(no subject)

So more birthday wishes have been popping up, and now I am feeling a little uncomfortable, because I really wasn't fishing, and I have so far been a complete non-starter where other people's birthdays are concerned.

So...Happy Birthday to pola_bear, and I'll try and do better from now on!

New site stuff

My website now has two crosswords on it! Prompted by ffutures's discovery of one piece of crossword-making software, I went looking and found one I liked better from the nice people at Puzzlers' Cave. Some of the answers can be found on the site, others are general sf, and still others are general general, and the clues are supposed to be moderately cryptic/sneaky. Let me know if they're either too easy or too difficult... (EDIT: or just leave me blindly groping about in a vacuum. No really. It's okay. I'll just sit here in the dark...*sniffle* :) Obviously crosswords don't float other people's boats the way they do mine.)

A missed point

With trepidation (and probably softening of the brain) I dip my toe into the burning petrol again...

filkertom and others have been commenting on Obama's appointment of an anti-gay-marriage pastor to speak at his inauguration, and asking, with brows furrowed in honest puzzlement, "how does someone else's marriage affect him?"

To ask this, to assume that this is the important question, is to miss the point by a hundred and thirty seven miles, as I've pointed out on a number of occasions, and to fail to understand your opponents by that much is to diminish to a serious degree your chances of ever reaching an accommodation with them, which short of killing them is the only way to end this rhubarb.

Disclaimer that no-one ever reads: I do not agree with these people nor am I opposed to gay marriage as should have been obvious to anyone who reads this journal at all regularly. I've taken my knocks for uncomplicatedly opposing Prop 8, so you could at least listen to me while I explain this about the other side to you.

Assuming for the moment, outlandish as it may seem, that this Warren person is sincere in his Christian belief...it doesn't have to affect him. There's this story, see, that the Christians tell, about a guy who got mugged and was lying in the road wounded and broke, and only one person stopped and helped him, and that was the ideal held up by Jesus to his disciples. It didn't affect the man from Samaria that this guy had got himself robbed and beaten, but he saw a fellow human being in trouble and wanted to help.

Now supporters of Prop 8, those who are sincere in their beliefs (yes, I know that phrase doesn't compute because you can't imagine how anyone could sincerely believe such nonsense, just file it somewhere and move on), they see a whole lot of people in trouble with God. God (and I've said this before as well) isn't a choice to them, he's not negotiable. He's like gravity. He's THERE and he has RULES and if you break them you will go to HELL and that's true as far as they know whether they like it or not. It really isn't any of their business who other people marry...but they wouldn't be good Christians if they did not try to save people from the pains of hell, and if that means dissolving marriages that are not made according to the rules of their God, then they'll do it. Not to interfere would, to them, make them the same as those people who stood by while Kitty Genovese was murdered.

None of that matters to the people whose marriages, legally entered into, are now threatened, of course, or to those whose view of God is more modern and flexible and New Testament, or to members of other faiths, or to atheists. And you don't have to try to get inside these people's heads, to understand that they genuinely think they're helping. But it might help to bring a good ending to this fight just a little closer.

Well...

Rudolph the red-nosed smallship1
Had a very shiny nose.

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
from the Christmas Song Generator.

Get your own song :

...I could hardly let that one pass, could I?

(thanks to dickgloucester)