Oh, the Groom Grinds a 360!

Sharp-eyed Ezra (so much free time now that finals are over ) spots a new speech from our new Pope.

Pope Benedict, in his first clear pronouncement on gay marriages since his election, on Monday condemned same-sex unions as fake and expressions of "anarchic freedom" that threatened the future of the family.

The Pope, who was elected in April, also condemned divorce, artificial birth control, trial marriages and free-style unions, saying all of these practices were dangerous for the family.

"Today's various forms of dissolution of marriage, free unions, trial marriages as well as the pseudo-matrimonies between people of the same sex are instead expressions of anarchic freedom which falsely tries to pass itself off as the true liberation of man," he said.

"Anarchic freedom". Someone's still verrrrry angry over the '60's.

This, of course, should surprise no one. He's the Pope who was the head of the frikkin' Inquisition. But it's interesting, in the context of the Southern Baptist article below, that he used "anarchic freedom" where "anarchy" would have done just fine. Freedom's just another word for something you gotta lose.

First off, anyone who gets up on their high horse about abortion or gay marriage but who's divorced -- fuck you. Seriously. Shut. The hell. Up. This is the greatest hypocrisy of American Christianity, and I'm sick of it. Jesus mentions divorce several times, homosexuality -- eh. Abortion -- don't even get me started. A gay man who gets married is just as Catholic as you are if you're divorced. I'm for both divorce and gay marriage. At least my argument's consistent.

This is one of the things progressives should hit with a hammer again and again and again. America's supposed to be the place where you make the decisions affecting your family. But the Texas Reps and Religionistas, they're going to decide if you can get access to birth control, by faking it up as a moral stand by pharmacists. It doesn't matter what husband and wife have decided, what you've decided between yourselves and your doctors -- that guy's precious moral choice trumps your moral choice, and now the gubmint's on his side. They're going to decide what a marriage is, what love is more valid than others. The anti-same sex marriage laws have already been used to let guys who beat their live-in girlfriends off the hook, and I assure you some people are not at all unhappy about that.

They're going to decide how your kids learn about God -- in school, according to their definition, not from you. You in favor of school prayer*? Fine. You happy your kid's going to be praying from the selection made up by some real angry Southern Evangelicals who think your church, be it mainstream Protestant or even Catholic, is a false church? Ahhh, not so much fun now, is it ... They're going to decide if you live or die despite your wishes or your family's, they're going to let their poor understanding of science inflame their morality to the point where your kid dies of a disease that could've been stopped by stem cell research.

The government does not belong in the bedrooms of the nation. Nor in its living rooms. Nor in its churches. The bitch about the opening the door so faith can get into the government is that the door swings both ways, my religious-moderate-but-still-inexplicably-voting-Republican-pals. The problem with electing people to turn your moral beliefs into policy is that once they get to Washington, they'll turn their moral beliefs into policy.

You often wonder where the fulcrums of history are. Well, folks, this is one. The next twenty years. We either march forward under a banner of equal rights into the future, or we fall back to the 1950's. Which I assure all you young conservatives, were nowhere near as spiffy as you've heard.

Once again: Everybody who wants to live in the 21st Century over here. Everybody who misses the 1800's over there. Good, thanks. Good luck with that.

And "free-style unions" should only be practiced by those who've been married for more than ten years and have worked the committment half-pipe for many hours of practice.

* It may surprise you that I'm all for "a moment of silence" in schools in the morning. If you've read the history of school prayer, by the way, you'll dicover that the only reason the Supreme Court killed the moment of silence idea was that one of the people suing for it admitted it was a backdoor way to get prayer in school. See, a perfectly good compromise ruined by the "give- 'em an inch" idiots.

Peak Oil

Well, this is the problem with having a career. While I was balancing my page count with the research, Kevin Drum has done a perfectly serviceable series of articles on Peak Oil. I'll probably revisit this in the context of some other ideas, but for now, not bad reading.

If you'd like to maintain that nice, mellow panic-buzz -- like taking too much Robutussin and trying to remember where the hell you left your wallet -- you can always go read some Joseph Palmer, or track articles at Global Public Media, or hang at the website of the guy who created the latest buzz with the article excerpted from his book The Long Emergency -- Jim Kunstler. His blog is Clusterf*ck Nation, which I find abrasive and amusing as hell.

I am incredibly encouraged by the fact that the Western Democrats (or at least some of them) understand that energy independence is both crucial policy and smart politics.

Hero

Ezra reminds us that today is the 16th Anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. The least we can all do is take a moment to remember this photo.

"That", as my grandfather would say, "that is such a man to deserve the name of it."

Light Blogging ...

... because, well ... I can't tell you. Let's just say I've been contacted by the Japanese government, and am even now assembling a crack team to aid me in my project. I will update when I can,

"The Core, bitches!!"

(Tip of the hat to Atrios)

Hydrogen Cars Come Right After the Jetpacks and Free Oral Sex

Linked here for future reference, and a the start of a new section in the sideboard -- HybridCenter.org

Wold Wold World

Thanks to our friends at Groovy Age of Horror, we have two spiffy links while I actually go about the job of writing for a living today.

Faceless is the very interesting retro -- in both art style and writing style -- comic adventure of Terry Sharp, 60's horror director and two-fisted Satanist smasher. Jolly good fun. If it continues you can count me in on a subscription.

Win Eckert not only has his Big Book of Wold Newton coming out (pre-order now), he also has a blog. I had no idea. The blog is a wee more streamlined than the main Wold Newton site, and so I find it a bit more entertaining/useful/useful for entertaining.

And from Gizmodo, we find that the Japanese are bringing hard-core porn to the PSP. This is an extension, of course, to the *2nd Law of Marketing: Porn Drives Technology.

Photography, magazine printing, home movie equipment both camera and projectors, the evolution of video cameras, VCR's, cable, the Interweb -- all advanced in tech and exploded into the mainstream as soon as their usefulness to getting porn from over there to over here became apparent. If it allowed you to make your own porn -- well then, gold mine. So I say, march on, merchants of filth! March on, into ... the FUTURE!


* The 1st Law of Marketing: Nail any two random pieces of wood together, into any random configuration, and some idiot, somewhere ... will buy it.

My Script Deal for a Proper Pub!

And, of course, there are days when I'm nothing but a pile of raging anger that I'm not in London hanging about with Mike and the Visible Monsters gang, drinking real beer and pitching dark little Doctor Who sidestories.

Always a pleasure to see what they're up to. Mike was one of the first to find the Kung Fu Monkey, go check him out.

"Toxic Spiritual Nature" ... and Those Desks Pinch

From our ever vigilant and adorably perma-perturbed pals at Big Brass Blog we discover that the Southern Baptist Convention is calling to remove Baptist kids from public schools and their "toxic spiritual Nature."

Similar to one that failed last year, this resolution also asks churches "to lovingly warn all of their members concerning the toxic spiritual nature of the government school system."

Grady Arnold, a pastor in Texas who also directs GetTheKidsOut.org, is submitting the measure along with David Scarbrough, minister of education at a Souther Baptist church in Tennessee.

"Southern Baptists have been playing the 'ostrich with its head in the sand' routine long enough," Arnold said. "The time is way overdue that we acknowledge the devastating effects public school is having on the faith of our children."

Arnold takes issue with Baptist leaders who argue that having their children in public schools is being "salt and light," a Christian influence and witness.

But Arnold points to the denomination's own data -- the SBC Council on Family Life Report of 2002 -- which says 88 percent of those Southern Baptist children after graduating from government high school are leaving the church.

The Arnold-Scarbrough Resolution: "(a) applauds Christians working in the government schools as missionaries, (b) calls on churches to warn their members of the devastating effects of sending their children to a totally secular institution for their education, (c) calls on churches to become aggressive and pro-active in starting Christian schools and in supporting homeschooling."

Now first off -- we know what the real issue here is. It's that 88% figure. How you gonna keep 'em down on the intellectual farm, once they've gone and read that other cultures are kinda interesting, science is our pal, and fags don't eat babies?

You'll note, interestingly, that that loss doesn't mean the 88% have stopped being Christians. I've met some of those "Ah, we'll be on our way, thank you" Baptists. We're friends. Some of them still call themselves Baptists and just go to a personally looser Church, some have drifted into the whole "generic vaguely Lutheran just not Papist" churches. But all are still practicing (and might I add, excellent living examples of) Christianity. They've just stopped practicing that particular brand of the Belief Line.

But that is not cool, as far as these boss guys are concerned. Because it doesn't matter that these exiles still have a deep and fulfilling relationship with God -- because being Christian to these religious Boss Tweeds means following their intepretation of the Word and no other. It's like a mini-papacy, but without the pointy hats and rather more smearily-mimeo'd newsletters. I doubt the irony is registering with them.

It's about control. That's what we're fighting here, folks, that's what the whole first half of the 21st Century is going to be about. It's not about worshipping God, it's about an angry 10% insisting other people believe the same way they do, and arguing with a straight face that they're being actively persecuted, thereby sucking in another 20% because one of the great secrets of human nature is that the one thing people want more than love, security, sex, chocolate or big-screen TV's is to feel hard done by.

Why? Because being hard done by is the shit. Feeling hard done by is the sweetest of drugs. If you're being persecuted -- it must mean you're doing the right thing, right? You get the mellow buzz of the moral high ground, but without arrogantly claiming it as your own. You get an instant, supportive community in a big dark scary world of such scope it may well literally be beyond rational human processing. When you are hard done by, you get purpose in a life where oitherwise, you'd have to find your own. And whe you ride that high, then no amount of logic, no pointing out that in actuality you and your beliefs are at a high point of popularity and influence for the last hundred years -- is going to pry that sweet crack-pipe of moral indignation from your hands.

I'm not saying that feeling hard done by is a sole diminion of the Religionistas. It is the nuke, people, the great vile vulgar key to the heart of all humanity, and can be seen in some form or another in every movement right or left, on every scale of social interaction from kindergarten class to nation-states. What we're seeing here is that one group is wielding the Ultimate Nullifier with amazing -- really, admirable -- precision.

To get back on the subject, I'm all for these folk pulling their kids from public school. I'm all for these communities trying to recreate entire social services and governmental structures on their own, and then dealing with the ramshackle results. Stop trying to teach intelligent design in my public school, teach it to your kids at home, and then enoy as they try to get jobs in the 21st Century. Let them form their little United States of Christ, and see how it fares in the world. I am genuinely all for that. *

Because if you have so little faith in your faith, so little belief in its strength and beauty and inner radiant truth that you don't believe it can deal with, oh, say the real world ... then exactly what the hell kind of religion are you following anyway?



*(On a personal, perhaps irrational, note I am firmly convinced that the United States population and infrastructure are now so huge, the country's essentially become ungovernable/untenable as a united country in the future. I derive no joy from the idea. But I do believe the tides of history will eventually splinter the nation. There's a comparison on how the Religious Right are the United States' Quebec, but that probably requires more thought than I have time for today.)

Half Life in Real Life

Alice at Wonderland links to what somebody who knows their rendering can do with their home-computer and some Half Life 2 models. That's a 3-D model from inside a COMPUTER GAME, people. Follow her link to get to the motherlode.

You ... you ... no, not you, the girl next to you ...

Ahh, THE FUTURE! (let that roll around, booming off the blogwalls for a moment) When any man's life can become a narrative for a teeming micro-audience! And it certainly doesn't hurt if he can write like a bastich.

Clublife -- the adventures of a New York City Bouncer.