All Hail the Power

You know, I'm really fucking sick and tired of "God" getting all the credit for anything good that happens, yet none of the blame for any of the bad shit that goes down. Am I the only one who notices the disparity here? What kind of sense does that make? Seriously. It's bullshit, people. You can't have it both ways.

So anyone who wants to tell me that bad times are the perfect times to turn to some spiritual guidance, you know what? Fuck you. And the cloud you rode in on. If your deity isn't man enough to step up and take responsibility for the bad shit, then he's apparently not allfuckingpowerful enough to have had anything to do with the good. And if he were responsible for the good, that means he could've damn well prevented the bad, but didn't. Seriously, could it be any more clear? So no, thank you.  Been there, done that, woke the fuck up.

And that's all I've got to say about that.

Freedom Requires Religion?

Freedom requires religion, just as religion requires freedom. Freedom opens the windows of the soul so that man can discover his most profound beliefs and commune with God.
~Mitt Romney, "The Faith Speech", Dec. 2007

I didn't realize that was the big benefit behind freedom. But then when it comes to people like me, Mitt's got this to say,

But in recent years, the notion of the separation of church and state has been taken by some well beyond its original meaning. They seek to remove from the public domain any acknowledgment of God. Religion is seen as merely a private affair with no place in public life.

It is as if they are intent on establishing a new religion in America – the religion of secularism. They are wrong.

Say what? So, we've taken this "notion" of separation of church and state too far, Mitt? Really? Because after the last 8 years with your boy, George, I don't think we've taken it far enough. See, I thought religion was, actually, a private affair, with no place in governance.


Mitt falls back on the far Right's double standard around religious extremism:

These radical Islamists do their preaching not by reason or example, but in the coercion of minds and the shedding of blood. We face no greater danger today than theocratic tyranny, and the boundless suffering these states and groups could inflict if given the chance.

Nicely done. Very effective use of fear-mongering with a bit of us-them rhetoric thrown in. "Us", of course, being believers in Jesus Christ. Mitt knows he needs to jump on that Jesus Train if he's got any hope of being elected. Throughout the speech, Mitt played down the differences between Christians and Mormons, focusing on the fact that all believers have something in common, something that non-believers (and those pesky Muslims) apparently do not share.

And I'm sorry Mitt, but I'm pretty sure the last 8 years have been about some "theocratic tyranny" at the hands of King George, with plenty of "coercion of minds and shedding of blood" going on, but what do I know? Apparently, theocratic tyranny only applies to those scary radical religions. The "good religions", which Mitt is fervently hoping will now include Mormons, are not radical extremists bent on tyranny, they are merely God Warriors, carrying out the legacy of our founding fathers.


Looks like Mitt is hoping to catch a ride on the religion mobile by finding common ground with the Christians. And I'm thinking that the so-called "morality voters" might just figure that hey, any religious guy is better than a damn liberal. Unless they go with their boy Huckabee. (A most unpresidential name if ever I've heard one.)

Well, who knows. If the Irish, Italians, and Jewish folks eventually "became White", who's to say Mormons won't be accepted into the Christian fold against the advancing hordes of scary Muslims and non-believers?

I hope the more moderate folks on the right will look at the past 8 years and realize that more religion, of any kind, in governance is a slippery slope to that tyranny Mitt mentioned.

Jesus Land

I just finished reading Jesus Land, a memoir by Julia Scheeres. Her story is written from the perspective of her 17-year-old self, and is both sweet and brutal. Her writing is very honest, sometimes disturbingly so, and her sarcastic dark humor flavors the agonizing experience that was her childhood.

Julia spent her teen years in rural Indiana, raised by fundamentalist Christian parents in the 80s. Her parents adopted two African American boys out of a sense of Christian guilt. Much of the story revolves around Julia's close relationship with her "twin" brother, David.

Their parents had no clue about raising a child of color in the cornfields of the Bible belt; the brothers' daily experiences with racism, both out in the world and at home, are central to the story. The parents were emotionally distant and abusive with all their children, and were physically abusive to Jerome and David. They were heavily into the whole Spare the Rod, Spoil the Child deal, to the point of having that bit of Biblery engraved on the two large paddles hanging on the wall.

My high school years were spent in the rural Midwest in the 80s, immersed in The Way, The Truth, The Life as well, so parts of the book had a familiar feel to me. Fortunately, I did not have the home life that Julia and her siblings dealt with -- my parents were not abusive, and though my mom was very religious (as was I), she was not a fundamentalist. The community though, from the school to food, dress, landscape and attitudes, could've been my town.

One thing that personally freaked me out a bit, was the music. Throughout the book, Christian music is the backdrop for the story. Mom continuously blasts Rejoice Radio over the home intercom system, and hymns and religious songs are often referenced. (The intercom is also used to eavesdrop on the kids' conversations, in case any heathenism is going down.)

I knew every single song in the book.

Every single one, y'all. Every hymn, every contemporary Christian hit, every camp song. After all these years, the words, melodies, harmonies -- in some cases multiple verses and even the tenor harmonies -- all still in there.

These songs have been running through my head for the last three days. It is freaking me the fuck out. I'm talking songs like,

Just As I Am
Power In the Blood
Were You There When They Crucified My Lord
All to Jesus I Surrender
Old Rugged Cross
Go To Dark Gethsemane

... like that. The Rejoice Radio hits too -- Sandy Patty, Amy Grant, Keith Green, Petra, those were my tunes in the 80s.

Secular music was sinful. It encouraged wild kids to have sex and become drug addicts. No bump and grind for me, no sir, I put my Keith Green in the tape deck and got my religion on.

So apparently, religious music is still in there, locked away among my neurons and synapses. Scary.

Anyway, this book kind of got in there for me. The racism that David and Jerome dealt with just tore at my heart. Adoption across racial lines is a whole'nuther post. I am not saying I think it's wrong in every circumstance, but I do believe that in many situations it is not the best option for the child. I may get a lot of disagreement on that. I'm in no way saying that every situation of interracial adoption is detrimental. I do think that it is often done by well-intentioned white folks trying to do a good deed who have no understanding of or connection to that child's culture. So the way of dealing with differences lots of times is to just assimilate the child into white culture, as a way to "make things easy" for them. So the child will "fit in" and be "accepted".

That shit doesn't work, in the end. You can assimilate your ass all day long, but it will never be white enough for society to afford you full membership privileges, and then you've lost connectivity to your culture and ethnicity to boot.

These particular parents should not have adopted any child, black or white; they had no concern or understanding of the issues that they brought upon these kids. Mom's answer to everything was "turn the other cheek". It broke my heart and pissed me off, to think of David living this life with no control over his situation, no one to understand, no one to get him the fuck out of Dodge. He was taken as a baby and given unto Jesus and and a white world of ignorance and hatred.

This book made me think of my own choice not to move back to the Midwest. It breaks my mom's heart to have us so far away, and I can't help but feel I'm going to reap what I've sown big time in the Karma department. I have this fear of my own kids scattering to the winds after they leave home, that I will not really be part of their lives, that it will be my Karmic reward for not being an actual presence in my parents' lives as an adult. (not fishing for comments about how that's not true and it will be fine -- I know in my head it's some weird guilt game, but the feeling is still there. Whaddya gonna do.)

My reasons for not moving back to the Midwest revolve largely around the conservative mindset there, and the levels of racism, right-wingery, and Bible-thumping the kids would be regularly exposed to. Not that you can avoid it anywhere in this country, but let's face it, some places are a whole lot worse than others.

I can't say it's just for the kids -- I don't think I could deal with living in that environment any more. Every time I go back to Ohio, it just sets my teeth on edge. A lot of it is subtle. A lot of it is blatant to me, but not really noticed there. I like living in a blue state, I like progressive thought being the norm.

So I struggle with that -- did I make the right choice? I don't know. My mom has MS and can't travel. I knew that, and that's part of the equation. I don't make the kind of money that would allow me to travel back and forth with three kids.

I miss my parents terribly.

On the other hand, the thought of raising kids of color in the Midwest was not something I could reconcile. We -- my ex and I -- made the conscious choice to bring each one of them into the world. I may not have understood all the ramifications at that time, but it's my responsibility to do the best I can with what I know now.

My folks say it's changed, it's not that bad, but their perception of "not that bad" is not the same as mine. Mom says, "There are a lot of East Indian and Asian kids in the schools now; they're so smart! Such good students." (I am just "looking for negatives" when I bring up the whole model minority thing.)

Anyway, this book got me thinking and remembering. I kind of got off on a tangent there. I'd suck ass as a book reviewer. I don't want to give away the story line, so no spoilers, but the story goes a lot deeper than I've mentioned here. I'm glad I read it, and will be looking for future works from this author.

-------------------------

The Radical Bohemian daughter and I are heading to Value Village to drop off some donations and see if she can find any funky clothes to get her style on. Then tonight we are going to see The Tallis Scholars, hello, at St. James Cathedral. Yes, I said The Tallis Scholars, hell yeah! OK, so it's only four of them, performing with the students from their annual summer school, but still. The daughter and I saw the whole group at St. Mark's once -- I have no words to describe that experience. If you like Early Music, you've got to check these guys out. They rock.

Creation Museum's Adam: Bringing the Bow-Chicka-Bow-Wow

BREAKING BIBLICAL NEWS:

Our own field reporter Big Ass Belle gave me a hot news tip this morning, regarding the Creation Museum. Apparently, the actor hired by the Creation Museum to play Adam has his own idea of Paradise.

Adam, it seems, is porn star. The museum has pulled the video, and banished Adam from the Garden:

The Expulsion of Adam & Eve - Benjamin West

Here's the down and dirty, according to WKYT in Kentucky, the museum's home state.

Registration records show that Eric Linden, who portrays Adam taking his first breath in a film at the newly opened Creation Museum, owns a graphic Web site called Bedroom Acrobat. He has been pictured there, smiling alongside a drag queen, in a T-shirt brandishing the site's sexually suggestive logo.

Linden, a graphic designer, model and actor, also sells clothing for SFX International, whose initials appear on clothing to spell "SEX" from afar and serve as an abbreviation for its mascot, who promotes "free love", "pleasure" and "Thrillz."

The museum's operators, informed Thursday by The Associated Press of Linden's online appearances, acted swiftly to suspend airing of the 40-second video in which he appeared.

What? Adam pictured with a drag queen? Well, well, well. Could this be the elusive Steve?

Apparently, Eric Linden gave up the rights to Bedroom Acrobat, and is no longer affiliated with it. Records show he registered the site a mere 18 months ago. (Gotta say, I'm loving that site name.)

Adam and Eve -- Tamara de Lempicka

I'm thinking the Creation Museum's directors may have been a bit too hasty. I mean, the main premise of their mission statement is to evangalize the lost, right? It's not enough to preach to the choir, -- they're saved, praisegod -- it's the heathens they're after, right?

I'd have never stepped foot in the Creation Museum before. But they might just be able to pull me in with some Thrillz like a porn star Adam. That might just pique my interest.

From a marketing standpoint, it's genius. Think about it; porn star Adam, a few paintings like this one, and a little bow-chicka-wow-wow theme music going on. Eve could even have a pole and do some kind of crazy snake charmer dance.

All the Heathens in the house say Hey! (Hey!) Hey! (Hey!)

Yeah, I'd go see that.

As for Adam, here's his take on the matter:

For the Creation Museum, I did what I did as an actor. It doesn't necessarily mean I believe in evolution or a believe in creation, I'm hired to get a point across. On the flip side, if I was hired to play a murderer, that doesn't mean I'd go out and kill somebody. It's make-believe.

Make believe. I'll leave that one alone.

All Hail the Creation Museum

Fear not, all ye who struggle with the whole Evolution v. Creation debate.

Behold, the Creation Museum! For the glory details, check out this link from Salon. Just interesting as hell.

For those unfamiliar with my sordid past, I am a reformed religious zealot. Yes, honey, I said zealot. As in knocking on doors. As in color-coded, highlighted Bible. Washed in the blood of the Lamb. I could quote the Word on a dime. Any topic.

I was fervent, y'all.

Anyway, even with this holy background and understanding of the creationist "logic", it just amazes me to read the rationalizing going on in the Creation Museum.

Their motto: Prepare to Believe.  Their mission statement (emphasis mine):

Exalt Jesus Christ as Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer through a safe, wholesome, family-friendly center for learning and discovery that clearly presents major biblical themes from Genesis to Revelation.

This center will equip Christians to better evangelize the lost with a sense of urgency, through a combination of exhibits, research and educational presentations that uphold the inerrancy of the Bible.

This center will also challenge visitors to receive Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord and to accept the authority of the Bible by providing culturally relevant biblical and scientific answers from a biblical worldview.

Well. I can't help but wonder: how exactly is Jesus Christ "the Creator..."?  Huh? Redeemer, okay. Sustainer, sure. But Creator? Uh-uh. Jesus came later. Way after Genesis. New Testament, people -- things had already been created by the time Mary immaculately conceived.

I'm sure the Holy Trinity folks will attempt to explain that by schooling me on the whole three-in-one deal. Been there, done that, sang the hymn. I'm just saying, if I'm supposed to come to your museum and accept the creationist premise ... an inaccuracy in the first sentence of your mission statement may create a bit of a barrier to the proverbial scales falling from mine eyes.

Anyway, get the whole down & dirty at Salon, but here is a taste of how they will show you the Way (... the Truth, the Light).

We’ll then explore why the Bible—the “history book of the universe”—provides a reliable, eye-witness account of the beginning of all things.

They will do this through what they call The 7 C's of History. 

Photo : So, What Are the ‘7 C’s’ Anyway? by Stacia McKeever

So there you have it. The 7 C's. All you need to know about the how & why of history. And the folks over at Answers in Genesis, the museum's creator, have an answer for everything:

• Is the timeline figurative? (No. Everything was whipped up in 6 literal days. The Earth is 6,000 years old.)
• Is the one-man, one-woman thing figurative? (No. God created two individual humans, not a whole gaggle of Adams & Eves.)
• But ... doesn't that mean Cain would've had to marry his sister? (Yes.)
• Wouldn't that lead to birth defects and all of us being a few eggs short of a dozen? (No. Adam & Eve were created perfect, therefore, cumulative genetic abnormalities had not yet developed. Those came later, "because of sin and the Curse", so the whole incest thing would not work now.)
• What about dinosaurs, did they exist? (Yes.)
• Aha! Humans and dinosaurs didn't exist at the same time! This shoots your argument in the foot. (Wrong. Humans and dinosaurs DID, as a matter of fact, exist at the same time. It just doesn't appear that way because the Great Flood moved all the fossils around. Have faith.)

Anyway. Check it out. You can even visit. They're in the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky area, apparently "within a day’s drive of almost 2/3 of the U.S. population ". Prepare to be evangelized.
Prepare to Believe!

Big Jerry Takes the Dirt Nap

The country has been abuzz about Jerry Falwell's timely demise. Doesn't matter where you fall on the political or religious spectrum, everyone seems to have some thought on the matter. I've heard everything from "I hope he's getting bitch-slapped at the pearly gates", to "hope they ream his ass with his own personal coat hanger" to "At least he was sincere in his beliefs" to "We should never speak ill of the dead".

I have to defer to my fellow blogger over at Nine Pearls. She let Jerry speak for himself. Check it out. A compendium of Jerry's own words to the not-so-wise. Really, I think this says more about him than any of us could say.

May he be judged according to his good works.