This (http://shine.yahoo.com/beauty/15-biggest-beauty-turnoffs-real-guys-150900080.html) was one of the top articles on Yahoo! today.

The revolution shall not be televised...

There is a phenomenon that I feel I occasionally hint at or passingly refer to from time to time on here in my life, where I find an aspect of myself which I recognize now but would seem to have roots that trace back to some point that fades into the past, and I can no longer discern it distinctly. My liberalism (and the creeping feeling that this was retrieved and enforced by my surrounding culture throughout the entirety – just about – of my childhood) is one of them.

And, it would seem, my Catholicism is one as well (which is particularly bizarre to me), because I really never identified strongly with my Catholicism until college. I don't believe I ever have mentioned this here (though I started to actually notice, and mention, it for the first time after discussing religion in college, first in Williams Secular Community, then with Arantza, Andrew, and Kahn, and then in InterFaith) but, in spite of attending Sunday School (on and off) and stepping foot into a church at least half of the year (Catholic, naturally), I didn't really have a particularly Catholic identity. Sure, I identified as Catholic, but my religious affiliation could really have been better described as a Christian identity than a Catholic one.

America is a Christian nation – insofar that "Christian nation" means one based upon a premise of generic Protestant Christianity largely due to a bizarre necessity, by a decent amount of people, for evangelism (including tacit evangelism like politicians feeling it's necessary to say God bless at the end of every speaking engagement, regardless of zir own religious identifications or those whom ze is addressing) and a held belief that, so long as we all believe in JESUS, everything else will turn out fine (seriously, though, we need to all agree on that one fact – we do, right? Right?).

The downfall of this approach (other than the glaring fact of expected cultural religious conformity) is that a lot of the cool denominational diversity that exists is passed over. However, from a personal perspective, it robbed me of the diversity within my denomination by making me think that Christianity meant X (and, since Catholicism is a form of Christianity, Catholicism must mean X). This provided me with thoughts like Catholicism believed in sola scriptura (Latin for "by scripture alone"). Or, as I've complained irately a multitude of times here, sola fide (Latin for "[salvation] by faith alone").

This, in turn, had me stating that there was no real Christian denomination that I agreed with (how could I, when, in my ignorance, they all required faith for salvation?); I identified as Catholic, because that's what I grew up in and, therefore, was the place of my attendance (it surely had nothing to do with me agreeing with the theology).

This, I think, is why discovery of my Catholicism was this very cool experience (and welcome relief) in college. However, it was also a somewhat bizarre experience, as I realized that a lot of my religion fit me so well. This was bizarre because I had not sought out Catholicism for its stances (indeed, I was so utterly clueless the whole of my childhood as to what Catholicism stood for that I actually rejected it (as I did all Christian denominations) as an imperfect expression of my own beliefs; I had no issue with being Christian: I just didn't agree with the conclusions most Christian religions extrapolated from that). And yet Catholicism seemed to verify so much of what I did agree with:

We employ incense and cross ourselves, because worship should involve all the senses?
Cool; I never thought of theology in that light before.

Our liturgy, like aspects of our scripture and Jewish liturgy, ought to be symbolic and metaphorical?
Cool; as an English major, I can completely get that.

Our Mass should include beautiful music and incense and pretty stained-glass windows, because it ought to be art, because art is a means of connecting with the divine and Truth?
What a beautiful idea.

Reason and logic are tools given to Human-kind, and we ought to use them and, indeed, can (and ought to) use them to perceive and understand God?
How very Enlightenment like.

In lieu of the last point, there ought to be a respect for science as an explainer of our current universe? So much so that St. Augustine said that scripture should possibly be regarded as metaphorical if science contradicts it. On top of that, there's a very rich history of priests as scientists, as well as the church being a patron of the sciences; lest we forget, it was a priest that helped formulate the concept of the Big Bang.
Wonderful.

Of course, some of why I like those things (stuff like the use of reason and the importance of beauty/art) are because they tie us very close to a celebration to the human/earthly form (which, in turn, is why more on the Protestant side dislike Catholicism and just see it as an extension of paganism. All that incense, candles, and stained-glass windows? Just distractions taking your mind away from focusing on God during the service). Admittedly, my favorite priests were the ones who'd sit down with you around at a pub with a beer (or mix drinks) or join you to hang out somewhere or had experience at college campuses – imagine the somewhat portly priest so ridiculed during the middle ages, the priest perceived to be too much of this Earth, too down-to-Earth. Of course, theology was always so much more strongly about morality rather than how wicked the Earth itself is, so I've never been too afraid of celebrating and enjoying our Earthly humanity.

An orthodox Catholic would probably find a middle ground, of sorts. Certainly our humanity isn't to be wholly repudiated. After all, Christ became man, and what was his first miracle? Making water into wine.

But I think this highlights the final conclusion I came to: while Catholicism, I discovered, was the religion that fit me the closest (sans Judaism), I still wound up disagreeing with aspects of it. I graduated with a degree in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies with a concentration in Queer Studies, after all. I would not be surprised to learn that the pope and I have some differing ideas. Despite the absolute unlikelihood of it, I want women ordained; I understand all reasons the why the church refuses on that point, but I can't – in good conscience – agree. And you know, really, my differences are small in number. But they all focus around things which are pretty much dogma by now. For all the changes the church can make (and they can be awesome; how the Mass is viewed after Vatican II is an awesome understanding and approach to our liturgy), they won't be any that address the bulk of my issues with Catholicism.

However, unless I decide to convert to Judaism, this is what I have. The time I became an atheist taught me (ironically) that I am a religious person; my understanding of the world involves religion. Honestly, I think it's inseparable from who I am (there's a reason I was co-president of InterFaith for two years).

However, this isn't a complete impediment. After all, I spent most of the entirety of my life in a religion that I disagreed with; I now agree with it so much more so, so it's even better than it was before, right?

And, really, I don't think I'm really making how clear I like a lot of Catholicism right now. I forget if I mentioned it on here or had only thought to, but it's very difficult to describe the feeling I got when hearing an organ playing from out of a cathedral while at Princeton for the interfaith summit. Or the sounds of, really, any form of chanting of psalms and hymns (though, naturally, Gregorian has a special place in my heart). And, of course, the celebration of the Mass.

But there's also another one of those phenomena I mentioned at the beginning of this post that makes my Catholicism so cozy. Again, for the life of me, I'm not sure where I get this feeling (in particular since I only really started understanding Catholicism in college), but there is a history of liberal Catholics throughout history, a group of liberal intellectuals who, in spite of their differences with Catholicism due to their liberalism, are fully Catholic (and are, in fact, liberal fully due to being Catholic). Yet, if you were to ask me for examples, I would come up short, which isn't to say that the idea is far-fetched. As I've already said, there is an emphasis and respect for intellectualism within Catholicism, particularly in the area of philosophy. And, while part of the reason you can consider the Catholic voting bloc Democratic for the most part (even to this day) is because most Catholic immigrants were Irish (and thus Catholic) while also being working class and, thus, labor (as well as Kennedy, obviously), I think it's telling, when Catholic no longer means Irish here in America, at least 50-some percent of Catholics are still voting Democrat. The only time I've actually really witnessed this was during my Senior year of college with Andrew. We were both pretty hard-leaning liberals, though of different stripes in the end, and yet entirely Catholic.

Both of us could back up why we do what we do during Mass and in most of our theology. Andrew was more versed in the philosophy used by Catholicism to justify itself. I'm pretty concerned regarding liturgy (including that outside of Mass). And, while I was always happy to find myself in a fully-Catholic room from time to time (due to, for nine elevenths of my life, not fully identifying as Catholic), Andrew and I would often laugh about what we disagreed with and perceived as ridiculous about our church (at one point, he mentioned that he thought he had heard that the papacy had released an official apology for what had happened with Galileo; we marveled how, in comparison to other Christian denominations, ours could get so many things right and yet others still so utterly wrong. Then we laughed as we noted the church had no problem with evolution (unlike other denominations) but still hadn't apologized for when it denied that the sun revolved around the Earth).

Side note: come to think of it, Kaz and I probably fall into that same place together, but I feel him and I haven't discussed politics enough for such a dynamic to unfold.

And this is my longwinded way of eventually reaching the point of this post.

I like my religion; I do. Actually, it's (admittedly) more torn than that, with high extremes of each end. While I often don't put anything in the collection plate each Sunday (in part because I don't really have any money, though more these days because I can't justify supporting financially an institution that I disagree so extremely on in some cases), I still vouch for the religion. But the point is, I'm trying to find my place in it. Based on the merits that Catholicism does have, I think we ought to root ourselves in that. In other words, Catholic culture. But what is that, exactly? Good question.

And these thoughts which are usually lurking around my head came to the forefront, when I came across this article: http://patrickdeneen.blogspot.com/2009/05/abortion-and-catholic-culture.html.

At first, I thought the article was going to make the argument that abortion and pro-life culture dominated Catholic culture at the moment (which, really, you can't create a culture around a singular idea), and it was because of this that people were leaving the church in droves (particularly young people). To quote two sentences from the article: "In my view, the singular focus upon abortion as THE issue over which conservative Catholics will brook no divergence and around which we are called to rally reveals, to my mind, not evidence of robust Catholic culture as much as its absence.[…]The ferocity over this issue – and this issue almost to the exclusion of nearly every other issue that might be part of a rich fabric of Catholic culture – suggests to me that Catholic culture, where it existed, has been largely routed."

Instead, the article is about how we live in American society's culture and not in a purely Catholic one, and this is why some Catholics feel okay not centralizing their Catholicism around abortion (after all, abortion is not at the center of Catholic spirituality or theology).

***Note: I'm not interested in contemplating the morality of abortion; that's not the point of this post. Everything written here will be sans my own opinions on abortion, if I even have any***

And this is somewhat central to my search for a Catholic culture or, really, namely a Catholicism I feel comfortable in.

As I noted to my dad a few days ago, I'm extremely conservative when it comes to liturgy (possibly a small part of why I'm so interested in Judaism – our liturgy came out of that, so, if you want to go back to the source…). On the other hand, as I've noted (and demonstrated) a multitude of times here, I'm extremely liberal (no surprise anymore). So, when I find someplace I really like worshiping, I will probably not be liked by most of the people there.

On the other hand, I agree entirely with the concepts of Vatican II regarding changes to the Mass. The difficulty comes with the part that calls for more local aspects brought in (which, ultimately, I do agree). A Mass is a Mass is a Mass. And while I recognize it as valid, it's not my ideal way of celebrating it (a valid opinion, I would argue, seeing that the very construction of the Mass was as an art to be enjoyed and admired). The part of the article that talks about how we are members of parishes (where we live) rather than shopping around for the right place and, thus, we have a culture of acceptance rather than transformation struck me as funny, largely because I've been going to different parishes to see the differing Masses because the one in my parish is far too liberal in its liturgy for my taste (and it's not even that liberal, by today's standards; it's actually rather common place – hence why I haven't settled for a particular parish yet).

Yet there's the rub. I agree with Vatican II (I know, technically I'm not supposed to even have the choice of disagreeing if I'm a part of this church, but clearly I'm not a fully orthodox Catholic). I don't disagree with these Masses; I simply dislike them (stylistically). There's an important difference in that.

So, in the grand question of what is Catholic culture, how do we decide in such diversity? Well, the first problem, I would guess, would be that you can't define culture around the Mass (though there are some interesting questions that arise from such an idea and I'm certain there have been Catholic philosophers (and I would probably agree) that there are ways to do so partially). Sure, liturgy can be important to culture, but, as I've said several times, Mass is not the only part of the liturgy. Did you know that it is practically literally impossible (I don't know if I've checked all the possibilities yet) to find a parish that celebrates Vespers within a 45 minute drive from my house?

Perhaps it's more linked to the problem that I tend to find in my own spiritual life. If it isn't obvious yet, I prefer liturgical religions. There are some liberal reasons for this involving analysis of systems and how it affects the adherents, etc. but I think this post is getting long enough as it is. Yet if I wanted to find other means of discovering the wealth of diverse and beautiful liturgy we have? It literally took me a year to fully understand what the Divine Office was, let alone how to practice it. And, if it weren't for the particular people in my life during that time, I don't know I would have discovered it so quickly; yes, you can always ask your priest, but doesn't it make more sense to have that information readily available somewhere in easy-to-digest form rather than putting it through a bottleneck of one person?

So where was I supposed to discover the wealth of my Catholic faith? Arguably, Sunday School (and, God knows, those poor teachers did their best) but you can't expect children from such a young age to truly value the information their receiving (at one point, one of the kids just played his Gameboy under the table while claiming he was meditating; I'm pretty sure my teacher just gave up).

But after that? Sure, my brother and I were made altar servers (from which I learned a great deal), but there really isn't any other means other than lector or Eucharistic minister – all of which doesn't really teach you or envelop you in the liturgy (particularly outside of the Mass). It envelopes you scripture, sure, but – you know – we're heretics and scripture alone isn't enough for us.

And this is why I got so excited about that article. I thought it was going to repudiate abortion (or same-sex marriage or contraceptives) as the pillar in which to encircle our culture around. Because you can't create a Catholic culture around an external cause. It has to involve more (and I do defend this point, even to the issue of poverty, an issue which has been a Catholic cause for ages and strikes directly to Catholicism).

You want to know why people are leaving the church? The first is that you're zeroing in on divisive issues (homosexuals and Transsexuals and condoms in Africa) and, like good Catholics, the laity is using their God-given reason to see that the church's position just doesn't make that much sense (plus, it hurts people). At least, that's my pet theory.

However, more so, you're not giving these people any alternative. A religion focused around fighting abortion is not going to keep people; people want a little bit more.

Give them something which makes them feel Catholic. Because, right now, there isn't really much. I was stuck in rapt horror during the Mass before the March for Life as it was built up to with generic worship music (which, naturally, all sounded the same and could think of remotely creative lyrics even though they're supposedly written for a higher power). I might as well have been attending any evangelical group back at home because there was hardly any difference other than there were a bunch of priests and seminarians walking around. The only point that an actual difference started to emerge was during the introduction of the bishops present and a reference to the relic being used on the altar (and, of course, the Mass itself).

Now, there's a long and personal history as to why I'm so bitter against such worship, but the point still remains: why am I bothering to stick with Catholicism when evangelicalism is offering pretty much the same thing? Evangelicalism is able to keep its adherents, because it operates on a system of fearing about your own salvation and the salvation of everyone you care about with a constant threat of going to Hell and an expectation to be continually perfect to the point that it becomes an informal (not always realized) game of bragging rights. This is not Catholicism (though, of course, with some of the laity (and apparently some of the clergy) seeing no difference between evangelical culture and Catholic culture, who knows anymore).

Setting up places to more easily understand and learn about liturgy would be a start, as well as the ability to learn about Catholic philosophy would be good.

Of course, they may end up tacitly (and then un-tacitly) agreeing with opposition to same-sex marriage, contraceptives, and the like. I need more liberal Catholics; where do I find them?

 

***Note: I think it's obvious, but better safe than sorry – when I refer to evangelicalism here, it's a rather large umbrella term and is referring to those groups I have personal experience with, rather than everyone. Further, it's more often in reference to evangelical culture than necessarily theology***

Full interview between Ayn Rand and Playboy can be found here: http://ellensplace.net/ar_pboy.html.

PLAYBOY: Couldn't the attempt to rule whim out of life, to act in a totally rational fashion, be viewed as conducive to a juiceless, joyless kind of existence?

RAND: I truly must say that I don't know what you are talking about. Let's define our terms. Reason is [a person]'s tool of knowledge, the faculty that enables [zem] to perceive the facts of reality. To act rationally means to act in accordance with the facts of reality. Emotions are not tools of cognition. What you feel tells you nothing about the facts; it merely tells you something about your estimate of the facts. Emotions are the result of your value judgments; they are caused by your basic premises, which you may hold consciously or subconsciously, which may be right or wrong. A whim is an emotion whose cause you neither know nor care to discover. Now what does it mean, to act on whim? It means that a [person] acts like a zombi, without any knowledge of what [ze] deals with, what [ze] wants to accomplish, or what motivates [zem]. It means that a [person] acts in a state of temporary insanity. Is this what you call juicy or colorful? I think the only juice that can come out of such a situation is blood. To act against the facts of reality can result only in destruction.

PLAYBOY: Should one ignore emotions altogether, rule them out of one's life entirely?

RAND: Of course not. One should merely keep them in their place. An emotion is an automatic response, an automatic effect of [a person]'s value premises. An effect, not a cause. There is no necessary clash, no dichotomy between [a person]'s reason and [zir] emotions -- provided [ze] observes their proper relationship. A rational [person] knows -- or makes it a point to discover -- the source of [zir] emotions, the basic premises from which they come; if [zir] premises are wrong, [ze] corrects them. [Ze] never acts on emotions for which [ze] cannot account, the meaning of which [ze] does not understand. In appraising a situation, [ze] knows why [ze] reacts as [ze] does and whether [ze] is right. [Ze] has no inner conflicts, [zir] mind and [zir] emotions are integrated, [zir] consciousness is in perfect harmony. [Zir] emotions are not [zir] enemies, they are [zir] means of enjoying life. But they are not [zir] guide; the guide is [zir] mind. This relationship cannot be reversed, however. If a [person] takes [zir] emotions as the cause and [zir] mind as their passive effect, if [ze] is guided by [zir] emotions and uses [zir] mind only to rationalize or justify them somehow -- then [ze] is acting immorally, [ze] is condemning [zem]self to misery, failure, defeat, and [ze] will achieve nothing but destruction -- [zir] own and that of others.

This is probably the only position that I agree in entirety with Ayn Rand on.

My brother had found the above interview and, upon reading it, handed it off to me (it's nice, in part, to have a sibling still in college, because then the rigorous consumption of intellectualism doesn't have to end just because I'm out of college, though I think it has more to do with his own obsessive intelligence).

And it's a fascinating read; Ayn Rand certainly is very intelligent (or, at the very least, has a masterful command of communication). And yet (as I expected I would), I find myself disagreeing – in at least complete terms – with most of her.

The obvious point of contention I'm going to have is with her assessment of literature (which, if I'm to be fully frank, I find rubbish), though I think the reason for this lies in that, while I believe I've said before – and do partially agree with her – that literature ought to (namely, in this case, regarding morality) make an arguable point, I don't think the writer (or the reader) has to necessarily agree with it. I do fall into the camp that believes that, the more ideas we're exposed to, the better we are off and that all thoughts and concepts should be examined in full. And, in particular when it comes to literature, there is importance in the craft of making you feel for, and to understand the motives of, characters you don't agree with.

But this is mostly an aside, since, at the end of the day, I certainly have no interest in drawing sides based around personal tastes in literature. I disagree with Ayn Rand but would feel no compulsion to dissway her of her opinions, if she had no interest of changing them (and it's completely fair that she would likely find my own thoughts on literature to be rubbish as well).

 

Rather, the larger points of contention that I have is Rand's conception of the proper use of government:

PLAYBOY: What, in your view, is the proper function of a government?

RAND: Basically, there is really only one proper function: the protection of individual rights. Since rights can be violated only by physical force, and by certain derivatives of physical force, the proper function of government is to protect [people] from those who initiate the use of physical force: from those who are criminals. Force, in a free society, may be used only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use. This is the proper task of government: to serve as a policeman who protects [people] from the use of force.

To my knowledge, Rand never states the reason for avoiding the use of force against other citizens, but I'm going to make an assumption and assume that it's because the use of force to overpower another is a negation of their freedom.

The point where we severe agreement is that I would argue that force is not the only power that may negate another's freedom. I'd first bring up (which Rand may or may not agree with me on) that people require, at least from the start, proper education in order to properly assess the world (using her own conceptualization of the world: a person is not born understanding the world; thus, they are emotional. As such, they blunder through the world incapable of learning from it, possibly to never reach the understanding that they must use reason to comprehend it. As such, an education that makes clear to a person the use of reason and logic is necessary to make sane and safe people).

It is a lack of this necessary education that allows for people to become (and remain mired in) racism. And it is this racism, on a large-scale, that enabled Jim Crow. Of course, one might respond back that this is why we need limited government. To which then I would appeal to the housing crisis during and following the African American Great Migration for the south to the north, during which real estate sellers would purposefully over price tenement- and slum-like conditions to African Americans and ensure that the African Americans could not receive housing in any white neighborhood. This wasn't an instance of legalized racism (which is why the Civil Rights Movement in the 60s failed in their attempt to combat racism in the north); this was individuals making racist choices (so much for "[...]there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women[...].").

And those individuals tried to do something about it (again, civil rights movement); the top five most segregated cities in America all maintain a dissimilarity index in the high 70s to this day.

So, to recap, the fundamental difference I have with Rand on this point is that physical force is not the only force capable of being wielded against individuals. And, as such, I fully and fundamentally believe the government should protect against this.

But perhaps another flaw is that Rand believes that laissez-faire capitalism works, whereas I (again fundamentally) do not.

And I think these two points can be, once again, summed up in a fundamental difference in view that I have with Rand: she (as well as libertarians and anarchists), to some degree, believes people can be trusted (this is applicable with the phrase "to some degree" because, even if you think complete freedom enables a constantly vigilant and self-sufficient person to resist those who might attack him, this trusts that those who might find more advantage in overpowering you will be unable to (or that you can outwit them); and, for those who would appeal to others out of those others fearing for their own rights at the hand of the amassing mob, you are trusting that those individuals will be intelligent enough to understand that concept – Nazi Germany would seem to disagree with you).

 

This was more or less the point that I came to with my cousin when discussing whether she felt the FDA ought to be struck down. She felt it ought to be and that there were alternatives to it through privatized means. Incredulous, I asked how she could trust what was to go into her stomach with privatized forces, to which she pointed out, "There's our difference; I don't distrust people." Does anyone know why your health listing of food says Dietary Fiber rather than just Fiber?

Because that's the base of it: the market will not respond in what's best for people; the market responds with what's best for the market. If someone can make a profit selling bread with sawdust in it rather than simply selling a quality product, they often will do it. If dolls of Stalin as an adorable humanitarian become popular, the market will mass-produce them in full-force.  Forget the fact that it's glorifying a mass-murder.

And while there may be an outcry against sawdust bread, there is the requirement that every individual remain vigilant against such things so that they don't happen once again, which may be difficult if you live in a tenement in Chicago and can't leave because people 6 decades ago constructed it as an economic trap to make sure you could never enter their neighborhood.

The very reason the American government is a republic instead of a democracy was out of distrust of people as a mass-group, to allow representation of minority opinions instead of mob-rule by the majority.

And, for all the obsession with freedom and liberty, there can be neither freedom nor liberty in any system which allows the control (either through physical force or psychological force of society) of others by others.

 

And I think, ultimately, this is why I must part with Rand: her societal ideas are, ultimately, based in ideal rather than what is practically realistic, much like communism.

Frank Kameny is dead.

It's going to be one of those awkward days where I'll spend the entirety in mourning and no one or near to know one will even be aware it has happened.

 

http://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/2011/10/12/37802:

Frank Kameny Has Died

Jim Burroway

October 12th, 2011

One of the greatest and most steadfast pioneering advocates for the gay rights movement, Frank Kameny, died on Tuesday, October 11 at his home in Washington, D.C. He was 86. He appears to have died of natural causes. According to the Washington Blade:

Timothy Clark, Kameny’s tenant, said he found Kameny unconscious and unresponsive in his bed shortly after 5 p.m. on Tuesday. Clark called 911 police emergency and rescue workers determined that Kameny had passed away earlier, most likely in his sleep. Clark said he had spoken with Kameny shortly before midnight on the previous day and Kameny didn’t seem to be in distress.

Kameny was born on May 21, 1925 in New York City. He is a World War II veteran, having seen combat in Europe. After the war, Kameny earned a doctorate in astronomy from Harvard University and went to work for the Army Map service as an astronomer. He became a gay rights activist when he was fired by the Army in 1957 when they learned he was gay. At that time, gay people were prohibited from Federal employment due to a 1953 Executive order by President Eisenhower. In Joyce Murdoch and Deb Price’s book, Courting Justice: Gay Men And Lesbians V. The Supreme Court, Frank called his 1957 firing the spark which energized his long dedication to securing equality for all LGBT people:

“I just couldn’t walk away,” recalled Frank Kameny, a brilliant Harvard-educated astronomer who became nearly destitute after being fired from his government job in 1957. The phrase echoed through many interviews with gay people who fought against dreadful odds after losing a job, being embarrassed by a “sex crime” arrest or suffering some similar humiliation. “For the rest of my life, I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself,” Kameny added. “I would be dead of stomach ulcers by now. There’s simply a burning sense of justice.”

He immediately set about challenging the his firing and the federal ban, taking his case all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court. Because he acts as his own attorney, he became the first known gay person to file a gay-related case before the high court. In his petition before the court, Kameny let loose his full rhetorical powers which would become a trademark throughout his life of activism:

…the government’s policies…are a stench in the nostrils of decent people, an offense against morality, an abandonment of reason, an affront to human dignity, an improper restraint upon proper freedom and liberty, a disgrace to any civilized society, and a violation of all that this nation stands for.

Kameny lost the case, but was undeterred. He, along with Jack Nichols, co-founded the Mattachine Society of Washington, D.C. The Mattachine Society elsewhere was know for being rather conservative in their tactics, but Kameny’s leadership of the Washington chapter brought an unprecedented boldness to gay activism. The Washington chapter organized the very first picket for gay rights in front of the White House on April 17, 1965, and that was followed by further pickets in front of the Pentagon, the Civil Service Commission, and, in cooperation with other East Coast activists, in front of Philadelphia’s City Hall.

Inspired by the civil rights movement’s slogan “Black is Beautiful,” Kameny coined the phrase “Gay Is Good.” That message may appear rather simple today, but it was a particularly significant slogan for 1968 when homosexuality was still considered both a mental illness and a criminal act. It was also a message that many gay people didn’t understand or fully believe themselves. Kameny didn’t just want to change how the laws treated gay people, he also wanted gay people to see themselves as fully equal to everyone else as people, deserving full equality not as a priveledge to be won but as a right earned at birth. In an email exchange with me in 2007, Frank reflected:

I’ve said, for a long time, that if I’m remembered for only one thing, I would like it to be for having coined “Gay is Good.” But never did I expect that that would make its way to the Smithsonian. I feel deeply contented.

When Washington D.C. was awarded a non-voting seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1971, Kameny became the first openly gay man to run for Congress. He lost that election, but went on to become the first openly gay member of the District of Columbia’s Human Rights Commission. Meanwhile, Kameny saw that the American Psychiatric Association’s listing of homosexuality as a mental disorder was the primary roadblock to full civil equality for gay people. He worked with other gay rights activists, principally Barbara Gittings, to convince the APA to remove homosexuality from that list. They were ultimately successful in 1973. In 1975, Kameny was also successful in getting the Civil Service Commission to drop their blanket ban on hiring gay people. Federal personnel officials “surrendered to me on July 3rd, 1975,” he recalled. “They called me up to tell me they were changing their policies to suit me. And that was the end of it.”

In 2006, Kameny’s papers were donated to the Library of Congress, where they were catalogued and made available to the public. In 2008, his personal collection, including original picket signs from the 1965 protests and an original “Gay Is Good” button, were donated to the Smithsonian Institution. But in June, 2009, Kameny’s long years of activism finally came full circle. More than fifty years after his firing from the Army Map Service, Frank was invited to a special ceremony to receive a formal letter of apology from John Berry, the openly gay Director of the Office of Personnel Management, which is the organizational successor to the Civil Service Commission which had fired untold thousands of gay people. Kameny was also bestowed the Teddy Roosevelt Award, the department’s highest honor. Upon receiving the apology, Frank Kameny tearfully replied, “Apology accepted.”

I posted as a pulse but I post again: http://hellogiggles.com/princess-zach

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/la-naw-0625-ny-gay-marriage-20110625,0,1496953.story

http://www.givesmehope.com/view/Cute%20kids/9035967

(btw, they're from Chicago; just sayin')

 

 

SHFJSNJTJUHJDHFJGF

I barely have words.

I've been involved in just general Queer things since as far back as I can remember and even I'm shocked by the progress we've made.

A mainstream, well-known music group dedicating a whole music video directly to Queer kids? Where were you during my childhood! Finally New York (of all places; Stonewall, anyone?) gets marriage. And (while, admittedly, not on a large scale) sensible social change towards gender‽

Dear God, I love it.

taken from: http://reasonradionetwork.com/?p=497

Letter to the White Race

White Man!

We regret to inform you that your kind has been slated for termination. We, the various Third World majorities of Africa, Asia, India, South America, and the Middle East assert that your long history of success at building civilizations, developing new technologies, creating stable governments, fostering good will, feeding much of the world, and increasing peace and prosperity even amongst the riotous hordes of our own homelands, has made us envious and resentful of you. We, who make up 92% of the global population, feel that we can no longer accept the great disparity between your success and our abject failure. The solution to this inequality should be obvious to all concerned.

We are planning to invade your ancestral homelands, little by little, and to facilitate this, we have the full cooperation of your controlled media and government, academia, and law enforcement organizations. While we, personally, do not control any of these entities ourselves, we are profiting endlessly from the crypto-Marxist system put in place many decades ago by an ethnic “fifth column” which operates with complete impunity at all levels of your political, academic, and media culture. Their interference in the natural development of your constitutional republics has been indispensable to our efforts to wrest from you the control of everything that you’ve struggled to build and maintain over the last century. Indeed, were it not for them, none of our present plans would have even been possible.

By carefully controlling and managing the schools, universities, media, and press, this “out group” has managed to convince the great bulk of your racial kinsmen that not only is resistance futile, but that it is immoral, barbaric, depraved, and unworthy of a “thinking” individual. By promoting the stereotype of a “racist redneck resistance”, they have made the idea of a struggle for White Identity a veritable sin in the minds of nearly every White person. In short: they have convinced European-derived peoples that a prolonged suicide is preferable to the unmitigated evil of “racism”.

While doing this, they have pushed, inch by inch, to open the borders of ALL White nations to our own sullen masses, throwing open the gates to invasion while assuring the public that “race doesn’t matter”. Since race, in fact, DOES matter (and no one knows it better than We), they have likewise put into place a totalitarian system of “hate speech” and “hate crime” laws, to further alienate and penalize those few Whites who might harbor some simmering resentments at the increasing decay of their society and culture. All of this is in keeping with the far-reaching plans of this particular ethnic “out group”, and has been sometimes referred to as the “Long March”.

The Out Group, who maintains a sense of racial cohesiveness hitherto unknown among even the most tightly-knit of all dispersed human peoples, maintains a grip on the press and electronic media that is nearly monopolistic in its all-encompassing reach. Since they are so thoroughly in control of these organs for the dissemination of propaganda, they are in the best position to spread hostility against the White peoples of Europe and America, inciting the minority against the majority in these lands: Black against White, Latino against White, Asian against White, Arab against White, Indian against White, and so on, and so forth.

This is facilitated by decades of brainwashing, beginning in early school years, portraying Whites not as the builders of a great civilization, or the admirable leaders of the Free World, but in a lopsided, entirely slanted way as oppressors, enslavers, genocidal “Nazis”, southern Klansmen, imperialistic Colonials, and toothless hillbillies just itching for a chance to lynch the first colored individual that comes along. This brainwashing not only inflames the minorities in these now racially-mixed “schools”, but also inculcates a sense of “White guilt” that the Out Group finds particularly useful in maintaining control.

Hence, you Whites have become a neutered, egoless herd of cattle, easily manipulated and posing no threat to the Out Group, who live in perpetual terror of your ever waking up to their plans. The Out Group has a long-running resentment and fear of White civilization, and thus have worked within that civilization to undermine its cohesion and sense of purpose. The promotion of homosexuality, pornography, drugs, divorce, illicit sex, moral relativism, atheism, communism, gun control, “anti-racism”, and “civil rights”, has been the greatest boon to this subversive faction, who are but a tiny minority among you, but who wield awesome, incomparable power.

Thus, in light of the fact that you are socially, morally, mentally, intellectually, and even legally castrated, We, the teeming masses of the Third World who thirst for what you have and what we can never obtain, are going to finally swamp your once noble and advanced societies, your pristine cities and unsullied neighborhoods, and rape your countries for everything they are worth.

We are going to move in, right under your noses, and set our churches, mosques, synagogues, and strange gods up in place of your own. We will ensure that OUR celebrations and festivities and holidays are observed, while YOURS are erased from the pages of history.

We will drain the public coffers of welfare, food stamps, and all forms of social aid available. We will swamp your children’s schools, change the language in which lessons are taught, form street gangs to terrorize and torment your family, steal, vandalize, harass, threaten, and cajole you until we get what WE want.

That it will be entirely at your expense is irrelevant to us.

We will beat and murder your sons; we will rape your wives and daughters.

We kill twelve Americans every day; your government could care less.

We have shut down hospitals with our teeming numbers. We have flooded the streets, demanding “special rights” for those millions of us that are here illegally.

We nearly had your major politicians ready to grant all of us an “amnesty” in the name of “diversity” and “equal rights”. We are filling up the ranks for unskilled labor. We are raping pre-teens. We are doing the jobs Americans won’t do.

As your global economy crumbles, and it gets harder and harder to feed your families, as your birthrate plummets and you face the eventual dispossession of the country your forefathers founded for YOU and YOUR posterity, just remember: there is nothing you can do to stop us. The Out Group has made sure that the law is on OUR side, not yours. No matter how piffling your criticism of us is, the Out Group will use their media to label you with shocking epithets and broad smears: racist, hater, bigot, neo-Nazi, nativist, White supremacist, domestic terrorist, etc.

If we want to, we can assault and kill you with near impunity. The media will not report it, and if they do, they will place the blame for the assault squarely on YOUR shoulders, not ours. In Jena, Louisiana, a White boy was beaten mercilessly by six black criminals. The media made the criminals into the victims.

We watch these developments carefully, and we like what we see. Soon, you will be a minority even in your own homelands (you are already a minority worldwide), and we will continue to squeeze and squeeze until there is nothing left of you. We will crush your countries, your cultures, and eventually, we will snuffle out your lives.

Beethoven, Mozart, Shakespeare, and all other bourgeois manifestations of your high culture will be vanquished forever. All of your legends and heroes will be spat upon, purged, and finally forgotten. Your cultural folkways will be transgressions; your identity will become a crime.

We come for your JOBS, your MONEY, your WOMEN, and eventually your LIVES. It will not be much longer now.

In closing, We, the huddled masses of the Third World yearning to “breathe free”, would like to thank the Out Group, the media monopolists and political plunderers who made all of this possible. We wish them well, and we know they wish us well, just as long as we don’t trespass upon their own homeland, which they stole fair and square several decades ago.

Adios, White man! You had a good, long run, but your day is over, and ours is just beginning. Your empire is at an end, and your race is no longer wanted here. We’ll have our fun with you while you still hang on by a thread, but soon, the thread will be cut, and the abyss yawns beneath you and the civilization your kind spawned.

Besides, many of you are even anticipating this with something akin to sick glee. After all, that’s how the TV set told them to feel. The brainwashing is almost complete, and the sheep are in line to shear.

Have a nice day!

XXXXXXXXXXXXX

If you can tell me what's wrong with this letter (extra points if you go point by point), you'll be my hero of the day. This allows for multiple heros of the day for the first time; get excited.

 

Oh! The best part? They're not joking.

*edit* I hadn't read it all beforehand. It's so bad, you don't have to break it down point by point. Just read it for a good laugh.

This article is really interesting. I would highly suggest reading it.

https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=3701234398613893315&postID=3689506082923845127

I can't seem to find a source online for the script of the original movie, so I'll have to recite it best as I can from memory.

The scene is a pool, with three women sitting together. One of the women is average size, the other is a "little" bigger than average, and the last one has a body that most women (who care greatly about their body shape) would probably kill to have.

For the sake of easy clarity, I shall refer to the first woman as A, the second as B, and the third as S.

As the women are talking, they happen to notice some Africans (three, I believe) at the pool as well (Nigerians, I think).

The men notice the women and walk over to them (I think the third one shows up mid-conversation, so it's 2 men approaching three women).

B, used to not being noticed, immediately looks down rejected, particularly since S, used to attention, immediately starts showing off her body.

The men, however, aren't interested in S. They try to start conversing with B, but S butts in. I remember at one point, she remarks (thinking the men are interested in her body, which she is fully prostituting for free by now, as much of a contradiction as that is), "You like what you see?"

It seems, at least the message that this movie was trying to convey, that Nigerians like bigger women. Therefore, the hierarchy that the U. S. has established is reversed - the skinny woman is given looks of oddity and passed over in favor of the more appealing woman on the scene.

At some point, the third Nigerian comes back to catch up with his friends, notices S and remarks in one of the native languages of Nigeria, "What is wrong with her? Is she sick??"

I've never seen the movie in full, but I will forever adore it for that scene alone.

I came across these two articles while looking for the movie. I would definitely suggest checking them out. I need to watch some of the movie mentioned in them at some point.

Nobody Loves a Fat Woman On Film

Take Any Shape But That: Fat Men On Film

Damned Hell, I had wanted to find sheet music for For You during the summer, not far after it had finished. Of course, this reminder led me to listening to some tracks and...geez, you forget how unnerving he can be. If you like raw rock, this is just downright gorgeous.

 

 

Beneath...the city...
     two hearts beat
Soul engines running through a night so tender...
In a bedroom, locked
In whispers of soft
     confusion...and then
     ...surrender
In the tunnels uptown...the Rat's own dream guns him down
Shots echo down them hallways in the night...
No one watches as an ambulance pulls away

Or as the girl shuts out the bedroom light...

Outside, the streets are on fire -
     in a real death-waltz -
Between what's flesh and what's fantasy
And the poets down here don't write nothing at all -
     they just stand back and let it all be

And in the quick of a knife - they reach for their moment
     and try to take an honest stand
But they wind up wounded...not even dead...

Tonight...
     in...
          Jun-
               gle
                    Land!

 

 

Well, there's a dark cloud rising from the desert storm
I've packed my bags and I'm heading straight into the storm
Gonna be a twister to blow everything down
And I ain't got - the faith - to stand it's ground

Blow away!
     the dreams that tear you apart
Blow away!
     the dreams that break your heart
Blow away!
     the lies that leave you nothing but lost and broken-hearted...

 

 

So, oh, ohh - come take my hand
We're riding out tonight to case the Promise Land
Oh, oh - ohh, Thunder Road
     oh, Thunder Road, Thunder Road...
Lying out there, like a killer in the sun!
Baby, I know it's late - but we can make it, if we run
Oh, oh, oh - oh, Thunder Road
     Sit tight - take hold!
Thunder Road!

 

 

Well now, some folks are born into a good life
And other folks get it anyway, anyhow
Well now, I lost my money and I lost my wife
But them things don't seem to matter much to me now

Tonight I'll be on that hill!
     'cause I can't stop...
I'll be on that hill
     with everything that I've got
Lives on the line!
     Where dreams are found and lost!
I'll be there on time!
     And I'll pay the cost
For wanting things - that can - on-ly - be - found...

In the Darkness on the edge of town

 

 

Outside, inside - wherever you may be: Rosie! Come out tonight!

 

 

http://houston.culturemap.com/newsdetail/08-01-10-is-there-a-haunting-suicide-in-bruce-springsteen-past-songs-20-11/
http://houston.culturemap.com/newsdetail/08-08-10-the-top-best-bruce-springsteen-songs-of-all-time-and-a-beckoning-HBO-Boss-documentary/
(all 200 hundred of the songs have the author criticize the bad and bring up the good, so I gave you the page for where the last 20 greats by him starts; it's not a long read (and I kinda freaked a little when he gave Wild Billy's Circus Story a low rating), but totally worth it)

http://www.landoverbaptist.org/news0100/investigation.html

Just when I thought I had composed a proper list, I have to add being Catholic to the reasons why I'm going to Hell! Ay, I may never figure it all out.

The "article" is actually beyond hilarious in how rediculous it is. Do read it if you need a laugh. My favorite line was, "Pansy priests pranced around in hideous dresses, all of which were black, Satan's favorite color." Because that has everything to do with going to Hell. Or am I supposed to buy into that tripe that men are utterly "masculine" (that's like trying to define normal...) and women vice versa?

The world amuses me.