I was going to lay over in Cheyenne today, but they were all booked for the night. There’s some sort of festival going on there. Frontier Days, they’re calling it. So I had to blast my way to Laramie before they were all booked there too. The room I was finally able to get was in a place not far from where it happened. I can look out my motel room and see the general area of it.
I tried to wander around the old historical district for a bit with one of my F1s, but it’s hard to see Laramie. I took a few photos, mostly around the rail yard. But everywhere I look there’s a face that haunts me. The face of a sweet young gay kid who had his whole life ahead of him.
Before bedding down for the night I light a cigar and take a wander up the road away from the motel. It’s mid July, and the night is a tad chilly here on the high plains. I walk up the road and quickly leave the town lights behind me. It’s lonely on the plains. Quiet, save for the constant plains wind that tugs at my ponytail.
The stars are shrouded by a cloud bank. I can see a few, shining weakly through the clouds. But mostly it’s pitch night here. My path recedes ahead of me into blackness. All around me rolling sage covered hills swell and dip in the night like an unsettled sea. My guide stars are nowhere to be seen. I’m not sure which way is which. Only the footpath I’m on suggests direction, and it leads further and further into the darkness. Eventually I stop, drag easily on my cigar, watch the smoke drift away into the night. Behind me are the town lights. Somewhere, many unseen horizons to the east is my empty little home, waiting patently for me to return. To my right, at the top of a small hillside, is a wooden post and wire fence, silhouetted against the night.
Due to a sudden and severe increase in my comment spam, I’ve increased the level of comment moderation a tad here. If you’ve previously left a comment here you should be able to keep commenting without difficulty. If you haven’t you’ll probably see a message saying I need to approve it before it will appear. Also, if your comment has more then one hyperlink in it you’ll also get that message.
Hopefully this will take care of the problem. If not I’ll have to hold all comments for moderation. If the level of comment spam goes back to normal levels I’ll reduce the moderation level again.
Many religious homes are very judgmental about homosexuality. Ex-gays go through exaggerated attempts to repress, control and avoid their sexuality—in a way that parallels the dynamics of sexual anorexia. Ex-gays have come to see me talk about believing their homosexual urges were sick and wrong. They believe their homosexuality is a sexual addiction and try to use Patrick Carnes’s model to set boundaries around their “sexual acting out” behavior. They speak of hating themselves for having these homoerotic urges and would never consider acting them out. Instead, they work hard at repressing them. Preoccupied with any feelings toward the same gender, they’re extremely judgmental toward those who do live out their homosexual orientation, sexually and romantically. They tell me they don’t believe me when as I say I’m happy in my life as a gay man.
Ex-gays go to extremes to avoid sexual contact with the same gender, even if it means behaving in hateful ways—such as trying to pass legislation against gays. I strongly believe that those in the forefront of the ex-gay movement suffer from sexual anorexia and self-hatred about homosexuality, which was taught to them as children. So many come from families, cultures, and communities that disdain homosexuality, and have incorporated this to such an extreme that they can never fully actualize themselves as the gays and lesbians they were meant to be and truly are. Along with their true sexual orientation, they have shut down their capacity to be loving and accepting, particular toward other gays and lesbians.
Joe’s site deals with a topic I’ve often thought about…why essentially heterosexual guys have sex with other guys. Joe takes pains at the top of his blog to assure us he’s not doing "reparative therapy"…
This site is about men who have sex with men (MSM) who question their sexual orientation. This is not intended for reparative therapy, religion or pornography. This site is about the many reasons men engage in sexual contact with other men that are not about homosexuality. It will educate readers on the differences between sexual identity, sexual behavior and sexual fantasy.
I say this topic is of interest to me, as a gay man, because I’ve often found myself, irritatingly, on the receiving end of a straight guy’s attentions. In my college years, it occasionally came from other straight friends. Often after they’d just broken up or had a fight with their girlfriends. I always tried to handle those as tactfully as I could, and I’m still friends with some of them all these years later, but it’s demeaning. And especially so when I have to live in a society that treats gay people as second class citizens. Sure buddy…you can have a little fling with me…the day I can wear a wedding ring like yours…
You hear a lot of joking among gay folks about picking up not-so-straight straight guys. In Memphis a couple years ago I was told by a guy working at a gay bookstore, that the community there in Memphis was mostly married men, who had sex with guys on the side. And I was hearing from some friends who’d been on an ocean cruse that the sexual pickings on a gay cruse are vastly more limited compared to that on a regular, mostly heterosexual one. It’s, I’m happy to hear, easier to find a willing straight guy on a mostly straight cruse then a guy on a gay cruse who would cheat on his boyfriend. I’m sure a lot of deeply closeted gay men do that sort of thing. But the fact is that there are essentially heterosexual men who do it too and I’ve never thought that was healthy. I’m finding that Joe’s blog is shining a helpful light into that kind of behavior on the part of straight men. It’s certainly reinforcing my belief that it isn’t healthy.
This, for some reason, has been playing on my iPod almost constantly since I left Memphis…
I can feel it coming in the air tonight, oh lord
Ive been waiting for this moment, all my life, oh lord
Can you feel it coming in the air tonight, oh lord, oh lord
Well, if you told me you were drowning
I would not lend a hand
Ive seen your face before my friend
But I don’t know if you know who I am
Well, I was there and I saw what you did
I saw it with my own two eyes
So you can wipe off the grin, I know where you’ve been
Its all been a pack of lies
And I can feel it coming in the air tonight, oh lord
Ive been waiting for this moment for all my life, oh lord
I can feel it in the air tonight, oh lord, oh lord
And I’ve been waiting for this moment all my life, oh lord, oh lord
Probably because I saw something while I was there that rekindled a long smoldering anger.
Via Box Turtle Bulletin. The man who went to a Houston Texas gay bar looking for a homosexual to kill, and killed 46-year-old Kenneth Cummings Jr., believes with all his heart that he did the right thing. Well of course he does…
A Cypress man charged in the death of a Southwest Airlines flight attendant said Saturday that he was doing God’s work when he went to a Montrose-area bar last month, hunting for a gay man to kill.
"I believe I’m Elijah, called by God to be a prophet," said 26-year-old Terry Mark Mangum, charged with murder June 11. " … I believe with all my heart that I was doing the right thing."
Interviewed in the Brazoria County Jail Saturday morning, Mangum said he feels no remorse for killing 46-year-old Kenneth Cummings Jr., whom relatives described as a "loving" son who never forgot a holiday and a devoted uncle who had set up college funds for his niece and nephew. He worked at Southwest for 24 years.
Mangum, who described himself as "definitely not a homosexual," said God called on him to "carry out a code of retribution" by killing a gay man because "sexual perversion" is the "worst sin."
Mangum believed Cummings to be gay.
"I planned on sending him to hell," he said.
Cummings disappeared June 4. His charred remains were found June 16, buried on a 50-acre ranch near San Antonio owned by Mangum’s 90-year-old grandfather.
Hey, John Smid…I got your considerate and transparent dialogue right here…
We Are Always Open To Considerate And Transparent Dialogue. Not That We’ll Engage In It…
Dialogue anyone?
PRESS STATEMENT
July 17, 2007
Love In Action received no formal notice of Mr. Toscano’s arrival, not did he invite us to participate in today’s proceedings, though it is apparent he did take the time to invite media sources…
Blah, blah, woof woof… And you took the time to prepare a statement for the press and have a bunch of them printed up with with your logo and web site address and attach a tasteful little business card with your Communications Coordinator‘s name on it to every one. So you knew it was happening, and in fact, Peterson has been talking to you John Smid.
But then…you knew that. The wall is yellow John.
More on the Survivor’s Initiative at Love In Action last Tuesday, and Peterson’s response to the LIA press statement Here. In the meantime, I have some photos…
David Christie (right) and Brandon Tidwell display the collages of their
life journeys they would later present to the Love In Action staff.
At their request I’ve blurred out the details in the artwork.
Some of the local folks who came out to support the survivors…
Brandon and David return from delivering their collages
to the LIA staff. The only point at which anyone from LIA
came out to talk to anyone was to deliver copies of their
press statement. I’ve no idea what was said at the door to
LIA, but the meeting was short.
Brandon gets some artwork to take back home with him.
One of the protesters gave Brandon her poster and I’m
a tad jealous because that was a real good one. I’d watched
them making it and a bunch of other good ones just before
the first anniversary protest last year.
LIA’s Press Statement
Someone had put them there, to keep them from blowing
away I guess, and I thought it made a good shot. I think
that’s one of Morgan’s tripods.
Those Little Things That Creep Up On You The Older You Get
(sigh)
For some years now I’ve had to wear glasses to read with. It started out with the tiny print. You know…the font the food companies print the ingredients lists on their product packaging with. It got worse slowly…like a creeping fog cluttering up my vision. One day I noticed I could not read the year mark on a dime. Then it was the print in a newspaper. Then it was the print in a book. Then it was the print on maps. Then it was the text in my computer display. I gritted my teeth and just bought new half frames with stronger and stronger magnification factors. I didn’t mind the half frames so much. They were light in weight, and I could tuck them into my day pack and shirt pocket where they didn’t take up much room. And I liked the look of them on me. Even after a friend called me Granny Garrett when he saw me wearing a pair. Half frames were invented by Ben Franklin, a man I greatly admire. They’re so typical of his practical, common sense inventiveness.
I’d held out a hope that my distance vision wouldn’t be affected. But some time ago I had to admit deep down inside that it was not to be. I noticed myself having to work to get distant signage into focus. Then I noticed I was doing the same thing to get the horizon into focus. I could see it coming then. So I did what any graphic artist would do when he notices his vision is getting worse. I went into denial.
As long as I could reasonably make out what was there in the distance, I didn’t bother noticing that it was all getting fuzzier and fuzzier. I just didn’t want it to be. When the letter from the Maryland DMV to renew my driver’s license came in the mail the other day, I hoped that I could still pass the eye exam and for another couple of years at least not get the damn notice put on my license, that this driver needs to be wearing glasses to legally drive. After all, I could still read the highway signs. I just had to work my eyes a tad to do it.
Well…it was on the road to Memphis yesterday that I finally had to admit it. My distance vision isn’t right anymore. It’s not horrible by any means. But it isn’t right. Driving down highways that are unfamiliar, in traffic flows you are not used to, you really need to be watching the signs the moment they appear in the distance, so you can make your lane changes safely, well before the cutoff points. When you can’t read the big green Interstate highway signs at a distance anymore, when you need them to be almost on you before the fuzziness goes away enough that you’re certain you know what they’re saying to you, you need glasses.
Had I dealt with this more rationally I might have had some before I started heading out to Memphis. As it was, I was able to get by using an old, old pair of spare reading glasses I’d stashed in the glove compartment. They were so old they were useless for reading with, and I’d been meaning to toss them out. As it turned out, luckily, that was just right for seeing the highway signs again. But what really convinced me when I put them on and looked into the distance, wasn’t just the highway signs.
Oh…the horizon…it’s full of stuff now…
I could see it all…and yet I couldn’t. I could see all the trees and houses in the distance, all the buildings in the far city skylines, all the elegant structures, human and natural, in the world around me. But over the last couple years apparently, the detail in all that plenty had been fading away like the color in an old photograph. And I didn’t know how much of it I’d already lost, until I put those old, weak, useless reading glasses on and looked out at the world beyond the highway signs. I’d allowed my world to loose more of its richness and vitality then I’d realized, because I just didn’t want to know that my eyes were getting old, and that I was going to have to start wearing glasses all the time.
I hate it. I used to have great eyes. My left eye had better then normal vision in it: 20/14. It’s still the better of the two. But both of them need help now.
Since I was going to stay in Memphis for a while, I checked around to see if one of those quickie eye glass places could take me in, and make me a couple pair to tide me over until I got back to Baltimore. I found a place that says they can do my exam first thing tomorrow morning, and probably have my glasses ready in an hour. That’ll do until I can get back home.
My face is going to have a whole new look I reckon. Oh. And one other really irritating thing. In the motel, I took a look at myself in the mirror with those old reading glasses I’d been using to drive down the highway with. I’m 53 years old, and I hadn’t thought I was looking my age, until I looked at my face with a pair of glasses that allowed me to clearly see all the detail that I’d been missing, probably for the past couple years. Damn. Damn. Damn.
It’ll be lite posting for a while here because as of…er…Right Now…I’m heading out to the big highways to visit some friends, attend the Open Source Developer’s Conference in Portland, and do some exploring along the way. I’ll be on the road most of the day today, but I’m heading for Memphis and I’ll stay there for a while to see some friends, and…stand with Soul Force in front of Love In Action. Via Peterson Toscano…
Ex-Gay Survivor Initiative Heads to Memphis
What: Gay men visit Love in Action to tell of the psychological and spiritual harm that they experienced there and in other "ex-gay" ministries. Three survivors of the controversial residential program will present Love in Action with personal artwork depicting the damage caused by the message that gays and lesbians can and should change their sexual orientation.
When: Tuesday, July 17, at 10:30 a.m.
Where: Love in Action, 4780 Yale Road, Memphis, Tennessee
Who: David Christie is a former Love in Action client who spent 13 years in ex-gay therapy before accepting himself as a gay man at the age of 28.
Brandon Tidwell completed Love in Action’s adult residential program in 2002, but ultimately rejected the organization’s theology and reconciled his sexual orientation with his Christian faith.
Other participants: Jeffrey Harwood, Lance Carroll
Why: Love in Action (LIA) is a Christian residential program that claims to help clients "break out" of "homosexual attraction and behavior" at a cost of $7000 for 3 months. In 2005, the facility was under investigation by the state of Tennessee for operating a mental health facility without a license. LIA has since changed its operating procedures to avoid state regulation. Most recently, LIA closed its controversial Refuge program for teenagers and replaced it with "Family Freedom Intensives," a 4-day, $600 per person. The program is for parents of gay or questioning teenagers.
Love in Action is part of a larger "ex-gay" movement, which continues to thrive in spite of Americans’ growing conviction that sexual orientation is not subject to change and despite a growing willingness on the part of faith communities to accept gays and lesbians as whole and valuable members.
This event is part of the Survivor’s Initiative, a national campaign to share the stories of "Ex-gay Survivors"-men and women who feel that ex-gay messages and programs did them more harm than good.
If you are in or near Memphis, come and show your solidarity. Also, spread the word. It’s been two years since the summer protests sparked by Zach Stark’s blog entries. No matter how LIA words it, Refuge is no more. Even so, the voices of their former LIA clients need to be heard as a witness and a warning.
If you can be there to stand peacefully in witness and solidarity with the survivors, please come. The ex-gay movement cynically pleads tolerance for religious diversity and freedom of choice but they have none to offer themselves for gay people. They instill shame where there should be joy. They teach fear where there should be love. They build walls of shame and fear and mistrust between parents and their children. All so that our hearts may bleed, so that they can feel righteous. If there is such a thing as Sin in this world, Capital S, then to put a dagger of shame into a person’s heart and take away the possibility of finding that intimate other and building a life together, must surely be a big one. For years the ex-gay ministries have claimed that thousands have changed. Now another voice is making itself heard: that of the ones who tried, and who learned after great hardship and pain that to finally become whole persons, they first had to accept themselves, in the words of the old spiritual, "Just As I Am."
Come, stand with us if you can, in witness and in solidarity. Just as you are. Just as we are.
Via Pam’s House Blend… You could just about predict the reaction from the kook pews when several democratic candidates for president announced they’d participate in a debate on Logo about gay issues…
After all who could argue with the intellectual, philosophical, economic, national security, and social conscience expertise of a network that prides itself on the number of different ways a human being can have engage in sexual behavior while at the same time avoiding good old fashioned marital sexual intercourse?
…
What will happen is that each of these candidates will have to also later face the same "faith-based" audiences that they have been attempting to woo in recent weeks. Heaven forbid, but Obama might even have to make a follow up appearance in Rick Warren’s pulpit to announce the results of his most recent AIDS test. And what will they have to say then?
See here is the unrelenting truth, put as plainly as humanly possible:
Homosexual behavior and Christianity do not mix. From the standpoint of theory, theology, doctrine, and practice the two are totally and completely incompatible; as are adultery, pornography, bestiality, pedophilia, pre-marital sex, incest, cross dressing, multiple partner orgies and the list goes on. So the candidates can not have it both ways.
The truth is Democrats are not now nor have they ever been interested in seriously committed faith based voters.
So says Kevin McCullough over at TownHall.Com. Meanwhile…back on the side of all that is Godly and Righteous, the republicans are showing the rest of the nation just what it means to be morally upright…
NEW ORLEANS — New allegations tie Sen. David Vitter to a high-priced brothel in his hometown, days after he publicly apologized for his connection to an alleged prostitution ring in Washington, D.C.
Vitter (R-La.) acknowledged being involved with a D.C. escort service that federal prosecutors say was a prostitution ring.
On Tuesday, former madam Jeanette Maier said Vitter was once a client of her Canal Street brothel. She pleaded guilty to running the operation in 2002. Vitter won his seat in the U.S. Senate in 2004.
Maier described Vitter as a "decent guy" who appeared to be in need of company when he visited the brothel.
"As far as the girls coming out after seeing David, all they had was nice things to say. It wasn’t all about sex. In fact, he just wanted to have somebody listen to him, you know," Maier said in an interview with the Associated Press.
Tonight I got confirmation from a solid inside source who has no ideological ax to grind. The source said [Sen.] Vitter was a client at Canal Street, and provided some additional details that shed light on Maier’s comment that there was “more to the business than sex”. [Update: Based on her comments about Vitter not having “unusual predilections”, I would interpret this comment to mean something like companionship and social interaction rather than fetishes… etc.] These details are not for the faint of heart, either.
We’re talking about, among other things, Diaper Fetishism. That’s right folks, according to a trusted inside source, Vitter was well known among other Canal Street Brothel patrons to like diapers as well as other bizarre “fetishes”. I don’t have much more info than that from my source, except that some of the other patrons at the brothel included a well known business-minded New Orleans Republican and a well known Democratic ex-governor. There are many other well known patrons who never held public office, too. You’ve probably heard various names floated about.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I love that New Orleans has more than its share of sex fetishists and preeverts who can’t come missionary. This ain’t a vanilla town, kids.
But the thought of Vitter prancing around in a dipey is a bit jarring, especially since I’m changing those nasty things every day.
During the Clinton impeachment scandal, Hustler Magazine publisher Larry Flynt placed an article in his magazine offering up to $1,000,000 for information on sexual indiscretions by Republican officials. Flynt received evidence that Livingston had strayed outside of his marriage and he was preparing to publish this information. Livingston got word that the article was pending. During debate over the impeachment resolution on December 19, 1998, Livingston surprised everyone by stepping down as Speaker-elect and announced he would resign from the House in May1999. He was succeeded by David Vitter…
The writings of the Founding Fathers are very instructive on this issue. They are not cast in terms of political effectiveness at all but in terms of right and wrong — moral fitness. Hamilton writes in the Federalists Papers (No. 65) that impeachable offenses are those that "proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust."
In considering impeachment, Vitter asserted, Congress had to judge Clinton on moral terms. Decrying the law professors’ failure to see this, Vitter observed, "Is that the level of moral relatively [sic] and vacuousness we have come to?" If no "meaningful action" were to be taken against Clinton, Vitter wrote, "his leadership will only further drain any sense of values left to our political culture."
You don’t say, David. Gosh…three cheers for moral leadership. And…prostitutes who are worth every penny they charge. Especially the ones who know how to dress a man in diapers.
Today, looking back, Jeanette is not the least bit ashamed of the business she built. "There is a need for prostitutes," she says. "We balance everything out. We let a guy live out his fantasies."
Some of the fantasies at the Canal Street Brothel got a little rough. For those who liked that kind of stuff, there were whips, chains and a lot of leather. Jeanette says that most of the clients who wanted to be dominated were Republicans. She cracks a smile, then adds, "They wanted to be spanked and tortured and wear stockings–Republicans have impeccable taste in silk stockings–and these are the people who run our country."
"We’ve got 20-some investigations that all look good," Flynt said during a news conference at his Beverly Hills office.
"We have got some high-ranking Republican and Democratic members of the Senate and the House," he told reporters. "If I get just a couple of those phonies out of there, maybe it will be a step forward."
I’m laughing in your face Kevin McCullough, and all the rest of you pusillanimous sexual perverts over at Town Hall. Sex is a beautiful, thrilling, wonderful part of being alive and being human, and it isn’t Godlessness that’s writing all these sordid headlines now, and it isn’t moral relativism and wasn’t the dirty hippies and all their free love. This is what you get when you drag this vital part of the human identity into the gutter like it was dirty laundry, not one of this life’s pure and perfect joys. When you teach people that sex is a sordid, squalid, dirty thing, don’t be surprised when they act it out in sordid, squalid, dirty ways.
The author Mary Renault once said that politics, like sex, is an expression of the person within. If you’re mean and selfish and cruel it will come out in your sex life and it will come out in your politics when what really matters is that you’re not the sort of person who will behave like that. So what have we here? The party of Greed Is Good, and Sex is 90 Percent Evil, Except When It’s Between A Married Man And Women For Making Babies. And the brothel owners are saying they like to be dominated and spanked and tortured. And…wear silk stockings. And…diapers. And I’ll not endure lectures on how unnatural my sex life is from the likes of your kind Kevin.
Christian denominations outside Roman Catholicism are either defective or are not full churches of Jesus Christ, the Vatican has reaffirmed.
A 16-page document released by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which Pope Benedict XVI once headed, described Orthodox churches as true churches, but said they are suffering from a "wound" since they do not recognise the primacy of the Pope.
The document, approved by Pope Benedict, went on to say the "wound is still more profound" in Protestant denominations.
Just so all you American fundamentalists who’ve been getting all gushy about yours, and Ratzinger’s, mutual hostility toward gay people know where you fit in. But hey…look at it this way…you both agree that everyone else but you isn’t a true Christian. Common Ground.
In the wake of three Surgeon Generals testifying on Capital Hill about Bush administration political interference in medical science, raising once again the issue of how the Bush administration has been relentlessly attacking any science that doesn’t agree with their agenda, Andrew Sullivan thinks Virginia Postrel is making sense…
"Scientists have gotten way too fond of invoking their authority to claim that "science" dictates their preferred policy solutions and claiming that any disagreement constitutes an attack on science. But, even assuming that scientists agree on the facts, science can only tell us something about the state of the world. It cannot tell us what policy is the best to adopt. Scientists’ preferences are not "science." You cannot go from an "is" (science) to an "ought" (policy). Social science, particularly economics, can tell you something about the likely tradeoffs (hence some of my frustrations at Aspen). But it can’t tell you which tradeoffs to make,"
– Virginia Postrel, making sense as usual.
Postrel is referring to an op-ed defending Governor Girly Man’s sacking of Robert Sawyer, chair of California’s chair Air Resources Board. Schwarzenegger had appointed him in December of 2005, calling him "an exceptionally accomplished scientist, teacher and environmental policy expert who has devoted his career to using science and technology to improve air quality not only in California, but across our country and the world."
The grim irony in Postrel’s blog post is that what the Schwarzenegger camp would have you believe is that Sawyer was fired for doing exactly what Postrel said needs to be done: weighing the science against the public interest. Against the wishes of environmentalists, the state air board led by Sawyer voted by a 7-1 margin to let San Joaquin Valley polluters have until 2024 to come into compliance with the Federal Clean Air Act. The San Joaquin Valley is California’s, and by extension much of this nation’s, food basket. But it wasn’t this decision, so much as Sawyer’s insistence that the State Air Board remain politically independent, that got Sawyer his pink slip. That is what Postrel is defending here; not the idea that public policy often has to be a compromise between various necessities, but that science must serve politics.
Postrel’s post is dishonest claptrap of the sort that homophobes use when they bellyache that they’re being called bigots merely for "disagreeing with the gay agenda". It isn’t disagreement the scientists are calling attacks, it’s when politicians censor them, and then rewrite their science outright to fit a specific political agenda, that’s the attack on science. It’s one thing for politicians to say that they have to weigh the science against what they see as the public interest, and another for them to force science to tell the public things that are not true. But this has been Bush administration policy from day one, and republican party policy now for decades. Intelligent Design anyone?
I keep turning to Jacob Bronowski on this, but he said it absolutely right…
Picture the state of German thought when Wener Heisenberg was criticized by the S.S., and had to ask Himmler to support his scientific standing. Heisenberg had won the Nobel prize at the age of thirty; his principle of uncertainty is one of the two or three deep concepts which science has found in this century; and he was trying to warn Germans that they must not dismiss such discoveries as Relativity because they disliked the author. Yet Himmler, who had been a schoolmaster, took months of petty inquiery (someone in his family knew Heisenberg) before he authorized of all people, Heydrich to protect Heisenberg. His letter to Heydrich is a paper monument to what happens to the creative mind in a society without truth. For Himmler writes that he has heard that Heisenberg is good enough to be earmarked later for his own Academy for Welteislehre. This was an Academy which Himmler proposed to devote to the conviction which he either shared with or imposed on his scientific yes-men, that the stars are made of ice.
-Jacob Bronowski, Science and Human Values.
For years after reading that I wondered why the hell anyone would want to force scientists to say that stars are made of ice. Then I came across this web site run by a group of people who still believe in the Ptolemaic earth centric model of the universe and then it made sense. There are still some nutty fundamentalists out there who insist that the earth must be the center of the universe, because they bible says so. But in that case the stars simply cannot be suns like our own, and light years away from us, because then the outer edges of the universe would be whipping around the earth once each day at speeds even a fundamentalist could not accept. So the stars must be a lot closer to the earth and the universe must be a lot smaller. But if the stars are a lot closer to the earth then they can’t be objects like our sun. So they must be made of ice instead, and are merely reflecting the light from our own sun back at us.
It’s crazy. But that’s apparently what Himmler believed, because his screwball religion told him it had to be so. And never mind what the evidence says. Contrary opinions are not merely wrong, they’re heresy, and even worse, they’re rebellion against authority. This is why theocrats and totalitarians hate the practice of science. The only authority science accepts is the evidence. At the end of the day nature speaks for itself. This is why science is always going to have a tense relationship with politics. But it’s not a hopeless one, so long as everyone is willing to tell the truth.
It’s one thing to say that we have to weigh the costs and benefits, and make hard decisions sometimes that maybe nobody really likes, and another to try to make scientists say things that aren’t so. No, science can’t tell us what policy is the best to adopt. But it can sure as hell narrow it down. You can’t even begin to guess what the best policy is, if you don’t know what the goddamned facts are.
While you all claim in websites, protests, in organizations, or coalitions, to want to help people who are “trapped in homosexuality,” you seem to be more concerned with sticking your nose in my business, and telling me the way you think I should live, along with who I am.
Whoops! Sorry. What this guy actually wrote was…
While you all claim in websites, protests, in organizations, or coalitions, to want to help people who are “trapped in the ex-gay movement,” you seem to be more concerned with sticking your nose in my business, and telling me the way you think I should live, along with who I am.
Sorry about that. Really. Meanwhile (again via Ex-Gay Watch…), PFOX is still battling the Montgomery County Maryland Board Of Education to insure that the only things taught in sex education classes about homosexuals and homosexuality are what the ex-gay movement wants taught. Not that they want to be telling anyone how they think they should live mind you…
Fred Clark’s Slacktivist bloggot an R rating from the same nutty blog rating thing that gave me my NC-17. Fred is a liberal Baptist and one of the most decent people I’ve ever met. He regularly tackles spiritual and theological issues on his blog, and he’s been doing a really killer ongoing review of the first book in the Left Behind series. His blog got the R for excessive use of the words Missionary, Hell, and Death. Oh…and Dick…but that Fred says, was in a post about the Vice President.
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