201. confutation

Yesterday was Darwin’s birthday, so I watched an HBO documentary called Questioning Darwin, a look at the Creationist movement in the United States and its fierce opposition to the theory of evolution by natural selection. It’s basically a dissection of everything I was taught as a child about myself, the origin of life, and my purpose on Earth.

First, some quotes from Creationists in the film:

“We believe in Creation, because of our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and God’s word, the holy Bible.”
“If the theory of evolution is a fact, the Bible must be false, so we’re all stupid ignoramuses.”
“I do not believe that we’re some sort of highly evolved primate.”
“The Bible says we are created a little lower than angels, which is much more noble and majestic than the explanation that evolution gives for who we are.”
“I don’t know how someone could observe humans and miss the dignity that’s put there by God alone.”
“To put man down as just an animal, that we’re no different than a dog, is preposterous. God made us in His image, and so to say that man is an animal, and God created man in his own image… does one come back and say God is nothing more than an animal?”
“If we are just a product of this random mutation process, where does morality come from? Where does hope come from? Where does love come from?”
“If that’s the way the world works, then you believe in a God that doesn’t intervene. That takes away any possibility of miracles, any possibility of answered prayer, any possibility of the resurrection.”
“To think I have no communication with God would be so devastating. I can’t even imagine adopting such a view just to make peace with Darwin.”
“I can’t imagine life without knowing that God has a plan, and that that plan is not just for the here-and-now, but that plan includes a hope and a future, and a future way beyond whatever we’ll face here on Earth but a future with Him in heaven.”

What I hear in these voices is fear, thinly masked by certainty in a belief that promises to deliver both answers and purpose. These are people terrified by an existence that’s marked by uncertainty and danger. In a way, they’re right to be afraid, irrational as that fear is.

The beginning of my journey to atheism was indeed in finally accepting the theory of evolution by natural selection. I’m not sure when that happened, exactly—somewhere in the years after graduating from Northwestern College. The more I considered the fossil and genetic evidence that all life on Earth is related, and for the age of the universe and the Earth itself, the less likely it seemed that it was designed. For a while I flirted with the idea of theistic evolution, that God put everything in motion. Then something Julia Sweeney says in Letting Go of God stuck with me:

Intelligent design gets everything backwards. It’s like saying that our hands are miraculous because they fit so perfectly into our gloves: “Look at that! Four fingers and a thumb! That can’t have been an accident!’

Fact is, far from “fearfully and wonderfully made,” we more seem to be haphazardly assembled.

This view of a naturalistic universe had real implications for the beliefs my parents had handed me as a child, beliefs that mirrored the sentiments offered by the quotations above. How could a loving God allow such a world to exist? If I, a being made in the image of God, wanted to prevent suffering, how could an all-powerful being then not banish it completely?

At one point, several individuals talk about surviving substance abuse and how their addiction turned to Christianity. This is a popular talking point: without God we’re just animals, slaves to our darker impulses and passions—that we’ll tear ourselves apart. I don’t know how many presentations I sat through growing up: of “recovering sinners” warning us how bad it was on the outside, and that our only hope for overcoming sin and temptation was Jesus.

A fellow from Answers in Genesis sums it up at one point: “When asked what is the primary reason I believe evolution is incompatible with Biblical Christianity, I can sum it up in one word: death. Whether we’re young or old, death is inevitable.”

In the debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham last week, this issue also came up. Ham said something to the effect of: “Bill Nye can’t tell us what happens after we die.” And that’s true. We don’t know. I don’t know. Yet somehow this becomes a talking point for Creationists to insert a Gospel pitch of salvation through Jesus Christ. You cannot talk to a Creationist who won’t do this at some point.

Their response to the news that we’re essentially alone in an amoral and indifferent universe is to try to shut their eyes tight and stop their ears. For them, if evolution is true, that means that life is pointless, aimless, meaningless. I love how Julia Sweeney puts it in Letting Go of God: “What’s going to stop me from rushing out and murdering people?”

For me, accepting evolution was liberating. For years, I agonized over the struggle between my “earthly” desires and my supposed divine purpose on Earth. The news that I’m an animal, with the same origins and subject to the same needs and forces as other creature on this planet, was a relief. It meant there’s nothing wrong with me, the opposite of what Christianity taught.

It’s futile to argue with Creationists. Their arguments are based on emotion, and apparently fear of death and spontaneously becoming murderers or kleptomaniacs. Or gay. Thus, they can easily dismiss threatening, rational evidence in favor of the Bible.

Darwin wrote: “Man in his arrogance thinks himself a great work, worthy the interposition of a deity, more humble and I believe truer to consider him created from animals.”

181. dilly

This afternoon a friend of mine posted an article from the Guardian about the top five regrets people have as they come to die. As an atheist who doesn’t believe in any kind of afterlife and that each of us only gets one shot at life, being intentional about avoiding regrets has been a major motif for me in the past few years. I don’t want to arrive at the inevitable end of my mortal coil with the taste of an unlived life in my mouth.

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

This is the principle reason why I finally came out gay almost five years ago, and as an atheist almost two and a half years ago. As a self-identified Christian, I wasn’t being honest with anyone (including myself) about the fact that I didn’t really believe in God, and that church was basically about socializing for me. And after coming to the realization that my sexual orientation wasn’t something that was ever likely to change, and that I didn’t even want it to change, I decided that living in fear of what my parents and community thought wasn’t worth wasting the opportunity to express who I truly am. Worse, it’s not worth the opportunity to experience life through the lens of marriage and intimate relationship, and to learn to love and be loved by another human being — in my case, another man.

I didn’t want to get to the end of my life with the knowledge that I’d missed the chance to find someone who I couldn’t live without.

2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.

For me, this has less to do with working long hours and more to do with the nature of work that I do. For most of my working life I’ve taken the safer path and accepted jobs that paid the bills or didn’t provide much challenge. Even my degree I chose in college was something I knew wouldn’t carry much risk in terms of accomplishment. But ultimately, I’m most happy when creating, whether musically or with words. The best times in my life, when I felt most alive, were when I was working on a show, or writing an opera or novel, and so on. And life is too short to not be remarkable and do what brings you.

“It’s not so much do as you like as it is that you like what you do.”
– Dot, Sunday in the Park with George

3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.

Heh, as anyone who reads this blog or follows my Facebook posts knows, this is not an area where I often hold back. Even my face frequently betrays what I’m thinking and feeling. I was a very outgoing and exuberant child, but there was a span of years during my childhood where I was shut-down and self-repressed. I’m not entirely sure why that happened. There were troubles with my parents, as many boys experience, but few photos from those years show me smiling. I’d become very self-critical, a trait that has survived well into adulthood, and remember being very dissatisfied with myself, particularly how I looked when smiling.

Thanks to one drama teacher in junior high, however, I rediscovered my ability to express myself, to smile and to laugh again. It wasn’t until after I came out as an atheist that I was really able to start expressing the pain and hurt that I experienced growing up. And once I’d given voice to the hurt, and truly grappled with the concept of the finality of existence, start expressing to people in my life how much they truly mean to me.

Words from the Bible that I grew up hearing and reading now take on a new, ironical meaning: “Whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it” (Matthew 16:25). Only that “me” ended up not being some religious figure.

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

I’m trying to do better about this, but as an introvert with some hard-to-shake social anxiety and hermit tendencies, it’s a daily struggle. To that end, and thanks to the influence of a friend of mine, I’ve started maintaining a spreadsheet to track who I spend time with, and how often. It was partly in response to wanting to be more intentional about my social life, but also getting tired of saying, “It’s been a while!”

Quite a few friendships were burned in the process of coming out twice, some on my part and some on the part of others. You do learn who your true friends are when you show them your true self, and they can either live with that identity or reject you because you’re not who they wanted you to be. And it made me realize the importance of choosing your friends wisely, and spending time with truly good people whose company I covet and value.

One of the bedroom decorating tips in feng shui is to “choose images that you want to see happening in your life.” That’s how I’m approaching friendships now. Quality over quantity.

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

This is probably the hardest one of all. As Aslan says in C. S. Lewis’ The Magician’s Nephew,

“… he has made himself unable to hear my voice. If I spoke to him, he would hear only growlings and roarings. Oh, Adam’s son, how cleverly you defend yourself against all that might do you good!”

Part of the impetus in starting therapy last September was to find a trained, impartial third-party observer to help me identify the ways I’ve tied myself in knots over the years. As Bob Wiley realized, “If I don’t untie myself, inside the emotional knots, I’m going to explode.”

Baby step: untie your knots. Life’s too damned short not to let yourself be happy.

173. machinate

Here’s a surprise bit of news from the FCC: it’s considering dropping current broadcast decency standards that ban explicit profanity and “non-sexual” nudity. Apparently they’ll cut their backlog of pending complaints significantly (I think by about 70 percent), and save a ton of money in the process.

Translation—we’d be hearing a lot more “shit” instead of “shoot” or “crap”; “fuck” instead of “frack” or “fudge”; and seeing more boobs and (fingers crossed everyone) cock on television. Naked breasts I could care less about. Cock, however…

Not surprisingly, the “family” councils (e.g., American Family Association, my local Minnesota Family Council) are up in arms over this “outrage.” I guess while they were focused on keeping gays and lesbians from getting hitched, the Gay Agenda snuck this one through the backdoor to finish its job of stripping the United States of its morals.

Their response: send their legions of panic-stricken Christians to the FCC website to file complaints. Some of the responses are unwittingly hilarious (taken verbatim from the FCC Electronic Comment Filing System page). Like this one:

Philippians 4:8 says – for the rest, brethren,whatever is true, whatever is worthy of reverence and is honorable and seemly, whatver is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely and lovable, whatever is kind and winsome and gracious, if there is any virte and excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think on and weigh and take account of these things (fix your minds on them). F words and nudity would cause my to discontinue television.

The old fundamentalist Christian standby—when there’s no rational argument, quote Bible verses! That one always works. Or this one:

By allowing the F word and nudity on to television you are striking very damaging harm to the already seriously wounded culture in the United States. Our sex saturated culture harms especially young people and deprives them of hope that their lives can mprove when they experience the reults of a culture which places sexual gratification as the ultimate game. When many young people realize that they have been deluded they will be tempted to increase the already alarming statistic on youth suicide.

So if the FCC broadcasts words like “fuck” and (non-sexual) images of nude women (and men!!!) … young people will commit suicide?

Some comments make wild use of punctuation to drive home their point:

Do you think more FILTH on TV is good for our country???????????????

Or this one, from a gentleman who claims that the United States will somehow be overthrown and its citizens enslaved if the FCC airs “naughty” words:

Your advocacy of nudity and profanity on public TV are the signs of the terminal moral decay of America, as this nation turns from its moral foundations to puruse its own direction free from the moral and religious standards that once made this nation great. You are part of the sweeping tide that is bringing about the destruction of our nation through the advocacy of pornagraphy and profanity; an advocacy which only 20 years ago would have been unthinkable. Freedom abused and misused wiil be freedom lost,as we lose this country to the results of moral decay – which will be our enslavement. Be forwarned.

The FCC wouldn’t be advocating nudity, profanity or pornography, any more than it currently advocates batshit crazy Evangelical theology by allowing lunatics like Pat Robertson and Bryan Fischer to air their hateful ideology on their television and radio shows.

Then there are comments like this one:

Please do not relax the FCC standards. If anything, tighten the standards and enforce them. TV and radio have gotten too filthy and violent. It’s already too indecent and repulsive and needs to be cleaned up. Our culture is in rapid decay, every little bit we can do to reverse the damage would be a step in the correct direction.

With one breath, these Christians tell the government to stay the heck out of their lives and their religion. With the next, they demand the FCC enforce some kind of moral police state. Which do they want—a small government, or a Big Brother state? (We know the answer: they want nothing short of an Evangelical Christian theocracy.)

Of course, I know plenty of Christians and other people of faith who won’t be flummoxed at all by this. They drink, swear, fuck, and enjoy a good nudie show as much as the next godless heathen. And I know plenty of atheists who are just as offended by profanity and nudity as many of these Christians (albeit for different reasons).

Point is—if you don’t like what’s on TV, don’t watch. With the exception of activities that really do harm people (e.g., cigarettes, stabbing people with knives), just because you feel offended by or don’t like something doesn’t give you the right to try and outlaw or ban it for everyone.

—

More on this from the International Business Times: http://www.ibtimes.com/fcc-may-finally-relax-draconian-bush-era-indecency-rules-parents-television-council-not-happy-about

130. pococurante

The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them:
that’s the essence of inhumanity. After all, my dear, if you watch people carefully,
you’ll be surprised to find how like hate is to love.

— George Bernard Shaw, The Devil’s Disciple (1901), Act II

pococurante, noun: Caring little; indifferent; nonchalant. Adjective: A careless or indifferent person.

Denzel Washington loves his Jesus. He goes to church every Sunday. Allegedly he reads his bible every single day. But you know who he apparently doesn’t love? Atheists.

“The overwhelming majority of sociopaths aren’t violent. They just have a desire to win. They just don’t have a conscience — they don’t have it. The majority of them are atheists as well. So that was the book that was sort of my Bible if you will… in preparation for this part.”

The part in question is his role in the recently released film Safehouse, where he plays an ex-CIA agent turned international criminal. Denzel was talking in an interview (from which the above quote was taken) about his preparation for his part in the film. Now, to be perfectly honest, I think that this is a non-story. Here’s another interview where he talks about the movie:

Washington talks more about waterboarding than he does about atheism. Atheism is mentioned in passing, more as his own personal takeaway from Martha Stout’s The Sociopath Next Door: The ruthless versus the rest of us.

Now, before we get carried away with media portrayals of sociopathy, it’s important to actually define what a sociopath is. Both sociopathy and psychopathy are classed under Antisocial Personality Disorders in the Diagnostic and Statistics Manual, fourth edition (DSM-IV), and are characterized as “a pervasive pattern of disregard for, and violation of, the rights of others that begins in childhood or early adolescence and continues into adulthood.” Both sociopathy and psychopathy are characterized by (among other things) a noticeable lack of remorse, regard for the safety or well-being of others, deception (“as indicated by repeatedly lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure”), impulsiveness, and “failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest.”

This is not just a lack of guilt—it’s a complete inability to relate to other human beings. What’s probably most frightening about sociopaths is that they often look “normal,” and that’s part of the mask. The character of Dexter in Jeff Lindsay’s novels exemplifies this sociopathic trait: They don’t understand how other people operate. They’re often very intelligent and are able to study and emulate human behavior in the way that an actor takes on a role, but they don’t internalize.

Okay—back to Denzel.

Shortly after these interviews, the reference to atheists blew up in atheist circles. “Did Actor Denzel Washington Really Call Atheists ‘Sociopaths?’” goes one recent headline from this morning, which signals to me that this is yet another example of people needing some excuse to get bent out of shape. You see this a lot in the gay community too, although (to be fair) atheists don’t have a reason to hear anti-atheist slurs, whereas homophobia really is woven into the societal fabric to an extent. And atheists aren’t routinely harassed, bullied, tortured and beaten to death (or worse) for being atheists. Or being suspected of atheism.

But to be fair to atheists (and myself), we’re tired of having to defend our morality against those who say that you can’t be good without god. I’m not going to waste a keystroke on the various ways that nasty little question is thrown around, but I can make the jump that by even mentioning atheism in the same sentence as sociopathy that Denzel Washington is saying that atheists are sociopaths. But he didn’t. He’s an actor who was quoting from a book. If anything, we should be going after Martha Stout for writing that about atheists! And that would be a waste of time and energy.

So yes, Denzel is a very religious man. He has never made that a secret.

But you know who we’re not talking about in terms of sociopathy? Religious conservatives.

Now, I don’t think that Michele Bachmann, Tony Perkins, Rick Santorum, Tracy Morgan and any politician or celebrity who has made anti-gay remarks are necessarily sociopaths. Nor do I think that opposing gay rights or gay marriage should raise suspicion of a person being antisocial (although for some it should make us wonder about what other issues they’re potentially hiding). They hide behind their “traditional beliefs” and their religious arguments, and on the surface it appears that they genuinely don’t understand why people are so outraged at what they’re saying and doing.

However, many of these people (Tracy Morgan excluded) are just too intelligent to be that simple. If they were your average, church-going rube fundamentalists I might be willing to cede that, but these are educated individuals who have managed to get elected to fairly high political offices (although that in itself is not necessarily proof of intelligence—a certain former President comes to mind). You can’t get to that level without some cunning, or at least knowing how to surround yourself with the right people.

And regarding homosexuality, I think that if you were to pin every anti-gay politician to the wall or (the ghost of Christopher Hitchens forbid) waterboard them long enough, I think they’d all admit that it’s a MacGuffin that keeps conservative voters coming to the polls and voting keeping them in power. Most of them probably don’t personally care much what two guys or girls do in their bedroom.

However, what I do see in the eyes and speeches of Bachmann, Perry, Santorum and Kevin Bryant is indifference, be it genuine or willful. And when your political agenda trumps achieving equality for GLBT Americans, there’s something dangerously wrong with your moral compass.

So who’s the most sociopathical sociopath of them all?

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…

114. ignorance

‘They are Man’s,’ said the Spirit, looking down upon them. ‘And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it.’ cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. ‘Slander those who tell it ye. Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And abide the end.’
— Dickens, A Christmas Carol, Stave 3: The Second of the Three Spirits

Full disclosure: I am angry right now.

If you follow GLBT news at all, one of the big items in Minnesota is the announcement on Tuesday^[1] that the Anoka-Hennepin school board is considering an alternative to the Sexual Orientation Curriculum Policy^[2] that’s in place right now. This is the home district of Michele Bachmann, the anti-gay congresswoman whose husband Marcus(ss) runs the [Pray-Away-the-Gay] counselling clinic^[3].

In case you aren’t familiar, the current policy prohibits teachers and administrators from talking about or interfering in matters concerning a student’s sexual orientation—including a student being bullied—the purpose being (and I’m speculating here) to protect school officials from being sued over insinuating that a teen is gay. What it’s created, however, is a culture in which GLBT teens have little recourse from bullies, and a culture in which nine students have committed suicide in the past two years, some of whom were gay or merely perceived to be gay.

Again, this is the home district of Michele Bachmann. And, not surprisingly, the Parent’s Action League, an ultra-conservative group, is protesting the new policy^[4], stating that it is “being used as a pretext to advance a much broader agenda: the legitimization of homosexuality and related conduct to impressionable schoolchildren [and] will undermine the academic focus of this district and open the door to pro-homosexual and related conduct materials in the school curriculum thereby exposing students to concepts hostile to their religious faith and or moral convictions.”

So, “school safety” = “pro-homosexual.” Simply astounding.

MinnPost reported in an article on Thursday^[5] that these parents also requested that, should this new policy be instituted, students also have access to information about conversion (i.e., “ex-gay”) therapy, a form of psychological terrorism that has been denounced and derided by every reputable therapist. They also demand that (and I’m not making this up) officials “provide the history of gay-related immune deficiency (GRID), AIDS, and the medical consequences of homosexual acts” and “provide pro-family, ex-homosexual and ex-transgender videos to secondary media centers.”

GRID, in case you don’t know, was the name initially proposed for the disease that became AIDS. In 1982.^[6] It was promptly discarded for its inaccuracy^[7]. Yet here it is again, in 2012, being referred to in a proposal by a bunch of right-wing, religious, anti-gay parents.

In Michele Bachmann territory.

This comes in the same month that the Tennessee General Assembly is meeting about the HB229 (a.k.a., “Don’t Say Gay”) bill^[8] that’d make it illegal to even mention homosexuality in a public school, even though another 14-year-old committed suicide^[9] this past week after he was relentlessly bullied at his school for being openly gay.

And we need to prohibit teachers from talking about homosexuality, as if that will stop kids from turning queer.

Just like we need to keep telling teens not to have sex before marriage, which is obviously going to stop teen girls from getting pregnant—just like it’s stopping them in Texas, which has the third highest teen birth rate^[10], and the highest repeat teen birth rate^[11], in the country. That’s one race you don’t want to come first in.

I am angry that there are still anti-sodomy laws^[12] in Kansas, Texas, Oklahoma and Montana, which means the police can technically arrest you in your own home for having “gay sex.”

I am angry that Oklahoma State Rep. Mike Reynolds is attempting to push new DADT legislation^[13] that would ban GLBT citizens from openly serving in the National Guard (even though a similar measure was attempted in Virginia last year, and the federal government responded by threatening to cut their entire budget)^[14], a measure that Rick Perry lent his support to by encouraging Christian Oklahomans to mobilize.

I am angry that a 16-year-old atheist student ^[15] in Rhode Island received violence and death threats after she sued her school to have an overtly Christian banner taken down. (This is supremely ironic, considering that Rhode Island was founded by Roger Williams in 1636 as a haven for religious freedom.)^[16]

I am angry that an Oklahoma Republican, State Sen. Ralph Shortey, is actually pushing a bill that would (according to the website Talking Points Memo):

outlaw the use of human fetuses in food, because, as he says, “there is a potential that there are companies that are using aborted human babies in their research and development of basically enhancing flavor for artificial flavors.”^[17]

Yes. Soylent Green is a tasty food additive made from dead babies.

I am angry that Rick Santorum (among other things) is publicly saying that he thinks that women who become pregnant after being raped should “make the best of a bad situation” and carry the fetus to term as a “broken gift from god.”^[18] (This coming from a privileged white guy who will never have to face that scenario himself.)

I am furious that Tennessee Sen. Stacey Campfield (R) said that it’s “virtually impossible to contract AIDS through heterosexual sex.”^[19] Tell that to the 12 million women living with AIDS in 2009 in Sub-Saharan Africa, compared with 8.2 million men. (More on women living with AIDS globally at http://www.avert.org/women-hiv-aids.htm.) Tell that to the children—born of heterosexual parents, mind you—who were infected at birth.

I am furious that the Catholic Church still advises against condom use^[20], in places like Sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean and the Americas where it could save millions of lives, under the notion that condom use will encourage fornication and prevent procreation.

I’m fucking angry.

That is all.

References:

Baca, Maria. “4 of 6 on Anoka school board back new policy on sexual orientation.” StarTribune. 24 Jan 2012.
Anoka-Hennepin School District. “Sexual Orientation Curriculum Policy.” 9 Feb 2009.
Benjamin, Mark. “The Truth Behind Marcus Bachmann’s Controversial Christian Therapy Clinic.” Time Magazine, 15 Jul 2011.
Lindquist, Bryan, and Michael Skaalerud. “Concerns & Demands.” Parents Action League, 09 Jan 2012.
Hawkins, Beth. “Learning Curve.” MinnPost, 26 Jan 2012.
Altman, Lawrence. “New Homosexual Disorder Worries Health Officials.” The New York Times, 11 May 1982.
Altman, Lawrence. “Outlook on AIDS is Termed Bleak.” The New York Times, 13 Jun 1988.
Towle, Andy. “Tennessee’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ Bill is Back for Another Try.” http://www.towleroad.com, 17 Jan 2012.
Huffington Gay Voices. “Phillip Parker, Gay Tennessee Teen, Commits Suicide After Enduring Bullying.” Huffington Post, 23 Jan 2012.
“50-State and National Comparisons.” The National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, Nov 2011.
“Lowering the Teen Birth Rate in Texas.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 30 Jun 2011.
Murphy, Kevin. “Gay groups angry Kansas anti-sodomy law remains on books.” Reuters, 24 Jan 2012.
Wright, John. “Oklahoma lawmaker seeks to ban gays from serving openly in state’s National Guard.” DallasVoice, 10 Jan 2012.
Nolan, Jim. “Cuccinelli: Va. could exclude gays from National Guard.” Inside NoVa, 31 Jan 2011.
Goodnough, Abby. “Student Faces Town’s Wrath in Protest Against a Prayer.” The New York Times, 26 Jan 2012.
“Rhode Island.” Worldmark Encyclopedia of the States. 2007. Encyclopedia.com. 27 Jan 2012.
Rayfield, Jillian. “Oklahoma GOPer Proposes Bill To Outlaw ‘Aborted Human Fetuses’ In Food.” TPM. TPM Media LLC, 25 Jan 2012.
Graff, Amy. “Rick Santorum: Rape babies are gifts from God.” San Francisco Chronicle. Hearst Communications Inc., 24 Jan 2012.
Gittleson, Wendy. “Tennessee Rep. Says It’s ‘Virtually Impossible’ To Contract AIDS Through Heterosexual Sex.” Addicting Info. 26 Jan 2012.
Bowcott, Owen. “Catholic church tries to clear confusion over condom use.” The Guardian. 23 Nov 2010.

104. respect

Tonight on the Tuesday edition of the CBC’s As It Happens, a story was aired about an ultra-conservative sect of Jewish men who are creating a lot of controversy in Israel by demanding a return of sex segregation and enforcing strict standards of modesty for Jewish women. The story has been covered in the Jerusalem Post, amongst other places, but it’s caused something of a cultural clash between traditional conservatives and progressive secularists. (I’m not quite sure if “secularists” is quite how to describe the latter group, but it seems appropriate when contrasted with the more religious conservatives.)

The issue has struck a bit of a cord when, as the story on the CBC related, the men began protesting outside of an all-girl’s school in the city of Beit Shemesh, harassing and even threatening the children on their way to and from, and then even during, school.

This they do in the name of their religion. And their god.

The sect in question is known as Haredi Judaism. As the article on Wikipedia states, “According to Nachman Ben-Yehuda, ‘the Hebrew word Haredi derives from harada – fear and anxiety – meaning, he who is anxious about, and/or fearful of, the word of the Almighty.’ Nurit Stadler writes that the word ‘meaning those who fear or tremble, appears in Isaiah 66:5: ‘Hear the word of the Lord, you who tremble at His word’.”

There is also the unfortunate case of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, the Iranian woman convicted in 2006 of the murder of her husband (which carries a stiff prison sentence) but is being sentenced to death by stoning (now commuted to hanging apparently) for the separate crime of adultery. Not surprisingly the outcry from the international community and from amnesty groups has been vocal, but (also not surprisingly) Iran is stubbornly moving forward with the (dare I say it) execution of the sentence.

To modern eyes accustomed to a modern judicial system, this sentence makes absolutely no sense. Prison for murder—but execution for adultery? Where no one was physically hurt or killed, and the only crime is against a husband (which itself is a private matter)? This sentence only makes sense in light of the barbaric views on women still harbored within religious fundamentalism, where women are considered inferior to men by decree from Almighty God.

Even the Apostle Paul, whose writings (presumably) make up a large part of the New Testament of the bible, had this to say about women:

“Women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire, but with what is proper for women who profess godliness—with good works. Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control.” – 1 Timothy 2:9–15 (ESV)

The popular post-feminist interpretation of verses 11 and 12 of this passage is that Paul was not talking about all women but rather about one woman; that this woman rather was being disruptive and disrespectful of the entire congregation. Yet why would he bookend those verses with directives about women dressing modestly, and then with the reminder that it was Eve and not Adam who brought about the downfall of Mankind?

Yes, this was a different time and the views of the ancient world towards women were dreadful; yet those views have changed little in the Middle and Near East; in places where women often go uneducated, have few to no individual rights, and are themselves given as and considered the property of men.

This is the problem with religious fundamentalism, the kind that I was talking about in the previous article; the kind that is ultimately anti-human in nature. As Stephen Weinberg, who was often quoted by Christopher Hitchens, said, “If you want to make good people do wicked things, you’ll need religion.”

(“But wait!” you might be saying (if you read my last blog, or have dialogued with me about ethics). “You don’t believe in good and evil. You’ve said so!” And quite rightly, I don’t. To expound on the quote, “If you want to make people, who under normal circumstances try to behave towards others in a kind and respectful manner, do things that even beasts would call beastly, you’ll need religion.” Things like:

Gunning down a doctor who performs late-term abortions as he is serving as an usher at his church while his wife looks on in horror from her seat in the church choir;
Blowing yourself up in a crowded marketplace along with numerous others who have done no wrong to you other than to hold differing beliefs;
And protesting at the funerals of soldiers—who, ironically, died defending your right to protest—with hateful slogans like “Thank God for IEDs”, “Thank God for 9/11” and “Pray for More Dead Soldiers.”)

Fundamentalism not only loathes change: It rallies and often wars against it. It insists with a sharp finger jab to the chest that “the old ways were good enough for your grandparents, and it’ll sure as hell be good enough for you.” It screams, “Who the fuck do you think you are?” and sneers, “So, you think you’re better than us?”

Behind the black hats and the long beards of the Haredi; beneath the turbans, kufiya and the Pashtun dress of the Taliban; and the well-coiffed hair and tailored suits of men like Rick Perry, Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann is fear. Theirs is a stern and unsmiling god, graven in their image, who looks down from Heaven with disapproval at anything that they dislike or feel uncomfortable around (which usually has to do with sex or sexuality, something god—even though he technically gifted us with it—is terrified of and detests). They fear anyone on the outside who thinks, believes or behaves differently, and cloister themselves, their families and their children away in guarded communities and schools (or home schools, in the case of many Christians).

It is this fundamentalism that presents the greatest threat to civilization and to progress. It’s the kind that demands that the whole world stop whatever it’s doing and bow down to its god and to its inexorable ethics. It craves the suspending of all human rights, of all human wants and desires, and of all human emotion and need. It demands worship and unwavering devotion, transforming people into mindless hordes marching unquestioningly into the yawning maw of its ravenous god, much like that iconic scene in the silent film Metropolis, where the main character sees a dynamo transformed into the god Moloch.

That’s a bit of a melodramatic description, yes, but no less true. These are the religions that demand that all females subject themselves to males as their superiors, to do with as they please, and as their god permits them to do. These are the religions that mutilate bodies according to the decrees of an ancient holy book. These are the religions that execute homosexuals for the supreme crime of loving someone of the same sex, but also the religions that brainwash gay teens and adults into believing that they are broken, diseased and in need of curing. These are the religions that promise that no matter how awful and unbearable life is on earth, that no matter how much you suffer, if you can hold out long enough, that Heaven is just around the corner, with a bright, shining afterlife.

In a scene from Tony Kushner’s Perestroika, the Angel delivers this prophesy to Prior:

YOU HAVE DRIVEN HIM AWAY! YOU MUST STOP MOVING!
Foresake the Open Road:
Neither Mix Nor Intermarry: Let Deep Roots Grow:
If you do not MINGLE you will Cease to Progress:
Seek Not to Fathom the World and its Delicate Particle Logic:
You cannot Understand, You can only Destroy,
You do not Advance, You only Trample.
Poor blind Children, abandoned on the Earth,
Groping terrified, misguided, over
Fields of Slaughter, over bodies of the Slain:
HOBBLE YOURSELVES!
There is No Zion Save Where You Are!
If you Cannot find your Heart’s desire
In your own backyard,
You never lost it to begin with.
Turn Back. Undo.
Till HE returns again.

This is what all fundamentalist religion demands of humans.

It’s what evangelical Christian parents demand of their gay sons and daughters, that drives those children to despair and sometimes to suicide.

It’s what Haredi men demand of Israeli schoolgirls in Beit Shemesh.

It’s what Iran demands of its people when it puts women to death for adultery, but not for murder.

Or when an Afghan court tries to force a raped woman to marry her attacker to spare her family the shame.

Evolution by nature moves forward. It progresses. The question is: How long before humanity lets go and progresses with it?

103. sucre

Let dreamers dream what worlds they please;
Those Edens can’t be found.
The sweetest flowers, the fairest trees
Are grown in solid ground.

We’re neither pure nor wise nor good;
We’ll do the best we know;
We’ll build our house, and chop our wood,
And make our garden grow.
— Richard Wilbur, Candide (based on Voltaire’s work of the same title)

The past few months I’ve had chats that begin like this, or include questions like these:

“Can you be good without God?”
“Without absolute truth, you can’t really believe in good and evil.”
“Doesn’t that just mean that you define what’s ‘right’?”

The first thing that pops into my head when dealing with questions like these is—did I sound like that when talking to atheists back when I was a Christian? Not that I really ever recall talking to nontheists that much, but I’m sure that discussions like that were had. There were several times when we went out witnessing or having “spiritual conversations” with non-Christians, and I’m sure that something like that came up.

This brings up the issue of what I actually believe now as a non-theist – as a post-theist. In blog post 99, I expressed my frustration with the current flavor of atheism, which can best be described as neo-atheism: the sort of aggressive, in-your-face, denialist movement that has characterized atheism as more of a negative worldview than a positive one. It’s the kind that loudly denies the existence of any supernatural being under any circumstances, and seeks to destroy all belief in god or gods the whole world over. It’s also the kind the kind that has no qualms insulting the religious faithful by calling them weak, small-minded, superstitious, gullible, and… well, you get the picture. [Insert insult here.]

And, of course, the two high priests of atheism – the Anti-Popes, if you will – are Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. Or rather were, since Hitch is no longer with us. But their voices defined the movement in ways that few others have. Their vehement, shrill and oftentimes rude confrontations with monotheists (and fundamentalists specifically) and their call for all people to throw off the shackles of belief in favor of reason, science and intellect has been persuasive for many, and off-putting for others, including many atheists.

So some of us are left wondering: All right, now what? Rather than stand and define ourselves against a whole belief, what do we stand for?

Well, for starters, the first Humanist Manifesto, followed by the second manifesto (more fleshed out and developed than the first), is a good starting point. As the authors of the second manifesto wrote in their preamble, “Traditional moral codes and newer irrational cults both fail to meet the pressing needs of today and tomorrow. False ‘theologies of hope’ and messianic ideologies, substituting new dogmas for old, cannot cope with existing world realities. They separate rather than unite peoples.”

Religion, as I have come to realize (and let me be clear—I’m talking about the extremist and fundamentalist varieties that I’ve known, that I grew up with, and that most people associate with “religion”), is a distinctly anti-human enterprise. It puts human beings at the bottom of a hierarchy of importance, existing at and for the pleasure of a supernatural deity. It grants other human beings who supposedly hold the “Truth” permission to use and abuse others for their own benefit—or, for the truly devout, for the sake of “God.”

Why would I want an “absolute morality” like that—of a beneficent, celestial dictatorship? Hitch was fond of calling it a celestial North Korea in his talks, where “the real fun begins after you’re dead.” (“But at least you can fucking die and leave North Korea,” he says in that video. “Does the bible or the Koran offer you that ability? No!”) Why would I want to pattern my life around such a system in terms of what I do and don’t do?

But that’s getting sidetracked slightly away from the original question: “Can you be good without God?”

The answer is: Yes. Millions of people do it every day. Is the only reason that you don’t rob, cheat, rape, lie and murder because of your fear of divine punishment? And is that the only reason for a theist to do good—because God’s watching? If so, that’s a pretty bankrupt morality, in the opinion of myself and other nontheists.

Morality seems to be a strictly human invention. While there is a rudimentary morality among some of the higher primates, the rest of nature seems to be a completely amoral place. It’s survival of the fittest. “Nature, red in tooth and claw,” as Alfred, Lord Tennyson wrote. Our human morality seems derived from our deepest, most tribal, and most primal being that values getting along and cooperating over total anarchy. As tool-wielders, and through trial and error, we’ve worked out a code of immutable “laws” for human survival:

Don’t kill other humans.
Don’t steal from other humans.
Being selfish is bad.

It seems to come from our ability for empathy, which evolved from emotional connections that were necessary to form bonds with other members of our tribe. We learned to see things “from the other chimp’s perspective.” We realized that if we don’t like the other guy beating us up, he probably doesn’t like me beating him up either. And it’s that ability to see through another person’s eyes that gives us our “moral” code.

I see morality as being essentially a complex equation of sorts. Most of the calculating we do automatically, as one segment on “chimp morality” shows on an episode of WNYC’s RadioLab that was about morality. In fact, if you want to really know what I believe about morality, stop reading this and go and listen to that. Then come back and read.

It’s a sort of three-dimensional cost/benefit analysis, where various potential choices are compared side by side, and the possible outcomes are weighed against each other. The solution is usually the one that does the least amount of harm to everyone, and carries the most benefits for everyone involved. It starts with the individual, then moves outward to others in the immediate circle of influence, and then goes further and further out until we can look at the potential benefit/harm done to something as large as the planet.

Doesn’t that sound like a better alternative than blindly following what your 3,000 year-old Bronze Age holy book tells you to do? Such as if it tells you to stone your wife to death for adultery? Or cut the foreskin off a newborn baby boy? Or tells you that homosexuals are disgusting perverts who are going to hell and deserve the abuse they get?

My morality boils down to the line from the closing song of Leonard Bernstein’s Candide (lyrics beautifully penned by Richard Wilbur, which is itself an adaptation of the last chapter of Candide’s novel): We’re neither pure nor wise nor good; we’ll do the best we know. Play nicely with others, treat them how you want to be treated, and leave the planet better than you came into it. What reason do I have for believing this? Absolutely none, aside from my own deeply-held convictions.

Supposing these ancient “moral codes” are merely humanity’s first attempts at describing what it means to be human? Explore and examine how we can live together in community? To try and put these deep and primal desires within us into words? We don’t really need a god to have handed those down to us.

Could I be a selfish bastard and try to get as much as I can from life while I can? Sure. But would it make me happy and contented? Would others benefit from my selfishness? No, they wouldn’t. (“What does that matter,” my theist friends will postulate, “if this is all there is?”) My humanity allows me to look at it through the eyes of my neighbors and decide what the best course of action is.

I don’t know if there is a God or not. I can’t disprove it any more than I can prove it. I take the last verse of “Make Our Garden Grow” to heart: Let dreamers dream what worlds they please; those Edens can’t be found. Ultimately, we don’t know, and speculating only makes things more complicated. It’s fun to think and argue about; but if there is a personal god out there, from the sort of universe it brought into being I think it probably considers belief in it—and all of the myriad of locks and fences we’ve built—pretty pointless.

Even ungrateful.

“Go outside!” it seems to be saying. “Get some sun—but in moderation! Enjoy nature! Enjoy yourself. Enjoy each other. Do good work.”

The sweetest flowers, the fairest trees
Are grown in solid ground.

We’re neither pure nor wise nor good;
We’ll do the best we know;
We’ll build our house, and chop our wood,
And make our garden grow.

57. invidiousness part i

… and why I hate Valentine’s Day so much.

Truth be told, it’s because I’ve never been able to take part in it. Or rather, had a positive experience that would refute the notion that it’s anything more than a tawdry, vulgar pseudo-holiday dreamed up by the Marquis de Sade to torment those who are miserably single [he said with a permanent scowl etched into his craggy, careworn face].

It’s a day when happy, coupled people blissfully buy into the spurious notion that there’s one day in the year when we should all be extra attracted to each other, and men go out and make grand, sweeping gestures to their girlfriends (or boyfriends) to make up for the fact of how neglectful they are towards their significant other the rest of the year.

Or maybe that’s just me and that damned speck of mirror-glass in my eye.

Yes, I’m one of those peevish, vituperative, curmudgeonly people who begrudge the fact that others are happy and having a wonderful time today, and wish they would all just collectively go fuck themselves and remember that there are those who aren’t blissfully happy; who (full disclosure) desperately wish that there were someone to brainlessly buy into this farce of a “holiday” with, and maybe for a few, fleeting hours forget how cheap, bloody and cruel life is the other three-hundred and sixty-four days of the year—or, on a more positive note, spend an evening with that “special someone,” maybe have a nice dinner and feel part of the universal experience of romantic love.

And, naturally, fuck each other silly at the end of the night.

Another reason that I begrudge Valentine’s Day so deeply and with such contempt is that a year ago today I woke up with the guy I spent the majority of this past year pining, crying and agonizing over. Let’s call him Seth. (No, really, that’s his name.) He was the first man I have ever been in love with, exacerbated by the fact that I knew he didn’t feel the same way about me. Shortly after our first sexual encounter, he basically told me that flat out, breaking my heart the first time. Before that, I found the idea of unrequited love silly and self-abasing. “Get over it!” you’d hear me say, doling out advice to inconsolable, anguished friends whose predicament I now find myself in. “He/She is not worth the pain you’re putting yourself through!” The funny thing about it though is that you can’t stop caring, or wishing, or hoping. It’s wholly irrational, but you hold out for the slim chance that maybe, just maybe, the veil will be drawn from their eyes and they will suddenly see you for the loving, caring, perfectly compatible person that you are.

And so Seth and I became what is affectionately referred to as fuck buddies. He was more or less using me for sex, apparently under the misguided notion that we were just having fun. Or some shit like that. And every time I hoped that maybe, just maybe, I’d get through to him; that he’d see that we could be more than friends; that, even beyond the whole sexual compatibility element, we got each others jokes, wanted the same things, had a similar approach to life and faith and intellect.

As Bobby Fisher might say, “No dice.”

This Valentine’s story concludes a few weeks ago, on my 28th birthday, with me drunk and sobbing in a friend’s apartment. Everyone had left Seth’s apartment (where the birthday party was being held), and I was too drunk to drive. Two other friends of mine live in the same building, but have a cat, and I am extremely allergic to cats, so normally this would end with us in his bed, having sex and me spending the night. It was not to end thus this time.

Seth had been on a blind date a week previous with another guy, and wasn’t sure how it was going to go, or even if it would go anywhere. My heart sank when he talked about this, but again I held out for the hope that it wouldn’t work, that it would just be another dalliance and that if I hung around long enough that he’d fall for me as I had for him. On that February 2nd though, he said that he was starting to like the guy more, and things were getting more serious between them. I was trying desperately to put a brave face on it and not let it bother me.

Flash back to earlier in the summer. I had just ended a relationship with my second serious boyfriend (let’s call him Nick) and was starting to date a new guy (we’ll call him Jack), and the night that I’d told everyone about Jack, as we were leaving, Seth asked if he could kiss me before things got too serious. And so, still being madly in love with him, we made out in the stairwell of the apartment.

Back to the night of my 28th birthday, eventually it got late and everyone decided it was time to call it an evening. It was obvious I wasn’t going anywhere, and he said I could crash there, but that I would need to sleep on the couch since he was starting a relationship with a new guy. And that’s when it began.

For weeks prior to this, I’d been agonizing over whether to confess my feelings to Seth or not. Some good friends who knew about the whole fuck buddy situation said that there was no way he couldn’t feel the same way, at least on some level, because nobody could do those things and be totally detached. Right? And I was determined not to let him be the biggest regret of my life.

So there in his apartment, drunk and enraged, I spewed everything at him that had been building over the weeks and months—how stupid I’d been to have let him play with my heart that way, how he’s not worthy of me, how I deserve better than some guy who can fuck me whenever it’s convenient for him to get his goddamn rocks off but then toss me to the curb once something “real” comes along, as if I were that cheap and disposable. On top of it all, he’s slated to be the pastor of a fucking GLBT-friendly church. I told him he’d do this again to someone else, that he’d play with some vulnerable guy’s affections who’s desperate to find a good Christian gay man, take advantage of him, and break his heart too. I called him a monster, a user, and a whole host of other awful things. No sense in being a writer if you can’t use them as a scalpel.

That night I also told him I no longer believe in God; that the church is a sham, and that he’s living, walking proof that none of it rings true. He listened quietly, tried to explain himself (which I’d have none of), and then left the room. Upon which I called my friend who lives upstairs, asked if I could crash there, and then spent the next hour sobbing on her couch. I’d hated myself for what I’d done, and hated him at the same time that I loved him.

But I also knew that the friendship, the relationship, was over.

Since the 2nd, I made it my resolution to do away with my old sexual morality, because chances are I’m never going to find a soulmate, and impersonal hookups are about as close as I’m probably going to get to the intimacy that I desperately crave. In the last few weeks I’ve had more sex than I have in my entire life, but it hasn’t filled the void, and I knew going in it wouldn’t satisfy. Maybe I’m just trying to get Seth out of my system.

So you’ll forgive me if I don’t jump on the Valentine’s Day bandwagon and celebrate the triumph of romantic love with the rest of the callow world. Last night, a guy that I’d been seeing and talking to for a few weeks decided to call things off. It was a mutual decision; I’d been sensing that we weren’t any more than just friends, but it still came as a bit of a crushing disappointment, especially considering that, even if it wasn’t going anywhere, that perhaps for once I could temporarily shut my eyes, not be alone on Valentine’s Day and believe that maybe, just maybe, love and romance really are possible. But, as usual, he turned out like all the others. This man too “disappoint me.”

I’m still waiting for someone to prove me wrong.