I was just going through the server logs and found another visitor to my cartoon series, A Coming Out Story, who came here via the following Google search:
coming out story garrett
This isn’t the first time it’s happened either. I’ve had roughly…oh…a half dozen or so occurrences of someone coming here looking for my cartoon specifically. That is, some combination of the cartoon name and mine used as a search string. They don’t know where on the web to find it I reckon, but they know the name of the cartoon and they know the name of the guy who is doing it.
That’s just…amazing. Considering I am not advertising this cartoon At All… I know it’s been picked up on some cartoon aggregators…most notibly the list at gaycomics.free.fr. I get lots of traffic from there every day…mostly people who just check the main page to see if a new episode is up. For them I’ve just added a set of better progress bars to the page, so people can see how things are moving along, and be reassured that the cartoon hasn’t been abandoned because I am so slow at getting out new episodes.
But this is new. I get hits all the time on "coming out stories" or "coming out" or "gay coming out story" or "gay teen coming out story" But only recently…in the past four or five months, have I had any of those searches include my name…it’s always my last name…in the search string.
Every time I see this headline scan across my gay news lists I think maybe I’m still asleep and just dreaming that I’m awake and Monday hasn’t really started yet…
Jim Burroway makes a good catch I’d missed when looking at the new anti-gay ad campaign created by Campaign Secrets…the one that shows an unseen gay sniper putting a family and more specifically their little children in the crosshairs. This one is good…it really says it all…
By the way, we also learn that public schools no longer celebrate Father’s Day. Wait a minute. That couldn’t be because it’s celebrated on the third Sunday in June while school’s out, could it? Naah, it’s a much better story when it’s all the gays’ fault.
Dig it. Never mind that Father’s Day happens after the school year ends…just remember that the homosexuals have forced schools to stop celebrating Father’s Day.
Now…this kind of crap may actually fool a lot of people, not all of whom necessarily want someone to feed them pre-fabricated lies about gays they can pass around without taking responsibility for it. Some people will actually hear this and think…Wow…the gays took Father’s Day out of the schools… But you know goddamned well the people who made that ad knew that it was horseshit, and almost certainly so did the folks who bought it. And it’s a safe bet that its target audience doesn’t care if it’s truthful or not.
There’s your moral crusade right there. There’s your righteousness.
Remember those multiple lead poisoning in children’s toy scares? Remember that poison pet food scare. The poison toothpaste? The tainted milk…which thankfully didn’t reach our own shores (I don’t think…).
Well prepare to become afraid of anything made of steel…
An internal memo in the Environment Ministry that was sent to Germany’s states on Feb. 6 listed 15 "incidents of contaminated steel," in 12 states. The list included radioactive bars, steel cables, chippings and valve housings. The list of findings has since risen to 19.
Since last August, a total of 150 tons of contaminated metal has been seized…
The situation is a novelty in Germany. Never before have officials had to deal with so much radioactive material in transit. Last week, Gabriel announced soberly that "radioactive steel products had been found in several federal states." Internally, though, his ministry officials have described the situation as dramatic. The problem is said to have "huge dimensions," according to sources.
Some of the metal had so far exceeded the limit of 10 becquerel per gram that it had to be confiscated immediately…
More than 500 elevator buttons, which came to Berlin from France, showed radioactivity levels of 270 becquerel per gram. The buttons have since been replaced. A component found at a company in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and tested on Jan. 19 radiated an astounding 600 becquerel per gram.
The scare in Germany is being traced to three steel processing plants in India. How the radioactive material is getting into the steel is a mystery at the moment. The suspicion is that it may be medical or other radio active waste that is being carelessly recycled. There’s a lot to be said in favor of global trade. But when you are trading with nations whose environmental, employee and consumer protections are little to none, you need to be aware that cheaper isn’t always…well…cheaper…
German companies now worry that the contamination could have costly consequences. They are concerned that they might lose customers were they to deliver contaminated stainless steel. In addition, the costs of safe disposal could be as high as thousands of euros per ton of metal.
I’m assuming they built my Mercedes from steel made in Germany, but my first reflex was to go get a giger counter. Then I thought…I’ve been driving it for over a year now, so I’m probably fucked anyway. And a radioactive Mercedes-Benz would go nicely with my radioactive Fiestaware.
The Fine Art Of Inflaming Violent Passions Toward Homosexuals
Via Pam’s House Blend…and as of now racing across the net like a fire. West Virginia Christianists are gearing up for a push to enact an anti same-sex marriage amendment in their state. As always, it isn’t enough to simply make a case for heterosexual supremacy. They have to demonize gay people too. Their latest ad starts out with the image of a gay sniper putting a heterosexual family, and more specifically their little children, in the cross hairs. They are being targeted, to be gunned down, by some the homosexuals. Here’s a screen shot:
Bear in mind that this ad is running in a state that’s maybe only a tad less armed to the teeth then Texas. And the message of this particular sequence is crystal clear: The homosexuals are going to kill your family, starting with your children. Of course they’ll insist its only a metaphor. They don’t mean that homosexuals are Literally going to kill your family. Naturally all the West Virginians who see this ad will understand that.
This is what gets gay people killed in this country every year. And make no mistake, the people creating and the people running these ads are well aware of that fact. But we are not so much human beings as cockroaches to them. They want us gone. They want us eliminated. If the state won’t do what Leviticus commands, then maybe Bubba will…
The video is below. The sniper shot comes in at about .53 seconds. Then it’s another four minutes plus warning everyone about the threat the homosexuals pose to families and children. In 1977 Jerry Falwell stood beside Anita Bryant, who was then fighting to have Dade County’s anti-discrimination ordinance repealed by popular vote, and told a room full of reporters that “A homosexual will kill you as soon as look at you.” Now they are, almost literally, telling people in West Virginia that we do in fact intend to kill them, and kill their children. Gay people are going to die because of this ad.
Pam over at the Blend notes this same group who made the ad…Campaign Secrets…also created an attack ad against the AARP back in 2005. AARP’s crime back then was opposing Bush’s plan to let the stock market play with your social security pension money. To discredit AARP, Campaign Secrets cooked up this little gem:
Dig it. The AARP is wrong about social security, because it hates our men in uniform and loves faggots. That, literally, was the message.
A classroom dispute at Los Angeles City College in the emotional aftermath of Proposition 8 has given rise to a lawsuit testing the balance between 1st Amendment rights and school codes on offensive speech.
Student Jonathan Lopez says his professor called him a "fascist bastard" and refused to let him finish his speech against same-sex marriage during a public speaking class last November, weeks after California voters approved the ban on such unions.
When Lopez tried to find out his mark for the speech, the professor, John Matteson, allegedly told him to "ask God what your grade is," the suit says.
Whenever I see a story like this one pop up I scan down the article for the words "Alliance Defense Fund" and I am seldom dissapointed. That’s Pat Robertson’s ACLU evil mirror and it exists, not so much to defend the rights of Christians as to inflame religious passions in the mob toward secular government. Whenever you see the Alliance Defense Fund in a news story, the first thing you have to assume is that most of what you are reading is Alliance Defense Fund spin, because they’re very good at finding reporters who are too lazy to fact check them.
This story is a case in point. Your first reaction may be to question the wisdom of calling a student a fascist bastard in class. Certainly telling a student to ask God what their grade is was way out of line. Perhaps you didn’t notice this little tidbit in the L.A. Times story…
The Los Angeles Community College District’s offices were closed Friday for the Presidents Day holiday, and the general counsel, Camille A. Goulet, could not be reached. But in a letter to Alliance, the district said it deemed Lopez’s complaint "extremely serious in nature" and had launched a private disciplinary process.
The Alliance Defense Fund is a master at this. They tossed this story out on a weekend, when nobody from the school district would be available for immediate comment. That way, they get to spin the story the entire weekend and through Monday, the holiday, without fear of anyone hearing both sides of the story.
But in a letter to Alliance, the district said it deemed Lopez’s complaint "extremely serious in nature" and had launched a private disciplinary process.
In the letter, Dean Allison Jones also said that two students had been "deeply offended" by Lopez’s address, one of whom stated that "this student should have to pay some price for preaching hate in the classroom."
We are only getting the ADL’s spin on this story…but even in that spin there is a germ of something not-quite-right. It wasn’t just the professor, but at least two students in the class who were offended enough by the speech to register complaints.
But, you say, even so, the ADL’s side of it is serious enough. Professors shouldn’t be calling students fascists. In class. Other students should be told to respect the sincerely held religious beliefs of their peers, no matter how offensive those beliefs may seem to them. But notice the one thing you aren’t hearing from the ADL, or in fact, any of the other news sources: the speech the student gave.
It isn’t there. Not in the L.A. Times. Not in the San Jose Mercury News. Not in the ADL press release. Not even in the right wing loony bin that is Town Hall even, where you would expect to find nothing but hosannas for outright Christainist Fascism. The closest you get to the actual content of the speech in Town Hall, is this:
In November, Jonathan Lopez attempted to give his informative speech on God and the ways he has seen God act miraculously in his life and in the lives of others. In the middle of that speech, Lopez spoke of God and morality and read the dictionary definition of marriage. He also read two verses from the Bible.
But before Lopez was finished with his speech, Professor Matteson interrupted him. After calling Lopez a “fascist bastard” in front of other students, Matteson invited students to leave the class if they had been offended. When no one left, the professor dismissed the entire class.
But in fact even the ADL conceeds that two students were offended enough to register their complaints. But look at that carefully. In the middle of that speech, Lopez spoke of God and morality and read the dictionary definition of marriage. He also read two verses from the Bible. Would one of those verses have been this one…perchance…?
If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death. Their blood shall be upon them.
We don’t know. All we know at this point, is that something was said during that class that shocked and outraged enough of the people who heard it that…well…what exactly? The suit doesn’t accuse the school of actually penalizing Lopez in any way, other then having his speech cut short and being ridiculed in front of the class. Which I’m sure has never happened to any other college student in a public speaking class. Oh yes, it accuses the the professor of making threats of retaliation…but no actual retaliation is in the ADL’s accusations. When you look at this one critically, there doesn’t seem to be much of anything at all other then…well…a lot of empty speechifying.
So what is this all about? Simple. It’s about generating a news story about Christians being persecuted to inflame the mob…to keep it fired up for the ongoing culture war. I strongly suspect that when we eventually find out what it was this lout actually said to his classmates it won’t seem such a clear cut act of religious persecution after all.
Of course…the reporters on the story could simply have done their damn jobs. The obvious thing here is to dig up what Lopez actually said. Nobody seems to have bothered doing that. And the ADL and Town Hall would have their reasons one strongly suspects, for not telling. Where are the goddamned journalists in this country? They all retire or something?
This is why I read SLOG. I’m going to steal this entire post from Dan Savage, because it perked me up when I really needed it. But you should read SLOG from time to time.
Sitting in the fake Irish pub, eating my fake Irish chow ("Irish white cheddar" makes a burger Irish—who knew?), drinking my real Irish beer. Two women at the next table are talking up Jesus. They’re trying to save a man’s soul from the dark and sinister clutches of… I think he said "lapsed Catholicism" but I’m not sure. This fake Irish pub is located in the actual American south, and overhearing conversations like this is known risk of venturing outside your hotel room. I go back to my book.
But my ears perk up when the man cites the gays as one reason he can’t quite see himself converting to… whatever strain of Christianity the two women were pushing. Knowing what we know now about sex and what science tells us about what makes people gay—he’s referring back to an earlier point he made concerning what we know about the age of the planet and the evolution of the species ("God gave us brains and reason for a reason, so we could figure these things out based on the science and evidence, right?")—it seems to him that putting people to death for being gay, per the bible, is, "a little cruel."
No, no: the bible is without error. And if our nation were more Godly, if bible-believing people would only stand up for what’s right… well, we might not be putting gay people to death, say the girls, we wouldn’t be stoning them and stuff, but we would ban gay sex and gay marriage and gay adoption and gay/straight student alliances and repeal all gay rights laws and keep gay characters off the TV. Not out of Old-Testament style vengefulness, but out of New-Testament style love and compassion and concern. Because if persecuting homosexuals—a.k.a. "fighting back against the gay agenda"—convinces even one gay person to leave their lifestyle and come back to God, "it would save a soul."
I set my burger down. "Hello, I’m a fag," I say. I assure them that I’m not angry or upset or hurt by anything that they’ve said. I just wanted them to know that I was sitting there, a big fag, eating my Irish burger within earshot. "And you’re free to think I’m going to hell and say so while I’m forced to listen. But I’m free to think you’re ridiculous and that your God is a delusion and say so while you’re forced to listen."
One of the young women assured me that they didn’t mean anything they’d said, you know, personally. "And I’ll be praying hard for you," the other one of said, giving me a wink.
"And I’ll be fucking butt for you," I replied, winking back.
Yes! Just…Yes!
You people…you callous, fucking ignorant, gutter crawling maggots who think our hopes and dreams of love and contentment are your stepping stones to heaven… If I could wave a magic wand I’d make each and every one of you loveless soulless louts re-live every gay bashing victim’s final moments every night for the rest of your lives, until you figured out that the people you are knifing in the heart with your pusillanimous cardboard McLove are human beings, not your scapegoats.
I despise you. Every night I go to bed I lay my head down on the pillow despising you a little more. You took what ought to be this life’s most wonderful experience…falling in love, and being loved…and turned it into a nightmare for so many people, so that God would know how much you love him. It wasn’t enough that Jesus died for your sins…the rest of us have to die too. Because you’re afraid that even Christ on the cross can’t cleanse the open sewer that is your love. And you may just be right…
So…anyway…I’m reading a post from one of the gay news lists I subscribe to, about the Oklahoma republicans who gave the finger to that gay minister who offered them a prayer a few days ago…
No other previous prayer had been subjected to a vote of approval from the House membership. It wasn’t the prayer itself that the GOPers objected to, though when one is trying to describe the behavior of Oklahoma GOPers, legislators in particular, one must assume they wake up every day in a bad temper.
…
It was the diversity Jones alluded to that was found objectionable. People in all walks of life usually take the opportunity to introduce important people in their lives. It’s the rare inconoclast who doesn’t have a special person in their life. Those who have no one often end their lives in violent anti-social behavior taking innocent people with them.
Swell. Just swell. Yes…by all means…beware the lonely people. They’re…dangerous. You never know what they might do next. Say away from them.
Welcome to creepy old man-ville Bruce… Now…if I could go back in time, could I bring myself to tell the kid I once was, what was waiting for him…? I can’t even look at old pictures of myself anymore, without feeling so sorry for the kid I see in them…
Why couldn’t this kid have a life? What was wrong with this kid, that he couldn’t have a fucking life…?
The Second Annual Casa del Garrett Valentine’s Day Poster Contest…(Part 3!)
Yes…it’s the day after Valentine’s Day…and here we are still sorting out our Valentine’s Day Poster Contest contenders. But dragging it out after it’s over is all part of the fun!
Here are some more worthy contenders that didn’t quite make it to the winner’s circle. But that only makes them more worthy!
Tomorrow…THE WINNER! You may want to be somewhere else…
I’d been thinking about the self-publishing options available to folks now (see my post below), and I found myself that morning scanning through some web links about photo book publishing. I’ve wanted to put together a book of my art photography too. I began scanning pages of comment about how well Apple’s online photo book publishing mechanism works with Aperture…the Apple photographer work flow software I use.
I discovered several insights into the problem of color management I’ve been wrestling with, ever since I got a request, that came with a promise of actual money, for a print of one of my Puerto Valarta images. It took me so many test prints to get the colors right off the printer, that I actually lost money on it. But it was worth it to me, just for the satisfaction of knowing I had a fan of my art photography out there who was willing to give me good money for a print they’d particularly liked.
Here’s the image that gave me so much trouble:
This is off the Puerto Vallarta gallery. You can’t really see it in this JPEG, but the actual image is rich with delicate detail in the floor tile and brick work, and there are so many beautifully subtle colors and gradients. I love it myself. But getting what I saw on Bagheera’s screen (Bagheera is my art room Mac) to match what I got from my printer, a very nice Epson R1800, turned out to be a royal hassle. This JPEG doesn’t do it much justice either…but I wouldn’t expect much fidelity from a JPEG. The printer was another story. I spent a lot of money on it to get something I could produce art quality prints with and I had no idea it would turn out to be so hard.
The worst…and you may find this hard to imagine…was that damn beige wall around the brick archway. I could not for the life of me get it right out of the printer. I could get the tile floor. I could get the brickwork. I could get the lovely wood in the shadows, and in the bright golden light of the morning sun in Puerto Vallarta. I could get the dog perfect…just perfect. I could not get that goddamned beige wall. It starts out with a distinctly reddish cast at the far end, and gradates over the stucco to the lighter, paler beige in the near end. It is just lovely if you get it right. But I kept getting a yellowish wall, or an orange-ish wall or some puke colored wall. I was having fits until finally, just by accident, I hit on a combination of Aperture output settings and printer color settings that got it right, and I was able to give my customer a good print of it.
This…I thought…cannot be right. I’d taken a profusion of notes during my struggle to get a good print of this image and looking through them the only thing I could say for sure is I had a combination of settings that would work on That One Photo and probably I’d have to do it all over again for any others. I knew there was this thing called "color management" you could enforce…somehow…which was supposed to use the color profiles of your printer and monitor to make sure that what you see on the screen is exactly the same as what you see in the final print. But whenever I looked into any of these color management systems they were all horribly expensive to buy and more complicated to install and use then I had the money or the time to fool with. There had to be an easier way.
Last summer I was asked at the last minute to do the photography for a relative’s wedding. Some of the photos I took were with the Canon 30D digital SLR. But some shots, the critical couple and family portraits were done with the Hasselblad. I’ve been hemming and hawing for months now about getting them prints because I knew it was going to be a massive effort to get each individual print right. They’ve been very patient, but it’s been embarrassing.
So I’m reading this article online about using Aperture to publish photobooks via Apple’s photobook service, and I see a simple, straightforward explanation of how Apple’s own internal color management system works that I’d never been able to find while I was struggling with the Puerto Vallarta photo…and suddenly everything snapped together for me.
I had only a vague idea that Apple even had color management built into the operating system. And there it was, laid out for me in an simple step-by-step process, to set it up in Aperture. Apple’s system is called "ColorSync", and since it was built-in to the OS, it Was as simple as I thought it had to be. Just a matter of getting the latest color profiles for my printer installed and then, in Aperture, switching on the onscreen proofing and making sure it was using the printer profiles. The default is the Apple RGB space. On the printer side instead of trying to set up a third-party color management system, I just switched on ColorSync. When Aperture printed, I just had to make sure it was using the printer profile for the particular kind of paper I had in it when it sent output to the printer. That was all I needed to do.
I ran a test print of the image above through it and it came out…perfectly. Then I got into the wedding photos I’d taken last summer. The wedding portraits were all taken outdoors under a tree with a little lake behind it and the lighting conditions kept varying because the bright puffy beautiful clouds in the background kept passing in front of it. I picked out an image of the couple that needed some adjustments in the light levels and tweaked until I got everything to my satisfaction. Then instead of making a test proof print, I just sent it directly to the printer using the ColorSync setup and the expensive high gloss paper. I wanted to see the final product right up front. It came out exactly right.
I was thrilled. Now I could make as many art prints as I wanted and not have to worry too much about wasting paper and spinning my wheels searching for the right combination of printer settings to get something to print the way I wanted it to print. I started work on the wedding prints I’d been promising my family…the southern Baptist side down in southern Virgina…for so long. It was great. Everything was coming off the printer perfectly. Just perfectly. I was delighted.
I’d printed up a nice 13" by 19" print of the couple’s wedding portrait, and thinking to myself with that sense of completeness and inner satisfaction an artist gets when you have a head of steam up and it all comes together and its all perfect that, Hey…They’re really going to like this… Hopefully it’ll make up for the delay in getting it all to them… And then I realized what I was doing.
It’s Valentine’s Day, I’m 55, I’ve been single almost all my life except for maybe that short affair I had with Keith ten years ago and even that was more a roller coaster of yes we are no we’re not yes we are no we’re not until he dumped me…I’m sick, absolutely sick with loneliness and despair is settling in to keep me company in my old age…and here I am happily, cheerfully even, working on other people’s wedding photos. Like…this is what my life was always meant to be after all. I exist, to serve other people’s happiness. I was born to watch other people get a love life and settle down. Keith settled down. My first high school crush is happily settled down and has been for over thirty years now with the person he calls his soulmate. And a certain heartless jackass I know in Arlington Virginia keeps telling me my problem is I just don’t work at it enough, like a sanctimonious billionaire who thinks the only reason people are poor is because they are lazy and just don’t want to work.
I get to watch it all…the parade of life. I get to point my camera at it. I get to make drawings and paintings of it. I have the skill…and the eye. I get to document it all as it passes me by. That’s why I was put here on this earth I guess. I think I saw it, finally, last night.
How I spent my Valentine’s day: I made other people’s wedding prints. Trust me, it wasn’t what I’d planned on doing. If someone had even suggested it I’d have laughed in their face. I’ll do them later…just not Valentine’s Day. Not when I’m so lonely while the whole fucking world celebrates being in love. And it just…happened. Like an omen. Like a tap on the shoulder reminding me I have a place in this world, and that’s not it. How I spent my Valentine’s day: I made other people’s wedding prints.
Well…I need to go get some more photo paper. And…ink.
The Second Annual Casa del Garrett Valentine’s Day Poster Contest…(Part 2!)
Okay…we’re a little behind schedule in posting our worthy Valentine’s Day Poster Contest runners-up here. Sorry. But that sense that things aren’t going according to plan is All Part Of The Fun!
Here are some more worthy contenders for the crown. Alas, they just didn’t quite measure up. But that only makes them even more worthy!
More worthy contenders who were left standing in the dust tomorrow!
There’s a bunch of you folks who come here on a daily basis…somewhat more who come here on a week-to-week basis. I can tell from the servers logs…but no…I have no idea who any of you are. Those of you who come here from a few of the major ISPs I don’t even know precisely where you live. But I have a small, but very satisfying audience here. And I am delighted with all of you…whether or not you comment. I have never once advertised this site. So I have to assume that those of you I don’t know personally, just stumbled upon my little place, and decided that it was worth revisiting regularly. That is just…amazing.
Per the previous post… I mentioned an author who has self-published a book on Authoritarianism. He has offered his book for free in PDF format to the world…but is also using a service called Lulu to create paperback copies if anyone wants to buy one. I just took a closer look at Lulu…and it is interesting to me on a number of levels.
Services like Lulu offer authors the ability to have books literally made-to-order, at prices competitive with what you’d get from Amazon or any mortar and brick bookseller. So if someone likes what you do, the technology now exists to make one-off copies for anyone who wants one. You don’t have to interest a big publisher. That means if your material is such that it only is of interest to a small subset of readers, you can still have your book printed and they can still read you.
I’ve been wanting to do books for ages. I have two primary interests here: my art photography naturally…but also some works of fiction. This is what I want to ask you about.
Most of you may not know this, but some years ago I had a series of fantasy world stories up here on my web site: The Skywatchers of Aden.
The series takes place in an alternate universe earth…one with different continents and different histories. There is a struggle to the death involving a theocratic totalitarian state…Ekrus…and a nation of refugees from that state…Aden…comprised of many non-conformist faiths who came together to form their own nation…a democracy based on religious freedom. But they cannot fight alone. There is a third nation…Atria…a nation of many native peoples who hold to many different values and worship many different gods…that is caught in the middle of this war between the theocracy and the democracy. Somehow, these people of wildly divergent views on faith and morality have to find common ground in order to preserver against the large and powerful theocratic state. The central focus of the stories is on a same-sex couple…one of which is a devout non-conformist believer from the nation of Aden…the other a native of Atria…who find themselves in love and in the middle of this scorched earth war between Aden and Ekrus.
As I said…some time ago I had these stories up here…and then I pulled them down when I became dissatisfied with them. I am not naturally a writer…I am a graphic artist. But I do write occasionally and this fantasy series still attracts my attention. I have been meaning to re-write some of what I initially put out and add some illustrations and re-post it. My question to you all is…would you be interested in reading it? Those of you who keep coming back here to read my occasional posts…is it conceivable to you that you might be interested in reading some fiction I might produce?
Just curious…because it seems the technology exists for me to turn this into a book after all. I would love to…one day…hold a book of my own in my hands.
If there is enough interest…I’ll start reposting some of the stories. I still want to add some illustrations though. But feedback would be…wonderful.
You knew the culture warriors were a bitter lot, didn’t you? This came across one of the gay news lists I subscribe to this morning…
20 Oklahoma legislators vote against recording gay pastor’s prayer in House Journal
Scott Jones, pastor of the Cathedral of Hope-Oklahoma City, delivered the opening prayer Monday in the Oklahoma House of Representatives, according to this report on Jones’ blog, MyQuest. The Cathedral of Hope-OKC is a congregation of the United Church of Christ that spun off from Dallas’ Cathedral of Hope, known as the world’s largest gay church.
The Rev. Scott Jones thanked his legislator, Rep. Al McAffrey, who asked him to pray to open Wednesday’s House session and acknowledged several in the gallery – "dear friends, my wonderful parents, and my loving partner and fiance, Michael.”
Jones is the pastor of the Cathedral of Hope — Oklahoma City.
When McAffrey, D-Oklahoma City, asked in the session’s closing minutes that Jones’ prayer be made part of the House journal, the chamber’s official record, Rep. John Wright objected
20 upstanding Oklahoma legislators objected to including Jones’ prayer in the record…a thing that is so routine nobody can remember when anyone ever objected to a prayer being included in the record. More Here. Note that the the Oklahoman (The State’s Most Trusted Newspaper) account of the incident characterizes the objectors as being merely "annoyed", and that their annoyance was over Jones’ opening remarks. But the prayer, which even "the state’s most trusted newspaper" characterized as a "generic prayer", was what they voted to remove from the record. You can almost hear Wright gritting his teeth when he tells "the state’s most trusted newspaper" that his motion was "not meant to be derogatory nor divisive nor in any way trying to cause diminishment of someone’s sense of self-worth."
Contacted later, Wright, R-Broken Arrow, said the practice of including a minister’s prayer in the House journal usually is reserved for Thursdays, the last workday for legislators.
That’s one side of his mouth. And here’s the other…spoken in practically the same breath…
"My actions were motivated by the faith, so now if you want to take it and cause the public to be inflamed about it, well, that’s at your feet,” Wright said.
Which brings me to This Post over at Pam’s House Blend. It’s about a book written by a researcher whose primary focus has been the authoritarian mindset.
Yesterday I came across a most interesting book, available on-line at The Authoritarians, which provides a significant body of scientific research that goes a long way to explaining why religious followers (and leaders) have such a hard time with us GLBT folk. The author [Robert Altemeyer] is a professor of psychology at the University of Manitoba and has been studying authoritarian people for decades as a psychological researcher.
Altermeyer is offering his book as a free download, or for $9.74 plus shipping for a bound edition. Here’s a few excepts pinched off Pam’s…
p. 139-140: This chapter has presented my main research findings on religious fundamentalists. The first thing I want to emphasize, in light of the rest of this book, is that they are highly likely to be authoritarian followers. They are highly submissive to established authority, aggressive in the name of that authority, and conventional to the point of insisting everyone should behave as their authorities decide. They are fearful and self-righteous and have a lot of hostility in them that they readily direct toward various out-groups. They are easily incited, easily led, rather un-inclined to think for themselves, largely impervious to facts and reason, and rely instead on social support to maintain their beliefs. They bring strong loyalty to their in-groups, have thick-walled, highly compartmentalized minds, use a lot of double standards in their judgments, are surprisingly unprincipled at times, and are often hypocrites.
But they are also Teflon-coated when it comes to guilt. They are blind to themselves, ethnocentric and prejudiced, and as closed-minded as they are narrowminded. They can be woefully uninformed about things they oppose, but they prefer ignorance and want to make others become as ignorant as they. They are also surprisingly uninformed about the things they say they believe in, and deep, deep, deep down inside many of them have secret doubts about their core belief. But they are very happy, highly giving, and quite zealous. In fact, they are about the only zealous people around nowadays in North America, which explains a lot of their success in their endless (and necessary) pursuit of converts.
Emphasis mine. Sound familiar? The motion was not meant to be derogatory nor divisive nor in any way trying to cause diminishment of someone’s sense of self-worth…the practice of including a minister’s prayer in the House journal usually is reserved for Thursdays, the last workday for legislators…my actions were motivated by the faith, so now if you want to take it and cause the public to be inflamed about it, well, that’s at your feet… Well that certainly explains that, doesn’t it senator?
I try, when I rail against this sort of thing here, to distinguish between fundamentalists and evangelicals, because the mindset between the two is categorically different. Fundamentalists have certainty. Evangelicals have faith. They could not be more different things. The fundamentalists’ certainty is hollow. It is brittle. It is delicate. We are not gods after all, that we can have perfect understanding. Uncertainty is the human condition, which is why we need faith. But faith is also the companion to humility. We are not gods. We are human beings and we screw it up sometimes. We need to keep that in mind from time to time, to insure we don’t screw it up even more. But the fundamentalist is loath to admit their weaknesses other then to say by rote that they are sinners like everyone else…only forgiven. This they know for a fact. They are forgiven…and you are not. Certainty. But certainty collapses like a soap bubble at the slightest touch of reality. So reality becomes the enemy. So ‘truth’ becomes whatever keeps the bubble safe.
Faith is not certainty. Faith is trust, in the face of doubt. Sometimes, terrible doubt. Here is Fred Clark at his dazzling best, discussing the difference between the religious certitude of the authors of the Left Behind books, and faith…
The New Hope Village Church is being run by a post-rapture skeleton crew consisting of the apostate Rev. Bruce Barnes and get-back Loretta. Most of the following chapter consists of the long, sad saga of Barnes’ former sham-faith.
Before we dive into that extended monologue, a brief aside on the Rev. Barnes’ former vocation. He (re-)introduced himself to Rayford Steele as New Hope’s "visitation pastor," and repeatedly makes clear that his was a lesser, subordinate role to that of the senior pastor — the Rev. Vernon Billings. This is typical of the hierarchical structure among the staff at many nondenominational churches. This ranges from the senior pastor at the top (i.e., the pope) down through the various "associate" pastors, followed by "assistant" pastors — including visitation staff, like Bruce — on down to the youth pastor, who is just out of Bible College, wears jeans, and ranks somewhere just below the worship leader and just above the head usher.
"I was good at it," Bruce Barnes says of his role as visitation pastor.
This is not true. This cannot be true. All of Bruce Barnes’ extended testimony to Rayford and Chloe is premised on the idea that his getting left behind produced an epiphany of self-knowledge, but this newfound self-knowledge does not extend to the recognition that he cannot have been very comforting in his role as a half-assed poser of a visitation pastor.
Part of the problem here, I think, is that Tim LaHaye is, himself, was a senior pastor during his days at Scott Memorial Baptist Church in San Diego. I doubt he understands the nature of "visitation" ministry any better than Bruce Barnes does. Here’s how Barnes described that work:
"My job was to visit people in their homes and nursing homes and hospitals every day. I was good at it. I encouraged them, smiled at them, talked with them, prayed with them, even read Scripture to them."
Isn’t that nice? He smiled at them. But what Barnes/LaHaye don’t explain or seem to understand is why these people are stuck in nursing homes and hospitals. One gets the sense that an amiable visit from Barnes might have been welcomed by a parishioner who was, say, laid up for six weeks with a broken leg that would soon heal as good as new. But for a parishioner undergoing long-shot cancer treatments — adding the pain of chemotherapy to the already crippling pain of their disease in the hopes that maybe, maybe it would help them live long enough to see their youngest child graduate fifth grade — I can’t imagine that a visit from Guy Smiley would have been much help.
It’s not unusual for seminary students to experience a crisis of faith — and not every student’s faith survives this crisis. The common misperception is that this is due to all that book-larnin’ — that reading Bultmann or the latest from the Jesus Seminar is inherently dangerous to one’s faith. (Far safer to maintain a pose of anti-intellectual piety — which is, again, why many evangelicals prefer the safety of "Bible college" to the academic perils of seminary.) I suppose it’s theoretically possible that some suggestible seminarian might be overwhelmed by such exposure to liberal scholarship, but I’ve never met such a person. No, the real reason that seminary is a crucible for faith has nothing to do with intellectual study. It has to do with CPE.
CPE stands for "clinical pastoral education" — better known as the front lines. CPE has nothing to do with Vernon Billings’ job. It doesn’t involve preaching from a pulpit. It involves, rather, visitation — ministering to people in "nursing homes and hospitals."
Gordon Atkinson, the Real Live Preacher, refers to CPE as "Tear the Young Minister a New One" and describes how his own CPE experience led to a dark night of the soul:
… people facing death don’t give a fuck about your interpretation of II Timothy. Some take the “bloodied, but unbowed” road, but most dying people want to pray with the chaplain. And they don’t want weak-ass prayers either. They don’t want you to pray that God’s will be done. …
I threw myself into it. I prayed holding hands and cradling heads. I prayed with children and old men. I prayed with a man who lost his tongue to cancer. I lent him mine. I prayed my ass off. I had 50 variations of every prayer you could imagine, one hell of a repertoire.
I started noticing something. When the doctors said someone was going to die, they did. When they said 10 percent chance of survival, about 9 out of 10 died. The odds ran pretty much as predicted by the doctors. I mean, is this praying doing ANYTHING?
Compare that with Barnes’ facile summary of his role as a "visitation pastor." If Barnes ever met with someone who was dying, he doesn’t seem to have noticed. The RLP goes on to describe the final, fatal blow that CPE dealt to his young faith. Her name was Jenny:
Thirtysomething. Cute. New mother with two little kids. Breast cancer. Found it too late. Spread all over. Absolutely going to die.
Jenny had only one request. “I know I’m going to die, chaplain. I need time to finish this. It’s for my kids. Pray with me that God will give me the strength to finish it.”
She showed me the needlepoint pillow she was making for her children. It was an “alphabet blocks and apples” kind of thing. She knew she would not be there for them. Would not drop them off at kindergarten, would not see baseball games, would not help her daughter pick out her first bra. No weddings, no grandkids. Nothing.
She had this fantasy that her children would cherish this thing — sleep with it, snuggle it. Someday it might be lovingly put on display at her daughter’s wedding. Perhaps there would be a moment of silence. Some part of her would be there.
I was totally hooked. We prayed. We believed. Jesus, this was the kind of prayer you could believe in. We were like idiots and fools.
A couple of days later I went to see her only to find the room filled with doctors and nurses. She was having violent convulsions and terrible pain. I watched while she died hard. Real hard.
As the door shut, the last thing I saw was the unfinished needlepoint lying on the floor.
A faith that matters, a faith that is worth anything real, or anything at all, has to be able to account for Jenny’s story. Her story, after all, is everyone’s story — the details of time and place may differ somewhat, but not the ending. You and me, and everyone we know, we’re all going to die. Hard. A faith that cannot account for this must give way either to despair or denial.
The faith described in Left Behind cannot account for this. It’s all about denial. Proudly so. "Can you imagine," Irene Steele gushes, "Jesus coming back to get us before we die?"
Can you imagine a visitation pastor bringing such a message to hospitals and nursing homes and people like Jenny?
This is what is missing from the megamall cathedrals of the heartland. They have plenty of religion, but no faith. Because faith takes a degree of courage. They are in love with the bible, for its physicality. It can give them any answer they want to hear. But it takes a bit of nerve to look God in the face, and ask a question. Because you might get an answer. Why no Pope Urban…actually the earth isn’t at the center of the universe…and oh, by the way…neither are you…
This is why they hate gay folk. Because we are people of faith. I’m not talking about religious faith particularly. But…faith. It’s why the sincere prayers of a gay pastor had to be stricken from the record in Oklahoma. Not because he was a gay man, not because his church practiced heresy, but because he kept his faith despite the multitude of pulpits thundering at him their certainty that he was an abomination in the eyes of god. And so they hate us all…not because we are homosexuals, but because no matter how many times the likes of Sally Kern say we are a bigger danger to America then terrorists, no matter how many times they spit in our faces in the halls of government, or on TV, no matter how many anti-gay amendments they pass, no matter how many anti-gay conferences they organize, no matter how many millions of anti-gay pamphlets they print and wave in our faces, and in our neighbors faces, we still rise every morning, and go on about our lives, hoping for a better world then the gutter they live in, and want us to live in too…working for it in whatever small way we can, with whatever small things we have within us to give to it, despite the horrific torrent of hatred that surrounds us…knowing, somehow, deep down in our hearts, that the better world is out there somewhere.
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