Author: Mark Alexander

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How to Destroy Your Organization's Reason for Existence in a Single Sentence

“Because you believe something is wrong, doesn’t mean you make it illegal.” ~ Brian Brown @ 47:55

After watching this, I am convinced Bryan Brown, Maggie Gallagher and the rest of these “protector of traditional marriage” buffoons will never move out of the 16th Century, no matter how many facts are presented to them.

And y’know, I kind of feel sorry for them, living out their pathetic little lives locked in such a rigid mindset, totally unable or unwilling to admit they’re wrong.

Sad, really.

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Mind-Numbingly Beautiful

The Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico, which uses something called “drift scanning” to document the vastness of the sky, has been snapping pictures of the heavens for twelve years as part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The Survey’s findings have been compiled into a 3D map of space, picturing 200 million galaxies and “7 billion years worth of cosmic movement.” The map will get bigger, soon.

I don’t know about you, but watching this full screen (and happening to be listening to one of the Doctor Who soundtracks when I first viewed it) almost brought me to tears. Keep in mind that each of those blobs of lights aren’t stars—they’re entire galaxies. How can anyone seriously believe we are the only sentient life in such vastness? The thought that there is so much life teeming in the darkness gives me chills. The Universe is so incredibly huge, even if reincarnation were a reality and we “visited” only a single world during each lifetime, we could never experience it all.

I am humbled by the immensity of it all, and makes the fact that the a group of clever apes on a grain of sand orbiting an insignificant speck of light are arguing over who they can love even sadder, doesn’t it?

Put on some music that inspires you (preferably through headphones) and watch (be sure to expand to full screen):

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"FRC's Own Activities Are What Brought This Down On Them"

I haven’t written anything about the shooting at FRC Headquarters because frankly, the words eluded me. My first thought was, “Karma is a bitch,” but I couldn’t expand further on that thought. It comes as no surprise to me that an organization (indeed the entire Christian Right movement) that has been spewing hatred toward gays and lesbians  finally gets hit with blowback—even if it came from a mentally unhinged individual—in the exact form of violence they’ve been not-so-subtly advocating for decades.

John Aravosis at AMERICAblog has written extensively on this topic, and his thoughts expand on the “Karma is a bitch” theme much more eloquently than I could ever hope to. For that reason I’m passing on his most recent post in full, here:

Classliberal2 writes in the comments to my earlier post about the Family Research Council and the recent shooting at its headquarters in Washington, DC:

The FRC is loudly claiming the “hate group” designation brought on this attempted massacre, and I think it needs to be pointed out, much more loudly and forcefully, that their own activities are, in fact, what brought this down on them.

People shy away from that, because they think it sounds too much like apologism for this would-be terrorist fellow, but there’s no way to look at the history of the FRC and come to any other conclusion.

And even after something like this happens, which could have turned into a real horror, it didn’t inspire one moment of pause or reflection on behalf of anyone there, no thought that maybe they’d gone too far and should tone it down — instead, they’re off blaming someone else, so they can continue to do what they’ve always done.

The Family Research Council has decided to treat this tragedy as yet another opportunity to defame its victims. First, they blamed the shooting on the Southern Poverty Law Center for standing up to the Family Research Council’s decades of hate and defamation against gay and trans people.  Then they went so far as to blame President Obama for the shooting.

Since the FRC has been shameless in playing the blame game in an attempt to milk this tragedy for political benefit, then so be it. Let’s do what they’re demanding we do, and talk about whose rhetoric is to blame for the shooting.

First, the shooter is clearly to blame.  And he probably has a screw loose somewhere (I don’t care how hateful an organization is, picking up a gun and planning a shooting rampage (which is what I assume he was planning), which is almost certainly going to end up a suicide mission, is more than a bit screw-loose-y)).  It’s also interesting to note that it’s difficult to remember even one recent act of violence that involved a gay person targeting the religious right – violence on our side simply doesn’t happen.  (Though, I’m not sure we even know the shooter’s orientation.)

Second, the absurd availability of guns in our country (the shooter reportedly got the gun legally) is also to blame. We can thank conservative groups, the Republican party, and Blue Dog Democrats for making guns so easily available to nuts like this shooter, and the shooters in all the previous mass murders.

Third, since the Family Research Council wants to talk, incessantly, about what motivated the shooter besides insanity – about how, in the FRC’s mind, words can absolutely positively push someone to violence – then let’s talk about whether words could push someone to violence, including the Family Research Council’s own words.

Is it possible, as the commenter wrote above, that the Family Research Council’s own decades of hate and defamation against the gay and trans communities, and more generally the religious right’s decades of defamation, finally pushed one of its victims, who was already unstable, over the edge?

Yes.

Does that mean that the FRC deserved to be shot at?

No.

But if the Family Research Council wants to make this debate about words inspiring violence, then let’s have that conversation, and make it an honest conversation that considers their words in addition to ours.

The Family Research Council says that the SPLC, and the rest of us, called them a hate group and that that caused someone to open fire on the FRC.  The thing is, the SPLC calls lots of groups hate groups, and you don’t see people regularly opening fire on any of those groups.  These include the Klan and white supremacists, who are pretty well-hated groups. Yet, there’s little violence against them.  Thus, the appellation itself does not historically seem to lead to violence.

Second, the FRC would like you to believe that calling an organization a hate group is enough to push someone to murder; but actually being a hate group, acting like a hate group, talking like a hate group will have no impact whatsoever on some unhinged person’s decision to take up violence.

That’s a bit naive (and I suspect the FRC is anything but naive).  As I explain in this other blog post, the FRC is essentially blaming the SPLC for exposing the fact that the FRC is hateful.  Are we really to believe that the shooter would have been fine with the FRC’s hateful anti-gay words and deeds – would have been fine being repeatedly mislabeled a pedophile – had the Southern Poverty Law Center not also added the moniker “hate group”?  Unlikely.

The thing is, it’s not really news to gay people, and our allies, that the FRC is hateful.  As victims of far right hatred for all these years, we knew about the FRC and its brethren long before the SPLC spoke out in 2010.  So it’s, again, naive to think that gay people, or our allies, were unaware of the Family Research Council’s anti-gay rhetoric until the SPLC decided to call them on it.  If we were motivated to violence by the fact that we thought the FRC was hateful, you’d think the violence would have happened long before the SPLC got involved because all of us thought/knew they were hateful the first time they wrongfully accused us of being pedophiles, oh so many years ago.

Second, the FRC is, in essence, (and pardon the cliché under the circumstances) asking us to shoot the messenger.  FRC would like you to believe that even if someone didn’t know about FRC’s hate before, the fact that they learned about FRC’s hate now via the SPLC, makes the SPLC responsible for any subsequent actions by any unhinged persons.  I explain the logical fallacy:

Isn’t it a bit like complaining, “Joe punched me because you told him I slept with his wife.”

But you did sleep with his wife.

That doesn’t mean Joe should resort to violence, ever. But you did sleep with his wife. So let’s stop pretending that the sinner here is the guy who caught you.

The Family Research Council has made a business out of calling out “sinners,” as they lovingly call us.  Yet when they’re called out for theirsins, their accusers are accused of inciting murder with their words, and told to STFU.  So the FRC is saying that it’s okay to intentionally mislabel an entire class of Americans as pedophiles, but it’s not okay for the so-called pedophiles to say “stop.”

Not only is the Family Research Council’s anti-gay rhetoric so hateful that I think it could inspire one of its less-level-headed victims to violence, I also fear, and have said so many times before, that their hateful rhetoric could motivate one of their less-leveled-headed followers to violence as well.  And it wouldn’t be the first time “good Christians” took up violence against gays in order to be true to their God.

The Family Research Council has claimed for 20 years that gay men are after America’s children – either to convert said children into a Satanic lifestyle of emptiness, disease and death; or we simply want to rape the kids, a lot.

Now, I’m not a parent, but I am an uncle.  And if I met someone who wanted to rape, or kill, my nieces and nephews, God help him.  That’s all I’ll say on the matter.  The suggestion that such language might not inspire violence in the defense of children is ludicrous.

The Family Research Council, and more generally the anti-gay right, can’t have it both ways.  Either words can incite violence or they can’t.  Falsely labeling someone a bad person can either provoke violence, or it can’t.  The FRC would have us believe that our admonitions incite violence but theirs couldn’t.

But if words can incite violence, then it’s fair to examine all the words of all the parties to the dispute, not just the words of one side.

And if you examine what the Family Research Council, and really the entire religious right, has said – lied – about gay and trans people for the past two decades, not only is what they’ve said is far worse than what any of their critics have said in response, but their language is so hateful, so damning, so incendiary on its face (and false, which only makes it all the more incendiary), that I believe it’s difficult not to consider the possibility that the religious right might share some of the blame for recklessly inciting the violence that finally, and sadly, unfolded this past week.

 

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Ugh.

Here we go again.

It’s been my experience that I rarely stay more than a year at the first place I move into in a new city, and Denver is proving to be no exception to that. Ben and I were both pretty fed up with this place and when presented with a $1000 a year rent increase we said, “Enough!”

Yes, it’s convenient to our preferred shopping haunts, it’s located roughly halfway between our respective workplaces, and we’ve become quite fond of the Starbucks that’s a block away, but we just can’t justify staying here, especially since we found a two bedroom place that’s brand new and is going for what our increased rent would be if we stayed here in this one bedroom unit.

So why am I not champing at the bit to get packed, even though I am excited about the new place? Because I hate the process of moving. Once upon a time I looked upon it as a great adventure, but I’m long past that. The best thing I did when I reached my mid 30s was to start hiring people to load and unload the truck, finally zeroing-out the moving karma owed to friends. I’m rapidly reaching the point where I can justify the expense of having movers come in and do it all.

Right now I’m just keeping in mind that three weeks from now we’ll be moved—and moved in—to the new place and this will all be nothing more than an unpleasant memory.

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The Path to Non-Belief

I wasn’t always an Atheist, although like all human beings, I was originally born that way. My family wasn’t particularly religious (my mom was Lutheran and my dad fell into the “none of the above” category), but we did attend church on the usual holidays, and Dad allowed Mom to fill our heads with her particular brand of mythology as we were growing up.

Like a lot of teenagers, I became very religious during high school and started attending church regularly—ironically inspired by the fact I had a terrible crush on one of the guys in my freshman class who also happened to be of the same sect. A year or so later, my mom got it into her head that I had to be confirmed into the faith—and since I was already deep in it—I went along. In the process I met another boy who I ended up crushing on equally hard. (The first guy and I had stopped hanging out together after I’d confessed my true love; go figger.)

Anyhow, my church attendance dropped precipitously after I went off to college, and ended completely once I came out. I still considered myself a “spiritual” person, but the Christian faith just wasn’t cutting it any more. How could I embrace something that so obviously and vocally had no place for me? And the more I read of the atrocities that had been committed in the name of Christ down through the centuries, the more disgusted I became with the whole business.

The first summer back home from college I had what I then considered an almost “religious” experience during my first screening of Star Wars. When Luke stood there looking out on that double sunset, I experienced an overpowering sense of deja vu. I didn’t know where or when, but I knew that at some point I’d once gazed out upon a similar landscape. That led me into reincarnation—and by extension—the whole “New Age” thing.

While I can’t deny that the New Age practice of Reiki played a big part in at least putting my head in a good space during my cancer treatment, in the couple years that followed, even New Age philosophy began to lose all credibility, and I came to realize that none of it could be proven any more than the existence of god, angels and the resurrection of Christ.

When you’re looking death in the face, it causes you to examine your beliefs in detail, and I think that was the beginning of the final turning point into non-belief for me. I thought of all the possible after-life scenarios, and came to the conclusion there was absolutely no way of knowing what—if anything—would follow, and for that reason alone, worrying about it was kind of ridiculous. If our essence, our energy goes off in some form after our body stops functioning, fine.  If not, and we just wink out into nothingness, how can that be frightening? We won’t exist to experience the nothingness anyway.

The only thing I rejected then—and reject to this day—is the crime and punishment view of the afterlife as espoused by the Christian concepts of Heaven and Hell. That’s just batshit crazy. And don’t even get me started on the contradictions, illogic, and outright proven falsehoods contained in the Bible.

But if I am proven wrong and end up burning for all eternity (leaving aside the question of how a soul can burn) because I don’t believe this bullshit and wasn’t a good little Christian and flat out rejected the delusion that passes as “faith,” you can bet I’ll have my non-corporeal middle finger extended upward the entire time, because the Christian god (by his “own” supposed inerrant words) and the vast majority of his followers are psychotic and I want no part of their insanity.

Coming out as an Atheist can be compared to coming out as gay. While I will admit there are truly some folks out there who are attracted to either sex, for a lot of us, labeling ourselves “bisexual” offers a psychological buffer before finally fully embracing what we knew to be the truth all along. By the same token, calling myself agnostic has served as a psychological buffer for many years. But lately—prompted in no small part by the hysterical ranting of those on the far right who are demanding that their own petty hate and prejudice become codified into secular law—I’ve finally reached the point where I can no longer deny it and am compelled to say fuck you to all religions, all gods and in fact all things metaphysical, and wear that big red atheist “A” with pride. I will continue to live my life in a moral fashion and treat others—as much as is humanly possible—the way I would want to be treated, and without the need for a promised reward waiting at the end of my life.

 

 

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"Kentucky: We're dumber than you think."

Well apparently the Kentucky GOP is outraged—outraged, I tell you—that colleges want their incoming students to know things. The nerve!

From Wonkette:

Kentucky Republicans passed education legislation in 2009 that made it easier to compare the state’s students to other states. Now they’re very upset that the results came back Stupid.

ACT, the state’s testing company, interviews professors to figure out the things most important to student readiness for college, which sounds like a smart thing to do. Unfortunately, those professors have bad news: If you want students to do well in biology classes, they have to know about evolution.

Rather predictably, the Kentucky GOP is madder than a plumber in a Chipotle.

“I think we are very committed to being able to take Kentucky students and put them on a report card beside students across the nation,” said Republican Sen. David Givens. “We’re simply saying to the ACT people we don’t want what is a theory to be taught as a fact in such a way it may damage students’ ability to do critical thinking.”

Yes! Let’s teach students about how Chuck E. Cheese made the Earth out of popsicle sticks three years ago. We don’t want to damage them.

It gets even better. From the Lexington Herald-Leader:

Givens said he asked the ACT representatives about possibly returning to a test personalized for Kentucky, but he was told that option was very expensive and time-consuming.

Aw, come on, Smart People. Is that so unreasonable? All Kentucky wants is national guidelines that exempt the state from knowing science, because the best way to prepare students for college classes is obviously to ignore the advice of the people teaching them. Don’t worry, they have a totally real and responsible argument:

“The theory of evolution is a theory, and essentially the theory of evolution is not science — Darwin made it up,” [Rep. Ben] Waide said. “My objection is they should ensure whatever scientific material is being put forth as a standard should at least stand up to scientific method. Under the most rudimentary, basic scientific examination, the theory of evolution has never stood up to scientific scrutiny.”

See? It’s simple — evolution isn’t real. Not like Jesus! Have you even HEARD of the scientific method, biologists? It’s a little thing where you get evidence for a thing, and continue testing that thing, except in cases where an invisible man made the heavens and the earth, then you have to believe it and definitely teach it as science and DON’T YOU BE ASKING QUESTIONS ABOUT IT, HEATHEN.

What say you, Vincent Cassone, chairman of the University of Kentucky biology department?

“The theory of evolution is the fundamental backbone of all biological research.”

Oh.

“There is more evidence for evolution than there is for the theory of gravity, than the idea that things are made up of atoms, or Einstein’s theory of relativity. It is the finest scientific theory ever devised.”

Wait wait wait. Are you saying… are you saying we have more evidence for evolution than for gravity? ARE YOU SAYING WE DON’T HAVE EVIDENCE FOR GRAVITY?

Somebody get Kentucky on the phone. It’s about to float away. [Lexington Herald-Leader]

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This and That

While taking the freeway to work is relatively okay in the morning (although it can be hit or miss, depending on what time I actually get on the 25), in the afternoon it’s uniformly fucked. For that reason, I’ve started taking what I refer to as “the back way” home, avoiding the insanity altogether. My alternate route is slower speed, fewer cars, and much less stressful than that stupid freeway. It also takes me past places like this.

And surprisingly, it only takes me about 10 minutes longer to actually get home.

Tonight I chose Elton John’s Greatest Hits to accompany me on the drive, and after not hearing any classic EJ for several years now, it was quite refreshing. The songs he wrote back in the 70s—providing the soundtrack for a good portion of my adolescence (much to my parents’ consternation) show that even though he’s turned into a pompous, arrogant old queen of late, at one point there was some major talent burning inside Sir Elton.

Captain Fantastic remains my favorite EJ album, followed closely by Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and Don’t Shoot Me, I’m Only the Piano Player.

Good stuff.

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