Bullying

I've been hesitant to write about this, because the tendency to indulge self pity creeps in around the edges. I'm hesitant because for me this is personal. But in the past year we've seen a rise in attention being paid to a great human tradition---bullying. A gay youth outed by his peers committed suicide. Other gays under a microscope all over the country have found themselves driven to the edge. National "movements" to deal with this problem have sprung up like mushrooms after a spring rain. The last time we witnessed this level of discussion about bullying was after a couple of disaffected youths murdered several of their peers at their high school and then took their own lives, leaving behind ample testaments that what had driven them to do this had been years of bullying. A recent episode of Glee dealt with the subject, the lone out gay boy in the school having come under the daily assault by an oversized pituitary case who, for no apparent reason, had decided to make life hell for the outsider. I suppose it was this episode that prompted me to write about this. Because it indulged some pop psychology, which I stress is not baseless, to explain the bully's behavior---he, too, was a closeted gay who hated himself for it. The idea being that we hate that which we are which we cannot accept in ourselves. [More . . . ]

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Funeral Misbehavior

I don't follow gossip columns, or even broadcast news. But I do read a few blogs. Yesterday FriendlyAtheist posted Tony Danza’s Funeral Outburst Makes Sense. I don't particularly care about the actor or the author involved. But apparently he has gotten some negative press for an action that I wish I'd had the cojones to do a couple of times. He cut off a a cleric who was in full stride in a fire and brimstone recruiting speech at the funeral of a friend, to redirect focus to the friend. Personally, I think the cleric was misbehaving, not the friend. And I wish more people would stand up at funerals and demand that the subject be of the life departed, not of the faith of the orator. Better yet, make sure the minister knows beforehand that bald propagandizing will not be tolerated. If the deceased had been a pious person, then discussing the faith and piety of the departed meets with my approval. But using the occasion simply as a recruiting drive is too common of an occurrence. I've been to a few funerals where the cleric/priest/minister had nothing particular to contribute about the guest of honor, but went on and on about how doomed the rest of us were unless we took his preferred sacrament. He simply knew a captive audience and marketing opportunity when he had one. Very dissatisfying to those of us who knew the decedent. I have also been to good memorials, where the focus was on the life as lived. My two favorite memorial services ended with a participatory kazoo performance, or recessional music by Groucho Marx. They were fully celebrations of the life departed, not dire warnings to the audience. Unless as a cautionary example to enjoy life while you can. Here is an example of an appropriate farewell, although NSFW:

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The Dollar Got More Annoying

This is not about the falling value of our currency with respect to the rest of the world, but rather a reprise on my 2007 post, In God We Trust wherein I complained about the propagation of the cold war addition of God to our money in the latest series of presidential dollar coins. The had stamped "In God We Trust" around the edge, along with the date. But the latest dollars have God on the face, and hide the date and the uniquely and importantly American "E Pluribus Unum" on the edge. Do they think that Sacajawea trusted in in the Old World God? I really think that we should get rid of the old cold war legacies, and take God back off of our money and back out of the pledge to the flag (as I discussed in The Changing Recipe of Pleasure Lesion Stew). One could argue that this would show the world that we are confident of our faith, instead of protesting it too much.

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Did Anne Frank go to hell?

Now here is a question I'd never thought to ask. Not of myself, mind you. I discarded belief in any afterlife long ago. But it is a good question to pose to fundamentalist Christians. And so Rachel Evans did. Credit where due, I found it via the Friendly Atheist. If you read her post and comments, you see a lot of hemming and hawing from Chrisitans who believe a) in a kind, loving, and just God who b) sends everyone to hell except the most extreme sycophants. They try to have it both ways. In brief, yes, all Jews go to Hell. But when considering this actual young, innocent person, who was a victim of Martin Luther's plan enacted by a Catholic leader, they sputter.

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Do Christians need to obey Old Testament laws?

I found this question via FriendlyAtheist, who shared this big pdf file (poster size, but only 1.6Mb), with a list of questions, each answered in various ways in different parts of the Bible, and a graphic showing links between the different areas where the different answers occur.. To my title question, the poster shows:

gen 17:19, exo 12:14, 17, 24, lev 23:14, 21, 31, deut 4:8-9, 7:9, 11:1, 11:26-28, 1chron 16:15, ps 119:151-2, 119:160, mal 4:4, mat 5:18-19, lk 16:17 ≠ lk 16:16, rom 6:14, 7:4, 6, 10:4, 2cor 3:14, gal 3:13, 3:24-25, 5:18, eph 2:15, col 2:14
Those of us who don't know all the verses need a convenient way to look them up, like http://bible.cc I've linked two of the sample verses, above. I like the parallel view, showing each verse in 15 popular English Bible translations.

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