The Dish

A reader writes:

You wrote this today about the fundamentalist kerfuffle over McDonald’s:

If Wildmon could have seen our wedding, he would have witnessed two families, of all generations, bringing two men more closely together and in greater communion with their own parents and sisters and brothers and nieces and cousins and nephews and friends.

That is precisely what would have horrified Wildmon about your same-sex wedding. For fundamentalist Christians, a wedding is about the joining of a man and woman in a way that reinforces certain ideas about patriarchy and divine authority: God over man; man over woman; couple over child. When you and Aaron married, you rebelled against the idea that marriage and family is a way of submitting to the correct order of creation. Instead you replaced it with all sorts of horizontal and egalitarian commitments that celebrate love, equality, companionship and the joining of families rather than the production of children within a hierarchical family unit.

No wonder Wildmon sees you as a threat to civilization. If we followed your example, pretty soon we’d be out of metaphors for a God who looks a lot like an abusive, judgmental father-lord.

I didn’t think this was possible, but I nearly feel sorry for Karl Rove.

I’m pretty sure you’re only allowed one week per year.

Former KBR contractor Dawn Leamon testifies during a hearing of a Senate Foreign Relations Committee subcommittee on ‘Closing Legal Loopholes: Prosecuting Sexual Assaults and Other Violent Crimes Committed Overseas by American Civilians in a Combat Environment’ April 9, 2008 in Washington, DC. Leamon and Mary Beth Kineston, also a former KBR contractor both allege they were victims of sexual assault while working for KBR in Iraq. By Win McNamee/Getty Images.

My description of my friend Mike Kinsley’s essay as "Godless" was not meant as an insult in any way. I’m sorry if some interpreted it that way. I was trying to express simply my distance from his experience, not any criticism of it. A reader writes:

I was touched by Mike Kinsley’s essay. How brave of him, I thought, not to fall back on easy consolations. Not all of us unbelievers are as crude or as savage as Hitch. Nor are we all so illogical.  He won’t imagine what the world might have been like or would be like if his wish were granted and there had never been organized religion, for instance. Call me an agnostic, because there is always a possibility that my view of the world, however deeply held and hard earned, is wrong or incomplete or, at best, based on misunderstood evidence.  But. My daughter Kate’s birthday will be on April 15th.  She would have been 41 if she were alive.  She died in her shower in Brussels in 1994 of carbon monoxide poisoning.  The circumstances of her death were in all ways awful.  She was almost 27.

If God is all powerful, why would he let a wonderful, miraculous, beloved young person die in such an awful, hideous, careless, poisonous way?  If He knew and didn’t stop it, he is evil.  If he knew and couldn’t stop it, he is not God, in that there are limits to his power.

And her loss of her life isn’t the end of it.  Her death almost killed her mother, my ex-wife.  It deeply hurt her sister and brother…and her step-sister, my step-daughter, who was 12 at the time, was deeply affected by a sense of loss she hadn’t even known the world could provide.

I had been becoming less and less committed to my faith as Kate grew older.  We all went to church every Sunday, and gave monies, and then, little by little, we’d stopped: the church seemed to want things to flow toward it, and didn’t really want to create energies flowing the other way….it was, somehow, becoming irrelevant to me; and fundamentalism was [and remains] morally repugnant to me in every way.  Faith, whatever it is, isn’t easy or glib or automatic or free of doubt….it just isn’t.  Not if you use your head.

Faith had been real to me, beautiful, elevating.  The words of Jesus in particular I found [and find] deeply intelligent and morally exquisite and enlightening.  The art and the music and architecture of the church universal  touch my soul in ways I still fail to understand, and if life were led in music, I’d probably still be a believer.

So my life has been permanently maimed as well.  Not what it would have been if I could call Kate on the phone and have a chat; if I could hug her; if I could watch her dazzling life continue to unfold as it was unfolding, in brilliance and wit and humor and with profound intelligence, exuberantly and gracefully growing more and more complex.  Such a loss.

We were all damaged by an accident which in a world impelled by God’s justice and love wouldn’t happen.

I know what you, as a believer, will say to me.  I said it to others myself in the day.  I KNOW the difference between faith and intelligence.  I know the deep need to accept, which to the extent I can, I have done.

But I also know this: God wants me to be honest, and frank, and candid, and sure of myself.  Especially, He wants me to be honest.

And, honestly, I cannot believe in such a Being.

I know the world is lambent, I know the numinous arisings of light when the wind hits my pond.  I understand full well, in part because of Kate’s awful loss, how lucky we are to be here.  I, as I age downward into decrepitude, feel the world leaving my grasp, and it hurts almost more than I can say.

I wish, as profoundly as I wish anything, that I could believe, that I could smile and say, oh yes, as I get closer to death, I get closer to Kate.  My faith sustains me; all will be well.

All will be well because the world, the physical beautiful world, will go on. And that sustains me, that and only that.

So, Andrew.  My response to Michael Kinsley is indeed the opposite of yours.  How brave, I think, to confront one’s leaving of the world without blinking and without piteous wailing, and with deep intellectual and emotional honesty.

More Ella – "Imagine My Frustration":

Abe Greenwald writes:

If Ms. Paglia finds the U.S.’s "reputation in tatters," she’s describing some internal or personal state of perception.

The gulf between the continued complacency of the neocons and the reality of America’s position in the world is staggering. And that is a core divider in this election: do you believe that the US is in a crisis – economically, diplomatically, militarily and in terms of soft power? I do. If you think things are basically fine – that a massive unending war (now more expensive than Vietnam and financed by borrowing) is no big deal, that the unprecedented levels of public and private debt are trivial, that politics revolves around professional Rove-Morris tactics rather than any serious engagement with public policy – then a vote for Obama makes little sense. But I’m with Camille. Again.

Because McDonalds has reached out to the gay and lesbian Chamber of Commerce, the Christianist right is having a cow. Here’s Wildmon:

"And this is so strange, because it’s the family that McDonald’s appeals to — children’s playland, you know, all the little toys, all of that. And they are promoting a lifestyle that would utterly destroy the traditional family."

Another:

My son and I often stop by McDonald’s for a bite to eat after homeschool bowling on Fridays. But not today…

Not today, in light of reports that McDonald’s has decided, apparently, to declare war on my family. And to declare war on the civilization of liberty, independence, creativity, and humanity under God that my Dad fought for in World War II.

Via Ed Brayton. I guess I just don’t know what to say in the face of this hysteria. I guess we have to repeat this again and again and again and again: we gay couples do not want to "declare war" on any family; we merely want to be fully part of our own. If Wildmon could have seen our wedding, he would have witnessed two families, of all generations, bringing two men more closely together and in greater communion with their own parents and sisters and brothers and nieces and cousins and nephews and friends. Having the support of our families – and supporting them in turn – is what our marriage is partly about. We threaten no one. So stop threatening us. And have a Big Mac while you’re at it.

Japan mandates waistlines.

He’s addressing the Log Cabin Republicans this weekend. Bolton has long been a libertarian type on social issues, while being a rogue unilateralist abroad. But the debate about Iraq and about strategy in the war on terror is a separate issue than knowing where one stands on Islamist extremism or on social issues.

I’ve become a severe critic of the Iraq war and Bush’s overall strategy. But I have not for a second lessened my loathing of Islamism or of theocracy in general. The debate is so polarized that those of us in the anti-Bush-Cheney camp can sometimes be lumped altogether. But there are big differences. I’ve become much more leery of unilateralism, pre-emption, and occupation as effective tools in the war against Islamism. But that’s not because I want to surrender or have gone soft. It’s because I want to win; and I don’t think our recent strategy has been the right one. I also don’t believe you counter terror with torture or fear with more fear. We can do better. And we can learn from mistakes.

The enemy is still real; and in its extreme forms must be defeated, not engaged. And gays, of all people, need to understand that.