Brown, Garner, et. al. post #2: We're still assuming it's not about race...

What is left unsaid in both of my critiques is the undertone of each...

The undertone of the Randian argument is fear that someone who is unbound by the law will be able to do those things which I (if I were a conservative), being bound by the law, only wish I could do.

The undertone of the quid-pro-quot argument is that I (as a liberal) recognizing that quid-pro-quo happens constantly in matters unrelated to law enforcement, fear it happens there as a protection of police who have used and will, as a result of a lack of punishment, continue to use physical abuse against various people, myself included.

Both are based in a common fear: powerlessness.  We are primordially afraid of people who have power over us because we see examples of that power being abused every time we turn on the news.

Case in point - the language of gun rights activists:
In a home invasion in Georgia, CNN tells us, a man used a crowbar to break in, and the female homeowner, hiding with her children in the attic, unloaded on him when he opened the door.  The response by gun rights activists was completely typical for what we've seen on national media many times before:

"It's a good thing she wasn't facing more attackers. Otherwise she would have been in trouble and she would have run out of ammunition," said Erich Pratt, director of communications for the Gun Owners of America.

Don't you hate it when your home is broken into by roving gangs of marauders?  Yeah, me too. 

Statistics on invasion events are hard to find, but here's some detective work we can do on it:

• There are 115,226,802 households in the U.S. (link).
• There are 3,700,000 household burglaries in the U.S. annually (link). 

Many of these households will be burglarized more than once, but even in the worst case, that means 3.2% of people would experience a break-in during a year.

• 266,560 home break-ins result in violent harm to residences of the home (link). 

That's a 0.23% chance of being the victim of such a break in each year.  That's still a significant value - 4 out of every 1,000 homes.  The fear of such an event is not without its reasoning, and people should take precautions to try to protect themselves if they can afford to.  

But the real question is - how many people are involved in those crimes?  Are marauding gangs of thugs involved?

Well... sadly, yes.  Sometimes.  We don't have statistics on that - for some reason, no one is asking that question.  To listen to, for instance, Erich Pratt's quote above, you'd think it was happening in every break-in.  It's not.  But, to what extent it is happening, we just don't know.

But gun laws are based off of the belief that it's always happening - which is why we insist on the need for guns with high rates of fire, so that if four people come into the house, the homeowner can mow them down in a hailstorm of bullets.  It's the fear of these invasions, the fear of "stranger danger," that drives some people to buy guns for protection.

(I'm not, here, getting into the argument of whether that causes more harm than good.)

In the same way, it's fear of police officers abusing their authority that leads some people to protest them.  Certainly not all, but some.  That fear seems justified in light of the statistics I previously posted about the incidence of indictments of police officers.  Here again, though, national statistics are impossible to find, and only local state statistics can help to fill in the gap a tiny bit.  In Cleveland, for instance, the Justice Department recently released a report showing that cops “too often use unnecessary and unreasonable force in violation of the Constitution” (link).

So fear of crime is justified.  Fear of cops is justified.  Each one of these things is an example of a power dynamic - a fear of powerlessness in the face of power.

The two types of power are markedly different, though.

Normal crime, even violent crime, is a personal power.  It is the ability for one person to overpower another through physical means - which could be strength, weapons, drugs, and so on.  In this situation, the perpetrator acts relatively alone; while he or she could have the support of criminal colleagues, the support ends there.  There is no intended institutional support for the criminal actions, and there will never be a vote of the people to grant political power to the criminals in those actions (e.g., a "right to rob someone's house").

In the case of a criminal attack, there are means to fight back.  A person can own guns and use them in self-defense.  A person can learn martial arts and use that for self defense.  A person can buy alarm systems, a very large dog, security bars, and so on.  These measures ARE supported by law.

Police brutality, on the other hand, is an institutional power.  When a police officer places a suspect in a choke hold, or shoots a suspect, or sits on a suspect, etc., the institutions in place help to protect that officer (the lack of indictment is just one example; another is the fact that the officer continues drawing pay even if on leave while the incident is investigated). 

In the case of a police attack, there are no legal means to fight back.  Anything a person does is taken as resisting arrest, and many people are quick to rush to the defense of the officer by saying that the brutality wouldn't have happened if the suspect had simply not resisted (See this NY Times article on the Garner case).  When an incident between an officer and a suspect comes into court, we as a society are inclined to believe the officer's side of the story, even though both sides have bias and their own reasons for lying to the court.

The inherent power we grant to police officers is far greater than that of criminals.  This is by design, so that police can fight crime - but, currently, the result of that power is the abuse of said power.  Rather than going easier on police as we currently do, we should be harder on them than we are on criminals, to hold them to a higher standard, to expect more out of them based on the power we grant to them.  If punishment fits the crime, then every crime of the police that has a non-police antecedent/corollary should also include "abuse of power" as part of its bill.

It's why we send teachers to jail when they sleep with their students, even the students who are of legal age - because the chance for an abuse of power is too great, that the teacher could expect sexual payout for good grades, etc.

And note that even our arguments of fear of criminality assume violent criminality; in the cases of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, there was no violence on their parts.  Selling untaxed cigarettes ranks even further down the "dangerous list" than jaywalking, and stealing cigars by pocketing them and walking out, rather than using a gun or making any threats, etc., is akin to shoplifting.  Yes, it's bad, but there's a reason we don't allow security guards at Wal-Mart to shoot people who've shoplifted - because it's not the equivalent of a human life.

So even if this whole thing is not about race, we still have a very real reason to stand in support of Brown and Garner, of Tamir Rice, Rumain Brisbon, John Crawford, Ezell Ford, and the seemingly inexhaustible list of other black men and women killed by police - because we do not tolerate bullies, and when police abuse their power, that's exactly what they are.

(All that said, it is still about race... but if I write that part, it will be part 3...)

Brown, Garner, et. al. post #1: Let's assume it isn't about race...

I'm going to assume, for a moment, that the Right is honest in its protestations that recent police killings are not about race.  Let me propose a couple of theories as to what could be going on...

#1.

Republicans as a general rule hold three literary sources to be holy and sacrosanct: the Bible, the Constitution, and the collected works of Ayn Rand.  Randian ideology holds up the individual as exemplary.  Truth is knowable, and deeply internal.  A person who seeks Truth will find it, and can use it to become mighty.  Truth can be recognized in the individual by those individuals who shuck off the bonds of society and grab for themselves everything they want, because not only is Truth the divine right of the individual, but so is everything else.  The mightiest person is the one who climbs on top of the heap of others, becoming the most politically and economically powerful, too.  Many people can achieve success and be Randian, but certainly not most, and only the king of them all is the true winner of the philosophy.

One problem occurs when we realize that the heroes of Rand's books are not beholden to the law, and in fact actively work to subvert the law when the law seems to prevent them from attaining all the power they believe is their right.  The law cannot stand up to the Truth of a Randian hero. 

And once again, this is what I was actually taught in my own religious upbringing - that when Truth and law disagree, it is the responsibility of people to stand up to the law in favor of Truth.

We all believe this, of course.  We praise Rosa Parks for fighting for Truth.  We praise Martin Luther King Jr. for fighting for Truth.  We praise Nelson Mandela for fighting for Truth.  Abraham Lincoln.  George Washington.  etc.

But we tend to forget that those they fought against also thought THEY were on the side of Truth.  The slave owners had convinced themselves that slaves were actually better off under their control.  In the American Revolution, many people born and raised on this continent gave their lives in service to King George. 

Truth, as with other things, may be decided by the victors.

But while we're in the midst of a fight, Truth is still decided by the individual - each individual fights for his/her own unique definition of Truth.

And, as I've noted before, on the Republican side of the aisle, we have a supposed arbiter of Truth that cannot be argued against.  That is, that when someone believes his/her Truth comes directly from God, there can be no discussion about it, no bending, no giving in to the demands of the other side...

no diplomacy.

The other side always already belongs to Satan, because if God is Truth, and Truth is absolute, then those who agree with Truth are with God, and those who disagree are with Satan.  It's exceedingly and necessarily dichotomous. 

And it is this Truth that narrowly limits the Randian heroes from everybody else.  For, when a person walks into a store and takes everything at gun point, they are not living within the Truth.  When a person uses legal means to take everything from someone else, however, they are right in doing so, for they are the ideal Randian hero.  When a social group, like the government, uses legal means to take a portion of things from someone else, they are right if those things are to be distributed to other Randian heroes, and wrong if those things are to be distributed to others. 

Sadly, the inner Randian is often at odds with the Truth.  For a true Randian would not give one whit about someone ELSE's definition of Truth, even if that someone else is a religious figure of global impact.  Ayn Rand herself was, after all, an atheist.  If a Randian wants to take someone else's property, at gunpoint or no, then he will take it - or will long to, and believe it is his/her divine right to do so, but may stay his/her hand to avoid going to jail. 

And this sensation lies under the surface of the subconscious, always waiting for a chance to act.  The greatest Randians I've known haven't held themselves back very far.

Now consider what someone might do who holds that philosophy and encounters someone who does not pay attention to the law, someone who takes what s/he wants or does what s/he wants.   The existing feeling of entitlement would find itself jealous, and would seek to eliminate the competition.

It could do so through passing laws for longer prison time, through allowing Randians to commit murder of those they deem a threat to their order, and through economic and social manipulation to ensure that those on the other side who have not yet gone to prison or been murdered by the Randians would have to stay as far away as possible, in their own worlds. 

Now, thus far I've been theorycrafting, but we see this every day. 

In the case of Michael Brown, those on the Right claim he is a thief, as if it's OK to gun down a thief in the street.  Well, in the model I just described above, it is!  A thief takes what s/he wants, and a Randian who follows the law cannot abide that, so the Randian will accept the thief's murder as a just punishment for the crime.

I'm making no claim here whether Brown did or did not steal anything - rather, I'm making only a claim about the justification for the use of lethal force.

Based on all of that, we could, perhaps, make a claim that it isn't about race, but rather purely about the extremes to which Randian beliefs have taken over the Right. 

Then we got another case similar to Michael Brown's.  Like Brown's, Eric Garner was a black man killed by police for suspected illegal activity.  Unlike Brown's, his criminal action wasn't quite on the same scale.  He was suspected of selling individual cigarettes, which would help people avoid paying tax on them.  As Ben Shapiro notes on Right-wing blog site Breitbart.com, "Garner had been arrested some eight times for selling 'loosies.'  That said, even Shapiro says, "by virtually any logic, it is the height of irresponsibility and depravity for a man to end up dead for selling loose cigarettes" (link).

I would, of course, claim the same is true for simple theft of cigars, but there may be a link to my Randian argument yet - remember that in Brown's case, he was supposedly stealing directly from a store, pitting a non-Truth Randian (Brown) against a Truth Randian (a store owner); however, in Garner's case, he was supposedly a non-Truth Randian stealing from the government of New York, a government that is, itself, inherently non-Randian.  Ergo, no crime was committed against Randianism.

And yet, Garner still died.  And not only did he die, but police were cleared of charges, even though by all accounts they used an inappropriate subdual method.


#2

Grand Juries almost always indict.  Ben Casselman, on ESPN's news site "fivethirtyeight.com" (I know... ESPN and news in the same phrase...), reveals the numbers:

... U.S. attorneys prosecuted 162,000 federal cases in 2010, the most recent year for which we have data. Grand juries declined to return an indictment in 11 of them.

That's  0.006%.  That's 1 out of ever 14,727 cases.  You have a better chance of winning an Academy Award than avoiding an indictment.  You have a better chance of injuring yourself with a chainsaw.  Or with a toilet.  You have a better chance of dying in a horrible bicycle accident. 

Casselman goes on to explain,

Cases involving police shootings, however, appear to be an exception. As my colleague Reuben Fischer-Baum has written, we don’t have good data on officer-involved killings. But newspaper accounts suggest, grand juries frequently decline to indict law-enforcement officials. A recent Houston Chronicle investigation found that “police have been nearly immune from criminal charges in shootings” in Houston and other large cities in recent years. In Harris County, Texas, for example, grand juries haven’t indicted a Houston police officer since 2004; in Dallas, grand juries reviewed 81 shootings between 2008 and 2012 and returned just one indictment.

Yikes.  In Dallas, at least, you have only a 1 in 81 chance of being indicted if you're a cop.  For comparison, you have a 14545 times greater chance of not being indicted if you're a cop, at least in Dallas, than of not being indicted if you're *anybody else*. 

The obvious answer to that, of course, is that the prosecutor likely intentionally threw the case.  That's easy to imagine, given that the prosecutors in Grand Jury cases are the same prosecutors as in every other criminal case, and thus they have to rely on and work with the police department every day.  At the least, there's reason to suspect they would throw the cases just to stay on the good sides of law enforcement, a kind of "I've got your back, you've got mine" mentality.  At worst, it's a reflection of outright fraternity between prosecutors and police. 

This, of course, presents a problem from the standpoint that both police and prosecutors are supposed to be working not for each other, but for the people of their districts.  If the people need to be protected, even from the police, then it is the job of the prosecutors to go after the police and keep the people safe. 

What's weird, though, is that even with this knowledge, we see the Right saying that a lack of indictment in the Brown case was the right thing to do.  For reference, an indictment is not a conviction - rather, it's saying that there's reason to further try the case, much like impeachment is not removal from office.  It would have given people a more thorough and more open trial, to see all the evidence and make a decision for themselves, rather than allowing police to hide behind the protections of a Grand Jury to prevent that evidence from becoming a matter of public record. 

It's weird, I say, only if this case was purely about attorneys protecting police - because anyone can acknowledge that it's wrong for them to use their position to protect an officer from being further tried in a court of law. 

But it's not about that... it's about power.  And I'll get there in my next post on this topic.

True Christian Fundamentals

The Fundamentalists were well-intentioned folk.  Amid the chaos of Protestantism and the millions, perhaps billions, of different interpretations of Scripture it indulged, church leaders tried to identify a minimum number of things people should believe to call themselves "Christian."  This was, at its outset, a decidedly conservative approach - it fought against changes to Christianity that it perceived from liberalism and evolution, by reinforcing core beliefs such as Biblical Inerrancy, which allowed them to state that the creation of the world as outlined in Genesis was absolutely true, simply by virtue of its being present in Genesis.  More on that in the next post, I think.

These were people who thought their world was becoming more evil, who feared an active and powerful Satan leading people astray with false beliefs.  While some, certainly, may have engaged in fundamentalism as a way of solidifying their political power, back in those days, fundamentalists were on the ropes, and there was little power to be gained.  Power was developed slowly, over a period of many decades.  It wouldn't be until the 70s that that power began to coalesce behind the Republican party.  Such is the source of the famous Barry Goldwater quote:

Source: http://berkshireonstage.com/2014/05/09/mr-conservative-barry-goldwater-play-about-christian-politics-and-dc-gridlock/

But, that's not the point of this article.  Instead, I want to offer a challenge to Fundamentalists to solve one problem: That is, how do you know the heart of another person?

You see, Fundamentalism is entirely external - it is a codification of beliefs, so that those beliefs can be reinforced across denominations; but, just because a preacher stands before a congregation and shouts and rattles the pulpit and appears to be calling down lightning from Heaven with his words, that doesn't mean he himself believes the things he's saying.  It doesn't mean that those in the congregation will buy into his words, either.  Christianity today is, as many of you have noted, a "luke warm" belief, with congregants attending church more for the social scene than for any actual conviction.

A friend of mine from the UK once told me that all of the Anglican preachers she knew over there are, in fact, atheists.  This is but a symptom of the problem.

I also saw this in a much more publicly-broadcast way back when I was dating, which really wasn't that long ago.  I used to read profiles on OkCupid every day.  That site offered the ability to winnow down your potential matches on a wide variety of criteria, and further to read their responses to a wide array of questions that could help provide further insights into their beliefs.  The majority of users I found who lived in Tulsa and who listed "Christian" as their religion held wildly divergent beliefs that were anathema to their supposed religion:

1. By and large, these Christians felt it was inappropriate to teach evolution in schools.  Where they accepted that it would be taught, they almost always said it must be taught side-by-side with Creationism.  Most, however, said only Creationism should be taught.
2. Most said homosexuality was a sin.
3. Many smoked.  (I'd estimate 40%, but it's entirely a rough estimate based on personal perception and not on the exhaustive work of actually coding the responses.)
4. Most said that they would need to have sex with someone before marrying them.

The latter two seem at odds with the former two, because in the codification of Fundamentalism that gives rise to the former two beliefs, the latter two are also verboten: smoking is a violation of the treatment of the human body as a temple to God; sex before marriage is a violation of the arguments Paul made against fornication.

This is, most likely, endemic of two factors: #1, it's easy to believe in those things that don't directly effect you, while it's easy to disregard those things that do; #2, the extent to which arguments against evolution and homosexuality are made in popular Fundamentalist discourse, in lieu of other arguments.

Therein lies the problem I present to Fundamentalists at the moment (although obviously, I have many, many other problems with Fundamentalism than this): how can you claim that divergent theologies are sinful, when you don't know the actual hearts of your members?  When the people who make up your congregations, and even your leading pastors, hold wildly heterodox beliefs, how can they be Fundamentalists?

It's a problem of the internal versus the external.  We say that those who hold true beliefs will bear Spiritual Fruit, but then ignore those who do bear Spiritual Fruit.  For a good example: Princess Diana often went on mission trips into Africa, holding the poorest and most desperately in need dear to her heart; yet, we throw out that Fruit because she wasn't "Christian" in the mindset of the Fundamentalists.  Mother Theresa exhibited an even greater problem, as she was undeniably Christian by her actions, and yet her beliefs had her in a religion that Fundamentalists are not entirely comfortable with (leading to the claim that it's possible to be a Christian even in non-Fundamentalist religions).  When Fundamentalists get caught doing something wrong, they are often excommunicated socially (though not legally) from the church if the church wishes to remain out of the controversy, but more often than that, they are still held to be members of the church and Christians, because of their identification with these Fundamentalist groups.  Their sins are ignored, their lack of Spiritual Fruit is ignored, because of their in-group identification.

That's what Fundamentalism really is - the identification of the in-group, the "Us" that allows believers within the group to also coalesce their hatred of "Them." It's important to fight beliefs such as that, just as Goldwater did:

Source: http://bigfishink.com/?p=3108

Jesus was a communist

You heard that sort of right - Jesus was a communist.

Or, rather... Jesus really didn't take a stand on it in any direction, except to say that people who live by the law die by the law, and that love is bigger than all of that.

So, perhaps it's better to say that Paul was a communist.  As were the disciples.

But here we have to draw a distinction between communist and Communist.  A Communist is someone who follows after the pattern of Stalin and Lenin, etc., someone who believes that the people should control the means of production, because theoretically the only way that people will accept that control is through military totalitarianism.  A communist, however, is someone who believes in communal living - that is, that within the community, all people work together, from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.  It does not depend on a strong military, but it does depend on people buying into the idea of communal living and having some limited idea of leadership.

We get to see this play out in the Bible.  In Acts 4, we see the believers sharing their possessions:

All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had.  With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need. (Acts 4:32-35)

So, the apostles - the spiritual leaders of the community - were also the political leaders of the community.  This should not be a recommendation for spiritual leaders to always be political leaders (after all - imagine if Judas had not killed himself and had remained one of the Twelve).  Rather, these particular leaders were anointed by God as witnessed by the faithful, through not only the calling from Christ, but also from the appearance of the Holy Spirit as fire upon their heads.  It was a clear sign of their election by God.  We have no such clear signs today.

Nevertheless, people lived communally, and shared all they had together within the community.  And it worked, because there were those who were generous enough to donate to the needs of the community and fortunate enough that they had the money available to sell.  There's no indication that those who sold their land had any belief or request that those who didn't own land or those who weren't working shouldn't be eligible to receive.

This was a community in which those with money and means lived the example of Christ to those who did not have.  Remember the story of the rich man who asked Jesus:

“Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?”
“Why do you ask me about what is good?” Jesus replied. “There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, keep the commandments.”
“Which ones?” he inquired.
Jesus replied, “‘You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, honor your father and mother,’ and ‘love your neighbor as yourself.’”
“All these I have kept,” the young man said. “What do I still lack?”
Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth. (Matthew 19:16-22)

The story here is that the rich man didn't truly love his neighbor, because he had great wealth.  In giving away his wealth, he would show that he loved others more than himself, that he was willing to sacrifice everything for the love of God.

When those who lived communally did exactly what this rich man seemed hesitant to do and was depressed by the thought of doing, selling all they had and giving to the community, they were taken care of.  They did not suddenly have to worry about where they would live and what they would eat, because the Apostles distributing their wealth could take care of them.  Within the community, it was safe to distribute money in this way, and so while they certainly still had to take a great leap of faith and sacrifice of themselves, they still had security for their futures.

It was social welfare.  There are those who argue that no, that's not what we should take away from this, because it wasn't a legally-enforced social welfare - and they are somewhat correct.  However, the social pressure was, nonetheless, there.  Ananias and Sapphira, who a chapter later did the same thing but secretly held some back, surely sold everything they had to make it appear like they were just as holy as their brethren.  They felt pressured to give as others had done, even if such pressure was not overt.  Their sin was that they wanted the best of both worlds - their greed and the respect of their peers - without realizing that the real reason for selling everything they had and giving to the community was one of love for the community.  They were not required to do it, but they were rewarded for doing it, both by social respect and by the guarantee of care from the Apostles.

We have no such reward system in place today.  Our social welfare system does not guarantee a livable minimum of care.  Rather, it guarantees a completely impoverished minimum of care, jeopardizing the physical and mental health of those who would enter into it.  Imagine giving away everything you own today.  No one would take that money and reinvest it in you - rather, they would take that money and distribute it far and wide.  And, while you might have enough income to support yourself, you would have to buy a new car just to get to work, clothes to work in, utensils to cook your food, and so on.  There is a minimum of stuff you would have to re-buy - and, if you couldn't, you'd lose your job and be unable to support yourself.  In our country, it is impossible to literally sell all you have and give to the poor.

But that is still what Christ would recommend, for you to truly understand love for your fellow man and trust in the Lord.

Many years ago, compassionate Christians took a different approach to care for their fellow man.  It was compassionate Christianity that gave us welfare.  It was compassionate Christianity that gave us medicare.  It was compassionate Christianity that gave us food stamps.  It was compassionate Christianity that gave us social security.  Christians understood that they had a responsibility to ensure a minimum level of care for their fellow man.  They chose as an electorate to do this thing from a tax-supported position, despite the fact that the Bible didn't outright command such a position, because it was the only way of instituting communal living of the type enjoyed and employed by the early Christian Church.  Donations have never been, and are certainly not now, enough to fund the difference.

Part of that is because the minimum is so low.  To allow all of us who are able to support ourselves to sell all we have and give to the poor, we would need certain guarantees:
1. That we will have transportation to and from work.  This means that an infrastructure of public transportation must be established where it doesn't exist and improved where it does, so that when we sell our car to give the money to the poor, we can still get to work.
2. That we will have shelter.  This means both shelter from the elements and security from those who mean us harm.  Public housing must be free of cockroaches and drug dealers.  It must be safe for a person who has given everything to the poor to walk alone at night as he or she comes home from a job.
3. That we will have food and water.  This means that food must be available so that those who give all they have can still have a hot, healthy meal.
4. That we will have clothing.  Yes, you already know I'm a nudist, and if we could go to work naked that'd be swell.  But, there are times when clothing is a necessity - to block the light of the sun, to warm in the cold winter months, to protect our skin from hail or insects or brambles.  The person who sells all he or she owns and gives to the poor will still need to be dressed to get to work - all the time unless you want to humor my nudist side, and a significant amount of the time even if you do.
5. That we will have health care.  Someone who gives all he or she owns to the poor should not have to sacrifice his or her health to do so.
6. That we will have education.  Someone who gives all he or she owns to the poor should still be able to learn new things that will further his or her employment.

In such a society, a person could potentially sell all they have and give to the poor repeatedly, without fear for the future.

#GamerGate, Part 2

Now that I've covered the issue of media ethics, I turn my attention to what, for the rest of the world, is making #GamerGate infamous - that is, its treatment of women.

This, itself, is in two parts: a fear of a changing games culture and vicious attacks on women themselves.

Again, most of the people involved are not directly attacking women.  A very small subset of the Internet has focused its energies on this task and is brutally efficient in doing so.  Case in point: Felicia Day posted on the subject and had her personal information leaked within an hour. 

This constitutes a brutal attack because it seems to be done with the specific intent of giving people a way of harassing her that goes far beyond the Internet and into real life.  Internet harassment is difficult enough, but it seems even more dangerous when real-life information is obtained - in the former case, attacks can be so painful that they drive a person to suicide, but in the latter case stalkers can literally wind up on a person's doorstep and kill them. 

And more than that, it is an attempt at intimidation, literally telling the person, "I know where you live," as if the person releasing the data and making the intimidation will actually follow through and attempt to attack their victim at home.  It is, in the modern vernacular, terrorism, in that it uses terror as a weapon.

Ironically, perhaps, it was that very fear that Day proclaimed she would no longer be subject to, that she did not appreciate what the fear did to her, and what the attacks did to her community. 

As the time article notes: Chris Kluwe - who admittedly is not as famous to gamers as Day, but is, nevertheless, famous - did not get attacked in the same way.  The attacks are reserved for women, because the intent to cause fear is reserved for women, and that's all because women are seen as weaker and more able to be controlled through fear.  That is part and parcel of misogyny culture. 

We've been controlling (or attempting to control) women through fear for thousands of years.  Case in point: while some men have experienced street harassment (sexual harassment from random strangers), a vast majority of women have.

I would argue that in any situation where we (all humans) have the ability to hold power over another human being, we're tempted to do so.  Societal bonds (including laws and ideological instructions from churches and schools) can help to limit the extent to which we do, but they can also exacerbate the problem.  What misogyny culture means is that those bonds exist in our culture to structure our interactions in such a way that the idea of women as being weaker and the idea that it's OK to exert power over weaker gender forces are empowered and codified.    In our society, it's not only OK but good to be a man, which doesn't mean to possess a penis, but does mean to be physically stronger than everyone else and to exert your power willingly over everyone else and not be ashamed of it.  It's the essence of Blake in Glengarry Glen Ross, in all the heroes of Ayn Rand's shitty stories and Terry Badkind's shittier stories, in all Fox News interviewers, and in the ideas that I've been writing against since the beginning of this blog: that those who are powerful deserve their power and should use it, and those who are not powerful do not deserve a voice.  It's what Colbert mocks by co-opting that dominating interview personality.

That's the light side of misogyny, if you will - I don't mean the good side, I mean the fluffy side, the easy-to-take side, the attractive-to-some side.  We can almost all of us agree that beating women is bad, but we can't seem to agree that creating a culture conducive to the beating of women is bad, and that's because that culture is attractive to so many.

And it lurks most easily in the dark corners of the Internet, where people laugh about misogyny and talk to others who share their beliefs, their anger at their own subjugation to greater powers building off one another to form a perfect storm of hate and resentment of another social group.  Don't get me wrong - this happens on the left, too, but fortunately our cognitive dissonance over that hate helps to constantly deflate the balloon.

Ok... let's get back to the other part of the #GamerGate debate that I said still regards misogyny - game culture.  One of the great concerns of #GamerGate is that games culture is changing.

First of all, I don't believe that's true.  A quick glance around modern games proves that with few exceptions, women character models are still crafted off the law of inverse armor coverage - that while armor suits for men are better if they're bigger, armor suits for women need to show as much skin as possible to be effective.  The only MMO game I can think of in the past 7 years, at least, that hasn't followed that rule is Lord of the Rings Online, which covers women just as much as men (and has perhaps the largest female-to-male ratio of any MMO as a result). 

But let's examine the problem a little more closely.  First of all, games culture didn't start as the highly-misogynistic dynasty it would later become.  Lara Croft could not exist in the early games culture for many reasons, not the least of which being that graphics weren't up to snuff.  But most of the earliest games were puzzle or limited competition games that gave not one crap about the gender of the players.  Ironically, the emergence of Facebook gaming has actually gotten us back to our earliest games culture, rather than subverting the games culture. 

Zork was relatively gender-neutral, for instance.  Pong (1972) certainly was.  Pac-Man (1980) was gender-irrelevant until they made Ms. Pac-Man (1982) as an attempt toward inclusivity, simply by sticking a bow on the top of Pac-man. 

As soon as games could be usurped by misogyny culture, however, they were.  The first pornographic games were already rolling out by 1981, and even titans of porn like Playboy have added their moniker to games. Of course, we all know that sex sells, and soon game makers were putting sexy women on everything.  There is no logical reason, for instance, why Lara Croft would have increasingly-large bra sizes over the years, and skimpier outfits, other than to attract men who would enjoy watching her breasts bounce.

But perhaps this isn't the "games culture" that these protestors are referring to.  Perhaps they mean, instead, the games culture that produces domination games.

Remember that being the dominant, "I can do anything I want" person is a highly socially-masculine role.  This type of character was popular in movies and literature already, as in the case of the gunslingers of Old West novels and movies.  For more in-depth explanation of that, check out my article about Firefly.  This ideology, in basic, says that a good man with a gun can stop an entire invading horde of bad guys.  If the games stopped the moment you got shot, then perhaps they would be more representative of real life - but instead, since they allow for saving the game and trying again, they create an effectively-immortal main character whose job is simply to unleash destruction on those he or she perceives as evil. 

They allow the players to step into that fantasy and unleash destruction on others, as well.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the case of First Person Shooters (FPSs).  FPSs have been around since 1973, but it wasn't until Wolfenstein 3D (1992), and shortly thereafter Doom (1993), that the genre really took off.  I knew it would be a popular medium when I first learned about Dennis Fong (Thresh) winning a Ferrari in a Quake tournament in 1997. 

Side note: I've dueled Fong exactly once.  He's every bit as good as you'd expect based on that tournament win.  I died, a lot.  But I killed him a few times, too.  Not enough to win by a long shot.

I say that because I, too, was a member of this culture.  I'd like to think I still am.  FPSs can allow their players to live out a fantasy of murderous rampages, but for those of stouter psychologies, they are simply fun and competitive sports. 

And the FPS genre hasn't gone anywhere.  It is, perhaps, more popular today than ever before. 

FPSs are, traditionally, masculine games.  They represent that culturally-masculine mindset very well.  But they can also be traditionally feminine games, as with Quake's old Capture The Flag mode, which allowed users to participate on a team.  Some players would take point and have the most damaging bonuses to allow them to strike hard and fast.  Some players would guard the base and have the most defensive bonuses to let them stay alive while incoming enemies stormed the place to grab the flag.  Everyone had a role to play.  Today's shooters are similar - online play pits teams against each other, and while it's possible to hop in a game or on a team where the roles don't matter and everyone's job is to simply shoot at everything, there are also team matches where teams are prebuilt and members still have important roles to fill. 

They are no longer strictly stereotypically-masculine ideals.  They've evolved, offering roles for everyone, regardless of how they identify.

And that's important, because these changes didn't scare anyone into thinking that gaming culture was changing in some horrible way - it simply changed, slowly but surely, and people either changed with it or got out of the way.  And this popularity of modern shooters has occurred simultaneously with other gaming advancements such as Candy Crush and Farmville and, yes, Depression Quest. These games have proven for years that traditional gaming can still be going strong while newer non-traditional gaming styles can well up from needs the world didn't even know it had yet, and no one has to be threatened by that.

I have no doubt that there will remain websites devoted to the more traditional games.  I have no doubt that some news sources will talk about newer games. 

So no - the idea that the culture is changing is bullshit, covering up a fear of being emasculated by other changing elements of the culture at large.

#GamerGate, Part 1

So, I'm going to post my own thoughts about #GamerGate.  This is a very emotional topic for a lot of people, so I ask that you hold judgment until you've read the full thing - and if you think you can't, then don't read it.

This post is simply part 1.

The reason for breaking it up has to do with a suggestion I heard on NPR yesterday; during an interview segment, a caller suggested that the issue should be broken into two pieces:

1. A discussion of media ethics
2. A discussion of misogyny in gamer culture

I'm going to attempt to discuss this issue using the same division, although certainly that's a simplification of the issue and it might make it appear that I am coming down on a side of the issue that might be premature.

As I say, try to reserve judgment.

For those unfamiliar, the extremely-reduced version of events is basically this: A woman who designed a video game was reportedly dating a writer at an online game journal, and the attacks initially stated that her game would not have received the kind of hype it did had it not been for journalistic bias toward it by that journal.  Some of those attacks focused on her as a woman, and some the defenses posted by various different people assumed that folks were attacking her because she is a woman, or that people were attacking "female game design."  One female writer posted on a completely different site about the misogyny inherent in such attacks, and suddenly Intel pulled its advertising from that site. 

To go into it any further is to muddy the water.  That's not fair to muddy water - it's rather like watering the mud.

Since then, the gamer world has lost. its. shit.  To the extent that women who've simply commented on the scandal have received death and rape threats. 

This post is not about the misogyny element, whether it exists or not, etc.  And believe me, it's taking a lot of restraint not to comment on that piece yet.  That's the next post.

This first post is about media ethics.

Now, I can't speak for what actually occurs in the games industry, but I do know what I've experienced writing music reviews for a local music magazine.  There's a feeling that true criticism of musicians and venues is not only unwarranted, but also dangerous.  The venues pay our bills by posting advertisements in our paper.  Events give us free entry into the event in exchange for covering it.

To talk badly about these things is to bite the hand that feeds you.

I'm not talking about editorial censorship - rather, I'm talking about my own self-censorship.  When I write about an event, I feel like I have to pull my punches, because I know that that's what is expected.  The result is that our articles have no teeth; rather than salacious, they're fellatious. 

Here's the thing, though: this is nothing new.  I'm glad gamers are finally waking up to a fact that has been around as long as media has been around, but this property of news is literally that old.  Noam Chomsky went into great detail about what it is and why it happens way back in 1988 (in Manufacturing Consent, which I would quote from if I could find it in the boxes of books I haven't shelved yet after my last move).

I do remember that Chomsky notes that there is a respect among journalists for their sources, such that they'll often simply publish directly whatever they're asked to (press releases from companies and government offices, for instance) rather than digging into the story.  It has to do with the need to continue having access to such information.

Or, as Stephen Colbert put it in his White House Correspondents Dinner address:

Here's how it works: the president makes decisions. He's "The Decider." The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put 'em through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know: fiction!

I don't say these things to say they're not valid, but rather to say that they are!  Our media is and always has been unethical, and it seems to be a necessary trait of media.  As long as media is at the mercy of advertisers, it is always having to juggle that balance between ethical reporting and survival.  Only advertising-free journalism is safe, and even then that journalism has to negotiate the boundary between access and story, between what is expected of them culturally and what is desired of them.  We rue the loss of reporters like Woodward and Bernstein, but the fact is that there have never been such reporters - they are a part of our American mythos, a belief that times were better "back in the day."  Reporters have always only been able to turn against administrations and corporations when the tide of public opinion was already turning that direction, giving them the safety of popularity.

So, what's the answer?  If I knew the answer entirely, I'd be rich - it has plagued mankind as long as newspapers have been a thing.

However, I think that to an extent the Internet is already an answer - that is, if a game reviewer reviews a game positively, and that game turns out to be shit, then the tide of public opinion will swing very rapidly against it and it will be obvious to a great many people that the review is crap.  If bloggers take advantage of that situation to point out when reviewers are wrong, to compare the scores various reviewers give to games to the scores that those games eventually get from the general public, perhaps we can come up with some standards for reading reviews, and call out especially bad reviewers.

I think the answer is also that if we want well-done reviews, we need to be willing to shell out the cash for them.  A subscription-based game news outlet would be free to review whatever it wants however it wants without risk of advertiser reprisal.  If gamers truly want journalistic integrity, they need to put their money where their mouths are.

The answer is certainly not, however, sending threats to the authors... (continued hopefully tomorrow)

So what is right and what is wrong? Gimme a sign.

To die, to sleep--
To sleep--perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. [...]
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, [...]
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns [...]
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
[...] Soft you now,
The fair Ophelia! -- Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remembered. (Hamlet, III.I.71-97)

Hamlet reflects on suicide, and realizes that the reason more people aren't afraid to do it - the reason why people instead "bear the whips and scorns of time" is that they fear for what will happen to their souls after their deaths, which he calls "the undiscovered country." 

It is this place after death that Christianity fills with the rolls of Heaven and Hell, and the fear of the latter is what is used to urge people to fight against sin, to instead choose to live righteous lives.  I'm a bit reductive here, as there are positives noted in Scripture as well; but, we would be remiss not to acknowledge the role that sin and the fear of sin take in our spiritual lives.

We sin, we go to Hell.
We have forgiveness of sin, we go to Heaven.

That's the extent of it.  There is no in-between for believers.  And, since our default position is sin, we start out going to Hell.  This is more than a bit troublesome for many believers, especially in light of 2,000 years of high infant mortality.  If a human being starts out having a sinful nature derived from his or her parents, then if he or she dies before that sin can be forgiven, he or she will be doomed to Hell.

In Protestant Christianity, we fumble around this one by saying that a human can't be a sinner until he or she has learned the difference between right and wrong.  In Catholicism, they just baptize babies and are done with it.

(As an aside: this could be the reason Catholicism is so adamant about abortion - anyone conceived and then aborted could be in spiritual jeopardy.  In “No Embryos in Paradise,” found in his collection, Inventing the Enemy, Umberto Eco explains Thomas Aquinas's description of how an embryo forms a soul, and it turns out that Aquinas thought its human soul wasn't complete until fairly late in the process and thus there was nothing to either be condemned or saved.  Catholics who find themselves torn between abortion viewpoints might want to check out that essay to help support a pro-choice stance, though Eco himself doesn't specify a stance either way.)

But let's go back to that idea.  We sin, and we start out in sin.  Paul says, "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Rom 3:23), and it's from there that we assume babies, too, are tainted with sin.

But none of it says what sin is.

That's the weird thing.  We define sin not by any verse of the Bible.  Instead, we seem to define it in abstract ways.

For the legalistic among us, we describe it as breaking God's law.  It's why, when some on the right claim that homosexuality is immoral, they refer to laws of the Old Testament - because those laws are sacrosanct.  They represent clear delineations of right and wrong.  Except when those delineations aren't clear, and then there's a huge profit to be made in writing books commenting on the Bible and teasing out justifications for various different things.  For instance, the Old Testament clearly says "Thou Shalt Not Murder" - and then God's chosen people turn around and brutally slaughter surrounding tribes.  The apologists argue that murder is OK in cases of war, self defense, and legal discipline (though they might try to rephrase it as "killing" or "execution").

In such a case, both murder-apologists and anti-murderers claim to hold the moral high ground.  In Romans 14, Paul showed us another situation where two different camps interpreted scripture differently, and thus this could provide us insight into this murder issue.

I already provided some background on this in my Shades of White article, but let's go further into the exact reasoning behind it:

Paul spoke to Christians who held different beliefs on the practice of eating meat.  Some I've heard interpret this scripture do so to say that Paul was not referring to vegetarianism per se, but that those who chose not to eat meat were concerned that the meat had been sacrificed to pagan gods.  Nothing in Romans 14 indicates this strictly, but the passage closely parallels 1 Corinthians 8, which does specifically call out food sacrificed to idols.

Using that argument, we see a potential point of view that goes something like this: "I can't be certain whether this meat was sacrificed to pagan gods or not.  If, by eating that meat, I'm reminded of those gods whom I used to worship, I might be tempted away from God.  Ergo, I should not eat that meat."  It probably wasn't so clearly stated, but the intent seems to be the same.

Paul, for his part, thought that the meat itself shouldn't be such an icon and shouldn't cause such temptation.  He couldn't personally relate to the effect it had on those who were tempted away from God by it.  But, he could understand their argument, could place himself in their shoes.  In so doing, he realized that to keep pressuring them to eat meat might, in fact, pull them away from God.  The result - they'd be sinning. 

(Even assuming Romans 14 stands alone and is talking about vegetarianism, the result of the argument is the same - by trying to force something on people who aren't able to handle it, you might cause them to sin.)

It's interesting to me that this argument takes place at the end of the book of Romans, because throughout that letter, Paul had been trying to explain to the Romans about sin and the law.  Here, finally, he lays out an argument that has nothing to do with the law - in fact, Christ had already abolished the law on unclean meat by saying that it is what comes out of a man that makes him unclean.  Paul reveals that sin doesn't have to be tied to the law, just as righteousness is not tied to the law.

In Romans 14, as in 1 Corinthians 8, Paul describes sin as something that happens not as the result of acting against the law, but instead acting in a way that threatens our relationships with God.  That is, by eating the potentially-idol-sacrificed meat, a Christian who might find him/herself straying to other gods was knowingly risking his/her relationship with God.  Acting in such a way that you open yourself up to separation from God, being willing to make such an action without regard to that relationship, is sin.

There's a corollary as well - acting in such a way that you put another Christian's relationship with God in jeopardy.

And thus, the definition of sin is not acting against God's law, but acting against God's love - either personally with God, or tangentially with another believer.

---

There's another way to arrive at the same conclusion, which is fortunate - if my hypothesis about sin is correct, it must fit other arguments that are Biblically-sourced.

Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together.  One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question:  “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’  This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”  (Matthew 22:34-40)

We know from Christ's own words that the law can be broken down based on what's most important for believers - and that the two most important parts are the commands He quoted: "Love the Lord your God" and "Love your neighbor as yourself."   These quotes come from Deuteronomy and Leviticus, respectively.  According to Deuteronomy, "Love the Lord your God" was the first commandment given to the Jews.  Interestingly, though, the command to love our neighbors was buried deep within the commands given only to the Levites, shortly before the command not to wear linen and wool blends and to execute anyone who engages in adultery, and shortly after the command to pay employees on time.

Christ really had to understand the law deeply to see that as the second greatest commandment.  Had He not taught it to us, we might have ignored it as simply a line in the midst of a lot of other lines about treating people fairly.  And, and I say this to shame those who take this tack, we might have simply discarded it as a command given only to the Levites, the priests of God's people.  A 3-second-long Google Search will prove to you how often we currently do that regarding other commands in that book we don't like (it's why I pointed out the linen and wool blends command and the adultery command - those are two that apologists have argued away by saying they were "only for the Levites").

But not only does Christ point out these two laws as being "greatest," He further goes on to say that "All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."  What could that possibly mean?

With the Ten Commandments, at least, the answer is usually easy:

1. "You shall have no other gods before me" - loving God with everything we are means loving Him more than anything else, including other gods.
2. "You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below" - loving God means recognizing God and not the symbol or sign of God (the writer of Exodus understood Saussure?).
3. “You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God" - loving God means respecting the name of God (but that writer didn't understand Saussure that well).
4. “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy" - loving God means taking one day a week to remember Him. 
5. “Honor your father and your mother" - this is the start of the "love your neighbor" section.  Your father and mother are closer than neighbors, and have sacrificed much for you, more than neighbors generally will.  Ergo, you should love them by keeping their commands (within reason - the "honor" command is awfully vague).
6. “You shall not murder." - Obviously, committing violence against someone is not a loving act.  Love demands you recognize the right of other people to live.
7. “You shall not commit adultery." - When a couple have pledged themselves to each other, coming into that relationship and tearing it apart is an unloving act.  It hurts both of the people in that original relationship, and will probably hurt you as well.  Ditto if you are one of the people in that relationship - you are violating your partner's trust in the most extreme of ways.  
8. “You shall not steal." - When someone owns property, and you take that property from them, you're declaring that you have a greater right to that property than they do - and they paid for it, whereas you did not, so that not only are they out the property, they're out the original money for the property.  It's a bum deal.  Love demands respecting other people's property. 
9. “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor." - When you testify that your neighbor has done wrong he/she has not done, that can cause extreme distress, jail time, even death for your neighbor.  False testimony can only be driven by hate.
10.  “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.” - Well, first of all, people aren't property in a civil society.  That out of the way, this seems to be in-line with the later postulations of Jesus when He said that it wasn't enough not to murder but also not to think angry thoughts at someone.  This is the only thought crime of the Ten Commandments, and the only one that is only inwardly-driven.  Remember that the command is "love your neighbor as yourself" - that is, you also have to love yourself.  When you love yourself, you recognize that coveting someone else's property or relationships is painful, it causes you to feel bad about yourself, it causes depression, anxiety, and so on.  It can also lead you to doing the four things in the list above coveting - murdering, stealing, cheating, and lying in testimony.   

It is, however, somewhat harder to see how other commands derive from these - such as the command not to mix linen and wool (which appears to have something to do with making sure the Israelites were clothed in such a way as to set them apart from societies around them and help them remain pure for the Lord, which would be a "love the Lord" command).  Sometimes they are hard to understand, but their purpose, their meaning, is to help structure society in such a way as to ensure that people behave in loving manner toward one another and toward God. 

That said, once people learn to love, they no longer need law.

That's what Paul seems to be trying to say in Romans: 

So, my brothers and sisters, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God. For when we were in the realm of the flesh, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in us, so that we bore fruit for death.  But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code. (Romans 7:4-6)

We are now dead to the law - that is, we no longer need the law to inform us, because we have the Love of Christ.  The Love of Christ drives out sin, it prevents it and purifies us.  Paul tries to explain that the law can lead us to sin, and the reason is simple: when we only live by a standard of "do this" or "do not do this," we have no reason for it, no understanding behind it.  If we don't have love for one another in our hearts, we can see someone else's property and think "I shouldn't take that, because it's against the law," but, the moment we think we can do so without anyone noticing, the moment we think that we can get away with it, we'll steal.  The evil that lurks within all of us can be somewhat controlled by the law, but it is not perfect.  But, when we love, we don't need the law to tell us not to steal - we know that by stealing, we would be hurting that other person, and our love will not even allow us to consider the concept.

So then, if we have the love of Christ, we are free from the law.  We are not bound to do what it says.  Christ showed us this Himself when He healed a man and a woman on the Sabbath:

On a Sabbath Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues, and a woman was there who had been crippled by a spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and could not straighten up at all. When Jesus saw her, he called her forward and said to her, “Woman, you are set free from your infirmity.” Then he put his hands on her, and immediately she straightened up and praised God.
Indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, the synagogue leader said to the people, “There are six days for work. So come and be healed on those days, not on the Sabbath.”
The Lord answered him, “You hypocrites! Doesn’t each of you on the Sabbath untie your ox or donkey from the stall and lead it out to give it water? Then should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for eighteen long years, be set free on the Sabbath day from what bound her?” (Luke 13:10-16)

One Sabbath, when Jesus went to eat in the house of a prominent Pharisee, he was being carefully watched. There in front of him was a man suffering from abnormal swelling of his body. Jesus asked the Pharisees and experts in the law, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not?” But they remained silent. So taking hold of the man, he healed him and sent him on his way.
Then he asked them, “If one of you has a child or an ox that falls into a well on the Sabbath day, will you not immediately pull it out?” And they had nothing to say.  (Luke 14:1-6)

In each case, Jesus called people out for being willing to do for themselves what they were unwilling to do for others, citing the law.  The Pharisees were using the law as a shield to prevent them from having to show love - that is, if they had the power to heal, they would still hold it back, as they sought to hold Christ back, and would proclaim that this was simply God's will.  But God's will is love, and loving means sometimes breaking God's law in order to achieve God's love.

As Paul notes, that does not mean we can do whatever we want.  Or, rather, we aren't free to sin in whatever ways we would like.  We cannot use the love of Christ as a writ saying that we have complete freedom to do anything without repercussions.  But, if we actually have the love of Christ, we are free to do whatever we want - because what we want will always be what's loving.

The challenge is that we don't always love.  Even Paul notes that he has problems with that:

For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. (Romans 7:18-19)

That is, we must be careful and evaluate each thing to know whether it is the love of Christ that compels it, or our sinful nature.  But, if we are sure that what we do is good, then we should do it without regard to whether or not the "law" says we should not.

Paul gives us a test by which we can know whether something is part of the love of Christ or the sinful nature:

All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any. (1 Corinthians 6:12, KJV)
All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but all things edify not. Let no man seek his own, but every man another's wealth. (1 Corinthians 10:23-24, KJV)

If something is not beneficial, it is controls us, if it does not help build us up, if it is only for our own good and not for the good of others, then it is not done with the love of Christ.

Many scholars have claimed that Paul was either sarcastic with his "I have the right to do anything" comments.  In fact, the NIV added in the words "you say" so that he's shown to be quoting an audience and reflecting what they're claiming; which is why I quoted the KJV instead, to show that that isn't apparent in the original.  I would argue, instead, that Paul does actually believe that "all things are lawful" - that is, because he is no longer bound by law, he can do anything he wants.   But, he applies this test, of whether or not something controls him, whether or not something is edifying, etc., to see whether he should do it or not.

---

Finally, we find that homosexuality - and indeed, anything - is "good" so long as it is beneficial, does not master us, and so on.  "Sexual immorality" is dangerous not because it acts against the will of God, but because it's such an intimate act and has the potential to hurt people in ways that other activities do not.  It also has the ability to control us ("I will not be mastered by anything," as Paul says), as an addictive activity.

But if two people, regardless of their gender, love each other, are honest with each other and with themselves, are open and communicative in discussing their needs, then they are showing love toward one another.  They can do anything within the bounds of that relationship that they both agree upon, so long as they aren't being mastered by those things.  If those two people happen to share the same gender, that's OK - if they act with love toward one another, they are doing more good than a heterosexual couple behaving unlovingly toward one another.

Which is worse, my fundy readers - a gay couple who stay devoted to each other for 30 years; or straight couples who divorce and remarry constantly, who cheat, who lie about themselves and their needs to keep their partners happy, who stay in unhappy relationships for "the sake of the children," who abuse each other, and so on?  One is loving, the other is not.  We should never promote an unloving relationship above a loving one.

Love never fails.

It's an Institute You Can't Disparage

On October 6th, the Supreme Court declined to review the decisions by federal courts that overturned gay marriage bans in Oklahoma and several other states.  The result: by that same afternoon, Oklahoma had its first same-sex wedding.  As far as I know, it's the one that occurred on the steps of the Tulsa County Courthouse at 5pm.  There were many others that same day and the following day.

I have thus far been fairly silent on the issue of gay marriage, but I think this is the right time to talk about it.  Rather than lay out an argument about it, I'd like to take you through the thought process that led me to where I am today.

When I was a child, I had no idea that people could be gay.  I was attracted to girls from the time I was 3, and had my first girlfriend while still in preschool.  I knew I was rare among boys - most wanted nothing to do with girls until they were older (4th grade seemed to be the turning point).  This actually meant that I had way more girlfriends than average before then.

It wasn't until I was a freshman in high school that I even knew homosexuality was a thing.  I still was (and am, in case anyone's worried about my use of past tense) attracted to girls and girls only, so from that perspective it didn't make any sense.  I had also been raised in, as I've said before, a very conservative home, and around the same time we started getting lessons about how homosexuality was an abomination, etc.  So, before I even met anyone who was gay (and out), I already had been turned against it.

The first gay man I knew was a guy in orchestra with me.  His boyfriend was in band, and I saw the two of them quite often.  They were both way more effeminate than other guys I knew, tending to wear tight shirts and sparkly earrings, and rainbow necklaces.  I experienced cognitive dissonance around them - for they seemed perfectly nice and friendly, and I didn't feel comfortable making fun of them due to the things I had experienced in school myself, but at the same time they didn't fit my model of expected masculinity.  Others made fun of them in secret, and so I did, too, and felt bad about it the entire time, even while feeling weirded out.

I never really felt hate toward gay people, however.  I felt that it was icky, that it was sinful, and that I should work to try to rescue people from homosexuality, but I felt my actions were loving, that they were done with a genuine worry about the final destination of their souls rather than anger.

I remember well one time when a friend came out to me.  She was a Christian, and was dating a guy, a preacher's kid, and said he was the first guy she had ever felt attracted to.  She told me she was only otherwise attracted to women, and until then had dated nothing but women.  She just knew that she was violating God's will, and so she forced herself to date guys.  She was impressed and surprised that when she told me she liked women, I didn't react with saying "can I watch?" - which, she said, is what every other guy did.  I was the first who didn't.

I still thought it, of course.  I just didn't say it.

Over the next few years, I doubled down on my beliefs, arguing that I was still loving gay people by insisting that their actions were evil, etc.  I argued that if someone could actually be born gay, that they were still required to follow God's will as I saw it laid out in the Bible.  I backed it up with scriptures that called it out as an abomination.  When people complained that homosexuals weren't being allowed to love, I busted out this scripture from 1 Cor 7:

8: Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I do.

27: Are you pledged to a woman? Do not seek to be released. Are you free from such a commitment? Do not look for a wife.

32-35: I would like you to be free from concern. An unmarried man is concerned about the Lord’s affairs—how he can please the Lord. But a married man is concerned about the affairs of this world—how he can please his wife— and his interests are divided. An unmarried woman or virgin is concerned about the Lord’s affairs: Her aim is to be devoted to the Lord in both body and spirit. But a married woman is concerned about the affairs of this world—how she can please her husband. I am saying this for your own good, not to restrict you, but that you may live in a right way in undivided devotion to the Lord.

So, to Paul, being single was better than getting married.  This is the Scriptural basis behind priests and nuns of the Catholic church remaining single.  In my mind, if a man were untempted by women, that simply meant that he was perfectly created to remain single.

Unwittingly, I was calling all gay men to become priests and gay women to become nuns (in the Catholic church) or priests (in pretty much all of the rest of the church). 

It was not, of course, a loving position.  I was single most of my life, and miserable about it.  I questioned whether I would ever be married.  How could I expect a gay person would feel any better having to avoid love?

During my liberal conversion, before it was complete, while still in the midst of it - and, possibly, as part of the cause for pushing it out of the starting gate - I had a realization about marriage.  Those around me decried marriage as an institution that could be extended to gays because it was a holy Christian institution.  I did, too.

Until, one day, unbidden, I was faced with the prospect of atheists getting married.

Who were they married by, if not God?  Who were Buddhists married by, if not God?  Who were Hindus and Bahá'ís and Sikhs and any number of hundreds of other faiths married by if not the Christian God?  From my Christian perspective, certainly, God was the one joining their eternal souls, but to insist that that was happening in a legal sense was, I knew, wrong.  That is, if I insisted that the Christian God was joining the souls of non-Christians in Heaven, and that was the basis of law on Earth, that would be forcing Christianity onto non-Christians.  These people all held their own views about gods (or the lack thereof) and, just as I wanted my own views protected, I believed it was important that they have their views protected, too.  Even if I didn't agree with them.  

It was important enough to me that I could continue believing as I wanted that I would extend those rights to others.  And, as a result, I had to allow them to believe that their marriage was blessed by whatever institution they believed (or didn't believe).  

After all, if Buddhists could get married without acknowledging the Christian God, if Hindus could, if atheists could, then marriage itself is not a Christian institution.  My beliefs about marriage only apply to marriage within a Christian church, and not those marriages that take place outside of the church.

Once I realized that, there were suddenly no more objections I could throw up against gay marriage, at least outside of the Christian church.  From a legal perspective, I had to accept it.  Granted, I could have doubled-down on gay marriage laws and chosen to eschew my beliefs about religious freedom, but I felt like that would be a road to certain persecution in the future for myself... and I could not abide that.  

Still, accepting it in a legal sense is far from believing it to be "good."  It was simply legally allowed.  I still insisted homosexuality was evil, and that it should not take place within the Christian church.

Most recently - perhaps only 2 years ago - I still held to that claim, although I began to believe that there could be Christians who accepted it.  As I've mentioned before regarding Romans 14, I learned to believe that many things could be accepted as morally right, and that salvation was up to each individual person to work out with God.  That meant that I had arrived at the point where I wouldn't directly judge, I wouldn't tell gays that I thought they would burn in Hell, but I still didn't personally think it was OK.  It was a 'live and let live' approach, and that's it.  

I liked to say that since I'm not tempted by homosexuality myself, that it wasn't important to me, that my beliefs about whether it was morally right or wrong didn't matter, because they couldn't in any way affect my eternal salvation.  

It wasn't until I started going to my current church that I was really forced to face it.  My first day there, an older lady in the church, who was one of three ordained pastors in the congregation (that I'm aware of), leaned over to me and said, not unquietly during a quiet part of the service, "Do you see those four men up there? (pointing to the four guys a few rows ahead of us.)  Those are two gay couples, and I married them in this church!"  My first thought, "Why are you telling me this?"  (Having been hit on by many gay men, I had to assume that she thought that was my reason for attending the church.)  My second thought, "Uh... that's nice?"  

But then I had to decide how comfortable I was with that idea.  Because here was a church that openly welcomed homosexuals, both singles and couples, and yet I knew from the friendliness of the congregation and from the absolutely phenomenal, research-driven sermons from the pastor, that I had to attend.  

Fortunately, about 4 years ago, I developed a new philosophy, which I'm actually surprised to discover I haven't posted about yet.  I will in my next post...

Ain't no hate like Oklahoma hate.

I love Oklahoma.  I sometimes dislike Oklahomans.  The last three posts I've made, which are about Islam and our response to it and beliefs about it, stem as responses to comments I've seen on the Tulsa World Facebook page.

For some background, this wave started with the beheading committed by Alton Nolen on September 24th.  You can read the Wikipedia page on the incident for yourself, although at this point I think everyone in the country is familiar with what happened.

In response to that, 8 Oklahoma legislators who call themselves the "Counterterrorism Caucus" issued a statement that sought to create a “public discussion about potential terrorists in our midst and the role that Sharia law plays in their actions.”  (I cannot find the original text of that statement.  It was first reported in the Oklahoman.)

Immediately, on the Tulsa World Facebook page, I pointed out the irony that this supposed Counterterrorism Caucus would assume terrorist = Muslim when the very building these legislators work in is 2 miles from the site of the worst incident of domestic terrorism in U.S. history, an act of terrorism perpetrated by Christians.

Yet the posts on the TW FB page are simultaneously encouraging and disheartening.  Some of the ones that encourage me:

"Religion is like money: You can use it to do good or use it to do bad.

Some of my closest friends are Muslim and actually feel like part of my family.  Once you meet and get to know people who are different from you, it's hard to demonize them.  In fact, you'll find the differences are superficial."

I like that comment, and I'll talk about it more in a moment.

"A building is built one brick at a time.  The sooner we embrace our Muslim brothers, the sooner all the hat [sic] will stop.  Yes, it will take a long time ... but we must work diligently to build a better world for our children."

"Assuming a minority of a much larger group is representative of the whole is wrong.  It's like assuming the KKK represents the rest of Christianity."

But, of course, there were quite a lot of negative comments, too:

"How about gtfo of our country you sicko heathens." (got 8 likes that I could see)

"All Muslims please leave now." (7 likes)

"lol, if you want to bridge the gap of hate, if you want to show that 'we are peaceful and loving.' then YOU as muslims need to stand up against the radicals of your own religion.  They are the one propagating the hate." [all SIC] (11 likes)

"Let them prove it some place els [SIC]." (1 like)

"peaceful til you strap a bomb on your goat fucking ass." (3 likes)

"No thank it's their way to get into our community and use that against us when the time comes to attack us" (3 likes)

"Islam isnt peaceful.  the Koran tells them in no uncertain terms they must convert everyone in the world or kill them.  it's black and white.  there is no getting around this fact." (6 likes)

And finally...

 "Let's talk about Taqiyya."

Well, funny you should mention that.  That's what my first blog post on this topic was about. 

I left out the commenters' names in case they are later embarrassed about those remarks and want to change them.  I can hope.  Anyway, let's go back to that first one I quoted - religion is a tool.

It is, but not quite the way you're thinking.  Religion can be a beautiful thing, when it helps someone learn to love his fellow human beings, learn to function as a healthy adult in a human community, learn to treat every day and every event as a blessing rather than taking things for granted.

Unfortunately, it also can be used in negative ways - by religious leaders to control a population and by people who are filled with hate to justify hateful actions.  It seems to me that the two desires are related.  If a religious leader is only in that role because he or she wants to control people (which could be part and parcel to simply wanting to be wealthy, but that wealth requires that people turn over their wealth to the leader, and that requires control), then that religious leader has a vested interest in preaching hate.  Yes, we see this in Muslim regimes, where the religion of Islam is used to justify violence against women, child rape, beheadings, etc.  We also see it in Christian regimes and in atheistic regimes.

Let's go back to that idea of control.  If you've ever set foot in a bar, chances are you're familiar with a Bloody Mary - a drink made from tomato juice, vodka, and various seasonings.  But did you know that the original Bloody Mary was the daughter of Henry VIII?  Here's some fun for you:

• Henry VIII beheaded two of his wives.  He was not a Muslim.
• Mary's mother, Catherine of Aragon (not Aragorn.  This isn't Lord of the Rings.  You are not an elf.), was Henry VIII's first wife, although he was not her first husband - that was Henry VIII's own brother.
• Henry VIII started the church of England at least in part because the Catholic Church wouldn't allow him to get divorced from Mary's mother (and the Pope himself refused to annul their marriage).  
• Mary was Catholic.  At this point in English history, the battle between Catholics and Protestants was more than a little bit rocky.  Mary tried to return the Church of England into the fold of Catholicism, and began persecuting those who refused to join.  Real persecution.  Not "you can't call it 'Christmas'" 'persecution.'
• The persecution of protestants was called The Marian Persecutions.  Mary executed over 300 protestants during the 3 years these took place. 
• These executions notably included burning at the stake and beheadings.
• Her successor, Elizabeth I, is widely remembered as being a good queen.  She also brutally executed many people, including Mary Queen of Scots (not the same person as Mary I), her own cousin.  That was also a beheading.

Perhaps what makes us think about these executions differently is that they took place 450 years ago, while the executions by Saudi Arabia, Iran, ISIS, and others are happening today.  They are more real by their temporal proximity.

Or, perhaps it's because of the religions of the people involved.  Mary was horrible because she murdered protestants.  Elizabeth was good, but she murdered Catholics.  In the U.S., we executed Clayton Lockett in a horribly painful way, but that's OK because we're Christians implementing "justice."  Saudi Arabia is doing just fine because they're only executing other Muslims.  When it's a Christian that is executed, though... HOLY SHIT.  That's an act of persecution.  It's an act of war.

But all of these executions - those of Mary I and those of other monarchs of that past era, and those of Saudi Arabia and even of the U.S. - all are based on the premise that by executing people, you can scare the rest of your population into doing what's right.  It's why executions in the middle ages and in many not-quite-first-world countries today are done so publicly - because we want people to see the execution and learn to behave from it.  As if seeing someone murdered could somehow prevent you from making the same mistake.

That means it's really about control, and about who controls your body and your life.  Do you control it, or does the government?  That's what Foucault taught us, at least.  He also taught us that in the modern world, it's not really necessary - because, by putting inmates into a prison where they can be monitored all day, they implement their own control.  We believe in that prison system today unconsciously, and can't understand when another country wouldn't use the same system to implement its own justice.

By the way - when Clayton Lockett was executed, many people on the Tulsa World facebook page called for more painful, more public executions, still basing their belief in that outdated idea that witnessing an execution could make people behave.  It's not a Muslim idea.  It's an idea many in the U.S. share, while pretending we're better than "those people."

So is Alton Nolen a terrorist?  Do we need to investigate that connection?

It's certainly a question we could consider if there was any indication that his actions were taken to try to scare people into adopting a particular view or making a particular change in their society.  When Timothy McVeigh bombed the Murrah Federal Building, he did it both to retaliate for various federal raids, but also "to send a message to a government that was becoming increasingly hostile..."  Al-Qaeda has stated numerous times their efforts are an attempt to send a message about American aggression against Muslims around the world.  In both cases, these attackers chose methods of attack that were intended not only to kill many people, but also to use those deaths and the fear they would inspire as part of that message.  These attacks took extensive planning to carry out, because planning is necessary to create the maximum amount of terror.

By definition, Nolen could only be a terrorist if he also was engaging in such an attempt to send a message.  By all accounts, there was no message present - instead, he was a deranged man obsessed with beheadings and a distorted view of Islam who struck out at the company that had just that day fired him.  It was not a planned attack, it was simply retaliatory.

And this is blatantly obvious to anyone who understands the meaning of the word "terrorist."  Which leaves us with one conclusion: that all of the people who think he might be a terrorist are conflating that definition with what they observe that word entails, its unintended corollary meanings.  Since most terrorists we are told about today are violent Muslims, all violent Muslims are necessarily terrorists.  For people who think that all Muslims are violent, therefore, all Muslims are terrorists.

But anyone who studies history for even 5 minutes can determine that's not a necessary correlation.  We've had Christian terrorists, and Atheist terrorists, and Buddhist terrorists, and Hindu terrorists, and Jewish terrorists, and terrorists of other religions you've probably never even heard of.  It just so happens that the Muslim terrorists got to us most recently, and inspired the biggest reaction.  None of those religions necessarily caused the terrorism, but certainly someone somewhere has used that religion to defend those terrorist actions.

Because sometimes, human beings are dicks.