Marriage, Sex And Christianism

A reader writes:

As someone with a Christianist upbringing, I agree completely with your reader's take on marriage being about sex. (My husband and I, happily married — really — for 40 years, married at 21 because of it.)

That, combined with the Christianist belief that homosexuality is a choice because the God they believe in could not possibly create a homosexual, makes it unacceptable at its core and in the extreme. 

A couple of days ago you wrote: "So the right has a choice. They either double down and wage a war to strip gay couples of existing marriage rights, and use that reversal of rights to try to increase the stigma of homosexual orientation among the young. Or they can coopt the movement and use it to teach the virtues of marriage and family all round, inclusive of gay people."

As much as I long for them to choose the latter, I believe they cannot. All they CAN do, in their worldview is "humiliate, browbeat and stigmatize those of us building our relationships and families."

But, as you say, that is all they can do. And all the rest of us can do is hope their numbers decrease and that those on the fringe pull away from their intolerance and hatred. Because the core of them cannot change.

The reduction of marriage to sex and the reduction of sex to procreation does explain a huge amount of Christianist panic about marriage equality. Their bigotry is a function of their inability to see nuance of any kind and of their white–knuckled fear that their worldview is wrong, and therefore needs extreme reassertion.

Iraq, Powder Keg

Joost Hilterman in the NY Review of Books thinks 2010 could be a very bad year:

[J]ust as Odierno will be pulling out his first combat brigades, starting in March, Iraq will be entering into a period of fractious wrangling over the formation of a new government. If Iraqi national forces fail to impose their control, an absence of political leadership could thus coincide with a collapse in security; if politicians and their allied militias resort to violence, the state, including its intelligence apparatus so critical for maintaining internal stability, could fracture along political, ethnic, and sectarian lines.

It's coming: the final proof that the surge failed. (And yes, the Iraqi parliament still hasn't come up with an election law because of sectarian divisions).

(Hat tip: Ricks)

“Elie Should Stop Her Whining,” Ctd

A reader writes:

I don't know why the bone deep and deliberate ignorance of some people still shocks me, but it does.

I've been to Dachau. I have walked through the gates with the words "Arbeit Macht Boxcar-dachau Frei" and looked at the showers and the cramped bunks and the ovens. I have seen the dusty yard where prisoners mustered every morning.  I now know that a place can retain horror and despair in its soil.  You can feel the evil in the air even fifty years later.  I have no idea how anyone survived with their sanity. 
 
There are things for which there are no comparison, things like the Holocaust, rape, the death of one's child, and yet they are used with frightening regularity.  'This is like the holocaust'. 'He is like a Nazi'.  'This is akin to rape'.  No. No. And no. There is no like or akin to these things and using them as political hyperbole shows a breathtaking lack of humanity. Not to mention an inability or disinclination to formulate a reasonable argument.
 
So the Dems' health insurance reform plan is equivalent to the poor, tortured souls who lost their lives in Dachau and the survivor who protests the comparison is the "Newest, most current tool of the sick, perverted, racist, anti-semetic Democrap party". 
 
There are no words.

Indeed there aren't. And the GOP leadership, with the sole exception of Eric Cantor, says nothing.

The Global Baby Boom Slows

From The Economist's cover story (video here):

In principle, there are three ways of limiting human environmental impacts: through population policy, technology and governance. The first of those does not offer much scope. Population growth is already slowing almost as fast as it naturally could. Easier access to family planning, especially in Africa, could probably lower its expected peak from around 9 billion to perhaps 8.5 billion. Only Chinese-style coercion would bring it down much below that; and forcing poor people to have fewer children than they want because the rich consume too many of the world’s resources would be immoral.

If population policy can do little more to alleviate environmental damage, then the human race will have to rely on technology and governance to shift the world’s economy towards cleaner growth. Mankind needs to develop more and cheaper technologies that can enable people to enjoy the fruits of economic growth without destroying the planet’s natural capital. That’s not going to happen unless governments both use carbon pricing and other policies to encourage investment in those technologies and constrain the damage that economic development does to biodiversity.

Falling fertility may be making poor people’s lives better, but it cannot save the Earth. That lies in our own hands.

Women In Catholicism

If this is really the best that Kathryn-Jean Lopez can offer in defense of the Catholic hierarchy's subjugation of women and treatment of nuns, it's pretty sad. She has no arguments. She just has the reflexive defensiveness of the dumb and the orthodox. Every now and again, you get a glimpse into the intellectual quality of the forces of reaction in the church. It is largely execrable – as anyone who has to listen to the Benebots being churned out in today's seminaries will testify. 

And then you realize that this is National Review, a place where intellectual Catholicism once had a home, where Buckley and Muggeridge wrote, where Wills got his start … and now we're left with a person with the intellectual heft of a college sophomore, defending orthodoxy because, well, any critique amounts to "anything goes." Really – pathetic.

Faces Of The Day

Facepainting

Web urbanist:

Remember going to birthday parties or the carnival as a child and getting your face painted? Face painting is fun and magical, and it lets us temporarily transform ourselves. You can be just about anything, from a fierce animal to a dainty fairy to a weird celebrity look-alike. Unfortunately, most of us stop getting our faces painting when we become adults. James Kuhn, however, picked up the habit as an adult – and ran with it…The artist, who lives in Michigan, describes himself as a face paint illusionist, drag queen, performance artist, and full-time Christian.

Many more images here.

“Elie Should Stop Her Whining”

Because of my horror at the inhumanity of, the Gaza assault, my support for a two-state solution soon enough to rescue Israel from becoming South Africa, and my desire to see the US-Israel alliance become less suffocatingly one-sided, I am deemed an anti-Semite. This is the fate of most goyim who question the Israeli government on any grounds in Washington, so I cannot complain (at least I am not called a self-hating Jew as most Jewish American critics of Israel's government are).

But when real anti-Semitism emerges, it is hard not to miss it. And if American Jews do not see it in the current Populist right, a faction that loves Israel primarily to bring about the Apocalypse, they need to open their eyes. From the comments section on Ben Smith's story on Elie Wiesel's concern about Dachau being a salient image for universal health insurance:

Rothschilds nothing! Everyone knows that Obama is George Soros sock puppet. Wasn't Soros Jewish once upon a time? May the Schwartz be with you.

The jews need to clam up and accept the fact that they are in a Chritian country.

This hollowcost thing is totally overblown by the jewish.

Eli Wiesel should just go back to Indonesia. I don't see him condemnig the terrorist shooter at Fort Hood.

Elie is a whiner. She should stop her whining. You didn't not complane when the libs were calling Bush Hitler.

You know what? The fact is that at a time in history, The Rosthchild family controlled practically everything. This is a fact. Not anti semitic. I resent the Jewish outrage at everything. I am a tea partier. obama is a Marxist and takes his orders from George Soros… it is similar and these people need to get a life., Why any Jew would support the Obama administation is a mystery anyway. He is a Muslim sympathizer and the greatest threat to Israel ever to sit in the White House. Wake up Jewish community. Take off the blinders.

Rothschild sign? Well its factually true. They were one of the primary families involved in founding the Federal Reserve and are still in it up to their necks. Obama, Bush, and every president since Wilson have done as the Fed told them. Since it a valid historical fact that this family was involved in creating and still has ownership of a substantial piece of the Federal Reserve (but nobody seems to know how much), I guess its now Anti- Semitic to discuss anything a Jew does critically? This guy is a Hebrew Al Sharpton.

Elie, how did that whole Madoff thing work out for you?

Elie Wiesel: Newest, most current tool of the sick, perverted, racist, anti-semetic Democrap party. Have you no shame Democraps?

"most American jews are not very religious and many are outright unbelievers, Jews in name only." Many older Jews in America feel shame for BEING in America, rather than emigrating to Israel in the late 1940s. Many sent money to help the colonization, and a few sent Army-surplus rifles, but the majority came up with the most interesting excuses for not answering the call to gather together and forge their homeland.

Elie Weisel is disgusting PR-seeking profiteering demagogue who has made a fortune off playing on the world's guilt trips about the what happened to the Jews during WW2. Most objective WW2 researchers agree now that the beastial Nazi''s, who happened to be anti-capitalist Socialists, killed even more Slavs and Gypsies in their concentration camps than Jews, but you don't see the Slavs and Gypsies trying to profit off the "Holocaust" like some of the shameless powerful Jews in the media.

I sometimes wonder what has happened to the Jewish people?. The Bible says that they are GODs' people and Israel is their home land. I see so many Jews seem to have abandoned their faith and I think this has to sadden our Father in Heaven. I see many Jews that are homosexual-actively promoting it as a "normal" lifestyle. I see many Jews involved in the ACLU- which I call the "Anti Christian Liberal Union", this bothers me as how can one be against their Father and Son in Heaven who are for Life??. I see many Jews in Hollywood making filthy ,sinful movies-what happened to the good, Family movies??. I see many Jews full of Greed in Hollywood, Wall Street,etc. I see many Jews involved in abortion groups- how can one support the killing of human fetuses??, especially people who have suffered through the Holocaust??. I am not anti-semitic, I know many will come on here and attack me. I am simply stating what I see and I believe our Father in Heaven is wondering what is happening to his "chosen" people?. He sent his only son to Earth to die for our sins and I think He is wondering the direction our Country is taking??. I am praying for our Country and all the Jews in our Country and pray that our Father will forgive us all for our sins. I hope I have stated what GOD would have wanted me to say?. GOD Bless and Pray for our Country.

Old man should go away.