BizarroBlog: Jerky

Two people love each other. Why shouldn’t they have the opportunity to get married?

Churches Putting Town Out of Business – Los Angeles Times – They are not the words one expects to hear from a politician or a Southerner, and Leonard Scarcella is both: “Our city has an excessive number of churches.”

Scarcella is mayor of this Houston-area community, which has 51 churches and other religious institutions packed into its 7 square miles.

My solution : tax the churches.

Seriously. Want to have a house of worship, agree to pay property tax. If a religious establishment want to give back to their community, this would be one way to do so.

Circumcision ‘could cut HIV risk’

Interesting, but the article says nothing about “why”. Just says that circumcision cuts the risk of HIV without giving any supporting data, other than talking about computer models. If this was completely true, wouldn’t the HIV infection rate be higher in Europe than in America?

Women bishops and gays ? That’s the church for me – Comment – Times Online

And, yes, I know it’s not exactly the same for gays, as there is some scripture in the Old Testament (though not in Christ’s teachings) that forbids homosexuality. Yet there is some pretty rum stuff in the Old Testament, Leviticus in particular.

Are women still to be deemed “unclean”, “impure” and untouchable for seven days in every month? Are priests with a physical disability to be banned? After all, God instructed Moses to tell Aaron: “No man among your descendants for all time who has any physical defect is to come and present the food of his God. No man with a defect is to come, whether a blind man, a lame man, a man stunted or overgrown, a man deformed in foot or hand, or with misshapen brows or a film over his eye or a discharge from it, a man who has a scab or eruption or has had a testicle ruptured.”

I bet there is a bishop or two in the Anglican Communion with misshapen brows or filmy eyes.

Leviticus also prohibits tattoos, beards with the edges shaved, and garments woven with two kinds of yarn. That puts paid to polycotton vestments then. We should not eat meat that has any blood in it, or any meat from camels, rock-badgers, hares or pigs. Shellfish are out too, but locusts are fine.

It is all very well for conservatives to say that we liberals cannot pick and choose what teachings we follow from the Bible. But they do the same. How many of them abjure prawn cocktails? Do they refuse to take out a mortgage or put money on deposit because of the injunction against usury? Do they wear no clothes with added Lycra?

Wondering up to the museum stage and just discovering a band. Oteil Burbridge & The Peacemakers were awesome and just a new band I happened to walk into. Very “free” band, make me want to do something similar.

Standing at the front of the stage for Derek Trucks. Awesome band (again) and just a great group of musicians who (again) made very “free” music. I liked the Peacemakers better, but I love Derek’s style of playing.

Again, I wound up heading up toward the museum stage…although this time it was to use the restroom. While I was standing in line, I could look to my left and see the back of the stage and the drummer’s head. The drummer started playing one of the best drum solos I’ve heard in years. So after I “finished up”, I decided to just sit down on the sidewalk and eat a smoked sausage and hear this great band, that turned out to be Robert Walter’s “Super Heavy Organ“.

I kept saying, I think I’ve seen that drummer before….it is Johnny Vidacovich {see also} one of the “masters” of New Orleans style drumming. Never saw him live or heard his playing before, but it’s really made me want to pick up some more of that stuff. Just awesome.

Overall, even though I saw very little of the Allmon Brothers, it was a great evening, musically. Wonderful drumming and music from people who aren’t gonna be on mainstream radio. Made me want to play again. One of the best musical times I’ve had in a long time. Almost religious….

6/7/2006 – Gay Marriage Ban Was Just Pandering Legislation – Opinion – Chattanoogan.com – Important legislation under this current group of senators include English as a national language, gay marriage, Terry Schiavo (one person), and burning the American flag. All of it is useless, pandering legislation that does nothing for the country and the betterment of anyone’s life.

Exactly!

Why do we care if two men or two women want to marry, when we have high gas prices, schools that can’t even educate our kids, unprotected levees and a war out of control? Those are more serious and impact more Americans than same-sex marriage.

With some of the names listed, I had kinda a “duh” moment. But it was rather eye opening.

American Ethnic Geography

As you can see by the map, I’m dealing with a lot of fucking Baptists.

It’s not easy being anything other than a Baptist in the south. I remember being 16 and going to this huge Baptist church in Flintstone, GA. They had this Wednesday-only event for Teens called, SWAT. I can’t remember what it meant. But they had Christian bands play, good message, but got where my budding cynicism kicked in. Having some kid get up and play a “Christian” version of Bon Jovi’s “Wanted Dead or Alive” was the beginning.

I had just spent my first “real” church experience in this little old Nazarene church. Not a bad church, lots of old (70′s and up) people and about 10 kids my age (10-16). I had a lot of friends going to this SWAT program, so I started going and eventually was asked to be “saved”. Mind you, I thought that “I” was the one who needed to come up with that idea. Granted, the first time I was saved it was on the side of a road by some strange people from one of the more cult-like Baptist churches in the area…but that’s another story entirely.

This time, I had this giant man, a coach I believe, ask me if I wanted to be saved, so I said “yes”. So they took me to this pew and they asked if I went to church before and I said something along the lines of “I went to a Nazarene church for years”. And this guy, Coach, wound up saying something along the lines of “well, I think they worship the same God”. And after that, I wound up being stunned for about 5 years. Honestly, I only went there about a year but it shaped my early impressions of what *I* wanted to be like spiritually….and it sure wasn’t “Coach”.

Part of the reason I identify more with the title of Agnostic, is because of events like that one. A few years back I went to a Baptist church, that I honestly enjoyed for a bit…they preached love and tolerance..enough to set me back on track. But that’s what it’s all about. Love one another.

Love and spiritually shouldn’t be based on an organization or a title, every religion has their basic tenets that have their equals among all of the religions. To step back and see this, makes it impossible for me to say that I’m Christian, Buddhist, or Pagan.

The problem, going back to the maps, is that I had this opinion in my high school years….way before I even knew what an agnostic was. So how do you self-identify when you have no one else to identify with?

I went to school with Atheists, a whole family of them, good people very nice and polite. But just SO outside of the norm of a rural high school. I went to school with about a thousand Baptists, a few Catholics (about 4), and two atheists. This is not diversity.

Unfortunately, I would see how people would use the church as their weekly little social club. Coming in and gossiping, dressing to the 9′s, just anything aside from worshiping a deity or deities.

You’re surrounded by this religious peer-pressure and not even allowed to discover who you are. We taught to be afraid of making decisions, we’re taught to be afraid of believing differently, we’re taught to be like everyone else. Maybe this is just from being a right-brained person, but with everyone being unique, why should I care about a pink-haired person going to church? Why can’t a homosexual worship God? Why can’t someone believe that there is a higher power and we just call them by different names?

We have all of these questions and so long as someone is a good person, with love in their heart, why should it matter what title they hold? Why do we have to try to convert these people to a belief structure that isn’t ideal for individuality?