Arthur gives Mingo noogies.
Mingo takes it.
Gay rights are religious rights
Today is National Coming Out Day. Last year, I wrote about gay rights as relational rights. This year, I’d like to talk about how gay rights are religious rights.
Gay rights, yes, are civil rights, and are amply justified in the Constitution under “equal protection,” not to mention “pursuit of happiness.” But we tend to bury the fact that religious liberty is also at stake.
The entire notion that there’s something wrong with being gay, something unacceptable, is a religious one. It’s based in the Bible or the Koran or some other bookish thingy. So why should those who do not follow those books be bound by their laws?
There is lots of room for gay people, and indeed for gay marriage, in most Pagan religions. As a Wiccan Priestess, I would be happy to perform a handfasting (marriage) ceremony for a gay couple. But while I can perform such a ceremony for a straight couple and have it legally recognized, the same-sex handfasting cannot be recognized. Since they are equal in the eyes of my religion, isn’t that State interference with religion?
You’ll see them say it. You’ll see them say marriage is “sacred.” If it’s sacred, it belongs to religion and religion alone; keep the State out of it. If it’s not sacred, if it’s civil, then everyone should have an equal shot at it.
Quote of the Day
I just got an email from Isaac; I don’t know where he picked up his new sig line, but it’s glorious:
Other than telling us how to live, think, marry, pray, vote, invest,
educate our children and, now, die, I think the Republicans have done
a fine job of getting government out of our personal lives.
—Craig Carter, The Oregonian, 5/22/05
Early Decision
Arthur has decided to apply for “Early Decision” to his chosen school. It’s a smart choice. He knows where he wants to go, and if he gets in he’s saved the hassle of applying elsewhere; we’ll know before standard application deadlines. If he doesn’t get in, we’ll have time to regroup and choose the next course of action.
About a year ago, I read an article on the trend of kids applying Early Decision or Early Action. (Early Decision means you commit to attending if you get in, Early Action you do not.) The whole thing was that it used to be just exceptional students who applied early, often for special reasons, or because they were particularly driven. Now there are so many more super-ambitious students that early decision/action has actually changed the ability of everyone to get into selective universities; so many slots are filled early that more and more students have to apply early in order to compete.
Thinking about this made me think about how the Presidential Primaries are in virtually the same sort of situation. There used to be one or two or three early primaries, but then, the states with later primaries started to feel like they were out of it, so they moved their primaries forward, which pushed other states to move theirs, which pushed New Hampshire earlier, and so on. Now we’re all suffering by this incredibly extended campaign season.
Listen, I’m from New Jersey. Our primary was in June. It’s miserable to go cast a primary vote when there are no candidates left. So I empathize with the urge to push forward. But you know we would be better off if the whole thing took less time, and earlier primaries make the campaign season longer and more grueling.
I see a relationship between these two “early push” phenomena, that speaks to how we, as a culture, are pushing further harder faster sooner now now now. It doesn’t serve us to be the least patient people on Earth. We’re pushing the boundary of “early” so hard now, that soon we’ll have to start before we start. Babies will be competing for schools in utero. And the next Primaries will begin as soon as the current election is over.
So could we all just TAKE A FUCKING BREATH?
Just saying.
Name That Actor: Solutions!
All solved in one day.
Tuesday Trivia: Name the Actor
I’m still having fun with this, and you all seem to enjoy it as well, so here goes.
1. A hooker who slept with a preacher, a farm girl in love with a cowboy, and a librarian.
Solved by Melville (comment #7).
2. A butler, a hotel clerk, and a transvestite.
Solved by Melville (comment #1).
3. The traitorous wife of the head of British Secret Service, a nun, and the adulterous wife of an Army Captain.
Solved by Melville (comment #10).
4. An influential newspaper columnist, first officer on a submarine, and an accused Nazi war criminal.
Solved by Melville (comment #2).
5. A terrorist/revolutionary, an FBI investigator, and a porn star.
Solved by Melville (comment #1).
6. A hairdresser, an angel, and a ghost.
Solved by Hazel (comment #14).
7. A murderious poet, a television reporter, and an evil witch.
Solved by lunofajro (comment #11).
Monday Movie Review: Sideways
Sideways (2004) 5/10
Miles (Paul Giamatti) takes his friend Jack (Thomas Haden Church) on a road trip to wine country the week before Jack’s wedding. There they meet and become involved with two beautiful wine connoisseurs (Sandra Oh and Virginia Madson).
Gods, did I hate this movie.
Okay, that’s kind of strong. There’s certainly a lot to commend. Giamatti’s performance is nuanced and rather brilliant. Madsen and Oh are radiant and sharp. There were some decent laughs, and the movie is intelligently written. For all of that, it pretty much made my skin crawl.
First, can we talk about Thomas Haden Church? He looks like the Claymation version of a handsome man. His face is soft and sort of semi-formed. I was totally on board when he was cast as the Sandman, a character who turns into sand, because he kind of looks like that all the time. It’s very distracting to watch his squishy face, which is consistent with his squishy character. It’s a child’s face, and Jack behaves like a child.
The problem with Sideways is that Miles and Jack are detestable men with barely any character arc. I’m all about dislikable characters, but give me something. Within the first fifteen minutes of the movie, Miles has lied to his friend Jack, dawdled when he was already late, and stolen from his mother. Really, by this point I absolutely despised Miles, and didn’t give a shit what his fucking character journey was. But I stuck with the movie in the hopes that things would shape up.
Silly me.
Giamatti has one absolutely stellar monologue, in which he talks about the wonders of the Pinot grape. How it’s thin-skinned, temperamental, not a survivor, but has the most brilliant and thrilling flavors if it’s grown correctly. It’s very clear that he’s describing himself, but wonderfully, neither he nor Maya (Madsen) spell out the simile; the viewer can know it without having it hammered home. The thing is, though, that Miles is thin-skinned and temperamental, but I never really bought that he was thrilling and brilliant.
A negative protagonist works when you sense there’s something good within that is unexpressed. You root for the character in the hopes that the good will come out, or that the character will survive the adventure to perhaps find that goodness at a later date. But neither Miles nor Jack evince any decent qualities at all. Miles is smug and disdainful in every conversation, he feels sorry for himself, he whines, he pontificates, and he is seething with anger. Jack is a philanderer and a big ol’ baby. Despite everything these men go through, they just persist in being their small-minded, nasty selves.
You know, when you read that, you can think it’s intelligent, or realistic, or whatever. Mostly, whiny depressive snots don’t much change. But everything in the script and presentation sets you up to expect the heartwarming moment. There is a heartwarming moment at the very end, but it’s tepid, and entirely too small in proportion to what has gone before.
Hollywood, including “indie” Hollywood, has too many goddamn movies about self-pitying middle-aged white men with delusions of intellectualism and fear of commitment. Yeah, I get it, they write what they know. But all that does is make me feel irritated that they don’t know anything else. If I met Miles or Jack at a party I’d chat with them for ten minutes and then walk away, annoyed. Instead, I was stuck with them for two hours.
Sunday Meditation: Reflection on an idea
Often these meditations are guided imagery. I take you on a visual journey. Sometimes, I give you affirmation-type meditation, where you reinforce a goal or concept in a meditative state. Sometimes, a meditation creates a feeling-state, a transformation of consciousness.
Another kind of meditation is meditating on a thought, with the goal of attaining insight or understanding. I cannot call this “insight meditation” because that is a very specific thing, but the idea is to create meditative insight rather than just “thinking it over.”
A homework assignment I often give my students involves meditating on an element. But to do this in meditation is not the same as “thinking it over.” You’re not wracking your brain on “What is Air?” and searching for the right answer. Instead, you allow the concept and question to move through your meditative state. Like this:
Imagine Air. Air is around you. Notice what it is like. Just observe it, and notice qualities as they appear to you. Notice any thoughts you have about Air. Follow these thoughts down whatever windy path they take, bringing yourself back only when you’ve left the topic of Air behind.
That’s really it. Observation, reflection, following stray trains of thought while using a focused state to bring that train back when it takes a sider too far. Often, I start such a meditation by stating my question aloud (like “What is Air?”). There’s no “thinking about” in the sense of working your brain, it’s just bringing the possibility of insight into your consciousness.
I like to use this technique when doing ritual chores, like when cleaning up after ritual or polishing my pentagram. It keeps the mundane chores sacred and often opens my mind to new observations.
You can use this kind of reflection on any problem. Remember: Don’t worry over the problem, simply observe it and see what you learn.
Preventative lunch
They have this website where you can put money into an account and your kid can use it towards school lunch. And Arthur wanted me to sign up. And I said “I want you packing your own lunch.” And he said “I will, this is just in case.”
And I opened my mouth to say something and then stopped, and he said “What?” And I said “I was about to say that I didn’t want to put money in this, because it might encourage you to blow off packing lunch. But that’s kind of like not giving kids condoms because it might encourage them to have promiscuous sex, right?”
“Right.”
So I set up Arthur’s account.
But it got me thinking about the no-condoms, no-sex ed, no-HPV vaccine crowd. When you’re a parent, you grow a lot of “no” under your skin. You say it a lot. You want to say it a lot, because pretty quickly you learn how much there is that needs restricting, and how enormous a child’s capacity for stupid is. And yes, you want to say “yes” a lot too. But I want to acknowledge the tightness in the heart, the “I can’t allow that” feeling. Which is sometimes protective, and sometimes (as in the case of lunch money) “Don’t fuck with me, kid.”
What we parents struggle with is the knowledge that kids won’t always listen to “no,” and won’t always do what they’re told, and will sometimes make mistakes, and will sometimes get in trouble that is in no way their own fault. These are all truths that a parent might suffer over, but once we acknowledge these truths, we can move on to the understanding that we want to protect our kids anyway.
Friday Catblogging: Laser beams
So I’m coming down the stairs, and I see this, and I run quietly back up, get the camera, and come back down.
Ta da! » Read more..
