The Pope and the Atheists

Pope Francis, in a homily he gave today in Rome (found via Andrew Sullivan):

"The Lord created us in His image and likeness, and we are the image of the Lord, and He does good and all of us have this commandment at heart: do good and do not do evil. All of us. ‘But, Father, this is not Catholic! He cannot do good.’ Yes, he can. He must. Not can: must! Because he has this commandment within him. Instead, this ‘closing off’ that imagines that those outside, everyone, cannot do good is a wall that leads to war and also to what some people throughout history have conceived of: killing in the name of God. That we can kill in the name of God. And that, simply, is blasphemy. To say that you can kill in the name of God is blasphemy.”

“Instead,” the Pope continued, “the Lord has created us in His image and likeness, and has given us this commandment in the depths of our heart: do good and do not do evil”:

"The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone! ‘Father, the atheists?’ Even the atheists. Everyone! And this Blood makes us children of God of the first class! We are created children in the likeness of God and the Blood of Christ has redeemed us all! And we all have a duty to do good. And this commandment for everyone to do good, I think, is a beautiful path towards peace. If we, each doing our own part, if we do good to others, if we meet there, doing good, and we go slowly, gently, little by little, we will make that culture of encounter: we need that so much. We must meet one another doing good. ‘But I don’t believe, Father, I am an atheist!’ But do good: we will meet one another there.”

This does sound like a different kind of Pope.


A further thought: Turning from the contemplation of these high and lovely thoughts to the utterly barbarous and demonic beheading of a British soldier in the streets of London in broad daylight, your Head Trucker finds no room in his heart to countenance any further shilly-shallying with the violent and the malign among us. This sickening act, like that of the bombing in Boston last month, is beyond all decency, a crime against humanity, and it must be stopped now - by whatever means necessary.

The crazies and the fanatics must not be allowed to roam freely among us and kill us at their whim; the Constitution is not a suicide pact.

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Two Prayers Answered

Sometimes grace happens, against all odds.  Oklahoma City, yesterday:

Marriage News Watch 5/20/13

Matt Baume of the American Foundation for Equal Rights reports:

Sunday Drive: In the Garden

Guest Post: He's So Fine, Prequel

Contributed by my truckbuddy Tim from England, now resident in Spain:

Everyone is doing trilogies these days:  The Hobbit, Iron Man, Lord of the Rings. Never one to lag behind the times, the Big Blue Truck has commissioned a third ‘He’s So Fine’ because you, dear reader, seemed to like the first two. So welcome to Part 0, the prequel to Part 1, which went back to my adolescent crush Wayne and starred the sexy Steve McQueen . . .

. . . and a precursor to Part 2, with the gorgeous Cam Gigandet doubling as a more recent crush, my friend José. Good news about José by the way: he has a motorbike again, so my fiery Spanish stallion has not been put out to retirement just yet!

This prequel takes us even further back in time than Part 1, back to some of my earliest memories and childhood heroes. This is another voyage of discovery for me, and hopefully it will be for you too. It stems in part from some discussions Russ and I have had on at what age you first realise you are gay, in your infancy or teens, or if, as some think, that you are born that way, the gay-gene theory. Was I gay at birth or at 5, or was it, as I have always previously thought, at puberty? Currently I’m not quite so sure, so by going back to analyse earlier thoughts and recollections I hope to shed more light on the subject. It’s also a good excuse to look back at some of the hunks and heroes that appeared in children’s TV all those years ago; which in itself is no bad thing. Who were your heroes?

If you sit down and list your childhood favourites I think you’ll be surprised at how many there are. From my own list of 10 or so all-time favourites, far too many to include in one post, I have whittled them down to my top three. They cover my age from 3 to 16, which hopefully will provide a good basis for my analysis. I’ve put them in chronological order to help you follow my development, and because it’s easier to write that way!

Continued after the jump

Waitin' for the Weekend

The Right to be Ordinary

Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick, writing in the Washington Post:

Nine years ago Friday, same-sex marriages started happening in Massachusetts, and the time since then has proved wonderfully unremarkable. The sky has not fallen. The earth has not opened to swallow us up. Thousands of good people, contributing members of our society, have made free decisions about whom to marry. Most have been joyful and lasting. Some have failed. Ho-hum. And even as this principle of government treating people equally spreads to 11 more states and the District of Columbia, even as mean-spirited politicians stoke discord over marriage equality in election years, people just keep on being people, choosing their life partners by the same old mysteries, regardless of sexual orientation. Gays and lesbians, like blacks and whites a generation ago, want nothing more than to be ordinary.

As our nation’s highest court considers two cases addressing same-sex marriage — one challenging the ban on equal marriage in California and the second challenging the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) — I hope the justices consider the Massachusetts experience. If our constitutional democracy doesn’t mean that people come before their government as equals, then democracy itself is up for grabs. And the impact of affirming that principle, by striking down the California ban and DOMA, is to let a large part of our population keep their personal decisions private.

Our court’s 2003 decision in Good­ridge v. Department of Public Healthwas clear-eyed about that. The majority opinion, written by then-Chief Justice Margaret Marshall, remains an urgent call to justice. It also offers a timeless and eloquent description of marriage that transcends sexual orientation.

“Civil marriage is at once a deeply personal commitment to another human being and a highly public celebration of the ideals of mutuality, companionship, intimacy, fidelity, and family,” Marshall wrote. “Because it fulfills yearnings for security, safe haven, and connection that express our common humanity, civil marriage is an esteemed institution, and the decision whether and whom to marry is among life’s momentous acts of self-definition.”

When the “self-definition” people seek is to be ordinary, government ought to step back and let them be.

Love Your Enemies

Nikiforos Lytras, Antigone in front of the dead Polynices (1865)

From the Sermon on the Mount:

Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.

But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;

That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.

Your Head Trucker feels old and weary, and not up to writing a lengthy, well-polished post today, so I will just throw out some thoughts and leave it up to you fellas to connect the dots, if they mean anything to you.

It's a gray, drizzly day here in Texas, where last night, several counties away from me, tornadoes destroyed a subdivision, killing or injuring scores of people. Which seems only to be expected somehow, in a week when the news has been brimful of scandal, crime, murder, outrage, and every kind of horrible mayhem. Too much to take in, and far too much to dwell on: it seems the veneer of civilization is worn through in many places, and the ugly, bloody, barbaric core is bleeding out. I suppose awful things have always been happening somewhere, to someone, every day of mankind's existence on this planet; but whereas news used to travel slowly and partially, now it comes roaring at you in living color at all hours of the night and day. Too much to bear. All one can do is look away, and occupy the mind with puttering around the house, and tending one's own narrow garden.

As much as I applaud the recent advances for gay rights and marriage equality that I often feature here in the Blue Truck, I also have to say that I can hardly help despairing for the future of the world, and to be honest, I am glad that whenever it is my time to depart from it, I will leave behind no posterity to worry about. "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity," Yeats wrote a hundred years ago, and it is even truer now than it was then.

At nearly 60 years of age, few illusions about human nature are left to me; with time and experience, one comes to see people for who and what they really are, not what they pretend to be. It is particularly discouraging to see that the great mass of supposedly civilized Western people - the great majority of them at least nominally Christian - are all in a headlong rush to the worst excesses of barbarism. It feels that way, anyhow.  My second-grade teacher got it exactly right one day, fifty years ago, when she asked why a bunch of us little boys were all stepping on one another's shoes in the cafeteria line. "Well, he did it to me, so I did it to the other boy," was the repeated answer to her question. Summing up her inquest with a wry face and a disapproving shake of the head, she exclaimed, "Monkey see, monkey do."

Man is an imitative creature. You become what you think about, what you idolize, what you adore - which may be something quite different from what you say you do. And it seems to me that nearly everyone is doing their damnedest to behave just like characters in a low-class, scrum-bum reality show nowadays. Hence the decline of manners, of civility, of literacy and of reason. Of course, I have to remind myself that the worst examples are not necessarily representative of the whole in any group, but - "Monkey see, monkey do."

Continued after the jump

Just Close Your Eyes and Thank God You're in America

Televangelist Pat Robertson piled a shitload of oh-so-pious advice on a woman who is struggling to forgive her husband's adultery. "Men have a tendency to stray," Robertson said by way of defending the dude. He advised her, "Ask yourself, 'Is he a good provider? Is he nice to the children? Is he handsome?'" and other such irrelevant points. Listen for yourself, fellas:



Now your Head Trucker isn't advising anyone what to do or not do if their spouse strays (address those letters with full particulars to Dear Russ, in care of this blog). But I am pointing out the utter, complete hypocrisy of this con artist and all the others who call down hellfire and damnation on the gays - oh but if a straight boy breaks the rules, well that's okay then - "He's a man," after all - no problem. Not a word, not even a hint about his eternal salvation being in danger.  It's just normal behavior.

Compare this screed via Joe.My.God. from Minnesota evangelist and pompous ass John Piper - emphasis mine:

Living in a sexual relationship with a person of the same sex is forbidden in Scripture with terrifying clarity. 'Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God' (1 Corinthians 6:9–10). This means putting a child in the personal care of a same-sex couple would put the child’s soul at jeopardy along with the couple’s souls. The couple would be endorsed by the adoption, and thus their hell-bound pattern of life would be endorsed, implying that we don’t care if they go to hell, which would be unloving. And the child would be taught that a damning behavior is normal and acceptable.

Oh, that good old terrifying clarity!  So the gays are going straight to hell for all eternity. But as for the straight boys - oh honey, just reach out and touch his handsome face, why don't you. And think of all the good times.  You'll get over it, like a good wife should.

Right. What a stinking sack of shit.  Which just goes to show, once again, that the Bible was written by straight men for straight men.  A lot of good stuff is in there - but also a lot of self-serving, self-justifying, self-excusing (remember who gave poor Adam the apple) patriarchal crap.