The Dish

Here’s an eloquent, profound and conservative defense of inclusion:

I write to announce that, effective immediately, The Jewish Theological Seminary will accept qualified gay and lesbian students to our rabbinical and cantorial schools…

We believe that the law can be modified, and therefore should be modified, in accord with our society’s changed knowledge about and moral attitudes toward homosexuality, knowledge and attitudes far different than those of our ancestors that guided their reading of law and tradition. Core Jewish teachings such as the imperative to treat every human being with full respect as a creature in God’s image urge us strongly in this direction. We do not alter established belief and behavior casually. But we are convinced that change in this case is permitted and required, precisely in order to preserve the tradition charged with guiding us in greatly altered circumstances.

Read the whole thing. It’s a landmark decision. It pains me to note that as Episcopalians, reform and conservative Jews, and many other religious groups are grappling with this question with compassion and insight, my own church has actually regressed back to the dark ages with respect to gay seminarians.

A reader captures it:

Wednesday will be the third anniversary of the day my wife Becky died. She battled lung cancer for a year and a half; she was diagnosed at the age of 30 with no risk factors. And the thing about Becky is that she was never, ever dying of cancer, but always living with it. She taught her classes on Friday – she was an assistant professor of mathematics – and died on Sunday, and spent an hour in the hospital on the day she died designing a project for her students for the next semester. She wasn’t in denial of what the prospects were for metastatic lung cancer, but at the same, she spent her days doing the things that made them worth living.

I have read a lot of comments about how having a positive attitude and continuing to move forward with your life gives you the best chance to live longer. I don’t know about that; I hope it is true, but it isn’t always true. What I learned from being her partner during this time is that we don’t have as much control as we’d like about how long we live, but we do have a lot of control over how we live. Becky continued living with cancer the way she had lived before being diagnosed; she was the same mother, wife, friend, teacher, though sometimes lugging around an oxygen machine. That demonstrates the goodness of her life before her diagnosis, and it is the number one lesson I have tried to bring to my widowed life. If I found out today that I had a year to live, and that meant I would change the way I spend my days, then I need to change the way I spend my days now. It is my hope that having someone in the public eye being so open, brave, and grateful for the blessing of this day might cause many other people to examine their lives as well.

What a desperate little jibe. It is perfectly obvious from the post in question that I am not blaming the Brits for being captured by Iran. I blame Iran. It is also perfectly obvious that this blog has long exposed and decried the religious dictatorship in Iran. My point is that if the British soldiers are treated inhumanely in captivity, the United States no longer has any high ground morally to complain. This president, by authorizing torture, detaining innocents for years, outsourcing the torture of others to vicious regimes, and lying about all of it has made the lives of all American and allied servicemembers that much more dangerous. K-Lo knows that. Hence the swipe. It distracts from the truth.

Of the Catholic variety. Here’s Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, head of the Vatican permanent observer mission of the Holy See to the U.N.:

"One cannot consider the ridicule of the sacred as a right of freedom…respect of the rights and dignity of others should mark the limit of any right, even that of the free expression and manifestation of one’s opinions, religious ones included."

Another D’Souza fan. (Hat tip: Andrew.)

Stuart Rothenberg has some advice for the Democrats. It makes a good deal of sense to me.

Several, actually. Money quote:

Quantum mechanics is the girl you meet at the poetry reading. Everyone thinks she’s really interesting and people you don’t know are obsessed about her. You go out. It turns out that she’s pretty complicated and has some issues. Later, after you’ve broken up, you wonder if her aura of mystery is actually just confusion.

Virginia Postrel raised the question here. Others joined the debate here.

It seems as if some in the military have taken Peter Pace’s recent remarks on homosexuality and run with them.

A Somali soldier made prisoner by the Islamist militia is pictured as he waits to be released 26 March 2007 in Mogadishu, Somalia. Somalia’s powerful Hawiye clan on Monday released government forces captured during bloody clashes last week as the Somali government sought dialogue with the clan in a bid to pacify Mogadishu. Photo by Jose Cendon/AFP/Getty.

Not-so-much. Many prefer Obama.