Another casualty of the war and occupation:
But when a hand-scrawled note appeared on their door telling them to convert to Islam, pay $300 a month for "protection" or die, they realized they had to leave their home of 11 years.
I wonder what the Christianists make of this. Weasel Zippers is mad. One thing you can rely on: Bush will not give these people asylum. That would be too much for his pride to take.
Good news from a survey of gay and lesbian mental health:
The study found that, across all race/ethnic groups, younger cohorts of lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals (those in age groups 18 – 29 and 30 – 44 as compared with 45 – 59 years old) had lower prevalence of almost all mental disorders categories, and the difference was statistically significant for mood disorders. Younger cohorts also had fewer serious suicide attempts than did older cohorts (but this was statistically significant only for the middle cohort).
The civil rights movement has already made the lives of gay people better (apart, it seems, from John Waters). The younger generation has to deal with so much less pressure than mine did, let alone those emotionally tortured in previous eras. Why some want to prevent this improvement, why they actively want to promote depression, anxiety and low self-esteem among gay people – and why they think this is better for society as a whole – remains a mystery to me. But that is currently the position of the Republican party. My best guess is that they’re simply afraid of what they do not know or understand. And so they seek to persecute it.
Russia is seeing a decline in the critters’ attitude. If that doesn’t get Stephen Colbert interested in climate change, what will? More possible consequences of global warming here. Your Pinot Noir may be in danger.
Q: You write that as our understanding of biology advances, so too will our understanding of religion.
A: It impacts upon our understanding of theology. What I was pointing out is that human theology is based on our own value system — above all our knowledge of good and evil as we experience it. Take an autistic child. I took the case of Jessica Park, who is a friend of mine who happens to be autistic. If she had a theology, it would be quite different because she cannot understand other people suffering. She has no conception of other people’s existence in the way we have. It’s a radically different world that she lives in. You can tell by the fact that she can’t understand the difference between "I" and "you." She uses the words indiscriminately.
So the idea of a suffering savior would have no meaning for her at all. If she had a theology, it wouldn’t involve sin. One thing that is characteristic of autistic people is that they cannot tell a lie. Jessica never tells a lie because to tell a deliberate lie, you have to have the idea of deceiving somebody. That’s something she couldn’t imagine. Since there is no sin, there can be no fall from grace and no redemption.
The example of Jessica shows us how our own view of the world might be equally skewed. There may be many essential features of the world to which we are blind, just as she is blind to other people’s thoughts and feelings. So our theology also reflects our possibly skewed view of the world.
It has to, of course, because we have no other way of knowing God. But that is surely the point: anyway to understand God that is not God will misprise the divine in some way. Which is why the Incarnation remains our best hope; and why he spoke in parables. The most we can understand is stories and analogies. The rest is more distant from us than an autistic mind is from a normal one.
Or else. Rick Hertzberg first rumbled Schwarzenegger’s disgruntlement with the GOP, and suggested that was why he helped scotch a devious Republican plan to squeeze more electoral votes out of California. Matt concurs:
Anybody remember the first Republican debate, on MSNBC back in May? I’ll bet Arnold does. He was in the front row at the Reagan Library when Chris Matthews asked the ten candidates if they would support changing the Constitution ever so slightly to make naturalized citizens eligible for the presidency. The vote onstage was eight to one against. (The one was Giuliani; McCain said he’d "seriously consider it," which I count as an abstention.) Eight to one, in other words, in favor of crushing the ultimate and perfectly legitimate dream of the distinguished Governor of California.
If I were Schwarzenegger, I wouldn’t lift a finger to help these bozos.
Me neither. We body-building non-natives need to stick together.
Chicago, Illinois, 2 pm.
Jon Rauch, as usual, is onto something:
Astonishingly, 26 Republican senators broke with President Bush’s Iraq policy last week. But you may not have noticed this, and it’s not your fault …
What was Giuliani actually doing when his scheduling issues made it impossible for him to attend the debate for African-Americans? You guessed it:
A reader writes:
You wrote:
"Everyone under 40 these days is voting for Obama."
Not in Texas, they’re not – and don’t kid yourself that they’re voting Republican either. There are a lot of quiet conservatives who aren’t saying much (they have a lot of pride invested in the old Clinton animosity) but I hear more and more neutral to positive comments about Hillary than I ever have before. I repeat: this is Texas. This is Sugar Land, Texas. This was the district for 22 years of our dear old friend Tom Delay, one of the most conservative places in these United States, and they are softening to Hillary.
I talk to all sorts of Soccer Moms and Dads every week, carpool with middle-roadish conservatives, and work and mingle with a whole spectrum of generally middle-class folks, here and in Houston (a much more liberal area), and I tell you many will have a tough time pulling the lever for Barack. Call it what you will but they are very suspicious of him – worried he is too liberal and won’t have their interests in mind, isn’t strong enough to defend against "terrorists", is inexperienced – and if he gets the nomination he will have an uphill battle to win these people over. I hear much the same from family and friends in southeast Pennsylvania (Philly suburbs), a very mixed conservative/liberal area. It goes against conventional wisdom but I would not bet on him winning in the general election, whereas my sense is that Hillary is respected for being more "mainstream", which in my experience is where most of America is.
On the other hand, check out this reporting from the Mountain West. No, I don’t think any Democrat will win Texas in 2008.
A simple exchange:
SPIEGEL ONLINE: So what are the options in Iraq?
Seymour Hersh: There are two very clear options: Option A) Get everybody out by midnight tonight. Option B) Get everybody out by midnight tomorrow. The fuel that keeps the war going is us.
