Dancing with Myself

The American Episcopal Church Responds to the Ultimatum from Dar es Salaam

It is incumbent upon us as disciples to do our best to follow Jesus in the increasing experience of the leading of the Holy Spirit. We fully understand that others in the Communion believe the same, but we do not believe that Jesus leads us to break our relationships. We proclaim the Gospel of what God has done and is doing in Christ, of the dignity of every human being, and of justice, compassion, and peace. We proclaim the Gospel that in Christ there is no Jew or Greek, no male or female, no slave or free. We proclaim the Gospel that in Christ all God's children, including women, are full and equal participants in the life of Christ's Church. We proclaim the Gospel that in Christ all God's children, including gay and lesbian persons, are full and equal participants in the life of Christ's Church. We proclaim the Gospel that stands against any violence, including violence done to women and children as well as those who are persecuted because of their differences, often in the name of God. The Dar es Salaam Communiqué is distressingly silent on this subject. And, contrary to the way the Anglican Communion Network and the American Anglican Council have represented us, we proclaim a Gospel that welcomes diversity of thought and encourages free and open theological debate as a way of seeking God's truth. If that means that others reject us and communion with us, as some have already done, we must with great regret and sorrow accept their decision.

Read the whole thing here.  If there is a schism, it won't be us walking away from them.  It'll be them, walking away from us.

Stop the Presses!

Hillary does not think homosexuality is immoral.  I'm so fucking glad I can barely breathe.  This is from her webpage:

"Well I've heard from a number of my friends and I've certainly clarified with them any misunderstanding that anyone had, because I disagree with General Pace completely. I do not think homosexuality is immoral.  [Emphasis mine.]  But the point I was trying to make is that this policy of Don't Ask, Don't Tell is not working. I have been against it for many years because I think it does a grave injustice to patriotic Americans who want to serve their country. And so I have called for its repeal and I'd like to follow the lead of our allies like, Great Britain and Israel and let people who wish to serve their country be able to join and do so. And then let the uniform code of military justice determine if conduct is inappropriate or unbecoming. That's fine. That's what we do with everybody. But let's not be eliminating people because of who they are or who they love."

A day late and a dollar short, if you ask me.  Why could she not say that when first asked?  The same question to Lightweight contender, Barack Obama.  Your three non answers from yesterday create a strange echo for your statement today. 

"As the New York Times reported today, I do not agree with General Pace that homosexuality is immoral. Attempts to divide people like this have consumed too much of our politics over the past six years."

Even this statement is chickenshit.  He does not agree with General Pace that homosexuality is immoral.  Why couldn't he say, "No, homosexuality is not immoral."   Hey, Barry Baby, you're a lightweight and you're outmatched.  If you think homosexuality is immoral, have the cajones to say so.  If you don't think so, be man enough to say that as well.

As for General Pace, he can go fuck himrself.  The army is allowing petty crooks and borderline retardees into its ranks these days, but at least they're heterosexual crooks and retardees.  That ought to keep General Pace morally satisfied.

Wild Cat, Redefined

What happens when cat's go bad?

To Pun or Not to Pun

A collection of puns from a friend.

(1) King Ozymandias of Assyria was running low on cash after years of war
with the Hittites. His last great possession was the Star of the
Euphrates , the most valuable diamond in the ancient world. Desperate, he
went to Croesus, the pawnbroker, to ask for a loan. Croesus said, "I'll
give you 100,000 dinars for it." "But I paid a million dinars for it,"
the King protested. "Don't you know who I am? I am the king!" Croesus
replied, "When you wish to pawn a Star, makes no difference who you are."

(2) Evidence has been found that William Tell and his family were avid
bowlers. However, all the Swiss league records were unfortunately
destroyed in a fire, and we'll never know for whom the Tells bowled.

(3) A man rushed into a busy doctor's office and shouted "Doctor! I think
I'm shrinking!!" The doctor calmly responded, "Now, settle down. You'll
just have to be a little patient."

(4) A marine biologist developed a race of genetically engineered
dolphins that could live forever if they were fed a steady diet of
seagulls. One day, his supply of the birds ran out so he had to go out
and trap some more. On the way back, he spied two lions asleep on the
road. Afraid to wake them, he gingerly stepped over them. Immediately, he
was arrested and charged with transporting gulls across sedate lions for
immortal porpoises.

(5) Back in the 1800s the Tates Watch Company of Massachusetts wanted to
produce other products and, since they already made the cases for
watches, they used them to produce compasses. The new compasses were so
bad that people often ended up in Canada or Mexico rather than
California . This, of course, is the origin of the expression, "He who has
a Tates is lost!"

(6) A thief broke into the local police station and stole all the toilets
and urinals, leaving no clues. A spokesperson was quoted as saying, "We
have absolutely nothing to go on."

(7) An Indian chief was feeling very sick, so he summoned the medicine
man. After a brief examination, the medicine man took out a long, thin
strip of elk rawhide and gave it to the chief, telling him to bite off,
chew, and swallow one inch of the leather every day. After a month, the
medicine man returned to see how the chief was feeling. The chief
shrugged and said, "The thong is ended, but the malady lingers on."

(8) A famous Viking explorer returned home from a voyage and found his
name missing from the town register. His wife insisted on complaining to
the local civic official who apologized profusely saying, "I must have
taken Leif off my census."

(9) There were three Indian squaws. One slept on a deer skin, one slept
on an elk skin, and the third slept on a hippopotamus skin. All three
became pregnant, and the first two each had a baby boy. The one who slept
on the hippopotamus skin had twin boys. This goes to prove that the squaw
of the hippopotamus is equal to the sons of the squaws of the other two
hides.

(10) A skeptical anthropologist was cataloging South American folk
remedies with the assistance of a tribal brujo who indicated that the
leaves of a particular fern were a sure cure for any case of
constipation. When the anthropologist expressed his doubts, the brujo
looked him in the eye and said, "Let me tell you, with fronds like these,
who needs enemas?"

Virginia Apologizes for Slavery

One hundred and forty-four years after the Emancipation Proclamation, three hundred and eighty-eight years after the first Africans were traded by English privateers for water and supplies to the colony at Jamestown, one hundred and seventy-six years after Nat Turner's ill-fated rebellion, Virginia apologizes for slavery.

It also apologized for its 400 year history of exploitation of its native-Americans.  For two hundred and fifty years, it has been the policy of Virginia to re-classify all of its native American people as Colored.  For three hundred and sixty-five years, Virginia refused to allow those same Coloreds to vote.  By magically changing all native Americans to Colored not only deprived those same people of basic rights of citizenship, it denied them the right to a heritage.  They were not welcome as Whites and they were denied their Indianess.  I have no doubt that if the South had not lost the Civil War, Virginia would have attempted to enslave all its Colored population.  So steeped is Virginia's history in ugly racism, that it was a mere 83 years ago that Virginia passed its Racial Integrity Law which required all citizens not pure White to register within the county of their residence and provided penalties for anyone attempting to pass themselves off as White.  In the person of Walter A. Plecker, Virginia's Registrar of the Bureau of Vital Statistics, Virginia had a fierce protector of the White race.  Plecker was zealous in his efforts to make sure Virginia's Indians and tri-racials, such as Melungeons, were properly listed as Colored.

It was a mere 345 years ago that Virginia passed a law overturning hundreds of years of English common law and declared that henceforth a child's status derives from its mother and not its father, or  born slave, die slave.  Six years later, Virginia passed a law taxing free Black women, and just so there wouldn't be any doubt, the law "said that 'negro women, though permitted to enjoy their freedome' could not have the rights of 'the English.'"

Three hundred and sixteen years ago Virginia forbade the marriage of non-Whites to Whites.  It's my understanding they used the exact same law to attack same-sex marriages three hundred, thirteen years later in 2004.  Okay, I'm joking.  They paraphrased.

Virginia has a lot of be sorry for.  It's just my luck to be at the receiving end of Virginia's bigotry twice in 400 years.  The first time was when my tri-racial ancestors were forced to migrate from Virginia in the early to middle 1700s.  At least two of my family lines originated in Virginia, the Bunch and Chavers families.  The second time has been these past ten years as Virginia has taken the lead in passing nastive, punitive laws against Gays and Lesbians. 

Virginia, mother of bigots and presidents, still has a hateful streak.  The new Coloreds in Virginia these days are Gays.  Virginia has led the nation in punitive laws aimed at homosexuals.  Consenting adults are now prohibited by Virginia law from making legally-binding contracts that might tend to suggest that they are somehow a couple.  Virginia courts routinely savage the rights of same-sex parents in ways that are as arbitrary as were their laws regarding racial purity.

Actually, Virginia has a thing about homosexuals.  This from EqualityVirginia:

• In 2006 Virginia voters ratified an amendment to the Virginia Constitution banning marriage equality for gay and lesbian Virginians, and denying legal relationship recognition for all unmarried couples.
• Earlier, in 2004, the Virginia General Assembly passed the "Affirmation of Marriage Act" (HB 751) banning civil unions and other contract rights for same-sex couples in the state.
• In Virginia, it is permissible to discriminate against someone in employment, housing, banking or public accommodations based on sexual orientation or gender identity and expression.
• Virginia does not allow second-parent adoptions for unmarried couples, leaving these families and children without critical protections.
• Sexual orientation and gender identity and expression are not included in the state's hate crimes law.
• Although it is inconsistent with the 2003 Lawrence v. Texas U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Virginia still has not repealed the so-called "crimes against nature" law making sodomy a Class 6 felony.

All in the name of Jesus, amen.  The Bible thumpers condemning Gays are the children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the Bible thumpers who said a mere 350 years ago that slavery was the proper condition of non-White people. 

Oh Virginia.  You've been wrong as many times as Bush and Cheney.  I'd like to think this apology will sensitize you to the evil you do in the name of your god, but I seriously doubt it.  Your apology means little without contrition and your treatment of Gays and Lesbians shows the ugliness of your heart.  You don't stop being a whore because you grow too old and can't get tricks.  You're still a whore, you're just out of work. 

Anybody but Clinton

I think I may have overreacted just a tad in my Comment following Kathy's innocent enough observations on the subject of Gays in the military, but this is a subject close and dear to my heart.  I was drafted into the Army in November 1971. 

(This is me in basic training.  Was I cute or what?)

I reported to the induction station with a letter from my psychiatrist that said I was not only Gay, but a bit unstable.  After being interviewed by an Army psychiatrist, I was okayed for processing into the Army.  What about my being Gay, I practically screamed at them?  The sergeant in charge said to me, "Well, won't you have fun.  All those men.  But let me warn you:  we don't care that you're Gay, but it's against Army regulations, so if you get caught doing something Gay you'll end up doing hard time at Leavenworth, and now that we know you're Gay, we'll be watching you."  Oh shit.   

Basic training was the only time I lived in a barracks situation and the only time we did group showers.  There's nothing like showering with a dozen or so guys all nervous about being naked in front of each other to make a person feel all sexual.  Right?  Wrong.  For the most part, guys don't like being naked in front of a bunch of other guys, regardless of anyone's perceived sexuality.  Within a week of beginning basic, I was put into a room more akin to a college dormitory than anything I had imagined as military.  I was not put there because I was Gay, but because I had more time in grade than did most of the other draftees. 

Two years of service later and I had not one unpleasant experience in the Army because of my sexuality.

When I read the bigots who run the military worrying about "unit cohesiveness" I think, what total nonsense.  It's just bigotry, pure and simple.  Otherwise it's a slap in the face of every American serviceman to say they are so unable to control themselves and are a bunch of pussies who will crumble at the idea that someone may stare at their nakedness and humiliate them.  What other reason could there be?  American males are total losers?  I don't think so.

There have always been homosexual soldiers, and since the sixties when the word "Gay" started being used to describe the social and political community of out-of-the-closet homosexuals, there have been Gay soldiers.

Lesbians have an even tougher time.  They're sexually harassed and often assaulted on a fairly regular basis by their fellow soldiers.  They get the "why won't you go out with me?  You a lesbian?"  I know women who were forced out of the Army because they wouldn't put out.

Now about bigotry fueled by religion, what other reason can you think of to deny same-sex couples the right to marry besides religious bigotry? Your Bible, as it is interpreted by many of your religious, condemns all forms of same-sex affection.  Not Jesus, just your Bible.  Most Christians these days worship it and forget to pay attention to what Christ actually taught.  Do you honestly think Jesus would deny same-sex couples his blessings?  Of course not!  That does not stop the midgets in charge of the Catholic Church, the Africans of the Anglican Church and most American Evangelical Protestants from frothing at the mouth at the prospect of a witch-burning Gay baiting.

So there it is.  The two most offensive measures against Gays and Lesbians ever passed by our national government are both courtesy of Bill Clinton.  Forget Hillary apologizing for being stupid nd voting to give Bush unlimited war powers, I think Bill should apologize to Gays and Lesbians for fucking us while only getting a blow job from Monica.

I will not support Hillary Clinton's run for the President.  She is not in favor of same-sex marriage.  She is silent on Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and she treats Gays and Lesbians with such condescension that it would be difficult (but not impossible) for me to vote for her for President should she get the nomination of her party.  I much prefer anyone else in the race to Hillary. 

UPDATE:  3/6/2006:  Apparently Hillary came out against Don't Ask Don't Tell when she was running for her Senate seat back in 1999.  Who knew?  Talk about well kept secrets!  Apparently she spoke to the Human Rights Campaign this past Friday.  Didn't hear about it?  Don't feel alone.  No one else heard about it either.  HRC (the Human Rights Campaign, not Hillary Rodham Cllinton) would have you know they also invited Obama, Edwards and Guiliani, but only Hillary thought them important enough to attend (IN SECRET). 

As I said in a previous post, she's not my first or second (or even third) choice among Democrats, but she's acceptable as a candidate should she win the nomination. Here, by the way, is her speech to the Human Rights Campaign, if you're curious about how she stands on issues affecting the Gay and Lesbian community.

Anyone else got something on their mind?