Do Not Be Afraid

I probably shouldn't do this, but today's reading from Forward Day by Day (a ministry of the Episcopal Church) is so very pertinent to this moment in time that I feel compelled to share it with my truckbuddies.  I hope you will draw comfort and strength from it in the parlous state of the world today.

Click to enlarge.

The text was written by Roger Hutchison, author, illustrator, and Episcopal lay minister.  If the good folks at FDD object, I'll remove the text image, but you can still read it at the FDD website here.

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Today's Thought

 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

--St. Paul

 

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Bannon Praises the Power of Darkness

Embed from Getty Images

Steve Bannon, chairman of Breitbart News and now the new chief strategist for Trump, praised the Devil out loud this week in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter:

The liberal firewall against Trump was, most of all, the belief that the Republican contender was too disorganized, outlandish, outré and lacking in nuance to run a proper political campaign. That view was only confirmed when Bannon, editor of the outlandish and outré Breitbart News Network, took over the campaign in August. Now Bannon is arguably the most powerful person on the new White House team, embodying more than anyone the liberals' awful existential pain and fury: How did someone so wrong — not just wrong, but inappropriate, unfit and "loathsome," according to The New York Times — get it so spot-on right?

In these dark days for Democrats, Bannon has become the blackest hole.

"Darkness is good," says Bannon, who amid the suits surrounding him at Trump Tower, looks like a graduate student in his T-shirt, open button-down and tatty blue blazer — albeit a 62-year-old graduate student. "Dick Cheney. Darth Vader. Satan. That's power. It only helps us when they" — I believe by "they" he means liberals and the media, already promoting calls for his ouster — "get it wrong. When they're blind to who we are and what we're doing."

It seems to your Head Trucker that "they" could just as well refer to all those happy-clappy, Bible-thumping, oh-so-holy Christianists who pulled the lever for Trump and his greasy gang.

For such people are false apostles, deceitful workers, masquerading as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. It is not surprising, then, if his servants also masquerade as servants of righteousness. Their end will be what their actions deserve.

--I Corinthians 11:13-15, NIV

From National Election Pool polling data via Wikipedia.  Click to enlarge.

Love the Stranger

A Syrian refugee fleeing Isis fighters in Tal Abyad holds onto his daughter as he waits to cross into Turkey at Akcakale border gate, on June 15, 2015.  (International Business Times, July 10, 2015)

Well, what to do about it?  Before you answer, consider two families, two stories:

1.  Welcome to Canada

2.  Welcome to Texas

Today's text, Deuteronomy 10:16-19:

¹⁶ Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no more stiffnecked.
¹⁷ For the Lord your God is God of gods, and Lord of lords, a great God, a mighty, and a terrible, which regardeth not persons, nor taketh reward:
¹⁸ He doth execute the judgment of the fatherless and widow, and loveth the stranger, in giving him food and raiment.
¹⁹ Love ye therefore the stranger: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.


Cf. Matthew 25:31-46.

So the Pope DID Meet with Kim Davis

I was sure yesterday's report was just a rightwing fantasy, but the New York Times has confirmed it with a Vatican official in Rome. Here's a report from ABC:




Ya know, fellas, I can never forget that dark moment ten years ago when my late husband was hardly cold in his grave, and I read that Pope John Paul II, now Saint John Paul, so-called, declared that same-sex marriage was part of the "ideology of evil" - this  at the very moment when I was suddenly left all alone in a tiny Texas town full of homophobes and bigots, with no rights whatsoever under the law, and had to leave what was only a few days earlier our home with a few clothes and my little dog in the middle of a bitterly cold night to seek a place of sanctuary. Under the laws of the great state of Texas, out of all our joint possessions I was not entitled to so much as a teacup, a pencil, or a shirt button. Because our relationship did not exist in the eyes of the law, and had no more significance than the coupling of two dogs or two cows.

The present pope seems like a kindly gentleman with a strong humanitarian impulse - but he just does not see or understand the enormity of the injustice and degradation that gay people have been put through by the teachings of his church, lo these many centuries.

Ms. Davis is a simple small-town woman who is hardly the devil incarnate, but as a deeply misguided zealot anxious for martyrdom she also has no idea of the real issue at stake here, nor of the harm she is perpetuating.

Your Head Trucker does not wish to require anyone to violate their own good conscience - but I would remind both His Holiness and Ms. Davis of Jesus's words:

Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's,
and to God the things that are God's.

Same-sex marriage is the law of the land here. Ms. Davis is being paid $80,000 per annum to conduct the taxpayers' business. If she has a problem with that, she is perfectly free to resign and go take some other job that will not burden her Christian conscience. 

Otherwise, she had best get on with her duties. That's what she's being paid that big salary of Caesar's money for, right?

And if I had a chance to talk with His Holiness, I would just ask: where were you and your Church when I was homeless and alone, with not a friend in sight?


Update, 10/2/15:  Turns out, it was all a set-up, and the Vatican says only private 'audience' in D.C. was with gay ex-student, not Kim Davis.

But you know all the Vatican denials are just the work of the magical, superpowerful Gay Gestapo.  Of course.  We control the entire planet!  Oh Mary, don't ask.

Dan Savage Starts the NALT Christians Project

From the project's website:

The purpose of the NALT Christians Project is to give LGBT-affirming Christians a means of proclaiming to the world—and especially to young gay people—their belief and conviction that there is nothing anti-biblical or at all inherently sinful about being gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender.

NALT Christians Project Co-founder John Shore, progressive Christian writer and activist:

For much too long now, anti-LGBT Christians have used the Bible and the pulpit to bully, malign, and shame LGBT people. And not enough LGBT-affirming Christians have stood up to boldly and clearly say how terribly wrong that is—to say that’s not what Christianity is, that the Bible doesn’t condemn homosexuality, that ”Christian” leaders like Tony Perkins and Maggie Gallagher do not speak for us.

It’s time for us true NALT Christians—the ones who genuinely aren’t like that—to speak up and be heard, to affirm LGBT people as loudly and clearly as anti-LGBT Christians condemn them. We must stand up for young LGBT people, who are so vulnerable to feeling worthless and shunned. We must eradicate the culturally inculcated moral underpinnings that serves to support such bullying. And we must bring to the fore a renewed Christianity that, instead of standing for anti-gay bigotry, stands for the integrity and love that Jesus Christ himself so radically stood for.

Wayne Besen and Evan Hurst of Truth Wins Out are also co-founders of the project. 

Dan's It Gets Better Project was and remains wildly successful, receiving thousands of video contributions from around the world, including many prominent people in politics, sports, and the arts. It will be interesting to see if this new project generates a similar response among "nice" heterosexual Christians.

Watch more videos or get your straight friends and family to contribute one here.


P.S. - Your Head Trucker devoted much study to the topic over a period of many years, and cannot conclude otherwise than that the Bible does indeed condemn homosexuality in both the old and the new testaments. People who say different, even so-called experts, are playing fast and loose with the facts of history, culture, and language, in my considered opinion.

But the Bible - which of course is not one single book but a collection, a library, of 66 different books (73 if you're Catholic) written by nearly that many different writers over a period of more than a thousand years - the Bible in one place or another also commands genocide, forced marriage, the execution of promiscuous girls and rebellious boys, group stonings, and slavery - not to mention the utter subjection of women to their husbands. The Bible is a product of the straight men who wrote it for other straight men to read - which is to say, a product of the solidly patriarchal, virulently homophobic Hebraic culture in which its various parts were written.

You remember those sickening pictures of Iranian teenagers being publicly hanged for being homosexual?  Well, that's just what the ancient Hebrew society that produced the Bible was like.

The Bible is simply wrong about homosexuality, as it is about those other things I just mentioned, and more besides. Yet in other places, the Bible contains some of the highest, best thoughts and precepts of mankind in its long search for the meaning of life and the divine nature. The fact is, the Bible - rather like the Internet, it occurs to me - is a very mixed bag, which must be read with care, and interpreted with caution, based upon deep and wide learning.

But of course, the vast majority of folks won't take the time or trouble to do that.  In the meantime, here's all you really need to know from the Bible - presented as a public service by your Head Trucker:

He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?

 

Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.

 

Love thy neighbor as thyself. 

 

See also the second half of the 25th chapter of Matthew for your quick-and-easy roadmap to Heaven.  Free gate pass included. 

You're welcome.

 

Hitched in Taos, and Other Marriage News

Some video of the first same-sex weddings in Taos, New Mexico, last Wednesday the 28th. Dignity may be somewhat lacking in these impromptu ceremonies, but the emotions are all that they should be.




While we're on the topic of marriage, Chicago Cardinal Francis George, while ranting against how "irrational" gay marriage is, admits that "the Church did not invent marriage"; but "nature gives us marriage," so that's why we do it.  Say what?

It's also worth taking another look at this rather amazing chart of Biblical Marriage that I posted on the Blue Truck a year or two ago - at the link, you can download it yourself or share it on Facebook or Twitter.

And Mary Cheney, lesbian daughter of the former Vice-President who married her wife, Heather Poe, last year in D. C.,  today slammed her sister's announcement earlier this week that she is "not pro-gay marriage."  Mary said:

For the record, I love my sister, but she is dead wrong on the issue of marriage. Freedom means freedom for everyone. That means that all families — regardless of how they look or how they are made — all families are entitled to the same rights, privileges and protections as every other. It’s not something to be decided by a show of hands.

Finally, in the atrium of the Kennedy Center in Washington, D. C., tonight Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will officiate at the wedding of her good friend and Kennedy Center Director Michael Kaiser and government economist John Roberts (no relation to Chief Justice John G. Roberts). On the guest list are stars of opera and Broadway, as well as the cream of Washington society. Ginsburg is already scheduled to celebrate another same-sex wedding next month.

My God, fellas - can you believe?? A GAY WEDDING presided over by a SUPREME COURT JUSTICE?!! Holy fuck, we're sure not in Kansas anymore, Toto.

And I have lived to see this day.

You See How They Are?

Send this one to your diehard, Bible-believing, uneasy-about-the-gays relations:  Even Pat Robertson says the Bible isn't an infallible guide to life:



Of course, the truth is that wealthy straight white men have always picked and chosen, just as they pleased, the parts of the Bible they wanted to ignore - or not.

Which, of course, everyone else does too - but they aren't usually in the driver's seat.

Savage Wrong and Right

I suppose you fellas have already heard about the brouhaha over Dan Savage's remarks a couple weeks ago during the National High School Journalism convention in Seattle.  I've ignored it until today, but for the record, here is what Savage said to the assembled high-schoolers:



The thing is, as I may have said before in this blog, at his best Dan is a very intelligent and highly articulate advocate for gay rights.  At his worst, however, he can be a self-righteous prick, as bad as anyone on the right wing of the spectrum - and that goes for some other other gay speakers and bloggers whose names are familiar to you.  Being gay, being a minority, being oppressed - for whatever reason - does not make you infallible, does not mean you can never do anything wrong.

Nor, as my mama always said, do two wrongs ever make a right.

I was, then, pleasantly surpised to learn that Dan is not a total prick:  he has actually apologized in his blog for using the phrase "pansy-assed" - which he was indeed quite wrong in using, for several reasons.  In your Head Trucker's mind, he was also wrong to use "bullshit" to a captive audience of high-school kids.  This wasn't a nightclub, it wasn't even a college crowd.

When you are speaking in public, you must always consider your audience and your purpose for being there - not just saying whatever the hell first pops into your head.  On an occasion when Dan might have opened some young minds to a more insightful view of what it means to be gay in a world dominated by unreasonable prejudice, he may have closed some of those minds forever by being too quick-tongued and too potty-mouthed - which is, in fact, a form of arrogance, despising your hearers.  Whether they are right or wrong, smart or dumb, you have to start with people where they are, or you won't start with them at all, ever.

As a prime example, your Head Trucker is old enough, just barely, to remember when bigshot Mr. Kruschev came to the United Nations and told the West "We will bury you," all the while pounding the podium with his shoe. Yes, I'm not fucking kidding, youngsters - he really did, go look it up.

I'm sure he enjoyed the hell out of that little self-aggrandizing stunt at the moment he did it - the human creature is so perversely constituted that being a prick in public is quite thrilling, and I'm ashamed to say that I can testify to the fact - but what exactly did he accomplish for the good of his country and his fellow Soviets thereby?

Absolutely nothing. There he was, for one golden moment at the summit of the whole world's attention, and he had no more sense of how to use that rare opportunity for the good of the world, or at least for that of his own countrymen, than a dog pissing on a fire hydrant. How.Fucking.Sad.

And yes, your Head Trucker has a pretty damn dirty mouth himself when he gets wound up, but I'm just talking among us guys here.  There's a time and place for everything, ya know.

Here's Dan's own response to the uproar, after the jump:

Biblical Marriage Chart

This has been floating around the blogosphere awhile, but I thought I'd repost it on the Blue Truck, in case any of my truckbuddies run into somebody who mouths about "marriage has always been the same" and "the Bible says . . . ." Well, here are the plain facts of what the Old Testament has to say on the subject, with chapter and verse cited. Throw this on your Christianist neighbor and watch the but-but-buts start bubbling out of his mouth.

Click to enlarge

The point being that the Bible is a collection of books written over a span of ten centuries, containing much that merely reflects the social conditions of the time and the typical attitudes of the straight, male writers who lived back then. Therefore, there's a lot of Biblical material that is simply not true and not a good guide for us now. The Christianists who claim that every word of it is the infallible Word of God are simply, tragically, ignorantly, childishly wrong.

God is bigger than the Bible. God is bigger than the Church. God - the Love that moves the stars, in Dante's lovely phrase - yet closer than hands and feet, nearer than breathing, as Tennyson wrote - cannot be fully contained in any one mind's understanding.

On the other hand, there are many things in the Bible worth knowing, and some that are deeply moving and soul-sustaining, as many millions of quiet Christians and Jews, not raving fanatics, have discovered down through the centuries, all around the globe.

Jesus Was No Bartender

Found at Joe.My.God:  Jesus did not turn water into wine at the wedding of Cana, you ignoramuses:



Which reminds me of a favorite joke my late husband told me:  There are three things Baptists don't recognize.  They don't recognize the Pope, they don't recognize the Jews, and they don't recognize another Baptist in the liquor store.

This video is no parody, guys, but totally for real. And I am surrounded by this kind of thinking (if you can call it that) here.  Of course, it doesn't stop with the grape juice fetish.  Miss Thing Rev. Grice also says The Wizard of Oz is "one of the most God-hating movies that there is," and not because there's a witch in it:



(He hates the movie, but he sure knows all the lyrics and all the steps, don't he? And has the dialogue down by heart.)

Now don't go sending nasty notes to that preacher, he's very small fry and not at all exceptional in his views for this part of the world. I post these vids just to show you boys up there in the blue state wonderland how common and ordinary this approach to life and this concept of Christianity is for millions of people. They are not all bug-eyed, jackbooted fascists, but rather are sadly ignorant of the facts of history and science and even grammar; and are sadly a majority of everyday working people who just don't know any better - but think they know all that matters.

Even more unfortunately, the folks who crowd the fundamentalist churches on Sunday are used for political gain by the real thugs, the slick, smooth, sophisticated ones, who are hellbent now, it seems, on making a theocracy out of a democracy, and all for the ultimate gain of the wealthy.

What's truly incomprehensible is why all you ever hear about on the news shows or in the blogosphere are the firebrand politicans and preachers, and never the sensible, rational ones. Which is why so many people on the liberal end of the spectrum - a majority of the young, I think, and a lot of the middle-aged - now equate all of Christianity with fundamentalism. And that's just not so. This is exactly the same logical fallacy - yes, I mean you, smug reader, with all your college degrees and friend lists and that vaunted "cultural awareness" you are so proud of, whatever that means - it's the exact same stupid thinking as my fellow Texans commit when they assert that all Muslims are terrorists.

Twisted thinking is not the exclusive property of the Right; nor is snobbery or tribalism.  We liberals and gays are human beings just like they are, and subject to the very same human failings.  Which is very important to remember:  we are all one human family, and nobody gets it right all the time.  Not even you or I.

But whether you are a believer or not, you should at least recognize that there is a Christianity that does not depend upon ignorance or literal interpretation of scripture. As witness this very fine sermon, "Brush with Grace," by the Rev. Buddy Stallings - a Mississippi transplant whose accent I love, natch - vicar at St. Bart's Episcopal in Manhattan.  You can read the sermon there, but I strongly suggest you click on the first little round button to the right of the text and listen to it instead.  You might just like what you hear:  a thoughtful, even humorous, Christian message that does not require switching off your brain first.

The ex-roommate and I were discussing this very point the other night:  why do you never hear from the rational, kind-hearted, well-balanced people?  As he said, maybe the Democrats and the Episcopalians (and all the other decent folks of every political and religious persuasion) are just too nice to raise their voices, make themselves heard.  They are rarely to be found screaming their message on street corners for the TV news cameras, so they just aren't covered.

Instead, all we hear are the ranting, foaming extremists.  Which is a great pity, your Head Trucker thinks.  Because that silence of the decent gives the foamers enormous power.

First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

See also a poem called "Hangman" that your Head Trucker just ran across.

Hey Baa-by

The women of The View discuss Biblical restrictions on marriage:

Bishop Robinson: Religion Kills Young People

Gene Robinson, Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire - the gay bishop whose 2003 election has caused the Anglican Communion to splinter into pro- and anti-gay fragments - writes in the Huffington Post:

An increasingly popular bumper sticker reads, "Guns Don't Kill People -- RELIGION Kills People!" In light of recent events I would add religion kills young people: gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender young people.

Perhaps not directly, though. And religion is certainly not the only source of anti-gay sentiment in the culture. But it's hard to deny that religious voices denouncing LGBT people contribute to the atmosphere in which violence against LGBT people and bullying of LGBT youth can flourish. . . .

With the exception of [Asher] Brown in Texas these suicides are not happening in Bible Belt regions of the country, where we might predict a greater-than-usual regard for religious thought. Instead, they are occurring in states perceived to be more liberal on LGBT issues: California, Minnesota, New Jersey, and Rhode Island.

The case of Tyler Clementi is especially instructive about how far we have to go in accepting our gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender children. Clementi was an 18-year-old freshman at Rutgers University whose roommate secretly filmed a sexual encounter he had with another male student and then posted it on the internet.

Think about it. If Tyler had been heterosexual and instead filmed having sex with his girlfriend, it would still be an inappropriate invasion of his privacy and tasteless to post the video online. And it certainly would have been embarrassing for Tyler and the girl. But chances are he would have been the recipient of some congratulatory remarks from friends about what a stud he was. And if he was straight he likely wouldn't have contemplated -- not to mention successfully accomplished -- his own suicide by jumping off the George Washington Bridge.

No, Tyler was a victim -- not of an inner disturbance of depression or mental illness--but of an external and in part religiously inspired disdain and hatred of gay people.

Despite the progress we're making on achieving equality under the law and acceptance in society for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people, why this rash of bullying, paired with self-loathing, ending in suicide? With humility and heartfelt repentance I assert that religion -- and its general rejection of homosexuality -- plays a crucial role in this crisis.

On the one hand, Religious Right hatemongers and crazies are spewing all sorts of venom and condemnation, all in the name of a loving God. The second-highest-ranking Mormon leader, Boyd K. Packer, recently called same-sex attraction "impure and unnatural" in an act of unspeakable insensitivity at the height of this rash of teen suicides. He declared that it can be cured, and that same-sex unions are morally repugnant and "against God's law and nature."

Just as many gay kids grow up in these conservative denominations as any other. They are told day in and day out that they are an abomination before God. Just consider the sheer numbers of LGBT kids growing up right now in Roman Catholic, Mormon, and other conservative religious households. The pain and self-loathing caused by such a distortion of God's will is undeniable and tragic, causing scars and indescribable self-alienation in these young victims.

You don't have to grow up in a religious household, though, to absorb these religious messages. Not long ago I had a conversation with six gay teens, not one of whom had ever had any formal religious training or influence. Every one of them knew the word "abomination," and every one of them thought that was what God thought of them. They couldn't have located the Book of Leviticus in the Bible if their lives depended on it yet they had absorbed this message from the antigay air they breathe every day.

Add to that the Minnesota Family Council's Tom Prichard recently saying that the real cause of the suicides is "homosexual indoctrination," not antigay bullying, and that the students died because they adopted an "unhealthy lifestyle." . . .

Continued after the jump . . .

The Creation Myth

The Creation of the Sun and Moon, Sistine Chapel, by Michelangelo.
But who's that guy who lost his pants?  Seems kinda strange, don't it.  Click to enlarge.

Once upon a time when your Head Trucker was still too wet behind the ears to know any better, I got into a big, hairy religious argument discussion with a Bible-believing lady. I might a-knowed the conversation weren't goin' nowhere when she began by claiming the King James Bible was the only one to use because that's exactly how God wrote it - ever word, from front to back. In English, o'course.

I ain't makin' this up, fellers.  The Bible said it, and she believed it.  So that little talk we had was a waste of breath, for shore.  Now you have to understand, her motive was good; it was just her thinking that was all kinda sideways.  Poor woman just had no idee there was anything in the world to know about, besides her little church in her little town in her little world.

Well, we live and learn. Your Head Trucker, of course, has long since moved on from thinking that God created the universe, and Texas to boot, in just six 24-hour days. But a lot o'folks hasn't. In Texas and elsewheres. Which is why I'm putting a little chunk of this article by a fella named Carl Pinnock out here, so's maybe somebody somewhere, sometime, can read it and get a little clearer understanding of things. It's right int'restin'.  He called his piece "Climbing Out of a Swamp: The Evangelical Struggle to Understand the Creation Texts":

For even though the purpose of Genesis 1—11 is other than scientific, these texts are still talking about the real world and its history in their own way. After all, the creation of the world is the beginning of God's purposeful temporal activity in relation to history and the event of the world's coming into being. My point is more modest, that we should be guided in a general way by the macro-purpose of the Bible and the Book of Genesis and not unduly influenced by debates which have their meaning largely in the context of modern society.

This impression about the function of the Bible is reinforced by specific signals in the text itself which should alert us to it in other ways as well. The fact that God made the sun, moon, and stars on the fourth day, not on the first, ought to tell us that this is not a scientific statement (Gen. 1:14—19). This one detail in the narrative suggests that concordism is not going to work well and that the agenda of the writer must have been something other than one of describing actual physical processes.

Continued after the jump . . .

The Great Agnostic: Robert G. Ingersoll

Happiness is the only good.
The time to be happy is now.
The place to be happy is here.
The way to be happy is to help make others so.

Reason is the highest attribute of man.

The truth is, our government is not founded upon the rights of gods, but upon the rights of men. . . .  It is the only nation with which the gods have had nothing to do.

Argument cannot be answered with insults. Kindness is strength; anger blows out the lamp of the mind.

Happiness is the only good, reason the only torch, justice the only worship, humanity the only religion, and love the only priest.

The other day, while doing a little research on the history of divorce laws in this country - which just goes to show that the straight boys have been changing the rules of marriage all the time, just as they pleased - your Head Trucker happened to stumble upon this very interesting work:  Is Divorce Wrong? 

Written in 1889, it is a response to the question by three well-known public figures of the time:  Archibishop Cardinal Gibbons of Maryland, who naturally condemns the very idea out of hand, holding squarely to Roman Catholic teaching on the sanctity of marriage; Episcopal Bishop Henry C. Potter of New York, who as a good Anglican naturally waffles a good deal about it, pro and con; and finally Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll, known as "The Great Agnostic," who ringingly denounces the tyranny and injustice of religious precepts against divorce, which cause so much needless harm to innocent people, though at the same time very warmly and rather poetically defending the sanctity of marital love and the family home.

Somewhere along the line I had heard of Ingersoll's name before, but couldn't remember anything about him.  So a little further googling turned up the very interesting facts of his life, and his numerous speeches and writings, which you can browse through at your leisure if you have nothing better to do after brunch.  Many of which are quite good, and even amusing at times.  "The Most Remarkable American You Never Heard Of" - yes, and I can see why he was never, ever mentioned in the history books down here in the Bible Belt when I was a schoolboy.  Or if you don't have time for reading today, at least check out this video, I think you'll be amazed for one reason or another:

[For some strange reason, none of Ingersoll's videos will display here - how odd. But try this link for an overview of his life and work:]

What I Say:  Ingersoll was a man of great intelligence, and of great compassion for the human race.  It seems to me that he is a more outspoken proponent of Thomas Jefferson's famous vow of "eternal hostility to every form of tyranny over the human mind."  And I agree wholeheartedly with Ingersoll's great aim of removing the shackles of ignorance and superstition from the human race.  Quite an admirable man, who deserves to be better remembered than he is.

Yet from reading a few of his works, I think Ingersoll, in his zeal to bring light and freedom to his audiences, sometimes overstates his case - as all zealots do.  Just as Ingersoll inveighs against ever placing "unquestioning faith" in any scripture or supernatural authority, so your Head Trucker would offer a gentle warning against placing the same kind of blind faith in any one remark of Ingersoll's.  To take just one example, in one of his writings he heaps great scorn upon the book of Job and condemns it as essentially worthless.  Perhaps so, if you think it was written to be taken literally.  On the other hand, if you approach it as a work of fiction - moral fiction - to begin with, then you may take an entirely different view of its worth.

Continued after the jump . . .

Marriage is a Contract

Texas marriage license and certificate, 1879; the couple was married by a justice of the peace, not a clergyman - which made it a legal marriage just as good as any celebrated in church.

I've blogged about this a time or two before, but since a couple of you fellas have touched on this point in some recent comments, seems a good time to put the legal definitions out there so everyone can make use of them as need be.

One big huge ginormous problem with the whole marriage debate is that our oh-so-holy religious kin, friends, and neighbors have got the idea so strong in their heads that marriage was invented by the Christian Church, and is thus The Will of God and eternally unchangeable - and moreover has always and everywhere been exactly the same thing it is right now, except of course for those nasty, perverted, pagan places like Spain, Canada, and Massachusetts.

Wrong.  Dead wrong.  Even your Bible shows you, knucklehead, that people were marrying long before Jesus ever walked the earth.  "Well, the Hebrews started it then, when God gave them the Ten Commandments."  Wrong - don't you ever go to Sunday School, you heathern?  Jesus himself said, "in the days that were before the Flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark" (Matthew 24:38). Before the Flood. You ain't a-gonna argue with the Lord, are ya bubba?  Though there is some folks I've knowed who was just so bullheaded, they would argue with Jesus Christ hisself.


So then, going just strictly by the Bible, you see there was plenty of marrying going on away long before the time of Christ, long before the Ten Commandments, long before Moses or even Abraham.  Long before there was any notion whatsoever of a Christian Church, and long before there was any idee of a Hebrew religion, even.  You can check out Genesis for more references to marriage and husbands and wives, including ol' Noah hisself, who natcherly took his wife along in the boat with him - not to mention his sons and their wives.  You do remember that story, don'cha bud?

There was also marriage going on in every other place on the face of the earth too, whether God liked it or not - you remember who tempted Joseph, don't you?  That's right - the wife of Potiphar, an Egyptian woman.  So marriage wasn't something the Hebrews dreamed up all on their own. 

"Oh well it doesn't matter, because marriage has always been the same, and I want to keep it just like it was in the Bible."  Izzat right, friend?  Well now, how 'bout you consider the fact that Abraham, Jacob, Gideon, David, Solomon, and a lot more of them old boys had several wives, and concubines too - and nobody thought a thing in the world about it, including God himself, who actually encouraged that kind of thing with some of them. 

"Oh but Jesus changed all that." Well now if you're a-gonna start quoting Jesus, how about this saying from his own mouth: "Whosoever shall put away his wife, and marry another, committeth adultery against her. And if a woman shall put away her husband, and be married to another, she committeth adultery" (Mark 10). But say, bubba, that didn't stop you from trading in your old lady for that purty little blonde you got a-stirring your grits now, did it? And you ain't felt a minute's guilt about any o'that, have you bud? Still setting up there in the pews, front and center ever Sunday morning, pleased as punch with yourself, ain't ya?

So enough with "thuh Bye-bul says" routine; it's plain as day from your own scripture that marriage - of all kinds and stripes and shapes - was going on long before there was ever a Christian to be seen on the face of the earth, and also that you straight boys have done just exactly as you please with the rules of it, in every century and in every clime.  So just sit down and shut up about it now.  You might learn something.

Continued after the jump . . . .

There Are No Homosexuals - Ya Think?

Rob Tisinai always hits it right on the money with cold, clear logic.  Today he's responding to this claim by avowed heterosexual activist (see how nasty that sounds?) Matt Barber:

Being black is what someone is.

On the other hand, being “gay” is what someone does. It involves feelings and changeable behaviors. Homosexual conduct is more akin to the aforementioned gambling or pot smoking behaviors than it is to skin color (and for those in the lifestyle, especially men, sodomy most definitely involves rolling the dice). To compare “black” or “heterosexual” to “gay” is to compare apples to oranges. Understandably, many African Americans find this disingenuous comparison tremendously offensive.

Rob responds with this bulls-eye:

So much wrong here. First, of course, is the notion that being gay is not a neutral, immutable characteristic. And then there’s this strange claim that being gay involves feelings while being straight or black does not.

Third (and this is so dumb, it deserves its own paragraph), he says that comparing “heterosexual” to “gay” is like comparing apples to oranges. What? He’s staking his argument on the belief that straight is something you are, but gay is something you do? That gay involves changeable behavior but straight does not? This is bizarre even inside Matt’s own distorted world. Seriously — if he thinks that being gay is a choice, then he’s saying that people are choosing not to be straight. In other words, heterosexuality involves feelings and changeable behavior, just like homosexuality. So by his criteria, they’re not different at all.

But it’s a cheap shot to point out Matt Barber’s intellectual confusion, like mocking a short guy for not being able to dunk. The real point is not Matt’s logical inconsistency, but the way his entire no-homosexuals-just-homosexual-acts starting point is an unsubstantiated and total break from reality.

And remember this point, fellas:

And by the way, Matt, religion is all about feelings and changeable behavior. Unless you don’t mean the stuff about loving Jesus and turning away from sin.

Of course, what Barber is claiming is the standard traditional Christian worldview derived from both the Old and New Testaments; most directly stated by St. Paul in Romans 1:26-27:

Because of this [idolatry], God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.

You see?  Heterosexuality is not merely the default human state, it's the only human condition; therefore, any deviation from heterosexual behavior is, ipso facto, a choice.  And if every man, woman, and child is "by nature" heterosexual, there can be no love between people of the same sex, only lust and "indecent acts."

Which is a lie.  A big, fat lie.  It is simply not true, no more than the notion that the earth has "four corners" (see Revelation 7:1 and 20:8).  But the straight boys are so terrified of us girly boys  - and what's wrong with this picture? - that they will cling to those Bible verses, ignorant and unmerciful, to the last gasp.

As Rob points out in his previous post on this subject, adopting the tone of the homophobes:

There’s no discrimination against homosexuals because there are no homosexuals. Just homosexual conduct. Homosexuality isn’t a state of being — it’s merely a set of actions. Hate crimes against homosexuals? No! Civil equality for homosexuals? No! Anti-bullying laws to protect young homosexuals? No! None of these things are necessary if there are no homosexuals.

This thinking is important when it comes to the “immutability” argument in Constitutional law. Is homosexuality a choice? Our opponents say that deciding to engage in homosexual acts is a choice, and people can stop being gay just by giving up gay sex. That makes sense, though, only if homosexuality is nothing more than same-sex sex. Obviously, though, it’s a great deal more — I was gay before I ever had sex, I’m gay when I’m not having sex, I’m gay right now as I type this (and there’s no man in sight). . . .

Language matters. Orwell taught us to be wary of political language that “is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

. . . The claim that there are no homosexuals, just homosexual conduct, is pure wind. The assertion that “gay” is something you do, but never something you are, is pure wind. And it’s a dangerous wind, at that.

Forget Uganda, Send American Gays to the Slammer

What a lovely thought for Sunday.  As Joe.My.God and TWO have reported today, American Family Association radio host Bryan Fischer says all teh nasty gayz in America should be rounded up and sent to prison, where they can be turned into good, obedient heterosexuals:

If you believe that what drug abusers need is to go into an effective detox program, then we should likewise put active homosexuals through an effective reparative therapy program. Secondly, I'm afraid you're simply wrong about the Bible's perspective on the law and homosexuality. Paul lists quite explicitly in 1 Timothy 1:8-11 the actions and behaviors that are the proper concern of the law:

Now we know that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully, understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality*, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine...

The bottom line here is that, biblically, those "who practice homosexuality" should come under the purview of the law just as much as those who take people captive in order to sell them into slavery. You express a belief in the Scriptures, and I trust your confidence in Scripture is not selective. If you believe all Scripture is inspired, then you are compelled to accept that legal sanctions may appropriately be applied to those who engage in homosexual behavior.

The Bible says!

Of course, this is a scared-shitless straight boy's fantasy of what the duties of Christianity are.  You notice he doesn't quote the other passages of the Bible that say things like "you must love your neighbor as yourself."  Hmm.  I wonder what kind of "reparative therapy" he'd enjoy the most.

As usual, Joe clinches the story with a bullseye:

Remember folks, the Christianist right is not about hatred and bigotry. It's about the gentle redemptive love of Jesus, forced upon you at the barrel of a gun in prison as they beat the gay out of you.

* - "Homosexuality" is a word first coined in 1869, in Germany. No such word appears in the original Hebrew or Greek scriptures; but a number of recent translations have paraphrased the original texts and inserted this anachronistic word instead. In my view, that doesn't alter the fact that the Bible writers were uniformly hostile to same-sex love, but it's important to get our facts right.

Sunday Drive: You Are No Accident

Father Geoff Farrow:

The Prophet Jeremiah says, “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you” and “before you were born, I consecrated you” (Jeremiah 1: 5.) Do you believe that about yourself? Do you believe that you are not “an accident” that your life has value and purpose? You are unique, gifted with a combination of talents, intellect; life experiences and attributes which no one else on earth possesses.

The two commandments [i.e., love God with all your heart, and love your neighbor as yourself], which Jesus teaches his disciples, serve to integrate us. First with our self. First, we must appreciate that we are created by a God who is love, a God who does not make mistakes, and a God who does not make trash. You are not defective, you are not disordered, and you are not deformed. Your gender, your eye color, the pigmentation of your skin, your intellect, and your sexual orientation is all willed by the Creator. You are willed by the Creator and the fact that you live and draw breath at this very moment is willed by the Creator.

The Creator has also created each other person on this earth as well as all other creatures and the planet and cosmos which sustain life. We are part of a larger organic whole. To hurt another person, creature, the planet, etc; is in fact, to hurt you. The consequence of hurtful decisions and choices creates a ripple effect in other lives and in the whole of the created order.

Once we learn to love and accept our self, we begin to move to greater personal wholeness and integrity within our self. We begin to see and actualize our yet unrealized potential. We begin to learn from errors of judgment. We become more sensitive to the hurts we have caused others and learn to ask for forgiveness and to avoid hurting others in the future.

We learn to become a living reflection of the Creator who is love itself. Who has moved beyond self to create others and me. We begin to see all of the created order and being ordered towards love, towards reintegration, towards potentials, which can only be realized in and through the other.

Sex is designed by God to require us to move beyond the self. If you look at the physical act of sex, it teaches you something of what is suppose to happen between two people in an intimate encounter. You undress, for intimacy to occur between two people it requires you to undress. Not just physically, but also emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually. You reveal yourself to the other. Your true self, with all of your strengths and weaknesses. Your hopes/dreams and your fears and what haunts you. You become vulnerable to the other in this moment and they to you and the wonderful occurs when the other accepts you “as is.”

Lovely words, lovely thoughts, Padre. Perhaps I would find it easier to put faith in them if I hadn't spent years listening to these very sentiments being read out from the pulpit already.

And then the preacher turned the page and began, "Do you not know that the effeminate and men who lie with men shall not inherit the kingdom of God? . . ."

Which put the lie to everything he had just said. And left me sitting on the edge of the dark and terrible abyss.

Jesus, Gays, and Texans

Andrew Sullivan, a devout Catholic, has posted this today; the story's from a couple months back, but still pertinent:



MCC churches in North Texas have put slogans like these on billboards in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.  Which has annoyed the hell out of Bible-believing Christianists.  But perhaps it will make some people stop and examine what it is they really believe, and consider whether their thinking is consistent and compassionate, which is always a good thing.

Would Jesus discriminate?

The early church welcomed a gay man.

Jesus affirmed a gay couple.

Ruth loved Naomi as Adam loved Eve.

David loved Jonathan more than women.

Your Head Trucker spent many years reading and studying and researching the Scriptures on this point, looking desperately for a loophole, a window of hope that God loved me too.  And that search will run you crazy - and I do mean crazy - after a while.  Because that Bible was written down by straight men to serve their purposes and their view of the world and of God.

I don't have time today to go into all this deep subject.  And I don't want to step on anybody's toes, who have found a way to interpret the awful homophobic passages differently.  But it is true beyond any doubt that Jesus himself is not recorded as saying anything at all about same-sex love, one way or another.

And after many years of trying to reconcile the truths I was taught in church with the truth within me - the goodness and rightness of my own identity and feelings and nature - I finally came to realize that God, if God exists, is much bigger than the Church.  And much bigger than the Bible.

I haven't renounced my belief in Christ; I'm an Episcopalian-on-hold as I've explained before.  But to make a short conclusion, here's where I am now:  God is above all things and beyond all things; yet God is also very small and very close.  God is that light of goodness and peace inside you and me and everyone; anyone can be in touch with it, you don't need creeds and scriptures and rituals to find it, and you don't have to go searching in some holy place. 

It's already there inside you; and in a certain sense, you are the holy place yourself, the temple, as it were, of spirit.  And so am I, and so is every man and woman, though we can blind ourselves from perceiving it.

And that inner light is God, and God is Love.  It's important to pay attention to it, and not just our feelings and thoughts and bodies:  it's part of those things, but something else too.  More than that I can't say.  But that helps me. 

What helps you?