Tag: religion

Oppressed Christians

Posted by helenboyd – February 16, 2009

Has anyone else seen this video? It’s unbelievably paranoid, no?

I’m not sure what part of “your religion stops where my government starts” they don’t understand. They can say anything they want, and usually do. What they can’t do is fire someone for being homosexual, or censor television whose morality they don’t approve of. That’s it. They just don’t get to control shit for the rest of us. But they are perfectly free to avoid watching shows with gay characters, they don’t need to go to same sex weddings, etc. etc.

I’m never going to get this kind of “I don’t get to control you therefore I’m oppressed” type of thinking.

Employment Non-Discrimination

Posted by helenboyd – November 8, 2008

On Twitter, Gunner Scott of GenderCrash directed me to the new Obama-Biden administration’s employment policy, which says:

The Obama-Biden Transition Project does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, or any other basis of discrimination prohibited by law.

Note the bold print.

Feministing points out that the CT Employment Law Blog has stated that this “signals a dramatic shift in the hiring practices of the executive branch because current law does not prohibit employment discrimination on the basis of gender identity.”

So not only is this a proposed change or ideological shift, but an actual policy change has already happened with the Obama-Biden administration.

I told y’all they were hip to gender!

Book Review: Queer Catholicism

Posted by helenboyd – August 23, 2008

It’s been a year of Catholics, hasn’t it? From the sad news about Ted Kennedy’s health, to the deaths of Tim Russert & George Carlin. So the editors of Queer + Catholic might have unusually good timing, even if none of the Catholics who died this year were queer.

I’m a contributor to this book – I’ll say that upfront to say that I’m biased – but I honestly didn’t know what to expect from it. I feared I would be one of very few to have anything positive to say. But the more of this book I read – and I’ve read almost all of it already – is that I was very, very wrong. The editors have chosen some of the most tender eulogies to their childhood Catholicism, some complicated appreciations of having been both queer and catholic, and honestly, some straight-up love letters to the mysteries that are the Catholic Church.

It is hard not to especially love hearing the way gay men talk about being Catholic: about the first time they noticed the obscenity and eroticism of the way Christ was portrayed, or the many martyred saints, the homoeroticism of all boys’ schools. The love and shame and pride are served up in such equal measure, but always with that kind of gentle, sad-eyed quality that gay men do so well.

How gender-y this book is struck me as well. My own piece is very much about gender, of course: I wanted to be a priest but found I had a vagina, horror of horrors. The other lovely female perverts and poets in this collection are uncanny in the way they talk about bodies, about blood, about sex.

Because Catholics are, as a lot, obsessed with sex. I had an older, experienced crossdresser once tell me that it’s always the Catholic girls who are wild rides. & I believe him.

What is in this book isn’t just sex though; we all, as Catholics, become a bit Jesuitical in seeing always both sides of the same coin. So that sex becomes suffering, and redemption; sex becomes shame, but also pride; sex becomes beauty, and divinity, and transcendence.

So there is something about declaring myself a Catholic that seems exactly right to me in the way the Church’s mysteries always enfolded a little more than you bargained for, and to me, that’s downright vulvic. Mother Church, indeed.

If you’re Catholic, or interested in religion, or in art, or homoeroticism, or spirituality – or any or all of the above – do get the book. These are some of the best, most personal, marrow-full essays I’ve read in a long, long time.

Jenny Boylan & The “Complementarians”

Posted by helenboyd – August 17, 2008

Here’s an interesting exchange between a blogger,  CWMW (a Christian group), and the NYT op-ed by Jenny Boylan about the gender testing planned for the Olympics:

The issue of the ‘extremely rare’ defects that result from this being a fallen world ‘not invalidating the binary nature of God’s good design of manhood and womanhood’ fails to address this. For if the binary is to hold, then 65 million people need to be categorized as either male or female. Otherwise they cannot logically be assigned scripturally defined gender roles. So what are the standards? Genitalia? Chromosomes? Capability to give birth? If the Bible doesn’t provide the standards, then someone has to. I look forward to CMWM’s answer to this.

Which is an interesting thought: if people are convinced our gender roles are laid out for us in The Bible, then what about the people who don’t fit the pre-existing genders? & What about the eunuchs?

Pride Rant

Posted by helenboyd – June 30, 2008

A great rant about Pride by Joe.My.God, which he wrote back in 2005 after watching a NYC Pride Parade:

Because even if Pride doesn’t change many minds in the outside world, it’s our PARTY, darlings. It’s our Christmas, our New Year’s, our Carnival. It’s the one day of the year that all the crazy contingents of the gay world actually come face to face on the street and blow each other air kisses. And wish each other “Happy Pride!” Saying “Happy Pride!” is really just a shorter, easier way of saying “Congratulations on not being driven completely batshit insane! Way to go for not taking a rifle into a tower and taking out half the town! Well done, being YOURSELF!”

I’m not worried what the outside world thinks about the drag queens, the topless bulldaggers, or the nearly naked leatherfolk. It’s OUR party, bitches. If you think that straight America would finally pull its homokinder to its star-spangled bosom once we put down that glitter gun, then you are seriously deluding yourself. Next year, if one of the Christian camera crews that show up to film our “debauched” celebrations happen to train their cameras on you, stop dancing. And start PRANCING.

It seemed a great way to end Pride Month.

The Other Hand

Posted by helenboyd – June 20, 2008

The AMA passed a resolution attempting to make home births illegal, and yet in the same session, they also passed Resolution 114 (MS Word .doc):

Whereas, Gender Identity Disorder (GID) is a serious medical condition recognized as such in both the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and the International Classification of Diseases; and

Whereas, GID, if left untreated, can result in clinically significant psychological distress, dysfunction, debilitating depression, and, for some patients without access to appropriate medical care and treatment, suicidality and death; and

Whereas, The medical literature has established the effectiveness and medical necessity of mental health care, hormone therapy, and sex reassignment surgery in the treatment of patients diagnosed with GID; and

Whereas, Many health insurance plans categorically exclude coverage of mental health, medical, and surgical treatments for GID, even though many of these same treatments, such as psychotherapy, hormone therapy, breast augmentation and removal, hysterectomy, oophorectomy, orchiectomy, and salpingectomy, are covered for other medical conditions; and

Whereas, The denial of otherwise covered benefits for patients diagnosed with GID represents discrimination based solely on a patient’s gender identity; and

Whereas, Our AMA opposes discrimination (AMA Policies H-65.983, H-65.992) and the denial of health insurance (H-180.980) on the basis of gender identity; and

Whereas, Our AMA opposes limitations placed on patient care by third-party payers when such care is based upon sound scientific evidence and sound medical opinion (H-120.988); therefore be it

RESOLVED, That our American Medical Association support public and private health insurance coverage for treatment of gender identity disorder in adolescents and adults (New HOD Policy); and be it further

RESOLVED, That our AMA oppose categorical exclusions of coverage for treatment of gender identity disorder in adolescents and adults when prescribed by a physician. (New HOD Policy)

Which doesn’t do the job entirely, but it’s certainly a good weapon in a trans person’s arsenal when arguing for why their transition related costs should be funded.

(thanks to Veronica for the news)

White Privilege

Posted by helenboyd – May 31, 2008

& More on the Fr. Pfleger post! Someone wrote to me & said:

I am Catholic as well, 1st generation Irish-American, I was poor, faced prejudice – and feel I owe nothing to Father Pfleger’s constituency. I feel I worked myself out of the bottom and I don’t feel anyone owes me anything either. But if this race-baiting (as I see it) continues then I might have to argue that I was discriminated against as well—if not here in the USA then maybe in Ireland/England.

But then when does it end? When does victimization end? It has gone on a long time in the USA and it hasn’t improved. I don’t think victimization helps improve people’s lives. It never helped me. I worked my way out of it (and people don’t understand the work that I did unless they did it themselves).

But when Father Pfleger says we owe some of or 401k’s to black people because we had ‘white privilege’, I have difficulty understanding it because I don’t feel I had equal opportunity and yet I don’t resent it. I accept it–It is life and I don’t think it will ever change.

Which is all perfectly logical & makes sense to me; I think it’s the nut of why poor and working-class white people sometimes object to Affirmative Action programs.

Except that the reality, in the US, is that we have inherited a system where some people are oppressed because of their race and only because of their race. It is not the only way people are oppressed, and plenty of us (white folks) did not have family here when slavery was operable. But the system that came out of race-based slavery was, in turn, racist.

So while poor white people didn’t benefit from equal treatment – because we didn’t – we didn’t have to deal with being poor AND black. We were privileged in one aspect – being white – and oppressed in another – by class. Catholics and Jews and other “white” immigrant groups were often also oppressed due to their religion or recent immigration status. Often these groups are referred to as “white ethnic” – meaning ‘white but not WASP.’ It’s what I consider myself. For an excellent book on the subject, specifically the way whiteness was sold as privilege to unionized white workers – check out The Wages of Whiteness, or on White Ethnic groups, check out White Ethnics.

Being able to look at the ways we are each privileged and the ways we are oppressed is what we call Intersectionality in Gender Studies.

But more importantly, let me say this: the idea here isn’t about victimization. It’s about understanding one’s individual story in context. It’s not about sitting around & saying “woe is me” or anything like it. It’s just about knowing which aspects of your own experience and others works against you, & them; it’s a way of explaining why some women are more privileged than others, and why, say, a white, rich, professional gay man might have a hard time understanding why a black poor lesbian can’t get a decent start in life despite them both being LGBT.

So: no whining. Just acknowledgment in the ways we exist, as individuals, within the larger culture and its institutions, and the ways those institutions, in turn, shape us. (Of course that doesn’t mean there aren’t people who would prefer to blame everyone & anyone for why they suck, but that’s an entirely different issue entirely.)

Not Marrying Money

Posted by helenboyd – May 10, 2008

I was so happy to find this article on being a woman who is planning to marry a man who is deep in debt and who actually called off the wedding – at least temporarily – until he got this finances in order. It’s an issue no one ever talks about – debt in general, & money in relationships too. I’ve seen money listed as one of the top five things a couple should make sure they agree about (the other four are having children, dealing with family, sex, and religion) before they get married. Historically women end up with a lower standard of living after divorce, for instance, than men do, despite all the jokes about how women “get rich” via divorce. Those with children, even moreso.

I’m waiting for her to outline how exactly he managed this 53% reduction in so short a time. It’s encouraging.

Not a Donkey

Posted by helenboyd – May 3, 2008

A New Yorker article about C.S. Lewis I’d missed that talks about the “two Lewises.” I’m a huge fan, & this was a good piece about him. I like this bit especially:

What is so moving about the Narnia stories is that, though Lewis began with a number of haunted images—a street lamp in the snow, the magic wardrobe itself, the gentle intelligent faun who meets Lucy—he never wrote down to, or even for, children, except to use them as characters, and to make his sentences one shade simpler than usual. He never tries to engineer an entertainment for kids. He writes, instead, as real writers must, a real book for a circle of readers large and small, and the result is a fairy tale that includes, encyclopedically, everything he feels most passionate about: the nature of redemption, the problem of pain, the Passion and the Resurrection, all set in his favored mystical English winter-and-spring landscape. Had he tried for less, the books would not have lasted so long. The trouble was that though he could encompass his obsessions, he could not entirely surrender to his imagination. The emotional power of the book, as every sensitive child has known, diminishes as the religious part intensifies. The most explicitly religious part of his myth is the most strenuously, and the least successfully, allegorized. Aslan the lion, the Christ symbol, who has exasperated generations of freethinking parents and delighted generations of worried Anglicans, is, after all, a very weird symbol for that famous carpenter’s son—not just an un-Christian but in many ways an anti-Christian figure.

Prince Caspian comes out May 16th. The trailer gives me hope.

(Courtesy of Neil Gaiman’s blog.)

Fuck Seal Press?

Posted by helenboyd – April 19, 2008

I came back from visiting Betty upstate to find out that there is a huge mess involving Seal Press (my publishers) which came right on the heels of BFP’s departure last week.

So without pointing out every phrase and person involved, I’ll just say a few things as a white feminist who really only consciously became a feminist after reading Michele Wallace, and who, for nearly 10 years, worked for author Walter Mosley, who has written and talked about the absence of POC in the publishing industry, specifically.

The under representation of WOC in publishing has been a problem for a long time. The under representation of POC has been as well, in general. It’s not just chronic; it’s really fucking awful. More→

Race + LGBT

Posted by helenboyd – April 17, 2008

I heard Jasmyne Cannick speak at the Bodies of Knowledge conference at USC Upstate, and the focus of her talk was race and the LGBT community. She made a couple of important points about the failures of the white LGBT set in dealing with black LGBT people. I use “black” because she did; she mentioned that she dislikes the phrase “people of color” but didn’t explain why exactly.

One of her main issues was that minorities are often used to trump up “diversity” numbers for primarily white LGBT organizations but aren’t then given any real power to choose issues within those organizations. Gay marriage in particular was way down on her list of priorities, after things like universal healthcare, jobs, access to education, immigration, access to power/politicians, and other issues of poverty. Her point was that in LA, it’s the white LGBT who live in West Hollywood, but that black LGBT people tend to live in their neighborhoods of birth: Compton, East LA, etc., exactly because of the issues of dicrimination and access.

As she put it: “Just because someone doesn’t agree with you that gay marriage is the most important issue doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be at the table.” More→

Unjustice of the Peace

Posted by helenboyd – April 8, 2008

A church in the UK stopped performing weddings when the congregation realized how different the laws are governing civil unions vs. marriages there.

Unitarians, of course.

(Thanks to Valery for the tip!)

(Go Chris!)

Posted by helenboyd – April 3, 2008

Hitchens vs. Hitchens: On God, War, Politics, and Culture – Brothers Christopher and Peter Hitchens are set for their first public debate, this Thursday, April 3, at 7:30 p.m. at Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan. They plan to debate on numerous topics, from religion to Iraq.There will be a live Webcast of Hitchens vs Hitchens available at: http://www.allpresidents.org and http://www.cfimichigan.org. More→

He Can Say It

Posted by helenboyd – February 29, 2008

From The Stranger:

Obama’s rally in Beaumont today was the highest-energy of this Texas swing, with a crowd that was about three-quarters black cheering at almost every turn.

An interesting moment came when he was asked a question about LGBT rights and delivered an answer that seemed to suit the questioner, listing the various attributes—race, gender, etc.—that shouldn’t trigger discrimination, to successive cheers. When he came to saying that gays and lesbians deserve equality, though, the crowd fell silent.

So he took a different tack:

“Now I’m a Christian, and I praise Jesus every Sunday,” he said, to a sudden wave of noisy applause and cheers. “I hear people saying things that I don’t think are very Christian with respect to people who are gay and lesbian,” he said, and the crowd seemed to come along with him this time.

(Do notice the comment left by Dan Savage. It’s #9.)

Life is Hard.

Posted by helenboyd – December 12, 2007

A Christian pharmacist, Brian Bundy, was fired by Target for not being willing to dispense Plan B contraception to customers. He’s suing.

How odd. I can’t imagine. You don’t do your job & you get fired. What a weird outcome.

Advene Advent

Posted by helenboyd – December 6, 2007

Betty & I regularly have conversations about what’s Christian and what’s specifically Catholic, since neither of us seems to know all the time. That is, I was raised Catholic and I’m never sure if an idea or ritual I was raised with is specifically Catholic or if it’s believed/practiced by other types of Christians, too. & For her it’s similar, since she was raised 7th Day Adventist.

The holiday season tends to bring more points to discuss, of course; this year we were buying a bottle of wine for some folks who put us up when I saw an Advent calendar for sale. I hadn’t had one with the little doors with the chocolates inside since I was a kid, so of course I had to buy one, because I’m just old enough to feel sentimental about kid stuff.

& Since then, Betty & I have been trying to figure out if Advent is a Catholic thing specifically or if it’s something a lot of Christians “do” with the exception of 7th Day types. (I think it’d be pretty damned funny if they don’t mark Advent, considering they call themselves “Adventists,” no?)

We could just look it up but we’re not going to. Instead, we’ll keep bugging each other, as I introduce her to a lovely bit of fun; everyday we’ll take turns opening the doors of the calendar though in all likeliness I’ll eat most of the chocolate (since she has no sweet tooth). That said, everyone can go check out some nifty online Advent calendars. My favorite so far is this neat one of comic book art because I like the tech – only the doors that should open, do – and the art itself.

So, happy Christmas season, all!

Gagged Twice

Posted by helenboyd – November 17, 2007

The Global Gag Rule, which feminists have been pointing out is bad news especially for the world’s poorest women, isn’t just about abortion. It’s about birth control, and family planning, which the very poorest women often need the most. For those who don’t know, it’s the law that demands that any organization that even mentions abortion lose all its U.S.-backed family planning funding which means they don’t get basic contraception.

Chair Nita Lowey (D-NY) (of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on State and Foreign Operations and Related Programs) added: “In some cases, the largest distribution centers for contraceptives have experienced decreased access for over 50% of the women they serve.”

Besides: it doesn’t make much of a difference in the amount of abortions. What legal abortions provide is women who live another day.

Whether abortion is legal or illegal, rates are about the same. But the “shocking” difference is how dangerous it is to women where it is illegal. At least 67,000 women die each year from unsafe abortions.

I suppose it’s useless to point out that half the countries we’re funding aren’t, um, Christian, and may or may not feel that abortion is immoral.

(source: Feminist Daily News, 11/1)

Mara Keisling on C-SPAN

Posted by helenboyd – November 17, 2007

If you haven’t seen it yet, Mara Keisling’s appearance on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal last week is worth viewing, and apparently isn’t going to be online forever, so do go watch it within the next week or so.

(You want the 11/10/2007 show.)

My favorite bit is when the woman calls to talk about how the founding fathers were Christian, & how Mara shouldn’t be allowed to talk at all, & Mara drinks her coffee stone-faced like Buster Keaton, the smile only showing at the very corners of her mouth, after which she explains, again, that the Bill in fact exempts religious institutions. (It’s at about 1:17 or so.)

& As one caller put it, I agree with him: Mara is a brilliant woman, and I’m happy to see her doing advocacy. That anyone said, “you can’t be a full person if you have to hide all the love in your life,” on Washington Journalis amazing, but I’m pleased as punch it was someone talking about LGBT rights.

The Forgotten Veterans

Posted by helenboyd – November 12, 2007

by Monica Helms

Veterans Day is one the three most important days in this country when it comes to patriotism and pride. At the eleventh minute, of the eleventh hour, of the eleventh day, of the eleventh month, we start the day honoring all the veterans who have served this country, both in peace and in war. Today, we have 26 million military veterans in America, but sadly, we lose 1500 WWII each day and a similar number of Korean War veterans as well. Soon, the Vietnam War veterans will pass away in similar numbers.

The men and women who fought in those wars over the last 230-plus years came from every diverse background this country has ever known. People from every race, religion, ethnicity, economic status, social status and sexual orientation have fought, been wounded or died for this country. A current example of sexual orientation is the first person wounded in the current war in Iraq. Eric Alva lost a leg in the very early days of the war and then came out as being gay after his discharge. More→

Monks Defy Orders

Posted by helenboyd – September 25, 2007

Imagine! Dubya finally said something in public I agree with! Today at the beginning of the UN’s general assembly, President Bush announced tighter sanctions on Burma:

He outlined a tightening of financial sanctions on Myanmar and an extension of a ban on visas of officials “responsible for the most egregious violations of human rights” and their families.

“Americans are outraged by the situation in Burma, where a military junta has imposed a 19-year reign of fear,” Mr. Bush said. “Basic freedoms of speech, assembly, and worship are severely restricted. Ethnic minorities are persecuted. Forced child labor, human trafficking, and rape are common.”

& In the meantime, the junta (formerly known as SLORC), have pulled soldiers away from where they’ve been fighting the Karen tribesmen for years now. The Karen will, no doubt, take advantage of the situation, as they were the largest ethnic majority to rise up against the military junta in 1988, as well. Interesting for U.S. policy, but one of the objections of the Karen tribe is that they are not allowed to practice their religion because the practice of Buddhism is state-imposed, and a third of them are… Christian.