Republican Gay Theatre
Pop quiz: Under what administration did the first openly gay couple spend a night in visiting residence of the White House?
Have an idea? I’ll wager that you are wrong. No, it wasn’t our current President who, as he is envisioned by some, divides his time pining merit badges on the shirts of young and effervescent socialists, or praying in the direction of Saudi Arabia five times a day in the Lincoln bedroom, conveniently redesigned and reappropriated to serve as some baroque Mosque.
Nope. Not him.
In fact, I’ll provide you with a bit of hint: It was not under a Democrat’s stewardship.
Give up?
It was Republican icon Ronald Reagan. Ted Grabe, who served as the Reagan’s interior decorator (a literal queer eye for the straight guy routine) spent a night in the private quarters of the Reagans with his lover Archie Case. Even Reagan’s tolerance of homosexuality was not completely closeted. Prior to his running for Executive office in 1978, he publicly voiced opposition to the California ballot initiative that would have blocked gay and lesbian teachers from teaching public school children. “Whatever else it is,” Reagan said, “homosexuality is not a contagious disease like the measles.”
Unfortunately, his Republican descendants have moved precious little by way of vigorous contemplation and education on the matter of homosexuality’s acceptability in society. Virginia’s Republican Attorney General, Ken Cuccinelli, in what amounts to nothing short of legal frivolity, argued that Virginia colleges do not have the right to protect gay and lesbian faculty and staff from discrimination. Unsurprisingly, the institutions that dispense higher education prevailed over Cuccinelli’s modicum possession of such learnedness, holding up their collective hand, saying, “Um…we disagree.”
Arizona, which, when the United States voiced a position vacancy for a mentally handicapped red-headed step child, rose ebulliently to the challenge, barred same sex marriage in the state in 2008. Legislators, with Republican affiliation at sixty-percent, and unfulfilled with that mere contestation toward the gradually shifting societal acceptance of gay marriage, tried to further cement their abhorrence to gay and lesbian Arizonians by obstructing the dispensation of health insurance benefits for state employee dependents to homosexual partners.
Even to Reagan, who was by no means a stalwart to the cause of gay and lesbians civil rights, this is all a bit too much to handle.
Thankfully, the Republican party might soon enough (albeit gravely belated in the eyes of reason and rightness) come around to Uncle Ronnie’s tolerance of gays and lesbians. Ken Mehlman, former Republican Party Chairman, who recently announced, publicly, his gay orientation, will host a same-sex marriage fundraiser that will also include top brass Republicans.
It seems that “conservatives” and “same-sex marriage” are two terms that are not inherently divorced from one another.
The former campaign manager for Sen. McCain presidential bid, Steve Schmidt, says, “Marriage is an institution that strengthens and stabilizes society. It is an institution that has the capacity to bring profound joy and happiness to people and it is a matter of equality and keeping faith of one of the charters of the nation, the right to live your life.”
Yes, folks. Mr. Schmidt, a Republican, is talking about homosexual marriage.
Hope does springs eternal.
But for every drama there must be a antagonist. In this drama, full of lavishly designed sets and immaculately stitched florid costumes, our antagonist is the principle component of Republican zeitgeist: the inanity of Tea Party elk who want a future that resembles a quaint and perfect American past that is a fiction, only to have ever existed in their imaginations. As long as their daftness and enthusiasm for Election Day voting move in tandem, there will be no shortage of Republican candidates that will tell them exactly what they want to hear, impassioning them to seek out the nearest voting booth.
Thankfully, there are those conservatives that have not been lost to the daft boilerplate of modern Republican rhetoric. Those that are willing, and wanting, to pick up where Uncle Ronnie left off, and that, in due time, may provide audiences with a surprise, feel-good ending worthy of both celebration and decency.
Defecation: You’re Doing it Wrong.
But (pun intended) it seems that we all are. Our bodies were designed to squat in fields, just as our ancestors did prior to the gushing 1591 invention of the flush toilet by Sir John Harington. Unfortunately, it seems as though the modern toilet causes a good bit of harm by way of encouraging hemorrhoids, in exchange for the sanitary convenience. Yes, the bowls are hurting our bowels. Here’s Daniel Lametti summarizing the benefits of traditional squatting:
Proponents of squatting argue that conventional toilets produce an anorectal angle that’s ill-suited for defecation. By squatting, they say, we can achieve “complete evacuation” of the colon, ridding our bowels of disease-causing toxins.
And of the hemorrhoid matter:
Straining increases the pressure in your abdomen, causing the veins that line your anus to swell. In hemorrhoid patients, those veins stay swollen and sometimes bleed. In theory, squatting might stave off hemorrhoids by making defecation easier, reducing the need to strain and decreasing abdominal pressure.
There is not only evidence to suggest that popping a squat might stave of the abhorrent hemorrhoidal polyp. Those who feel there aren’t enough hours in the day may want to consider the added time that one can tack on to their daily schedule for undertaking the old-school feces expulsion technique:
An Israeli doctor named Dov Sikirov tested this idea for a 2003 study published in Digestive Diseases and Sciences. He had several dozen patients defecate in each of three positions: sitting on a 16-inch-high toilet, sitting on a 12-inch-high toilet, and squatting over a plastic container. He asked his subjects to record how long each bowel movement took and rate the effort required on a four-point scale ranging from effortless to difficult. Sikirov found that, when squatting, subjects averaged a mere 51 seconds to move their bowels, versus 130 seconds when sitting on a high toilet. And as they moved from a sit to a squat, subjects were more likely to rate the experience as easier.
Technology as our Overlord
A few years ago, Kord Campbell’s addiction caused him to overlook an email in his inbox. Instead of patrolling his incoming mail, as would be initially assumed, his constant attention to various electronic devices, and his interaction with them, made his mind unfocused. The content of that missed email? An offer to purchase his start-up company for $1.3 million dollars.
Matt Richtel writes of growing research, and subsequent concern, of how technology is affecting the brain’s processes. One debunked myth in this digital epoch is the practice of multitasking. Multitasking, studies show, is not the effective, neurologically-savvy, method of working that it is lauded to be. “‘The scary part for guys like Kord is, they can’t shut off their multitasking tendencies when they’re not multitasking,’” says Clifford Nass, a communications professor at Stanford University.
The ubiquity of technology, with its almost sensual allure, is a concern of mine. I typcially watch television with my laptop exemplifying the computer’s sobriquet, pleasantly warming my genitals, and the profusion of apps on my iPhone keeps me either informed or entertained through the addictive gentle use of my index finger. The only way I can sit through a movie is if I’m cloistered in the dark bowels of a theatre, fully preoccupied by the grand presentation of Hollywood celluloid.
It takes a great deal of effort and restraint to avoid: checking for email, tweets, news updates, blog posts, and Facebook status updates.
“’I have to work to suppress it.’” This is Eyal Ophir on the technological cross that he bears. He is a researcher at Stanford, giving particular attention to the effects that technology has on all of us.
“‘The media is changing me’”
Both he and I repine over the same concern.
Happily Married with Issues
The famed Socratic axiom goes like this: the unexamined life is not worth living. Indeed. It’s a fine little rhetorical dandy for those predisposed to the craft of self-reflection. And from it, we can divine a corollary from Socrates’ famed psychological aphorism: The unexamined marriage is not worth perpetuating.
That is such an examination that Elizabeth Weil initiated last year:
I’ve never really believed that you just marry one day at the altar or before a justice of the peace. I believe that you become married — truly married — slowly, over time, through all the road-rage incidents and precolonoscopy enemas, all the small and large moments that you never expected to happen and certainly didn’t plan to endure. But then you do: you endure.
But the endurer can occasionally become threadbare by the process, as Weil recounts:
I’ve long favored the fake-it-till-you-make-it approach to life. Why turn over the rocks of your history just to see what’s underneath? In marriage therapy, this fear makes particular sense, because the therapy carries not only the threat of learning things about yourself that you might prefer not to know but also the hazard of saying things to your spouse that are better left unsaid, as well as hearing things from your spouse that you might prefer not to hear.
Yet I believe, as she does, that marriage is worth such potentially arduous moil, rewarding the participants, at the very least, with “the courage and patience to grow.” It’s a long piece, but one worth the reading time. Marriage has long fascinated me. Not so much the honeymoon phase (although I look forward to enjoying it when my time comes) but when things become a little more florid, and a little more mercurial, often when children are inserted into the matrimonial equation. That Weil attempts for an equitable and sincere reportage about her marriage, with that subtle Socratic imperative guiding her curiosity, is greatly appreciated, as I look forward to a marriage equation of my own.
An animation produced by South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker using an Alan Watts recording. Watts is always someone worth coming back to from time to time for perspective.
Life is not a journey, he contends, but rather a piece of music.
(via joshnoom)
Bad Religion - “The Devil in Stitches” from their forthcoming album The Dissent of Man.
The Meaning of Marriage
Dutifully, jurisprudence has prevailed in California, as Proposition 8, a bill that made gay marriage illegal, as been ruled unconstitutional by Judge Vaughn Walker. Writing in his opinion:
Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite-sex couples are superior to same-sex couples. Because California has no interest in discriminating against gay men and lesbians, and because Proposition 8 prevents California from fulfilling its constitutional obligation to provide marriages on an equal basis, the court concludes that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional
It appears that this case will eventually ascend up the legislative trellis to reach the Supreme Court of the United States.
I’ve felt for some time that one of the principle causes of this contentious matter is the simple matter of semantics. What do we mean when we say “marriage?”
When we utter marriage with use both a religious and civic inflection of the tongue. Most of us, upon hearing the word, think of a ceremony conducted upon the auspices of a religious administrator (a rabbi, priest, imam, et cetera). And of course this religious administrator represent a particular religious denomination, one that recognizes the matrimonial conjoiner of two individuals. That’s the religious side of things.
On the civic side, there is the legal appropriation upon the marriage. Not only is one’s marriage recognized by one’s religious group, but it is also legally recognized by the state that you reside in, as well as the federal government (that’s why you check ‘Single’ or ‘Married’ when filling out your annual taxes. This stuff matters).
The conjoiner of a religious and civic recognition is, what I think, at the heart (of the problem) of the matter. Marriage is a compound semantic dilemma. Marriage develops out of a socio-religious historical context, one that is recognized by the state and federal governments. It’s the converging of both religion and state that forms the proverbial thorn in the sides of both supporters and detractors of gay marriage.
The religious debate on the allowance of gay marriage is a theological one. It should be reconciled among the individual religions and their multitudinous denominations.
The civic debate on the allowance of gay marriage, however, is a legal one. That government powers (whether state or federal) can limit the rights of gay couples that wish to unionize their romance, the same way that straight couples do, is demonstrative of unbridled discrimination.
There needs to be separation of the religious realm and the civic realm.
The pressing issue for gays and lesbians is to receive the very same legal benefits that the law gives to heterosexuals. It’s the “civic” aspect of the word marriage that matters most, not the religious one. Churches, synagogues, and mosques are free to pass judgment on gay marriages, should it affirm their world view.
But Government cannot adjudicate so recklessly. It is binded to the spine of justice, and there should be no attempts at its extraction, which is what California Proposition 8 attempted to do.
Even among straight couples, there is no need to testify their love under the supporting buttresses of any church. My home state of Virginia offers these guidelines for those interested in marrying within its boundaries:
A minister of any religious denomination must be authorized by a circuit court to celebrate the rites of matrimony. To obtain such authorization, the minister must produce proof of his ordination and regular communion with the religious society of which he is a reputed member. In addition, the court in each city and county has appointed persons who are eligible to perform civil marriage ceremonies.
It is the last point which shows that Virginia, as with other states, is willing to bestow couples who choose to refrain from a religious ceremony with full benefits of marriage. It is the taking of a religious idea and secularizing it.
And that is precisely what the remedy should be. Ultimately, marriage should be bestowed among religious authority; civil unions (for both straight and gay couples) bestowed by legal acknowledgment of couplehood. The problem arises when one realizes that we are so accustomed to using the word marriage. Even myself, who is straight, and who does not wish to have my eventual marriage overseen by a religious administrator (or a religion, for that matter) would refer to my “civil union” as a marriage. Because it is two people coming together to form a bond banded by love.
And I wonder: perhaps that is the most sensible way for gays and lesbians to strip the inference of religion from the word marriage. To take civil unions, a civil union that affords you the very same legal protections and guarantees that your straight contemporaries enjoy (abiding with nothing less), and to show those that oppose your right to do so that you are quite capable of reifying the principles of marriage (love, faithfulness, devotion, loyalty) that your detractors complain you serve as an affront towards. Take the civil unions and show them that they are marriages in the true sense of the word; thereby hanging anti-gay marriage supporters by their own fallacious petard.
![I agree resoundingly
[sfhaps]](http://28.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l6nj182pGs1qzx3wso1_400.jpg)
I agree resoundingly
[sfhaps]
![Photo of the day
[via]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l6mqmqQJ8u1qzmnm4o1_400.jpg)
Photo of the day
[via]
Axe will help you find hot women surreptitiously hiding in your apartment.
[via AdFreak]
Abstaining from Meat, Abstaining from Arrogance
While dining at Richmond’s beloved Sticky Rice last night, I ordered a popular appetizer of the restaurant: a bucket full of tater tots. In addition to seemingly endless supply of crunchy, bite-sized fare, Sticky Rice provides a mayonnaise-based dipping sauce. Thankfully, they also provide a “vegenaise” substitute for those, such as myself, that do not ingest animal products or byproducts. I happily ordered the vegenaise.
A few minutes later, our tin bucket of tater tots arrived. The initial tots were particularly hot, and so what better way to provide a cool sensation for the tongue than to dip them in to refrigerated vegenaise sauce? Ahhhh. Absolutely tasty!
Upon depleting the reserve of tots to roughly a quarter of the serving size, the waitress came by the table. She had a container of what appeared to be tot dipping sauce. I looked up at her, bemusedly.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “You received the regular dipping sauce. This sauce here,” she nodded to the sauce that her left hand carried, “is the vegenaise.” I had been eating a mayonnaise-based product. One with milk and eggs, the latter product being one of the most truly heinously-produced foods, an affronting industry with little-to-no concern placed towards animal welfare. I had been duped!
Instead of repining over a clear infraction against my vegan sensibilities, or excoriating the waitress and management for the mistake, I voiced my displeasure by frowning at the waitress. Then thanking her for correcting the mistake as she removed the regular dipping sauce from the table.
I am not a subscriber to the “hard line” tendencies. Hard line refers to those individuals who martinetishly execute their vegan diets. They are the most regimental of the vegan elk. Although such discipline is admirable, their obdurate sensibilities and mulishly-voiced opposition to non-vegan friendly practices (i.e. a restaurant innocently confusing customers into thinking a mayonnaise product was vegenaise) typically garner more remarkable reproaches. Say, leaving a restaurant without paying for their meal. Or, more extreme in nature, verbally confronting the waitress and management to an audience of befuddled patrons pleasantly dining. It appears though that the term “hard line” is more accurate in describing their self-imposed incredulity at the current state of dietary affairs rather than their dietary discipline.
What happened last night at Sticky Rice was (let’s be honest) an honest mistake. As a vegan, I realize that my diet, the vegan diet, is rare, upheld roughly by a mere 1% of the US population. This number should elucidate the relationship between vegans and restaurants: Vegans do not accommodate restaurants with their presence, restaurants accommodate vegans. As a result, there are going to be times when restaurants goof. It’s human nature. Should they try to avoid these mistakes? Yes, of course. But vegans would do well to avoid a “hard line” response to these honest mistakes. It is thought that vegans, by virtue of their diet and consumer choices, are compassionate people. It is unfortunate if that perception were to be annulled by the extreme behavior of dietary despotism.
