Zach Wahls honors his two moms.

Today, an attorney with whom I work told me I absolutely needed to drop what I was doing in order to listen to a 19-year old man giving a statement to the Iowa legislature. Under consideration was a constitutional amendment that would reverse the landmark case of Varnum v Brien. I looked up Zach Wahls on Youtube and watched his incredible speech. My friend then told me that Zach also happened to be in town, at Left Bank Books, 5 blocks away from my law office. I walked over, arriving in time to hear Zach ending his prepared remarks, and opening the floor to questions. One of the main points he made is that people react badly to households of two gay parents because they have a "fear of the unknown."

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The Story of 178873: Ben Fainer, Holocaust Survivor

I met 81 year old Ben Fainer two weeks ago at Grand Center Arts Academy in St. Louis. Ben had been invited by one of the social studies teachers to tell the seventh graders about his experiences as a Holocaust survivor. As a parent of one of the students, I was also invited to attend. I found his presentation to be stunning and inspiring. One of the things that stood out to me was Ben's admonition that, despite all he went through, he found hatred to be self-destructive. On April 21, 2012, Ben (known as "Bendet Urman Fajner" when he lived in Poland as a boy) allowed me to videotape the story of how he survived six years in several Nazi concentration camps, from 1939 until he was rescued by American soldiers in 1945. He was only 9 1/2 years old when he was captured. Therefore, in this interview, you'll hear what it was like to be a child imprisoned for the crime of being a Jew. At first, he was assigned special chores like shining shoes and cleaning offices for the regime. He grew up in these camps, though, and eventually he was put to work in factories alongside adult prisoners. In this video, you'll hear that he would never have survived had he not lied about his age.

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On loving one’s enemies

I believe that Jesus was a human being, not a God. Therefore, I don't give him homage, but I do occasionally read his alleged teachings, which I evaluate one-by-one. Jesus allegedly said some things that make sense to me, but other things attributed to Jesus don't make much sense to me. When I run into a teaching of Jesus that doesn't make sense, I set it aside as something that doesn't make sense. I'm free to do this, because I'm not a Christian. If I were a Christian, however, I would think that I should follow ALL of the teachings attributed to Jesus, because if I were a Christian, I would probably believe that Jesus is God, and who would I be to disagree with God? One of the things Jesus seemed to teach quite clearly was that we should love our enemies. Robert Wright summarizes these teachings:

The “Love your enemy” injunction, as we’ve seen, appears in both Matthew and Luke. In the Matthew version, Jesus says, “I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” In the letter to the Romans, written more than a decade before Matthew or Luke was written, Paul says, “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.” And if Paul doesn’t quite say to love your enemies, he does add “if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink.” Paul also says, in that same passage, “Do not repay anyone evil for evil … never avenge yourselves.” Similarly, Jesus, just before advising people to love their enemies, says, “Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.”

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“Saying Gay” is not about SEX

I’ve been thinking about the Missouri “Don’t Say Gay” legislation (HB2051) since it hit public awareness. I’ve lived in Missouri most of my life, I am used to seeing legislative discussions that make my head hurt, but this one hit me harder than most.

I realize that this bill, like much legislation around the country, is a fearful reaction to the many advances that gay folk are making. It is more accepted to be gay now than 20 years ago. Gay people are often portrayed on TV shows, in books and movies and the storyline is no longer about being gay. The dramatic value of homosexuality has dipped in popularity. Being gay is less taboo, and for some people that is the last straw. This legislation feels like a last ditch effort from the folks petrified and disgusted by homosexuals to protect themselves through the guise of protecting the children. But from what?

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Life by the numbers

In years past, I used to rest assured that I was in good shape, physically, economically and socially. That was before computers gave me the ability to know exactly how I'm doing. It used to be easier to pretend that one was in good health. Nowadays, hundreds of websites let you know about all of the diseases that threaten you, complete with many symptoms that undoubtedly match some of your symptoms. Of course there have always been books and magazines with medical information, but never before could you so easily pinpoint so many symptoms with a free Google search or a quick visit to the symptom-checker at Wrongdiagnosis.com. Economically, we used to put our money into some sort of mutual fund or other investment, and we considered that we were "married" to the account. Computers now give us the ability to track our financial health second by second. Computer-programmed trading also creates crazy jumps and plunges in the market. Ignorance was bliss, and many advisers argue that you should go back to finding a reasonable place to put your money, then ignoring it for long periods of time. Then there is one's social health. It used to be that I could assume that I had an indefinite (large) number of people with whom I had a friendship. That was before Outlook came along to tell me exactly who I did (and did not) know well enough to have a phone number or an email address. In Outlook, you'll get the exact number. Ooops. My social circle is not nearly as big as I'd like to believe. Perhaps you are thinking that Outlook is not the right place to look, and that one ought to look, instead, to Facebook. Thanks to the precision statistics offered by Facebook, we can see that the typical Facebook user has 190 friends. That's it? But what if I get in a bind or I get sick, and I need the help of a "friend." It seems like you could run through 190 "friends" all too quickly. It ultimately presents the same problem as Outlook. It gives you a finite number, and many of them are not really good friends, anyway, as much as I enjoy sharing information with them. A new article in The Atlantic, "Is Facebook Making Us Lonely," by Stephen Marche, should make us even more suspicious of the Facebook phenomenon (the article is in the May 2012 edition, not yet online). We learn (p. 66) that neurotics and lonely individuals spend greater amounts of time on Facebook per day than non-lonely people. He also writes that Facebook has become a place to pretend that one's life is better than it is, and that "believing that others have strong social networks can lead to feelings of depression." He also cites to research showing that "surrogates can never make up completely for the absence of the real thing . . . actual people in the flesh." He concludes that the idea that a website "could deliver a more friendly, inter-connected world is bogus." Further research shows that "the greater the proportion of face-to-face interactions, the less lonely you are . . . [and] The greater the proportion of online interactions, the lonelier you are." He adds that Facebook is not always a bad thing. Like many things, it is a tool that can be used or misused. "It's like a car. you can drive it to pick up your friends. Or you can drive alone." Then again, Facebook puts us into the business of competing with our "friends." "Facebook imprisons us in the business of self-presenting, and this, [according to author Jaron Lanier], is the site's crucial and fatally unacceptable downside." Facebook gratifies "the narcissistic individual's need to engage in self-promoting behavior." So think about this next time you smugly react to your "friend" count. Marche's article is far more nuanced than the above summary, and he would admit that there are many ways to use Facebook. I, for instance, use it to share article, including many articles from this website. I can't help but notice, though, that many people post on Facebook 8 times per day, and they would seem to fall into his description of those having a "narcissistic personality disorder." When you add up your Facebook "friends," then, to see how rich you are with "friends," you might want to set those narcissistic friends aside before counting. So this is life by the numbers, at least if you include this final number, which I take as a challenge, rather than a depressing fact (or use this alternate method of calculating your approximate number of remaining days). In sum, it appears that you will be happier (or at least you will think you are happier) if you get away from the computer and, instead, spend time with a good friend, face-to-face, talking about something other than your health, your investments, and you cyber social circle.

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