Archive for March, 2008

Gay Lib

Friday, March 28th, 2008

I was listening to some old George Carlin the other day. He has a routine called “Gay Lib.” Now this is from 1974, so while it’s very enlightened for its time, it’s probably a little uninformed by today’s standards. Now, in this routine he puts forth the notion that being gay is normal but not natural. The reason? He claims that if nature had intended for some of us to be gay, that we wouldn’t have been made to share the same sexual organs that are used by heterosexuals.

So I put the question to God. Did the lack of separate sexual organs indicate that we’re supposed to be straight?

She not only told me that it didn’t, she pointed out that the organs we have are already doing double duty. George said that if nature had been in charge then we wouldn’t have had to share organs, but even straight people are sharing them, using them for eliminating bodily waste as well as for pursuing pleasure. She also pointed out that we’re designed to fit together in all sorts of interesting ways and that if she really didn’t want us to be queer, we’d find it a lot harder to find slots that fit our tabs.

So I suppose the bottom line was, all’s well that fits well.

It’s a Dead Man’s Party

Friday, March 21st, 2008

Here it is, Good Friday. The day that Christians commemorate the killing of Jesus Christ, celebrating the forgiveness of Original Sin that his selfless death enabled.

So the rough timeline is that Jesus is killed on Good Friday, rises from the dead on Easter Sunday, and then wanders around for forty days before ascending to Heaven.

I was musing about that with God this week and we didn’t really see eye to eye. See to me, this makes Jesus the original zombie story. Now when you start talking to God about Zombie Jesus, he doesn’t tend to participate much in the conversation. I’d ask if Jesus turned a sort of greenish gray, and God wouldn’t answer. I’d ask if Jesus was a slow zombie, like in “Night of the Living Dead,” or a fast zombie like the recent “I Am Legend,” but God wouldn’t answer. I suppose it’s kind of tacky to ask a father about his son being a zombie, but I didn’t know anyone else that would have any inside info.

And one other thing that God wouldn’t comment on… Does a zombie craving brains have anything to do with the crown of thorns?

The Drinking of the Green

Friday, March 14th, 2008

Monday is St. Patrick’s Day. It’s a little unusual in that it’s a Christian Holy Day that doesn’t appear to have been stolen from any sort of Pagan celebration. That hasn’t stopped it, though, from devolving into something rather un-church-like.

It’s a day, in the United States at least, where vast numbers of people celebrate the notion of being Irish. Even those of us with some actual Irish heritage tend to celebrate the notion of being Irish rather than the actuality of being Irish.

What does that mean? It means wearing green, because Ireland, due to its verdant splendor, is called the Emerald Isle. It means professing a belief in Leprechauns, though not necessarily to the point of eating Lucky Charms for breakfast. It means eating corned beef and cabbage for dinner. And it means drinking. Drinking bad American beers dyed green or good Irish ales and whiskeys left just as they are.

So come Monday, tip a glass to me. I’ll hoist one in honor of everyone reading this and God promises he’ll drink a separate toast for each of you. He can do that, he doesn’t get hangovers.

Onan, Not Again

Friday, March 7th, 2008

God and I were having one of those rambling conversations and somewhere in it I got a new insight. Somehow we got around to the subject of onanism, which is an old obscurant term for masturbation, and to the biblical story from which the term comes. Just in case you’re not all up on your Bible, here’s a quick version: Onan agreed to provide for his brother’s wife’s sexual needs after his brother was killed by God. However, Onan didn’t want any bastards so rather than completing the act he “spilled” his seed “on the ground.” God didn’t like this, so he killed Onan as well. From this, certain interpreters of the Bible have concluded that any non-procreative use of semen is a sin and so masturbation is bad stuff.

Now don’t ask me how I made the connection, but my great insight is that, tenuous justifications of Onan aside, the real reason to disallow mastubation is ancient homophobia. See the Bible teaches us that we should love our neighbors as we love ourselves. Well, if one of the ways that we love ourselves is masturbation then it follows that we should masturbate our neighbors, even the ones that are the same sex.

God told me that my logic and train of thought were no worse than those of many clergy and other Bibleists. Before I could get too proud, he then pointed out that many of them were crazy, or at least just wrong. We verbally wrangled a bit and I never did get him to flat out tell me I was wrong, but he did tell me that if people need to go to two-thousand-year-old books for justifications for their prejudices that just maybe they should rethink their lives a little.