One thing that I’ve been mulling over about the whole Belmont thing, for myself, is just what I think morality and the role of religious leaders in perpetuating it is. A lot of the comments on posts and stories about Belmont are about how Belmont has a right to impose moral standards on the members of its community. And I have to tell you, I’m just not sure about this.

First, I’m not sure that an action that hurts someone who is no danger to herself or others can actually be said to be a moral action. So, even if you believe homosexual activity is immoral, while I applaud your efforts to not participate in it yourself, I think once you try to impose your moral order on others without respect for their moral code, then you’re not acting morally.

Now, maybe you can’t act morally all the time, so maybe there’s a gray area between moral and immoral, you know?

But I was thinking this morning, again, about how Christians believe that the Bible explicitly forbids human sacrifice, first, in the story of Abraham and Isaac, where God tells Abraham that it’s not necessary to kill Isaac for God, and then again through the story of Jesus, where he sacrifices himself in a “perfect sacrifice” for all Christians for all times.

And yet, how many Christian families have turned their backs on their gay children because they think that’s what the Bible requires? Or used the Bible to justify their poor behavior towards their gay employees? How many Christians think that they have a Christian duty to make gay people suffer?

And how is that not human sacrifice?

That’s really the thing I most wonder about what’s going on at Belmont–how do they not see what they’re doing as a form of human sacrifice?

Issues of morality aside, do they not believe their god when He tells them such sacrifices are unnecessary?

I guess not. Can you imagine the enormous pain on every side of this issue that has been swallowed? And to say to people who cut off their own children “God didn’t want that” so that they could believe it? Or to say to people who rooted out the gay people among their staff and fired them that God didn’t want that so that they could believe it?

The cost of that conversion would be enormous and I’m not sure most people can do it, precisely because it would mean facing up to the pain they’ve caused people they otherwise cared about and the ways they’ve shortchanged themselves.

Dec 16

Feeling the Love

Over at Pith, Steve Haruch called me “our own.” I know, really, what else was he going to call me? But still, it made me feel loved.

And then, I got to see the page proofs for this book of antique Spanish erotica that I’ve been working on for years, and I see in the acknowledgements, “My special thanks also to Betsy Phillips, my editor at [my place of work], who freed the book from any potential ‘provincial’ airs and ensured that it would appeal to a wide audience. If the book breathes and moves, it is because of Betsy’s insight and daring vision.”

Insight and daring vision?

Shoot. That is the kind of thing that can carry a gal all day. And that my insight and daring vision pertains to naked Spaniards? I’m just saying, I’d like to live in a world where that was a marketable skill.

Dec 16

Walking the Dog, Just-a, Just-a, Just-a Walking

Is it just me or does Thomas seem alternately terrified and delighted?

Anyway, since we didn’t get an ice storm, for the first time all week, I got up to walk the dog and was met by almost 50 degree weather out there. I’m always surprised how constipated at a soul level I begin to feel when I don’t get to walk the dog for a few days. It’s just good for me, not even at a physical level, at some fundamental level to get out there.

They attempted to deliver my mom’s cacti yesterday and… I don’t know. I guess the Butcher wasn’t here? I’m going to have to tease him about that a little. Otherwise, maybe the mailbox is full? I’m going to put him on figuring it out.

This has just been a weird week. Not bad, but weird.

I’d need a whole morning of walking to get it out of my system, I think.