Whinging It

I think one of the best things about the Internet is how people like me can write about their favorite subjects (themselves) and obsessive issues ad nauseum with only short breaks to talk about taxes and garden manure.

Go Internet!

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One of my main beefs with Christianity in America today is that we are letting the wingnuts speak for us. We are letting the judgmental, homophobic self-righteous be our voices.  And that sucks.  So let’s stop doing this, and start doing things like this guy who responded to Colorado State Senator Mark Renfroe’s comments about how gay people are equivalent to murderers, and then gave one of the most half-assed apologies I’ve ever read, noting that he totally doesn’t believe we should kill gay people, y’all.  He just thinks they’re moral degenerates. Geez.

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I’ve been thinking a lot about the “Tell 3” campaign that asks all LGBT people and their allies to tell three other people what it’s like to either be LGBT or to love someone who is LGBT. I think it’s a great campaign; it’s easy to judge people from afar, but hearing stories up close (or even semi-close like the Internet) makes it harder to deny love and hurt and fear in real people.

So, even though I feel like I’ve done my required telling of three, I’m going to go for extra credit. Because I am an “A” student, dammit.  And because I’m relentless and am more and more without shame these days, please consider telling your own story to three people.

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My Story
There are several adjectives that come immediately to mind when I think about being gay: Loving, confused and courageous.

Loving
LGBT people are incredibly loving. They often know what it is to have to reveal a truth about themselves that risks the love and acceptance of others, and consequently are very good at exemplifying love. They know that love is not conditional upon things that are superficial, that it does not care about color or size or gender. The gay community welcomes and embraces those who have been cast off by society at large: runaways, victims of HIV/AIDS, people in general who are not the “norm,” and each other. When a gay person loves, he/she LOVES.

Confused
It is often hard for me to reconcile what I see in my everyday life with the vitriol or indifference that is rampant in the world at large. I have a loving marriage and live in a loving community full of gay and straight people who couldn’t care less what genders my wife and I are. I don’t begin to understand how it is a stretch that anyone tolerate that I love a woman much less that anyone is moved to legislate against our union. It is confusing to me that my attempt to live my life in a truthful, loving manner is considered threatening, evil, or at odds with anyone else’s marriage or family.

Courageous
I live with fear every day. Every day. When others legislate against my love and marriage, other citizens with extreme prejudice tend to take that as license that harming LGBT folks is condoned. And while I do not think that is the intent of legislation or those who speak out against LGBT, it is most definitely a by-product. And even beyond my fear of outright harm coming to me or my wife because we love each other, I fear circumstances where bigotry or prejudice would harm us. But even with all this fear, I and other members of the LGBT community find courage to continue living as ourselves and working toward acceptance in society. We work to clarify the truth. We are courageous.

I love my wife. She loves me back. We are good and loving citizens of the state of California and of the United States of America, and we love our country. We pay taxes and vote and have potluck dinners with our neighbors. We pray to God and go to work and fight against injustices. We bicker with each other and watch TV and go to baseball games. We are every couple in this great nation of ours. We just both happen to be female.

Conversation this morning:

Whinger: I’m going to do the taxes this weekend! [Note that exclamation point is not indicative of sarcasm. I actually like to do the taxes as it gives me an immense sense of completion as well as the delusion of competence in math skills. Wife, on the other hand, breaks into a mini-panic attack at the idea that someone, somewhere is doing his/her taxes. It's possible she married me for this reason alone as Lord knows it wasn't for my cooking skills.]

Wife: Groan.

Whinger: Also, this weekend is the annual poo weekend when I need to get manure for the garden! [Also not a sarcastic exclamation point. I enjoy this task as it makes me feel like an expert gardener and enforces the delusion that I would not have been picked off by wolves if I were a farmer during frontier times.]

Wife: Well this weekend just has the theme of shit running all through it.

My bedside table may have the the most single-subject reading material it’s ever had.

As part of my overall difficulty with the Prop. 8 nonsense, I’ve become obsessed with the relationship between Christianity and homosexuality. And I’m not talking cuckoo Christians like those folks who picket the funerals of people who died of AIDS.  I’m talking regular folks who think that, along with going to church on Sunday, it is also their duty to interfere with civil laws mandating equal rights and protections for queers. Oh, and nevermind about the poor and hungry.  I just have a really hard time reconciling the situation, what with being gay AND a Christian.

And so with this obsession comes books on the gay/Christian subject.  I’ve covered the spectrum from books written by Christians in favor of marriage for gay folks to books that detail every single passage that could possibly have to do with why gay people are all just Satan. (The latter must be read while consuming wine.)

One of the most interesting I’ve read is “unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity and Why It Matters” by David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons. The book is predominantly written by Kinnaman, who is the president of the Barna Group, an organization that has researched the Christian movement for decades.  Kinnaman specifically asked 16-29 year old non-Christians and Christians about their impressions of Christianity and Christians.  The results were not terribly flattering toward Christians; they were seen as judgmental, hypocritical and sheltered. (I should note that, while the book recognized that there’s a broad definition for “Christians,” it mostly focused on Evangelicals.)

But the number one negative adjective that both non-Christian and Christian youth used to describe Christians? Antihomosexual.

Kinnaman discusses the many reasons that Christians are seen as anti-gay by American youth:

• The gay community has not recovered from being told that HIV/AIDS is God’s judgment on gay people, no matter how much work is now being done by churches for the AIDS crisis in Africa.
• Gay people are not welcomed into churches, and are often shunned by Christians.
• There is a lack of compassion shown by Christians toward homosexuals in the struggles that they (the homosexuals) go through.
• The younger American generations have more relativistic morals, and don’t see homosexuality as bad.

I thought in many ways that Kinnaman was making broad strides in helping to clue in the Christian community as to why they are seen as antihomosexual, but then he also had to go and make the following points.  Keep in mind that he was making these arguments with the intent of being more Christ-like in his attitude toward gay people:

• Gay sex is a sin that has equal weight with any other sexual sin, so it’s not like it should be condemned more broadly. Christians are willing to forgive those who view pornography or who have lustful thoughts, and gay sex should be treated with the same magnitude.
• It’s becoming clear that homosexuality has a basis in genetics, so Christians should be compassionate toward gay people like they are toward alcoholics who are genetically predisposed to it.
• Christians should continue to fight for traditional marriage between a man and a woman because the Bible doesn’t make any mention of any other type of marriage even though it doesn’t expressly forbid it.
• Christians should stop making such a big deal about the connection between HIV/AIDS and the queer community.  After all, gluttony is a sin, but Christians don’t go around telling people who are overweight that Diabetes is God’s punishment.

I think that Kinnaman might be shocked to find that, even if Christians employ his tactics in dealing with gay people, his polling will still result in an antihomosexual label. Until the Christian community comes to terms that being gay is a benign trait or characteristic like hair color, they will continue to endure being seen as bigots.

An Open Letter to the Idiot Who Stole the Cassette (That’s Right) Radio We Never Use Out of Our Always Unlocked Beater Truck Even Though There Was No Faceplate So the Radio (and Tape Cassette Player) Won’t Even Work

Dear Jackass,

Ahahahahahahahaha!  Good luck with your new acquisition.

Love,

Whinger and Wife

I got a notice from the government in the mail yesterday notifying me that my monthly student loan payments were suspended due to a deferment request.

This was only confusing because I had not requested that my payments be suspended.

At this point, there may have been a giant sigh followed by general bitching about the government in general and their apparent willingness to suspend accounts that don’t need suspending.  Happily, there was a number to call in order to yell at some poor representative, but by the time I opened the mail and read the cryptic notice, the call center was closed.

“Just you wait, Loan People,” thought I as I put the notice in my bag to take to work.  “Just you wait. I have a headset at the office and a boring document to work on.  I can stay on hold and be transferred as many times as necessary to make you fix your mistake.  It can take ALL DAY but you will not break me.”

This morning, after checking email and voicemail, I sat down with my headset for the task that I presumed would take me all morning.  I pressed 1 for English and entered my social and date of birth when prompted.  As the options menu then played, I was going to wait until the end to see if there was a “talk to a human” option, but the second choice was to check the balance of the account, and I figured, “Why the heck not?”  Even though I know, at any given time, how much is in my bank account and what our retirement balances are, I long ago learned to never look at how much I owe the government in student loans as the number always seems to be the same, and I knew that they would just keep taking the same amount of money from me at the end of the month until the end of time.

So I asked the phone robot to check the balance.  “This account is in a ‘paid in full’ status,” said the robot.

It took a moment because the robot’s ESL phrasing made that sentence a little awkward.

But…does that mean I don’t owe any more money?  I made the robot check the balance again.  Once more: Paid in full status.

My mind was racing at this point, failing to comprehend that it appears I no longer owe the government money for that Master’s degree I earned ten years ago but never use other than when I drop into conversation that I have it.

My student loans are paid off.

Dear God, am I an adult now?

Nah.