Sick To My Stomach



SOURCE: http://bit.ly/QByOWw


I know many people don't believe the struggle for homosexual rights corresponds with the "civil" rights struggle of the 60s because, presumably, we CHOOSE our orientation (and UGH i hate the word "lifestyle" and p.s.: I remember being attracted to men at age 4, srsly), but the pictures and videos I've seen from Chicken Pride Day (thank you, Randy Rainbow) have made me feel dirty and numb and frustrated and sad and I hope one day they all look back with embarrassment like I hope the people above do.

 

(the thing i love so much about Randy Rainbow is he always does what i think we do best ...
plow through others' ignorance with a song and a tiara.)

Let's get over the issue of "civil" civil rights for a second (and the fact that this whole mishegas is a Seinfeld episode).  Let's get over the fact that (a) Jesus never says anything about homosexuality, (b) if you bitch about Old Testament laws against homosexuality then you BETTER be living the life of an orthodox and observant Jew and (c) this country is not run against the rules of the Bible, it's run against the rules of The Constitution ... (1) I don't think people in the US understand that there are TWO parts to the "marriage" ceremony because it is most often performed in a religious setting ... the civil part and the "religious" part ... the religious leader performs a blessing in the name of the religious institution and is also licensed to perform the civil part, which is why we hear, "By the power invested in me by the State of Bladie-Blah", I now pronounce you ...".  This "blessing" part was just proudly approved at #GC77 by members of the Episcopal Church.  (2) I'm tired of those opposed to same-sex marriage presuming we're all godless heathens (read: non-religious Christians), and (3) honest to fukcakes(tm, djs), I can't imagine anything more "conservative" than WANTING to get MARRIED ! and wanting to raise CHILDREN !  (and there's always that old chestnut: "If you want to put an end to gay sex, legalize gay marriage" hardee har har.)

Most importantly, though ... what the hell business is it of yours the kind of consensual sex I'm having (with a human being having reached the age of consent in the particular state in which the sex occurs within the CONfines of the statutes of the kind and SORTS of sex which may legally occur ... have I covered it for the Christianists?  thanks.).  Let's say that I have misunderstood, since 1973 when I began studying the Old and New Testament thoroughly, learning the languages in which they were originally recorded, burying myself in the cultures in which they were crafted at that specific time in herstory and passed down, all under the prayfilled guidance of whom I believe, within the confines of these "scriptures", to be "God"'s "Holy Spirit") that my specific creation as a homosexually orientated [sic] being is contrary to these writings and that my (rather flaw-free and legendary) practise of these attractions are disordered and an abomination.  What DIFFERENCE does it make to the United States Constitution.  Shouldn't it be illegal, then, for Atheists to be "married" because they're not being married in the name of God and Jesus Christ?  Shouldn't it be illegal, then, for any non-Judeo-Christian to be married because they're not being married in the name of Jesus Christ? and how all of a sudden are these Christianists denying that for EVER there have been Evangelical seminars (which, in my pentecostal past, I have attended and taught) that Mormonism is a CULT but it's okay to run an LDS Republican for president.

Let's cut the shit, people, and concentrate on important things like ending poverty and hunger, concentrate on providing healthy water to those in need, universal education and gender equality and health care for children all over the globe.  Maybe then all the energy expended on cursing the fact that God introduced me to the person God made specifically to join me to for a life of service in God's name could be used for good and not for hideousness.  Stop making me apologize for my existence.

Thanks for sharing, I'm sure, your Auntie Dasch

Jesus Falls the First Time

Picture source: http://bit.ly/xT9vwm

I promise I’m not trying to derail the solemnity of Lent with this post, this is all my personal, humble reflection, nor am I trying to deliberately contradict any of the observances in the Preface of Lent enumerated in its invitation ("... self-examination and repentance ... prayer, fasting, and self-denial ...  reading and meditating on God's holy Word..."), but I'm finding, in my advanced years, that I'm getting crotchety. People (read: MainStreamMedia, Christianists, and politicians) keep using broad strokes when painting definitions of ordinary matters, assigning absolutes to words which exist in a flux, and I’m pretty tired of being manhandled. I ran to the open, loving arms of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America because I was promised the “three-legged stool”, the three-fold sources of authority in Anglicanism being scripture, tradition, and REASON as, it is said, these three sources uphold and critique each other in a dynamic way.

I think my cranky nature this Lent is due to the, er, vibrant, um, discourses during this election cycle with so many people pontificating with very little forethought or consequence to their words, and many of these absolutes are being attributed to this being I’m in contact with, God, these teachings I study by this Rabbi, Jesus, and this movement I espouse, Christianity.

Ahem. Sorry.

The topic of my assignment is The Third Station in The Way of the Cross, Jesus Falls the First Time. The collect at this station reads:

O God, you know us to be set in the midst of so many and great dangers, that by reason of the frailty of our nature we cannot always stand upright: Grant us such strength and protection as may support us in all dangers, and carry us through all temptations, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (BOS, '94)

The tradition of The Way of the Cross fixes Jesus with three “falls”: he falls on stations three, seven, and nine. In earlier iterations, there were Seven Falls and they were considered less literal falls and more pauses, depictions of Jesus coincidentally being prostrate, or nearly so, during performance of some other activity like some of the current stations, Jesus meeting his Mother and Jesus consoling the women of Jerusalem.

I’ve watched a lot of folks for a lot of years practicing many different “brands” of Christianity, in praise and in worship, and sometimes there is some propensity for some, especially during Lent, to adopt a “pious” attitude which is almost dramatic, like, as if they have to “act” repentant like they’re being filmed. That’s dreadfully Judge-ie McJudge-ster of me, I know, and I promise I’ll repent … it is Lent, after all. But I think Lent makes people do silly things, like, the “I’m giving up chocolate” kids or the sackcloth-and-ashes kids who are determined to read the entire Bible during Lent or to me, the saddest of all, the kids who feel so overwhelmed by all the perceived impositions and restrictions of Lent that they give up and do nothing and then feel horrible about themselves the entire time.

Then as if all of Lent’s judgments and restrictions aren’t bad enough, we are being bombarded lately with declarations of what is “holy” and what is “right” and what is “Christian” and what is “American” and what is “patriotic” and what is “traditional” and it’s driven many to self-loathing and destructive behaviours, even to the point of suicide, and it’s kept many people from coming home to God because they HEAR they SHOULD be ashamed and that their love and homes and children are not valid and that their desires are sin when, in fact, they were knit perfectly this way in their mother’s wombs. I just want to scream at the top of my lungs, “ENOUGH!”

Before I came to scriptural terms with the gift of my same-sex orientation, I read unfortunate translations of the Bible and was in a continuous shame spiral. I thought for years that every time I found a man attractive I was “in sin”. I was decades in to my healing upon my first few visits to St. Luke’s and I distinctly remember the sun from the windows streaming through the smoke, and listening to Bobby’s beautiful bass reading a long passage, and seeing this guy a few pews up who I thought was mighty cute, and I started dreaming about the matching outfits we would wear at the Easter vigil, and wondering if we were too old to have kids, and devising the order I was going to introduce him to my friends, and what what WHAT ?! and a wave of the ‘ole SHAME came over me. I was thinking inappropriate thoughts and sinning in church! Same-sex attraction is intrinsically disordered and Church is an inappropriate place for such musings! Then I looked at the altar and saw women priests who mirror the Jewish women of the first century, Christianity’s first priests, and I remembered where I was and I shook myself  silly and remembered that my dreaming was exactly what intrinsically ORDERED people have been doing for time immemorial. Church is the PERFECTLY appropriate place to weave the fantasies of my marriage because all my life God has had it in my heart that one day I would find a man who was as in love with God as I am, and one day I would be sitting with him tucked under my arm while we listened to a Sermon while we worshipped God in the house of God among our spiritual family in our home parish. It is meet and right so to do !

I think this year I feel it more instructive for me to take a lead from the thought of “Jesus pausing” and not of Him “falling” … which puts me in mind of the contemporary meaning for the Psalm’s Selah, a pause, a breath to weigh the gravity of what was just heard, what is settling on our spirit. To reasonably self-examine – not to the world’s standards but the standards of what Jesus said were the greatest commandments: to love God and love our neighbor; repentance  – for all the times I fall short under the weight of those enormous requirements; prayer –that I would hear only God’s voice and not the world’s when examining myself; fasting – from all the negative garbage coming at me from the world; and self-denial – from pity parties I throw for myself when God tasks me and I-don’t-wanna! And to always remember that strength and protection as may support us in all dangers comes from reading and meditating on God's holy Word, truly an instant spa treatment which replenishes us and fills us and rejuvenates us with peace and joy and love, which will carry us through all our temptations and allow us to relax in self and reach out to serve.

(this post was written for my church's Lenten Blog which can be found after the jump)

Newt Gingrich, the dirty birdy

I got this from Andy Towle who got it from Think Progress LGBT.  I need to take a bath.

Let's just breathe for a second and remember these things:  Gingrich has been married three times:

• Battley, his former high school geometry teacher, when he was 19 years old and she was 26.

• In the spring of 1980, Gingrich left Battley after having an affair with Marianne Ginther.  According to Battley, Gingrich and their children visited her while she was in the hospital, recovering from surgery for cancer, and Gingrich wanted to discuss the terms of their divorce.  Six months after the divorce from Battley was final, Gingrich wed Marianne Ginther in 1981.

• In the mid-1990s, Gingrich began an affair with House of Representatives staffer Callista Bisek, who is 23 years his junior. They continued their affair during the Lewinsky scandal, when Gingrich became a leader of the investigation of President Clinton for perjury and obstruction of justice in connection with his alleged affairs.

• In 2000, Gingrich married Bisek shortly after his divorce from second wife Ginther.

This is all within his definition of the SANCTITY of the SACRED institution of marriage.  Okay.

Below is the video of his meeting with the Des Moines Register’s editorial board during which he says things that make my head explode:

Q: Do you believe that people choose to be gay?

GINGRICH: I believe it’s a combination of genetics and environment....

REHLEH ?!?! doesn't he have a gay SISTER?   Does that mean that he dodged this particular genetic propensity? since the environment in which he grew contributed to his sister's "LIFESTYLE"?  (OHMUHGUH ! how i HATE that word ! ! Bodybuilding is a lifestyle.  Training for a MARATHON is a lifestyle.  The fact that I think about women's anatomy about the same as Newt thinks about men's anatomy is not a CHOICE, EITHER ... ech.)  Let's continue with these delusions:

GINGRICH (con't): ...I think both are involved. I think people have many ranges of choices. Part of the question is, do you want a society which has a bias in one direction or another?

Q: So people can then choose one way or another?

GINGRICH: I think people have a significant range of choice within a genetic pattern. I don’t believe in genetic determinism and I don’t think there is any great evidence of genetic determinism. There are propensities. Are you more likely to do this or more likely to do that? But that doesn’t mean it’s definitional.

Q: So a person can then choose to be straight?

GINGRICH: Look, people choose to be celibate. People choose many things in life. You know, there is a bias in favor of non-celibacy. It’s part of how the species recreates. And yet there is a substantial amount of people who choose celibacy as a religious vocation or for other reasons.

oh brother.  but wait! BEFORE this happened, THIS happened when asked about Gay Rights being similar to the 60s and rights based on race:

GINGRICH: ...I think there is an enormous difference between an inescapable fact of race and you have to decide whether or not you in fact you are going to tolerate discrimination based on race and a question about culture, a question about what are your values ...

um ... I scream this to the mountaintops:  WHAT is a more TRADITIONAL value then ME wanting to marry my husband.  WHAT would be a more traditional value than us as GOD-FEARING people being blessed in that union within the confines of our Episcopal Church.  What is more traditional than the beautiful same-sex couples in our congregation who celebrate God's beauty by bringing children in to the midst of their unions.  And guess what ... I can only think of one married same-sex couple in our church within the last 10 years who has divorced.  And they were both healthy at the time ... tee hee.

GINGRICH (con't): ...I think marriage is between a man and a woman, that is a value proposition. ...

hmm...actually that is a RELIGIOUS proposition.   It is not a moral proposition and the only VALUE that proposition has is within the confines of a religious context.  And he keeps using the phrase "value system" when he really means "religious constraints" ... and by "religion" I mean something we can do to earn God's favor versus God's complete and total love of us exactly where each of us is, as God was the one who created us exactly as we are.

GINGRICH (con't):  ...I think people growing up in a structure in which children have parents that they look up to and parents that they relate to is a very important thing...

 um ... me too ... but I'd like to point out to him that his sister and, I would venture to say, every single homosexual I know was raised by opposite-sex parents.  and ... scene.  but let's continue ...

GINGRICH, referencing a question about miscegenation): ...Look ...

Have you ever noticed how men, especially Republican men, always say "Look..." when they're making a point?  It drives me insane.  Watch for it now that you realise it ...

GINGRICH, referencing a question about miscegenation): ...Look, you can always make parallels if you want to. I don't accept that parallel. I think that it is fairly ludicrous.  Nobody is suggesting that we have legal segregation of gays.  Nobody is suggesting  they not be allowed to use the bathroom, they not be allowed to drink at the water fountain.  Segregation was a horrible thing...

 ya think?

GINGRICH:  I am defending a 3,000 year tradition...

uh, yeah ... slavery was pretty popular for a long time too ... just because it's a tradition doesn't make it healthy, correct or Divinely inspired ...

GINGRICH: ...that's very deep in our culture for very profound reasons...marriage being the central building block of society...

I guess that's why he keeps practicing it.

It's funny that this video came out on the same day.  It gives me SUCH joy (and also makes me know why they call us gay lol).  It's two Dads finding out they're going to be GRANpas!:



Before you watch the Gingrich thing, Let us pray:

O God, you made us in your own image and redeemed us through Jesus your Son: Look with compassion on the whole human family; take away the arrogance and hatred which infect our hearts; break down the walls that separate us; unite us in bonds of love; and work through our struggle and confusion to accomplish your purposes on earth; that, in your good time, all nations and races may serve you in harmony around your heavenly throne; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

For the Human Family, Book of Common Prayer