A Republican Christianist heckles a Mormon candidate in Florida. Romney responds as follows:
We need to have a person of faith lead the country.
How is that not a religious test for the presidency? The anti-Mormon bigotry displayed is ugly and wrong - but it will come up again. Bush and Rove have built a Republican party on a sectarian base - and Romnney is of the wrong sect. But instead of standing up to this sectarianism, and affirming the right of anyone of any faith or none to be president, Romney panders to religious bias. It seems to me that it is equally bigoted to say that a Mormon should not be president as it is to say that an atheist should not be president. Romney has chosen to fight bigotry with bigotry. We are finding out that he will say anything - anything - to get elected. That is not the mark of a person of faith. It is the mark of a person shot through with cynicism.
The shower discussion is making me laugh at loud. I am a straight guy who worked in gay-owned cafes while in college. I was the token straight boy. I was checked out and flirted with relentlessly by the staff. I made great tips letting the customer's check me out as I took their order. They were all harmless - the older trolls, the young sex kitten, the brilliantly dark smart one, the muscle boy, the biker boys (as in River and Keanu, not Harley's), the theater boys, the preppy Republican gay guy ... they all checked me out and I loved it and profited by it. I never turned out gay, not even close. You are right, the attention is flattering as hell. It is not different than straight guys checking out girls. Not one bit. Guys are horny, it doesn't matter what they put their penis into. But that doesn't mean they go around porking everything that moves.
The only reason I would feel threatened showering with gay guys would be that they might look better than me when they are naked. Of course, when showering with the gay guys you can ask them what moisturizer they use to get that smooth skin without catching shit for it.
There's an economic niche here, if someone wants it. If you're a good looking straight guy in need of easy money, find a gay restaurant or bar and become a waiter or bar-tender. Gay men are great tippers, and they're even better tippers if you're hot. (Don't even think of getting tips from lesbians. There are exceptions, of course, but in general, look elsewhere.) I have a straight friend who made a small fortune as a deck-chair dude on the beach in Rehoboth. As so often, capitalism is the true corroder of prejudice.
"The fact we must face is this: We have already been defeated in Iraq. Perhaps not in literal truth; a better policy, better implemented, might yet bring about a stable, democratic country. And certainly not in historical terms; Iraq is only an early chapter in what must be a long struggle against global Jihadism. But, at the very least, the battle for perception of the Iraq War has gone entirely against the United States. In the eyes of both the American public and the Islamic world, we have lost - and lost badly.
The reason is President Bush. His administration has mishandled the logistics of the war and the politics of its perception in nearly equal measure, from Abu Ghraib to the execution of Saddam Hussein. Conservatives voted for George W. Bush in 2000 because they expected him to be the opposite of Bill Clinton-and so, unfortunately, he has proved. Where Clinton seemed a man of enormous political competence and no principle, Bush has been a man of principle and very little political competence. The security concerns after the attacks of September 11 and the general tide of American conservatism carried Republicans through the elections of 2002 and 2004. But by 2006 Bush had squandered his party’s advantages, until even the specter of Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House was not enough to keep the Republicans in power," - Joseph Bottum, despondent theocon, in First Things.
Here's Rumsfeld's unhinged plan for 5,000 U.S. troops in Iraq by 2006. You can read the full memo here. Looking at it today provides an insight into both the utopian derangement in the Bush administration before the Iraq war - but it still doesn't fully explain why the administration refused to start over as soon as this plan revealed itself to be absurd.
Gene Doughty, 83, of the Bronx borough of New York City, a combat veteran from the battle of Iwo Jima, attends the Combat Veterans of Iwo Jima Symposium and Reunion February 16, 2007 in Arlington, Virginia. Doughty served as a squad leader in the 36th Depot Company, 5th Marine Division during the battle of Iwo Jima. (Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty.)
Some headlines just write themselves, don't they? Peter Berkowitz has a must-read on Alan Wolfe in the Weekly Standard. The piece is not a defense of Dinesh D'Souza but an attempt to apply Wolfe's censorious logic with respect to D'Souza on Wolfe himself. Since I'm in the midst of writing a real piece on this issue, I won't comment further. Except to say that Berkowitz seems to me to get the better of Wolfe on the issue of Carl Schmitt; but that Peter under-estimates the authoritarian strains among elements of the American right.
Let me give one example from only recently. Hugh Hewitt's blog once had the slogan: "The Power of the Democrats Must Be Destroyed." Not countered; out-argued; or debated. But destroyed. I agree with Peter that this kind of rhetoric is not strictly Schmittian; but I don't agree that it isn't corrosive to the spirit of liberal democracy as conservatives have long understood it. I do believe that the conservative endorsement of torture, contempt for constitutional processes, indifference to habeas corpus, and naked hatred of the opposition represent real and dark developments. Peter is too sanguine about them, in my view. Yes, the left has its counterparts. In fact, there are strains of intolerance and illiberalism on the left that are just as dark. But the left hasn't been in power for so long; and hasn't been turbo-charged with war-powers. Wolfe over-reached. But Peter has under-reached.
The Koranic reference to "slaves not attracted to women" is not meant to be interpreted as gay people, but rather to eunuchs. Just another traditional practice from the folks who brought us 9/11.
It says everything you need to know about the state of the Republican Party: that they would knowingly lie about the words of the greatest Republican president in American history.
Remember habeas corpus, that pesky constitutional detail that Dick Cheney found so impertinent and Alberto Gonzales might deem "quaint"? It's still in indefinite suspension, subject to presidential whim. But there's a chance now to restore it by legislation and a petition to sign.
My link to the anonymous nun's appreciation for "The Vagina Monologues" prompted a huge reader response, and the nun has written a new post addressing many reader points. She restates her own belief in the virgin birth. Money quote:
Lumen Gentium stated that "the birth of our Lord ... did not diminish his mother's virginal integrity but sanctified it."
We can see that the word 'integrity' is used when describing Mary's virginal state during the birth of Jesus. This word is defined as: an undivided or unbroken completeness or totality with nothing wanting; from Latin integritatem (nom. integritas) 'soundness, wholeness;' the state of being whole, entire, or undiminished. None of the Conciliar texts conclusively states how Mary remained a virgin during the birth of Jesus. This, then, opens up a variety of possibilities, just as the dogma regarding Mary's Assumption leaves open both the possibility that she did or did not die. These unknown details are not essential to our eternal salvation, are not central to our Faith as Catholics, and allow the mystery to unfold within the context of a deeply personal relationship with Christ. This room for interpretation is beautiful and empowering to women on their journey toward physical, intellectual, psychological, emotional, sexual and spiritual integration, which is what The Vagina Monologues is trying to accomplish, albeit in a much more imperfect way.
I am an atheist (who was once a Christian) and wanted to comment on your latest missive to Sam Harris.
I would describe my own embrace of science and secular humanism as being motivated by a form of faith that is deeper than Christian faith. I believe that if Jesus lived today, he would be a secular humanist and would reject Christianity, just as he "rejected" Judaism and inspired Christianity. Christianity was once the vehicle for the boldest and most honest thinking about reality, the brotherhood of man, and the human condition. I think in light of the advances in science and our exposure to other religious traditions, it is time again to humanize further our understanding of "God" (or the source of all truth, goodness, and beauty) and come to a more universal understanding of religion.
It's time again to look beyond the letter and literal interpretation of immortality, heaven, hell, and miracles, and see the essence and spirit of these ideas. What is it about love that survives death? What is the ideal world? What is eternal separation from all that is good? Where do fundamentally new ideas and relationships come from? In the 21st century, we are able to see more clearly than the saints before us (just as Jesus was able to see more clearly than prophets before him) that deeds of love live on forever in the hearts and minds of all those who are transformed by such love and by those who value loving acts of goodness and justice. This is the immortality of the saints.
Heaven is not some place where we will go when our body dies. It is the world that we all yearn for and that each man of faith and good helps to realize in his small way through the march of human history. Hell is not some burning pit for the doomed and unsaved. Rather, it's a metaphor for the eternal separation from this community of the saints that the wicked are doomed never to realize by their rejection of what is good and beautiful. What are miracles? They are not supernatural gifts from an all-knowing God. Rather, they are what men of faith and good appreciate in this universe, despite all that is broken, evil and ugly.
I find that I am better able to love and appreciate Jesus as a humanist imagining him as a man than when I was a Christian and imagined him as a God or a spiritual presence. Jesus was a man therefore he is one of us and we can truly become like him.
I feel that I have lost nothing by rejecting the doctrines of Christianity. Rather, I have rediscovered what it means to have true faith and true understanding by embracing humanism and science. Humanism then does not reject Christianity, it completes it. Paul was wrong. Our faith is not foolish if Jesus is not literally and physically risen from the dead. We know our faith is true, because we know that death has not defeated him. As a humanist, I do not discard the rich legacy and richness of the Christian tradition, rather I claim to be the true heir to the Christian patrimony. Christians embrace a shallower version of Jesus. I know this because I continue to be transformed by Jesus's love and he continues to inspire my humanist faith - faith that there is yet some good in this earth, that we can all be redeemed by love, and that we should all choose life and should try to live it fully in a spirit of peace and brotherhood with all mankind. It makes no difference to me whether Jesus was born of virgin or rose bodily from his grave after three days. These are signs that the wicked demand because they do not have the heart to see the divine in Jesus and in all of us without such signs. Blessed are those who follow Jesus not having seen and without any need for signs and wonders.
"Any sexual pleasure derived from the women's naked bodies is a violation in the sense that there is no consent on the part of the lesbians."
Is this really what the problem is? The belief that arousal requires consent on the part of the ... let's call it the 'stimulating party' ... or else it's a 'violation'? That's astounding. How could I possibly consent to being arousing? Is there some signal I could use to indicate which people I will permit to be aroused by me and thus avoid this violation?
I wonder if this really is the heart of the problem. People like Tim Hardaway may not care, per se, that you're gay. What they care about is that gay people could be aroused by their bodies. I am a hetero male, but personally I couldn't care less if gay men found me arousing. Honestly, I'd take it as a compliment.
Me too in the equivalent situation. If I were showering among straight women, would they be violating me by checking out my body? I find the idea preposterous. I'd be flattered. If a woman were to watch me "with lust in her heart" on a beach, would I find that invasive? Nah. Ironic, maybe. Threatening? Are you kidding me? (Now, of course, men's mere visual "violation" of women can be more threatening, because it raises the specter of male physical domination over women, i.e. rape or abuse. But among straight men and gay men, the threat of physical force is less salient.)
I wonder whether this phenomenon isn't connected in some way to Islam's insistence on veiling women? Isn't the point of public veiling a means to prevent the kind of "violation' of which my previous reader wrote? Here is the Koran on the religious duty of women not to provide occasion for men to "violate" them with their eyes:
[O Prophet!] tell believing men to restrain their eyes and guard their private parts. That is purer for them. And Allah is well aware of what you do. And tell the believing women to restrain their eyes and to guard their private parts and to display of their ornaments only those [which are worn on limbs] which are normally revealed and to draw their khumr over their bosoms. They should not reveal their ornaments to anyone save their husbands or their fathers or their husbands’ fathers or their sons or their husbands’ sons or their brothers or their brothers’ sons or their sisters’ sons or other women of acquaintance or their slaves or the subservient male servants who are not attracted to women or children who have no awareness of the hidden aspects of women.
My italics. The Koran is saying exactly what my reader was expressing. The Koran is saying that it's ok for women to reveal their bodies to men who are gay, because no "violation" can take place. In contrast, I find the whole idea of "violating" someone by looking at them to be a function of sexual and emotional immaturity - regardless of the specific matrix of gender or sexual orientation. Hence my problem with some of the sexual ethics and gender absolutism of Islam.
Some Islamists defend the veil as a way to protect women from the violation of men's eyes. Others - more plausibly, I think - consider the veil as a way for men to control women: for fathers to control daughters' sexuality before they are married; and subsequently, for husbands to control their wives' sexuality. But the question asks itself: why should men control women this way? And why should straight men dictate the terms to gay men in the same way? The mindset behind this thinking is that it's a straight man's world and the rest of us just rent space from them. If we don't respect their authority on this, there are consequences. Don't get me wrong: most straight men in the West don't think this way at all. But some do, as Tim Hardaway revealed. And it's certainly a core feature of Islam.
Here's an honest column from a religious fundamentalist, a former basketball player and now a sports-writer. I think he understands the meaning of toleration better than some p.c. liberals. Money quote:
I've played in several rec leagues with LZ Granderson, who is an openly gay writer at ESPN The Magazine. I consider LZ a friend. I've gone out to lunch with him, talked music, sports, politics and lots of other things with him. I greet him with a handshake and a hug, just like I greet lots of other guys.
By the way, LZ can ball. In a league in New York City that features several former college players, we both made the All-Star team. He was kind of like our Shawn Marion minus the dunks (though he claims he can still slam!) and I was like our Gilbert Arenas (high game of 39, thank you).
Anyway, when we play in our rec league games, I give him high fives and hugs. Same with one of his friends who is on the team and also gay. When we're on the court trying to get a win -- or in the office talking about a story, for that matter -- his sexuality is not an issue.
Granted, I don't shower with LZ after games like NBA teammates do, and I'll admit that if I had to, it might be a little uncomfortable at first. But if a gay player just goes about his business in the shower, showing that he has no sexual interest in his teammates and that he's not "checking them out," I think the awkwardness would wear off fairly quickly.
LZ and I know where each other stand and we respect each other's right to believe as he does. I know he's gay, and he knows I believe that's a sin. I know he thinks I get my moral standards from an outdated, mistranslated book, and he knows I believe he needs to change his lifestyle. Still, we can laugh together, and play ball together.
That's real diversity. Disagreeing but not being disagreeable.
I'm a little confused. The position espoused by the reader seems to miss a glaring point. How is a scenario where a homosexual man showers with heterosexual men materially different from one where a hetero male showers with a group of lesbians? In the latter case there's probably little chance of sexual congress (hetero fantasies notwithstanding) and I believe most conscientious men could probably get through such a shower without becoming overtly aroused but that's not the point. Any sexual pleasure derived from the women's naked bodies is a violation in the sense that there is no consent on the part of the lesbians. The fact that I'm able to control my physical response, in my opinion, does not mitigate the violation.
I can see how the reader feels. The practical response is that it is perfectly feasible to separate men from women in terms of things like public restrooms, communal showers, etc. In school contexts, it is neither practical nor conscionable to ask gay men/boys to shower in a separate place, or to vet groups of men/boys as gay or straight. Most public gyms have an option for private stalls if some hetero men feel terrified of being "violated" by someone else's imagination. But it seems to me that if no one touches you or harasses you, you're not violated. You're insecure. Get over it.
It's quite lively down there. Warren Chisum, the creationist nut I posted about earlier today, is featured in this YouTube clip from a hilarious documentary, "The Dildo Diaries." I didn't know you were able to own five dildoes in Texas, but not six. Alabama just got nuttier, as well. Enjoy:
I was at Oxford from 1983-87 too (Keble - 'not really Oxford' as one family friend put it) and as a Grammar School boy I have memories of the Bullingdon club and their ilk seared into my amygdala. The main thing that I was conscious was the sense of total entitlement ... that the world in general and Oxford in particular revolved around them.
I've never been unhappier than I was at Oxford, largely because of the class split that was still totally evident there. The year afterwards, I went to the States and realised that the entire worlds was NOT like Oxford and that in a meritocracy it didn't actually matter whether you had been a member of the Bullingdon club or not. Those who have not seen their progeny up close tend to think that places like Eton and institutions like Oxford prepare men and women for positions of great power and responsibility. The truth is quite the opposite, and that is the real reason why we should be wary of yet another Old Etonian, or Skull-and-Boneser, jostling for the reins of power.
I'm not so bitter. I've known many Etonians who are well-balanced, sane and gifted people. Same with Skull and Bones: they can't all be at the same level as the president has turned out to be. My own lesson coming to America was to let these resentments die the death they deserve. Of course, immigrating to America was the lazy Brit's way to avoid the class issue. But it seems that many of those who never left have come to feel the same way.
There's a huge, juicy scandal unfolding ... about a celebrated musician's recordings. The scandal is ... the pianist may not exist. Or her recordings may be elaborate hoaxes. Gramophone News has the scoop. [The first version of this post erroneously referred to her as a singer.]
"When it comes to Iraq, I'm sorry, I can't be specific about my time there. Honestly, I don't know what I think. I don't know much about what I did there or if I did any good. I don’t know what to tell people and what's relevant. It's a confusing subject for me. I just know there's a huge part of me that does not want to believe that I spent a year and a half of my life over there for nothing. A lot of soldiers feel the same way. Did my buddies — 3,000 of them — die for nothing?" - Spc. Jacob Cayouette, back from Iraq, and now in Maine.
For the same reasons Dan Savage does. He makes a point I have made many times before and explain at length in Virtually Normal. It's worth repeating. I don't give a damn if someone hates me for being gay. I'm fine with it. If you're not, I'm fine with that too. Just leave me alone, and we'll get along just fine. Now, when the government officially discriminates against gays, it's another thing entirely. The government should treat its citizens equally, period. But the rest of you? As you please. I'd much rather live in a free country where people are free to be bigots than a p.c. country where everyone is legally required to be nice. Hate is a permanent human condition. Trying to ban it is folly. What the gay rights movement should be about is simple public civil equality. Period. Let us marry, serve in the military and then spew whatever bile you want. Deal?
I'm beginning to see the Bush/Gonzales intransigence in the face of overwhelming evidence against the use of "coercive interrogation techniques" (let's just call it torture) as just one more incarnation of the Rovian hierarchy of politics-trumps-policy. How else can you explain it? At this late stage in the game, they're still desperate to convince anyone who'll listen that the Bush team will protect America "by any means necessary". It doesn't matter if those means are contradictory, ineffective, un-American or downright inhuman. They're banking on the American people's continuing detachment from and ignorance of reality concerning interrogation and the consequent and pervasive fear this reinforces.
Pitting this fear against such a widespread anti-torture consensus among those that actually do the hard work smacks of the most despicable and cynical politics we've come to expect from Rove. I'm becoming more and more infuriated everyday when I think of how his opportunism has come to define this entire political era. Whenever I've had to give a reason as to why I never have and never will trust George W Bush, the Rove name alone has sufficed.
Pfc. Devin Franey of Oakland, New Jersey of the 2-12 Cavalry Regiment of the 1st Cavalry Division smokes a cigarette at Combat Outpost Casino before a mission February 16, 2007 in the Gazaliyah neighborhood of Baghdad, Iraq. (Photo by Chris Hondros/Getty Images)
There are times when, watching Comedy Central, I will accidentally find myself being exposed to Carlos Mencia. (My deranged cable fantasy is to have him co-host a show with Lou Dobbs.) But it turns out he may have some ethical issues as well. One other comic, Joe Rogan, is accusing Mencia of stealing jokes, and takes him on in public. From this clip, it looks like Mencia has some 'splaining to do. More here on Rogan's blog. Make your own mind up. Warning: profanity-laced comic confrontation:
This is a 1980s photograph of Oxford's Bullingdon Club, a select crew of partiers and boors from Britain's upper crust. Unfortunately, Number 2 is now the leader of the Conservative Party, and currently posing as a regular bloke who can relate to people of all classes. He has said he had a "normal university experience."
I was at Oxford a year or so before Cameron, and knew Boris Johnson (Number 8) from the Oxford Union (I was president in 1983). The Bullingdon was easily the worst of the obnoxious class-based clubs. Cameron's youthful pot-smoking doesn't help the class image either. It's hard to explain
to Americans but in the 1980s when I was at Oxford, pot was basically
an upper-crust activity. I despised it as decadent and aristocratic and
never touched the stuff. What's been remarkable so far about Cameron's popularity in Britain is that his privileged background - Eton, especially - hasn't worked against him. This is a big shift. People seem to have left this class hatred behind in the last couple of decades (Thatcher + Blair = Blue State America). But put cannabis and Bullingdon into the same stew and you can see this Guardian blogger doing his best to whip up class hatred. But check out the comments as well. They show a more complex picture of Brits not willing to return to the class hatred of yore.
Here's a good riposte to the Guardianista:
yeah, cos the only people who get pissed up and make twats of themselves at uni are toffs right?
For the non-Anglo "pissed up" means drunk. "Toffs" are preppies. "Uni" is college. "Twats" ... well, here's another:
"The Bullingdon invented binge drinking and yobbery long before it was discovered by the kind of people the Daily Mail is always denouncing."
Yeah. Binge drinking and yobbery started 150 years ago. Are you English? It's what we've always done. It's normal. It won us the Napoleonic War. It built our cities.
And besides, look at the clothes those guys are in. Now look at photos of Spandau Ballet and Duran Duran from the same time. Oddly those urban non-university kids looked much the same. A bit more makeup maybe.
Another:
As much as this is juicily wonderful background, and as hypocritically loathsome as it is for David Cameron to put himself forward as some sort of man of the people (and generally get away with it), he was right when he said that politicians should be allowed a private life before entering office. His supposed cannabis use won't become something that can either be touted as a sign he's a hypocrite or in touch with people. And if you really feel like judging the man, there's plenty of contemporary material to work with, rather than using his background against him.
Finally:
didn't this type of class envy go out some time in the 1970s? this really is feeble stuff.
Kathleen Hall Jamieson writes from her perspective in the Texas Monthly:
George Bush's legacy is going to be his use of signing statements. He has used them to replace the veto, which represents a shift in institutional power and alters the relationship between the branches. When a president doesn't issue a veto until the sixth year of his presidency but nonetheless systematically takes exception to legislation, that person is doing something different from what his predecessors did. Some observers view this as a healthy exercise of executive power; others view it as overstepping. I’m in the second camp.
Many signing statements are absolutely benign. They applaud Congress for passing the legislation, for instance. It’s true that earlier presidents used signing statements as something akin to what I call a 'de facto item veto.' What's new in this president's use is the displacement of the traditional veto for this alternative form. A good example is John McCain’s proposal from 2005 that banned the torture of detainees and passed with a veto-proof majority. Bush had already made clear his administration’s views on the matter, but he held a press availability with Senator McCain in which he said positive things about the legislation. He engaged in what I would call “public embrace, private repudiation.” Two weeks after the press conference, President Bush signed the bill, and the signing statement was posted on the White House Web site. Its eighth paragraph reserved the right to nullify the provision over which McCain and Bush had fought. The president didn’t say he would nullify it; he said he reserved the right to do so. That happened on December 30. Where do you think reporters are on December 30? They’re not paying attention to the White House Web site.
So you can ask if the press availability was real. Now you have a de facto item veto in a constitutionally problematic moment, because had Bush simply vetoed the bill, McCain would have had the votes to override it. That would have checked the president, as provided for in the Constitution.
If President Bush’s successors continue to do this, it could be not simply an important legacy. It could be the most important legacy. It shifts your presumption of what presidents can do.
One man confesses to his long-held wish to 'bind both the Queen and Baroness Thatcher with ropes and then make love to each woman in turn'. Some are deeply disturbing - a woman whose parents perished in the Holocaust who has always become aroused by the thought of SS officers in jackboots. Kahr says he has been for a long time intrigued by a comment of Freud's suggesting 'that every sexual act is a process in which four persons are involved': the two people in bed and the two others in their heads. He sees himself in the tradition of Alfred Kinsey and Nancy Friday, a liberating force, and insists that that force is still needed when it comes to the British and sex.
We've found how hard those words can be for a president. But in a critical period, under immense stress, Lincoln was up to it. Here's a simple short letter from Lincoln to General Grant, after the capture of Vicksburg, Mississippi, written July 13, 1863. I'm struck by its indifference to cronyism or friendship, its candor, and its sincerity. A reader recently remarked that Lincoln was never wrong. This is untrue. But what made Lincoln great was his capacity to see his own errors - and go out of his way to acknowledge them:
My dear General,
I do not remember that you and I ever met personally. I write this now as a grateful acknowledgment for the almost inestimable service you have done the country. I wish to say a word further. When you first reached the vicinity of Vicksburg, I thought you should do, what you finally did -- march the troups across the neck, run the batteries with the transports, and thus go below; and I never had any faith, except a general hope that you knew better than I, that the Yazoo Pass expedition, and the like, could succeed. When you got below, and took Port-Gibson, Grand Gulf, and vicinity, I thought you should go down the river and join Gen. Banks; and when you turned Northward East of the Big Black, I feared it was a mistake.
I now wish to make the personal acknowledgment that you were right, and I was wrong.
A Texas legislator - Chairman of House Appropriations no less - is eager to have public schools teach creationism. No big whup. This is Texas. But Mr Warren Chisum distributed a memo to his fellow state congressmen recently. It made for lively reading:
The memo points to "indisputable evidence" that "evolution science has a very specific religious agenda" and refers readers to a Web site that asserts the universe revolves around the earth. It also suggests that Jewish physicists are part of the force behind a "centuries-old conspiracy" to destroy the Christian teachings of Earth's origins ... Mr. Chisum said all he thought he was doing was "a Good Samaritan" deed for a fellow legislator. "If that's a sin, well, shoot me."
I don't get this whole "taking a shower with your gay team-mates thing." I am straight. Straight as an arrow. I like women. I like boobs. I do not find the penis sexy. Very, very straight ...
And I check out guys in the shower. I am always curious what other guys look like. I am always comparing and contrasting. Any guy who tells you he does not sneak a peak is full of crap. If you shower in a gym, it does not matter if you are showering with gay guys, straight guys, Chippendale dancers or the Dalai Lama himself ... everyone is checking everyone else out.
I'm sure that's true. As a gay guy who grew up showering among straight guys in school, there was a moment during puberty when it was a little overwhelming. Your hormones are in full throttle and I was a mobile trouser-tent half the time. But I managed to keep it, er, down in the showers. I was probably looking around much less than straight guys because I was scared of getting a woody. Of course there were some guys who turned me on. But the first thing gay guys learn is to overcome that, not to let that stuff come between being mature, adult or committed to the team or whatever. And most straight guys I know can deal with it very easily. It's the insecure ones who have a problem. And the problem is their insecurity, not anyone's orientation.
Your latest response to Sam Harris was right on the money in so many ways - except that it seemed to me that you were reacting against something that Sam actually doesn't believe and didn't put forward (at least not nearly to the degree that you took it).
Of course, everyone understands that contingency is inescapable. I just think that Sam never claimed rationalism/science to actually be free of it, merely that they have less than faith-based religious beliefs do. His point on this (by my interpretation) was only that faith-based beliefs cling to contingency whereas science tries to identify and eliminate as much as possible. When he brought up the issue, it was predominantly in the context of this kind of relative sense.
For example, he wrote:
"Your determination to have your emotional and spiritual needs met within the tradition of Catholicism has kept you from discovering that there is a mode of spiritual and ethical inquiry that is not contingent upon culture in the way that all religions are"
and
"Imagine a discourse about ethics and mystical experience that is as contingency-free as the discourse of science already is."
Both of these are comparisons regarding relative levels of contingence, not claims that science is contingency free. I'm afraid you misinterpreted that in an extreme sense that wasn't intended, then used it as a straw-man.
I should leave this for Sam to unpack if he wishes in his next response, but felt it worthwhile to register the critique here. I won't add anything now except to say that I certainly didn't intend to attack a straw-man; and that I don't believe that the best kind of science is any less contingent than the most admirable expressions of faith.
"We cannot shake ourselves free from the arrogant idea that our own planet, our own race, our own generation, our own corner of the earth is the culmination of the Creator's work, and in the events which pass through our field of view the final issues of Creation are being fought out. If we could better preserve our sense of proportion we might recognize the humiliating fact that the events of our day, visible from our point of view, are but an infinitesimal atom in the great whole. No one to whose mind this truth was present would dream that, from the mere fragment of the vast drama that falls under his view, he can grasp its real meaning, or conjecture the intentions which it is accomplishing," - Robert Cecil, Lord Salisbury, legendary Tory prime minister, quoted in Andrew Roberts' new biography.
In Salisbury's mind, and his was one of the greatest political minds of the nineteenth century, the notion of allying political conservatism with the theological certainty of evangelical fundamentalism would be literally absurd. At a philosophical level, it is literally absurd. Which is why I earnestly think and devoutly hope that this ghastly political contraption devised by Bush and Rove will soon collapse and, with any luck, die.
Some New Yorkers party. Here's a report from a hip new club in NYC, called Bungalow 8. Money quote:
Next up was a blond woman in her late 30's. She was wearing a black fedora from the men's department at Bergdorf Goodman, a black Moschino dress and shoes by Christian Loubouton. I asked her about Iraq.
"A rack? You mean titties? Like a really big rack?"
Iraq.
"Don't ever waste a moment in life. Fly to the moon and play amongst the stars, be happy, understand how lucky we are — and don't fight," she said. "I feel personally connected in one way — I'm a mother, and every day in Iraq somebody is losing their child. My little girl will never go to Iraq. I'm sorry, she'll go to Prada."
Read the whole thing. And be careful not to gag.
A reader comments:
Bungalow 8 has been around for years. It's even in a Sex and the City episode. I'm sure it was hardly worth going to when it was 'hip" and "new"; and now that it's a hangout for wannabes, I'm sure it's even less so - if that's possible.
I'm struck by how many defensive emails I've gotten from New Yorkers. Chill. We know you're not all like that.
It's Tehran, and an international drama festival. The censors are very very busy, but the young theater-goers keep one step ahead of them:
Finally one of the men says that they are here to experience something new and to see the performances by visiting theater groups from the West. They are curious, another man adds. The Polish production - or was it the French one? - promises to be especially exciting. The actresses wear ankle-length robes, as required under Islamic law, but in the last act the actors apparently pour water over each other and the women's robes suddenly become skin-tight - revealing the contours of their breasts, legs, stomachs and behinds. You can see everything, the young men say. On an open stage.
Ajjab - unbelievable - one of the men mumbles. The censors are clueless about what's going on here, says one man. It's part of the allure. A woman chimes in. She doesn't like the way the conversation is going. She is tall, has pretty eyes and pale skin, and pulls nervously at her headscarf.
"You can read our most secret thoughts," says one of the men, calling the woman by her first name - "but I beg you, don't turn us in!" His words are meant to sound funny, flirtatious and ironic, but the tone of his voice betrays a hint of fear and apprehension.
Everything you say about being "contingent" rings true in my heart. We are born in a tiny neighborhood of earth, in a brief moment of time. The extent of all that we may become, derives from this origin, over which we have no choice, and from which we cannot escape.
It is the nature of the human psyche to see God behind the workings of the world. Maybe in the far distant past, people thought God was a wise old man with a long beard, sitting on a Heavenly thrown in the sky. Gradually, we all came to realize, this could not be true. But does this mean that God does not exist? Not necessarily. Was this belief in God just a childish wish and imagining? Or might God be a little more complex and subtle? No matter what, my view on God does not come from my free choice, but is colored by all the human interpretations of God that I have encountered, together with my own conscious thinking and wondering, and then analyzed by some mysteriously autonomic analyzing process that operates in my head.
I am aware, where others may not be (perhaps most others) that my total being, personality, and beliefs are merely contingent on virtual "accidents" of the flow of events; and where I may have been on any certain day; and who may have spoken to me; whom I may have listened to; what book, movie, or television show I might have read or watched; if I glanced into the sky and saw a shape in the clouds that cheered me up or made me think of some specific thing...that the world impresses itself upon me, and forms me into all that I become, with only a very little bit of my own destiny and outcome, that I can determine by my own free will or choice.
I do not know much, but I know all of this. It may not be much, in the way of religious belief, but it is a foundation on which all else must rest. To be so sure and satisfied on this modest foundation, after all these years of extreme doubt on everything, is a relief and more than a relief, but satisfying, that I know and believe some things that make sense, and that I can put into words.
The origin of the word "contingent" comes from tangere, Latin, meaning "to touch."
(Photo: A believer reaches out to touch an apparition of the Virgin Mary
located on a wall of an underpass April 18, 2005 in Chicago, Illinois. By Scott Olson/Getty Images.)
Michigan's anti-gay-marriage amendment has been interpreted to ban all government provided benefits to gay couples, however long they have been together. Many are preparing to leave the state. Some of these couples have been together for decades. Kids are vulnerable too:
One well-publicized case involves Dennis and Tom Patrick, of neighboring Ypsilanti, who are raising four children. Because the oldest, a nine-year-old, requires special care and medical attention, Tom stopped working full-time in order to take care of him--taking health benefits through Dennis's employer, Eastern Michigan University (EMU). As a public university, EMU has to end spousal benefits under the prevailing ruling. And while Tom could always get benefits by returning to work full-time, he'd then have to leave care of the boy to somebody else. "I don't believe voters intended to hurt families and kids," Dennis told The Detroit News a year after the law first passed. "Our families exist, and no proposal or law is going to change [that]."
Will there be a backlash? Who knows? What I do know is that anyone under 30 has seen what the Republican party now stands for. And it isn't the values of the next generation.
We watched "Basic Instinct" last night with a bottle of champagne and freshly-made brownies. I'd never seen it before. It was washed down by a HD Sunrise Earth special on Machu Picchu. Life is good when you're in love and have a widescreen television.
Here's a brutal but to my mind persuasive case for allowing Iraq's civil war to take its course. It's from Foreign Affairs. Money quote:
As long as the Bush administration remains absolutely committed to propping up the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki or a similarly configured successor, the U.S. government will have limited leverage with almost all of the relevant parties. By contrast, moving away from absolute commitment - for example, by beginning to shift U.S. combat troops out of the central theaters - would increase U.S. diplomatic and military leverage on almost all fronts. Doing so would not allow the current or the next U.S. administration to bring a quick end to the civil war, which most likely will last for some time. But it would allow the United States to play a balancing role between the combatants that would be more conducive to reaching, in the long run, a stable resolution in which Sunni, Shiite, and Kurdish interests are well represented in a decent Iraqi government. If the Iraqis ever manage to settle on the power-sharing agreement that is the objective of current U.S. policy, it will come only after bitter fighting in the civil war that is already under way.
Withdrawal and redeployment are far more potent tools right now than the "surge." The latter seems to me to be a way for Bush to save face. But he shouldn't save face at the expense of increasing the long-term toll on Iraqi and American lives.
"I kind of feel like I have been hung out to dry. People say that I am responsible for everything, as if I had the full point plan for what we are going to do. In fact, I was fairly low down on the organizational chart. [Those above me] have basically decided they are not going to talk about this anymore. It is as if, if all the flak falls on this guy, well, fine. I don't like it, but unlike them I think it is my responsibility to explain what we did and why," - John Yoo, architect and implementer of the Bush administration's torture policy.
February 11, 2007 - February 17, 2007
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