave shouldn’t bother making torture porn—they could just adapt the bible.

Today I got into a discussion with a friend of a friend on Facebook who posted the above picture along with this caption:

Then Jesus prayed this prayer: “O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, thank you for hiding the truth from those who think themselves so wise and clever, and for revealing it to the childlike. Yes, Father, it pleased you to do it this way!”
— Matthew 11:25-26

As a rule, I try not to go after people I don’t know unless they try to start something with me. However, as much as I dislike children, that picture really disturbed me, and I shared that sentiment with him: “This makes me extremely nervous, seeing children who are not yet able to cognitively grasp what or who it is that they’re worshiping, or what they’re doing, and are basically parroting their elders.”

He responded: “I can see where your concern is coming from. On the flip side, I look forward to fathering my children in such a way some day, that they “parrot” my worship. If their parents are godly men and women whose lives produce fruit to go along with those postures of worship, these kids are on a very healthy pathway towards understanding worship in a way most adults do not.”

I look at that picture and see myself as a child, eager to please my parents and adults and to fit in. As children we’re genetically conditioned to imitate our elders. It’s how we learn.

But how, exactly, is this not brainwashing? When you raise a child in a vacuum, tell it that there’s a benevolent god up there who loves us, listens to our prayers and takes care of all our needs (even though its parents work hard to put food on the table and clothes on everyone’s backs); but will nevertheless throw us into a fiery pit for all eternity if we fail to properly worship the son he slaughtered because of his failed experiment on humanity—how can you expect that child to ask questions? To grow as a human being?

And when you tell that child that the earth is 6,000 years old, and that dinosaurs and humans co-existed (even though most of the dinosaurs were wiped out 65 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous period, and modern humans appeared on the scene c.60,000 years ago), how can you expect that child to think freely when you’ve taught it from birth that the bible is the authoritative, infallible word of god, and that every word is absolutely, unquestionably true?

It’s ironic that Christians believe that every fetus has a right to life, yet when that child is born they immediately want to take away its right to think to “save its soul.”

Religious freedom is a hallmark of American society. However, in preserving parents’ freedom to express their religious beliefs, I fear that we place children in intellectual (as well as physical) peril. Many religious groups refuse life-saving medical treatment on the grounds that it interferes with god’s prerogative over life—notably, Christian Scientists. Last year a couple in Oregon was jailed for six years after their premature newborn son died of staph pneumonia when they refused medical intervention. In 2010, a 15-year-old Jehovah’s Witness in the U.K. refused a blood transfusion and died as a result.

Religious parents claim the right to raise their children as they see fit. To be fair, most children raised in religious homes grow up healthy and well-adjusted. And I acknowledge that these parents are concerned for the spiritual well-being of their offspring. But how many of those children will:

… grow up thinking the earth is 6,000 years old?
… vote against same-sex marriage and believe that homosexuals are evil?
… go to school board meetings and demand that Creationism or Intelligent Design be taught?

You cannot be raised in a religious home and be a freethinker. I’m sorry, it’s not possible.

121. depone

depone, verb: To testify under oath; depose.

‘Atheism’ is a term that should not even exist. No one ever needs to identify himself as a ‘non-astrologer’ or a ‘non-alchemist.’ We do not have words for people who doubt that Elvis is still alive or that aliens have traversed the galaxy only to molest ranchers and their cattle. Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make in the presence of unjustified religious beliefs.
— Sam Harris

A few days ago there was a story circulating in the news about a U.S. Army soldier who has been petitioning to be classified as “Humanist” instead of “Atheist” on his official records and dog tags. The Army’s rationale? It’s the same difference as putting “Catholic” instead of “Christian.” And I can kind of see their point from an administrative angle. If they start to recognize one group as being unique then they’ll have to start recognizing all as unique. Then it starts to become a free-for-all, with everyone focusing on their differences instead of working on building unity and cohesion.

However, Maj. Jay Bradley also has a valid point. It would be one thing if the term atheist had as concrete a definition as Christian. But it doesn’t. In a post-9/11 world (especially in the military, from the stories I’ve read), if you hold a belief other than Christian, you may as well be a terrorist—or a child molester, or a serial rapist. You run the risk of being seen as anti-American. If you don’t believe in god, you’re turning your back on tradition, on all moral values, and on everything that is good and decent.

“Smoked newborn baby, anyone?”

As Sam Harris said, it’s unfortunate that we still need labels to differentiate ourselves from theists, or that anybody still cares—just as it’s unfortunate that anyone still cares that some of us love someone of the same sex and want to share a life with that person. But that is not the world that we live in.

Atheism by itself is not a philosophy. It is simply a non-belief in god(s). It doesn’t tell you anything about what a person believes, and that leaves much open to being misconstrued or misinterpreted (per above). Atheism can be expressed in a number of different ways, of which humanism is one, though probably the most prevalent.

“Humanism is a philosophy that guides a person,” Bradley said in an AP article. “It’s more than just a stamp of what you’re not.”

So why should anybody care about this? Certainly, no one forced any of us to become atheists or agnostics. You could argue that we’re all actually born atheists; that belief in gods is forced on us as children before we have the ability to choose for ourselves. And some of us are fortunate enough to be born into secular homes. For most of us though, it became our choice to leave our churches and communities of faith. But is that reason enough to compel organizations like the Army to recognize Humanists? Do atheists and other nontheists deserve secular “chaplains” (or whatever the equivalent might be).

To the latter question, I think that yes, secular soldiers and other personnel need a point person to be able to go to regarding personal matters, without danger of being proselyted to or even judged. When you’re at your neediest and most vulnerable emotionally, it’s imperative to have a safe place to go for help and advice. When an atheist soldier has just lost a friend in combat, can a religious chaplain be relied and called upon to speak to that soldier’s beliefs—that that friend is truly gone?

It’s not that I think that a religious chaplain would unscrupulously take advantage of a moment like that to try and convert anyone. However, at his/her core, that chaplain truly believes that another life awaits us after death. They want to offer and share the peace and comfort that they find in that belief. An atheist “chaplain” will see it differently.

But lest we think this a military issue, many Christians are overall wondering what the big deal is, or wonder why atheists object to any forms of religion being expressed in society. (Well, many Whites didn’t understand what all those Negros were raising a fuss about, having to sit in the back of the bus.) Many even feel attacked (oh, the irony) by the presence of atheists, and can’t see that what we want is a society where everyone is free to practice their beliefs without imposing them on others. I wish soldiers didn’t have to declare their religious beliefs on their dog tags, or that they have to decline to participate in platoon prayers (and no doubt get some grief over doing so, or are eyed warily afterward).

A friend of mine works in an industry that draws and employs many conservative (=religious) people, and doesn’t feel secure being “out” as an atheist there. I wish she weren’t afraid of retaliation.

In some ways, this is similar to the debate that’s going on over same-sex marriage; over whether gays are made second-class citizens by denying them the legal right to marry while offering alternatives like domestic partnerships or civil unions. In some ways. In other ways that’s a whole other discussion.

However.

This is fundamentally a matter of affirming personhood, and of a rancorous and frightened majority desperate to hold onto the status quo attempting to silence a growingly vocal minority. It is about people standing up and declaring who they truly are and what they believe, without having to put up with the prejudice and proselyting of the “faithful,” or with radical Christians attempting to shove their fundamentalist religion down the throats of vulnerable children.

I wish we didn’t have to identify as atheists; but as long as we have powerful Christians like Pat Robertson, Rick Santorum, “Porno” Peter LaBarbera, Tony Perkins, the American Family Association, James Dobson, Rick Warren and David Barton, we have to.

And loudly.

120. screed

screed, noun: 1. A long discourse or essay, especially a diatribe; 2. An informal letter, account, or other piece of writing.

Yesterday I found a blog post linked on Twitter entitled, “Why I love church even though I am an atheist.” It is a fascinating read by a girl who was raised secular and is drawn to the community, the ceremony and the sense of celebration that often surrounds the proceedings of the church.

As an ex-churchgoer, it was curious to read a piece like that since I can’t stand any of the things she finds fascinating, such as the “worship(=song) set,” the “worship band,” or the screens which the words to the songs are projected on, etc. Now, mind you, I used to participate in all of those things! I played piano, sang in the band, and even led “worship” occasionally. Now I’m trying to find the words to express exactly how I feel about the whole institution, which I find blitheringly chintzy, uninspired and even (dare I say it) mildly cultish.

Imagine: a couple hundred people gathered together in a large room, all facing forward, some of them with their eyes closed or hands raised in the air (some of them rocking back and forth or absently swaying side to side), mindlessly singing some bland, tuneless rock ballad (with the obligatory upbeat “gathering songs” to get people “in the spirit to praise god”) off projection screens, often with abstract or nature-inspired artwork on the slides that somehow aesthetically pairs with the words to the songs, which often make Lady Gaga sound like freaking T.S. Eliot in comparison.

I left all of that behind, and gladly, when I became an atheist—so why would a nonbeliever (indeed, the author of that blog does not believe in god) even want to participate?

In the post she wrote this:

I honestly have no qualms interpreting celebration of divine creation as celebration of existence—and at the end of the day, biblical preaching is by and large about living a moral and kind lifestyle—something I personally think is crucial to happiness as an individual.

Now, I get that. I get what it is that she finds in a church service, or in the community of friends she has there. There is something indescribably warm and inviting about going to church every week, finding where your friends are sitting (or walking in with them), and then participating. It’s the same kind of feeling of communion you get at a sports event or at a concert (not a Classical concert, mind you—that has the same formal, dusty feel as a Methodist church service).

But when you’re singing phrases like:

I am full of earth / You are heaven’s worth (David Crowder, “Wholly Yours”)
A loud song I sing, a huge bell I ring (Waterdeep, “I Will Not Forget You”)
Still the greatest treasure remains for those who gladly choose you now (Phillips, Craig and Dean, “Come, Now is the Time to Worship”)
I could sing of your love forever, I could sing of your love forever, I could sing of your love forever, I could sing of your love forever (Delirious—yes, that is the name of the band, and whoa, get this, the title of this song is—”I Could Sing of Your Love Forever”)
I feel like moving to the rhythm of Your grace / Your fragrance is intoxicating in our secret place (Casting Crowns, “Your Love is Extravagant”)

… how can you honestly take any of that seriously as an atheist!? Or as a rational, thinking person!? C’mon! You’re singing what amounts to love songs to a totally fictitious person (God and/or Jesus—take your pick), and I get the impression from some of these lyrics that (so long as you’re not paying any attention to what you’re actually saying) everyone has a massive hard-on for Jesus by the time the sermon rolls around.

Again, I get it. Tess has friends in the church. She goes to bible studies where they cook each other dinner. “I love to be inspired,” she writes. “I love sharing my life with others, and supporting them with their endeavours and being supported in return. These are important aspects of my church experiences and I have not managed to find other groups here at university that fill those roles in my life.”

I’ve written about this before—about the appalling lack of community for and amongst atheists. Again, I think this is partly what’s at the heart of the planned building of an “atheist temple” in London. Now, I highly doubt that anyone would be singing songs of praise to Richard Dawkins, to Bertrand Russell, or to the Flying Teapot there. I doubt there would be atheist “services.” After all, atheists don’t have religious beliefs. We have no creeds that bind us together. Certainly we believe things, and many of us hold humanist values and believe in the vital importance of critical thinking and the scientific method.

And that’s part of the problem—there is really nothing binding atheists together, nothing to draw us together. Belief in god and reverence for hearing the bible taught brings Christians together every week. That is something they all have in common. Atheists? Well, we all seem to come from such vast and different backgrounds that there is little commonality amongst us, aside from non-belief in god(s). Most of the ways that we express our non-belief tend to be rather individual—through personal study or research, writing (such as I’m doing here), volunteering and humanitarian work, or activism to promote non-theism or to attempt to quell the growing lobbyist influence of Christian conservatism.

But don’t forget our favorite activity: shredding and mocking fundamentalist Christians.

In the midst of all this, and the lack of any organized atheist community, I can see how the church might be attractive to an atheist who hasn’t experienced the more sinister side of Christianity or the abuse and rejection of Christians. This is something we seriously need to address as non-theists.

After all, what is attractive about atheism?

119. crib

crib, verb: To pilfer or steal, especially to plagiarize; slang: One’s home; pad.

Regrets collect like old friends,
Here to relive your darkest moments—
I can see no way, I can see no way.
And all of the ghouls come out to play.
— Florence + the Machine, Shake It Out

Change is inevitable. That’s the way of evolution. It’s the driving force of the universe. If things stayed the way they were, nothing would exist.

I’ve called Minneapolis/Saint Paul home since August of 1993 when my family moved here from central Kansas, where we’d lived since 1986. Ever since we came up over a hill and the skyscrapers of Minneapolis came into view, I’ve never wanted to call anyplace else home—even after visiting England and Ireland in 2003. This is where my family is from, where my friends are, and where a million memories are connected to.

But over the past couple of months, like a person gradually losing their mother tongue and having it replaced by an alien language, it’s felt less like the home that it always has been.

A similar thing happened in 2007 when I left the church that had been home for 14 years and went off by myself to another church, where I’d be for the next three and a half years until finally becoming an atheist.

When we moved here in 1993, we quickly decided on a non-denominational church in Saint Paul. Everything about it felt just right—the people, the teaching, the Christian education programs for both adults and children. And we got involved right away. We got connected with the active homeschool community at the church, and soon we were there 3-4 days a week, including Sundays. There were music practices, AWANAS, clubs, and regular events.

Later I would join the adult choir at age 15, which became my special church family, and I honestly cherish every memory I have from that group. And we were good. We were not your typical warbly church choir. We were an auditioned ensemble—and voiced. Our music director was incredible, and we were seated according to how our voices blended.

Needless to say, there were a thousand things about that church that I loved. But then our pastor left after a coup of sorts by the executive pastor who was hired to basically turn us into a mega church. That eventually led to the installation of the pastor who is currently there, a much younger guy who had his own “hip” ideas about church. The sermons were watered down in content and quality. Services started resembling rock shows, with one of the pastors shifted over to overseeing production.

And then one day I was standing in church, looking around, and it suddenly hit me. “I don’t belong here anymore.” I couldn’t put my finger on it, but so much had gradually changed that it no longer resembled the church I had grown up in. It was someone else’s church. At the time I was working at the church as a custodian, and I continued to work there while going to Saturday services at the church I would eventually move to.

In the same way, Minneapolis and Saint Paul have ceased to feel like home. Only nothing about the city itself has changed. The people have. And I have.

For many reasons, this past Christmas I cut off all contact with my immediate family—my mom and dad, two younger sisters, a brother-on-law and a nephew.

Many of my friends have also either moved away, or gotten married and/or started families of their own. A very close-knit group of friends of mine scattered last year after about half of them moved away. I lived with two guys for about a year and a half until one of them moved out to move in with his girlfriend, and then the other guy was getting married so I moved in with my parents for a bit until I found a new place to live. They became my “church” after I left the other one.

Then there’s SafeHouse, the church that my friends are starting. For those of you who’ve never been in a church, there’s a closeness that comes with being part of one that makes everyone on the outside feel a bit alienated. It’s not intentional on their part. They’re just becoming a tribe. It’s basic sociology.

… there’s also Seth.

It feels like playground politics to say it, but he’s really become the line in the sand with my old group of friends. Before the night of my birthday in 2011, I had grown incredibly close with that set of people, and Seth (at least for me) quickly became the center of it all. He’s incredibly charismatic and likable. From the first time I heard about the kid who had been kicked out of his Christian parents’ home when he came out to them, to when I read his blog and fell in love with his words, to when I actually met him for coffee and fell in love with his personality and his incredibly piercing, beautiful blue-grey eyes, I was taken.

Then it all fell apart. Now he’s my friends’ pastor, and on one side of the line is me and on the other is all the pain and ugliness that lies between him and myself, as well as anyone who calls him “friend.” And I miss him terribly. There are few days where I don’t think about him or wonder what he’s up to, and wish things happened differently.

So I’m seriously contemplating relocating to Seattle this summer. It’s pointless to run from your problems, but neither is anything getting better; and sometimes a radical change of scenery can help, like women in Jane Austen novels vacationing in Bath.

There’s the need for physical distance between myself and Seth, from SafeHouse, and from the people in my life who I just don’t belong with anymore. And I can’t figure out who I am now as an atheist when I’m dragging this horse around with me.

118. filiopietistic

filiopietistic, adjective: Pertaining to reverence of forebears or tradition, especially if carried to excess.

So much for my 2012 pseudo-resolution of trying to disengage from the whole religion debate and foster more positive, constructive dialogues with Christians and other people of faith. (That lasted all of a couple of days.)

What this really more likely indicates is my growing need for serious psychological counseling to get over all of the various issues related to my religious upbringing.

And Seth, of course.

(Note to self: need to get over that…)

The other day I ended up embroiled in a rather tense verbal scuffle with a fundamentalist Christian on Facebook. A friend of mine posted that he felt it was odd that his Christian university “has portraits of Martin Luther King Jr. posted up on campus, celebrates black history month, considers itself a “Reconciliation” school [whatever the hell that means], and yet, still considers homosexuality a sin.”

One of his friends posted in reply:

I think the Bible is pretty clear that pursuing a homosexual lifestyle is a sin. Therefore, it is perfectly reasonable for a Christian school to take that stance. “Why is God calling me to a life of celibacy?” is a very, very difficult question to answer. That’s probably why people don’t have good answers for things like that. But as God says, “My Grace is sufficient for you,” and Paul responds, “I will boast in my weaknesses, for in my weaknesses God is strong.”

Perhaps the reason why people “don’t have good answers for things like that” is because there aren’t any good reasons why a gay person should even have to choose a life of celibacy, or endure abuse for being gay in the first place.

The incredible thing is that these people don’t see themselves as hateful. In fact, they seem genuinely dismayed when accused of being such for saying things like this. Even when you attempt to explain how their speech may be perceived as disparaging, they still appear unable to grasp why gays might resent them for saying to a gay man or a lesbian that they can either turn straight or be alone for the rest of their lives. Yet millions of gay Christians have swallowed that toxic sludge and have obediently attempted just that.

“I’m not calling them sinners,” fundamentalists exclaim. “The bible calls them sinners!” My parents used a line like this when they found out I was gay. And I have to believe that they really believe that they think they’re loving gays by “proclaiming the Truth.”

However, the case for homosexuality being a “choice” is now rapidly falling to pieces—something even the other side is having to admit. Alan Chambers, the president of the floundering ex-gay group Exodus International (the group whose two founders left the organization, apologized for starting it in the first place, and got married to each other), said this at a meeting of Christian homosexuals:

“The majority of people I have met, and the majority meaning 99.9% of them, have not experienced a change in their sexual orientation or have gotten to a place where they can say they have never been tempted or are not tempted in some way or experience some level of same-sex attraction.”

Now, I highly doubt that 99.9% is a scientifically based estimate, but his statement is staggering. Chambers just admitted that “conversion therapy” doesn’t work!

So, if it apparently isn’t possible to successfully “cure” homosexuality, we’re left with two logical possibilities:

Jesus isn’t powerful enough to cure it.
There’s nothing there to cure.

Later on in the message thread, the guy on Facebook actually had the nerve to say this:

Our own sin distorts our perceptions of right and wrong. Our hearts are full of selfishness, lies, anger, and lust. We twist and abuse all the good things God gives us. God didn’t create alcoholics. He created the ability for us to make alcohol and we distorted its purpose.

Yes, he pulled out the old “Homosexuality is an addiction—just like alcoholism!” argument. However, many of us grew up in predominately heterosexual environments, with nothing to become addicted to. Most of us weren’t abused by an older male relative who twisted our perceptions of ourselves and our sexuality. The evidence is mounting in the scientific community that homosexuality is a natural variant of human sexuality.

But let’s be honest: Even if you present him/her with the evidence, a die-hard Evangelical Christian is still going to cling to the party line and insist that homosexuality is a sin.

For those of you lucky to not have been brought up in the fundamentalist church, you’re taught right away that you live in world hostile to Christians and the Christian message. “And you will be hated by all for my name’s sake,” says Mark 13:13. “But the one who endures to the end will be saved.” You’re going to suffer for doing good (see 1 Peter 3—this is textbook paradoxical thinking).

And that’s why they don’t see their speech as hateful. They’re just doing their god-given duty in speaking the Truth as it’s been revealed to them. Our anger, therefore, is evidence of the testimony of the Holy Spirit convicting us of our sin, and that’s why we get so upset at them—because we know deep down that what they’re saying is true. And that’s why they say, “Hey, don’t shoot the messenger!”

Here’s the other part of it: “Men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed” (John 3:19-20).

So evidence be damned—even though every reputable psychologist, neuroscientist, and even biologist is saying there’s nothing wrong with the GLBT community, gays are still living in sin. And need Jesus to “take away the gay.”

You cannot understand religious conservative rhetoric without understanding this. They know people are going to hate them for “speaking the Truth.”

Ahhh, but their reward lies in Heaven…