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“It Gets Better”

“More difficult to address are the myriad ways in which everyday churches that do a lot of good in the world also perpetuate theologies that undergird and legitimate instrumental violence.”

by Joe Newton

From the ACLU website:

In his September 23, 2010, Savage Love column, Dan Savage wrote about 15-year-old Billy Lucas, an Indiana teen who committed suicide after persistent bullying and harassment by his classmates for being gay. Savage wrote: “I wish I could have talked to this kid for five minutes. I wish I could have told Billy that it gets better. I wish I could have told him that, however bad things were, however isolated and alone he was, it gets better.”

So Savage started the “It Gets Better Project” on YouTube, in which LGBT adults are encouraged to submit videos of themselves talking to LGBT teenagers who suffer abuse similar to Billy Lucas’s. And several other teens who ended up committing suicide recently, as it turns out, including Cody Barker, age 17, of Shiocton, Wisconsin; Asher Brown, age 13, of Houston, Texas; Seth Walsh, age 13, of Tehachapi, California; Tyler Clementi, age 18, the Rutgers University student who jumped off the George Washington Bridge; Raymond Chase, age 19, a student in Providence, Rhode Island; and Justin Aaberg, age 15, of Anoka, Minnesota.

As a heterosexual Christian, I was particularly interested in hearing the theological response, specifically Why Anti-Gay Bullying is a Theological Issue And the moral imperative of anti-bullying preaching, teaching, and activism, by Cody J. Sanders:

Anti-gay bullying is a theological issue because it has a theological base. I find it difficult to believe that even those among us with a vibrant imagination can muster the creative energy to picture a reality in which anti-gay violence and bullying exist without the anti-gay religious messages that support them.

These messages come in many forms, degrees of virulence, and volumes of expression. The most insidious forms, however, are not those from groups like Westboro Baptist Church. Most people quickly dismiss this fanaticism as the red-faced ranting of a fringe religious leader and his small band of followers.

More difficult to address are the myriad ways in which everyday churches that do a lot of good in the world also perpetuate theologies that undergird and legitimate instrumental violence. The simplistic, black and white lines that are drawn between conceptions of good and evil make it all-too-easy to apply these dualisms to groups of people. When theologies leave no room for ambiguity, mystery, and uncertainty, it becomes very easy to identify an “us” (good, heterosexual) versus a “them” (evil, gay).

I don’t think it’s religion bashing to suggest that Rev. Sanders, an ordained Baptist minister, BTW, is making a valid point here. Indeed, I always fight off the urge of some to paint religion, and especially Christianity, with the broad brush of intolerance, just because there are intolerant (and generally LOUD) Christians who are better at attracting media attention.
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Make It Better Project on Facebook, and the website.

Coming out for equality- National Coming Out Day, October 11 on Facebook, whether you identify as LGBT or a straight ally.
Kathy Griffin on the recent gay teen suicides (via SamuraiFrog)

NOM Exposed: truths, lies, and connections about the so-called National Organization for Marriage

30 Day Challenge: Day 26-A Picture From One Of The Greatest Days Of Your Life

Hey, nothing in the instructions said it had to be a picture of me!

Above is a picture of Alex Trebek, host of a game show called High Rollers, which I would occasionally watch 30+ years ago. But more to the point, he has been the host of the game show JEOPARDY! since 1984.

To be honest, I’m not sure if that picture of him is from the day I was on JEOPARDY! But it WAS from one of the programs that was filmed in Boston, and the two weeks of programming in Boston was filmed over a two-day period, five shows per day, so I have a 50% chance of it being from the day I was taping, though not necessarily the episodes.

It’s not the suit he wore on the first episode I was on – I don’t remember what he wore the second show – and it’s not what he wore on this 1998 Teen Tournament reunion episode, either.

As I have noted, there was a big story in the local (Boston) paper the day after I taped my episodes, seven weeks before they aired.

Chance at fame for $100, Alex
Boston Globe – Boston, Mass.
Author: M. R. Montgomery, Globe Staff
Date: Sep 19, 1998
Start Page: C.1
Section: LIVING
Text Word Count: 827

Abstract (Document Summary)
“It’s the show, not the host,” he demurred. And it may not be false modesty: The 3,200 citizens roared for the new “Jeopardy!” set, for the assistant producer who warmed up the crowd with some practice contests, for the show announcer, and even for a camera shot of themselves. Alex Trebek got the same wild applause as “Boston, a great city,” and “Meet our contestants.”

Yesterday’s first taped show will air Nov. 9, and 15 million Americans will get to see Amy Roeder of Merrimack, N.H., match wits and unadulterated trivia with defending champion Tom Schellhammer of New York City, and Roger Green of Albany. The results are technically a secret (does anyone bet on “Jeopardy!” broadcasts?). With the whole 1950s game show scandal business hanging over their heads, the “Jeopardy!” staff takes serious measures. Contestants for a taping are selected at random from the pool of entrants just before each game. The winner, who will return, is, as they said, “sequestered.” Asked why, a representative of the show said they don’t want to let anyone aid, abet, help, or otherwise enhance the winner’s chances for the next game.

I’d LOVE to get copies of those two pages from the Boston Globe, each with a picture of Amy and me; the third person in the first shot is Tom, and in the second, a JEOPARDY! producer. Anyone in Boston with access to the Globe microfilm? Short of that, I could just buy a couple of pages – they run from $74.95 (unframed 11×17) to $169.95 (framed 18×24) each.

I wrote about my JEOPARDY! experience extensively, starting my first month of blogging; in fact, writing about the daughter and writing about JEOPARDY! were the only purported reasons I even started the blog.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9
Part 10
Part 11
Epilogue, when I write about discovering myself on J-ARCHIVE – hey, there’s a picture of me! -and realized I had misremembered certain events from less than seven years earlier.

I Had Cereal for Breakfast

I confused their daughters, Carrie Fisher and Jamie Lee Curtis.

Fisher – father and daughter

I always get annoyed with people who don’t read blogs who complain about blogs collectively, saying something like “No one cares what somebody had for breakfast.” The vast majority of blogs that I’ve looked at don’t deal with such minutiae.

That said, this will be one of THOSE posts.

First off, my daughter, my wife, and I have all been in some state of unwellness for the last couple of weeks. I stayed home with my sick daughter last Tuesday. I stayed home myself on Monday. My wife took off a couple of afternoons last week; she would have taken off the whole days except she couldn’t get a substitute earlier. Then she went to the urgent care place on Saturday, fearing she had bronchitis since she’s had it before. The diagnosis: a bad cold; the doctor said that he’s seen colds, which usually run their course in 3-5 days take twice, or even thrice as long this season.

Sunday, went to a GREAT play, 33 Variations, which I wrote about, briefly, HERE; if nothing else, play the music links I provided. But I was almost too tired to go.

Curtis – father and daughter

I think my illness and/or allergies, and the fatigue it generated, actually messed up my thinking process. When I heard that Eddie Fisher died, I somehow confused him with Tony Curtis. Or more properly, I confused their daughters, Carrie Fisher and Jamie Lee Curtis, both actresses in many films I’ve seen. It didn’t help that I saw Jamie Lee Curtis interviewed on the same CBS Sunday Morning episode that they announced Eddie Fisher’s death, and Jamie Lee talked about the great relationship she now had with her father. Then Tony Curtis DID die that very week; as a kid, I knew him better as the inspiration for Stony Curtis on The Flinstones cartoon, but I eventually saw him in Some Like It Hot (great), The Defiant Ones (pretty good-Oscar nominated), and Spartacus (not so good).

A couple of interesting points from his obit:
In 1987, Curtis started the Emanuel Foundation for Hungarian Culture in honor of his father. The organization has since donated funds to help refurbish Budapest’s Dohany Synagogue, the largest in Europe.
In 2003, Curtis shot two commercials in Budapest, which Hungary hoped would help rebrand it as a center of spa and “wellness” tourism, ditching the traditional image of paprika and gypsy music.

The deaths of Eddie Fisher and Tony Curtis will always be linked in my mind.

Well, I’m STILL tired, so that’s it for now.

L is for Loving Day

As late as 1987, a full 20 years after the Loving v. Virginia ruling, only 48% of Americans said it was acceptable for blacks and whites to date. That number has since jumped to 83%, according to the Pew Research Center.

I can’t believe I missed it. OK, until I read about it in TIME magazine, I’d never even heard of it, though it’s been going on for a half dozen years. There’s a group that has called for Loving Day Celebrations around June 12th each year “to fight racial prejudice through education and to build multicultural community.”

The celebration is named for Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving, who had the audacity to fall in love with each other. Unable to get married legally in their native Virginia – he was white, she was black – they got hitched in Washington, DC and “established their marital abode in Caroline County”, Virginia.

Ultimately, on “January 6, 1959, the Lovings pleaded guilty to the charge” stemming from their interracial marriage, “and were sentenced to one year in jail; however, the trial judge suspended the sentence for a period of 25 years on the condition that the Lovings leave the State and not return to Virginia together for 25 years. He stated in an opinion that:

“‘Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement, there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.'”

The Lovings moved to DC, and in 1963, took legal action against the state of Virginia. Meanwhile, Mildred Loving also wrote to US Attorney General Robert Kennedy for assistance, and he referred the Lovings to an ACLU lawyer who took the case pro bono. The Lovings lost at every court, with the primary reasoning being that “because its miscegenation statutes punish equally both the white and the Negro participants in an interracial marriage, these statutes, despite their reliance on racial classifications, do not constitute an invidious discrimination based upon race.”

However, their case made it to the US Supreme Court, and on June 12, 1967, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled, in Loving v. Virginia, that the anti-miscegenation laws of Virginia and 15 other states were unconstitutional. Chief Justice Earl Warren, writing for the Court, concluded:

These statutes also deprive the Lovings of liberty without due process of law in violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.

Marriage is one of the “basic civil rights of man,” fundamental to our very existence and survival. To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment is surely to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.

These convictions must be reversed.

Interestingly, the polling I’ve seen suggests that at the time of the ruling, less than 30% of Americans favored mixed marriages. From TIME:

As late as 1987, a full 20 years after the case, only 48% of Americans said it was acceptable for blacks and whites to date. That number has since jumped to 83%, according to the Pew Research Center. In 2010, the center estimated that 1 in 7 new marriages in the U.S. is now an interracial coupling. In 1961, the year Obama’s parents married, only 1 in 1,000 marriages included a black person and a white person; today, it’s 1 in 60.

In statistics for 2008, 14.6 percent of all marriages were between spouses of different races.

In 2010, there is a Republican running for Congress, Jim Russell, who wrote in 2001, “In the midst of this onslaught against our youth, parents need to be reminded that they have a natural obligation, as essential as providing food and shelter, to instill in their children an acceptance of appropriate ethnic boundaries for socialization and for marriage.” I wrote about him extensively here, and he is hardly alone. So I guess the Loving Day folks still have much work to do.
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Pete Seeger – All Mixed Up

ABC Wednesday – Round 7

Tagged, with a twist

When I was about 16, I was among a group of people somehow recruited to sing at a retirement dinner for some minister named Larry something-or-other who I barely knew, if at all.

LisaF at peripheral perceptions tagged me a couple of weeks ago. It’s a short meme, and I’ve got a bad cold, so this matches up well.

If you could have one superpower what would it be?

I think I’ve answered this before with the power to transport myself, a la Samantha Stevens in Bewitched. But I think I’ve changed my mind to flying at superspeed. Even going fast, I’d want the experience of moving. Not an apt comparison, but sometimes when I’m riding my bike downhill into Corporate Woods, I like to feel the wind in my hair – if I had hair and if I weren’t wearing a helmet.

Who is your style icon?

Jughead Jones of the Archie Comic strip. Actually, I have no icon. But I DO have a mantra. Form over function – never! (Unless required by the situation, such as wearing a tie to certain events.) If it looks good but feels awful, it generally isn’t worth it. I was thinking about this when I came across a post on ABC Wednesday about kinky boots.

What is your favorite quote?

“If you don’t know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else.” – Yogi Berra. Makes sense to me. I think I’ve experienced this at some points in my life. And you end up like David Byrne of the Talking Heads, saying And you may ask yourself, well, How did I get here?

What is the best compliment you ever received?

My wife said – in response to me helping someone who needed help when no one else was assisting – “You’re a good man, Roger Green.” Which reminded me of You’re a good man, Charlie Brown – same scansion and everything – but that’s OK.

And here’s a total sidebar:
When I was about 16, I was among a group of people somehow recruited to sing at a retirement dinner for some minister named Larry something-or-other who I barely knew, if at all. We never actually had a rehearsal together; I was just given these lyrics to memorize, swiped from the title song of the musical You’re a good man, Charlie Brown.

You’re a good man, Larry U
You’re the kind of reminder we need
You have humility, nobility, and a sense of duty
That is very rare indeed.

You’re a good man, Larry U
And we know you will go very far
Yes it’s hard to believe
Almost frightening to conceive
What a good man you are.

You are kind to all parishioners
And every little child
With a heart of gold
You believe what you’re told
Even if it is a little wild

You bravely face the Presbytery controversy
So they say
Your thought-provoking sermons
Have us thinking, every minute, every hour, every day.

I have NO idea what the heck the “Presbytery controversy” was. The kicker is that I got quite sick that Friday night and never DID sing the thing. Yet I have these 40-year-old lyrics that were obviously still buried in my brain.

What playlist/CD is in your CD player/playing right now?

It’s October so it’s heavy with October birthdays: Paul Simon (solo), Sting (solo), Tom Petty (solo and with the Heartbreakers, Mudcrutch, and Traveling Wilburys), John Lennon (solo and with The Beatles), plus whatever strikes my fancy.

Are you a night owl or morning person?

I used to be a night owl, but getting married, and especially since having the child, I’ve been forced to the a.m. side, unfortunately.

Do you prefer dogs or cats?

I’ve only had one dog when I was a kid, that bit me, which was OK BY MY PARENTS, but not with me. Then he (Lucky Stubbs, an Alaskan husky) bit the minister’s daughter, and he was given to a local farmer. I used to ride my bike down a dead-end street when I was a teenager, which would be a magnet for barking dogs, several of them at a time. So I was wary of dogs. I can think of two – one being a golden retriever (?) named Randle J. Dog who I actually loved.
And my daughter is VERY wary of dogs.

Whereas we had a lot of cats as a kid. My grandmother had several black cats in succession, all called Lucky. But I’ve had no pets since the mid-1980s. But I’d say cats.

What is the meaning behind your blog name?

There is, and was, these radio guys named John Gambling, three generation’s worth, and the moniker was/is Rambling with Gambling. Also, my name is Roger, so it created an almost alliteration, and I’m inclined to ramble about whatever strikes my fancy.

Hey, you who haven’t blogged in the last few months: consider yourself tagged.