mld, July 27, 2002 at 2:24:00 AM CEST

Skin

My buddy macker is one of the more tolerant flavors of Xian. He thinks I am going to hell, but he can still be my friend. Funny, I call him a friend - after about four years, we've never met, and I can count on one hand the times we've ever spoken on the phone. Ain't the internet grand?

Would that all Xians were so tolerant. Even though I think that in his particular case, it may be that he thinks tolerance is simply a more effective tactic for subverting heretics. Hey, if it walks like a duck...

Sometimes he gets a little wounded, I think, at my never-ending potshots at organized religion of all stripes, though he tries not to show it.

Hey, I'm a gadfly, an iconoclast, a mocker, a cynic about just about anything. It doesn't help that the religious keep tossing me batting practice meatballs to swat clean out of the park. Need I mention the higher level poobahs in the Catholic church concealing repeated criminal sexual abuse by their parish priests? Didn't think so. (Do I get to mention I was ranting about this ?)

Allow me, good folks to introduce to you one of the more common varieties of the human to be found in these parts, the homo xianus dogmatus. You never have to look far to find them in Texas. In fact, it's hard to get away from them. They'll even come and bother you while you're eating in a nice restaurant.

Case in point. Today, reading the local news, I saw that a group of the faithful are up in arms about a nudist resort, and are trying to work the local legal establishment to make life difficult for them. The full story is here. A few highlights are as follows...

Andrew Teesdale, of River Oaks Baptist Church, says that if we don't allow nudity in adult bookstores, we shouldn't allow it at public beaches.

This is a common behavior of the species, the uttering of non-sequiturs.

First off, it's not a public beach, but a private resort.

He is correct, though. We don't allow nudity at public beaches. (or most of them, anyway) In respectful deference to your unhealthy hangups, Mr. Teesdale, we don't allow shameful public displays of the flesh at the DMV, or in schools, or almost any public places. (I had to add that "almost" in there, as I was thinking of Bourbon Street during Mardi Gras) Or do we?

According to some Muslims, Mr. Teesdale, that makeup-slathered mug of Tammy Faye you can see on the Boob Toob is a shameful display of flesh more morally hidden under a veil. (I can agree with the conclusion, though not the rationale)

Should you be ruled by that Muslim's opinion of right and wrong? No? Well, why should those nudists be ruled by yours? Because Jeebus sez so? Fine. When he comes down outta heaven to tell us, then we'll side with you.

It's not like these folks are lobbying for the right to run around nekkid in the streets, offending your sense of propriety. The simply want to do what they want in privacy. Alas, this may be an argument too intricate for the typical dogmatus to easily comprehend.

This species comes, of course, in both genders, hence their unfortunate ability to reproduce. Baptist schoolteacher Sherry Davis, (the Baptist variant of the species is among the most intolerant and evangelical) according to this report, believes nudity invites perversion, pornography and crime, thus exibiting another tell-tale marker for the type, an IQ approaching the sub-moron level. This inablity to construct a rational argument in most examples of the breed leads to a simple reliance on statements of belief.

The species also shows a remarkable degree of undue curiosity. She says: "We don't know what may be going on behind those fences."

As if knowing would make a difference.

I don't know what's going on in your bedroom, Sherry. You might be banging Great Danes in a hot tub full of mushroom soup for all I know. (By the way, that wouldn't be against the law in Texas.)

But I don't have any right to know, and you don't have an inalienable right to know what's going on behind those fences, either. You may have a legal right to demand that those fences exist, to protect your tender sensibilities, but it then becomes a hypocritical contradiction to then demand to know what goes on behind them. If you wanna know, woman, take off your clothes and your archaic ethics, and join them. If you don't want to do that, then just go away.

The fact of the matter is, so long as it is consensual, and everyone is of a legal age, then there's not a damn thing you can do about it. The men can be buttfucking each other in a daisychain forty feet around, while the women all pile on each other in a big lesbian clusterfuck in the center of the circle to spur them on, and it's all legal.

(I thought I'd toss in all those salacious words in that last paragraph to drive up traffic a little bit. Looking at my logs, the most common hit I get from google is from people in Germany looking for ponygirls, all hitting this fairly tame entry.)

But, unfortunate as some of us might think it to be, the reality is much more mundane. I've been to a nudist colony, and a few nude beaches, and I can tell you what's going on - a bunch of middle-aged folks are drinking (that probably pisses you off, too) and laying around in the sun getting a wicked sunburn on their peckers and buns. Most, if not all of them, would look a lot better with their clothes on, and you don't even wanna watch a volleyball game - the slabs of flab flopping around is not pretty. It's about as erotic as going to church, even less so, in some cases.

They're not there to engage in wild sex parties, there are other places for that, and better ways to meet folks so inclined. Don't ask me how I know. :-)

Truly, there's not too much overlap in the sets of people that do one or the other. The circus-sex freaks are mostly sleeping during the weekend days, trying to recover from the previous night's bacchanalia. They don't see the point of shedding their clothes, and not getting down with somebody, while many nudists are just as vanilla in their sex lives as the bluehair prudes that are trying to ban their freedom to walk around in the outfit they were born in.

Prediction: these attempts to run these nudists out of town on a rail will fail. There are numerous nudist camps in Texas. They are clearly permitted under the law. There are even some on public lands Any attempts to stifle them will run into formidable constitutional barriers protecting freedom of expression.

Were those not enough, and they will be, all the resort would need to do is start holding services on Sunday mornings, and declare themselves a religious organization, claiming that their faith requires them to walk around periodically in the nude, to remind them and the world that material possessions are fleeting, and to keep them humble in the eyes of others. I could whip up a theological treatise supporting this one in no time flat, complete with quotations from the Good Book. Heh. Let the Jeebus freaks try and fight that one.

Men, especially, will know what I mean about being made humble. My first experience at a nude beach was Black Beach in California. The water was cold. Nothing like having your tallywhacker shrivel up to about one tenth of it normal size and try to tunnel back up into your crotch, in the midst of a bunch of nekkid Cali beach bunnies, to show you what real humility is. :-)

The only possible way the resort can lose would be if the bluehairs have a boodle of money for the court battles, civil lawsuits and such, and the resort doesn't. Unfortunately, our legal system is set up such that the side with the most money wins, not the ones whom the law actually favors.

Were that to happen, it would be an unwelcome victory for the more repressive residents of the human zoo.

 

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mld, June 10, 2002 at 10:25:00 PM CEST

Saddled by the Shamans

"Is the bondage of the priest-ridden less galling than that of the slave, because we do not see the chains, the indelible scars, the festering wounds, the deep degradation of all the powers of the God-like mind?"

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

How appropriate a verse in light of the recent allegations of impropriety and coverups by the Catholic Church. I'm sure that there are about fifteen other sects that are breathing a heavy sigh of relief that the spotlight is focused on the priests. I'm sure in time we'll come to discover that sexual abuse is not confined to just the followers of the Pope, we'll end up with a gaggle of rabbis and preachers in this before it's all over.

I must be fair about this, though. I had the good fortune to attend Catholic schools most of my life, and I do consider it good fortune. I had a terrific education.

Never in the entire time did a priest make any inappropriate gestures, and they had ample chances to, had they been so inclined. I was an altar boy, and spent long hours alone with priests for various reasons in school.

For example, to help pay tuition, I worked weekends answering the phones at the school, alone for long stretches of the afternoon and evening. Every once in a while one of the fathers would drop in to pick up something, or use the copy machine, whatever. Sometimes they'd sit and chat for a while. Perfect opportunity.

And I was a pretty little boy, though you'd have a hard time swallowing that looking at me today. Smallish, slender, long hair, rosy cheeks, the whole bit. Once, in my mid teens, working at a petshop and wearing a loose fitting smock, I was mistaken for a girl. I had a hard time living that one down. :-)

Anyway, in all those years, nothing untoward happened, for which I am thankful. All the priests I knew were fine men.

My pal macker seems to think that his conduct and personality as a Xian is an important facet of people's acceptance of his faith, or the lack therof. In fact, when he first came to know me, he assumed that my distaste for organized religion was due to some unpleasant experiences with the shamans in the Church while I was in my formative years. Not so.

My experience is that most adults have pretty much made up their mind about God, and aren't going to let other people's actions sway them much. We all know of assholes and angels in and out of the faith. If I was inclined to buy in to the whole Eternal Salvation thing, I'd be pretty foolish to risk my soul just because one insufferable asshole stumbled on the truth, too.

Conversely, I'm not going to be much persuaded to to believe, either, just because some proponent of the faith is charismatic, personable, and/or looks like a movie star.(Well, maybe the latter, iffn we're talking a female type. I might be willing to affect an enthusiasm. But if she was that sexy, I'd be more inclined to drag her over with me to the Dark Side. :-) It's a lot more fun over here.

So, I was not one of the "priest-ridden," at least in the most salacious interpretation of the term. However, I believe that we are all priest-ridden in a more insidious way, whether we are of the faith or not. We live in a culture in which many of the values are Xian values, and we follow them even if we don't follow the religion. They have transcended the faith to become an American value.

"Work Hard" is one of those values.

It's hard to find a man that's unemployed that feels good about himself, as men in our culture tend to define themselves by their job. Walk up to the average Joe, and ask him, "Joe, what are you?" In almost every instance, Joe will reply "I'm a truck driver." Not, I'm a Republican, or a father, or a model railroad enthusiast, though Joe is in fact all of those things, too. Take away a man's vocation, and you remove a large part of his selfhood.

All protestations of equality aside, we still look a bit askance at a man that chooses to be a stay-at-home dad. Or one that chooses to work only part-time, and lives a simple life so that he can afford to do so. Or one that is considerably under-employed. We expect men, and increasingly women, to work long and hard outside the home, as hard as they can, and to strive for promotions and raises. Anything less is considered laziness, and a character flaw. That's why it's called the "work ethic."

This is not the best way to live your life. Anthropologists tell us that we work much longer than primitive peoples in hunter-gatherer cultures, where most men and women only work a few hours each day, and spend the rest of the time relaxing, telling stories, having sex, or just "hanging out." Who knows what stress-related health problems and mental disorders result from this?

There are more of these cultural values which we've inherited from the Xian faith - the nature of sin, appropriate punishments for crime, denial of the senses as morally superior to indulging them among them.

In logic, the validity of a conclusion can only be as valid as the axioms used in it's construction. So too, as we search for the answers to many of the ethical dilemmas facing us today - the proper use of technology and natural resources, the just use of political and military power, even the simple centuries old question of how a man should live his personal life, we would do well to examine those unconscious assumptions to determine which we choose to keep, and which ones represent being saddled by the shamans, and deserve nothing more than to be tossed into the rubbish heap of history.

 

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mld, June 3, 2002 at 9:25:00 PM CEST

Tabletop Evangelism

I was having dinner at the restaurant where CG works a few days ago. About the middle of our meal, my subconscious pulls me away from my blackened tuna, crabcakes, creole veggies and salad to bring to my attention a conversation, err, monologue, going on at the table behind me. A deep male voice is intoning is sort of a rapid sing-song rhythm. I can only make out snippets, as it's not that loud.

"Unless by the name of Jesus... It's his promise to us... it says in his word..."

This goes on for a bit. I hear a matronly female voice adding an ocassional murmur of assent. I'm thinking to my self this guy's not too scintillating a dinner conversationalist, if he has to resort to reading born-again tracts to his friends.

But then I hear a young male voice making uncomfortable replies. like "Yes sir, I am a Christian..."

Finally, I turn around to see just what the hell is going on.

This guy is preaching to the waiter! His waiter, our waiter. Who is standing there, shifting from foot to foot, obviously unable to think of a decent way to get out of this, so he can get along with his job.

I suppose in theory I don't have a problem with people espousing their religious beliefs to others, free speech and the freedom to be an obnoxious wacko loon being part and parcel of our dear constitutional rights that I once swore to defend until death, if need be, an oath I took (and take) seriously.

But there's a right and a wrong way to go about things, and snaggin' a server on a busy weekend afternoon at his work, when he's got other folks to wait on, and he's clearly not in a position to tell your Bible-beating dumb ass to go take a flying fuck at a rolling donut were he of a mind to, without getting at the very least, stiffed on the tip, if not complained on to the management, is clearly not the right way to go.

I listened to this old man drone on. He was dressed severely in a black suit, white shirt and black tie, tall and gaunt, looking for all the world like an undertaker. His plump little Hallelujah chorus of a wife was all spiffy in her flowered dress and poofed-up, welded into a helmet hair. I listened until, as Popeye is wont to say, "That's all I can stands, and I can't stands no more."

Meanwhile, CG, who'd been blathering on her own self about something I don't recall (like the Connecticutt Yankee's Sandy, she can motor on solo until further notice) notices the storm clouds gathering on my face, snaps to what's happening, and reaches across the table to take my hand.

"Marcus, don't you say a thing!"

She knows me, and didn't want a scene at her job.

"All I was gonna do was turn around and tell him when he got done with that poor trapped kid, he could start in on me, 'cause I garan-goddam-tee I am the Devil Fucking Incarnate compared to that little itty-bitty baby sinner of a waiter, I've logged more hours drunk in whorehouses than that kid has in school, and maybe he'd like to debate theology with someone who's not a captive audience. I chew up Jesuits and pick my freakin' teeth with their bones. "

As that sentence went on, I tried to gradually up the volume to the point where old Ichabod behind me might could hear.

"Don't you dare."

(sigh)

Thankfully, about then, the impromtu sermon ended, and the couple left, no doubt congratulating themselves on having struck another blow for the Good and Righteous and earning a higher place in heaven. The kid ran around catching up on his tea glass refilling, etc., and finally made it back over to our table.

I told him he had a lot more patience than I did. He just shrugged and said the guy was a weirdo, and that they didn't tip worth a shit anyway.

This has got to be the sort of thing that drives my less insane Xian friends like Macker crazy. It screws it up for the more subtle, set the good Xian example method of conversion.

I guess that's the sort of overweening certainty you get when you've convinced yourself that you've got a T1 to the Truth soldered into your soul.

 

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