Warning: contents rather corrosive, handle with care

[cosmolinguist]

A couple of weeks ago I heard an interview on NPR with some conservative who'd written a book. He told me a lot of things I didn't know, like that "the homosexuals"¹ don't really care about getting married—"Most homosexuals don't want to marry. They just want to destroy marriage," I remember him saying. He also said, interestingly, that the American people are good and tolerant, and it's the homosexuals who are intolerant. The host of the show repeated this statement back to him on at least two separate occasions, perhaps hoping (as I was) that he'd see the irony or at least the idiocy inherent in it, but of course he did not.

He said they've declared war on Christians, or something like that. The Christians are the beleaguered, the oppressed, the victims. They're not being allowed to practice their religion! Abortions are still legal in this country! Gay people are starting to get uppity!

That anyone could think this boggles my mind. The perception I'm used to from my friends and—especially—from spending time in the UK is that the United States is far too influenced by the conservative, Christian, right-wing fundamentalists as it is. Britain actually has a state-sponsored religion, and the country is still way less religious than much of the US.

But he's not the only one who thinks that way. A couple of days ago, I heard another guy on the radio talking about how atrocious it is that stores say "Season's Greetings", that school concerts don't concern themselves solely with Christian songs, that some people think Christmas is about Santa more than Jesus.²

It's like these people think they have some inalienable right to never see anything that bothers them, some right to have the assurance that no one around them is allowed to do anything of which they don't approve.

They're allowed to shun their gay relatives, they're allowed to never have abortions, they're allowed to say "Merry Christmas" and boycott stores that don't. Freedom of expression and freedom of religion, yes, sure, we're happy for you. But thinking they're entitled to impose their worldview on everybody who happens to be from the same country is deeply aggravating to me. Those same freedoms of expression and religion mean they shouldn't do that!

"All men are created equal," Thomas Jefferson said at the inception of our country. It wasn't even true at the time, as has been so often pointed out, but since then we've been working to make it true, to include women and blacks and poor people and everybody else. It hasn't been easy or quick, though, and I hate to think of those hard-won freedoms now taken away by people who are now worried that the country is "too politically correct," too liberal, too secular, too dangerous. That really disappoints me.

Sorry; I'm not very merry this Christmas, am I?

---

¹ He kept saying that, "the homosexuals," and for some reason it really bugged me. He wasn't even trying to hide the disdain in his voice, for one thing, but I thought it wasn't just that. And then I realized that the difference between calling people "homosexual" and calling them "the homosexuals" is that "homosexual" is an adjective that can describe a person, but putting "the" in front of it makes it a noun, which obliterates everything else about the person(s) so called.

² Complaining about the secularization of Christmas strikes me as amusing; I want to tell them that the Christians brought this on themselves by assimilating elements of Yule/Saturnalia/winter solstice celebrations, to help those poor pagans party for the right reasons. The right reasons, of course, being theirs. Department-store Santas and socks that play "Jingle Bells" should be seen as a sign of success then, right? They achieved what they wanted.

Comments

[stealthmunchkin.livejournal.com]

"And then I realized that the difference between calling people "homosexual" and calling them "the homosexuals" is that "homosexual" is an adjective that can describe a person, but putting "the" in front of it makes it a noun, which obliterates everything else about the person(s) so called."

You'll be surprised to learn that this is an area in which you are in complete agreement with Dave Sim. He insists that 'homosexual' is an adjective, and that the noun should be 'homosexualist'. As in 'feminist/Marxist/homosexualist/atheist conspiracy to destroy civilisation' ;)

[cosmolinguist]

Yeah, but the difference is that he thinks it should be used as a noun; I think it should not.

[paninogirl.livejournal.com]

That's complete bullshit about people being offended when stores/people use "Season's Greetings" to be less offensive/discriminatory. Everyone has to pick a fight about everything, and everyone has to make some sort of excuse about how he or she is oppressed. They should just shut the fuck up.

Despite the tone of my comment, I'm in a good mood! This post just reminds me of how people are turds.

[cosmolinguist]

Yeah, writing about people being turds on Christmas—which I personally enjoy as well—seems kind of incongruous, I know. I've been saving up this rant for a couple weeks and this is when I was finally able to write it. Oh well.

Ooo, nifty new icon! :-)

[paninogirl.livejournal.com]

Ben Taylor is my new love. :)

Homosexuals are 'uppity'

[toastedtuna.livejournal.com]

I seem to recall that was a way of thinking about black people at one time. Remember slavery? Slave owners liked to use the term 'uppity' in regards to their black slaves who were rebellious and wanted to be viewed as the humans they were, rather than chattle.

It's scary that for all the things which have changed for the better here, things are still the same.

That word reminds me of a favourite song...

[stealthmunchkin.livejournal.com]

From the author of "They Ain't Makin' Jews Like Jesus Any More":

You uppity women I don’t understand
Why you gotta go and try to act like a man,
But before you go and make your weekly visit to the shrink
You’d better occupy the kitchen and liberate the sink.

Get your biscuits in the oven and your buns in the bed
That’s what I to my baby said,
Women’s liberation is a-going to your head,
Get your biscuits in the oven and your buns in the bed.

Early every morning you’re out on the street
Passing out pamphlets to everyone you meet.
You gave up your maiden form for lent
And now the front of your dress has an air scoop vent.

Every single brakeman that’s ever come along
Had a little woman always tellin’ him that he’s wrong.
Eve said to Adam, "here’s an apple you horse"
And Delilah defoliated Samson’s moss.

Get your biscuits in the oven and your buns in the bed
That’s what I to my baby said,
Women’s liberation is a-going to your head,
Get your biscuits in the oven and your buns in the bed.

Mean-hearted harpies are breaking all the laws
Tearing up their girdles and a-burning up their bras,
Now the air is dirty and the sex is clean
And your coffee makes my hair turn green.

So damn emancipated in your mind and your body,
Gonna have to cancel all your lessons in karate.
If you can’t love a male chauvinist
You’d better cross me off your shopping list.

Get your biscuits in the oven and your buns in the bed
That’s what I to my baby said,
Women’s liberation is a-going to your head,
Get your biscuits in the oven and your buns in the bed.

Re: That word reminds me of a favourite song...

[burkesworks.livejournal.com]

Man, there's always room for fellow Kinky Friedman fans here!

Re: That word reminds me of a favourite song...

[stealthmunchkin.livejournal.com]

The man's a God, isn't he? I know a couple of people who've known him since childhood.
I like his novels even more than I like the songs, just because of the sheer weight of ideas - the lesbian dancing class, the brontosaurus-foreskin boots...

Re: Homosexuals are 'uppity'

[cosmolinguist]

Yeah, when people expect me to take it for granted that gay people are "just not right!" or (as my mom said yesterday) "gross", I think of people saying "black people aren't as smart as white people, everyone knows that, that's just the way it is." I think this treatment of homosexuals may some day be seen in a way very close to the way we now think of this treatment of everybody who's not white.

And while i don't think "uppity" is a word the guy on the radio necessarily used, it was definitely the impression he was trying to give. How dare they think they're humans just like everybody else!

Argh.

Re: Homosexuals are 'uppity'

[stealthmunchkin.livejournal.com]

But I get the impression at least some of your family would agree about the black people too (as, indeed, would some of mine) :-/

Re: Homosexuals are 'uppity'

[cosmolinguist]

Oh, absolutely. I imagine I've told you that my mom and maybe her sisters and parents have still not got over the fact that her youngest sister married a black guy. Mom says she did it just to spite her parents. I don't know if that's true or not; I don't know if it'd work or not either. And after 25 years of marriage and three great kids, they're having problems and may get divorced; my mom sees this is quite the "I told you so": "He was never any good, we knew it."

And my mom has actually told me that she would not like it if I dated a black guy. Anyone non-white or blatantly non-Christian would do it, I'm sure.

[chuck-lw.livejournal.com]

>Complaining about the secularization of Christmas strikes me as amusing; I want to tell them that the Christians brought this on themselves by assimilating elements of Yule/Saturnalia/winter solstice celebrations, to help those poor pagans party for the right reasons.

Hey! That's it! If certain people want to keep a closer eye on homosexuals, and bring them into the fold, then Christianity needs to assimilate aspects of gay culture.:-)

[stealthmunchkin.livejournal.com]

I love the thing in Something Positive the other day, where the Wiccan shop steal the baby Jesus from a nativity display, add horns and an enormous erect penis, and stick it in the window with a sign saying "Our King is older than your King"...

[hexar-le-saipe.livejournal.com]

Queer Eye for the Christian Guy?

[cosmolinguist]

For some reason, that struck me as the funniest thing I've seen in a few days, and I love it.

[ex-roomette173.livejournal.com]

It's like these people think they have some inalienable right to never see anything that bothers them, some right to have the assurance that no one around them is allowed to do anything of which they don't approve.

Christmas is a graft on to several other holidays at this time of year. I astonished that people are so offended that there are more than one holiday in the month and that we might want to capture it all with "Season's Greetings."

People just love being offended. That's my conclusion. There things to be an activist about that really merit it (such as the situation in, oh, Sudan, to name a place) but they'd rather run around making sure people don't write "X-mas" instead of Christmas.

I'm a practicing Catholic so sometimes people think I'm in their nasty little "in" crowd. They'll say the most astonishing crap to me, about how marriage will be "destroyed" if all people are allowed to marry. My response to this is that they have no amount of faith whatsoever. If you're so convinced that everything you believe in religiously can be destroyed, you have no amount of belief at all. Marriage isn't threatened by anything, it is absolutely ancient and lives in many, many forms. Worry about the polygamy oppression of thirteen year old girls in Utah and Arizona, not my neighbors who have been together fifty years marrying at long last. I feel the same way about Christ. I don't see Christmas going into any sort of extinction and you'd have to live on Mars not to know that we have some sort of religious assocation with Christ along with Christmas. School kids see lawns. For heaven's sake, even the funeral home has a creche outside all lit up,and isn't that cheery? We can't say Season's Greetings to include everyone? It has to be just our God? Well, that's hospitable and Christian of everyone.

I am ranting, but call it pregnancy hormones. :) I am really crabby today. I'm going to go eat raw gingerbread dough. Sorry to go off. I don't know you well yet. I promise I'm nice. really. :)

[stealthmunchkin.livejournal.com]

The 'not writing Xmas for Christmas' people are particularly stupid, because the X isn't an X, but a Chi, which was used in place of the word 'Christ' by the Church dating back to the origins of Christianity...

[ex-roomette173.livejournal.com]

In my opinion they are the same population of people who believe that the stories in the "Chicken Soup for the Fill In The Blank" are true.

[cosmolinguist]

Don't worry about your ranting; I like it quite a bit.

I was raised Catholic, though I've been trying to extricate myself from it ever since I was 12 or so. I continued going to church with my dad until I was out of high school, and now when I'm around I go with my mom, who's Lutheran. So even now I'm exposed to people who think I agree to amazing things just because I get up on Sunday mornings and follow my mom out of the house.

I like how you said that marriage and Christ don't really have anything to worry about. And it's true. Both traditions are older than Christianity (Dionysus was kind of like Jesus, and so was Pan, and so were a bunch of other people I can't think of this early in the morning...).\

We can't say Season's Greetings to include everyone? It has to be just our God? Well, that's hospitable and Christian of everyone.

Yeah, you can use their own religion's teaching's against them, so to speak (it's what happens when the guy's famous for saying "love your neighbor" and "do unto others as you'd have them do unto you"), which is sort of fun but still doesn't accomplish anything because they're not really thinking any more. That's what really bugs me about organized religion; it just seems an excuse for people not to have to think about anything for themselves because someone else can tell them things and they'll accept them, often unquestioningly. Of course that's not always true; my dad, the Catholic, is a lot more politically sane than my mom, who belongs to a more progressive denomination. It's not a generalization good for everyone, but it is true enough of the time that I think it's a valid complaint.

So you don't have to worry about complaining; you're eloqunet about it and I even agree with you. :-)

omg!

[sporksoma.livejournal.com]

I heard that exact same broadcast, and I remember thinking what a complete and utter moronic fuck that guy was, and how lovely his entrails would look decorating my house for the holidays.

Stupid fucking intolerant asshole.

[madscience.livejournal.com]

The idea that Christians are the persecuted rather than the persecutors is deliberately and methodically cultivated from a very young age. At my Lutheran grade school, I was forced to watch outrageous movies where good little Christians refused to have weird symbols tattooed on their foreheads ("I know what that means! That's computer talk for 666!") and were subsequently chased around their neighborhood by black helicopters.

Anyway... we all know what the homosexuals are doing to the soil.

[hexar-le-saipe.livejournal.com]

Amen. Christians feed off persecution, and where there is none they'll create it.

"Christianity -- Under Siege for 2000 Years!"

[angel-thane.livejournal.com]

You may be interested in a post I made yesterday

http://www.livejournal.com/community/weirdjews2/226616.html