BoomBoomChikiChikiWaWa

It feels as if it's been forever since I made an entry. This summer has been p a c k e d with activities, it's almost unfunny. I've been going to school and going to work, and since the weather's this gorgeous for too short a time in our neck of the woods, we have parties every weekend (heck, who am I kidding? Weekdays are no different...) I've only managed to sit down and write something sensible because my body is on the brink of going on strike. I'm all partied out. But this is a good kind of tired. This time last year, I never would have thought we'd make friends like the ones we have now. Yes, it's been a year since Chaddy and I moved here, and it's been pretty amazing these past few months. Yay.

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Despite not having any time to write stuff down, I have been keeping a mental log of the stuff that I've been thinking of writing. So here's a hodgepodge of shuddawuddacuddas (but didnas...) blog entries:

1. I miss my girl friends. I mean, I really-really-really-really-really miss my girlfriends.
2. I've finally decided what kind of house I would like to live in. With the onslaught of modern furniture with kitschy patterns and whatnot, I really like the simple lines of a Spanish hacienda type of home. The natural materials with a smattering of vibrant colors just appeals to me, and I'm slowly furnishing my "castle on a cloud." :-)
3. I absolutely *hate* it when I see blog entries that have cuss words in the title, especially if they're meant to be read by everyone. Don't get me wrong, I haven't turned into a total prude in my old age, but seriously, we ought to be a little more responsible when it comes to what we write that's available for public consumption. Ugh.
4. I made 8 tins of leche flan for a good friend's surprise party and I'm sooooo glad everybody liked it (except for one...but I don't like her, so I don't really care!). It was the first time I used my Nana's recipe on my own, so I was a little fretful over how it would turn out.
5. I still don't necessarily believe in marriage, but I do believe in finding the right person, and mygollyganu am I glad I found the right person. Chaddy's the best and me wuvy my hubbywubby. (Gag. I almost gagged over my own mush.)
6. The Dark Knight was amazing, not so much because of the action and all the (much deserved) hype surrounding the actors' performances. At the end of the day, it really was about the storytelling, and man, that was a great story.
7. Oh how I wish I could be home right now to watch the UAAP games! Go, Ateneo! One Big Fight!!!
8. I. Want. Balut. Now.
9. What is up with our mosquitoes this season? Seriously! They must've been feasting on some baseball players before coming here, because these mosquitoes be on hormones, man! I have bites all over me. Yuck. I hate bugs. Which leads me to this...
10. There ain't no bugs on me...There ain't no bugs on me...There may be bugs on some of you mugs, but there ain't no bugs on me...(That song has been going on and on and on in my head...)

That's it. Wish I had more time and the wherewithal to write something more substantial, but I'm all alone at home and my bed looks so comfy like it's nobody's business. I'm going to take advantage of all this quiet and sleep a little more. And so, good day - I said good day!

A Different Kind of Suicide

Got this from Aimee and I just had to post it here as well. You all know about the recent death of our friend, so I had half the mind to just pass this one over. While I still don't condone suicide, I can't help but post this here. Upon reading the rest of the article, I realized it wasn't really about the suicide as much as it was about the incredible love between two people.

From The Sunday Times
October 14, 2007
My love, I cannot live without you

French philosopher Andre Gorz wrote his terminally ill wife a moving letter before their joint suicide last month. Here we publish it in Britain for the first time

The joint suicide of André Gorz, the French philosopher and founder of the magazine Le Nouvel Observateur, and his British-born wife Dorine, who was suffering from a fatal disease, has turned the love letter that he wrote to her into a surprise bestseller.

Gorz, 84, a friend of Jean-Paul Sartre, and Dorine, 83, committed suicide by lethal injection at their home in the village of Vosnon, east of Paris, on September 22. Two days later a friend found them lying side-by-side in their bedroom.

Gorz’s 75-page Lettre à D. Histoire d’un Amour (Letter to D. Story of a Love), published a year earlier, was a tribute to his wife. One French critic described the work, which won him a wider audience than his essays on ecology and anti-capitalism, as his “intellectual and emotional testament”.

The couple met by chance at a card game in 1947 and married in 1949. “You will soon be 82. You have shrunk six centimetres and you weigh just 45 kilos and you are still beautiful, gracious and desirable,” the book starts. “It is now 58 years that we have lived together and I love you more than ever.”

Gorz goes on to describe finding out in 1973 that Dorine, who managed foreign rights for the publisher Galilée, suffered from an incurable condition caused by the contrast agent lipiodol that was used for x-rays before a back operation that she underwent in 1965. Traces of the agent reached her skull and led to cysts in her cervix, painfully pressuring her nerves.

Two years later the couple learnt that she also suffered from another illness:

‘I took a photo of you, from behind: you are walking with your feet in the water on the beach of La Jolla. You are 52. You are amazing. It’s one of the images of you that I like best.

I looked at that photo for a long while after we got back home, when you told me you wondered if you didn’t have some sort of cancer. You’d already wondered that before we left for the United States but hadn’t wanted to say anything to me. Why not? ‘If I have to die, I wanted to see California beforehand,’ you told me calmly.

Your endometrial cancer hadn’t been picked up in your annual checkup. Once the diagnosis was made and the date of the operation set, we went to spend a week in the house you’d designed. I carved your name in the stone with a chisel. That house was magic. All the spaces had a trapezoidal shape. The bedroom windows looked out over the treetops.

The first night, we didn’t sleep. We were both listening to each other breathing. Then a nightingale started singing and a second one, further away, started answering. We said very little to each other. I spent the day digging and looked up from time to time at the bedroom window. You were standing there, motionless, staring into the distance. I am sure you were practising taming death in order to fight it without fear. You were so beautiful and so determined in your silence that I couldn’t imagine you giving up living.

I took time off from Le Nouvel Observateur and shared your room at the clinic. The first night, through the open window, I heard all of Schubert’s Ninth Symphony. It is etched in me, every note. I remember every moment spent at the clinic. Pierre, our doctor friend from the CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique), who came to hear your latest news every morning, said to me: ‘You are going through moments of exceptional intensity. You’ll remember this always.’ I wanted to know what chances the oncol-ogist gave you of surviving five years. Pierre brought me the answer: ‘50-50.’

When you came out of the clinic we went back to our house. Your spirit thrilled me and reassured me. You’d escaped death and life took on a new meaning and a new value. A friend immediately understood this when you saw him at a party. He stared into your eyes for a long time and he said to you: ‘You’ve seen the other side.’ I don’t know how you responded or what else you said. But these are the words he said to me, straight afterwards: ‘Those eyes! Now I understand what she means to you.’

You had seen ‘the other side’; you’d come back from the land no one comes back from. This changed your perspective. We made the same resolution without consulting each other. An English Romantic once summed it up in a sentence: ‘There is no wealth but life.’

During the months you were convalescing, I decided to take my retirement at 60. I started counting the weeks till I could pack up. I took pleasure in cooking, in tracking down organic produce that would help you get your strength back, in ordering the specially tailored medications that a homeopath had recommended you take.

Ecology became a way of life and a daily practice without ceasing to imply the requirement of a completely different civilisation. I’d reached the age where you ask yourself what you’ve done with your life, what you would like to have done with it. I had the impression of not having lived my life, of having always observed it at a distance, of having developed only one side of myself and being poor as a person. You were, and always had been, richer than I was. You’d blossomed and grown in every dimension. You were at home in your life; whereas I’d always been in a hurry to move on to the next task, as though our life would only really begin later.

I asked myself what was the inessential that I needed to give up in order to concentrate on the essential. I told myself that, to grasp the reach of the upheavals that were looming in every domain, there had to be more space and time for reflection than the full-time exercise of my profession as a journalist allowed.

I was amazed that my leaving the journal, after 20 years of collaboration, was neither painful to myself nor to others. I remember having written that, at the end of the day, only one thing was essential to me: to be with you. I can’t imagine continuing to write, if you no longer are. You are the essential without which all the rest, no matter how important it seems to me when you are there, loses its meaning and its importance. I told you that in the dedication of my last work.

Twenty-three years have gone by since we went off to live in the country, first in ‘your’ house, which radiated a sense of meditative harmony. A harmony we enjoyed for only three years. They started building a nuclear power station nearby and that drove us away. We found another house, very old, cool in summer, warm in winter, with huge grounds. It was a place where you could be happy.

Where there was only a meadow you created a garden of hedges and shrubs. I planted 200 trees there. For a few years we still did a bit of travelling; but all the vibrating and jolting around involved in any means of transport, no matter what, triggers headaches and pain through your whole body. Arach-noiditis has forced you, little by little, to abandon most of your favourite activities. You hide your suffering. Our friends think you’re ‘in great shape’. You’ve never stopped encouraging me to write. Over the 23 years we’ve spent in our house, I’ve published six books and hundreds of articles and interviews.

We’ve had dozens of visitors from every corner of the globe and I’ve given dozens of interviews. I surely have not lived up to the resolution made 30 years ago: to live completely at home in the present, mindful above all of the richness that is our shared life. I’m now reliving the instants when I made that resolution with a sense of urgency. I don’t have any major work in the pipeline. I don’t want ‘to put off living till later’ - in Georges Bataille’s phrase – any longer.

I am as mindful of your presence now as in the early days and would like to make you feel that. You’ve given me all of your life and all of you; I’d like to be able to give you all of me in the time we have left.

You’ve just turned 82. You are still beautiful, graceful and desirable. We’ve lived together now for 58 years and I love you more than ever. Lately I’ve fallen in love with you all over again and I once more carry inside me a gnawing emptiness that can only be filled by your body snuggled up against mine.

At night I sometimes see the figure of a man, on an empty road in a deserted landscape, walking behind a hearse. I am that man. It’s you the hearse is carrying away. I don’t want to be there for your cremation; I don’t want to be given an urn with your ashes in it. I hear the voice of Kathleen Ferrier singing, ‘Die Welt ist leer, Ich will nicht leben mehr’ and I wake up. I check your breathing, my hand brushes over you.

Each of us would like not to survive the other’s death. We’ve often said to ourselves that if, by some miracle, we were to have a second life, we’d like to spend it together. ’

Extracted from Lettre à D. Histoire d’un Amour by André Gorz. Translated by Julie Rose

Of 'Hwoks', 'E 'Kakos', and 'Horizons'

A few hours ago, I read an email from my college buddy. A good friend of ours had died. The email was cryptic and left no details as to how and when our friend died - and so it was easy for my mind to go on default denial mode. I immediately opened all my other accounts, knowing my friends would probably mention it in their respective sites. Sure enough, there it was. I saw LP blog about it. I immediately called her up (sorry again for waking you up!) and found out that it was true.

Her name was Ansky. Was Ansky. I still can't believe that I have to use the past tense now. She still seems so alive to me. Only a few days ago, I even mentioned her in passing. She was always saying something funny (like inventing yet another catchphrase), doing something remarkably atrocious (like adopting a small buko that had started to grow a teeny-tiny tree), or laughing in her vintage Ansky fashion - one part chuckle and ten parts gigantic guffaw. It would be easy to chuck it up to Ansky being quirky, but really, it was just Ansky looking at the world in a way no one else could.

One time, she and I were drinking, just she and I. For those of you who know her, you know that this is dangerous (because chances are, you'd die of alcohol poisoning before you even leave a dent on her), but for one reason or another, she and I took Mr. Tanduay by the neck, and conquered that MF like there was no tomorrow. After reaching that state when tipsy giggles turned into long, philosophical (or so we thought) silences, I looked at her and said, "Ansky! Finally! Gets na kita!" She looked at me, and smiled. *Long, philosophical (or so we though) pause.* And then she said, "Ano 'kamo?"

Hay, Ansky.

In Puerta Galera, on the eve of that ever famous Horizon Conversation, she, TG, and I shared one of the most eventful nights I've ever had to date. I will reserve that story for those who were there and those who knew the stories of that wacky week, but as annoyed as I was at that time because of what she did - my, what I would give to stay up the whole night washing all my clothes again (you had to be there).

To meet Ansky is to be her friend forever (as Sanrio as that may sound...) because she is just that kind of person. If you don't believe me, ask the rest of the GSM, my college barkada. This is our first really big loss. This will not be easy for any of us. But my heart goes out especially to her family and to her closest friends, the Buko Benchers (God, I haven't used that term in years!) who, I am sure, are feeling the pain of her loss the most.

I hate that I'm so far away. I wish I could be there. This just sucks, big time.

Damn you, Ansky. Bad trip ka, Chief. I'll miss you.

Currently Listening To...

This is for my friend who asked me to recommend artists she can listen to "expand her musical horizon." (Side note: GSM, I remember Ansky's horizon comment! LMAO!!! *End of side note*) Some of you might want to check some of these artists out as well. I've written some reviews for some of them, so just click on their names to find out more.

Enjoy!

I am currently listening to:

Adele
Andrew Bird
Architecture in Helsinki
Billy Holiday
Bob Marley
Cake
Chris Cornell
Death Cab for Cutie
The Doors
Duffy
Ella Fitzgerald
Erykah Badu
Feist
Forever Thursday
Franz Ferdinand
Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova
Gnarls Barkley
Goldfrapp
The Hives
The Hush Sound
Imogen Heap
Indigo Girls
Ingrid Michaelson
Jamiroquai
Jason Mraz
Jeff Buckley
Kaki King
Kaskade
Kate Nash
Katy Perry
The Killers
KT Tunstall
Lily Allen
Live
Madeleine Peyroux
Madonna
Massive Attack
Minus the Bear
Of Montreal
Morrisey
Nina Simone
Peter Bjorn and John
The Pipettes
Portishead
The Real Group
Regina Spektor
Royksopp
Sara Bareilles
The Shins
Simon & Garfunkel
The Smiths
Stevie Wonder
Sting
Sufjan Stevens
Tristan Prettyman
The Turtles
The Weepies
U2
Yael Naim
Zero 7

Maagang Pagbati ng Araw ng mga Tatay! (At isang mahalagang mensahe para aking mga kaibigan...)

OK, don't shoot me. I'm not sure if that was the proper translation of "advance happy father's day" - but I tried!

My dad sent me a copy of this article from the Inquirer and I thought it was absolutely wonderful! I'm so glad that there are still Filipinos who live here in the US who still value their heritage - enough to make sure their American citizen children still have a healthy grasp of their culture.

Incidentally, I'm wearing my "Barack Obama is my Homeboy" t-shirt. Rock.

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The odd way my sons say ‘Tatay’ in Obama’s America

By Benjamin Pimentel

SAN FRANCISCO - Visiting friends and relatives are usually amused or puzzled that my sons call me ‘Tatay,” and their mother, ‘Nanay.’ Not “Daddy” and “Mommy” or “Papa” and “Mama.” That’s also how some of our friends’ children call their parents. It’s our way of reminding them -- and us – of who we are and where we come from.

My wife Mara and I even went a step further. We decided, even before our first son, Paolo, was born that Tagalog would be our children’s first language. A few friends and family members thought we were nuts. “Why teach them a language they most likely will not use in America?” they asked.

But for me, that decision was based on a practical reason: I didn’t want my kids to get mad at me. That’s because when I moved to America nearly 20 years ago, I encountered young FilAms who were disappointed, even angry, that their immigrant parents never taught them Tagalog or other Philippine languages. They felt cheated. I didn’t want my boys to feel that way, and wanted to make sure that they would never be able to say to me or their mother, ‘You denied us our heritage.’

Still, I understand why immigrant Pinoys in the past insisted that their children speak English and that they shed as much of the “old” ways as possible. They wanted their children to fit in and not stand out with a thick accent or bad grammar or “strange” customs. They wanted them to be “genuine” Americans -- whatever that meant. To become otherwise would make life harder for them, even dangerous. After all, only about a half century ago, one could still find signs in a few California cities saying, “Absolutely No Dogs or Filipinos Allowed.”

But times are changing in America. Being from a different country is no longer as big a liability as in the past. And having a strange-sounding name -- like Barack Obama -- is no longer an insurmountable hurdle to moving forward in life. Just last week, a black man who is also a son of an immigrant from Africa, and who grew up in Southeast Asia and in a state dominated by Asian Americans just became the Democratic nominee for president of the United States. And he could very well win.

Beyond all that, our decision to teach our children Tagalog was also encouraged by experts who said it was okay and even smart to have children learn as many languages as possible – because it actually makes them smarter. Pediatric experts said so. Paolo’s doctor said so too. Then there’s our own experience. Mara and I grew up bilingual (she’s actually trilingual, being competent in Waray) and we turned out okay.

But I won’t lie. Having our first son, Paolo, speak Tagalog as a first language was tough for him and for us. I thank the children’s book publishers and authors back in the Philippines for writing and publishing more works in Tagalog. But there were times when I had to read to Paolo at bedtime when I had to do some on the spot translation as he insisted, “Basa sa Tagalog, Tatay.” (“Read to me in Tagalog, Tatay.”) So I had to quickly come up with such lines as, “Pumunta si Barney sa zoo kasama ni Baby Bob.” (Barney went to the zoo with Baby Bob.)
When Paolo started going to day care, being exposed to a world of English-speaking kids turned out to be an overwhelming experience for him. After picking him up in the first few weeks, Mara was surprised at how talkative he was in the car. We later found why: He was apparently so intimidated by his English-speaking schoolmates that he simply kept quiet the whole day, and then made up for the hours of silence by blabbing endlessly when her Nanay came to take him home.

During his first few visits to Manila, however, Paolo felt like he was in heaven. Once, when we took a walk around my old neighborhood in Cubao and came across a group of children playing in the street, Paolo, his eyes wide open, exclaimed, “Tatay, nagtatagalog sila!” (“They’re speaking Tagalog!”)

Of course, his Manila-based cousins found it strange to have a Stateside cousin who spoke English with a thick Pinoy accent. My nephew, who was then a student at Ateneo High School, and who naturally spoke English with an Arrneow accent, asked me, “Tito Boying, bakit ang barok mag Inggles ng anak mo?” (“Why does your son speak English like Barok?”)

Eventually, we found out that the experts and our instincts were correct. Just a few months into his kindergarten year, Paolo was speaking fluent English. I still remember the moment when, as I was getting into my car after dropping him off, I realized: ‘He hasn’t spoken to me in Tagalog for a week.’

In fact, Paolo, who is turning 9, now only speaks to us in English, though he still understands when we speak to him in Tagalog. On the other hand, his younger brother, Anton, who is turning 3, is, like him when he was younger, fluent in Tagalog, and “barok” in his English. Which has led to some amusing exchanges at home.

“Don’t mess with my Legos, Tonton,” Paolo would say.

“ “E kuya, I just ano – uh - maglaro naman tayo,” the smaller one would respond. (“Let’s play.”)

Paolo still calls me “Tatay.” But he now pronounces it differently, with the accent on the last syllable. As in “atay” (liver) or “ “patay” (dead). He does the same thing with “Nanay.” Visiting friends and family are even more amused by that of course. (I joke that he is saying it with a French accent.)

Anton still gets the accent right, but we expect that eventually he’ll follow his kuya’s lead.

Which is all fine with me and Mara, for at least we know the seeds of Pilipino are planted firmly in their consciousness. And if they choose later on to do more with it and other aspects of their Filipino-ness, many of the ingredients are there for them to dig up and use.

It will be their choice.

And if Obama becomes president, it could become a much easier choice to make. Perhaps a choice that is even celebrated in a society with a painful history of rejecting those who are different -- but which is now evolving into a community where people with strange names, who come from strange lands and who speak strange languages are not just welcomed, accepted and embraced, they at times can even have the seat at the head of the table.

Last week, as Obama was giving his incredibly inspiring speech after clinching the Democratic Party nomination, I told Paolo to sit down with me and watch the broadcast, telling him, “This is important. Something big has just happened.” I later found out that a colleague at work, who is white, had done the same thing with his son and for the same reason.

Whatever happens in November, our world has already been turned upside down. And for that, I won’t mind the odd way my sons call me “Tatay.”

It’s Father’s Day on Sunday. To my fellow Tatays around the world, a toast to all of us!


Bay Area journalist Benjamin Pimentel is the author of UG, An Underground Tale and Mga Gerilya sa Powell Street.

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On an unrelated but just as important note: Thank you to those who replied to my last (private) entry and to those who wrote personal messages/emails to wish me well. I really appreciate your kind words and your promises to pray for me. Some of you were really worried and I apologize if my being cryptic caused some of you a good measure of alarm. I'll probably write about it some day, but for now, I'd much rather that the full details remain between me, some really close friends, and God.

While the situation is still far from perfect, I am well on my way to feeling better, so thank you, all, once again, for your kind words and prayers.

We now go back to our normal programming...

To those who have been asking...

...no, I haven't been well. And no, I don't want to talk about it. Hence the silence in blogosphere. I'll be OK, just give me time.

OK? OK. There.

Death to "Alot" (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

I just read 5 different people use the word "alot" in the past hour - and I am about to spit fire. Gaaaaahhh!!! For heaven's sake!!! There. Is. No. Such. Word. It's "a (space) lot," it's a phrase, (not a word) that denotes more than one of anything. OR, it could be used to talk about an actual plot of land. Either way, remember: TWO WORDS, PEOPLE!!!

Of course, it could be a misspelled version of "allot" which means to give a portion of something. But using context clues, those people didn't mean that what they wrote (*shudder*) "alot."

OK?!?! OK!!!

Gaaaaaaahhh!!!

*pant-pant-pant*

In Defense of the Semicolon (Grammar Entry!!!)

Thank you to Biba for showing me this article from MSN encarta! I haven't had a grammar entry in so long, so this is great! :-)

In Defense of the Semicolon
By Martha Brockenbrough

It's hard out there if you're a semicolon.
How would you like to be called "pompous," "hoity-toity" and "as ugly as a tick on a dog"? Lest you have any doubt about how ugly that really is, check out this picture of a tick. Then dunk your eyeballs in disinfectant.

Nobody besmirches other punctuation marks quite this way. It's true that exclamation points are criticized for being low-class, and not just because a slang term for them refers to a dog's private bits. No, people pick on them because they're used to cheaply convey emotion that good writing is supposed to express.

Teachers steer students away from exclamation points, suggesting they be left out of business correspondence altogether, as if this straightened semicolon were the punctuation equivalent of the male Speedo.

Most reviled punctuation?
As humiliating as it is to be barred from the boardroom and held down by the glass ceiling of punctuation prejudice, the semicolon faces worse. It faces exile, the fate of Napoleon, who actually was a bit hoity-toity. For a mark of punctuation that lives to join closely related sentences, this solitude must be a crushing fate.

An article by Andrew Sullivan in the Financial Times of London said the revered editor Michael Kinsley wouldn't permit semicolons in the pages of The New Republic.

As Kinsley's reasoning went, semicolons, like drugs, can be abused. And while he doesn't favor drug bans, he's more sympathetic to semicolon censorship because "punctuation can't save a life."

This is really unfair. Unlike drugs, the semicolon won't give you the munchies or prevent you from safely operating heavy machinery. Nor is semicolon use a gateway to multiple punctuation marks or the wanton and alarming insertion of unnecessary apostrophes and quotation marks.

The trouble comes with using semicolons exactly as they're meant to be used.

What's a semicolon good for?
Semicolons link two complete and closely related sentences. They also separate series of items with commas -- for example: I have lived in Seattle, Wash.; Palo Alto, Calif.; and Kolybari, Crete.

Kinsley objects to the first use, the linking of complete sentences. As he told the Financial Times, if journalists use them to imply relationships that they don't explain, that's a bad thing.

I see his point. But perhaps it would be more efficient to ban journalists than to ban the innocent semicolon. In some magazines, readers might not even be able to see the difference. (Snap!)

Semicolon ascendant
Fortunately, the semicolon might be making a comeback. The New York Times ran a popular article recently, praising the semicolon's appearance on a subway sign. Erin McKean, an editor at the Oxford English Dictionary, shortly thereafter founded the Semicolon Appreciation Society (complete with downloadable membership card).

Best, however, is the advocacy of Craig Conley, America's most creative and diligent scholar of letters, words and punctuation. To wit: Conley has created a punctuation mark (the rhetorical question mark), he has written a book of one-letter words, and he is so closely related to the semicolon's spirit that he has been appointed official keeper of its dream journal.

That's right, all you haters. The semicolon has dreams: dreams of rest and relaxation at Semicolon Lakes, of conversations about Shakespeare with the mischievous Puck, and even -- gasp -- of the nightmare that is semicolon cancer.

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As Conley explained his close relationship with the semicolon, "I first dreamed that I was a semicolon when I was 6 years old. I vividly recall the uncanny experience of being frozen betwixt two closely related sentences. They called me 'the Go-Between.' In my dream, the words all glowed with an otherworldly green life force. Little surprise, then, that when I got my first IBM PC a decade later, typing my first glowing green semicolon brought the dream rushing back. For the past two decades, I've kept a dream journal from the semicolon's point of view."

Conley is happy when semicolons visit not just his dreams, but his discourse. He agrees with the music essayist Steven Harvey, who said in "Bound for Shady Grove" that the semicolon creates a "ringing emptiness" that "clears a space," a space for sacred silence that seals thoughts together. And he quotes Jesus Urzagasti from "In the Land of Silence," who said semicolons give us the air we need.

It's true, Conley said, that semicolons are asymmetrical. Beauty and symmetry are traditionally linked. But who doesn't admire the crooked Venus de Milo, who is one decapitated head away from being a sculptural semicolon herself?

;)
There is one bright spot for the semicolon that may keep it, despite its image, from falling off keyboards of the future. It's used to make that slyest of emoticons -- the wink -- helping us, in e-mail and text messages, say "I'm kidding, here!"

And that's good advice for people and punctuation marks that regularly face criticism. Develop a sense of humor about it, and you'll outlast your detractors -- and no doubt see many of your dreams come true. 

The Pros and Cons of Affirmative Action

I got these two excerpted articles in class again (yup, same class...I know, it was a great class!), showing both arguments concerning Affirmative Action. I think it would be good to be well-informed concerning this particular issue since it affects all of us, not just people of color. At the very least, it's an interesting read. :-)

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

How the Pot Got to Call the Kettle Black (pro-affirmative action)
Stanley Fish, Atlantic Monthly, November, 1993.

In this excerpted article, Stanley Fish analyzes popular arguments of those who oppose affirmative action.


“REVERSE RACISM”  

Some people argue, and argue persuasively, that affirmative action is “reverse racism.” In this country whites once set themselves apart from blacks and claimed privileges for themselves while denying them to others. Now, on the basis of race, blacks are claiming special status and reserving for themselves privileges they deny to others. Isn't one as bad as the other? The answer is no. One can see why by imagining that it is not 1993 but 1955, and that we are in a town in the South with two more or less distinct communities, one white and one black. To regard their respective racisms--if that is the word--as equivalent would be bizarre, for the hostility of one group stems not from any wrong done to it but from its wish to protect its ability to deprive citizens of their voting rights, to limit access to educational institutions, to prevent entry into the economy except at the lowest and most menial levels, and to force members of the stigmatized group to ride in the back of the bus. The hostility of the other group is the result of these actions, and whereas hostility and racial anger are unhappy facts wherever they are found, a distinction must surely be made between the hostility of the oppressors and the experience-based hostility of those who have been oppressed.

Affirmative action is the policy designed to redress the imbalances caused by long-standing discrimination.  To argue that affirmative action, which gives preferential treatment to disadvantaged minorities as part of a plan to achieve social equality, is no different from the policies that created the disadvantages is a travesty of reasoning.

"Reverse racism" describes affirmative action only if one considers the cancer of racism to be indistinguishable from the therapy we apply to it. A cancer is an invasion of the body's equilibrium, and so is chemotherapy; but we do not decline to fight the disease because the medicine we employ is also disruptive of normal functioning. Strong illness, strong remedy: the formula is as appropriate to the health of the body politic as it is to that of the body proper.

At this point someone will always say, "But two wrongs don't make a right; if it was wrong to treat blacks unfairly, it is wrong to give blacks preferences and thereby treat whites unfairly." This objection is just another version of the forgetting and rewriting of history. The problem is the adverb "unfairly," which suggests two more or less equal parties, one of whom has been unjustly penalized by an incompetent umpire. But blacks have not simply been treated unfairly; they have been subjected first to decades of slavery, and then to decades of second-class citizenship, widespread legalized discrimination, economic persecution, educational deprivation, and cultural stigmatization. They have been bought, sold, killed, beaten, raped, excluded, exploited, shamed, and scorned for a very long time. The word "unfair" is hardly an adequate description of their experience, and the belated gift of "fairness" in the form of a resolution no longer to discriminate against them legally is hardly an adequate remedy for the deep disadvantages that the prior discrimination has produced. When the deck is stacked against you in more ways than you can even count, it is a small consolation to hear that you are now free to enter the game and take your chances.

“A LEVEL PLAYING FIELD”

The same insincerity and hollowness of promise infect another formula that is popular with the anti-affirmative-action crowd: the formula of the level playing field. Here the argument usually takes the form of saying, "It is undemocratic to give one class of citizens advantages at the expense of other citizens; the truly democratic way is to have a level playing field to which everyone has access and where everyone has a fair and equal chance to succeed on the basis of his or her merit."  

Fine words--but they conceal the facts of the situation: The playing field is already tilted in favor of those by whom and for whom it was constructed in the first place. If mastery of the requirements for entry depends upon immersion in the cultural experiences of the mainstream majority, if the skills that make for success are nurtured by institutions and cultural practices from which the disadvantaged minority has been systematically excluded, if the language and ways of comporting oneself that identify a player as "one of us" are alien to the lives minorities are forced to live, then words like "fair" and "equal" are cruel jokes, for what they promote and celebrate is an institutionalized unfairness and a perpetuated inequality. The playing field is already tilted, and the resistance to altering it by the mechanisms of affirmative action is in fact a determination to make sure that the present imbalances persist as long as possible.

One way of tilting the field is the Scholastic Aptitude Test. Affirmative action opponents often use examples of white or Asian students denied admission to colleges and universities even though their SAT scores were higher than the scores of some others--often African Americans--who were admitted to the same institution. This, some say, is evidence that affirmative-action policies in colleges and universities tend "to depreciate the importance of merit criteria in admissions."

The assumption--and it is one that many would share--it that the test does in fact measure merit, with merit understood as a quality objectively determined in the same way that body temperature can be objectively determined.

In fact, however, the test is nothing of the kind. Statistical studies have suggested that test scores reflect income and socioeconomic status. It has been demonstrated again and again that scores vary in relation to cultural background; the test's questions assume a certain uniformity in educational experience and lifestyle and penalize those who, for whatever reason, have had a different experience and lived different kinds of lives. In short, what is being measured by the SAT is not absolutes like native ability and merit but accidents like birth, social position, access to libraries, and the opportunity to take vacations or to take SAT prep courses.

Furthermore, as David Owen notes on None of the Above: Behind the Myth of Scholastic Aptitude (1985), the "correlation between SAT scores and college grades is lower than the correlation between weight and height; in other words you would have a better chance of predicting a person's height by looking at his weight than you would of predicting his freshman grades by looking only at his SAT scores."

“CLASS IS THE PROBLEM, NOT RACE”  

Nevertheless, opponents have at least one more card to play against affirmative action, and it is a strong one. Granted, they say, the playing field is not level and access to it is reserved for an already advantaged elite, but the disadvantages suffered by others are less racial than socioeconomic. Therefore universities should alter their criteria of application from race to socioeconomic disadvantage" and thus avoid the unfairness of current policies that reward middle-class or affluent blacks at the expense of poor whites.

Despite the fact that 98 percent of the race-specific scholarships were also scholarships to the economically disadvantaged, it is said that the other two percent--nonpoor, middle-class, economically favored blacks--are receiving special attention on the basis of disadvantages they do not experience. What about them? Their race has not been a disadvantage.

But the lie was given dramatically to this assumption in a 1991 broadcast of the ABC program PrimeTime Live. In a stunning fifteen-minute segment reporters and a camera crew followed two young men of equal education, cultural sophistication, level of apparent influence, and so forth around St. Louis, a city where neither was known. The two differed in only a single respect: one was white, the other black. But that small difference turned out to mean everything. In a series of encounters with shoe salesmen, record-store employees, rental agents, landlords, employment agencies, taxicab drivers, and ordinary citizens, the black member of the pair was either ignored or given a special and suspicious attention. He was asked to pay more for the same goods or come up with a larger down payment for the same car, was turned away as a prospective tenant, was rejected as a prospective taxicab fare, was treated with contempt and irritation by clerks and bureaucrats, and in every way possible was made to feel inferior and unwanted.

The inescapable conclusion was that alike though they may have been in almost all respects, one of these young men, because he was black, would lead a significantly lesser life than his white counterpart: he would be housed less well and at a greater expense; he would pay more for services and products when and if he was given the opportunity to buy them; he would have difficulty establishing credit; the first emotions he would inspire on the part of many people he met would be distrust and fear; his abilities would be discounted even before he had a chance to display them; and, above all, the treatment he received from minute to minute would chip away at his self-esteem and self-confidence with consequences that most of us could not even imagine. As the young man in question said at the conclusion of the broadcast, "You walk down the street with a suit and tie and it doesn't matter. Someone will make determinations about you, determinations that affect the quality of your life."

Of course, the same determinations are being made quite early on by kindergarten teachers, grade school principals, high school guidance counselors, and the like, with results that cut across socioeconomic lines and place young black men and women in the ranks of the disadvantaged no matter what the bank accounts of their parents happen to show. Racism is a cultural fact, and although its effects may to some extent be diminished by socioeconomic variables, those effects will still be sufficiently great to warrant the nation's attention and thus the continuation of affirmative-action policies.

“WHY ME?”

When all is said and done, one objection to affirmative action is unanswerable on its own terms, and that is the objection of the individual who says, "Why me? Sure, discrimination has persisted for many years, and I acknowledge that the damage done has not been removed by changes in the law. But why me? I didn't own slaves; I didn't vote to keep people on the back of the bus; I didn't turn water hoses on civil-rights marchers. Why, then, should I be the one who doesn't get the job or who doesn't get the scholarship or who gets bumped back to the waiting list?"

I sympathize with this feeling, if only because in a small way I have had the experience that produces it. I was recently nominated for an administrative post at a large university. Early signs were encouraging, but after an interval I received notice that I would not be included at the next level, and subsequently I was told unofficially that a decision had been made to look only in the direction of women and minorities. Although I was disappointed, I did not conclude that the situation was "unfair," because the policy was obviously not directed at me.  Nor was it directed at persons of my race and sex--the policy was not intended to disenfranchise white males. Rather, the policy was driven by other considerations, and it was only as a by-product of those considerations--not as the main goal--that white males like me were rejected. Given that the institution in question has a low percentage of minority administrators, it made perfect sense to focus on women and minority candidates, and within that sense, not as a result of prejudice, my whiteness and maleness became disqualifications.

 “INDIVIDUAL MERIT”

The point of fairness is not a difficult one to grasp, but it is difficult to see when scenarios are presented as simple contrasts between two de-contextualized persons who emerge from nowhere to contend for a job or place in a freshman class. Here is Individual A; he has a board score of 1,300. And here is Individual B; her score is only 1,200, yet she is admitted and A is rejected. Is that fair? Given the minimal information provided, the answer is of course no. But the sleight-of-hand logic that assesses events from behind a veil of willful ignorance rests on another key word in the anti-affirmative-action lexicon. That word is "individual."  Now, "individual" and "individualism" have been honorable words in the American political vocabulary, but like any other word or concept, the word can be perverted to serve ends the opposite of those it originally served, and this is what has happened when in the name of individual rights, millions of individuals are prevented from redressing documented wrongs. Bizarre as it may seem, individualism in this argument turns out to mean that everyone is or should be the same.

This dismissal of individual difference in the name of the individual would be funny were its consequences not so serious: it is the mechanism by which imbalances and inequities suffered by millions of people through no fault of their own can be sanitized and even celebrated as the natural workings of unfettered democracy.

"Individualism," "fairness," "merit"—these three words are continually misappropriated by bigots who have learned that they need not put on a white hood or bar access to the ballot box in order to secure their ends. Rather, they need only clothe themselves in a vocabulary plucked from its historical context and made into the justification for attitudes and policies they would not acknowledge if frankly named.

Stanley Fish. "How the Pot Got to Call the Kettle Black." Atlantic Monthly, November 1993.

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A Negative Vote on Affirmative Action (Excerpts)
Shelby Steele, New York Times Magazine, 1990

In a few short years, when my two children will be applying to college, the affirmative-action policies by which most universities offer black students some form of preferential treatment will present me with a dilemma. I am a middle-class black, a college professor, far from wealthy, but also well removed from the kind of deprivation that would qualify my children for the label "disadvantaged." Both of them have endured racial insensitivity from whites. They have been called names, have suffered slights and have experienced first hand the peculiar malevolence that racism brings out of people. Yet they have never experienced racial discrimination, have never been stopped by their race on any path they have chosen to follow. Still, their society now tells them that if they will only designate themselves as black on their college applications, they will probably do better in the college lottery than if they conceal this fact.

Of course many supporters of affirmative action would say that this small preference is meager recompense for centuries of unrelieved oppression. And to these arguments other very obvious facts must be added. In America, many marginally competent or flatly incompetent whites are hired every day--some because their white skin suits the racial preference of their employers. The white children of alumni are often grandfathered into elite universities in what can only be seen as a residual benefit of historic white privilege. Worse, white incompetence is always an individual matter, but for blacks it is often confirmation of ugly stereotypes. Given that unfairness cuts both ways, doesn't it only balance the scales of history, doesn't this repay, in a small way, the systematic denial under which my children's grandfather lived out his days?

Good intentions can blind us to the effects they generate when implemented. But after 20 years of implementation I think that affirmative action has shown itself to be more bad than good and that blacks--whom I will focus on in this essay--now stand to lose more from it than they gain.

ORIGINAL MANDATES

I believe they do this because of what happened to white and black Americans in the crucible of the 1960's, when whites were confronted with their racial guilt and blacks tasted their first real power. Affirmative action became a meeting ground for those mandates in the law. At first, this meant insuring equal opportunity. The 1964 civil-rights bill was passed on the understanding that equal opportunity would not mean racial preference. But in the late 60's and early 70's, affirmative action underwent a remarkable escalation of its mission from simple anti-discrimination enforcement to social engineering by means of quotas, goals, time-tables, set-asides and other forms of preferential treatment.

Legally, this was achieved through a series of executive orders and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission guidelines that allowed racial imbalances in the workplace to stand as proof of racial discrimination. Once it could be assumed that discrimination explained racial imbalances, it became easy to justify group remedies to presumed discrimination rather than the normal case-by-case redress.

I don't think these mandates, in themselves, were wrong, because whites clearly needed to do better by blacks and blacks needed more real power in society. But as they came together in affirmative action, their effect was to distort our understanding of racial discrimination. By making black the color of preference, these mandates have re-burdened society with the very marriage of color and preference (in reverse) that we set out to eradicate.

DIVERSITY vs. DEVELOPMENT

When affirmative action grew into social engineering, diversity became a golden word. Diversity is a term that applies democratic principles to races and cultures rather than to individuals.  Too often the result of this, on campuses for example, has been a democracy of colors rather than of people, an artificial diversity that gives the appearance of an educational parity between black and white students that has not yet been achieved in reality. Here again, racial preferences allow society to leapfrog over the difficult problem of developing blacks to parity with whites and into a cosmetic diversity that covers the blemish of disparity.

Racial representation is not the same thing as racial development. Representation can be manufactured; development is always hard earned. The fact is that after 20 years of racial preference the gap between median incomes of black and white families is greater than it was in the 1970's. None of this is to say that blacks don't need policies that insure our right to equal opportunity, but what we need more of is the development that will let us take advantage of society's efforts to include us.

UNDERMINES SELF-RESPECT

I think one of the most troubling effects of racial preferences for blacks is a kind of demoralization. Under affirmative action, the quality that earns us preferential treatment is an implied inferiority. However this inferiority is explained--and it is easily enough explained by the myriad deprivations that grew out of our oppression--it is still inferiority. There are explanations and then there is the fact.  In integrated situations in which blacks must compete with whites who may be better prepared, these explanations may quickly wear thin and expose the individual to racial as well as personal self-doubt. (Of course whites also feel doubt, but only personally, not racially.)

What this means in practical terms is that when blacks deliver themselves into integrated situations they encounter a nasty little reflex in whites, a mindless atavistic reflex that responds to the color black with negative stereotypes, such as intellectual ineptness. I think this reflex embarrasses most whites today and thus it is usually quickly repressed. On an equally atavistic level, the black will be aware of the reflex his color triggers and will feel a stab of horror at seeing himself reflected in this way. He, too, will do a quick repression, but a lifetime of such stabbings is what constitutes his inner realm of racial doubt. Even when the black sees no implication of inferiority in racial preferences, he knows that whites do, so that--consciously or unconsciously--the result is virtually the same. The effect of preferential treatment--the lowering of normal standards to increase black representation--puts blacks at war with an expanded realm of debilitating doubt, so that the doubt itself undermines their ability to perform, especially in integrated situations.

CREATES VICTIM MENTALITY

I believe another liability of affirmative action comes from the fact that it indirectly encourages blacks to exploit their own past victimization. Like implied inferiority, victimization is what justifies preference, so that to receive the benefits of preferential treatment one must, to some extent, become invested in the view of one's self as a victim. In this way, affirmative action nurtures a victim-focused identity in blacks and sends us the message that there is more power in our past suffering than in our present achievements.

THE ILLUSION OF REPARATION

But I think one of the worst prices that blacks pay for preference has to do with an illusion. I saw this illusion at work recently in the mother of a middle-class black student who was going off to his first semester of college: "They owe us this, so don't think for a minute that you don't belong there." This is the logic by which many blacks, and some whites, justify affirmative action--it is something "owed," a form of reparation. But this logic overlooks a much harder and less digestible reality, that it is impossible to repay blacks living today for the historic suffering of the race. If all blacks were given a million dollars tomorrow it would not amount to a dime on the dollar for three centuries of oppression, nor would it dissolve the residues of that oppression that we still carry today. The concept of historic reparation grows out of man's need to impose on the world a degree of justice that simply does not exist. Suffering can be endured and overcome, it cannot be repaid. To think otherwise is to prolong the suffering.

Several blacks I spoke with said they were still in favor of affirmative action because of the "subtle" discrimination blacks were subject to once they were on the job. One photojournalist said, "They have ways of ignoring you." A black female television producer said: "You can't file a lawsuit when your boss doesn't invite you to the insider meetings without ruining your career. So we still need affirmative action." Others mentioned the infamous "glass ceiling" through which blacks can see the top positions of authority but never reach them. But I don't think racial preferences are a protection against this subtle discrimination; I think they contribute to it.

AN EXCUSE FOR WHITE RACISM

I think that much of the "subtle" discrimination that blacks talk about is often (not always) discrimination against the stigma of questionable competence that affirmative action marks blacks with. In this sense, preferences make scapegoats of the very people they seek to help. And it may be that at a certain level employers impose a glass ceiling, but this may not be against the race so much as against the race's reputation for having advanced by color as much as by competence. This ceiling is the point at which corporations shift the emphasis from color to competency and stop playing the affirmative-action game.

Here preference backfires for blacks and becomes a taint that holds them back. Of course one could argue that this taint, which is after all in the minds of whites, becomes nothing more than an excuse to discriminate against blacks. And certainly the result is the same in either case--blacks don't get past the glass ceiling. But this argument does not get around the fact that racial preferences now taint this color with the new theme of suspicion that makes blacks even more vulnerable to discrimination. In this crucial yet gray area of perceived competence, preferences make whites look better than they are and blacks worse, while doing nothing whatever to stop the very real discrimination that blacks may encounter. I don't wish to justify the glass ceiling here, but only to suggest the very subtle ways that affirmative action revives rather than extinguishes the old realizations for racial discrimination.

THE ONLY SOLUTION

It now seems clear that the Supreme Court, in a series of recent decisions, is moving away from racial preferences. It has disallowed preferences except in instances of "identified discrimination," eroded the precedent that statistical racial imbalances are prima facie evidence of discrimination, and, in effect, granted white males the right to challenge consent degrees that use preference to achieve racial balances in the workplace. Referring to this and other Supreme Court decisions, one civil-rights leader said, "Night has fallen as far as civil rights are concerned." I am not so sure.  But if not preferences, what?

I think we need social policies that are committed to two goals: the educational and economic development of disadvantaged people regardless of race and the eradication from our society--through close monitoring and severe sanctions--of racial, ethnic or gender discrimination. Preferences will not get us to either of these goals, because they tend to benefit those who are not disadvantaged --middle-class white women and middle-class blacks--and attack one form of discrimination with another. Preferences are inexpensive and carry the glamour of good intentions--change the numbers and the good deed is done. To be against them is to be unkind. But I think the unkindest cut is to bestow on children like my own an undeserved advantage while neglecting the development of those disadvantaged children in the poorer sections of my city who will most likely never be in a position to benefit from a preference. Give my children fairness; give disadvantaged children a better shot at development--better elementary and secondary schools, job training, safer neighborhoods, better financial assistance for college and so on.

The mandates of black power and white absolution out of which preferences emerged were not wrong in themselves. What was wrong was that both races focused more on the goals of those mandates than on the means to the goals. Blacks can have no real power without taking responsibility for their own educational and economic development. Whites can have no racial innocence without earning it by eradicating discrimination and helping the disadvantaged to develop. Because we ignored the means, the goals have not been reached and the real work remains to be done.

Shelby Steele. "A Negative Vote on Affirmative Action." Excerpted from The Content of Our Character by Shelby Steele. Originally published in The New York Times Magazine, May 13, 1990.
 

 

Questions on Sexuality

Have you ever wondered what it felt like to be asked to justify your sexual orientation all the time? For most of us who are heterosexual, it might not be something we have to think about often (if at all). But for a lot of homosexuals, it's a whole different story.

My teacher gave this set of questions for us to answer to somehow get to know what homosexuals have to go through almost every time they "come out" to a new person. If you're heterosexual and you answer these questions, you might find yourself shaking your head because the questions seem silly. Just think, it's only silly because heterosexuality is the default sexual orientation of our society. Imagine what it feels like to have a "non-normal" sexual orientation and have to answer these silly (and sometimes hurtful) questions all the time just to justify your existence.

Food for thought. :-)

. . . . . . . .

1. What do you think caused your heterosexuality?
2. When and how did you decide that you were a heterosexual?
3. Is it possible that your heterosexuality is just a phase that you may grow out of?
4. Is it possible your heterosexuality stems from a neurotic fear of others of the same sex?
5. If you've never slept with a person of the same sex, is it possible that all you need is a good gay or lesbian lover?
6. To whom have you disclosed your heterosexual tendencies? How did they react?
7. Why do you heterosexuals feel compelled to seduce others into your lifestyle?
8. Why do you insist on flaunting your heterosexuality? Why can' t you just be what you are and keep quiet about it?
9. Would you want your children to be heterosexual knowing the problems that they'd face?
10. A disproportionate majority of child molesters are heterosexual. Do you consider it safe to expose your children to heterosexual teachers?
11. With all the societal support marriage receives, the divorce rate is spiraling. Why are there so few stable relationships among heterosexuals?
12. Why do heterosexuals place so much emphasis on sex?
13. Considering the menace of overpopulation, how could the human race survive if everyone were heterosexual like you?
14. Could you trust a heterosexual therapist to be objective? Don't you fear (s)he might be incline to influence you in the direction of his/her own leanings?
15. How can you become a whole person if you limit yourself to compulsive, exclusive heterosexuality, and fail to develop your natural, healthy, homosexual potential?
    

What the Bible Says — and Doesn’t Say — About Homosexuality

Yes, again, taken from one of my classes...

Written by Rev. Mel White, a homosexual Christian and co-founder of Soulforce.

(Note: In this work, White sets forth eight broad premises about interpreting biblical passages. This abridgement includes only a few of these premises.)  

***

LIKE YOU, I TAKE THE BIBLE SERIOUSLY!

Many good people build their case against homosexuality almost entirely on the Bible. These folks value Scripture, and are serious about seeking its guidance in their lives. Unfortunately, many of them have never really studied what the Bible does and doesn't say about homosexuality.

We gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender Christians take the Bible seriously, too. Personally, I've spent more than 50 years reading, studying, memorizing, preaching, and teaching from the sacred texts. I earned my master's and doctoral degrees at a conservative biblical seminary to better equip myself to "rightly divide the word of truth." I learned Hebrew and Greek to gain a better understanding of the original words of the texts. I studied the lives and times of the biblical authors to help me know what they were saying in their day so I could better apply it to my own.

I'm convinced the Bible has a powerful message for gay and lesbian Christians -- as well as straight Christians. But it's not the message of condemnation we so often hear.
I'm not expecting you to take my word for it, though. I ask only that you'd consider what my research has taught me about the passages used by some people to condemn God's gay and lesbian children. Then decide for yourself...

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MY FIFTH PREMISE:
We miss what these passages say about God when we spend so much time debating what they say about sex.
If the Bible is the story of God's love for the world and not a handbook about sex, then that should shape how we read the Scriptures. So as we take a look at the six biblical texts that are used by some people to condemn homosexuality, let's ask two questions about each of them:
First, what does the text say about God that we need to hear but might be missing?
Second, what might the text be saying about homosexuality?

PASSAGE 1
GENESIS 2:21-25
THE CREATION STORY
Let's start "In the Beginning..." What does the creation story in Genesis 1-2 say about God?
I'm so tired of reading signs carried by protesters that say: "It's about Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve." In fact, the creation story is as important to Adam and Steve as it is Adam and Eve. Gays and non-gays alike need to know and celebrate the truth at the center of this story.
This creation story is primarily about God, a story written to show the power of God who created the world and everything in it. It teaches us that ultimately God is our Creator, that God shaped us, and that God said, "It's good." Isn't this the heart of the text?

Now what does the creation story say about homosexuality? Because the text says it is "natural" that a man and a woman come together to create a new life, some people think this means gay or lesbian couples are "unnatural." They read this interpretation into the text, even though the text is silent about all kinds of relationships that don't lead to having children:

• couples who are unable to have children
• couples who are too old to have children
• couples who choose not to have children
• people who are single

Are these relationships (or lack of relationships) "unnatural"? There's nothing said here that condemns or approves the love that people of the same sex have for each other, including the love I have for my partner, Gary.  So I believe the creation story says a lot about God's power and presence in the universe -- but nothing about homosexuality as we understand it today.

PASSAGE 2
GENESIS 19:1-14
THE STORY OF SODOM
Now let's consider the second biblical text used by some people to condemn God's gay children. You remember the ancient story of Sodom. First, what does the story of Sodom in Genesis 19 say about God?

When Gary and I arrive at a college or university to speak, there are often protesters carrying signs that read, "Mel White, Sodomite." (Has a nice ring to it.) Actually, I'm not from Sodom. That city was buried beneath the Dead Sea centuries ago. I'm from California -- but perhaps that just confirms their suspicions!

Once again, this story is not primarily about sex. It is primarily about God. Some people say the city of Sodom was destroyed because it was overrun by sexually obsessed homosexuals. In fact, the city of Sodom had been doomed to destruction long before. So what is this passage really about?  Jesus and five Old Testament prophets all speak of the sins that led to the destruction of Sodom -- and not one of them mentions homosexuality. Even Billy Graham doesn't mention homosexuality when he preaches on Sodom.

Listen to what Ezekiel 16:48-49 tell us: "This is the sin of Sodom; she and her suburbs had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not help or encourage the poor and needy. They were arrogant and this was abominable in God's eyes."

Today, heterosexuals and homosexuals alike do well to remember that we break God's heart when we spend all we earn on ourselves, when we forget the poor and hungry, when we refuse to do justice or show mercy, when we leave strangers at the gate.

I admit, there are a lot of gay folk who are Sodomites (and a lot of straight folk as well). Sodomites are rich and don't share what they have with the poor. Sodomites have plenty and want more. While millions are hungry, homeless, and sick, Sodomites rush to build bigger homes, buy bigger cars, and own more property -- putting their trust in safer stock portfolios and more secure retirement accounts.

Whatever teaching about sexuality you might get out of this passage, be sure to hear this central, primary truth about God as well. God has called us do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our Creator. Sodom was destroyed because its people didn't take God seriously about caring for the poor, the hungry, the homeless, or the outcast.  But what does the story of Sodom say about homosexual orientation as we understand it today? Nothing.

It was common for soldiers, thieves, and bullies to rape a fallen enemy, asserting their victory by dehumanizing and demeaning the vanquished. This act of raping an enemy is about power and revenge, not about homosexuality or homosexual orientation. And it is still happening.

The sexual act that occurs in the story of Sodom is a gang rape -- and homosexuals oppose gang rape as much as anyone. That's why I believe the story of Sodom says a lot about God's will for each of us, but nothing about homosexuality as we understand it today.

PASSAGE 3
LEVITICUS 18:22 AND 20:13
THE HOLINESS CODE
Let's move on. What do the two verses sometimes cited from Leviticus say about God?
Leviticus 18:6 reads: "You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female. It is an abomination." A similar verse occurs two chapters later, in Leviticus 20:13: "A man who sleeps with another man is an abomination and should be executed." On the surface, these words could leave you feeling rather uneasy, especially if you are gay. But just below the surface is the deeper truth about God -- and it has nothing to do with sex.

Leviticus is a holiness code written 3,000 years ago. This code includes many of the outdated sexual laws we mentioned earlier, and a lot more. It also includes prohibitions against round haircuts, tattoos, working on the Sabbath, wearing garments of mixed fabrics, eating pork or shellfish, getting your fortune told, and even playing with the skin of a pig. (There goes football!)

So what's a holiness code? It's a list of behaviors that people of faith find offensive in a certain place and time. In this case, the code was written for priests only, and its primary intent was to set the priests of Israel over and against priests of other cultures.

At the age of 10, I signed a holiness code written by the Women's Christian Temperance Union that said I would never taste beer, wine, or liquor. I thought signing it would please God and my grandmother. That's a holiness code. When I was in high school we evangelical Christians had an unwritten holiness code that went like this: "I don't drink, smoke, or chew, or go with girls who do." Now I know what you're thinking. That last part about "girls who do" proved especially easy for me. But the point is that I obeyed this evangelical holiness code because my parents said that breaking these rules didn't please God, and I knew it didn't please them.

We had another evangelical holiness code while I was in high school that prohibited dancing. I was student body president, yet I refused to go to the prom because I had promised not to dance. I did this to please God and my mother -- whose mother had made her sign a holiness code that she wouldn't go to dances either.

What about this word abomination that comes up in both passages? In Hebrew, "abominations" (TO'EBAH) are behaviors that people in a certain time and place consider tasteless or offensive. To the Jews an abomination was not a law, not something evil like rape or murder forbidden by the Ten Commandments. It was a common behavior by non-Jews that Jews thought was displeasing to God.

Jesus and Paul both said the holiness code in Leviticus does not pertain to Christian believers. Nevertheless, there are still people who pull the two verses about men sleeping together from this ancient holiness code to say that the Bible seems to condemn homosexuality.

But wait, before we go any further, let's ask: What does this text say about God? Even if the old holiness codes no longer apply to us as Christians, it's important to remember that in every age, people of faith are responsible for setting moral and ethical standards that honor God. But we people of faith must be very careful not to allow our own prejudices to determine what those standards should be.

Instead of selecting one item from an ancient Jewish holiness code and using it to condemn sexual or gender minorities, let's talk together about setting sexual standards that please God -- standards appropriate for heterosexuals and homosexuals alike, standards based on loving concern, health, and wholeness for ourselves and for others.

Now what do the Leviticus passages say about homosexuality?  I'm convinced those passages say nothing about homosexuality as we understand it today. Here's why. Consider this single Bible passage that was used for centuries to condemn masturbation: "He spilled his seed on the ground... And the thing which Onan did displeased the Lord: wherefore he slew him also" (Genesis 38:9-10). For Jewish writers of Scripture, a man sleeping with another man was an abomination. But it was also an abomination (and one worthy of death) to masturbate or even to interrupt coitus (to halt sex with your spouse before ejaculation as an act of birth control). Why were these sexual practices considered abominations by Scripture writers in these ancient times?

Because the Hebrew pre-scientific understanding was that the male semen contained the whole of life. With no knowledge of eggs and ovulation, it was assumed that the man's sperm contained the whole child and that the woman provided only the incubating space. Therefore, the spilling of semen without possibility of having a child was considered murder.

The Jews were a small tribe struggling to populate a country. They were outnumbered by their enemy. You can see why these ancient people felt it was an abomination to risk "wasting" even a single child. But the passage says nothing about homosexuality as we understand it today.

We've talked about the passages in the Hebrew Scriptures that are used (or misused) by some people to condemn sexual minorities. Now let's look at three verses from the letters of the apostle Paul in the Christian Scriptures that are used the same way. Remember: First, we'll ask what the text says about God; second, we'll consider what it may or may not say about sexual orientation.

PASSAGE 4
ROMANS 1:26-27
NATURAL AND UNNATURAL
What does Romans 1:26-27 say about God?

For our discussion, this is the most controversial biblical passage of them all. In Romans 1:26-27 the apostle Paul describes non-Jewish women who exchange "natural use for unnatural" and non-Jewish men who "leave the natural use of women, working shame with each other."  This verse appears to be clear: Paul sees women having sex with women and men having sex with men, and he condemns that practice. But let's go back 2,000 years and try to understand why.

Paul is writing this letter to Rome after his missionary tour of the Mediterranean. On his journey Paul had seen great temples built to honor Aphrodite, Diana, and other fertility gods and goddesses of sex and passion instead of the one true God the apostle honors. Apparently, these priests and priestesses engaged in some odd sexual behaviors -- including castrating themselves, carrying on drunken sexual orgies, and even having sex with young temple prostitutes (male and female) -- all to honor the gods of sex and pleasure.

The Bible is clear that sexuality is a gift from God. Our Creator celebrates our passion. But the Bible is also clear that when passion gets control of our lives, we're in deep trouble.  When we live for pleasure, when we forget that we are God's children and that God has great dreams for our lives, we may end up serving the false gods of sex and passion, just as they did in Paul's time. In our obsession with pleasure, we may even walk away from the God who created us -- and in the process we may cause God to abandon all the great dreams God has for our lives.

Did these priests and priestesses get into these behaviors because they were lesbian or gay? I don't think so. Did God abandon them because they were practicing homosexuals? No. Read the text again.

In our Soulforce video, There's a Wideness in God's Mercy, the Rev. Dr. Louis B. Smedes, a distinguished Christian author and ethicist, describes exactly how the Bible says these promiscuous priests and priestesses got into this mess. Once again it has nothing to do with homosexuality:

SMEDES: "The people Paul had in mind refused to acknowledge and worship God, and for this reason were abandoned by God. And being abandoned by God, they sank into sexual depravity."

SMEDES: "The homosexuals I know have not rejected God at all; they love God and they thank God for his grace and his gifts. How, then, could they have been abandoned to homosexuality as a punishment for refusing to acknowledge God?"

SMEDES: "Nor have the homosexuals that I know given up heterosexual passions for homosexual lusts. They have been homosexual from the moment of their earliest sexual stirrings. They did not change from one orientation to another; they just discovered that they were homosexual. It would be unnatural for most homosexuals to have heterosexual sex."

SMEDES: "And the homosexual people I know do not lust after each other any more than heterosexual people do... their love for one another is likely to be just as spiritual and personal as any heterosexual love can be."

Getting to know a lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender person of faith will help you realize that it is unreasonable (and unjust) to compare our love for each other to the rituals of the priests and priestesses who pranced around the statues of Aphrodite and Diana. Once again, I feel certain this passage says a lot about God, but nothing about homosexuality as we understand it.

You'll also note that Romans 2 begins with "Therefore, [referring to Romans 1], you have no excuse, whoever you are, when you judge others; for in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself..." Even after he describes the disturbing practices he has seen, Paul warns us that judging others is God's business, not ours.

PASSAGES 5 AND 6
1 CORINTHIANS 6:9 AND 1 TIMOTHY 1:10
THE MYSTERY OF "MALOKOIS" AND "ARSENOKOITAI"
Now what do the writings of Paul in 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:10 say, first, about God, and then about homosexuality? These are the last two places in the Bible that seem to refer to same-sex behavior. We can combine them because they are so similar.

Paul is exasperated. The Christians in Ephesus and Corinth are fighting among themselves. (Sound familiar?) In Corinth they're even suing one another in secular courts. Paul shouts across the distance, "You are breaking God's heart by the way you are treating one another."

Like any good writer, Paul anticipates their first question: "Well, how are we supposed to treat one another?" Paul answers, "You know very well how to treat one another from the Jewish law written on tablets of stone."

The Jewish law was created by God to help regulate human behavior. To remind the churches in Corinth and Ephesus how God wants us to treat one another, Paul recites examples from the Jewish law first. Don't kill one another. Don't sleep with a person who is married to someone else. Don't lie or cheat or steal. The list goes on to include admonitions against fornication, idolatry, whoremongering, perjury, drunkenness, revelry, and extortion. He also includes "malokois" and "arsenokoitai."

Here's where the confusion begins. What's a malokois? What's an arsenokoitai? Actually, those two Greek words have confused scholars to this very day. We'll say more about them later, when we ask what the texts say about sex. But first let's see what the texts say about God.

After quoting from the Jewish law, Paul reminds the Christians in Corinth that they are under a new law: the law of Jesus, a law of love that requires us to do more than just avoid murder, adultery, lying, cheating, and stealing. Paul tells them what God wants is not strict adherence to a list of laws, but a pure heart, a good conscience, and a faith that isn't phony.

That's the lesson we all need to learn from these texts. God doesn't want us squabbling over who is "in" and who is "out." God wants us to love one another. It's God's task to judge us. It is NOT our task to judge one another.

So what do these two texts say about homosexuality? Are gays and lesbians on that list of sinners in the Jewish law that Paul quotes to make an entirely different point?  Greek scholars say that in first century the Greek word malaokois probably meant "effeminate call boys." The New Revised Standard Version says "male prostitutes."  As for arsenokoitai, Greek scholars don't know exactly what it means -- and the fact that we don't know is a big part of this tragic debate. Some scholars believe Paul was coining a name to refer to the customers of "the effeminate call boys." We might call them "dirty old men." Others translate the word as "sodomites," but never explain what that means.

In 1958, for the first time in history, a person translating that mysterious Greek word into English decided it meant homosexuals, even though there is, in fact, no such word in Greek or Hebrew. But that translator made the decision for all of us that placed the word homosexual in the English-language Bible for the very first time.

In the past, people used Paul's writings to support slavery, segregation, and apartheid. People still use Paul's writings to oppress women and limit their role in the home, in church, and in society.
Now we have to ask ourselves, "Is it happening again?" Is a word in Greek that has no clear definition being used to reflect society's prejudice and condemn God's gay children?

We all need to look more closely at that mysterious Greek word arsenokoitai in its original context. I find most convincing the argument from history that Paul is condemning the married men who hired hairless young boys (malakois) for sexual pleasure just as they hired smooth-skinned young girls for that purpose.

Responsible homosexuals would join Paul in condemning anyone who uses children for sex, just as we would join anyone else in condemning the threatened gang rape in Sodom or the behavior of the sex-crazed priests and priestesses in Rome. So, once again, I am convinced that this passage says a lot about God, but nothing about homosexuality as we understand it today.

MY SIXTH PREMISE:
The biblical authors are silent about homosexual orientation as we know it today. They neither approve it nor condemn it.

We've looked closely at the six biblical texts used by some people to condemn homosexuality. But we must also remember that Jesus, the Jewish prophets, and even Paul never even comment on the responsible love a gay man or lesbian feels for another.  The Bible is completely silent on the issue of homosexual orientation. And no wonder. Homosexual orientation wasn't even known until the 19th century.

The discovery that some of us are created and/or shaped in our earliest infancy toward same-gender attraction was made in the last 150 years. Biblical authors knew nothing about sexual orientation. Old Testament authors and Paul assumed all people were created heterosexual, just as they believed the earth was flat, that there were heavens above and hell below, and that the sun moved up and down.

In 1864, almost 3,000 years after Moses and at least 18 centuries after the apostle Paul, the German social scientist Karl Heinrich Ulrichs was the first to declare that homosexuals were a distinct class of individuals. It was a big moment for all sexual minorities. It's our Columbus discovering the New World. It's our Madame Curie discovering radium used for Xrays. It's our Neil Armstrong walking on the moon. It may seem like one small step for the rest of you, but it's a giant leap for us.

Ulrichs assured the world of what we who are homosexual already know in our hearts. We aren't just heterosexuals choosing to perform same-sex behaviors. We are a whole class of people whose drive to same-sex intimacy is at the very core of our being from the very beginning of our lives.

Although the word homosexual was not used for the first time until later in the 19th century, Ulrichs recognized that homosexuals had been around from the beginning of recorded time, that we were "innately different from heterosexuals," and that our desire for same-sex intimacy and affiliation is intrinsic, natural, inborn and/or shaped in earliest infancy. According to Dr. Ulrichs, what may have looked "unnatural" to Moses and Paul was in fact "natural" to homosexuals.

So this is my sixth premise. The Biblical authors knew nothing of homosexual orientation as we understand it, and therefore said nothing to condemn or approve it.  The authors of the Bible are authorities in matters of faith. They can be trusted when they talk about God. But they should not be considered the final authorities on sexual orientation any more than they are the final authorities on space travel, gravity, or the Internet.

Since the writers of Scripture are not the final authorities on human sexuality, since they didn't even know about sexual orientation as we understand it today, since Jesus and the Jewish prophets were silent about any kind of same-sex behavior, I am persuaded that the Bible has nothing in it to approve or condemn homosexual orientation as we understand it.

MY SEVENTH PREMISE:
Although the prophets, Jesus, and other biblical authors say nothing about homosexual orientation as we understand it today, they are clear about one thing: As we search for truth, we are to "love one another."

We may not be able to use the Bible as our final authority on sexual orientation. But as we search for the truth, we can and should use the Bible as our final authority on how we should treat one another along the way.

A young Jewish scholar asked Jesus, "What is the greatest commandment?" Quoting the prophets, Jesus replied, "The great commandment is this... to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and the second command is like it, to love your neighbor as you love yourself."

"This is my commandment," Jesus said, "that you love one another, as I have loved you." On this the Bible is explicitly clear. Even if we disagree about what the Bible seems to say about homosexuality, we can agree that above all else we are commanded by the Scriptures to love God and to love one another.  Since God is the God of truth, since Jesus himself told us that the truth would set us free, one way that we love God and love one another is by seeking the truth about sexual orientation wherever we can find it.

There is a growing body of evidence from science, psychology, history, psychiatry, medicine, and personal experience that leads to a clear verdict: Homosexuality is neither a sickness nor a sin. Unfortunately, the church has always been slow, if not the last institution on earth, to accept new truth.

In 1632 the scientist Galileo (who was a man of faith) dared to support the radical 15th-century idea of Copernicus that all planets, including the earth, revolve around the sun. Immediately, Galileo was proclaimed a heretic by the Pope who quoted Scriptures in his attempt to disprove what science was proving.

Earlier, Protestant heroes had joined in quoting Scriptures condemning Copernicus. These weren't evil men. But they couldn't admit that the Bible was a book about God, not about astronomy -- just as good men and women today have trouble admitting that the Bible is a book about God, not about human sexuality.

Martin Luther said, "This fool Copernicus wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy; but sacred Scripture in Joshua 10:13 tells us that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not the earth."

John Calvin quoted Psalm 93 in his attack on Copernicus. "The earth also is established. It cannot be moved." Calvin added, "Who will venture to place the authority of Copernicus above that of the Holy Spirit?"

Melancthon, one of Luther's closest allies, used Ecclesiastes 1:4-5 to condemn Copernicus. "The sun also rises, and the sun goes down and hurries to the place from which it came." Then he added these dangerous words: "It is the part of a good mind to accept the truth as revealed by God and to obey it." In other words, believe what the Bible says -- even if science disproves it.

Because Christians refused to let their understanding of God's Word be informed by science, Copernicus was condemned and Galileo was declared a heretic and placed under house arrest for the remainder of his life. In 1992, 359 years later, Pope John Paul II finally admitted the church had been wrong to ignore science and to interpret the Bible literally.

The Pope said something we must never forget: "Recent historical studies enable us to state that this sad misunderstanding now belongs to the past." Unfortunately, the apology came too late to relieve Galileo of his suffering. What if the biblical scholars of Galileo's day had said to Galileo, "We don't agree with your Copernican theories, but we love and trust you. As long as you love God and seek God's will in your life, you are welcome here."

Imagine the suffering that could be avoided if the church could say this to their lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender children: "We don't understand your views about sexual orientation, but we love and trust you. As long as you love God and seek God's will in your life, you are welcome here."  Instead, well-intentioned Christian are driving their own children away from the church, using Scripture passages that may not even pertain to sexual orientation as we understand it.

MY EIGHTH PREMISE:
Whatever some people believe the Bible says about homosexuality, they must not use that belief to deny homosexuals their basic civil rights. To discriminate against sexual or gender minorities is unjust and un-American.

Please consider one last thing. I love the Bible. I read God's Word in it and hear God's Word through it. But the United States is not a nation governed by the Bible. Our nation is governed by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Our laws were created to protect an individual's right to disagree. If the Bible (or someone's view of the Bible) replaces the Constitution as the law of the land, we undermine the great foundation upon which this country was built.

When I was a guest on a talk show in Seattle, I saw what might happen to me and to millions like me if a genuine literalist gained political power over this country. The other guest on the show was an independent Presbyterian pastor. When I told him that I was gay, he said without hesitation, "Then you should be killed." A Christian brother sentenced me to death, guided only by his literal understanding of Leviticus 20:13.

I asked him, "Who should do the killing, you church folk?" He answered, "No, that's the civil authorities' job. That's why we need to elect more good men of God into government." I sat there in stunned silence, until he added, "I know it must be hard for you to hear it, Dr. White -- but God said it first and it's our job to obey."

I hope we can agree that all of us must stand together against those who would replace the Constitution with biblical law. That's why, when I lecture on a university campus, I carry a Bible in one pocket and a Constitution in the other.

Can we support full civil rights for all... even if we disagree?  In this last premise, I'm asking you who disagree with my stand on homosexuality to support my stand on full civil rights for all people, including gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender Americans.

I hope you'll agree that we are family, all sisters and brothers of the same heavenly parent. We may be different, but we can still live together in peace.
Thanks for reading this pamphlet. I'm grateful. If you are interested in learning more, I've listed a few resources on the next few pages. You can also find resources online at our Web page, www.soulforce.org.