It was a great day yesterday in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. When I walked past city hall on my way to work, there was a long and festive line of couples waiting to apply for marriage licenses. And at work, we were very happily distracted and inconvenienced by Julie and Hillary Goodridge’s wedding. (There’s a link to a video of the wedding.)
Revolting opinions of a science fiction writer
Here is Orson Scott Card going on about marriage. Apparently it’s not a unique example. Google on “Orson Scott Card marriage” and you’ll get an eyeful.
No mention, of course, about the evils of plural marriage. I think he should turn his attention to the abuses perpetrated by Mormons (whether LDS or not) before he spreads his hateful lies about gay and lesbian people.
Critique of US journalism
The Revealer has a great post “Who Was Yassin?” about reporting on the assassination of the Hamas leader.
We have to turn to the foreign press to learn anything substantial about the religious views of the “spiritual leader” whose worldly terror has been a constant factor in U.S. foreign policy. . . . [W]hy has our press ignored the “spiritual” dimensions of this “spiritual leader”? Two possibilities. One is that the journalists assigned to cover the Middle East are political reporters. They approach religion as simply a veneer for political motives, and rarely bother to learn its intricacies.
The other, deeper problem, is with the narratives available for religion stories even when a reporter tries to pay attention. Most religion writing is divided between innocuous spirituality and dangerous fanaticism, with subcategories for “corruption,” “traditionalism,” and wacky. . . .
So what does our press do? Nothing. A major enemy of peace in the Middle East has just been killed, and yet we learn almost nothing about what made him fight or why he is mourned. Opponents and supporters of the Palestinians remain in the dark, uninformed by a press incapable of breaking the narrative to investigate — and perhaps help eradicate — the roots of terrorism. It’s easier to stick to the “he-said/she-said”-with-guns version of events that reduces it all to retaliation, to hopeless spirals of violence and ancient ethnic hatreds, to enmity without reason.
Ig Nobel Ceremony 2003 Details
Banned Books Week
Mars
Last night I went to the Museum of Science with my friends Paul and Alanna, who have a telescope that they set up on the roof. Thousands of people were there in lines for the observatory and for the other telescopes. Early in the evening, all I could see (through the telescope) was an orange disk. By the end of the evening, when Mars was higher in the sky and it was darker, I could see the south polar ice cap as a tiny spot of brightness. Very exciting.
Harvey Fierstein on AIDS
Bishop calls for tolerance in gay row
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Bishop calls for tolerance in gay row A lay leader at Greyfriars Church, Reading, responds: “The gravest consequence will be to the Anglican Church’s witness to the name of Christ in our land. May God have mercy on us all and give those in authority Godly wisdom at this time.”
Well, sure: if John is appointed suffragan bishop, it will be a witness that Christ is for everyone, a repudiation of the hatred and bigotry all too often promulgated by the so-called Christian Church.