Posted
Tuesday, December 28, 2004 @ 1425 PST
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The
good, the bad, the funny, and the unfortunate.
The title just about
sums up the daily flow of info and minutia from the Internet into
my little laptop. Here is a sampling from this morning –
see if you can figure out which category each item falls into.
I have been saved.
Hallelujah! I have found the Church
of Critical Thinking. Amongst the items posted there, I
found this piece about a group of Wisconsin clergy who have written
to school officials encouraging the teaching of evolution.
My favorite quote from the letter is "We believe that among
God's good gifts are human minds capable of critical thought and
that the failure to fully employ this gift is a rejection of the
will of our Creator. To argue that God's loving plan of salvation
for humanity precludes the full employment of the God-given faculty
of reason is to attempt to limit God, an act of hubris."
To this I say bravo! In my not particularly humble professional
opinion, this is true (yes, it is a professional opinion, I
am a priest, after all). As an accompaniment to this great
site, I also found Stephen
Downes’ "Logical Fallacies" site. I think
I will use it to hone my debating skills, not to mention keeping
it handy as ammunition when posting comments.
Reading
the whole “mental illness” line of crap in the gay
marriage court case going on in California right now just makes
me want to barf. I am deeply disappointed to see some intervention
groups pull this nasty historical opinion out as part of their
argument against gay marriage, but to see health professionals
lend their expert status in support of personal bigotries is nauseating,
especially considering that scientific thought has long since
moved away from this hurtful notion. Here is an excerpt from the
SF Chronicle:
Among
the declarations they submitted to Judge Kramer were statements
from:
-- Jeffrey Satinover, a Princeton University lecturer and psychiatrist
who specializes in "reparative therapy'' for gays, saying
the American Psychiatric Association was misled into removing
homosexuality from its list of mental disorders in 1973.
-- Katherine Young, professor of religion at McGill University
in Montreal, saying that "children need a parent of each
sex'' because of inherent differences between men and women.
-- George Rekers, a psychologist and professor at the University
of South Carolina, saying studies show children do better with
heterosexual than with homosexual parents.
Deputy City Attorney Kathleen Morris said the declarations were
largely based on stereotypes and "contradicted by science.''
I think that this demonstrates
the contempt that the anti-gay marriage lobby has for the basic
humanity of the queer community, that they have to disparage queers
as somehow flawed (and therefore less than - and deserving less
than - the rest of the population). I would include Ralph Klein
in this category of homophobe. To paraphrase him: “I have
a lot of gay friends, I just think it’s immoral for them
to have committed, legally recognized life-long relationships”.
However, the holiday
cheer continues to trickle in. My good friend and colleague Dennis
Key sent me a great link. Like me, he used to fly with Lifeguard
back in New Mexico. I posted
the info here in my nursing pages.
Mark
Morford’s latest great rant is on political donations.
I had no idea about Amazon.
Guess I’ll be running my book list through Barnes
& Noble. My only question is: How
the hell does he find this stuff out? Hmmmm – I actually
have another question: How the hell does
he keep hammering out these amazing stream of consciousness pieces?
Some of them would take me all bloody week to write!
Finally, a great intellect
has been lost to us. Susan
Sontag has died at the age of 71. Love her or hate her, she
was a true polemic and was not afraid to say it as she saw it.
My favourite quote: “For me the primary obligation is human
solidarity.” I’ll echo that. Blessings on your journey,
Susan.
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