This month’s column is a tale of two rats. One rat got lots of attention from its mother when it was young; she licked its fur many times a day. The other rat had a different experience. Its mother hardly licked its fur at all. The two rats grew up and turned out to be very different. The neglected rat was easily startled by noises. It was reluctant to explore new places. When it experienced stress, it churned out lots of hormones. Meanwhile, the rat that had gotten more attention from its mother was not so easily startled, was more curious, and did not suffer surges of stress hormones.
The same basic tale has repeated itself hundreds of times in a number of labs. The experiences rats had when they were young altered their behavior as adults. We all intuit that this holds true for people, too, if you replace fur-licking with school, television, family troubles, and all the other experiences that children have. But there’s a major puzzle lurking underneath this seemingly obvious fact of life. Our brains develop according to a recipe encoded in our genes. Each of our brain cells contains the same set of genes we were born with and uses those genes to build proteins and other molecules throughout its life. The sequence of DNA in those genes is pretty much fixed. For experiences to produce long-term changes in how we behave, they must be somehow able to reach into our brains and alter how those genes work.
Neuroscientists are now mapping that mechanism…
This is interesting on a number of accounts. Firstly, as a gay man, it concerns me how the question of nature verses nurture is dealt with, as it has been a trip point in the culture war for decades now. And as it seems to be turning out more and more, it’s a combination of both. The story here is that genes may say one thing, but the effects of the environment, the physical environment, you grow up in, can overrule them all the same…
Two families of molecules perform that kind of genetic regulation. One family consists of methyl groups, molecular caps made of carbon and hydrogen. A string of methyl groups attached to a gene can prevent a cell from reading its DNA sequence. As a result, the cell can’t produce proteins or other molecules from that particular gene. The other family is made up of coiling proteins, molecules that wrap DNA into spools. By tightening the spools, these proteins can hide certain genes; by relaxing the spools, they can allow genes to become active.
How this plays out in terms of one’s sexual orientation fascinated me less then this…
…the influence of environment doesn’t end with childhood. Recent work indicates that adult experiences can also rearrange epigenetic marks in the brain and thereby change our behavior. Depression, for example, may be in many ways an epigenetic disease. Several groups of scientists have mimicked human depression in mice by pitting the animals against each other. If a mouse loses a series of fights against dominant rivals, its personality shifts. It shies away from contact with other mice and moves around less. When the mice are given access to a machine that lets them administer cocaine to themselves, the defeated mice take more of it.
Something, probably my body’s low tolerance to intoxicants, has kept me thankfully clear of addiction. But I know its temptations. There are days when I think if I could only drug myself out my my misery, life would be so much better. But my body simply won’t let me do that. I have no escape. Well…I have one. But it’s one I’ve not reached for. So far.
I have the job of my dreams. A house of my own I never in my wildest dreams ever thought I’d have. My dream come true car. And I am miserable. Single, lonely and miserable. If you don’t have love, nothing else matters. You can be rich. You can be living in the lap of luxury, and if you have no one, you have nothing and you know it. You will always know it. And at some level I have always known my brain was stacked against me in that struggle.
I was brutalized in grade school. It was only by shear luck that I lived in a tiny neighborhood that was diverted to this little expansion high school in a well to do neighborhood and away from my tormentors that allowed me to have at least a good final three years of grade school. Woodward was paradise compared to my Jr. High School years and my elementary school years were only slightly less brutal. When I wasn’t getting beaten up by the other kids, I was getting emotionally battered by the teachers, nearly all of whom dumped me in the problem child category, simply because mom was a single divorced mother. The few in those days who actually took an interest in me and gave me a chance to learn have always had my eternal gratitude.
Woodward, I have said time and again, was paradise…absolutely the best years of my school life. But even paradise could not undo the damage. It wasn’t until my senior year that I finally started peeking out of the shell my tormentors had locked me into. And by then it was, really, too late to start figuring out that dating and mating thing. And besides, I was a gay kid, and it was 1971.
And I’m 57 now, and still single, and if anything surprises me it’s that I’m still alive. I really shouldn’t be. I honestly don’t know why I am still alive. It’s your own fault Bruce. We had to do it to you. You were so weird we had to. It’s your own fault Bruce. You need to get out more. Friends don’t help friends find a lover, they rub it in that it’s their own fault. People who look like that, want people who look like that. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Why am I still here?
It was posted at Suicide.org, and it’s from a gay teen, aged 16, named Steven, who attempted suicide. He survived.
It’s brutal, and I would rather no gay kid reads it. Seriously, if you’re a gay teen go look at some of the videos over at Dan Savage’s It Gets Better Project. Because it Does get better. You don’t need to be dealing with what I’m about to post here. You have resources. The Trevor Hotline is a 24-hour toll-free suicide prevention line for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, and questioning youth. Call them at 1-866-4-U-Trevor (866-488-7386). But seriously…go see It Gets Better. And…I love you. Hang in there. There are adventures waiting for you live them. There are people waiting in your future for you to come into their lives and make them smile and feel like they will always be loved and never be lonely again. Your dreams are waiting for you. Walk proudly into them.
After decades of demonizing gay people and blasting devotion of same-sex couples as fraudulent, Maggie Gallagher suddenly surprises everyone by announcing she thinks she has a heart…
“The suicide of that teen was not only a tragedy it was a crime. The young people who violated laws out of mindless desire to bully or embarrass or whatever the heck kids do this stuff will be prosecuted and probably jailed, I hope. Nothing in the press accounts suggest the kids who did this were motivated by homophobia, and the cruelty of cyberbullying is causing teen suicides among those who are not gay, as well. I do not think the absence of gay marriage is the cause of these tragedies or its presence will resolve them. We can make this a symbol of all our other fights, or we can try to save all our kids, gay and straight, from this kind of ugly and mindless cruelty. My heart goes out to the family of the young man. God bless him and them.” – Maggie Gallagher, commenting on NOM’s blog.
“A group of San Francisco first-graders took an unusual field trip to City Hall on Friday to toss rose petals on their just-married lesbian teacher – putting the public school children at the center of a fierce election battle over the fate of same-sex marriage,” the front page story by Jill Tucker begins.
In fact, the parents who decided to surprise the beloved schoolteacher didn’t put the children “at the center of a fierce election battle” – the Chronicle did for sensationalism.
According to blogger Paul Hogarth in his Oct. 24 dissection of the piece for Beyond Chron and Daily Kos (“SF Chronicle Jeopardizes Marriage Equality”), Tucker said that “the parents who organized the trip actively sought media coverage—and the paper decided on its own that it was ‘news’ enough to deserve front-page treatment.”
Since lesbian weddings were legal then, one can image that the parents might have expected any coverage to go in the back with the other wedding announcements. On Oct. 26 two aggrieved parents sent a letter to the Yes on 8 campaign and the Chronicle complaining about their children “being exploited and used as pawns” by the Yes campaign which downloaded the front page picture from the Chronicle’s website to use in their ads.
Sapphocrat, who blogs at LavenderLiberal, complained vociferously about the Chronicle’s failure to put the field trip into the larger context of the Creative Arts Charter School’s philosophy.
But the damage was done. In an in-depth interview with me after Prop 8 passed, campaign consultant Steve Smith said they were winning back the critical undecided women’s vote until the Yes ad featuring the Chronicle story on the lesbian teacher.
That post by Karen Ocamb centers on the roll of the San Francisco Chronicle in instigating the successful Yes On 8 attack ads which used that teacher’s wedding as a hook for their The Homos Are Invading Your Schools To Turn Your Kids Gay message. But lurking in the background of her story is this simple, brutal fact: Maggie Gallagher and her fellow travelers in the Proposition 8 battle used the love those kids had for their teacher as a knife to cut their teacher’s ring finger off.
But she wants to save kids from mindless cruelty. Right. And Osama Bin Laden wants to save them from terrorist attacks.
More cartoons on The Cartoon Page…and many more in the archives I’ve been neglecting to update for so long…
The English Had London, The French Had Paris, And The Germans Had…Er…Lots of Castles…
Germania: In Wayward Pursuit of Germans and their History
by Simon Winder
I have this in my iPad book library and the biggest thing it’s taught me so far is how absolutely pathetic my grade school history lessons were. The history of Europe in the middle ages I was taught, was exclusively that of England, and not really very much of that. We didn’t get to the rest of Europe until the Renaissance and even that didn’t cover much of Europe. I knew nothing of this thing called The Holy Roman Empire (which actually bore very little relationship to the Roman Empire of the Cesars) until I started reading this book.
I’m finding that individuals engaged in a personal exploration of their world tell a Much more satisfying tale of history then academics, although their accounts need to be paid attention to as well. That “street level view” of history often provides you with so many little telling details the high level view does not. Case in point being Sebastian Haffner’s Defying Hitler, which just completely floored me as to how little I really knew about that period of time, despite having World War II history drummed into me throughout my childhood in school and on TV, in comic books and the movies.
In this case, Winder, an Englishman who became fascinated by Germany for somewhat different reasons then I did (I, after I reconnected with my first high school crush who is German, Winder after his father took his family to the Continent one vacation and he had his eyes opened to a whole ‘nother world), tells us about the history he meticulously, even obsessively uncovered for himself. And we sense that history in his retelling of it as one interesting or puzzling or amazing discovery after another after another after another. Text books so often, and tragically, kill that sense of learning something new as an adventure.
His book engages you. But also, and this is what makes a personal reading of history so worthwhile, you see how digging up the history of another land and its people brings him some insights on the history of his own native land for him. So here in this book I am getting insights into both German and British people and their histories and their relationship past and present to each other. A different teller would tell it a tad differently, but still authentically, and that would give you, the reader, a few more telling details that the high level histories would have overlooked, because that is not where they go.
I’m glad I stumbled on this book. Yes, sometimes Winder tries a little too hard to be humorous and it comes off just flippant. But better that then dry and boring. And he’s completely wrong about German food. At least what makes it across the ocean here is just wonderful. But I suppose that’s true of all local eats. The lousy stuff tends to get left back home.
And…gosh…I can’t believe I went through a pretty decent U.S. public school education and walked out still being so ignorant of so much history.
NASA is looking hard at a way to blast spacecraft horizontally down an electrified track or gas-powered sled and into space hitting speeds of about Mach 10. The craft would then return and land on a runway by the launch site.
The rail launcher, known Advanced Space Launch System is one of a few new launch systems a team of engineers from Kennedy Space Center and several other NASA centers are looking at that would use existing cutting-edge technologies to offer the space agency a next generation launcher to the stars, NASA stated.
Ah… Just like us space cadet kids always knew it would be…
Atrios wonders about something I’ve been shaking my head at since chain store and restaurant shopping took over America…
I certainly don’t claim to have my finger on the pulse of the American consumer, but recession issues aside I’m puzzled by the apparent belief by developers and retail experts that when people travel to tourist locations what they really want to do, most of all, is visit the same shops that they can visit in any high end mall all over the country. Maybe they’re right. What do I know?
They’re right, but here’s what you know: if all you want from travel is what you already have at home, then all you’re doing is spending money, running out the clock on your life, and getting nothing at all out of it.
Back in 2002 in a post of travel notes I wrote, “You didn’t come all this way for another Big Mac.” Apparently a lot of people do however. They’re not just wasting their vacations, they’re wasting their lives. Several years ago some friends of mine took me on my first ever trip outside the country, to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, and I will be forever grateful that they decided on staying in the old part of town and not the newer touristy one. Swear to god on the way into town from the airport I saw a Chili’s and my jaw dropped a little. What the hell does Mexico want with one of those??? But of course, it was the Yankee tourists who wanted it there. We ate at the Chili’s in Puerto Vallarta…it felt So Authentic!
Whatever…
Puerto Vallarta was Beautiful…
Just Beautiful…
Very Beautiful…
Er…yes…
Just imagine all the fun I could have had, shopping at all the same stores I can shop in at home, and eating out in all the same restaurants I can eat at in the Towson Town Mall.
There should be an international convention that bars chain restaurants and stores from crossing boarders. I would be in favor of a constitutional amendment banning them from crossing state lines too.
At The Daily Dish, Conor Friedersdorf links to an Atlantic article about World War II…The Real War…
WHAT WAS IT ABOUT THE SECOND WORLD War that moved the troops to constant verbal subversion and contempt? What was it that made the Americans, especially, so fertile with insult and cynicism, calling women Marines BAMS (broad-assed Marines) and devising SNAFU, with its offspring TARFU (“Things are really fucked up”), FUBAR (“Fucked up beyond all recognition”), and the perhaps less satisfying FUBB (“Fucked up beyond belief”)? It was not just the danger and fear, the boredom and uncertainty and loneliness and deprivation. It was the conviction that optimistic publicity and euphemism had rendered their experience so falsely that it would never be readily communicable. They knew that in its representation to the laity, what was happening to them was systematically sanitized and Norman Rockwellized, not to mention Disneyfied.
Neither man, Disney or Rockwell, was, of course, a journalist. Nor did either one make any such claim to be one. They were artists. I tire Very easily now, of the use of Rockwell and Disney’s names as synonymous with Phony. These men were many things but phony was not one of them. Neither one ever put anything before the public, I am absolutely certain, that they themselves did not believe. Art, said Picasso, is a lie that makes us see the truth. All artists are liars in one sense, but in that other sense, that soul speaking to soul sense, relentlessly truthful. Both men spoke to us from their hearts, honestly and sincerely, and you can argue that life isn’t like that if you wish, but my reply to that is Yes, you’re right, it isn’t, but it ought to be.
It’s a different matter though with journalism. Journalists need to tell the public the facts, or else we simply cannot function as a democracy. And that is especially true in times of war.
That war, morally justified as it was, was also very heavily sanitized on the home front. With the last of its soldiers passing away now, we are only beginning to see how nightmarishly savage it was. The bloody slaughter of the American Civil War it seems, was merely prelude to the 20th century…
You would expect frontline soldiers to be struck and hurt by bullets and shell fragments, but such is the popular insulation from the facts that you would not expect them to be hurt, sometimes killed, by being struck by parts of their friends’ bodies violently detached. If you asked a wounded soldier or Marine what hit him, you’d hardly be ready for the answer “My buddy’s head,” or his sergeant’s heel or his hand, or a Japanese leg, complete with shoe and puttees, or the West Point ring on his captain’s severed hand. What drove the troops to fury was the complacent, unimaginative innocence of their home fronts and rear echelons about such an experience…
After one artillery exchange, two soldiers, Neil McCallum and his friend “S.” came upon the body of a man after a shell had landed at his feet…
“Good God,” said S., shocked, “here’s one of his fingers.” S. stubbed with his toe at the ground some feet from the corpse. There is more horror in a severed digit than in a man dying: it savors of mutilation. “Christ,” went on S. in a very low voice, “look, it’s not his finger.”
I got part way though the Atlantic article, when this passage struck me…
In the great war Wilfred Owen was driven very near to madness by having to remain for some time next to the scattered body pieces of one of his friends. He had numerous counterparts in the Second World War. At the botched assault on Tarawa Atoll, one coxswain at the helm of a landing vessel went quite mad, perhaps at the shock of steering through all the severed heads and limbs near the shore. One Marine battalion commander, badly wounded, climbed above the rising tide onto a pile of American bodies. Next afternoon he was found there, mad.
There’s a reason my generation are called the baby boomers. We are the generation born to the ones who fought that war, came home, and all at once returned to what would have been normal lives were it not for the war…which for heterosexuals (and homosexuals, because the closet was not an option but a necessary means of survival in those days…) meant getting married and having kids. All at once. It was literally a baby boom. Housing was scarce for the new families for years. Suburban Levittowns sprang up all over America. Schools had to be built, many schools, many, Many schools, to handle the load…only to later be decommissioned as my old high school eventually was, after the last of the boom had graduated. We are a massive bulge in the population, and that is because there was a war. A very big, catastrophic, savage and bloody war…that changed so much…so very very much…
Mom told me often about the sailor she dated during WWII. When she got started, I could see that look of remembrance of first love in her eyes, hear it in her voice, still, so many years later. So many little things about him she remembered vividly. So many stories about the times they had together…about waiting patiently for his letters from overseas during the war…about how her father disliked Jews, but came to see them as fellow neighbors in life by coming to know the Jewish man she loved. She loved him, probably to her dying day.
When I asked her once why she married Dad instead, she said her sailor was on a ship that was ordered into Nagasaki harbor after the war ended, and that his ship became trapped in the harbor briefly due to all the bodies floating in it. She said the sight of it had driven him mad.
…and all these years I wondered, never doubting that he’d gone mad as mom had said, if that bodies trapping a big U.S. navy ship part of the story could possibly be true. Really? Perhaps he’d seen lots of bodies certainly…but so many they trapped a huge Navy ship? Madness if it will strike, strikes young men around the age he was, so perhaps it would have happened to him anyway.
Or…not…
At the botched assault on Tarawa Atoll, one coxswain at the helm of a landing vessel went quite mad, perhaps at the shock of steering through all the severed heads and limbs near the shore…
It wasn’t an a-bomb that did that either. So just imagine the aftermath of the first plutonium bomb, small as they say that one was, compared to what nuclear weapons can do nowadays. Reading this Atlantic article I see now it probably was exactly as mom had said. So her sailor boyfriend became lost in madness. So some years later on the pier at Avalon she met my dad and they married. So now here I am, writing this.
So many people died in that war…many from the two atomic bomb blasts alone. Every year they toll the bells in Hiroshima and Nagasaki for the a-bomb dead. And every year it’s been in the back of my thoughts always to wonder if I was born because of one of those atomic bombs. But that war violently changed a great many lives, and I am certainly not the only war baby ever born, who but for war would not be.
I think if partners want to have the opportunity to live together, I don’t have a problem with that…
Trois…
And I think that’s where most of America is.
Quatre…
So I think that you know, you have to speak from the heart about these issues.
Cinq…
They are very personal.
Six…
They have a significant impact on an awful lot of people…
Sept…
…and the less the government is telling people what to do, the better off we’re all going to be.
Huit…
….partners living together, I don’t have a problem with.
Neuf…
Question: Now that you’re trying to occupy the political center, are you still in favor of a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage? Governor Crist: I feel the same way, yes, because I feel that marriage is a sacred institution, if you will.
Ken Mehlman, former republican party chair, is out and proud. Well…out anyway…
Ex-GOP national chairman Ken Mehlman says he’s gay
Mehlman, manager of the 2004 Bush/Cheney re-election campaign, came out to Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic. “It’s taken me 43 years to get comfortable with this part of my life,” Mehlman said in the interview. “Everybody has their own path to travel, their own journey and for me over the past few months, I’ve told my family, friends, former colleagues and current colleagues and they’ve been wonderful and supportive.”
The article goes on to say Mehlman wants to work for same-sex marriage. That would be helpful. Mehlman worked for years to get anti-gay bigots elected. He ran the reelection campaign of Bush The Junior, waving the gay scarecrow at voters despite the fact that he himself was one…
But he was, and probably still is, a party loyalist, and as Garrison Keillor said after Norm Coleman won in the almost-as-ugly 2002 election (which also saw Max Cleland, a triple-amputee Vietnam veteran loose to slimeball Saxby Chambliss), they are Republicans first and Americans second. If the party tells you it wants to put a knife in your back, you offer to do it yourself as a show of loyalty.
“Some Republicans gave up on winning the African-American vote, looking the other way or trying to benefit politically from racial polarization,” Mehlman said at the annual convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. “I am here today as the Republican chairman to tell you we were wrong.”
This was happening back when some pundits were thinking republicans could peel some of the black vote away from the democratic party on social (read: anti-gay) issues, which makes Mehlman’s offering this apology more then a little grotesque. But if all you’re noticing about this is its tang of political opportunism, you’re missing that he’s offering this apology for deliberately polarizing the nation to win elections, just a year after they’d waged the most homophobic campaign in American history. Here’s a cartoon I did at the time…
That was the summer I stood in a protest line outside an ex-gay ministry in Memphis Tennessee, where a gay teen had been committed against his will by his own parents. There I heard the stories of other gay kids and young adults either forced into ex-gay therapy or on their own because they were terrified of being homosexual, in a climate of anti-gay fear, loathing and hate ginned up over the years by among others, Ken Mehlman. He had an election to win you see, and never mind the damage done to this country in the process. Neighbor had to hate neighbor. Parents had to loath their own flesh and blood, children had to see that loathing in the faces of their own fathers and mothers, and remember having seen it for the rest of their lives, so George Bush could be president. To the party loyalist the ends justify the means. You must be willing to destroy some families, to win an election on Family Values.
I’m glad Mehlman is finally at some sort of inner peace with the person he is. For one thing, people who are disgusted with their sexual nature, gay or straight, tend to take that disgust out on others. But no one, not even Republican’s first and Americans second, should feel forced to live their lives in the closet. But it isn’t unreasonable to expect those republicans to work a little harder now to make this an America where nobody else has to either. There’s a lot of damage out there, with their names on it.
Images From A Sideshow Running Away With The Circus…(continued)
Here’s some shots of the counter-demonstrators…
As I said previously, the main contingent of the counter-demonstrators came in two waves shortly after the NOM rally began. But even as NOM was setting up there were a handful of individuals there on the sidewalk near them, quietly speaking their truths. And among these was Mel White and his companions from Soulforce. I saw Mel occasionally walk over to some of the NOM folks and chat with them for a while. What was said between them I have no idea: much as I would have like to have snapped some photos of those conversations, I kept my distance. At 56 going on 57, I have a very negative opinion of the possibility of changing minds, let alone hearts of any of these True Believers. But I deeply respect anyone who still believes in their heart that it can be done. So I stay out of it. This is why I am not a professional news photographer. The spirit of Weegee laughs at my deference to the better angels.
More and more I am seeing at these demonstrations, young heterosexual couples who see this struggle as their own too. And it is. Only on its face is this a fight about homosexuality. Look closer. It’s a fight over the right to love and be loved, waged by the power hungry war mongering human gutter, that throughout history has viewed the power of love as the essential enemy to be smashed wherever it exists. The gay rights struggle is the lover’s struggle.
There were also lots of individual folks bearing simple statements in support of the right to love. Sometimes you thought you saw another lonely heart, determined to stand up for what in their own lives is yet to be…
As I said, the main force of counter-demonstrators came in two waves. The first was peaceful and positive. The second wave were a tad angrier. And…louder. They were quickly asked/ordered to move further down the plaza, away from the NOM event.
I understand this anger perfectly well. And I am not going to sit here and pontificate that this sort of demonstration is counter-productive. The other side turns us into scarecrows they can safely fear at a distance, and defeat with bar stool valor and junk food religion. They need to see that we are as human as they; and there is nothing less surprising on this earth then the sight of humans who have been attacked getting angry, and fighting back. When people are denied the dream of love, when that ability to love another, and accept their love in return is gutted out of them, what is left?
I have have said often, that the one who fights this fight and doesn’t put their head down on the pillow every night, just a little bit angrier then the night before, just a little more angry then they thought it was humanly possible to be angry, isn’t really paying attention. But it is oh-so easy for anger to become hate. And hate will kill your soul.
This is the lover’s struggle. When all you have left in it is anger, you are done for. It is for love that we fight. Every moment you can put anger aside and remember that, you defeat hate.
Images From A Sideshow Running Away With The Circus…
Here’s some of the shots I took at the NOM rally in front of the Capital yesterday…
They held the rally in front of the Capital south wing, which is right across from the Supreme Court building, but you really couldn’t see the court all that clearly for all the trees. The rally was mostly tucked away in one corner of the grassy park there in front of the south wing. This is what the crowd looked like, just a few moments literally, before Bishop Coles brought his cavalry in. It was almost exclusively white, and very nearly half media and NOM organizers.
Brian Brown getting a tad heated in front of a media lady just before the rally started. I don’t know what she may have asked him but he’d been really nice and polite to the media there, even the gay media, before this.
A couple NOM supporters brought their kids along. Most of the early arrivals were older folks. You didn’t start seeing many young people there until Bishop Coles’ cavalry came along.
That LET THE PEOPLE VOTE chant was an early hit with the crowd. Here they are while Brian Brown gives it a few turns.
Sometime into Bishop Coles’ speech a larger group of counter protesters arrived. (There had already been a few individual counter protesters there, including Mel White and Soulforce companions, as NOM was setting up.) The first wave of them just made themselves quietly known with signs around the perimeter of the event. NOM tried to have them removed, but the Capital Police told them basically that as long as they were quiet and didn’t interfere with the event they had a right to be where they were.
Some gay folk wandered around the NOM crowd during the event. I don’t know if this couple were with the larger group of counter protesters or not. The man’s t-shirt reads: Together 14 years, Married 1 year, 2nd class citizens every day.
Walter Fauntroy, with some other clergyman whose name I thankfully don’t know, waiting to speak. The white clergyman was there when NOM was setting up so I assume he was one of their local organizers. And unlike Bishops Jackson and Coles, he actually paid attention to all the other clergymen as they spoke. He didn’t talk much with the crowd though. Coles worked the crowd a little bit. Jackson was working the media.
Bishop Coles right after his speech, walked off the sump and whipped up the crowd with that LET THE PEOPLE VOTE chant. Black people were denied voting rights in this country for generations after then end of slavery. But those same rights were not won back by the ballot, but in the courts. The lesson that the courts have an important role to play in protecting the rights of all Americans, and that the basic human rights of minorities are not a popularity contest, seems to have escaped a lot of folks there. Prejudice does that to a person. Oh…YOUR rights don’t count…
Gays Have Made Significant Contributions To Society And The End Of Civilization
Le Dance Pathetique…as choreographed by Larry Klayman at World Net Daily…
Un…
I am not a homophobe.
Deux…
gay and lesbian people have made significant contributions to our society…
Trois…
…and should be respected as fellow citizens and children of God.
Quatre…
…but I also believe firmly in my heart, as do the majority of Americans, that they should not have any role in raising children.
Cinq…
Nor do I believe that they should be married.
Six…
…what they do among themselves in the privacy of their homes is also their business.
Sept…
But when a society loses its ethical and moral underpinnings and renounces traditional Judeo-Christian or, for that matter, common-sense universal values, it is the beginning of the end of that culture and its civilization.
Oh look…a message from the Social Security Administration asking me to review my annual statement which they have helpfully enclosed as a ZIP attachment. Three messages actually. Addressed to three different mail accounts of mine. One comes from…
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netname: DIGCOMM-PPPOE
descr: PPPoE Pool
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country: RU
admin-c: SDV452-RIPE
tech-c: SDV452-RIPE
status: ASSIGNED PA
mnt-by: MNT-DIGCOMM
source: RIPE # Filtered
person: Denis Shatskikh
address: per. Kupyansky 7, Voronezh, Russia
mnt-by: MNT-DIGCOMM
phone: +7-473-265-4114
nic-hdl: SDV452-RIPE
source: RIPE # Filtered
% Information related to '212.232.0.0/20AS13178'
route: 212.232.0.0/20
descr: Digital communications, LTD
origin: AS13178
mnt-by: MNT-DIGCOMM
source: RIPE # Filtered
One from rcdelectric.com and one from…
inetnum: 114.108.192.0 - 114.108.255.255
netname: SKYBB8-PH
descr: SkyBroadband
country: PH
admin-c: VMDB1-AP
tech-c: VMDB1-AP
status: ALLOCATED PORTABLE
remarks: Used for broadband
mnt-by: APNIC-HM
mnt-lower: MAINT-SKYBB8-PH
mnt-routes: MAINT-SKYBB8-PH
remarks: -+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-++-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
remarks: This object can only be updated by APNIC hostmasters.
remarks: To update this object, please contact APNIC
remarks: hostmasters and include your organisation's account
remarks: name in the subject line.
remarks: -+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-++-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
changed: hm-changed@apnic.net 20080521
changed: hm-changed@apnic.net 20100507
source: APNIC
route: 114.108.200.0/22
descr: SKYBroadband-Resi
origin: AS23944
mnt-by: MAINT-PH-SKYBB8
changed: cmgalicia@skycable.com 20080718
source: APNIC
route: 114.108.192.0/18
descr: SKYBroadband
origin: AS23944
mnt-by: MAINT-PH-SKYBB8
changed: cmgalicia@skycable.com 20100226
source: APNIC
role: Vanessa Maria Dolores Bueno
address: 409 P.Guevarra Street cor Ibanez San Juan City
country: PH
phone: +63-2-6369276
e-mail: vcbueno@skycable.com
admin-c: VMDB1-AP
tech-c: VMDB1-AP
nic-hdl: VMDB1-AP
mnt-by: MAINT-SKYBB8-PH
changed: hm-changed@apnic.net 20080521
source: APNIC
changed: hm-changed@apnic.net 20080521
I had no idea the Social Security Administration used the services of so many different companies to stay in touch with its account holders. The enclosed ZIPs didn’t set off my anti-virus software either. No I didn’t open them.
Also, a notice from DHL about the package I must have forgotten that I ordered…
The courier company was not able deliver your parcel by your address.
You may pickup the parcel at our post office personality,
The shipping label is attached to this e-mail.
Please print this label to get this package at our post office.
This one comes from the DHL offices at…
inetnum: 95.84.32.0 - 95.84.63.255
netname: SAN
descr: Network of Saratov branch of OJSC "Volgatelecom"
country: RU
admin-c: AVB35-RIPE
tech-c: AVB35-RIPE
status: ASSIGNED PA
mnt-by: MNT-SAN
source: RIPE # Filtered
person: Alexey V Bogdanov
address: JSC "VolgaTelecom", Saratov Branch Office
address: Mirny pereulok 11/13 410000 Saratov Russia
e-mail: avb@san.ru
phone: +7 8452 757575
nic-hdl: AVB35-RIPE
source: RIPE # Filtered
% Information related to '95.84.0.0/18AS39229'
route: 95.84.0.0/18
descr: SAN route object
origin: AS39229
mnt-by: mnt-san
source: RIPE # Filtered
Another ZIP attachment that didn’t set off my anti-virus. Also…I got an email greeting card! From my dearest anonymous friend at…
inetnum: 117.192.0.0 - 117.255.255.255
netname: BSNLNET
descr: NIB (National Internet Backbone)
descr: Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited
descr: 8th Floor,148-B,Statesman House, Barakhamba Road, descr: New Delhi-110001
country: IN
admin-c: NC83-AP
tech-c: CDN1-AP
remarks: IP Addresses for Multiplay network
remarks: -+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-++-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
remarks: This object can only be updated by APNIC hostmasters.
remarks: To update this object, please contact APNIC
remarks: hostmasters and include your organisation's account
remarks: name in the subject line.
remarks: -+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-++-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
changed: hm-changed@apnic.net 20070801
mnt-by: APNIC-HM
mnt-lower: MAINT-IN-DOT
status: ALLOCATED PORTABLE
source: APNIC
role: NS Cell
address: Internet Cell
address: Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited
address: 8th Floor,148-B Statesman House
address: Barakhamba Road, New Delhi - 110 001
country: IN
phone: +91-11-23734057
phone: +91-11-23710183
fax-no: +91-11-23734052
e-mail: hostmaster@sancharnet.in
e-mail: abuse@bsnl.in
admin-c: CGMD1-AP
tech-c: DT197-AP
nic-hdl: NC83-AP
mnt-by: MAINT-IN-DOT
changed: dnwplg@sancharnet.in 20030120
changed: hm-changed@apnic.net 20071227
source: APNIC
role: CGM Data Networks
address: CTS Compound
address: Netaji Nagar
address: New Delhi- 110 023
country: IN
phone: +91-11-24106782
phone: +91-11-24102119
fax-no: +91-11-26116783
fax-no: +91-11-26887888
e-mail: dnwplg@sancharnet.in
e-mail: hostmaster@sancharnet.in
admin-c: CGMD1-AP
tech-c: DT197-AP
tech-c: BH155-AP
nic-hdl: CDN1-AP
mnt-by: MAINT-IN-DOT
changed: dnwplg@sancharnet.in 20030120
changed: hm-changed@apnic.net 20071227
source: APNIC
This one did set off the anti-virus. Project managers take note: this is what happens when you outsource your software development projects to India. Outsource to the Russians instead, they’re Much Better. And you can trust them now that they’re not communists anymore!
Another Reason To Keep Processed Foods Out Of Your Kitchen
I’m beginning to regret my decision to buy a small chest freezer for Casa del Garrett last year. First it was my nephew, who went from a small, husky kind of kid into a lean and really handsome young man, simply by relentlessly cutting out all the processed food products from his diet.
He didn’t go vegetarian, but every bit of meat he eats nowadays he buys as cuts from the meat department, not as a frozen ready-made entree, and he cooks it up himself. Same with all his veggies…no frozen entrees, no canned or packaged this or that. Nothing ready-made in his diet. Nothing. Everything he eats starts with the basic ingredients and he cleans, cuts and cooks it all himself. And it made a big, no, an Amazing difference in his body mass and energy levels.
I’ve tried to learn from his example, but old habits die hard. I still, for instance, feed from the bags of ready made french fries I keep in my chest freezer. But since I went to visit my brother last year, and saw with my own eyes what my nephew’s no-processed-foods diet has done for him, I’ve stopped buying TV dinners and other frozen entrees. That’s huge for me. I am old enough to remember when TV dinners came in aluminum trays, and they’ve been an absolute staple of my diet for decades. No more.
Just last night I discovered another reason to keep crap like that out of the kitchen: you never know who’s making what you’re eating…
HOLLAND, Mich. – A community group that is trying to make Holland more accepting of gay people planned to meet Wednesday, July 28, to decide how to respond to a full-page advertisement in the local daily newspaper that one of its leaders said included “blatant untruths” about gay people.
The ad, which was sponsored by the Family Research Council and Request Foods and published July 23 in The Holland Sentinel, made reference to efforts toward broadening the city’s anti-discrimination ordinance to include sexual orientation and gender identity. The Holland City Council has referred the measure to its Human Resources Commission for review.
The ad stated that “pro-homosexual activists” were trying to give Holland gays and lesbians “special protections” under employment discrimination laws and called homosexuality a choice that is “harmful to individuals and to society.”
The ad contained the usual FRC lies about gay people. Alex McEwen over at Huffington Post details some of it…
To recap, The Top Ten Myths About Homosexuality is a fraudulent piece of work with many problems in regards to veracity including:
1. Ten Mythsrepeats the lie that the Robert Spitzer study proves that homosexuality is changeable, excluding the fact that Spitzer has said on more than one occasion that his research was being distorted.
2. Ten Myths utilizes the work of the organization National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH). The website Truth Wins Out calls NARTH a discredited “ex-gay” fringe organization that peddles fraudulent “cures” for homosexuality.
3. Most importantly, Ten Myths intentionally distorts information to make it seem that negative behaviors, i.e. drug and alcohol abuse, are indicative of the LGBT orientation. The pamphlet accomplishes this by citing data in regards to the LGBT community and such negative behaviors while omitting the fact that much of the data places the blame on homophobia for these negative behaviors.
I’ll only note in passing the FRC ad says on the one hand “homosexuals experience considerably higher levels of mental illness and substance abuse then heterosexuals. A detailed review of the research has shown that “no other group of comparable size in society experiences such intense and widespread pathology.” And yet… “Research shows that homosexuals actually have significantly higher levels of educational attainment then the general public, while the findings on homosexual income are mixed.” You have no idea how hard it is to be a pathological drug addicted substance abusing ivy leaguer and still manage all that hedge fund money. I just don’t know how I do it.
But note their sponsor. Request Foods is one of those zillions of faceless little sub-contractors to the big food companies, whose products could be anywhere in the food chain and you, the consumer won’t necessarily know it because they keep their client lists a Very Big secret.
What is known so far, is that Campbells Soup is one of their biggest customers. But if you’re thinking that Request’s CEO Jack DeWitt is just a wee bit misinformed about his gay neighbors, some basically decent fellow who just happened to witlessly buy into FRC’s steaming anti-gay crock-o-bigot-shit, let me show you the product Jack is proud to call his very own: Mary Ellen’s Blessings at Home Frozen Entrees…
The frozen entree that comes with a little family blessing “table talk” card that families “can use to start discussions during mealtime.” Sweet!
The Mary Ellen’s brand and family of products are the brainchild of Request Foods President, Jack DeWitt and his wife Mary (Mary Ellen DeWitt). “Mary always wanted our family to be together at dinner time. It’s where many of life’s lessons are learned. We would share our feelings and make time for one another, even on the busiest days. People are so busy today, taking kids to soccer practice and band concerts. Dinner ought to be a time when everyone can sit and talk and enjoy a healthy meal together,” explains Mr. DeWitt.
The “table talk” cards were developed by Dan Seaborn’s ministry Winning at Home, whose primary focus is to provide every family the joy of “winning at home.” Seaborn is an international speaker, author, radio commentator and pastor. “With all the studies affirming the importance of family development, Request Foods, with its introduction and expansion of Mary Ellen’s Blessings at Home, is in the forefront of a rising new strategy to assist and strengthen families,” Seaborn said.
It’s not just the food that’s processed, sterilized, pre-packaged and frozen, it’s the piety. Pity the poor kids whose parents buy this…food product.
The response to Mary Ellen’s Blessings at Home has been incredible! John from Illinois says: “As a single father of two teens, many times I don’t find time to prepare a good meal. I serve frozen meals at times to help with meal planning and time management. We found the product similar to a recipe we enjoy. I will continue to buy your product, as it is a food item we would buy anyway, but now we have the thoughts on the cards to look forward to. I’m off to check out your website, imagining how many families will be blessed by your message and how many will turn to God because of your witness.”
Joe from Georgia writes: “My wife and I were doing some grocery shopping in Wal-Mart and picked up one of your entrees. We got home and opened the box and out popped this card with Scripture on it. I was amazed I read it to my wife and began looking closer at the box. It had one of my favorite Scriptures on it (Proverbs 3:5-6). We enjoyed the meal, and we will be going back for more of Mary Ellen’s entrees because we were so impressed that you and your company have the courage to be open about your relationship with Christ. You’re a witness to others who desperately need to hear about Him today. It was good to be reminded that I need to order my day so my family and I can have some quality time together at the dinner table.”
Well if I was a kid in those households I know I could hardly wait for dinner time…
…to End. But Request Food’s motto is We make your brand…Better... So I guess even Jesus’s own words can be improved through the latest techniques in processed food manufacture.
Request Foods is one of the nation’s largest custom-prepared frozen food companies. Their mission is to honor God in all they do, to help people develop, and to pursue excellence. “It is our hope and prayer that Mary Ellen’s Blessings at Home entrees will bring busy families back together to share the blessings of a home-cooked meal and the fellowship of each other’s company,” said Mr. DeWitt.
I have a suggestion. If you want to bring families together Mr. DeWitt, you can start by healing the wounds you’ve been gouging with your bare hands into families with gay family members. Then start healing the wounds you’ve slashed into your community. We are your neighbors Mr. DeWitt. Stop spitting in our faces. At least stop expecting us to thank you for saving our immortal souls while you’re teaching our families to hate us.
And…if your goal is “to encourage confident, creative team members by demonstrating respect for every individual”, and that “maintaining a supportive working environment enables everyone to work to their utmost potential”, you can start by assuring you gay employees they won’t be tossed out of a job simply because they are gay, and further, that you don’t actually think they’re the human garbage that FRC ad and its supporting pamphlet says they are.
And…if you want your “…team members to think of their positions as gratifying and enjoyable.” you can at the very least tell your “team members”, your gay employees, and their co-workers, that they’re not working for you just to earn you money to give to the FRC so they can spit in their faces.
And finally…how does someone turn the bible into a collection of frozen entree dinner time fortune cookies and lecture their neighbors about the quality of their private lives with a straight face? You got lucky numbers on the backs of those cards too? I strongly suggest you pay a little less attention to the care of your neighbor’s souls Mr. DeWitt and start looking hard at your own. It’s clearly been neglected for a long, long time. In fact it’s looking a tad…frozen.
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