What's he on about now?

In case the articles, essays and opinions throughtout this site just weren't enough for you, here's my online diary (a.k.a. 'blog'). It's as close as you'll come to the inside of my head, so don't say I didn't warn you
(and remember, you can always e-mail me if you love or loathe anything you're about to read)...


   Friday, June 23, 2006

   BEERS, QUEERS AND CHEERS

Working at Canada's busiest gay bar for three years taught me to truly marvel at the wide diversity of gay people, to truly love my friends and freedom here in Toronto, and to truly hate Pride Day!

My reasons why haven't changed much in three years but, free from the Woody's trap last year, I actually had a pretty good time. This year, I'll be trying to hit the streets with the new dog in tow which screams BAD IDEA but, hey, Tegan loves to lick half-naked people even more than I do. I'll lock her up the second I should need to (fingers crossed) but until then, I want it all -- my dog, my friends, my people.

The main point is that, Stephen Harper notwithstanding (get it?), life is pretty good for my tribe these days. We're here, we're queer, they're mostly used to it. We can get married to our partners and the cops take it seriously when thugs try to beat us up. There's still a lot of work to do -- I told a couple of people from Halifax that an old friend is thrilled to have moved out there last year but I saw their faces pale when I mentioned, "with his boyfriend." Should I not have mentioned that bit? No friggin' way.

So, even while a friend very sensibly avoids this town altogether this weekend, I'm possessed of a deep and abiding masochistic streak that invites me to say, 'this time it'll be different,' to hit the streets and bask in three days of a world turned upside down (boy, you turn me...inside out...round and round).

I'm even feeling a little nostalgic for Queer as Folk. I was subjected to it every Monday night at Woody's and the show's 'almost-but-not-quite' writing drove me nuts but, during my time there, I met a few of the actors and they all seemed like lovely, talented people who truly enjoyed doing the show. In the fourth season, the noisy opening credits were thankfully changed to something stylish, warm and humane -- honouring its actors and all those millions of queer folk watching. It's a decent little snapshot of our lives and it made me smile this morning.

Happy Pride!

Labels: Stephen Harper, Tegan the Jack Russell Terrorist, Trawna

No one who speaks German could be an evil man...

Labels: Stephen Harper

Brendan and Dale here are two of the people I met last weekend at the gay science fiction convention. I went in on Saturday afternoon to attend some panels and find people to interview for my fab article. I was already behind the deadline but you can't write about fans without actually going to their gathering, I insisted. Still, the pressure was on -- I had to talk about sci-fi all day long with all sorts of different people!

Fortunately, this trauma was eased by the late-night charity event in which Brendan and a beautiful straight boy named Nick were among the volunteers feeding people cheesecake for donations to Casey House. Handsome Dale was a writer in Ottawa and we instantly bonded over friendly shop talk before a gentle debate over which one of us Brendan was flirting with more. "Oh please," I said, "He's a 21-year-old from San Francisco -- he's flirting with everybody!" And I was right, though I soon changed my tune by the time Brendan was sitting in my lap and challenging Dale to a Goldschlager shot contest -- Canada vs. the USA!

Do you understand the punishment I had to endure here? I mean, I had planned to leave hours before but, next thing I knew, I had to referee a drinking match with our country's honour at stake! One of the perks of age is that a tendency for indirectness is eventually burned away. I put my arm around Brendan and said, "Dale has a room down the hall -- let's go." The terms of an international alcoholic sports event preclude any further breach of confidentiality, I'm afraid, but I can tell you that Canada won.

I spent the next day with the two of them -- torturous, I know -- and the big geek convention turned out to be as magical and fantastic as it pretended to be. Brendan, meanwhile, revealed the perfect 'newbie' viewpoint for my article so we had an in-depth interview that evening after Dale had caught his train home. He was adorable, articulate and thoughtful. As my friend James likes to say, I fell right in love!

So, in the end, I'm left with a weekend that fired on all cylinders, two lovely new e-mail correspondents, and an article that I couldn't be happier with. It was a difficult road to walk but I've got my feet up on the desk in perfect gloating!

Labels: Canada, fab, friends, oh l'amour

Finally, it's done. A couple months ago, Steven the editor asked me if I'd be willing to do a piece for fab on gay fans and did I know anything about science fiction? I laughed out loud.

After weeks of research, nearly ten hours of interviews and six drafts, I'm not laughing any more. The article I thought would be a joy to write became a millstone around my neck. Sometimes being too close to a topic can be as big a burden as not knowing enough about it.

But it's done -- my first 4000-word piece (or 3000, once the butchers are through with it) and I'm thrilled. My only regret is that the article is too long to include the sidebar Steven and I wanted to do -- a humorous little stripe of "sci-fi's gayest moments." Thanks to the wonders of the Blog, however, here it is:


COMET DUST: Tiny but brilliant gay moments in sci-fi pop culture

Barbarella (1968)
The entire movie. Seriously.

Logan’s Run (1976)
Michael York’s teleporter brings potential dates right into his apartment – one of whom is a man. Later, Farrah Fawcett turns up at the “New You” laser plastic surgery clinic. Too camp!

Flash Gordon (1980)
A hunky blond hero, a fey villain in fabulous outfits and a soundtrack by Queen make this goofy sci-fi flick gayer than Queer as Folk.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – “Rejoined” (1995)
Okay, they weren’t lesbians but this was still the hottest girl-on-girl make-out since Bound.

Starship Troopers (1997)
Hunky Casper Van Dien accidentally kills a fellow soldier. His military punishment involves being stripped, chained and whipped. Straight geeks are suddenly watching gay S/M porn!

The Fifth Element (1997)
As always, no actual gay characters but it’s got the wildly queeny Chris Tucker, a dyed-blond Bruce Willis, a fight scene set to opera-funk and costume design by Jean-Paul Gaultier.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer – "Doppelgangland" (1999)
Willow sees the other-universe version of herself: “That’s me as a vampire? I’m so evil and skanky…and I think I’m kinda gay.”

Farscape – “Rhapsody in Blue” (1999)
Sure, astronaut John Crighton is straight and surrounded by sexy space chicks but a hot stud being bounced around a spaceship in his underwear certainly helped a show pick up new gay fans.

Smallville – most of it! (2001 – present)
In this version of Superman’s teen years, Clark Kent and Lex Luthor keep looking at each other like they’re about to make out at any moment. Rumour has it the producers had to tell the actors to knock it off but they were too late – straight girls love TV’s hottest gay couple!

X2: X-Men United (2003)
Ian McKellen’s sly villain Magneto almost kills Rogue, leaving her hair white. Reunited in the gay-subtext sequel, he purrs, “I love what you’ve done with your hair.” Ooh, snap!

Doctor Who – “Bad Wolf” (2005)
Searching for the Doctor, Captain Jack is captured and stripped naked by two female robots. Suddenly, he pulls a gun on them.
ROBOT: “That’s a Compact Laser Deluxe! Where did you get that?”
JACK: “You really don’t wanna know!” He shoots them and escapes.

Battlestar Galactica – “Lay Down Your Burdens, Part 2” (2006)
The shocking season finale: abruptly, it’s one year later…and Apollo is married and fat!
Nooooo!!

Labels: comic books, Doctor Who, fab

I briefly flirted with going on a rant about how the Republican campaign guy who smeared Al Gore in 2000 is now being charged with -- quelle surprise -- child molestation, but I've already listed over fifty such examples. The right-wing horror machine is finally exhausting even me.

Instead, I'm just going to reprint this piece by Randall Balmer, a professor of American religious history at Barnard College at Columbia University, New York. He's one of the heroes trying to take the evil out of evangelical. Normally, I'd just provide a link but this essay rocks so very hard, I had to print it all in hopes that more people will read it:

Jesus Is Not a Republican

By RANDALL BALMER

In November 2002, 30 years after my previous visit to Wheaton College to hear George McGovern, I approached the podium in Edman Chapel to address the student body. At evangelical colleges like Wheaton, in Illinois, there are two kinds of required gatherings: chapel and convocation. The former is religious in nature, whereas a speaker at convocation has the license to be far more discursive, even secular — or political. The college's chaplain, however, had invited me to preach in chapel, not convocation, and so, despite temptation, I delivered a homily that was, as I recall, not overly long, appropriate to the occasion, and reasonably well received.

I doubt very much that I will be invited back to Edman Chapel. One of the benefits of being reared within evangelicalism, I suppose, is that you understand the workings of the evangelical subculture. I know, for example, that when my new book on evangelicals appears, the minions of the religious right will seek to discredit me rather than engage the substance of my arguments. The initial wave of criticism, as an old friend who has endured similar attacks reminded me, will be to deny that I am, in fact, really an evangelical Christian. When that fails — and I'll put up my credentials as an evangelical against anyone's! — the next approach will be some gratuitous personal attack: that I am a member of the academic elite, spokesman for the Northeastern establishment, misguided liberal, prodigal son, traitor to the faith, or some such. Another evangelical friend with political convictions similar to mine actually endured a heresy trial.

The evangelical subculture, which prizes conformity above all else, doesn't suffer rebels gladly, and it is especially intolerant of anyone with the temerity to challenge the shibboleths of the religious right. I understand that. Despite their putative claims to the faith, the leaders of the religious right are vicious toward anyone who refuses to kowtow to their version of orthodoxy, and their machinery of vilification strikes with ruthless, dispassionate efficiency. Longtime friends (and not a few family members) will shuffle uneasily around me and studiously avoid any sort of substantive conversation about the issues I raise — and then quietly strike my name from their Christmas-card lists. Circle the wagons. Brook no dissent.

And so, since my chances of being invited back to Edman Chapel have dropped from slim to none, I offer here an outline of what I would like to say to the students at Wheaton and, by extension, to evangelicals everywhere.

Evangelicals have come a long way since my visit to Edman Chapel in 1972. We have moved from cultural obscurity — almost invisibility — to becoming a major force in American society. Jimmy Carter's run for the presidency launched us into the national consciousness, but evangelicals abandoned Carter by the end of the 1970s, as the nascent religious right forged an alliance with the Republican Party.

In terms of cultural and political influence, that alliance has been a bonanza for both sides. The coalition dominates talk radio and controls a growing number of state legislatures and local school boards. It is seeking, with some initial success, to recast Hollywood and the entertainment industry. The Republicans have come to depend on religious-right voters as their most reliable constituency, and, with the Republicans firmly in command of all three branches of the federal government, leaders of the religious right now enjoy unprecedented access to power.

And what has the religious right done with its political influence? Judging by the platform and the policies of the Republican Party — and I'm aware of no way to disentangle the agenda of the Republican Party from the goals of the religious right — the purpose of all this grasping for power looks something like this: an expansion of tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, the continued prosecution of a war in the Middle East that enraged our longtime allies and would not meet even the barest of just-war criteria, and a rejiggering of Social Security, the effect of which, most observers agree, would be to fray the social-safety net for the poorest among us. Public education is very much imperiled by Republican policies, to the evident satisfaction of the religious right, and it seeks to replace science curricula with theology, thereby transforming students into catechumens.

America's grossly disproportionate consumption of energy continues unabated, prompting demands for oil exploration in environmentally sensitive areas. The Bush administration has jettisoned U.S. participation in the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, which called on Americans to make at least a token effort to combat global warming. Corporate interests are treated with the kind of reverence and deference once reserved for the deity.

The Bible contains something like 2,000 references to the poor and the believer's responsibility for the poor. Sadly, that obligation seems not to have trickled down into public policy. On judicial matters, the religious right demands appointees who would diminish individual rights to privacy with regard to abortion. At the same time, it approves a corresponding expansion of presidential powers, thereby disrupting the constitutionally mandated system of checks and balances.

The torture of human beings, God's creatures — some guilty of crimes, others not — has been justified by the Bush administration, which also believes that it is perfectly acceptable to conduct surveillance on American citizens without putting itself to the trouble of obtaining a court order. Indeed, the chicanery, the bullying, and the flouting of the rule of law that emanates from the nation's capital these days make Richard Nixon look like a fraternity prankster.

Where does the religious right stand in all this? Following the revelations that the U.S. government exported prisoners to nations that have no scruples about the use of torture, I wrote to several prominent religious-right organizations. Please send me, I asked, a copy of your organization's position on the administration's use of torture. Surely, I thought, this is one issue that would allow the religious right to demonstrate its independence from the administration, for surely no one who calls himself a child of God or who professes to hear "fetal screams" could possibly countenance the use of torture. Although I didn't really expect that the religious right would climb out of the Republican Party's cozy bed over the torture of human beings, I thought perhaps they might poke out a foot and maybe wiggle a toe or two.

I was wrong. Of the eight religious-right organizations I contacted, only two, the Family Research Council and the Institute on Religion and Democracy, answered my query. Both were eager to defend administration policies. "It is our understanding, from statements released by the Bush administration," the reply from the Family Research Council read, "that torture is already prohibited as a means of collecting intelligence data." The Institute on Religion and Democracy stated that "torture is a violation of human dignity, contrary to biblical teachings," but conceded that it had "not yet produced a more comprehensive statement on the subject," even months after the revelations. Its president worried that the "anti-torture campaign seems to be aimed exclusively at the Bush administration," thereby creating a public-relations challenge.

I'm sorry, but the use of torture under any circumstances is a moral issue, not a public-relations dilemma.

And what about abortion, the issue that the religious right decided in the early 1980s was its signature concern? Since January 2003, the Republican and religious-right coalition has controlled the presidency and both houses of Congress — yet, curiously, it has not tried to outlaw abortion. Why? Could it be that its members are less interested in actually reducing the incidence of abortion itself (in which case they should seek to alter public opinion on the matter) than in continuing to use abortion as a potent political weapon?

Equally striking is the rhetoric that leaders of the religious right use to motivate their followers. In the course of traveling around the country, I have been impressed anew by the pervasiveness of the language of militarism among leaders of the religious right. Patrick Henry College, according to its founding president, Michael Farris, "is training an army of young people who will lead the nation and shape the culture with biblical values." Rod Parsley, pastor of World Harvest Church, in Ohio, issues swords to those who join his organization, the Center for Moral Clarity, and calls on his followers to "lock and load" for a "Holy Ghost invasion." The Traditional Values Coalition advertises its "Battle Plan" to take over the federal judiciary. "I want to be invisible. I do guerrilla warfare," Ralph Reed, former director of the Christian Coalition, famously declared about his political tactics in 1997. I wonder how that sounds in the ears of the Prince of Peace.

Such rhetoric and policies are a scandal, a reproach to the gospel I honor and to the Jesus I love. I went to Sunday school nearly every week of my childhood. But I must have been absent the day they told us that the followers of Jesus were obliged to secure even greater economic advantages for the affluent, to deprive those Jesus called "the least of these" of a living wage, and to despoil the environment by sacrificing it on the altar of free enterprise. I missed the lesson telling me that I should turn a blind eye to the suffering of others, even those designated as my enemies.

The Bible I read says something quite different. It tells the story of ancient Israel's epic struggle against injustice and bondage — and of the Almighty's investment in the outcome of that struggle. But the Hebrew Scriptures also caution against the imperiousness of that people, newly liberated from their oppressors, lest they treat others the way they themselves were treated back in Egypt. The prophets enjoin Yahweh's chosen people to "act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God" and warn of the consequences of failing to do so: exile and abandonment. "Administer true justice," the prophet Zechariah declares on behalf of the Lord Almighty. "Show mercy and compassion to one another. Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the foreigner or the poor. Do not plot evil against each other."

The New Testament echoes those themes, calling the followers of Jesus to care for orphans and widows, to clothe the naked, and to shelter the homeless. The New Testament I read says that, in the eyes of Jesus, there is no preference among the races and no distinction between the sexes. The Jesus I try to follow tells me that those who take on the role of peacemakers "will be called the children of God," and this same Jesus spells out the kind of behavior that might be grounds for exclusion from the kingdom of heaven: "I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me."

We could have a lively discussion and even vigorous disagreement over whether it is incumbent upon the government to provide services to the poor, but those who argue against such measures should be prepared with some alternative program or apparatus.

The agenda of the Republican-religious-right coalition, moreover, is utterly disconsonant with the distinguished record of evangelical activists in the 19th century. They interpreted the teachings of Jesus to mean that, yes, they really did bear responsibility for those on the margins of society, especially for the emancipation of slaves and for the rights of women.

In addition to distorting the teachings of Jesus, the religious right has also been cavorting with some rather unsavory characters in its quest for political and cultural power. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, who last year pleaded guilty to accepting $2.4-million worth of bribes, had earned a 100-percent approval rating from Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition while a member of the House of Representatives. During more than two decades as a member of the state Legislature, Jim West, a former mayor of Spokane, Wash., sponsored various bills aimed at curtailing the rights of gays and lesbians, as well as a bill that would have outlawed any consensual sexual contact between teenagers; the voters of Spokane recalled West last December, after he admitted to arranging gay sexual liaisons over the Internet and offering city jobs in exchange for sexual favors.

For the better part of three decades now, we've been treated to the moral sermonizing of William J. Bennett, who wrote The Book of Virtues and served as Ronald Reagan's secretary of education and as one of Bill Clinton's most relentless critics. We now know that Bennett is a compulsive gambler. Ralph Reed, currently a Republican candidate for lieutenant governor of Georgia — the first step on his road to the White House — has always preached against gambling as part of his "family values" rhetoric. He has also done consulting work for Enron (which engaged in other forms of gambling) and accepted as much as $4.2-million from Indian tribes intent on maintaining a regional monopoly for their casinos. "I need to start humping in corporate accounts," he wrote to the lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Tony Perkins, a graduate of Jerry Falwell's Liberty University and head of the Family Research Council, arguably the most influential religious-right organization aside from Focus on the Family, has had ties to white-supremacist organizations in his native Louisiana.

The purpose in ticking off a roll call of rogues associated with the religious right (and the list could have been longer) is not to single individuals out for obloquy and certainly not to suggest the absence of moral failings on the other side of the political spectrum — though I must say that some of this behavior makes Bill Clinton's adolescent dalliances pale by comparison. The point, rather, is to argue that those who make it their business to demand high standards of moral rectitude from others ought to be able to approach those standards themselves. My evangelical theology tells me that we are, all of us, sinners and flawed individuals. But it also teaches the importance of confession, restitution, and amendment of behavior — whether it be an adulterous tryst, racial intolerance, or prevarication in the service of combating one's enemies. We have seen nothing of the sort from these putatively Christian power brokers.

"Do not be misled," St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians. "Bad company corrupts good character." Jesus himself asked: "What good would it be for you to gain the whole world, yet forfeit your soul?" The coalition with the Republican Party is blasphemy, pure and simple.

It has also led to a denigration of the faith. The early years of the religious right provide a case in point. The pursuit of political power and influence in the 1980s came at a fearsome price. For most of the 20th century, evangelicalism had existed primarily within its own subculture, one that protected individuals from the depredations of the world. It was an insular universe, and the world outside of the subculture, including the political realm, was corrupt and corrupting. Believers beware. Along about 1980, however, evangelicals, newly intoxicated with political power and cultural influence, succumbed to the seductions of the culture. It was during the Reagan years that we began to hear about the so-called prosperity gospel, the notion that God will reward true believers with the emoluments of this world. Evangelicalism was still a subculture in the 1980s, but it was no longer a counterculture. It had lost its edge, its capacity for cultural critique.

A number of people have asked me what the religious right wants. What would America look like if the religious right had its way? I've thought long and hard about that question, and the best answer I can come up with is that the religious right hankers for the kind of homogeneous theocracy that the Puritans tried to establish in 17th-century Massachusetts: to impose their vision of a moral order on all of society.

The Puritans left England and crossed the Atlantic in the 1630s to construct what John Winthrop called a "city on a hill," an example to the rest of the world. The Puritans configured church and state so the two would be both coterminous and mutually reinforcing, but only one form of worship was permitted.

Without question, Puritanism in 17th-century Massachusetts was a grand and noble vision, but it ultimately collapsed beneath its own weight, beneath the arrogance of its own pretensions. By the middle of the century, Puritanism had become ingrown and calcified, the founding generation unable to transmit its piety to its children. By the waning decades of the century, in the face of encroaching pluralism — Anglicans and Quakers — and the rise of a merchant class, the Puritan ministers of Massachusetts were making increasingly impassioned, frantic calls for repentance. What frightened them — no less than the leaders of the religious right at the turn of the 21st century — was pluralism.

Despite the best efforts of the Puritan clergy, spirituality in New England continued to languish into the 18th century. The tide began to turn when fresher and more energetic preachers entered the scene in the 1730s. George Whitefield, Gilbert Tennent, Isaac Backus, and others challenged the cozy relationship between church and state and thereby reinvigorated religion in New England. The force of their ideas and their assault on the status quo spread throughout the Atlantic colonies in an utterly transformative event known as the Great Awakening.

The lesson was clear. Religion functions best outside the political order, and often as a challenge to the political order. When it identifies too closely with the state, it becomes complacent and ossified, and efforts to coerce piety or to proscribe certain behavior in the interests of moral conformity are unavailing.

Thankfully, the founding fathers recognized that wisdom and codified it into the First Amendment, the best friend that religion has ever had. The First Amendment was a concession to pluralism, and its guarantee of a "free market" of religion has ensured a salubrious religious marketplace unmatched anywhere else in the world.

Unfortunately, some of the clergy in New England still refused to concede their prerogatives and surrender to the religious marketplace. Congregationalists in Massachusetts and Connecticut clung stubbornly to their establishment status, not wanting to forfeit the tax subsidies afforded them by the state. From his post in Litchfield, Conn., Lyman Beecher resisted "the fall of the standing order" in Connecticut. In 1820, however, a scant two years after Connecticut did away with state-subsidized religion (Massachusetts would follow suit in 1833, the last state to do so), Beecher was forced to repent. Although he and his fellow Congregationalist ministers had feared "that our children would scatter like partridges," the effect of disestablishment was quite the opposite. "Before we had been standing on what our fathers had done," Beecher recalled in his autobiography, "but now we were obliged to develop all our energy." After disestablishment, he wrote, "there came such a time of revival as never before."

The leaders of the religious right are also frightened by pluralism. That's understandable, especially for a movement that propagates the ideology that America is — and always has been — a Christian nation. Pluralism is messy. It requires understanding, accommodation, and tolerance, especially if we hope to maintain some semblance of comity and social order. The Puritans hated pluralism, as did the Protestants of the 19th century in the face of Catholic immigrants from Ireland, Germany, and Italy. Changes in the immigration laws in 1965 brought to the United States new hues of ethnic and religious pluralism, a rich and diverse palette unimaginable to the Protestants of the 1950s, let alone to the Puritans of the 1650s.

By the late 1970s, the leaders of the religious right felt their hegemony over American society slipping away. One reading of the religious right is that many evangelicals believed that their faith could no longer compete in the new, expanded religious marketplace. No wonder the religious right wants to renege on the First Amendment. No wonder the religious right seeks to encode its version of morality into civil and criminal law. No wonder the religious right wants to emblazon its religious creeds and symbols on public property. Faced now with a newly expanded religious marketplace, it wants to change the rules of engagement so that evangelicals can enjoy a competitive advantage. Rather than gear up for new competition, as Beecher did in the 19th century, the religious right seeks to use the machinations of government and public policy to impose its vision of a theocratic order.

But pluralism is a good thing. It keeps religious groups from resting on their laurels — or their endowments, in the case of mainline Protestantism — and makes them competitive in the marketplace of ideas.

Ironically, the one movement that, more than any other, has in the past exploited the free marketplace of religion to its advantage is evangelical Protestantism. Evangelicals have understood almost instinctively how to speak the idiom of the culture, whether it be the open-air preaching of George Whitefield in the 18th century, the circuit riders and the camp meetings of the antebellum period, the urban revivalism of Billy Sunday at the turn of the 20th century, or the use of radio and television by various preachers in the 20th and 21st centuries.

America has been kind to religion, but not because the government has imposed religious faith or practice on its citizens. Quite the opposite. Religion has flourished because religious belief and expression have been voluntary, not compulsory. We are a religious people precisely because we have recognized the rights of our citizens to be religious in a different way from us, or even not to be religious at all. We are simultaneously a people of faith and citizens of a pluralistic society, one in which Americans believe that it is inappropriate, even oppressive, to impose the religious views of a minority — or even of a majority — on all of society. That is the genius of America, and it is also the reason that religion thrives here as nowhere else.

As I argued in my testimony as an expert witness in the Alabama Ten Commandments case, religion has prospered in this country precisely because the government has stayed out of the religion business. The tireless efforts on the part of the religious right to eviscerate the First Amendment in the interests of imposing its own theocratic vision ultimately demeans the faith even as it undermines the foundations of a democratic order that thrives on pluralism.

Jesus himself recognized that his followers held a dual citizenship. "Give back to Caesar what is Caesar's," he said, "and to God what is God's." Negotiating that dual status can be fraught, but it is incumbent upon responsible citizens of this earthly realm to abide by certain standards of behavior deemed essential for the functioning of the social order. Much as I would like all of my fellow Americans to be Christians or vegetarians or Democrats, I have no right to demand it. The leaders of the religious right have failed to observe even the most basic etiquette of democracy.

Is there a better way? Yes, I think so. It begins with an acknowledgement that religion in America has always functioned best from the margins, outside of the circles of power, and that any grasping for religious hegemony ultimately trivializes and diminishes the faith. The Puritans of the 17th century learned that lesson the hard way, as did the mainline Protestants of the 1950s, who sought to identify their faith with the white, middle-class values of the Eisenhower era. In both cases, it was the evangelicals who stepped in and offered a corrective, a vibrant expression of the faith untethered to cultural institutions that issued, first, in the Great Awakening and, second, in the evangelical resurgence of the 1970s.

For America's evangelicals, reclaiming the faith would produce a social and political ethic rather different from the one propagated by the religious right. Care for the earth and for God's creation provides a good place to start, building on the growing evangelical discontent with the rapacious environmental policies of the Republican-religious-right coalition. Once thinking evangelicals challenge religious-right orthodoxy on environmental matters, further challenges are possible. A full-throated, unconditional denunciation of the use of torture, even on political enemies, would certainly follow. Evangelicals opposed to abortion would be well advised to follow some Catholic teaching a bit further on this issue. As early as 1984, Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, the late archbishop of Chicago, talked about opposition to abortion as part of a "seamless garment" that included other "life issues": care for the poor and feeding the hungry, advocacy for human rights, and unequivocal opposition to capital punishment. Surely the adoption of what Bernardin called a "consistent ethic of life" carries with it greater moral authority than opposition to abortion alone.

As for abortion itself, evangelicals should consider carefully where they invest their energies on this matter. Both sides of the abortion debate acknowledge that making abortion illegal will not stop abortion itself; it will make abortions more dangerous for the life and health of the mother. The other complication is legal and constitutional. Especially at a time when the government's surveillance activities are already intruding on the privacy and the civil liberties of Americans, we should consider carefully the wisdom of allowing the government to determine a matter properly left to a woman and her conscience.

I have no interest in making abortion illegal; I would like to make it unthinkable. The most effective way to limit the incidence of abortion is to change the moral climate surrounding the issue — through education or even through public-service campaigns similar to those that discourage smoking or drugs or alcohol or spousal abuse.

Taking such a broader approach to "life issues" would affect evangelical attitudes not only toward abortion and capital punishment but also to matters related to race and to the poor. The social and economic policies of this nation seem to have created a permanent underclass. If evangelicals believe that God cares about the fate of a fetus, it shouldn't require a huge leap in logic to surmise that God also cares about people of color or prisoners or immigrants or people with an orientation other than heterosexual.

Finally, an evangelical social and political ethic would take into account the pluralistic context of American society and recognize the genius of the First Amendment. That requires respect for the canons of democracy and for the importance of public education to ensure its future. It acknowledges, for example, that the proper venue for the teaching of creationism or intelligent design is the home or the Sunday-school classroom, not the science curriculum. It means refusing to identify the symbols of the faith — the Bible, prayer, the Decaloguewith the political order. In short, our best hope for the recovery of an evangelical social and political ethic lies with recognizing that the faith functions best independent of the political order.

Indeed, one of the hallmarks of this grand experiment of democracy in America has been its vigilance over the rights of minorities. Evangelicals should appreciate that, for they were once a minority themselves. Evangelicals need once again to learn to be a counterculture, much as they were before the rise of the religious right, before succumbing to the seductions of power. The early followers of Jesus were a counterculture because they stood apart from the prevailing order. A counterculture can provide a critique of the powerful because it is utterly disinterested — it has no investment in the power structure itself.

Indeed, the most effective and vigorous religious movements in American history have identified with the downtrodden and have positioned themselves on the fringes of society rather than at the centers of power. The Methodists of the 19th century come to mind, as do the Mormons. In the 20th century, Pentecostalism, which initially appealed to the lower classes and made room for women and people of color, became perhaps the most significant religious movement of the century.

The leaders of the religious right have led their sheep astray from the gospel of Jesus Christ to the false gospel of neoconservative ideology and into the maw of the Republican Party. And yet my regard for the flock and my respect for their integrity is undiminished. Ultimately it is they who must reclaim the gospel and rescue us from the distortions of the religious right.

The Bible I read tells of freedom for captives and deliverance from oppression. It teaches that those who refuse to act with justice or who neglect the plight of those less fortunate have some explaining to do. But the Bible is also about good news. It promises redemption and forgiveness, a chance to start anew and, with divine help, to get it right. My evangelical theology assures me that no one, not even Karl Rove or James Dobson, lies beyond the reach of redemption, and that even a people led astray can find their way home.

That sounds like good news to me. Very good news indeed.

Labels: George W Bush, religion

With all the comic book adaptations, 1970's remakes and new versions of bad TV shows in the movie theatres now, people are apt to say that Hollywood has run out of ideas.
Au contraire.

This summer, Samuel L. Jackson will star in a film so bold, so audacious in the faith of its own core concept that many are predicting it will rule the summer boxoffice.
It's Snakes on a Plane.

Now, I can't tell if that title signals the End of Civilization As We Know It or the funniest thing I've ever heard, but I have to admit that screenwriter Josh Friedman certainly gave it the hard sell:

I will not give away any of the plot details of SNAKES ON A PLANE. But know this. As the great Sam Jackson would say: There are motherfucking snakes on the motherfucking plane.

What else do you need to know? How the snakes get on the plane, what the snakes do once they're on the plane, who puts the snakes on the plane, who is trying to get the snakes off the plane...This is not for you to ponder. There are snakes on the plane. End of fucking story.

The movie opens on August 18th. There will be a plane. With snakes. Snakes on a Plane.
Sam Jackson is so convinced of its excellence that, while presenting an MTV Movie Award last week, he said:

I'm guaranteeing that Snakes on a Plane will win Best Movie next year. Does not matter what else is coming out. New James Bond...no snakes in that! Ocean's 13...where my snakes at? Shrek the Third...green, but not a snake. No movie shall triumph over Snakes on a Plane. Unless I happen to feel like making a movie called Mo' Mothafuckin' Snakes on Mo' Mothafuckin' Planes.

Easy there, Sam -- save some ideas for the sequel! Meanwhile, I'm crafting my own version: a film that's boldly personal yet truly terrifying. I'm calling it Terriers on a Sofa.

Labels: movies, silliness

It's tough to find romance in Toronto, especially if you're this guy:

"Toronto Police have issued a warning about a pervert they believe is behind a series of increasingly strange sexual assaults. He comes up to his victims and introduces himself. He then offers to shake their hands. But when the unsuspecting ladies good naturedly offer him theirs, he refuses to let go. He then kisses the startled females on both cheeks, licks their necks, claims he's their boyfriend and then leaves hurling numerous obscenities at them."

Most of my relationships have played out like that. I think he just sounds lonely...can't imagine why:

"Police have been able to come up with a sketch of the bizarre brutalizer, who's said to be:

White, Possibly Greek, Portuguese or Italian, 60-70, 5'7", 170 lbs., Short, greying hair, Dark eyes, Thick European accent.

He wears a beret with a peak on the front."

Well, there's your problem, my slobbering friend! Berets are so Iraqi military, not at all fashionable these days. Try a raspberry one (I hear they work) -- that way, the Girl of Your Dreams will be able to spot you a mile away!
Hopefully.

Labels: insanity, Trawna

It's nice to see that intelligent adults can still have a reasonable discussion of issues -- in this case, two Mormon professors discussing gay marriage. Jeffrey Nielsen, a philosophy teacher at Brigham Young University, said:

"Truly, God would be unjust if He were the creator of a biological process that produced such uncommon, yet perfectly natural results, and then condemned the innocent person to a life of guilt, while denying him or her the ordinary privileges and fulfillment of the deep longing in all of us for family and a committed, loving relationship.

Even if the scientific evidence does not yet establish this beyond reasonable doubt, it seems that virtuous moderation and loving kindness require us to exercise caution before making constitutionally binding discrimination against a whole class of people based only on fear and superstition. In fact, when we examine the statements opposing gay marriage, we find few reasonable arguments.
...
How could the union of two committed and loving people negatively affect my marriage? I believe that quite the contrary is true; namely, legalizing gay marriage reinforces the importance of committed relationships and would strengthen the institution of marriage."

Thank you, Jeremy, some good points there. Now let's hear the opposing arguments from Daniel Graham, Chairman of Brigham Young University's Department of Philosophy:

"In accordance with the order of the church, we do not consider it our responsibility to correct, contradict or dismiss official pronouncements of the church. Since you have chosen to contradict and oppose the church in an area of great concern to church leaders, and to do so in a public forum, we will not rehire you after the current term is over."

There. Argument settled. Advantage: Graham!

Never underestimate the power of symbolism. The Macy's store in Boston decided to do a window display for Pride as so many stores who value us loyal homo shoppers tend to do these days and Andy Towle documents what happened next.

After caving in to the infamous Brian Camenker and his loud band of bigots, the Macy's/Bloomingdale people are now bracing for impact as they lose an entire customer base, one that spends a lot more money than your average fundamentalist. Me, I don't know a Bloomies from a Niemens but I thought I'd show my support by e-mailing this to the Macy's executives:

Dear Macy's,

It's obviously difficult to cater to everyone. All of your customers have different interests, outlooks and lifestyles. Sometimes you have to make choices to please one group over another -- even if just for a couple of weeks like, say, during Gay Pride festivities.

In that context, catering to one hatemonger and his small band of angry activists seems like an odd choice, especially in such a progressive, civilized city like Boston. It wasn't a bold decision to place 'gay' mannequins in your windows but it was a thoughtful and kind one -- only now revoked.

You say you "regret offending" those who seek to eliminate gay people from our society. Visual representations like mannequins are just the beginning, or have you never heard of the hundreds of teenagers sent off to 'reparative therapy' camps or given electroshock treatments in hospitals?

People like the MassResistance group draw lines in the sand -- arbitrary, unnecessary divisions between people in a time when we need to work together more than ever. They force a conflict and you've chosen their side. Please consider that as you whine about the angry letters, ill will, poor public relations and sliding sales figures that your unfortunate choice will bring you.

Hey, that felt good! Care to join in? Here's the e-mail addresses:

terry.lundgren@federated-fds.com, thomas.cody@federated-fds.com, thomas.cole@federated-fds.com, janet.grove@federated-fds.com, susan.kronick@federated-fds.com, ronald.tysoe@federated-fds.com, karen.hoguet@federated-fds.com, kimberly.reason@macys.com, ellen.fruchtman@macys.com, elina.kazan@macys.com, ronnie.taffet@macys.com, lisa.kauffman@macys.com

After a couple weeks of trying to organize around our ridiculous schedules, a big group of my friends all gathered together last night to go and see the third X-Men film. There was Trevor, 'the Jameses', Robert, Dave and their friends Scott and Jeff. I hadn't seen many of them in weeks (and Jeff, never) so it was really great to have everyone together for once.

The movie? Not so much, though I enjoyed it a lot more than I'd expected after the announcement that Brett Ratner would be directing it. Bryan Singer had done such a superb job in bringing the comic book heroes to the screen (especially in X2: X-Men United, one of my favourite films, period) so the new guy was bound to disappoint. The film spent the first hour setting up numerous fascinating plotlines, then spent the second hour ignoring most of them while blowing up cars. Very irksome, that, though I'd be lying if I said that Magneto's destruction of the Golden Gate Bridge wasn't an eye-popping set piece.

What really mattered was just the enjoyment in spending a couple hours with characters I've been fond of since I was a kid, played by actors I've become fond of as an adult. They carried the film in grand style.

And best of all was being able to carry that enjoyment forward, to natter about it all afterward with a tableful of martinis and a group of men I delight in listening to -- more fascinating, more strange and more fun than any band of superpowered mutants.

Labels: comic books, friends

This Ann Coulter thing is still with me but I'll quickly explain why -- aside from her obviously monstrous comments, I am truly unsettled by the complicity of the media in her career. Yesterday's disaster marked the third time she's appeared on The Today Show this year. Novelist, biographer and essayist Gore Vidal -- to name but one other -- is a brilliant, venerable commentator on American culture. I think he was last on TV in 1974.

This is worse than just bias. Allowing people like Coulter or Bill O'Reilly or Rush Limbaugh the time, money and exposure to vent their bigoted, ill-informed drivel cheapens the entire media, once known as our 'guardians of democracy.' We're seeing the results first-hand. If Coulter can airily toss off hate speech on national TV and be met with yawns and comments like "that's just her opinion" and "who cares, anyway?" then there's no need for anyone to do any research, to consider the experiences of others, to commit to any kind of civil discourse. Of course this matters. Lost in this fog of idiot pseudo-dialogue, how can any kind of consensus happen?

Thankfully, I can follow up that clip of Coulter's horrid ranting with an example of its opposite -- Jon Stewart's deft confrontation with Bill Bennett over gay marriage. Stewart is as forceful as Coulter, except that he listens to Bennett's objections, he counters them with informed wit and he's not incredibly fucking evil:

Earlier today, I used the words "Ann Coulter" and "comedy" in the same sentence.

Bad idea.



As the Globe and Mail's ads used to say, "Anyone can have an opinion, but is it informed?" It boggles the mind that someone who can actually talk about the September 11th widows and say, "I have never seen people enjoying their husbands’ death so much" is allowed near other humans, much less on a national broadcast.

A couple of people have asked me why people listen to Ann Coulter and my only explanation is that she's essentially that old, crazy racist uncle nearly every family is saddled with, only in the body of a young blonde woman. The media finds that fascinating (I, apparently, find that fascinating) but she must be stopped. Don't visit her website, don't buy her book, don't watch any show she appears on or buy any magazine that interviews her. Make her go away!

Yes, everyone's snickering over today's date -- 6/6/6 -- and, with all the devil-themed silliness going on today, it feels like Halloween in June:

-- the Church of Satan is hosting a satanic high mass in Los Angeles and High Priest Peter Gilmore will 'bless' those who "champion reason, pluralism, skepticism and abundant joy in life" (which sounds pretty good, actually!)

-- the 'National Day of Slayer' with the band printing 666 limited edition T-shirts

-- the heavy metal band Viking Skull are playing in London UK, with tickets priced at £6.66.

-- the remake of The Omen is being released

-- the ever-creepy Ann Coulter releases her latest book, "Godless: The Church of Liberalism," proving once and for all that her ranting schtick is just one bad comedy routine

My personal favourite is this headline, "Some expect Antichrist on Tuesday." I of course immediately thought of this bit :

ROMANA: He says he's planning to destroy the world. Next Tuesday.
THE DOCTOR: How vulgar. Nothing important happens on a Tuesday!
-- from Gareth Roberts' "Doctor Who" novel "The English Way of Death"

So there you have it. Unless you'll argue that, while the Doctor is a fictional character, Satan is real. In that case, we're done talking.

Labels: Doctor Who

Yep, here I was, another liberal fag asking the usual questions like
"War, what is it good for?"
"Muslims, are they really so terrible?" and
"Nixon lied, Clinton got blown, but we can't impeach George Bush for torturing people?"
All the usual War-on-Terror-bad, freedom-and-not-killing-good except -- whoops -- police have foiled a massive terrorist plot right here in Toronto.

Well that'll learn me.

As usual, the Star's Rosie DiManno summed it with calm, even-handed diplomacy:

These accused wanted, if intelligence experts are correct (and they've been wrong before), to kill you.

Your children, your parents, your lovers, your neighbours.

Wouldn't matter, the colour of your skin, your mother tongue, the God that you pray to or if you pray at all. Wouldn't matter even if you happen to equate George W. Bush with Osama bin Laden.

The Jihad Generation — nothing alleged about it — makes no distinctions.

Come such a day, Toronto will look like London ... Madrid ... Bali ... New York City.

Blood streaming, mangled metal, severed limbs, inchoate rage and immeasurable grief.

Yeah okay, Rosie ... Rosie? ... Rosie!! We get it already!
Now cut it out -- you're getting drool on the table. Let's all turn the Hysteriameter down to about four, shall we? Don't you and Thomas Walkom run into each other in the Star cafeteria?

Now then, first things first -- huge thanks to the excellent men and women of the RCMP and CSIS who didn't spend their time and our tax money creating the biggest database of personal phonecalls ever or investigating producers of pornography. No, they actually focused on possible terror networks and patiently accumulated evidence against them, rather than simply invade some tangentally-related country.

It's called police work. Because it's done by police and it works.

US Secretary of State Condeleeza Rice was so impressed she made special mention of it. Given the company she keeps, she probably thought these were revolutionary techniques. Even so, I give her points for being classy and rational.

Not so to the people who, following the arrests, vandalized a mosque. It's Muslim, you see. And the terrorists who were arrested? Muslim. And the cab driver who screamed at me and drove away after I'd specifically called for a taxi to take my dog to the vet? Muslim! Why, it's all coming together -- they're evil and must be destroyed!

I kid, of course, though the dog part happened -- another cab driver explained that Muslims have a rule that they must immediately go and wash themselves seven times if a dog should happen to touch them. That's not a religion, I say, that's Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Nevertheless, I've learned to keep my beloved pet away from these people I share my sidewalks with -- it's just what you do in the big city.

That's part of a little thing we call liberal values but, when terrorists don't share them, the obvious thing to do is throw them all away and Canada's conservatives know exactly how to solve the problem:

I know there will be an outcry from the anti-war crowd, the NDP, CAIR, and all the other usual suspects, but the fact of the matter is we need to gut the center of this. We need to destroy the camps and mosques and imams where this poison is coming from before we have a hope of cleaing up our own back yards. And that means Afghanistan. Iraq. Iran. Maybe Indonesia and Pakistan. Line 'em up, we'll knock 'em down. We need to.

Oy. What kills me is the perfect-circle Dr. Strangelove logic on display here: "They've declared a Jihad! That's evil! We'll declare War!" I used to think Brazil was a comedy; now we're living in it.

Once again, there is a middle ground between these two approaches:



It's called police work. Because it's done by police and it works.

Labels: Canada, Middle East, Trawna

I'm not usually so potty-mouthed but, in an era where every second thing in the newspaper makes me homicidal, THIS is the absolute limit [sensitive types, please just skip ahead to the next post]:

Dutch pedophiles are launching a political party to push for a cut in the legal age for sexual relations to 12 from 16 and the legalization of child pornography and sex with animals, sparking widespread outrage.

The Charity, Freedom and Diversity (NVD) party said ..."We want to make pedophilia the subject of discussion," he said, adding the subject had been a taboo since the 1996 Marc Dutroux child abuse scandal in neighboring Belgium. "We want to get into parliament so we have a voice. Other politicians only talk about us in a negative sense, as if we were criminals."

Oh please, find me that one politician who speaks of you in a positive light so I can bitchslap him for three hours.

This enrages me for two reasons -- one political, one personal. On the political front, I can already hear the voices of right-wing morons shouting, "You see? This is what happens when liberals and fags start blah blah yada blah." No, you idiot fucks, it's not. I'm an adult gay man who loves other adult gay men. My adult gay friends love other adult gay men. It's simple but, whenever these creepy people too messed up to deal with other adults start speaking up, we just get more of this in today's paper:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Friday his government plans to hold a vote on the same-sex marriage issue in the fall.
...
Reports emerged this week suggesting that a growing number of cabinet ministers and MPs are questioning whether the debate should be revisited.

Some suggested that the divisive issue has already been debated thoroughly, and others indicated that there are more pressing matters demanding the government's attention.
...
In the United States, President George W. Bush will push for a constitutional amendment next week banning gay marriage.

Oh sweet heaven above, can we knock this off already? How about a new bill on energy policy? Or school and hospital funding? Or anything that fucking matters?

But that's all just the usual political stuff. I hate these guys on a personal level because, well, they molest children (duh!) but worse, they claim that this is all in the children's best interests. This is the most staggering, disgusting twisting of the truth since Nixon said he wasn't a crook. It offends me that they even try to pass this arguement off on people, especially when they use the rhetoric of gay rights.

The gay rights movement flowed through the last few decades because brave people stood up and said, "As adults, we have the right to have sex with anyone we want," and others said, "Yes, as adults, we too have the right to have sex with those people." As political movements go, it's been pretty fun.

Gay rights, however, cannot ever be equated with the demands of paedophiles because we will never, ever, see a group of 12-year-children demonstrating for the right to have creepy middle-aged men fuck them. That will never happen and without it -- I believe the term is 'consensual' -- these people may have every right to speak their opinion but everyone else has the right to tell them to get some professional help or stay the fuck away from the kids.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm still trying to find a husband and bring about the end of civilization itself.

Labels: George W Bush, Stephen Harper

I love, love, love electric cars. Or even the gas hybrid ones. They're like those incredibly-rare well-behaved children. While the others are making grinding noises and spitting up oil, they just cutely putter along, quietly and neatly, taking up little space. Everyone should have one.

But they DO take some getting used to. You glide along in near-silence -- the absense of the motor noise is somehow deafening -- and the jury's still out on how safe or effective they are for cross-country travel. Darcy and I wanted to take one down to Georgia last December but we felt it probably made more sense to go with a small-but-solid sedan. In the city, though, the cars are pretty damn cool.

Even cooler are the new breed of geek machanics who hack their hybrids. It seems that Toyota Prius owners who aren't 100% happy with some of the design features in their otherwise-sensible little cars are cracking the codes and making some tweaks:

"It's the new breed of hot-rodders," said Phillip Torrone, an associate editor at do-it-yourself tech journal Make Magazine. "In the 1950s, it was all about getting more speed. Now, instead of getting more horsepower, it's about getting more miles per gallon. So your hot-rodders are going to be your hot-greeners."

Now there's a competition I can rally behind:

JAMES DEAN [leaning back against a brick wall]:
How many miles you drive on that one tank?

COREY ALLEN [glaring at him with hatred/homoerotic tension]:
Eighty. Got all the way to San Luis Ray.

JAMES DEAN [with a short, snorting laugh]:
Pussy. I went ninety-five.

That would be infinitely preferable to the automotive competition North America is losing:

A Ford Motor Co. plant in Atlanta and a General Motors Corp. facility in Oshawa, Ont., led the [productivity] rankings in the annual Harbour Report, released yesterday by Harbour Consulting, an automotive consulting firm whose yearly study is watched closely in the industry.

The closings of two plants that topped the Harbour list -- as measured by hours needed to assemble a vehicle -- are a sign of the times for the two auto makers, said Canadian Auto Workers union president Buzz Hargrove.

"When you don't have the market share, you don't have the new products, [so] the best plant doesn't mean anything at that point," said Mr. Hargrove, whose members are trying to persuade GM to build a leading-edge, flexible manufacturing operation in Oshawa.

But owners of Toyota electric cars are both irritated enough and enthusiastic enough about their foreign-import cars to do their own home-mechanic hackwork? If that doesn't seem like an opportunity to the Big Three in Detroit, they've got to get their eyes off the rearview mirror.

Labels: Canada