Nate Knows Nada

I was just checking my referrer logs, and I learned that if you type
“had sex with nate” into google (as someone apparently did), this blog
is the first site to come up.

No need to worry, my friends — I’m not running anything “illicit” on
the side here.  It comes from having Nate as my name on the site
and from discussing the gay sex that has made me permanently ineligible
to give blood.

But it’s quickly followed by sites that ask if Mormons believe that God had sex with the Virgin Mary.

I’m serving as the teaching assistant for an International Law class
this spring.  My advisor teaches it, and I have done this
particular class twice before.

I’d like to add a blogging component to the class this time around, and
I’ve been searching out sites that talk about blogging in the classroom
and how one can effectively use it as a component of learning.  I
should be clear — I do not want to supplant traditional discussion
sections with a web-based “bulletin board.”  But I want the online
content to be vital and continuing for the students.  In other
words, they shouldn’t post or contribute because they have to.  I want them to want to, just like we bloggers want to do this.

I know some of you readers out there might have some ideas about
this.  Can you drop me a comment or an e-mail with your
suggestions or websites on how to do this effectively?

I wrote the following letter last Friday:

I grant that the numbering of the commandments varies if you’re Jewish
or Roman Catholic, but I was raised Protestant, so it’s the second for
me.  And frankly, most of these people are Protestants, too, so
I’ll speak their language.

If you’re interested in the numbering aspect, this page has more detail than you might have ever been aware existed.  Interesting, in its own way….

O.K.  Some of you have come up with good ideas about adjusting to Boston.

When you mention “culture,” what sort of culture are we talking about
here?  I can see the history (and though it’s not my period, it’s
still fun, as long as the person you’re with doesn’t go on and on about
how all of America started here and we have New England to thank for
freedom, Mom, and apple pie [BTW, BF rarely, if ever, does this] — I
have some people in various parts of the country that used to be Mexico
or France who’d object vociferously to the “this is the origins of it
all” line), but besides the good classical music and the MFA, I’m
bereft in knowing about the culture that’s here.  The Lonely
Planet guide doesn’t do much to point it out.

Brief caveat: I will not spend time in the bars of Allston and
Brighton.  They always look too much like a whole town full of the
bars I spent time in during college (but we only had 5 bars in a town
with 20,000 college students, so you can imagine), but which I made a
point even then to avoid at night….

(I could make a jab about Dunkin’ Donuts in here, but considering that
I grew up in a land of strip malls, that’s a bit unfair.  But
purple and orange?  Who chose the color scheme?  The “Queer
Eye” guys would NOT approve, nor would Martha….)

Do other people have suggestions?  How else can the displaced come
to love Boston?  O.K.  “Love” is probably a bit
optimistic.  How about “like”?  Or “get along with”?

And how do I keep the cars out there on the road from trying to run me
over or yelling some conjugation of “fuck” at me when I am riding my
bike?  (This, I realize, is a totally separate question, but it
seems slightly related.)

I’m still working on trying  to like this city.  As I
discussed with BF last night, the two things that get me down are the
following:

1. Always having to feel like one is struggling to get any little
   bit of whatever done.  Since it often feels like people here
   (maybe it’s the East Coast) are trying to screw me at whatever turn, I
   find myself having to be suspiscious and aggressive all the time,
   almost preemptively, so that I don’t get run over (literally and
   figuratively).  This is far different than my previous experiences
   in urban areas.  And the “natives” (who strike me as a lot of
   dour, unhappy [generally] white ethnics) are particularly effective at
   making one who’s moved here as opposed to lived here forever feel like
   one shouldn’t be here in the first place.
2. Yeah, it seems I focus a lot on the negatives here and perhaps
   even to see them more than the positives.  But I haven’t found
   many positives here that I couldn’t get somewhere else. 
   Everywhere has bookstores and cafes and funky bars and such.  What
   makes Boston any different or more interesting in some way than other
   places?

Does anyone out there have any suggestions as to how I might begin to
try liking, or at least living at a detente, with Boston?  I’ve
been here a year, and so “just giving it time” is no longer a strategy
that I want to hear….

Went to Red Sox game, against my guys, the Oakland A’s, on Tuesday night. Awesome baseball, and even though the A’s won (whoo-hoo!), the two teams played some incredible baseball. They’re quite evenly matched, and it’s a shame that the Sox may have to forego a playoff chance due to the exigencies of the wild card system. I mean, come on — Kansas City is better than the Sox? But I was impressed with the team and with the park. Fenway is a baseball temple, to say the least!

And yesterday, the city of Somerville towed my car, for street sweeping violations. This towing thing has just started, and as my landlord says, the city has decided to be Cambridge and crack down on every possible violation of anything in order to get more revenue. I understand the need for revenue, but towing all the cars on the street for sweeping seems beyond necessity. And it cost me $95 in cash that I don’t really have at this point in the summer.

And LSAT classes end tonight! Yay!

Went to Tanglewood with some friends and BF yesterday. Saw some chamber music at the Ozawa hall. The Berkshires, though hardly mountains by my Western standards, are quite beautiful. They roll and are full of hills. And to set classical music in live performance among them is absolutely brilliant, as an idea.

The program included a nice suite by Shostakovich. It also had a composition by a 23-year-old that had some nice moments, but was too random and jumping all about. Several different themes that didn’t mesh well with one another. Also, his little description about the piece, which included some gobbledygook about changes in life that sounded like being sad about leaving one’s college friends but which he tried to endow with more angst and cloaked meaning than that, did not eandear his piece to the group.

But overall, it was a lovely way to get out of the city, see some tamed nature, and hear music just to hear music, rather than as background noise.

Then, I watched Chocolat last night. A pleasant day.

I got the following in my e-mail inbox this previous afternoon.

“I don’t usually read Christianity Today, as it has too many articles about the Satanic dangers of celebrating Halloween and such….”

Ted Olsen
Online Managing Editor, Christianity Today

Ted’s right. They don’t run articles like this, and they’re not really a bunch of reactionaries.

But it’s less than a simple disagreement about the status of gay priests that’s at issue here. What’s really at issue is much larger than that.

First off, I don’t think I can agree that Christianity Today is entirely irenic (peaceful) toward gay Christians. From the bottom of the aforementioned Books and Culture page, there’s this:

Homosexuality Bible Study Course
Read the news headlines and you’ll see something covering homosexuality. Now you can learn how to respond from an evangelical Christian perspective. This course helps answer questions like, “What does the Bible say about homosexuality?” and “What is the proper reponse of Christians to homosexuals?”

Two problems: first, I do not have any belief or evidence that convinces me that “what the Bible has to say about homosexuality” either a) exists (that is, I’m not sure that Scripture really has anything to say about homosexuality) or b) is a clear, unambiguous, only-understood-in-one-way sort of thing. Second, since when is it the case that “Christian” and “homosexual” are exclusive categories?

Here are the further details:

Overview

Our Unholy Blessing of Same-Sex Unions
Sometimes loving a denomination requires you to leave.

Briefly, the “gay transformation ministry” movement only has credence within conservative evangelical circle (yes, you can be liberal evangelical, but no one seems to recognize that). The mainstream psychological establishment rejects the “therapy” as harmful, and the evidence that does exist (and many of these groups refuse to participate in the sort of controlled studies that would validate their claims) indicates that the success is mixed at best. Also, the well-known falls of many “ex-gays” like John Paulk, people who had been so tranformed that they were now happily straight by God’s grace and were able to serve as models for the rest of us, makes me at least suspicious of such claims.

But again, the claim that this course sets up (and it’s a part of the CT website, not a separate site, at least from its looks and links) is that Christianity and homosexuality are incompatible. And I know that from CT’s perspective, they are.

(I was once a conservative evangelical myself. I guess I should mention that.)

But the approach that this part of the site takes is less than irenic, and it’s hardly about just a disagreement over gay priests. It’s oppositional and creates the impression for the poor soul who’s gay and this sort of Christian that there’s only one understanding of the problem before him or her. And no matter what, I’d have a hard time beleiving that Ted or CT would countenance the idea of reading Scripture in only one way.

Setting up an opposition of choice between sexual orientation or faith foments war within the soul. How do you deal with the understanding that sexual orientation is not a choice or an action but an intrinsic element, like one’s fingerprints? If you’re asked to choose between your fingerprints and God, what do you do?

And it’s not over just gay priests — again, it’s about an entire way of reading Scripture, of understanding the individual’s relationship to God and the community.

What’s more, although I don’t think CT itself is condoning the hatred of GLBTQ people that can turn into physical or verbal violence, the materials it offers can give safe religious haven to plenty of people who do take that step. And I don’t think that they can be completely absolved of their responsibility in this.

So Ted’s right. CT is not drivel or bilge. It is actually written by intelligent people who have thoughts in their heads and don’t seem to be reactionaries, from what I can see. I’m glad he wrote me to let me know.

I think that some of what CT says or does, even though wrong in outcome and probably misguided (at least as far as this issue is concerned), is good in intent and done in love. And that gets credit from me. As I say to my students, even partial credit is better than no credit.

And the Books and Culture section has some interesting pieces, even if I disagree with much of the analysis and conclusions, mostly for their confabulation of conservative evangelical Christianity with all of or true Christianty (possibly an interesting elision). I’m not shy about reading those who disagree with me or whom I disagree with (that is my job after all), so I will likely check back in on that section in the future.

However, I won’t be subscribing or providing financial support to Christianity Today as long as it helps to foster an environment that gives religious sanction to hate or self-hatred of gay people. That’s too important to me (and I know God probably thinks something entirely else) to be cavalier about it.

More than not, even if this post seems to indicate that CT and I disagree about everything, I think we’d all be pleasantly surprised about what we do agree on. It might not be much, but it’d probably be the things that actually matter. As St. Augustine said and many have repeated, “Unity in what is essential, liberty in what is not essential, and in all things charity.” I think that in knowing God, many fewer things than we human beings get worked up about are essential.

Yesterday, BF and I got out of town for our usual Wednesday attempt at “date day” (one nice thing about being a grad student is that you can schedule your leisure time not to coincide with the vast majority of others’ leisure time, thereby avoiding weekend crowds).

So we went up to Ogunquit, Maine. Stopped at a New hampshire liquor store along the way to buy some cheap booze (I love that they cater to Masachusetts there, advertising the salel of alcohol on Sunday; this Puritanism of Massachusetts is actually counterproductive, as the commonwealth is losing possible tax revenues…). We got to Ogunquit, and we walked around a bit, looking at the sheer New England touristy atmosphere. Then we had lunch (fish and chips and fried clams and chips) and walked around a bit more.

As we were eating, fog started to roll in off the ocean, turning the atmosphere colder and driving the less hearty beachgoers away. BF complained of the cold, and I relished it, for it felt secretly like being back in Berkeley early on a summer evening, when the temperature is dropping to sweater weather…. Then we began to hear some thunder to the north, and the lifeguards (some of which were cute, but who displayed a very different body aesthetic than I’m used to seeing in a lifeguard) told everyone to get out of the water until further notice.

The thunderstorm, accompanied by green sky and swirling clouds, rolled in quickly, hurling lightning bolts down upon the ocean. Nature put on a light show for a few minutes, and then the sky opened. We watched from the bluffs overlooking the town shore and lagoon for a few minutes, and then made a run to the car to avoid the soaking. We got a bit wet, but within 10 seconds of making into Rosie (my car’s name — yes, I’m somewhat insane), the gushing started.

We wanted to see more of the light show, so we drove down the coast to York Beach, parked at their Brighton-esque town beach, and watched the storm come in there.

Lightning’s bloody incredible. Especially by the seashore.

On the way back, some lightning stuck quite close to the side of I-95, panicking the traffic for few seconds. Scary as it initially is, I love the sound….

In today’s NY Times, this article describes the “day-after” reaction to the General Convention. But you gotta hear this quote, from Alice Woodward, of Colorado Springs: “It’s not enough that we leave them alone,” Ms. Woodward continued, referring to gays and lesbians. “They just demand that we accept. But I’ll stay with this church no matter what. If we end up in a tent, I won’t like it, but I’ll accept that.”

 *Heavy sarcasm follows*

 Yes, we really do appreciate that you don’t put us in prison or kill us anymore, Ms. Woodward. Sounds like it was grave disappointment to you that no longer occurs. Shockingly, since we are your equals in every way, we’d like to be treated as your equals, not merely “put up with.”

It’s just depressing to see such blatant bigotry and no apparent shame about it.