Budget cuts, budget cuts…
0So, this is interesting:
So budget cuts have shut down the property crimes division of the Spokane Police Department.
Is our society filled with short sighted idiots?
Let’s map this out shall we:
1. The police shut down the Property Crimes division and stop investigating property crimes.
2. More criminals begin to steal property due to lack of punishment and investigation.
3. Citizens are increasingly made victims of crime with no recourse.
4. Citizens purchase weapons and use deadly force to protect their property
5. Increasing numbers of criminals are killed in commission of crimes.
6. CRIMINALS purchase weapons and begin to use deadly force in the commission of their crimes.
7. Innocent citizens are killed due to criminals using deadly force.
8. Citizens increase protection measures
9. Criminals increase deadly force.
This is stupid.
Replies to two stupid arguments against gays in military
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Photo by Aaron Vince
Hooray! Today is the first day that the ban on people who identify as gay, lesbian and bisexual in the military! About time. I grew up in a military town and facilitated a support group that catered to gay, lesbian and bisexual members of the military for 10 years. I saw my share of tragic moments resulting from the ban. People dishonorably thrown out of the military and even imprisoned.
Now, we stand on the precipice of a new age. Of course there are those who disagree, and they’re violently verbal, and occasionally violently violent. So there’s gonna be some turmoil. I have plumbed the deepest depths of disgusting trollery, the internet comment boards, and have come up with some stupid arguments as to why lesbian, gay and bisexual people shouldn’t serve.
(Note: Most of these comments are addressed to men because most of the times I have heard them have been from men. This is not to say that I have not heard these very same arguments from women. Please change pronouns and genders at your leisure.)
1. THE SHOWERS!! NO!!!
We’ll start with the one that I have heard over and over again for years:
“I don’t want to shower with a gay guy!”
First of all, you already are. Gays did not pop into existence the minute that this ban was lifted. Since your shiny little butt was taking showers in school, you’ve been in the shower with gay guys.
YES, ITS TRUE!
You didn’t notice? There were no raging erections? No staring? No come-ons? No rape attempts?
This is because gay people aren’t as perverted as you’ve been led to believe. Sure, as a gay male, I am capable of recognizing the beauty in (certain) male forms. But I am also capable of self-control. I’m not a werewolf. I don’t get within 10 feet of a penis and lose my composure.
Honestly, I at the very most, if you are particularly attractive, I might sneak a peak. That is the very most I would do. You would not be aware of it and everyone else is doing it too, including you. Guys just do that…often for comparison purposes. However, I have never, and would never, even entertain the idea of making sexual advances toward anyone in the showers.
In every communal shower, in every city, in every nation, there are gay and lesbian people showering with non-gay and lesbian people.
Exactly what are you afraid of? Examine for a moment what it is that makes you think that showering with someone who might be attracted to you is bad?
Let’s play a little imagination game. Imagine that the scenario from the movie, Starship Troopers, were to happen. The military needed people so bad that they just scooped up everyone with a pulse. Men and women in that movie showered together.
Starship Troopers Shower Scene
If you, as a heterosexual male, were placed in a situation where you had to shower with both males and females, what would happen? Would you get an erection? Would you rape someone? Would you hit on women in the shower? Would the view of uncovered breasts and pubic hair make you lose your composure?
Of course it wouldn’t. You’re not a werewolf. You’d probably, if she were particularly attractive, sneak a quick peek, and go about your business. You’d spend minimal time in the shower, just like everyone else, and you’d get on with your day. In fact, over time, it would become no more unusual than showering with anyone else.
We’re no different than you.
REALITY CHECK:
If someone does make unwanted sexual advances toward you in the shower, regardless of sexuality or gender, it’s inappropriate. You have every right to react negatively. I would advise against violence, because that will cause YOU more trouble than you need. But, certainly file a complaint against them. They have it coming. It’s the wrong thing to do. Period.
2. I KEEP MY PRIVATE LIFE TO MYSELF, WHY CAN’T THEY??
Another adventure into shallowness of thought and double standards.
For example, lets say I’m working in the military with a fictional person, named Ron.
Ron would like for the world to be sterilized of mentions of the existence of gay people because he finds it uncomfortable. Not usually an attitude that I attribute with confidence in one’s sexuality, but that’s a topic for another post.
Private life means: things that happen when I am not at work.
Does Ron truly want the workplace discussion saved only for work related topics? If so, then I would not want to work with him.
Or does Ron mean SEX LIFE?
Again, gay people aren’t nearly as different from heterosexual people as you think.
Ron means sex life. He thinks that mentioning that my romantic partner is of the male variety means that I’m talking about my sex life. But it doesn’t. Not any more then his mentioning his wife & kids is bringing up his sex life.
The word “wife” implies that Ron’s romantic partners are of the female variety.
However, isn’t it also implied, when Ron says “my wife and kids” that he is having sexual relations with his wife? It’s actually evidenced by the fact that children have been mentioned. He has at some point inseminated his wife. That involves sexual activity of a most intimate nature. He’s probably put his bare penis in her vagina and injected sperm, which eventually reached an egg and fertilized it. This was probably done in a bed, and there was probably sweating and grunting-
OHH..ITS DISGUSTING! I DON’T WANT TO IMAGINE THAT!! HOW DARE HE TELL ME THAT??!!
Oh, wait…he didn’t. I INFERRED IT, remember? He just said “my wife and kids.”
Just because my mind went to sexual things I’d rather not think about when he mentioned his wife and kids, should I then tell him to keep his private life to himself?
Of course not. Our society politely assumes that there are more than one level to a relationship. There is a private level and a public level. The public level consists of socially consumable things we do. Go shopping, camping, eat dinner at Olive Garden, make a list of people to invite to the party, etc. The private level has things like what size dildo is owned, if any, the number of times the couple has sex during the week, the time they played pirate and wench, that time he cried when they watched Annie together, etc. Things that no one outside the relationship has any business knowing.
Gay people are just as capable of making that distinction as heterosexual people and do so regularly.
Don’t confuse your discomfort at your graphic imaginings of my private sex life with my stating that I have a monogamous relationship with a man.
The Dawn of Synthetic Meat
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This is not synthetic meat...it's real. From what I read synth meat doesn't look as good.
So, recently the good scientific types at the Maasctricht University in the Netherlands have announced that they will have a fully synthetic meat sausage in 6 months and hamburger in a year.
This isn’t Gardenburger or tofu, this is real meat, which doesn’t come from an animal. It’s animal tissue grown in a lab.
Those to whom I have mentioned this, have been less than enthusiastic about the whole thing. I, on the other hand, couldn’t be more thrilled. This is a HUGE advance is human morality.
I will happily partake of this synthetic meat. I will be first in line for the sausages and I will, after it’s arrival to market, eat nothing but synthetic hamburger. As other types of meat arrive on the market, I will switch solely to them. I urge others to do so as well.
Meat and Me
I absolutely refuse to kill almost any living creature, with exceptions for any animal/insect that is attempting to harm me, any other human or pet animal, or an animal which is terminally suffering. I will not hunt, nor will I fish. I do not associate with people who kill animals for sport. I even remove bees, wasps, and spiders from my home with the clever use of a glass and a card.
Hypocritially, however, I do eat meat because I’ve gotten used to it and it’s easier & more satisflying than not eating meat. Humans have evolved to eat meat. I am a human.
However, humans have also evolved to have consciousness. In this consciousness we have the blessing/curse of memory and empathy. I can imagine the terror a creature feels at being killed and I would remember that terror if I were ever to inflict it upon another living creature.
I despise the fact that I have to live off the profits of the destruction of another creature. I do what I am capable of doing to lessen that, which means I don’t kill stuff.
As we advance technologically, there will be less need for us to kill other creatures for sustenance. We have already surpassed the need to kill other creatures to keep warm, as we’ve developed plants and synthetic fabrics that have not only achieved, but surpassed what animal skins and fur were able to do for us. Anyone who uses fur and skins at this point technologically has no excuse and I consider them immoral and needlessly cruel.
Now I am happy to see that we will soon no longer need to kill animals for sustenance. Living a cruelty free existence will become a true option. This is the dawn of a great moment in human history!
photo by Suat Eman / FreeDigitalPhotos.net (click photo for portfolio)
Warren Jeffs..and the difference between polygamists and child rapists
0So, it seems that Warren Jeffs is going to spend the rest of his life (or until he gets paroled) in jail. The reason he’s going to go to jail is because he, and his cohorts, forced children to marry him and then have sex with him.
I remember hearing about polygamy when I was a kid. It was always associated with all manners of moral depravity. There was even a person of my acquaintance who was, due to an excess of stupid, accidentally married to more than one person for a short, quickly remedied, period of time. He was deemed to be morally corrupt by those who whispered about him.
I will admit it proudly: I have no problem with polyamory. What is the difference between polygamy and polyamory, you might ask. Well, marriage is the difference. Polygamy specifically involves marrying/being married to more than one person. Polyamory, means loving/being loved by (in the romantic sense), more than one person.
I’m really iffy on the idea of marriage anyway. Marriage, in the secular sense, is just the government mucking around in our collective business. Though, to be fair, the government probably wants to make sure that it’s citizens are being procreated in a reasonable manner…so I suppose it has some stake there. However, the legalities of marriage are the only differences between Polygamy and Polyamory. Marriage between two persons is full of little laws and special priveledges, numbering in the thousands. We have yet to work out how that works between two men, much less between 3 or 4…so I will leave that to the future to deal with. I have no moral qualms with it…I just see it as a paperwork headache of epic proportions.
Speaking of morality…
Warren Jeffs is a pedophile, rapist, and a religious nutjob who believed, because his religion told him so, that he was superior to women and thus deserved several of them to wait upon him. His crimes were many, and loving more than one person was not among them. I am not sure why, but, in modern society, we tend to lump child brides, forced marriage, child sexual, emotional and physical abuse, and other awful things under the heading of polygamy. This couldn’t be more off-base.
Let’s take a look a bit closer:
Pedophilia is NOT inherent to poly relationships. It becomes a feature when religion gets involved. Jeffs needed to have plenty of wives of child birthing age so he could populate the planet with his progeny while he was still fertile. The younger he got to them the better, because they would be fertile longer and create more boys and girls to continue this cycle and exponentially increase the population of their cult. The girls are kept in seclusion away from societal influence so that they would never understand that for a 50 year-old man to collect children to impregnate is wrong. But that’s religious pedophilia, not polyamory. Love doesn’t really make an appearance..this was about power and adherence to inherited religiosity. Sadly, Jeffs is as much a victim of this as he is a perpetrator, since he was raised to believe that the laws of his religion superseded any other law, civic or just plain common decency.
Polyamory, on the other hand, is subject to the moral rules and obligations society puts on everyone. If a consenting adult human falls in love with more than one other consenting adult human, then as long as everything is equal, what’s the problem? If it’s about love, as romantic relationships should be, then I can see no justifiable reason to oppose it.
Now, when I’ve spoken to those who are opposed to poly things, some of them say that there is a power differential that can cause problems. That may be true. But that is really a fine-tuning issue. As long as everyone is consenting adults, then it’s the same kind of residual, usually assumed male-dominance, problems that occur in any relationship with a male in it. Some men are equal minded. Some men, and far too many women, believe that men are superior to women, usually for religious reasons. These people are horrible, terrible, and stupid, in my most humble of opinions. I stand in eternal aghastment to them and shake my head in furious awe. But, as society progresses, this kind of power structure diminishes.
Perhaps, because I am gay, I have difficutly seeing the reason in what I deem as irrational rules and regulations on human romantic relationships. An 18 year-old can’t be in love with a 40 year-old. Why not? A man cannot love another man. Why not? A black person cannot love a white person? Why not? Tall, skinny, fat, old, young, weird, whatever. As long as everyone involved is capable of consent, and provides this consent, then it falls smack in the middle of none-of-anyone-else’s-damn-business. Period.
We need to seperate the poly from the immoral. There is nothing immoral about love.
Holy smokes! Up in smoke!
0I had a website here. I really did. It had all sort of pretty graphics and, though I wasn’t the most frequent article writer in the world, I did write articles occasionally, and they were quite good. Sadly, I arrived one day to find my site completely gone. No explanation, no recovery.
So, bygones.
I will attempt to recreate some things that I had on the site. I will attempt to write more articles than I have in the past. Cuz that what I do… See you soon!