This will be short. Seems the Pope has gotten into a bit of controversy because of a couple of ill-conveived remarks he made about Islam. Now, like most people, he probably meant Those Bad Ones Over There, who wear bombs and kill people in order to get into heaven. But…
Senator Rick Santorum, Republican, Pennsylvania, is having a difficult time getting re-elected. He’s fighting a hard race against someone who has more moderate views. I’m not altogether thrilled with his opponent, either, but Mr. Santorum–who has now taken the tactic of showing the people of Pennsylvania that they should vote for him because he can bring federal money to the state–is a banner emblem for the fundamental problems of the Republican Right. Lest we forget what he’s all about, I remind you that he is a social conservative who doesn’t Approve.
Doesn’t approve of much of anything representative of a liberal society. Let me here pick on one of the things as example of his mindset.
Homosexuality.
(As a point of debate, let me state up front that my issue with this has nothing to do with my own sexual orientation. My support of gay rights is a bit broader than that. I am not gay–but I am a sexual being, and one of the major points that gets overlooked in these debates is that when the specific proclivities of one group of consenting adults is attacked, all groups are attacked, because what is being attacked is a variation. While there is only one “natural” way to procreate, there is no single “natural” way to indulge in sensuality. Note, most laws in this country that have sought to limit homosexual behavior have in the past not stopped there, but have gone on to enumerate specific actions for illegalization, actions with …
Science cannot disprove the existence of god. I have heard this claim made so often and by such a broad spectrum of people that I rarely really think about it. But is that the end of it? Science is concerned with materialism ( in a philosophic sense) and does best…
I’ve been thinking about this since the initial post on our biases and all the responses. In the course of trying to come up with an “appropriate” response to the world, we often find ourselves caught up in endless exception-making, fudging, attempts to shoehorn certain proclivities and habits into convenient moulds so we don’t go through our days constantly flinching at our inadvertant insensitivities.
Does it do any good? The flinching? I mean, after the Sixties, one had to have been living on Mars for half a century not to be aware that there had been a Big Shift away from what might be called Gross Cultural Reliance to a more nuanced approach which has been (often derisively) termed Political Correctness. The former is a condition wherein one “borrows” wholesale from the culture to make associational choices. It doesn’t occur in this instance to question the wisdom of the culture–it’s what it is, and we are part of it, ergo…
But we realized that the Culture At Large was in many ways an Idiot. It stepped on people. It made too little room for variation. It tried to be all things to all people, but it was necessary that all people somehow be The Same in order for that to work. Those with a vested interest in keeping everything the same mightily resisted movement to change the rules.
We never did come up with a solid formulation that allows for prejudice.
You have to, you know. What we ended up …
The Missouri supreme court has ruled that a law banning sexually explicit billboards is--gasp!-- unconstitutional. This should come as a surprise to no one. But of course religious groups are stunned. They will try to appeal. Personally, I resent all the JESUS! billboards and the propagandistic ones that declare Pornography…