What’s The Recipe For Gay?

I was just poking around Pharyngula, and I saw this post. It turns out that, unbeknownst to me, some Catholics are promoting the idea that the UN has a secret agenda to make half the world gay in the next 20 years. Unfortunately, they don’t spill the beans on how they go about making people turn gay. It makes sense that it could be done, though, as we know that the fundagelicals are able to turn someone back from being gay with prayer and retreats.

What is the recipe for gay? I have gay friends, maybe they will let me in on the secret. I know I’m not gay, so perhaps it can be found in the things I dislike, from marmalade to top 40 music. But there’s such a vast amount of data to move through, and it could be combinations, like a minimum of 2 hours of top 40 music per day mixed with marmalade sandwiches and regular exposure to true crime novels. I don’t know how I’ll figure it out without someone helping me to understand.

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Who Knew Pope Ratzi Would Say That???

Oh wait. I did. Pope Ratzi the Terrible gave his State of the World address, and people are acting like it’s a shock that he said that same sex marriage and abortion were threats to the future of human life. It isn’t. The Catholic Church has always taken this stance. Pope John Paul II, arguably the most progressive Pope that Holy Mother Church has ever known, was against abortion and considered gay marriage a “part of a new ideology of evil, perhaps more insidious and hidden, which attempts to pit human rights against the family and against man.” And Pope Ratzi is anything but a progressive.

People can act as bewildered as they like about it, but the fact remains that the Catholic Church feels very strongly that these are evil attacks on the goodness of humanity. Now, I know some gay-positive Catholics, and I’m sure they’re annoyed by this because the word of Pope Ratzi isn’t the be all and end all of their personal faith experience, and they’re right in that. But this group you belong to, this group who you think has your ticket to an afterlife of awesome, they don’t agree with you on this. In fact, they think that gay marriage and abortions and condoms and pulling out are ways to get God to hate you for all eternity. If that’s not the God you believe in, maybe it’s time to question why your tithes go to supporting a homophobic, anti-choice agency.

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Well That’s Just A Grotesque Look Into Someone Else’s Mind

I just read a yucky on Pharyngula. It seems an evolutionary psychologist who writes for Scientific American named Jesse Bering has a bit of an unhealthy fascination with PZ Myers, and made a Facebook comment that essentially said, “If PZ doesn’t want to bang his students, he’s just weird”. Seriously, look at the image capture and read it, but I suggest not doing so if you want to think the best of random strangers.
Now, I’ve taught at the post-secondary level. It was a technical college and not a University, but there were many beautiful women in my classes, and in my case, they were all age-appropriate for me. However, as much as I would certainly notice their physical attractiveness, I was never tempted to cross the line. As someone in a position of trust, I just didn’t go there in my brain. 
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Just Wow – I Am My Brother’s Identical Twin Sister

So much about this story says wow. It’s the story of identical twins. Identical twins named Nicole and Jonas. They are 14 years old, and there’s a pretty striking difference between them, one that is much. One is a boy, and one is a girl. Physiologically, they’re both boys, but Nicole is on the road to changing that.

There’s wow in how different the two twins are. I mean, they came from the same fertilized egg. They share a good amount of DNA, which means that the building blocks began the same. Brain DNA changes through retrotransposons and I assume that means that there can be radical differences in brain chemistry even with those same building blocks, but it still seems amazing that two such completely different identities can come from those building blocks, and in such a short time. I imagine that the Christian Right would use this as an example of how God is bigger than DNA, except that God wouldn’t make a boy turn all homo in their eyes.

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The Dating Deal-Breaker Question

While I’m sure that there are probably others weighing in on the topic, I have seen this posed first by an article called Should Scientists Date People Who Believe In Astrology by Greg Laden (I found the article on FTB through my Google Reader, but I can’t figure out which FTB blog it’s on to link to it) and later in an article called Is religion a dating deal breaker on Blag Hag. I don’t believe that this is a question that deserves a broad answer, as I think we are able to date according to whatever standards we personally hold. And I’m certain that the various people who’ve written on this issue aren’t laying down dogma for all, but relating their own personal experiences, which is what I shall now do.

I have said many times on this blog that I was raised up a good Christian lad. My faith was already deeply on the wane when I got married to an agnostic. Over the next few years, my faith would fade completely where hers would suddenly appear. Despite dealing with the differences in ideology as well as we could, it added a strain on things. That was made worse as we divorced and her faith grew and changed, as did my stridency in atheism.

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The Dating Difficulty (All The Sex, Atheism, And Worry Crap You Never Wanted To Know About Me)

PZ Myers got me thinking this morning with this post. It’s a cute web comic about dating and atheists, but I don’t know that I’ve ever addressed the issue here, and I figured it made sense to do so.

First off, as regular readers of the blog know, I am in a great relationship with The Lovely Lady, and I’m pretty sure that dating just isn’t something I’ll have to do ever again. That is such good news.

You see, I suck at dating. I’m not an unattractive man (despite the moniker) but I did not have much dating experience as a kid. Then I got married and spent fourteen years not dating, and then one day it all came apart. And that was where things got weird.

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Queer As Earthquakes

I was unaware of the obvious link between gay marriage and massive earthquakes, but fortunately for me, Jen McCreight shared the information. I always thought earthquakes were caused by the shifting of plates along fault lines, but clearly it’s actually all about homos.

But what I really wanted to horn in on were the comments made by Rabbi Levin, a man who I’m sure considers himself to be quite a fair and godly man. On the topic of homosexuality, they quote him thusly: ”‘We don’t hate homosexuals,’ he says. ‘I feel bad for homosexuals. It’s a revolt against God and literally, there’s hell to pay.’”

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Sexy Self Stimulation

I’m all for masturbation. I haven’t done it anywhere near as regularly because the Lovely Lady has a way of keeping me smiling, but when I was single, I had a grip that would crush bricks. And I couldn’t care less who knows it. I’m human, and humans find the act of masturbating entirely enjoyable. So do other primates, and I’m sure any number of other creatures in the wild world pass a lazy afternoon with thoughts of the supermodel of their choice.

Not only is masturbation fun, it’s normal. I know lots of people who will argue till they are blue in the face that they don’t masturbate, but those people are either totally sexually repressed people who feel they have to lie about it or they are totally sexually repressed people who choose to make themselves feel bad. Either way, I don’t want to be one of those people.

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Another Long-Overdue Victory

In California, a bill has been passed to require their schools to teach the historical contributions of homosexuals. No, this does not mean Queer History Month, but it means that gay people are (gasp) treated the same as everyone else in history class. The bill won’t become law until Jerry Brown (that same Jerry Brown from the Dead Kennedys song California Uber Alles) either agrees to it or does nothing.

Heck, I wasn’t aware that Arnold had ceased to be the governor of California, let alone that they re-elected Brown! I’m so in touch…

At any rate, I have to say that this sort of legislation always surprises me. Why would history educators choose to ignore the contributions of homosexuals? Was Alan Turing‘s contribution to computer science and the war effort lessened by his being gay?

All I can say is it’s about time.

Jim

A Ruler To Dawkins’ Knuckles

I have a huge amount of respect for Richard Dawkins, so I’m going to hope that his comments towards Rebecca Watson from Skeptchick over her recent comments to the atheist community were a mistake on his part. In case you are wondering, this all stemmed from a video that Rebecca made about how she had been propositioned in an elevator by a fellow skeptic. Her comments were anything but offensive. Basically, she was saying to skeptical males everywhere that this is the wrong place and time, and that for a woman by herself in a foreign city late at night, it’s a little scary.

Dawkins response was to craft a fake letter (I believe this happened on Pharyngula) to “Muslima” telling her that it was unfortunate that she had her genitals mutilated and all, but look at what the poor women in the West have to deal with… men asking them if they want some coffee! ZOMG!

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