I’ve been toying with the idea of retiring mandikaye.com for awhile, and I’ve decided to take the plunge.
I love this site. I’ve been writing here (or not writing here) for more than 4 years. I have grown as a person and become incredibly self-aware as a result of the community that began here (and later fizzled).
But I am no longer the same person I was when I took up the mantle here.
When I began writing, this blog was called Imago Dei because that’s who and what I was. I wrote for God’s glory and to grow as a Christian in my faith.
When I chose to leave that life behind, I changed the name of this blog but it never felt quite right to write here from a worldview that wasn’t Christian. I tried, but you are all well aware that my writing has been less than lacking over the past year or more.
So, I am retiring this place. I’m leaving it up (for now), intact. I think it is important to keep it for myself so I know where I’m coming from.
I have a new blog, Saving Throw to Disbelieve. And anyone who wants to join me over there is more than welcome to come.
Today is a day that I really needed to smile. Luckily, I found these videos. This guy is pretty dang talented. And who doesn’t love listening to old theme songs?!
Many people are up in arms about the proposed mosque built near Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan.
And it’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.
Luckily, there are patient and eloquent people out there who can say nice things and make the point without resorting to the immature name-calling I am likely to do.
From NYC Mayor Bloomberg’s speech earlier this week: (Emphasis mine)
“Of all our precious freedoms, the most important may be the freedom to worship as we wish. And it is a freedom that, even here in a City that is rooted in Dutch tolerance, was hard-won over many years. In the mid-1650s, the small Jewish community living in Lower Manhattan petitioned Dutch Governor Peter Stuyvesant for the right to build a synagogue – and they were turned down.
“In 1657, when Stuyvesant also prohibited Quakers from holding meetings, a group of non-Quakers in Queens signed the Flushing Remonstrance, a petition in defense of the right of Quakers and others to freely practice their religion. It was perhaps the first formal, political petition for religious freedom in the American colonies – and the organizer was thrown in jail and then banished from New Amsterdam.
“In the 1700s, even as religious freedom took hold in America, Catholics in New York were effectively prohibited from practicing their religion – and priests could be arrested. Largely as a result, the first Catholic parish in New York City was not established until the 1780’s – St. Peter’s on Barclay Street, which still stands just one block north of the World Trade Center site and one block south of the proposed mosque and community center.
“This morning, the City’s Landmark Preservation Commission unanimously voted not to extend landmark status to the building on Park Place where the mosque and community center are planned. The decision was based solely on the fact that there was little architectural significance to the building. But with or without landmark designation, there is nothing in the law that would prevent the owners from opening a mosque within the existing building. The simple fact is this building is private property, and the owners have a right to use the building as a house of worship.
“The government has no right whatsoever to deny that right – and if it were tried, the courts would almost certainly strike it down as a violation of the U.S. Constitution. Whatever you may think of the proposed mosque and community center, lost in the heat of the debate has been a basic question – should government attempt to deny private citizens the right to build a house of worship on private property based on their particular religion? That may happen in other countries, but we should never allow it to happen here. This nation was founded on the principle that the government must never choose between religions, or favor one over another.
“The World Trade Center Site will forever hold a special place in our City, in our hearts. But we would be untrue to the best part of ourselves – and who we are as New Yorkers and Americans – if we said ‘no’ to a mosque in Lower Manhattan.
“Let us not forget that Muslims were among those murdered on 9/11 and that our Muslim neighbors grieved with us as New Yorkers and as Americans. We would betray our values – and play into our enemies’ hands – if we were to treat Muslims differently than anyone else. In fact, to cave to popular sentiment would be to hand a victory to the terrorists – and we should not stand for that.
“For that reason, I believe that this is an important test of the separation of church and state as we may see in our lifetime – as important a test – and it is critically important that we get it right.
I’ve recently realized that I am an inherently selfish person. I have to make an effort on many occasions to overcome my own limitations and recognize that the world and its inhabitants do not revolve around me and my opinions, wants, or needs.
Point being, I make that effort. I don’t always succeed, and sometimes I do it a little begrudgingly, but I recognize the worth and value of those around me and offer what I can to hold them in the esteem worthy of a fellow human being.
The big thing in the news right now is the overturning of Proposition 8 in California – the law that took away the right for same-sex couples to marry in 2008 after they had already been given that right.
The case was brought by two gay couples who said California’s Proposition 8, which passed in 2008 with 52 percent of the vote, discriminated against them by prohibiting same-sex marriage and relegating them to domestic partnerships. The judge easily dismissed the idea that discrimination is permissible if a majority of voters approve it; the referendum’s outcome was “irrelevant,” he said, quoting a 1943 case, because “fundamental rights may not be submitted to a vote.”
He then dismantled, brick by crumbling brick, the weak case made by supporters of Proposition 8 and laid out the facts presented in testimony. The two witnesses called by the supporters (the state having bowed out of the case) had no credibility, he said, and presented no evidence that same-sex marriage harmed society or the institution of marriage.
Same-sex couples are identical to opposite-sex couples in their ability to form successful marital unions and raise children, he said. Though procreation is not a necessary goal of marriage, children of same-sex couples will benefit from the stability provided by marriage, as will the state and society. Domestic partnerships confer a second-class status. The discrimination inherent in that second-class status is harmful to gay men and lesbians. These findings of fact will be highly significant as the case winds its way through years of appeals.
One of Judge Walker’s strongest points was that traditional notions of marriage can no longer be used to justify discrimination, just as gender roles in opposite-sex marriage have changed dramatically over the decades. All marriages are now unions of equals, he wrote, and there is no reason to restrict that equality to straight couples. The exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage “exists as an artifact of a time when the genders were seen as having distinct roles in society and in marriage,” he wrote. “That time has passed.”
To justify the proposition’s inherent discrimination on the basis of sex and sexual orientation, he wrote, there would have to be a compelling state interest in banning same-sex marriage. But no rational basis for discrimination was presented at the two-and-a-half-week trial in January, he said. The real reason for Proposition 8, he wrote, is a moral view “that there is something wrong with same-sex couples,” and that is not a permissible reason for legislation.
“Moral disapproval alone,” he wrote, in words that could someday help change history, “is an improper basis on which to deny rights to gay men and women.”
I know there are many many people out there who believe that morality alone is very much a reasonable basis to deny rights. To those people I ask: Who decides what is and isn’t moral?
There are men and women in Utah who believe it is perfectly moral to have multiple wives. Should we allow that view of morality be the line that dictates our legal system?
What about the men and women who believe it is perfectly moral to engage in negotiated infidelity? Should that view of morality be the line that dictates our legal system and our rights?
Judge Walker is absolutely right: Moral disapproval alone is an improper basis on which to deny rights to gay men and women. (I would add to any men and women)
Being gay does not make someone less American or less of a human.
The Friendly Atheist posted a video today that I hadn’t seen before, but I’m so glad he did. It is a clip of Keith Olbermann from right after Prop 8 was voted in:
… With so much hate in the world, with so much meaningless division, and people pitted against people for no good reason, this is what your religion tells you to do? With your experience of life and this world and all its sadnesses, this is what your conscience tells you to do?
With your knowledge that life, with endless vigor, seems to tilt the playing field on which we all live, in favor of unhappiness and hate… this is what your heart tells you to do? You want to sanctify marriage? You want to honor your God and the universal love you believe he represents? Then Spread happiness — this tiny, symbolic, semantical grain of happiness — share it with all those who seek it. Quote me anything from your religious leader or book of choice telling you to stand against this. And then tell me how you can believe both that statement and another statement, another one which reads only “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
I think we have a need to connect to generations of the past, and color photographs of those times allow us to do that in ways we haven’t had before.
The Faro Caudill family eating dinner in their dugout. Pie Town, New Mexico, October 1940. Reproduction from color slide. Photo by Russell Lee. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress
