I was reading the Bible on the PATH train last night (I'm a great proponent of on-train Bible-reading—there's nothing else you're supposed to be doing, there are no distractions, and you can't use your cell phone), and I admit I was doing the I Ching thing. Normally I don't recommend this method, as it's superstitious—you open the Bible to a random page in hope of finding divine wisdom that appertains to you at that very moment—but this time it opened to a particularly moving passage, Luke 8:48: "And he said unto her, Daughter, be of good comfort: thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace."

For a woman searching the Bible for reassuring words from Jesus, those certainly seemed made to order—even more so because Jesus did heal me from a terrible spiritual and physical ailment—clinical depression—and I believe His hands continue to reshape me.

But there was still five minutes to go before the train arrived at my stop, so I looked at the context of the quote. It's part of a sequence of events: Jairus, ruler of the synagogue, asks Jesus to heal his daughter; while Jesus is heading to the ruler's house, a woman touches the hem of his garment and is healed of her bleeding ailment; news comes that the ruler's daughter is dead; Jesus goes to the house anyway and brings the girl back to life.

What struck me about the sequence was that it was a story within a story. It's very rare to find a sequence in the Gospels like that where a story begins, another story interrupts it, and then the narrative suddenly did a "meanwhile, back at the ranch" and returns to the original story. It seemed there had to be meaning in the sequence of events, as well as the events themselves.

Suddenly it occurred to me that the woman being healed represented Jesus' healing the Gentiles, bringing them to him. In a similar manner, the girl, being the daughter of the ruler of the synagogue, represented the Jews.

Luke wrote that "virtue" had gone out of Jesus. My Bible linked that back to Luke 5:17: "And the power of the Lord was present to heal them." That made me think of the hymn: "There is power in the blood."

If there's power in the blood, then Jesus didn't just give that woman virtue. He gave her a transfusion.

By contrast, when Jesus raised the dead girl, he took her by the hand and told her to arise. That suggested to me that while Gentiles need Jesus to replace their lifeblood with His own, the Jewish people already have God's substance—in the form of the Hebrew Bible. So Jews then need the touch from Jesus that will infuse the understanding of God that they already have with new and transformative life. I myself certainly felt, when I first received the Holy Spirit, that the entire Bible came alive to me.

Looking at the two healing stories as a whole instead of as disconnected episodes, the message was clear to me: The Jews were the first to recognize their need for God, but the Gentiles were by and large the first to accept the message of the gospel. But the story is not complete until the Jews accept Jesus as well.

All that hit me in that last five minutes of my ride.

I pondered it more as I walked the nighttime streets back to my home. Luke makes a point of the fact that the girl was 12 years old. Wouldn't that be the age that Jewish girls were allowed to marry? So both Gentiles and Jews had to accept Jesus in order for the Bride of Christ—the Church—to be united with Jesus.

As soon as I got home, I did a Web search for the traditional age that Jewish girls could marry, and I found it was indeed 12. I also looked up the name Jairus to see if there was any significance to it, as there pretty much always is with Biblical names, particularly New Testament ones. Although the Web sites I found weren't in agreement, it seemed that the most popular interpretation of Jairus was "God enlightens"—another sign of Jesus' bringing his light to the Jewish people.

It was then that I entered the Twilight Zone.

As I searched for verification of the meaning of Jairus's name, I found a page that had several writers' interpretation of the same miracle stories that I'd examined—and they'd all made exactly the same conclusions as I had.

I had no memory of ever coming across that interpretation of the stories before, though it's entirely possible I might have heard it in a sermon.

So it was with some surprise that I discovered a group of writers had come to the same conclusions as me. I can't say it was a shock—the Bible and Bible interpreters have been along a lot longer than I have. But it was still strange.

One of the writers said, "Mystically, however, Jairus comes after the healing of the woman, because when the fulness of the Gentiles has come in, then shall Israel be saved."

Another said, "But in the woman with the bloody flux, and the raising of the damsel, is shewn the salvation of the human race, which was so ordered by the Lord, that first some from Judaea, then the fulness of the Gentiles, might come in, and so all Israel might be saved."

That same writer added a connection that hadn't occurred to me—the woman had been ill for as long as the girl had been alive: "Again, the damsel was twelve years old, and the woman had suffered for twelve years, because the sinning of unbelievers was contemporary with the beginning of the faith of believers."

But this part was the real surprise: All those interpreters on the page I found were early Christian writers, compiled by Thomas Aquinas in his Catena Aurea (Golden Chain).

I would never have imagined the early Roman Catholic Church's putting so much emphasis on Paul's message in Romans 11, particularly verses 25 and 26: "...that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. And so all Israel shall be saved..."

I should note that the Catena Aurea chapter which contains the interpretions of the miracle stories also includes language about the Jewish people that, at least on the face of it, is disturbing—particularly Bede's writing that the hands of the Jews are "full of blood": "Again, our Lord raised the damsel by taking hold of her hand, because the hands of the Jews, which are full of blood, must first be cleansed, else the synagogue, which is dead, cannot rise again." But the overall message of recognition that God has a salvation plan for Jews as well as Gentiles—and that both will be saved together—is something I had not seen expressed so plainly in Catholic theology.

At the time that "The Passion of the Christ" was released, I wrote a great deal of contrarian pieces on this page, saying that regardless of the actual depiction of Jews in the film, I objected to Mel Gibson's replacement theology. I made an assumption that Gibson, being a traditionalist Catholic who rejects Vatican II, believed that God's promises to the Jewish were no longer valid—that they'd been usurped by the Church.

I still believe, based on what I know of Gibson and traditionalist Catholics (whose commitment to orthodoxy I respect even as I disagree with them on certain points), that Gibson's faith is likely based on a replacement-theology perspective. But what I've just read in Catena Aurea, combined with the changes of Vatican II and the Church's recent remarkable denouncement of not only anti-Semitism but also anti-Zionism, gives me a new and much more favorable impression of how the Church sees itself in relation to the Jewish people.

TRACKBACK: Dennis of Vita Mea offers an insightful response, drawing a rhetorical bead on Bede.
2:28 AM  |

Thursday, July 22, 2004

Kevin Walsh has put up a stunningly exhaustive page of photos and commentary from last Sunday's Forgotten NY tour of Lower Manhattan. You'll spot me in my Twiggy glasses, but there's much more to see—like the only clock in the U.S. that's embedded in a sidewalk.
10:53 PM  |

The Missing Drink

National Review's Andrew Stuttaford believes an upright monkey in a zoo is "evolution proved...once and for all." But the news reports note that the monkey is believed to have begun walking on its hind legs after suffering brain damage.

Is that what evolution's all about? If so, I'd better start drinking.
5:29 PM  |

It's my day off, so I don't have any new headlines to report, but Mark Shea fills the gap with a "golden" one of his own (at the top of the page). At my paper, we would say something like, "Army serves wee bit of food"—or some other variation on the standby "Wee bit of trouble." (Another standby is for stories of horses gone wild: "Tale of Whoa.")
2:34 PM  |

Checking my site's statistics this morning, I was honored to find that Fr. Phil Bloom of Seattle had linked to a recent Dawn Patrol post from his weekly homily. It's a good homily, too, drawing from a C.S. Lewis essay on prayer.
2:17 AM  |

The Hound of Heaven

Catholic seminarian Dennis's recent post with alternate lyrics to a well-known contemporary worship song had me laughing out loud.
2:03 AM  |

If you have iTunes, I recommend checking out the first album by Lee Feldman, Living It All Wrong, which just became available on that music service. (They've released his second album too.) I reviewed Living It All Wrong, one of my favorite albums of the '90s, for Salon and interviewed Feldman for the Forward.
1:44 AM  |

Did you hear Laura Ingraham's show yesterday? If so, please write me (dawn -at- dawneden.com) and let me know what she said about Teenwire. I heard she mentioned it, and would love to know if it sounded like she got her information from The Dawn Patrol—and if she credited this here blog.
12:47 AM  |

Wednesday, July 21, 2004

Film Forum Says Ron Issue's a Non-Issue

Here is the reply I juts received from Film Forum director Karen Cooper to the e-mail I sent yesterday:

Dear Dawn Eden:

We appreciate the fact that you are a longterm member. A Ronald Reagan Film Festival is the kind of repertory programming selected by my colleague Bruce Goldstein. I select the premieres. He selects the classics. I will pass along your suggestion.

However, regarding your "worldview." I cannot determine if your desire for a Reagan festival is indicative of your poltical or movie-going taste. Should you be indicating, however, subtly, that you are a Reagan Republican, I think you'd be correct in assuming that my own political loyalties lie far from that camp. Nevertheless, in selecting the best new movies, I try to present just that: "the best," my personal politics aside.

Sincerely,

Karen Cooper
Director
Film Forum

I'm sending this reply:

Dear Karen,

Thank you for writing back to me promptly. I had posed my question on the phone to your membership director, and he recommended I put it to you, not Bruce Goldstein.

I appreciate your writing that you select the best new movies. But as director of the cinema, you do seem to be passing the buck. I wasn't sending a suggestion. I wrote you with an honest question, and you skirted answering it.

You mention your own political loyalties; that's abundantly clear in Film Forum's choice of new films. I'm aware of it, and I'm willing that some of my contribution money should fund it, because Film Forum is a multifaceted and vibrant cultural organization. But one of those facets--the one that most interests me, and the one where Film Forum among all New York's cinemas best supplies a need--is repertory programming.

My question, then, reflected a genuine concern that Film Forum's overt political views have saturated its repertory programming to the point that the organization's powers-that-be would dismiss with laughter the idea of a Reagan retrospective. It's a legitimate question from a member--regardless of whether or not I personally am, as you insinuate, a "Reagan Republican"--and I don't believe that you, as Film Forum's director, have treated it with respect.

Sincerely yours,

Dawn Eden

11:06 AM  |

Tuesday, July 20, 2004

Just wrote a headline for tomorrow's paper—waiting to hear if my boss gives it the OK. It's for a story about how, for the first time, the No. 6 is the top subway line in a report ranking the lines on value-for-money. I wrote: "BEST '6' WE EVER HAD."

I also have a punning headline in today's paper: "Tax-cheat podiatrist's feat failed him: DA."

UPDATE: My boss said he liked the idea, but the headline was too squeezed and "nobody remembers" the headline I was satirizing. He changed it to "THE JOY OF '6'."

6:11 PM  |

Got the Perfect Title for the
Festival, Too: "Dutch Masters"

New Yorkers know the Film Forum as the place that shows films like the anti-capitalist doc "The Corporation," which features Michael Moore, and the fawning documentary about Al-Jazeera. But it also shows wonderful festivals of Dawn Patrol faves like Buster Keaton and Orson Welles. Here is an e-mail I just sent to Film Forum head Karen Cooper—I'll let you know if she replies:

Dear Ms. Cooper,

I've been a Film Forum member for much of the past decade, and I first started going when you were on Watts Street. My membership is currently up for renewal. I'd like to renew, because every year you're certain to show something that greatly enhances my experience of life. But I don't like to keep giving money to an organization that, judging by its choice of films, is largely at odds with my worldview.
So here's my question, and please note the way it's phrased, because it's not requiring a commitment of any kind:

Would you ever give serious consideration to a Ronald Reagan film festival, or would you instantly laugh away the very idea of it?

Your answer will give me a better idea of whether the Film Forum is the sort of organization to which I can feel comfortable giving money. I look forward to your reply. Thank you.

Sincerely yours,

Dawn Eden Goldstein, a k a Dawn Eden

TRACKBACK: Charles of Dustbury.com notes that a little-known Reagan flick, "with its pre-Stepford eye on Perfect Womanhood, is relevant today."


3:53 PM  |

Sixteen Again

Going without kisses, sex, and everything in between for a while—and trying, for the first time in one's life, to curb one's romantic and sexual fantasies as well—creates a good opportunity for self-knowledge. But these days, it feels like the more I learn, the farther I realize I have to go.

I remember that during the last time of my life that I was chaste on purpose—which began shortly after I accepted Jesus—I went through a phase when I felt I'd conquered my desire for sex. But I let my fantasies run wild, and when I eventually met a man I wanted to date, my idealized image of him—and my hopes of how my love might change him—made me rush in when I shouldn't have.

This time around, I've once again reached the point where, for now—save for my imagined clinch at bedtime with a young Orson Welles on the Vienna set of "The Third Man," which I allow because it's very brief and he's very dead—my desire for sex has pretty much flatlined. But my interest in the opposite sex remains—even as it's changed from being on Cute Guy Watch to trying to discern who is my future husband—and my human desires prove more daunting than I'd imagined.

"Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature." What Paul doesn't tell you is that being born again can mean, from an emotional standpoint, going back to being a baby. That's how I was just after I was saved; I knew I had to live differently, but I still felt there were certain desires that I did not have to give up to the Lord.

Today I know I have to put my desire to eroticize men—or to have a romantic fantasy about one—at the foot of the Cross. But when I meet a man who awakens my interest, I feel awkward and uncertain—even more so than the days when I acted out sexually. I've gone from being a baby in Christ to—God help me—a teenager.

In the past, being in a state of openness to sexual contact enabled me to feel more confident around a love interest. If I wasn't certain of his interest, I could flirt, bat my eyelashes, whatever—and usually get an immediate response. If I wasn't certain that he wanted a committed relationship, I could push things physically, in the hope that it might sway him. Likewise, if I was scared of emotional intimacy, I could get rid of the tension by pushing the physical, speeding the relationship's denouement.

As dangerous as it is, sex provides a comfort zone. Take it away, and you're forced to deal with who you are, who your love interest is, and how confident you are that you can stand. In other words, you're more naked than if you were, well, naked.

Paul says in Romans 14:4 that God is able to make us stand, adding in verses 7-8: "For none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself. For whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord: whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord's." I know I must hope in the Lord, and put this spiritual teenagehood too at the foot of the Cross.
4:47 AM  |

Got a very nice e-mail yesterday from my friend (and Dawn Patrol jingle writer) Michael Lynch: "I like that photo on Gaits of Eden of you at the podium doing your reading. Even though I know it's a podium, it also kind of looks, what with the position of your arms, like you're at a Hammond organ and singing."
4:31 AM  |

Monday, July 19, 2004

Teenwire's Porn Connection

Read on to learn how Planned Parenthood's Teenwire Web site encourages underage teens to go to an online portal where they can buy sadomasochistic sex toys and porn videos:

South Dakota Governor Mike Rounds took a bold and courageous stand last week, and he caught hell for it. Acting on the request of Bishop Robert Carlson of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Sioux Falls, Rounds ordered that Planned Parenthood's "everybody's doing it" sex-ed site Teenwire be removed from the South Dakota State Library's Web site for teens.

Planned Parenthood and its supporters rushed to accuse Rounds of depriving teenagers of valuable information. In fact, all one has to do is visit Teenwire to see that an overwhelming amount of its content has little to do with educating teens on how to avoid pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases—and everything to do with sexualizing them.

One can understand why, for example, Bishop Carlson, Governor Rounds, and responsible parents would not want teenagers to view Teenwire's many articles on pornography. According to Teenwire's "experts," pornography is good. Witness the experts' reply to a teen who asked if viewing pornography might damage his school performance:

Many people enjoy using pornography or erotica as a part of their sex play — alone or with a partner.

There's no correlation between using pornography and getting bad grades in school. However, when any repeated behavior affects a person's ability to meet his or her responsibilities, it's called compulsive and that person may need help to cut down on that particular behavior — whether it's washing your hands over and over, checking to make sure you've locked the door hundreds of times, or checking to see if the burners are still on.

There is no indication that using pornography causes problems as long as it does not interfere with other aspects of a person's life.

That's rich. Viewing pornography is comparable to "checking to see if the burners are still on." Say what you will, Teenwire has a soul of metaphor.

But there is indeed something wrong with pornography, and a kid has to only click on Teenwire's "In Focus" section to learn what it is. The article "Porn Vs. Reality" explains, "Most people who have real sex don't look anything like people who have sex in porn, especially the women."

Yes, it's true. Teenwire is truly concerned about young girls' self-esteem—so much so that it goes out of its way to assure them that they don't have to look like porn stars.

I wish I were making this up. What universe are we in, anyway, where a kid could go to a public library's Web site and be connected to such trash?

Stay with me. It gets worse. Much worse.

Teenwire's "Porn Vs. Reality" piece is based on an interview with "Claire Cavanah, co-owner of New York- and Seattle-based sex-toy shops, Toys In Babeland."

That's right. Kids as young as 13 are encouraged to learn about pornography from the proprietresss of a sex-toy shop.

And when they're done, they can buy sadomasochistic sex toys and pornography from that very shop—via Teenwire.

At the bottom of the "Porn Vs. Reality" article is a link: "For more info, check out: Scarleteen: Sex Education for the Real World. Click on that link on the page and it will open up in a new window.

Normally, Teenwire's links to external sites first open up with a disclaimer, saying that Teenwire is not responsible for outside sites' content. Not this link. It just opens right up. Apparently, Teenwire is quite proud of this site's content.

The article that Teenwire links to is titled, "Looking, Lusting, and Learning: A Straightforward Look at Pornography," and it is on the sex-ed site Scarleteen. It's written by Hanne Blank, whose own Web site boasts that she is the author or editor of such seminal works as Shameless: Women's Intimate Erotica and Best Transgender Erotica. Scarleteen editor Heather Corinna has a similarly porn-friendly résumé; she's a queer writer, editor, photographer, artist, educator, and web publisher. She is the founder and editor of Scarlet Letters, Femmerotic and Scarleteen. She is considered a pioneer of both the Internet and online sexuality and sex-positive erotic art, having brought inclusive, informative and creative sexual content to the web since 1997.

So right away, Teenwire's sending its readers into the open arms of pornographers eager to encourage them to see themselves and others as soulless sex objects to use and be used.

That's no hyperbole. The article to which Teenwire directs its readers, Blank's paean to porn, reads like Relativism 101: "Sometimes, pornography can be a substitute for having a partner with whom you can be sexual. Most people go through periods in their lives when they do not have a sexual partner - that’s totally normal. But very few people really like feeling sexually frustrated, so often when people don’t have anyone in their lives with whom they can be sexual in person, they opt to use pornography to help arouse them and engage themselves sexually."

In other words, there's no good reason to use sexual restraint, no concept of people's being more than collections of errogenous zones. Teens are told in essence, "You are a sexual being, and your sexuality is your being. End of story. Go f--- yourselves."

But give the aptly-named Blank some credit for uncovering one problem with pornography—though she's quick to add that it only exists in people's minds:

The biggest problem that people often have with using pornography is that they sometimes start to expect their own actual sex lives to be just like the pornography they use and enjoy. This is really pretty ridiculous and unreasonable! Pornography is idealistic, not realistic. Porn tends to show what people fantasize about, not what actually does happen in most people’s sex lives.

It's the Teenwire message, rephrased: Don't feel bad if you don't look like a porn star.

By this point, if Teenwire and Scarleteen have done their job, readers who have will be itching to see some actual pornography, confident that they can view it without any ill effects and without comparing their own bodies to those of the performers. And Scarleteen is there for them. All the teen reader—or any reader who's allowed to use Mom's credit card—has to do is click on the "Scarleteen Shop" to the left of the article. That will immediately take them to the site's store, which offers links to its shopping partners, including—

That's right. Toys in Babeland.

Let me repeat this, and it's something you can discover yourself by going to Teenwire's "Porn Vs. Reality" article and clicking the series of links I've described. A Teenwire reader only has to click on a recommended link, and then click one more time—on a "Scarleteen Shop" link—to purchase all manner of sadomasochistic paraphernalia, vaginal and anal sex toys, and pornographic videos.

And here's the kicker: They don't have to give their age.

From Scarleteen's shopping instructions:

We...have chosen merchants who support our mission, who accept a variety of payment methods, who do not put age limitations on the products linked to, and who ship expediently and reliably...The merchants we use all ship in plain packages, discreetly...If you have any further questions, or need help, or want to make suggestions, just drop us a line, and we'll be on it like lubricant on latex in no time flat.

There is no way that Teenwire could be unaware that it links to a Web site that enables teenagers to purchase sadomasochistic sex toys and pornography. The Scarleteen link has been up on its Web site for nearly two years, and Scarleteen's shop is an integral part of its "mission."

The people who support Planned Parenthood should stop breathing fire over teen's supposed rights to abortion and birth control and take a look at what Margaret Sanger's organization is actually teaching teenagers. I can't believe any responsible parent, or anyone who cares about America's youth, could see how Planned Parenthood treats kids as pawns and not be enraged.
3:52 AM  |

Sunday, July 18, 2004

Went on a lovely walking tour of Lower Manhattan today guided by Kevin Walsh, webmaster of that true treasure Forgotten NY. At one point, Kevin had the attendees gather by the Washington statue at Federal Hall for a group shot, and one of the fellow Forgotteners, Amy Langfield, turned around and snapped a photo that includes my friend Janet and me. You can see it on Amy's photoblog.

Janet's in the denim jacket, and I'm wearing glasses while awaiting my new contact lenses. (The glasses, by the way, are older than me—the authentic Twiggy brand.)
7:19 PM  |

Road to Joy

One of my favorite things about C.S. Lewis's "Surprised By Joy" is the way he describes how, before he knew the Lord, he gained a taste of divine joy through worldly things—like Norse myths or, if memory serves, a picture on a cookie tin.

I don't believe that all or even most of the pleasures I experienced in my pre-saved life were tastes of the divine. But on those occasions when I did experience a hint of the joy Lewis describes, many times it was sparked by a song. Much of my favorite music was based on a sense of longing—whether delicately beautiful ballads like the Left Banke's "Walk Away Renee," or angst-tinged anthems like Badfinger's "Baby Blue" and George Harrison's "What Is Life." In a way, you could say, "Pop" helped point me to the Father.

Another thing I unwittingly learned about the Lord through my love of old records was that in a way, musically speaking, as G.K. Chesterton said, all roads lead to Rome. That is, as my knowledge of 1960s pop increased and I heard more and more obscure tunes, I kept discovering that my favorite tunes were linked by a handful of creative people. That great Searchers song "Needles and Pins" was co-written by Jack Nitzsche, who also produced the beautiful Bob Lind hit "Elusive Butterfly," and whose sparkling arrangements coated Phil Spector's Wall of Sound. The same names kept popping up, often in unexpected places, creating a silver thread that linked the era's most artful music. One only had to look for the connections.

That's why I was fascinated when I first heard the name John Pantry several years ago and discovered he had a hand in several of my favorite British psychedelic-pop songs. I had never before linked the songs in my mind, but when I learned the same person was behind them, it all made sense.

Musically, all the Pantry tunes I knew met at the crossroads of the psychedelic Beatles, the Pet Sounds-era Beach Boys, and the pre-disco Bee Gees. They were also terrifically catchy, with a delightful sense of miniaturism. If you're not a rock fan, imagine how exciting it is to hear the tiny little "Turkish March" section in the midst of the bombast of the fourth movement of Beethoven's Ninth. In the same way, Pantry's best melodies sound as precious and fragile as cut glass.

But it was the lyrics of Pantry's tunes that really should have tipped me off that there was a single mind behind them. They all shared an existential longing, teetering precariously between morbidity and a desire for something more.

There was "Red Chalk Hill," released by the Factory, a melancholy tune in 6/8 time which seems to be about the inescapability of death. I say "seems to be," because Pantry, who engineered several of the Bee Gees' early albums, seemed to have picked up Barry Gibb's gift for ambiguity. Still, there's no mistaking the sadness in lyrics like, "See where the wood's done what it could to touch the sky—what a try/Who am I to say what should be?"

Then there was the truly bizarre "Glasshouse Green, Splinter Red." Released by the Kinsmen, it's an "Eleanor Rigby"-style tale of a lonely retired gardener who commits suicide by stepping off a balcony and falling through—yes—a greenhouse. I know; it sounds like something from the psychedelic-era output of Spinal Tap. But there's absolutely no irony, and the relentlessly catchy melody causes the Gerard Manley Hopkins' "Spring and Fall"-style lyrics to sound even more stark by contrast: "High on a balcony, over a path of green, the gardener gazed at the darkening sky..."

But the song of Pantry's that really touched me—that gave me the joy Lewis spoke of—was the cryptic "Upside Down," released by an act with the unfortunate name of Norman Conquest. I first heard it at a time when I was going through major life changes, and its gorgeously poignant melody tore at me—even though I hadn't the faintest idea what it was about.

Even today, listening carefully to the song's lyrics, I can't say for certain whether "Upside Down" is about getting a divorce, joining the Army, dying, moving to Australia—or all of the above. The chorus, as far as I can make out, goes,

I signed my name on the form
The ten-pound trip meets the dawn.
And in an evening or two
I'll wake upside down.

I know it sounds crazy to say a song with those words could elevate me. But even classics like "Stardust" or "Ebb Tide" have an ethereal quality that doesn't come through in their lyrics alone. So it was for me with "Upside Down"—and still is. Its words and melody together take me to a painfully beautiful place where something ineffable is just out of reach.

A couple of years ago, I picked up the only legitimate collection of Pantry material, an LP called The Upside Down World of John Pantry, and found a surprise in its liner notes. During the time since his Sixties pop efforts, the singer-songwriter had become famous in his native England—as a priest. Yes, the Rev. John Pantry is a popular radio host, reaching listeners throughout the United Kingdom every morning with his "Inspirational Breakfast."

As I listened to the album and reacquainted myself with my favorite Pantry tunes, I decided to write to Pantry and tell him of the joy that his music had brought me both before and since finding the Lord. I found his e-mail address on his radio station's Web site and poured out my enthusiasm in a note.

Imagine my enthusiasm when I saw his response arrive in my In box...

...and my sinking spirits when I read it.

In essence, the Rev. Pantry did not appreciate my sentiments. He wanted nothing to do with his secular rock-and-roll past.

I was embarrassed, crushed, and even a little bit angry. It affected me more personally than I should have; I felt as though he didn't understand that I was approaching him as a fellow Christian.

But the truth is, Pantry probably hears from fans of his secular music fairly regularly, and I can't imagine how frustrating that must be for someone who, being a new creature, does not wish to be reminded of the "old man." Perhaps if I were flooded with people writing me to rave about the racier music-journalism pieces I penned in the mid-'90s for New York Press—which gets much of its revenue from sex ads—I might take the same attitude.

Tonight, as I listen to his songs on Right Side Up, a CD that complements Upside Down World, I realize that, in a larger sense, it doesn't matter if Pantry doesn't appreciate his work the way I do. God can make good things out of the most unlikely clay. In this case, He allowed songs which may not have had divine meaning in themselves to help point me in the right direction on my journey to Him.

I now see that the old Rolling Stones lyric was wrong. When it comes to human expression, what matters most is really not the singer. It's the Song.

• Right Side Up is available from Rockit Scientist Records, (212) 242-0066. The store may have Upside Down World as well.

1:19 AM  |

Today's serendipitous online discovery is Just Believe, the blog of a 17-year-old South Carolina girl. Normally I'd say "young woman," but she calls herself a girl, and that, like her blog, has a sweet ring to it. The posts of hers that I've seen have a refreshing blend of wisdom and innocence, like this one with its observation about the place of Jesus' birth.
12:58 AM  |

Saturday, July 17, 2004

An Altar You Can't Refuse

A new church was recently planted in my town, and, being an open-minded unchurched nondenominational Christian, I decided to give it a fair chance. I'd check out its Web site before dismissing it out of hand.

From the site, I gather the Harbor View Church is a nonjudgmental place. There's no mention of Jesus' dying for our sins—no mention of any sin at all, in fact. There is, however, much mention of "The Sopranos," which is one of the pastor's favorite TV shows, along with "The OC" and "The Apprentice."

I clicked hopefully on a section of the site marked "Free Gift." I had an idea of what it probably was, but I still hoped against hope that it might tell of the free gift of salvation through Jesus' death on the cross. (You know, like those bumper stickers that say, "Read the Bible—Free Gift Inside!")

But no. The free gift for those who give the church their contact information is a copy of The Purpose Driven Life. But in a sign that the church recognizes its target demographic has free will, it does offer visitors an alternate choice. Can you guess?

That's right. The Gospel According to Tony Soprano.

So I'm still looking for a church in the New York City area. That is, assuming the Harbor View Church doesn't have me whacked.

2:03 AM  |

This Is Your Wire Service on Drugs

Is it just me, or does this read like an op-ed? From a piece on the global AIDS conference:

The U.S. money dedicated to bilateral programs comes with strings attached -- one-third of the funds earmarked for prevention goes to abstinence-first programs. Also, the money currently can only buy branded drugs, made by companies in rich countries, shutting out generic medicines from developing nations that are not only cheaper but also formulated into three-in-one pills that make it easier for people to stick with treatment.

In other words, it's bad enough that U.S. money to Third World countries must be spent on branded drugs, but even worse, the drugs are made by companies in rich countries. Oh, the humanity!

The piece, by the way, was from a news article by the Associated Press.
1:37 AM  |

Sticker Shock

From ChronWatch, which is to the San Francisco Chronicle what TimesWatch is to the Gray Lady, comes an article by Nick Jenkins with the most intriguing headline I've seen in a while: "The Short, Sad Life of My Vintage 'Reagan/Bush '84' Bumper Sticker."

From that title alone, you can guess the story—especially if you live in a liberal bastion like New York City, or Jenkins's own Seattle.

Jenkins does get over the top with multiple comparisons of closed-minded liberals to Nazis, but don't let that keep you from reading his article to the end. Much of it hits home for conservatives in enemy territory, particularly the reactions of his "supposedly tolerant" friends:

One friend--a bright and articulate lady, but just this side of Karl Marx--said I should feel lucky: the Tolerant One could have keyed my car door or slashed my tires or busted my windows.  To which I wondered aloud whether blacks in the South felt lucky when the KKK burned their houses instead of killing them altogether.  Another card-carrying lefty pal suggested with a straight face that a fellow right-side-of-the-fencer took the sticker for his own private collection.  To which I replied: it’s possible that John Kerry didn’t care about the net worth of his two multi-gajillionaire wives when he married them--but I doubt it.  A fellow rightie straightened me out.  She told me that conservative bumper stickers don’t actually go on bumpers anymore, at least in the Northwest.  If you want it to last, you have to tape it to the inside of the car’s back window.

UPDATE: Forgotten NY's Kevin Walsh writes, "Nick Jenkins need look no further than the Bronx for an unsullied 'Reagan Bush '84' sticker. It's at the bottom of this Forgotten NY page."
12:28 AM  |

Friday, July 16, 2004

In a story I copyedited for tomorrow's paper, I wrote a photo kicker for a shot of Martha Stewart's feet. She was wearing wedges, so I wrote, "WEDGES OF SIN."


9:46 PM  |

U.N. Feminists to Maltese Women:
Work Your Fingers to the Bone &
Come Home to an Empty Womb

The tiny Mediterranean island nation of Malta has been the site of many a shipwreck, most famously that of Paul in Acts 28. But this week it became the site of a different kind of shipwreck, as the U.N. Committee on Elimination of Discrimination against Women released a report accusing the country of preventing women from attaining their proper place in the working world.

Working women like myself would agree that helping women overcome social barriers to earning a living for themselves and their families is an important cause. What's bizarre about this report is that it argues against some of the very career incentives that women have fought hard to attain in Malta and the rest of the world.

The logic of the U.N. report goes like this:

• "Malta’s breadwinners were still predominantly male...and caregiving had remained a woman’s prerogative."
  
  
• "The country had introduced several measures to encourage women to work, such as paid maternity leave."
  
  
• "Many [Maltese] women left the labor market by age 25."
  
  
• Therefore, Malta's efforts to encourage women to work by giving them maternity leave are actually causing them to leave their jobs early—and should be abolished.

All right, that last point's not exactly what the U.N. committee said. Here it is in their words:

Several experts also commented on the low percentage of women in Malta’s labor market, suggesting that the country review measures it had taken to encourage women to work. Such measures, which included various types of maternity leave, might actually discourage them from working in the paid labor force, and reinforce their roles as primary caregivers, they said.

You really can't make this stuff up.

In other words, in the topsy-turvy world of U.N. feminism, women are encouraged to equal or excel men at breadwinning—so long as they harbor no dreams of motherhood.

But why would an organization that claims to have women's best interests at heart want them to avoid having children? If Maltese husbands are breadwinners rather than absent dads, then children of those two-parent families would have a better start in life than many other kids around the world...

Oh. Of course.

As the pro-life LifeSite reports, "Malta, the population of which is 94% Roman Catholic, maintains one of the highest birth rates in Europe and has steadfastly refused to legalize abortion in the face of pressure from the European Union."

Another pro-life Web site lists American organizations which have endorsed the Committee on Elimination of Discrimination against Women. It's no surprise to find Planned Parenthood, whose original mission was to exterminate Catholics and other "non-Aryans" from the gene pool, on the list.

But clearly, with the United Nations attempting to browbeat a small island nation into denying women maternity benefits, something larger than Margaret Sanger's organization is at work here—and it doesn't just affect Catholics. It's something that's present in many political movements today, and is expressed in the spirit of our age—relativism. That spirit is determined to counter anything that suggests human beings have the capacity to make choices for themselves—and that among those choices are the choice to exercise personal restraint.

The most basic way that we can register disagreement with the spirit of the age is to be chaste before marriage, marry, be faithful, and raise children. Of course the United Nations and Planned Parenthood will oppose such principled actions—by those organizations' very nature, they have to.

Or maybe the United Nations just hates Catholics—which, given the others who are out of favor with that organization, would at least put Rome in good company.
12:35 AM  |

Thursday, July 15, 2004

My novelist friend Caren Lissner is also a talented humorist who's just published an essay about returning to her old summer camp 15 years later as a counselor. (Be aware that it contains sexual language which is unfortunately typical of many teens today—more so than when Caren was one, she notes.) She also has the most Beckettian Weblog that you are likely to find.
11:04 PM  |

Thanks be to Mark Shea for pointing out something I myself didn't realize when I read this incommodious tale: My most notorious headline fits the story perfectly.
6:39 PM  |

The AIDS Industry Wants to Keep African Women
Barefoot and Pregnant Barren

The Associated Press reports from the global AIDS conference:

The global fight against HIV will fail without serious progress in addressing the plight of women in the developing world, including ways they can protect themselves from infection without their partners knowing, advocates say.

Advocates for what? The AP doesn't say. But one thing's for sure: They're not advocating any change in African attitudes.

The article continues: "With vaccines considered a long way off and with many cultures denying women the power and confidence to demand that partners wear condoms—regarded as the key prevention tool—scientists are addressing ways women can protect themselves."

The American women's rights movement as you and I know it was based as much around changing the attitudes of men as it was emboldening women. Men were told that they were no longer to hold doors open for women—it was offensive—nor could they make sexual comments about women in a work environment. They weren't supposed to light a woman's cigarette, or be compelled to take the initiative in asking a woman on a date, or do many other things that they had once been told were expected of them.

These new standards for male behavior resulted in a tremendous social change. Some of that changes was for the good, some wasn't, but it was clear that the American women's rights movement won a great victory in a remarkably short time—less than a generation.

But according to the AIDS industry, which is spearheaded by International Planned Parenthood Federation, African men can't be changed. The very idea of changing African men's attitudes isn't even on the table for the AIDS industry. They take it as a given that Westerners must not impose such Dead White Male ideas as respect for women on these backwards Africans.

If that's true—if African men are so primitive they can't be expected to grow (and from these "advocates"' talk, you'd think they were all living in the bush)—

—then why, pray tell, is Christianity growing in Africa at never-before-seen levels?

Africa's native religions don't require men to make anything approaching the spiritual and physical sacrifices of Christianity. By its nature, Christianity requires men to be respectful of women, to marry, and to be faithful and loving to their wives. The idea that hundreds of millions of African men as well as women would adopt Christianity is proof positive that their cultural attitudes can be changed.

But what are these "advocates" suggesting, if not cultural change? From the same Associated Press article:

Among new HIV prevention strategies being discussed are vaccines, diaphragms, anti-HIV vaginal gels, and a daily prescription of HIV drugs to prevent infection.

Scientists hope that within five years, the first batch of broad-spectrum, HIV-killing vaginal products could be available....

While they are no substitute for condoms, they could profoundly affect how well the world's most vulnerable women can fight HIV even if the products turn out to be no more than 30 percent effective, said Dr. Zeda Rosenberg, chief executive of International Partnership for Microbicides....

"When you can have a partially protective vaccine in 15 years or a partially protective microbicide in 5 years, it makes a whole lot of sense now to focus on microbicides," Rosenberg said.

Two things:

(1) The microbicide expert admits it may be only 30 percent effective. That means that women using them would still carry a 70 percent chance of infection. They call that a solution? For that, the "advocates" pooh-pooh any idea of effecting cultural change?

(2) They can have a "partially protective microbicide" in five years. Yet they don't believe they should even bother trying to improve African men's treatment of women during that time?

One Roman Catholic archdiocese in Tanzania gained 400,000 members between 1992 and this year. Compared to other Christian denominations, Catholicism is not known for its laxity. It's not a religion one joins if one's goal is to sleep around, abusing and mistreating women. Which makes me wonder...

Given that the AIDS industry is not going to push abstinence, for that would be a victory for the religious groups that seek to change cultural attitudes about sex and personal responsibility...

(and besides, there's no money to be made from abstinence)...

...then, is it any coincidence that the AIDS industry is attemping to force this microbicide approach in Africa, where Catholicism—which promotes the birth of healthy African babies in two-parent homes—is growing so rapidly?

The more I examine the attitudes and approaches of these so-called advocates for Africans at risk of getting HIV, the more I fear they're not so interested in stopping AIDS as they are in destroying those people of color whom Planned Parenthood Margaret Sanger called "human weeds."
12:15 AM  |

Wednesday, July 14, 2004

Fisky Business

You know you've arrived in the blog world when you start getting fisked.

During the past few days, I've gone from being practically a fisking virgin to being fisked hither and thither. (I say practically a fisking virgin, because an Ivy League philosophy major named Wes used to do point-by-point commentaries on my essays, but his were equanimous and analytical, lacking the vitriol of garden-variety fiskers.)

So far, the most damning fisking I've received is from A Bad Christian Blog—that's its real name—whose "Brandon" writes, "Please don't assume that because I'm different than you, Ms. Eden, that I'm apathetic. It's just that I've learned how to love more people than you."

As the Church Lady would say, "Well!"

I think I may have to change The Dawn Patrol's slogan from "Not the paper of record," to "Where is the love?"
9:57 PM  |

AMENDED*—Would You Read This Entry if There
Were a 15 Percent Chance It Would Kill You?

Of course not. Something would have to be really fun for you to take that chance. Like sex. Sex is always worth a 15 percent chance of death, right? After all, if you're not free to have sex with a person who may be infected with AIDS, what's there to live for, right? We're human beings, not animals. We can choose how we live and how we die. To live in a free country means freedom from such bourgeois, Dead White European Male conventions as self-control in pursuit of a [guffaw] higher goal.

Today at the global AIDS conference—where protesters attempted to shout down the American representative, promoting abstinence, with cries of "He's lying, we're dying"—Raoul Fransen, a Dutchman who was infected at 15, railed against abstinence-first education.

Fransen, 26, said that after learning he was HIV positive, he thought he would never have sex again, for fear of infecting others. "It took a while before I was ready to experience intimacy again," he said.

Notice that he didn't say it took him a while to release body fluids against another person again. It took him a while to experience "intimacy." Because we all know that there is no intimacy without sex. And in Fransen's case, there's no such intimacy without risking giving his partner a deadly disease. But that's a risk he's willing to take.

This is a caring, compassionate representative of the HIV-positive anti-abstinence position? I'd hate to hear what the unsympathetic reps of that ideology say.

Pity all those poor children in the world who don't know Fransen's brand of intimacy. The anti-abstinence lobby cares and wishes them to share in this life-affirming adult experience. That is why they have established helpful Web sites for poor underprivileged underage kids. But I digress.

Fransen went on: "Rather than being taught not to have sex, young people...should be enabled to make the choice, be this abstinence or partner reduction or having access to condoms that is right for them.

"They should be supported in discovering their sexuality, its pleasures and its risks. The key lies in giving us a choice, not an ideology."

A choice. Yes, that's it. A 15 percent choice of dying from AIDS. That is the probability that a person will be exposed to HIV while having sex when using using a condom. The high probability occurs because, as anyone who has used condoms well knows, those barrier contraceptives are prone to slip, leak, and break.

The idea that condom use alone could stop an epidemic, without any change in sexual habits, essentially means writing off a minimum of 15 percent of people at risk. I say a minimum, because not everyone would use condoms, and, for those who don't, the absence of abstinence education would ensure that those who did not use condoms would continue to have sex freely.

But most AIDS activists refuse to consider the U.S.'s "ABC" program—which stresses, in order, abstinence, being faithful, and using condoms—because they refuse to adhere to a worldview that requires people to take personal responsibility for their actions. Likewise, since sex is their god, they wish to completely strip it of all its Judeo-Christian associations, detaching it from committed relationships.

Yahoo News, also reporting on today's session:

University of Pretoria researcher Mary Crewe said..."We have to make abstinence sexy, not holy."

Dennis Altman, a professor of politics at LaTrobe University, Australia,...suggested that governments, religious leaders and families get home the message that "there are other forms of sexual pleasure than intercourse," including oral sex and masturbation.

That is the Teenwire message: Teach teens how to attain sexual pleasure without intercourse, and they will be satisfied. Yet, anyone who knows teenagers or remembers what it was like to be one, knows that this is not so. The idea that it would work for them or for adults as a true deterrent is ludicrous.

In the face of these "experts," the United States stands as the voice of reason, asserting that the only way to stop the AIDS epidemic is to set priorities—and to place personal responsibility at the top. This is the only policy being proposed that truly values people's humanity, and it is the only one that has been proven to work.
__________________________________________
*Amped up the anger.
4:08 PM  |

R-E-S-P-E-C-T
Find Out What It Means to Me

Today someone—I don't know who—searched this site for the word "respect."

I'm pretty sure I know why they did it, and I, um, respect them greatly for doing so.

It's because, in my writings about sexual morality, I write about "respect" as though it were a dirty word—and in scare quotes, no less.

I believe it was G.K. Chesterton in Orthodoxy who observed that evils usually arise from one good being raised above all others. Respect is immeasurably important in every kind of relationship. But when it is viewed as the only good—the lone requirement one needs from a person in order to engage in sex—then it leads to a barren and cynical imitation of a loving union.

I can say this with authority. When I look back on my sexual experiences—and by that I include everything from kissing onward—I've had more "respect" than some of you have had hot dinners.

Respect within a sexual context, stripped of the bonds of love and commitment, means nothing more than, "I will have a transactional physical experience with you, performing only the acts that you want me to perform, and I will consider you no less of a person for engaging in it with me."

Really, considering the ultra-transactional, cut-and-dried rules of engagement, casual sex with "respect" is equivalent to buying a pack of gum at the Quick Chek—except that the guy behind the counter occasionally makes eye contact.

I realize all this now, which is why I'm trying to experience chastity in a way I haven't before—in thought as well as deed—to have the kind of true, godly respect for others that I would want my future husband to have. I'm not perfect at it—thoughts are especially hard to control—but I see it as a better way to live.

I don't mean that as in a more moral way to live; I mean really better.

Casual sex, flirtations with men in whom I have no serious emotional interest, fantasies about men—these are all by nature nihilistic. Draining. They use far more energy than they give back. Like playing computer solitaire, they might make me happy temporarily. But when I'm done, I have to come back to the real world—which then looks lonelier than ever.

The only way to find anything resembling happiness in the casual-sex lifestyle is to never let the game end—to allow oneself to be defined by it. It becomes a limited worldview.

Chastity, by contrast, opens up my world. I'm vulnerable to loneliness, to be sure, and sometimes that loneliness is terrible. But I'm free from the constant anxiety of where I'm going to get my next "fix," be it a fantasy, a flirtation, or a sexual encounter. A great burden is lifted.

I won't say I don't obsess anymore about whether or not a particular man likes me, because I do. But I ask God to help me trust in Him, and "He giveth more grace"—helping me wait on Him instead of waiting for the phone to ring.

Some days, it is very hard. But even the worst days are better than so many years I spent not knowing God and thinking that only attention from a man could give my life meaning.
1:59 AM  |

Tuesday, July 13, 2004

New York City G.K. Chesterton Society member Richard J. Stuart writes:

Re the gay marriage amendment: One wonders what the first roll-call vote was for ending slavery in the Senate. That one pass on the first time though?

Actually, it didn't; or, rather, it passed the Senate, but was soundly defeated in the House. I'm sure the Bob Schieffers of the day were loudly criticizing Congress's wasting taxpayer money with Congressional debate debating a "lost cause."

Incidentally, I have nothing personal against Schieffer. I met him in May, when he hosted the event where Dr. James "Ogre" Watson was honored [thanks to Elliot Bougis for coming up with the catchy nickname], and he was sweet and gracious. When I told him about my best-loved headline (which you can see in a photo on my main page), he even said, "I wish I had your job."

Bob, you out there? I love my job. But if it'll make you quit the one you have now, you can have it.

It's a great sacrifice for me, I know. But I'm just doing my public doody.
1:26 PM  |

The Endtimes They Are A-Changin'

A popular misconception about Christians is that their faith is so Heaven-centered that they are perfectly happy to let the nonbelieving world go to hell in a handbasket. I don't believe that is at all true of Christians in general. But the apathy of a great many believers in the face of the largest-ever assault on values—the homosexual lobby's efforts to legalize same-sex marriage nationwide—suggests they are content to just roll their eyes and wait for the endtimes.

Not that it's only people from the Christian community who are apathetic, by any means. I don't know the faith of CBS's "Face the Nation", host Bob Schieffer, but on last Sunday's show, while he didn't express a view on homosexual marriage (beyond support of civil unions), he was eager to criticize the Federal Marriage Amendment: "What irritates me as a taxpayer is that the Senate is debating this knowing full well the amendment has no chance of passing. Approval requires two-thirds of the House and Senate, and neither house can count a simple majority in favor. Still, they press on because an advocate says voters want people to be on the record on this. Well, who says?"

In other words, Schieffer doesn't care whether or not the Constitution is amended to bar homosexual marriage. He only regrets that taxpayer money is being spent debating a lost cause.

But let's go back to the endtimes, since they're so popular, what with the "Left Behind" series. Paul writes in 2 Timothy,

in the last days perilous times shall come.
For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,
Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good,
Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God.

Well! To quote a song by one of my favorite bands, the Association, "wasn't it a bit like now?" Certainly, reading Paul's words, one could be excused for thinking that these are the very times when all things evil come to a head—and all things good face persecution—before Jesus' return.

There's just one problem.

If these really are the endtimes—and I'm not at all convinced they are, though I believe in being watchful—then the one thing we're commanded not to do is to just lie there like a lox while the proponents of sinful living trample over us.

Paul continues in 2 Timothy 4:

 I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom;
Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long suffering and doctrine.

We're commanded to speak the truth according to God's word, even—especially—when that truth is what people don't want to hear.

"For the time will come," Paul continues, "when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables."

And what is the point of continuing to declare God's truth on the vital issues of our time, when people won't listen?

Paul doesn't seem to address that—or does he? "But watch thou in all things," he continues, "endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry."

The key is in the words "make full proof of thy ministry." The verb Paul uses for "make full proof of" is plerophoreo, which means to bear or bring full, to carry through to the end.

It is not enough that we spread God's word to one another. We have a job to do, a commission to fulfill. And our responsibility stands regardless of the resistance and persecution we face.

So small-screen personality Bob Schieffer thinks it's a waste of taxpayer money for our elected representatives to argue over a lost cause. I would remind him of the words of a big-screen personality—James Stewart as Sen. Jefferson Smith in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington": Lost causes are the only ones worth fighting for.
2:44 AM  |

Monday, July 12, 2004

Oh, Behave!

I knew that Kerry was touching Edwards an awful lot, but I had no idea how much was riding on it.
7:19 PM  |

Pop Smear

"My daddy's name is Donor." This T-shirt made by Family Evolutions, a company that specializes in products for homosexual parents, really says it all. The child is the son of the company's founders, a lesbian pair.

Look at this boy, and look at his T-shirt (click on it for a larger view). That's what the homosexual-marriage campaign is about.

It's not about letting a new social norm be accepted alongside the old. It's about upending the norms, so that instead of a mother and father, a child simply has Parent A and Parent B. It's about making fatherless or motherless children the rule—and not the exception.

Most of all, the homosexual-marriage campaign is about the selfish interests of adults—not what's best for children. Look at the face of that little boy. He's old enough to have some idea of what it means to have a daddy named Donor. Do you think he's happy about it? Do you think he considers that worth celebrating? Or did his lesbian parents stick him in that T-shirt because they thought they'd have some harmless fun at his expense? Besides, he makes such an adorable shill.

The Family Evolutions Web site includes an advice column, "Ask Evolved Moms, which currently has a question from a lesbian mother-to-be, asking if she should circumcise her son. She writes, "To me the penis has never exactly been a beautiful thing regardless of which way it looks - so what do we do?"

If you're a man who grew up with a father, you must be thanking God right now. Clearly, there's more going on in that lesbian's question than simple lack of knowledge. Underneath it is a sense that the child isn't really her child—it's this strange creature that's being dropped in her lap.

I can't think of a heterosexual mother of a son, whether biological or adoptive, who doesn't love her child's body simply because it's his. To think of women who have such a visceral distaste for the male body, not to mention a weird lack of maternal feeling, raising sons on their own—it would be ludicrous if it weren't a very real tragedy.

Oh, and they're selling a "my daddy's name is Donor" baby bib too. Just so those little buggers learn their place in the social order as early as possible. So this is what "pride" is all about.


1:55 AM  |

Ron Reagan "Cells" Out

So Ron Reagan plans to give a speech at the Democratic National Convention so he can plug embryonic stem-cell research. Never mind that experts agree embryonic stem-cell treatment would probably not have helped Ronald Reagan, nor would it benefit others with Alzheimer's disease.

"The conservative right has a rather simplistic way of characterizing it as baby killing," says Ron. "We're not talking about fingers and toes and brains. This is a mass of a couple hundred undifferentiated cells."

In other words, killing is only killing if the victim has reached a growth stage where he or she is recognizable to Ron Reagan.

Remind me to dig up Ron's tulip bulbs sometime and run them through a Cuisinart—for research, of course. With his logic, he couldn't accuse me of stealing his flowers.
12:18 AM  |

Sunday, July 11, 2004

For a headline in tomorrow's paper, I was given an opportunity to poke fun at my alma mater, New York University. I had no problem doing so, especially since the story was about NYU's marijuana problem—which was rampant when I arrived there nearly 20 years ago, and which the school has never adequately addressed. (In a way, one can hardly blame the kids for ignoring NYU's pronouncements that drugs are bad, when its professors tell the kids there is no such thing as good or evil.)

What particularly pleases me about this headline is that I was able to tease the school twice in one line:
NYU’s no Ivy – but it’s covered in grass
8:01 PM  |

Thanks to all the readers who wrote to correct me on the Roman Catholic Church's official positions on the death penalty and Iraq. I've added a new correction to the entry in question, "Talking Out of Church."
1:43 PM  |

The Love That Dare "Greek" Its Name—Part 2

Here are two more good pieces of advice from readers responding to my two requests for advice on how to nourish agape love with my future intended—and not just put on a Barry White record. (Actually, I don't own any Barry White, so it'd have to be Russ Columbo.) These are from different respondents than the ones I quoted yesterday. In the absence of one reader's giving explicit permission to be quoted, I've preserved anonymity. But I know Mom doesn't mind being quoted.

• "I think a person must search his heart the best he can for the reason behind the attraction, physical or other. If the reason is good (Godly?), it seems to me that the attraction doesnít need to be balanced against the Godly love he feels for the person. The attraction complements or maybe is even part of the Godly love he feels."
  
  
• And some personal thoughts from Mom: "Almost from the beginning of our courtship, Ron and I pledged to thank God every morning for each other. No matter what is on our minds, no matter what unpleasant business we need to tackle together, no matter what our last pet peeve, we HAVE to thank God for each other. We have fulfilled that pledge every day for almost nine years, and I know we will fulfill it for the rest of our lives on earth. When you commit yourself to thanking God for the other person and acknowledging that He is a gift, then you begin searching for the blessings in him that you might not see at some peevish moment. And you learn to give abundant thanks directly to your mate on all possible occasions."

4:04 AM  |

Last night, I joined my fellow Kill Your Idols contributors one more time at a reading to promote the book, this one at Sin-é on the Lower East Side. I believe the event was sold out, as some popular bands were on the bill, playing songs from classic albums castigated in the book.

Since I chose to go on first so I could make it to my monthly DJ gig in time, most of the audience hadn't arrived in time for my reading—there were only about 35 people. But I didn't mind—in fact, it was a bit of a relief, after reading to a full house at Housing Works Used Book Cafe the night before. Not having a podium this time around also helped me get looser, and I gave a much better reading—not shaking this time.

Some of my friends showed up (including Todd, who snapped the photo at right), plus a friend's friend—an editor from the paper where I work. I was tickled to have the editor there, because when I go in to work, I always feel like Clark Kent. Most of the people there have known me only as one of those anal-retentive copy editors who pester the city desk with queries or cut out the reporters' best lines. They've had no idea of my secret life. Until now, that is.
2:23 AM  |

Chelsea Morning

I came home in the wee small hours of the morning to find my very own Dawn Patrol caricaturist David Chelsea mentioned twice in the feature story of the New York Times Magazine. It cites his graphic novel David Chelsea in Love, which helped define the genre of comic-book autobiography when it first came out in 1992. Congrats, David!
1:53 AM  |

Saturday, July 10, 2004

And Who Is My Neighbor?

Elliot has a good St. Augustine quote up today:"You who do not yet see God will, by loving your neighbor, make yourself worthy of seeing him. By loving your neighbor, you cleanse your eyes so you can see God. Love your neighbor, then, and see within yourself the source of this love of neighbor. There you will see God insofar as you are able."

It reminds me of some great words from G.K. Chesterton: "The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people."
7:06 PM  |

If you tried to read the David Mills piece referenced in my "Lewis and Dork" entry, please try again. It's been fixed, thanks to a sharp-eyed reader's bringing the broken link to my attention, and the blogger's best friend, Tiny URL.
6:46 PM  |

To the Luna, Mellis!

Matt Berke writes to say that he enjoyed my tribute to him, and he adds a bit of "Honeymooners" trivia that I didn't know: "I also like your use of the phrase, immortalized by Jackie Gleason on 'The Honeymooners,' 'homina homina homina'—undoubtedly derived from Cicero's 'Homo sum; nihil humani a me alienum puto.' ['I am a man [human being], nothing human is alien to me.'] Gleason wore his learning lightly, but darn it all, the guy knew his classics."

6:03 PM  |

The Love That Dare "Greek" Its Name—Part 1

(Sorry, I'm running out of "agape" headlines...)

As promised, here is Part 1 of the reader responses to the two requests I put out for advice on how to integrate physical attraction with the desire to give and receive agape love in a relationship. Part 2 should come tomorrow morning.

Every one of the responses I received was helpful, and I'm grateful to all who wrote in—you know who you are. (No names are included here because no one stated they'd like to be identified—though I'll gladly add names if permitted.) Here are some excerpts, each one from a different writer. The last one particularly touched me.

• "The necessary thing is to retain a sense of proportion—to love your beloved and rejoice in the act of loving in all of its dimensions, physical, emotional, and spiritual."
  
  
• "In a nutshell, the point, I think, is that the body is an integral part of the person (see Aristotle and Aquinas—in contrast with, say, Cartesian dualism), and so fully shares in the value of the person (cf. "the resurrection of the body"!). So it's not so much that love can't include recognition of (attraction to) the value of the body...as that such love must always be integrated into love for the person—and this, in turn, requires chastity outside marriage."
  
  
• "We all bring imperfections to our relationships, and the truly beautiful thing about a relationship blessed by God is that it allows us to grow beyond those imperfections."
  
  
• "I married at 32, but I committed myself to my husband at age 13, when I became a Christian. Although I had not met him (to my knowledge), I began to pray for him on a daily basis. I would ask God to protect his heart. I prayed that he would have a good day. I prayed for discernment in finding him. Amazingly, I met my future husband when I was 14, but had absolutely no interest in him. He, however, fell for me immediately. He spent the next four years praying to marry me (although he was not a Christian, he did pray for that!). Our paths did not cross again until we were 29. He was still not a Christian, but miraculously, he was still a virgin (something I had prayed for). One year later, he became a Christian and is now a Godly leader of our family. I tell you all this in hopes that you might get the idea that you can start loving your mate today. When you have invested yourself in him before having met him, it will be easier to put the agape love together with the attraction. God will honor your prayer and commitment."

3:36 PM  |

Thanks to Elliot Bougis (who's currently doing double duty filling in for the formidable Mark Shea), I have recently had the great pleasure of discovering Jeff Miller, the Curt Jester. Miller weaves serious commentary on some of my pet issues with Onion/Harvard Lampoon-style parodies. (I particularly like his vision of the Vatican's stamping its correspondence with record-label style "Explicit Theology" advisories.)

Today's post by Miller is a must-read, as he follows an excerpt of a story about the NAACP's censoring a pro-life group with some cutting words of his own. He writes: "It would seem to me that if some of your ancestors were once declared property and being only 3/5 human that they might be sensitive to the plight of the unborn where the same thing has happened."

He's also right on the money when he writes, "As I once quipped with a slogan for Planned Parenthood, 'Keeping Minorities - Minorities.'" But do read his whole post.
2:20 PM  |

One down, one to go! The reading last night at the Housing Works bookstore in SoHo for the rock-criticism book to which I contributed, Kill Your Idols: A New Generation of Rock Writers Reconsiders the Classics, went beautifully.

I read along with several other contributors, to a standing-room-only crowd of about 80 or so—you can get an idea of the audience from the pic at right that my stepdad took. (Don't stare at it too long or you'll get a headache.) Singer-songwriter Tris McCall followed the reading with artful performances of songs from the albums that the book excoriates, as well as his own tunes. Now I've just got tomorrow's reading and then it's back to the solitude of my blogging corner 'til the next offer to appear in public comes along. (It might be a while; the last one, not including my appearance on TV's "Style Court," was my August 2002 Maxwell's concert, which you can read about in Gaits of Eden.)

In case you're wondering, reading your own writing in public for the first time ever before an audience of 80 remarkably quiet and attentive people is scary. I was shaking the whole time. But the adrenaline was flowing, and I walked away happy and relieved to kudos from friends and family. Many thanks to everyone who showed up and offered support.
2:21 AM  |

They say one of the great things about being single is having the freedom to go out and have fun wherever, whenever, and with whomever. But there are times when I miss out on doing fun things because I lack a better half.

It's not because those things require being part of a couple. It's because when I'm working on Saturday, then giving a reading for the second night in a row, and then deejaying at a multimedia Mod Sixties dance party, there's no way I can get out of bed at 9 a.m. on a Sunday unless some kind husband o'mine gives me a shove.

In other words, I really wish I could go to this wacky event which is an easy 30-minute walk from my home. But it's not gonna happen. Shoot.
2:06 AM  |

Friday, July 9, 2004

Apologies to all to whom I owe an e-mail—please be assured it's nothing personal. I also still intend to post excerpts from the responses to my "agape" post. But no time right now, as today marks the beginning of my whirlwind literary/musical weekend.
11:03 AM  |

Lewis and Dork

Andrew Sullivan is desperate to claim Christianity on his side in his campaign to change minds in favor of homosexual marriage. But his Christianity is not a Bible-based one—given his pet issue, it can't be. And it can't be the Christianity of the Roman Catholic Church from which he came. So he claims to have Christianity on his side in the form of C.S. Lewis, and today he once again digs up a quotation from Mere Christianity that he claims supports homosexual "marriage."

The Lewis quotation refers to divorce, and states that civil marriage should be different from religious marriage. What Lewis is saying is that the state should not allow religious bodies to prevent people from getting a legal divorce.

Needless to say, using that quotation to support homosexual marriage is stretching it. Moreover, even if one were to apply Lewis's rationale to homosexual "marriage," the state has compelling reasons to bar such "marriage" that go beyond Bible verses.

But it's Sullivan's appropriating Lewis for his cause that is particularly offensive. It's offensive to the memory of Lewis and what he really believed. As David Mills has noted in Touchstone magazine, Lewis's writings on homosexuality show that he was opposed to it—his brutally satirical characterization of a lesbian in his novel That Hideous Strength "alone would have been enough to brand him among the homophiles, whose sensitivity to judgment and capacity for remembering criticism was as great then as now."

Another writer, Joshua Pong, writes that Lewis "would no doubt consider the homosexual tendency and its felt impulses to be part of the result of the Fall." He supports this with a quote from a letter Lewis wrote to his friend Sheldon Vanauken, stating that he took it for certain "that the physical satisfaction of the homosexual desires is sin."

Sullivan, after citing Lewis, ends his post thusly: "My anger at [the religious right] is not simply because of their contempt for gay people, but because of their corruption of Christianity."

Lewis's own Screwtape, the devil "author" of The Screwtape Letters, whose Enemy was God, would have agreed:

The thing to do is get a man at first to value social justice as a thing which the Enemy demands, and then work him on to the stage at which he values Christianity because it may produce social justice. For the Enemy will not be used as a convenience....

Only today I have found a passage in a Christian writer where he recommends his own version of Christianity on the ground that "only such a faith can outlast the death of old cultures and the birth of new civilizations." You see the little rift? "Believe this, not because it is true, but for some other reason." That's the game.

So, Andrew, if that's the way you feel, hey, go ahead: Champion your own "uncorrupted" Christianity as the means for bringing about a world where marriage—both religious and civil—loses the meaning and purpose it had in Lewis's time. You'll certainly get some affection for holding that position. In fact, if my reading of Lewis is correct, I do believe Screwtape himself is waiting anxiously to see you, to unite you to himself in "an indissoluble embrace".
1:10 AM  |

Thursday, July 8, 2004

Atop Kevin McCullough's blog right now is a funny photo display, "Can't Keep My Hands Off You," showing a number of John Kerry's, um, "touching" tributes to his running mate.
1:52 PM  |

CORRECTION ADDED—Talking Out of Church

I am not a Catholic, for a number of reasons that I won't go into here. The one time I listed those reasons on this blog, I so offended a Catholic friend that she hasn't spoken to me since—even though I apologized and deleted the entry. So my small-e evangelical-Protestant cred is still pretty good. But I have to say, recent political developments have made me deeply admire the Roman Catholic Church and see how its voice is so vitally needed.

In Romans 14, Paul talks about the importance of recognizing the priorities of the church. Christians may disagree on such things as food or drink, or which days to celebrate holidays or the Sabbath. But, he says, they must unite on the fundamentals: "For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. For he that in these things serveth Christ is acceptable to God, and approved of men" (Romans 14:17-18).

The joy Paul speaks of stems from the meeting of peace and righteousness, as the Psalmist says: "righteousness and peace have kissed each other" (Psalm 85:10b). For believers to be united in Christ, they must uphold both the one and the other.

As an unchurched believer who identifies with Protestantism, I look at the Protestant world and the Roman Catholic Church, and I see peace on the Protestants' side, but righteousness on the Catholics' side. Moreover, I see the Protestant churches' peace as a bad effort—an enforced liberalism coming at the expense of conservative members—and the Catholic Church's righteousness as a good one, holding tight to fundamental moral precepts.

That's a general statement, of course. The terrible and tragic scandals that have hit the Catholic Church are sins against righteousness, and there are major Protestant denominations that have not compromised on morality. Moreover, I disagree with the Catholic Church on the war to oust Saddam (which the church opposed) [7/11/04: I've been corrected on this and on my next point—see below] and the death penalty (which it also opposes, and which I believe is biblical in principle, if not always in practice).* And I'd be remiss if I didn't add that the Catholic Church has often been hostile or indifferent to Israel (despite efforts to make up to the Jewish people), while the Protestant churches include Israel's most faithful friends.

What impresses me is how, despite the pronouncements of cardinals and bishops who disagree with church teaching, the Roman Catholic Church as a whole speaks with one voice—one biblical voice—on many of the most important moral issues of our time. It stands firm against homosexuality, homosexual marriage, and all other sexual immorality; abortion and any kind of research that destroys embryos; and euthanasia.

Those are hugely important issues that will determine our fate and the fate of our children. And while many Protestants make their voices heard on the same side of those moral issues as Catholics do, most of the time it's Catholics who take the bullet.

Look at the news. It's devout Catholics who are literally in the trenches, kneeling in the aisles to prevent homosexual activists from receiving Communion.

As an outsider, I'm not certain that it's the place of a layperson to deny another layperson Communion—it seems to me that the clergy should take responsibility (though, in this case, they're not). Still, I can't help but admire the courage of these people who will put themselves at risk to defend values that lie at the core of their faith. And that's what we're seeing now, as the issue of whether Catholics who vocally oppose church teaching should receive Communion comes to the fore. Somehow, I can't see the Methodists denying Communion to John Edwards.

C.S. Lewis, asked whether there was hope that Protestant churches might reunite with Rome, said that "the 'extremist' elements in every Church are nearest one another and the liberal and 'broad-minded' people in each Body could never be united at all. The world of dogmatic Christianity is a place in which thousands of people of quite different types keep on saying the same thing, and the world of 'broad-mindedness' and watered-down 'religion' is a world where a small number of people (all of the same type) say totally different things and change their minds every few minutes. We shall never get re-union from them."**

I've seen Protestants who are working to uphold marriage talk about how to involve Catholic groups in their efforts. That isn't enough. This is a time when all of us who uphold marriage, life, and biblical morality, regardless of our denomination, must actively support those in the Roman Catholic Church who are defending our shared values. We have to pray for them specifically, as well as for Christians as a whole; we have to encourage them when we meet them; and we have to support them when they take brave stances. Because right now, they're the ones who are suffering most for the sake of righteousness. On these issues, they are modeling Jesus' behavior for us. And as with Jesus, we can be most ourselves when we become like them.

_______________________________________________
*CORRECTION, 7/11/04: Thanks very much to the readers—including a Catholic priest, Rev. Bryce A. Sibley—who wrote in to correct me on the Catholic Church's positions on the death penalty and Iraq. I'm correcting myself here rather than in the text, because I'd like to have a record of what I originally thought. One reader sent me a section of the Catechism of the Catholic Church which shows that the church does not oppose the death penalty, but believes that "the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity 'are very rare, if not practically non-existent.'" And I've been informed that the church was not officially opposed to the war to oust Saddam—though I should add that it's understandable why a layman would think otherwise, given comments I read by at least one Vatican official.

Fr. Bryce has a highly enjoyable Web site, A Saintly Salmagundi. It reminds me that as a teen, when I first heard someone mention Greenwich Village's Salmugundi Club, I broke into laughter. I thought the speaker said "Solomon Grundy"—born on a Monday, etc...well, I guess you just had to be there.

**"Answers to Questions on Christianity," God in the Dock.
2:13 AM  |

On my stereo during the past week:

• A CD-R copy of disc one of the Michel Polnareff box
  
• Judee Sill's Heart Food
  
• Paul Jones' "I've Been a Bad, Bad Boy," from a CD that was manufactured to go with a "born in 1967" birthday card (not my birth year)
  
• Denny Laine's "Say You Don't Mind," on a Music Sales Corp. promotional compilation CD

Also: the Upside Down World of John Pantry LP, plus CDs by Los Shakers, Powder, and Guided by Voices.
12:01 AM  |

Wednesday, July 7, 2004

Craving Meal Companionship

Through Tim Blair, I found Sheila O'Malley's list of her "Five Best Kisses." I assume we're talking mouth-kisses here and not a peck on the cheek from Aunt Becky.

I could list my five best kisses. But the truth is, even though some kisses seemed phenomenal at the time, they're all depressing now, and I've managed to block most of them out. As I wrote earlier in "The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down," at this stage of my life, any kiss that does not lead to marriage is a waste of my time, energy, emotions, and lipstick.

After all, the real excitement in a kiss is the hope that it will lead to something more substantial. To remember an only-for-the-moment kiss as "fun while it lasted" is like remembering a delicious but ill-prepared meal as "fun before the salmonella kicked in." Lips that seek only physical pleasure bear the smell of death and decay.

So instead of listing my five best kisses, I'll list another kind of male contact that I remember with pleasure: my five best food experiences with men.

The criteria is that each experience had to involve both food and a man; the food had to be an essential part of the shared experience (this rules out scores of lovely meals, including one last week); and the man could not be a boyfriend—not a serious boyfriend, anyway. That last rule is just because I don't want to embarrass anyone.

And so, in chronological order:

• Ice cream with Dave Klassen, spring 1985: When I was 16, I had a terrific crush on 23-year-old New York City musician Dave. My attraction was unrequited, but Dave liked having me around, so we would hang out during my Saturday-afternoon trips from my suburban home to Greenwich Village. One day, we went to Steve's Ice Cream Parlor at Ninth Street and Sixth Avenue to enjoy their specialty—homemade ice cream with candy mixed in.
  
  I was still at the age when a single date-that's-not-really-a-date with a man I adored was an occasion that I had to remember for life. So I tried to commit all the details of the scene to memory, from the question written on the store's blackboard ("Free cone if you know the license plate number of the Monkees' GTO"), to the song playing on the sound system: the Byrds' "Feel a Whole Lot Better."
  
  Dave commented that the song had a bass mistake. "Wow!" I exclaimed, "I didn't know they made mistakes on records." That's how long ago it was.
  
  As we dug into our vanilla ice cream with Heath Bar mix-in, the joy of the moment overwhelmed me. "Dave!" I exulted. "Life should be as good as this ice cream."
  
  Dave looked at me as though I had just uttered something of grave importance. "That's the key," he said.
  
  
• Sushi with my dad, fall 1985: I had just started to like sushi and was delighted when my dad took me to a Japanese restaurant in Greenwich Village on one of his visits to New York City. He showed me how one is supposed to eat the ginger. I had been wrapping it not-so-gingerly around the fish. My father, who had learned his sushi technique while visiting Japan, showed me that the ginger is intended as a palate cleanser—one eats a piece of it between bites. At that moment, I was convinced that I had the coolest dad.
  
  
• Ice cream with Chris Hebert, fall 1985: During my freshman year at New York University, when I was 17, I went on a date with Chris, a fellow student. We had two main things in common: a love of the Monkees, and a love of food. So we combined the two, going to Swensen's Ice Cream Parlor at West Fourth Street, talking about Mike, Peter, Micky, and Davy, and ordering the biggest thing on the menu: the Matterhorn.
  
  I had never before shared a Matterhorn with only one person. It was indeed a mountain of ice cream—maybe nine scoops, with nuts, a cherry, a banana, whipped cream, hot fudge, the works.
  
  I remember the sheer glee Chris and I had in diving into that thing. All the freedom of living away from home for the first time went into our digging frenzy.
  
  After that, we wound up parting ways pretty quickly. Our shared tastes weren't enough to sustain us. But that was some mountain climb.
  
  
• Fruit salad with Kenn Kweder, 1987: Another unrequited musician crush. I saw Kenn as a Robyn Hitchcock type; a slightly loopy guy who wrote delightfully twisted poetry set to anthemic melodies. Kind of like a rock and roll Edward Lear.
  
  I didn't get to spend much time around Kenn—he lived in Philadelphia—but I do remember the one and only time we ate together, at a New York City diner. I was having fruit salad, and I offered him some.
  
  He seemed hesitant, then waved his hand in a dismissive flutter, mumbling, "No, thanks."
  
  "Are you sure?" I asked. It would have been the highest compliment for me if he would have eaten of my fruit salad.
  
  He shifted in his seat. "Yeah," he mumbled, embarrassed. "I—I just don't like it when all the different fruits are...touching each other."
  
  Looking back, I see that his distaste for clinging bits of fruit was neurotic. But at the time, I just thought it was charming.
  
  
• Eel hand rolls with Vince Miller, fall 1997: Vince is a friend from London who used to make frequent trips to New York City. I introduced him to sushi, which he loved, and we developed a routine. I'd meet him at JFK airport and we'd take a taxi together straight to Japonica, a wonderful sushi restaurant at 12th Street and University Place in Greenwich Village.
  
  At Japonica, we'd sit at the sushi bar and order our mutual favorite—the eel-and-avocado hand roll. A couple of years later, when I accepted Jesus, I would feel moved to avoid trayf. But back then with Vince, there was nothing more delicious to me than hot broiled eel.
  
  The Japonica chef would proudly hand each of us our cone-shaped rolls bursting with huge pieces of steaming eel and generous chunks of avocado. Vince and I would each take our first bite at the same time. Then our eyes would roll back into our heads in epicurean ecstasy as we'd turn to each other and, without even trying for synchronicity, release a simultaneous, "Mmmm!"

1:45 AM  |

Tuesday, July 6, 2004

I found out what kind of champagne the Daily News sent to the New York Post's editors to "congratulate" them. It was Andre Cold Duck. Those cheapskates.
11:46 PM  |

Fatal Attraction

"A pregnant woman lies on her side with a hand behind her head as if posing for a nude photograph. But her dead body isn't the only thing exposed. Her heart, intestines and 8-month-old fetus are visible as well."

So begins the Associated Press's description of "Body Worlds," a traveling exhibition of plasticine-filled corpses now showing at Los Angeles's California Science Center. The bodies are of "donors"—people who reportedly gave permission for their corpses to be sliced and preserved in such a manner.

Putting aside the obvious disgust at the idea of dead human bodies being turned into a sideshow, what struck me about this image of the pregnant woman was the passing reference to the eight-month-old unborn child.

Assuming the child wasn't horribly injured—and the description doesn't say if it was—it should have been viable. There's no reason why it should still be inside the mother—unless doctors made no attempt to save it.

That's what especially chilled me as I read the story about the exhibition and its creator, ghoulish German scientist Gunther von Hagens. I can just picture him saying in German, "Let the child die—it will make a better exhibit."

And that, I believe, is the real reason why this exhibit exists—to cause people to view the human body in a detached fashion, as an object, and not as a precious creation.

"It's not an ethical issue," said California Science Center Jeffrey N. Rudolph of the exhibit. "It's more of a visceral reaction."

In other words, viewers are supposed to examine their own feelings as they react to the corpses—with the implication that they will then get over their natural revulsion for dead bodies.

But that revulsion is necessary for our survival. Observation teaches that it's the people who treat dead bodies as objects for their own amusement who are most likely to lose their respect for live ones. When I was in school, I did not want to sit next to the cruel bully who plucked legs off of spiders—even if he was thoughtful enough to wait until they were dead.
9:00 PM  |

Life Begins at Zero

A friend wrote to me observing how I seem to change into a different person when I go off on Planned Parenthood's Teenwire or SaveRoe.com. That person, he added, is someone he wouldn't want to cross.

I do pull out the venom for people and organizations who would destroy innocent life, and there's a reason I'm so vocal on the issue.

Before I accepted Jesus at age 31, I was pro-choice. I didn't like the concept of abortion, but I felt it was a necessary option—especially once I became sexually active and feared I might someday, in my eyes, "need" an abortion myself. (Those words—"necessary option," "need"—I now realize are part of the vocabulary the pro-choice movement uses to make women think of the procedure as the only choice.)

As soon as I gained a faith perspective, I knew the pro-choice stance had to go. The change wasn't because I felt I had to rubber-stamp the whole evangelical agenda. I felt the strong presence of the Holy Spirit dwelling in me during my early days of faith—much more so than since then, though I know it's still there—and the Spirit would not allow any question on life issues. So I suddenly went from thinking of an unborn child as being something just less than human, to being a human being, with all the attendant rights.

Still, it took me a while to get worked up over the issue. For one thing, the pro-life movement is all about babies, and I don't particularly like babies. Oh, they're cute and everything, and I used to be one (a cross-eyed one, no less), but I'm not really interested in them. They're so nonverbal. Pictures of beaming parents holding their adorable little ones who were saved from the metal jaws of the abortionist, might make me feel a little mushy, but those alone wouldn't motivate me to join the National Right to Life Committee.

The real change for me was gradual, and is still occurring, deepening as I understand the full weight of the truth that life begins at conception. It's something that I'm sure hasn't hit John Kerry, otherwise he wouldn't be able to continue to support abortion rights while believing that same truth, as he stated yesterday.

What's so very hard to realize is that if abortion takes a life, then it's murder. More than that, it's cruel and unusual, because the victim feels pain and is horribly dismembered. And more than that, there have been 39 million of these disgusting, barbaric murders in the United States since abortion was made legal.

So to believe that life begins at conception is to believe that a terrible holocaust is going on under our noses, every day, in every corner of our country—not to mention the world at large, where a total of 46 million abortions are performed every year.

That's what I'm still trying to get my head around. And I'm not radicalized enough yet. Because if I were really radicalized, I would be in front of those abortuaries, preventing women from entering. And I'd be volunteering at a crisis-pregnancy center, encouraging women to keep their babies.

Abortion is a massively important issue—so massive, in fact, that I don't even know where to start doing something about it. For now, all I can say is that I've joined the resistance to this very real holocaust. And, as I survey the battlefield, I don't think it's a coincidence that a certain would-be leader who's surrendered to the enemy looks mighty French.
3:41 AM  |

"Reform" School

Several readers have written in response to yesterday's post "Why I Oughta," which asked, "How does one, in a relationship, balance attraction to a person with the desire to love that person in a godly way?" I'm grateful for all the responses, and am considering posting some of them, but for now I'd like to respond to the one from Batesline's Michael D. Bates. He's a fellow blogger whom I like and respect, and he has some unusually harsh words for me. It's not every day that I'm accused of being (gasp!) un-Reformed:

No time for a dissertation, just this point. Maybe I'm misreading you, but there's something almost gnostic—or at least un-Reformed—in the way you've framed the issue. Our earthly desires and God's purposes are not necessarily opposed. We mustn't try to be more holy than God.

Although we haven't met, as far as I know, you are flesh and blood and not an angelic being. So why would you think God has called you to glorify Him as if you were an angel, freed from earthly passions and desires? He expects you to glorify Him by ordering those desires according to His will, through chastity, not lifelong celibacy. (From what you've written about your longings, I think it's fair to presume you have not been given the gift of celibacy.) God's providence is as certainly at work in the process of attraction as it is in your vocational inclinations. We are all called to emulate God's unconditional love, especially to those of the household of the faith. It's hard enough to persevere in love for your spouse when you start off full of passion and attraction. God won't give you extra brownie points for marrying someone in the absence of any material cause of attraction.

The suggestion that I'm sounding Gnostic hits me much harder than the one of sounding un-Reformed. Quite honestly, I could care less about whether I sound Reformed or not. I have many differences with the Roman Catholic Church, but I've yet to be convinced that they have any wrong ideas about marital love, or the love that leads to marriage. (I'm speaking in terms of doctrine, not practice—I don't believe any denomination would stand if it were judged solely on practice.)

But the Gnostic charge stings, because there's truth in it. I do compartmentalize attraction separately from what I consider godly love, the kind C.S. Lewis called agape. (That link will take you to an excellent article on agape by Peter Kreeft.) In my mind, there's a dichotomy between the two that's so wide, I don't know how it can be bridged. When I feel attracted to a man, obsessive and possessive feelings immediately emerge. Although I believe I've gotten to the point where I can identify those feelings and realize they're not loving, it still bothers me that they color any loving feelings that I do have.

So I agree then with Michael that I can't be holier than God, and that, not being called to celibacy, the love relationship I have that leads to marriage will be one of physical attraction as well as agape love. The question remains, then, how does one integrate attraction with agape love? What are the signs to watch for, and what are the models one should follow?

I'm still interested in your response. Please let me know if I may publish it. Thanks.
3:04 AM  |

Monday, July 5, 2004

I just found a piece of advice in the Associated Press stylebook that made me do a double take. Under "airports," after giving the AP style for airport names, it adds, "Do not make up names."
8:03 PM  |

Little Sister

Steven A. Givler, a captain in the U.S. Air Force, responded to yesterday's post about Planned Parenthood's July 4 message by sending me a moving message of his own. "The Greek Word for Life" is his story of a baby girl who Planned Parenthood would have prevented from being born. It's also a powerful testimonial to the importance of crisis-pregnancy centers.

Steven's story affected me so much that I gave it a page of its own. If it moves you, please let me know (address at left) and I'll pass your message on to him.
3:40 AM  |

Fate of Our Fathers

Kathleen Parker has an excellent op-ed today, "Same-Sex Marriage And The Disposal Of Fatherhood," which tells why the fatherhood movement should be concerned about same-sex marriage. Some choice quotes:

In light of the travails endured by the fatherhood movement over the past decade, same-sex marriage stands as a particularly decisive blow in the disenfranchisement of fathers in American culture. How? By reinforcing the idea that one parent is disposable, which has been both an unspoken tenet of American divorce and the animating force behind the fatherhood movement....

At its root, same-sex marriage is predicated on two grossly faulty premises: (1) that children do not need both a mother and a father; (2) that two moms or two dads are just as good as a mother and a father. Here is where most people I know register their visceral opposition, even if they can't articulate just why....

[T]he many fathers who have lost children in the divorce trenches and custody battles should recognize that creating yet another institution that robs children of their right to two (opposite-sex) parents is unacceptable and undermines the arguments of those battling for fatherhood....

The fact that heterosexuals in their search for personal fulfillment have failed to protect marriage and their children is a just indictment that calls for acknowledgement and redress of harm done. It is not a mandate to further the disintegration of the structure of the family by ratifying a "right" for some individuals that stands in direct conflict with the equal right of children to have both a mother and a father.

That's just a taste; Parker backs up those arguments in her piece.
2:16 AM  |

Why I Oughta

In the nearly 2,000-year-old book of Jewish rabbinical wisdom known as the Pirke Avot (Sayings of the Fathers), I found the following fascinating assertion:

"Whenever love depends upon some material cause, with the passing away of that cause, the love too passes away; but if it be not dependent upon such a cause, it will not pass away forever. Such was the love of Amnon and Tamar. And that which depended upon no such cause? Such was the love of David and Jonathan."

Amnon was the son of David who hotly desired his half-sister Tamar, raped her, and then threw her out onto the street. Clearly his material cause for loving his sister was the desire to have her—and his love passed away immediately after he got what he wanted. In fact, he "hated her exceedingly; so that the hatred wherewith he hated her was greater than the love wherewith he had loved her."

What do the rabbis mean, then, by saying that David and Jonathan's intense but platonic love is the kind that "will not pass away forever"? Some might take that as a slur against love between a man and a woman. I don't believe that's why it was chosen as a contrast. But I do believe it's meant to make us think about what level of godly love is necessary in any relationship in order for it to rise above the purely physical—or, as I like to say, the transactional.

When I wrote earlier about the transactional nature of sex outside marriage, some readers, including married ones, wrote saying that I had idolized marital sex. They said that sex didn't become a better, more moral, or less self-centered act merely because it occurred between two people who were married to each other.

It's a valid criticism—married people are just as capable as singles of viewing one another as objects and not as human beings made in the image of God. But I do believe that married love should contain that element of selflessness expressed in David and Jonathan's love for one another, where the love, as the rabbis say, does not rest upon a material cause.

I'm also fairly certain that it's impossible for a man and woman who are attracted to one another to have a love that's unfettered by material desires. Once one's sexually attracted to a person, the object of desire is by nature an object, however loved. Certainly, too, our individuality, and our ability to appreciate the unique personhood of others, is a gift from God. But I still think that in a love relationship, one should strive for the love that is beyond a material cause, even as one acknowledges that one's fallen nature works against it.

What do you think? How does one, in a relationship, balance attraction to a person with the desire to love that person in a godly way? This is a subject that interests me because I've never been in a relationship with a believing man, and I'd like to learn more about what that involves. And yes, I realize this is like standing on the edge of a swimming pool and asking the swimmers how it's done, but it's not my time yet to dive in.

If you've any thoughts on this, please write me at the address at left, and please let me know if I can quote you. Thanks.

1:30 AM  |

Wrote a headline last night for the weekly box-office story. It's all about how well the film about Marvel Comics' webslinger is doing, so for the banner headline, I wrote: 'SPIDER'S GOT LEGS
1:02 AM  |

Sunday, July 4, 2004

No, Planned Parenthood Can't Put a Sock in It.
Not for One Day.

Some thoughts about the meaning of Independence Day, courtesy of Planned Parenthood's SaveRoe.com blog:

I just love the smell of freedom in the morning. Don’t you? A smell like fresh coffee and cooling blueberry pie. And wet dog and babies and a full grill in a backyard...

One assumes the babies aren't on the grill.

...This weekend, while celebrating Independence Day, remember to breathe deep that freedom, and take it not for granted....I’m pretty sure that the teenager who has a baby she didn’t plan on having because no one would tell her how not to doesn’t feel or smell that freedom.

If that teen were able to feel or smell that particular "freedom," she wouldn't be able to feel or smell her baby. Unless it's on the SaveRoe.com blogger's grill, of course.

Happy Independence Day, all. Remember it's the truth that makes us free. God bless you, and God bless America.
4:12 AM  |

Meals on Heels

Who says chastity is boring? There are so many fun things you can do besides have sex. You can go swimming, you can go sailing, you can enjoy art exhibits...

Went with my friend Janet Rosen yesterday morning before work to do a Meals on Wheels-type thing—or, as Janet puts it, Meals on Heels—for a Greenwich Village charity for which she serves on the board, The Caring Community. We had the good fortune to be assigned to deliver meals to elderly shut-ins at Westbeth, Manhattan's famous public-housing complex for artists. It was a great experience to deliver to grand old dames of the art world, including one lovely woman who invited us in to look at her paintings, which were stunning. I later researched her and found out that her works go for thousands of dollars. I can't believe I got to see a roomful of them up close, including one she'd just finished.

These elderly people have contributed so much to the world and often still have much to contribute. I think of my Aunt Alma, a writer who got published in Reader's Digest for the first time when she was in her 90s. I'm glad Caring Community offers me and other volunteers an opportunity to give something back. (Yes, I know that's a blatant advertisement, but they deserve it. Their contact information for volunteers and donations is here.)

The Westbeth itself, a former Bell Labs factory, is striking in that it's immense and imposing, but it's not a thing of beauty. Its residents and management beautify with abundant art, including this giant twisty thingie Janet and I found in the courtyard.

Janet (right, lunch-delivery bag in hand) does stand-up comedy and also the sit-down kind; she writes it. She gave me a copy of a newly released anthology of female comics' humor She's So Funny, which contains several of her jokes. I like her dismissal of infants: "Babies are just coasting on their youth and their looks."


3:46 AM  |

List for Life

Reader Karl Ikola of San Francisco wrote out of the blue, offering an entertaining bio of himself from 1966 to 1979. I love getting unexpected stuff like this. I think there's something here to which everyone can relate:

rundown: borned 2-66 in Pitty, Pa. Finnish/German/Norwegian/Native American ancestry (the last one might be a myth, but is, at the very least, a well-meaning one).

key consciousness unveilings:

prologue: was single-digit miles away from the Grande Ballroom in Detroit, Michigan in October '68, in Lincoln Park, MI, shortly after my younger sister was born.

1. realizing that I was three years old on my birthday in 1969, basement of rented home, Detroit street, Lincoln Park, Michigan.

2. seeing the Sunset Strip in August '69 at age three. Saw a guy in a devil suit dancing around some flames whilst laughing maniacally and juggling (true story!). My grandfather said: "doors locked, windows up" as he fastened the automatic settings in his 1965 Lincoln Continental.

3. Listening to parents' Elvis and novelty 45s in '70-'71. Flying Saucers, dude.

4. Hearing one of the "bad kids" in the 'hood playing "At The Hop" by Danny and the Juniors in  summer '71, shortly before that dope smoker had gotten a crew cut and headed to Vietnam.

5. Having my dad buy me Oldies But Goodies Volume 14 on Original Sound Records in 1973.

6. Watching my favorite track on that compilation, "Rock Around The Clock,"  by Bill Haley and his Comets, get edge-warp melted in the sun to the point of unplayability in my bedroom window in summer '73, Allen Park, MI.

7. Hearing Tomita's "Snowflakes Are Dancing" in '73 or whenever it came out.

8. Wanting to join the Bureau Of Indian Affairs at age 9 in '75 after having my father buy me a copy of the four LP box set of authentic, tribal-defined songs of American Indian tribes for $9+ at Dearborn Music in 1975.

9. Getting my first skeleton key. 1975.

10. Seeing the CN Tower in Toronto before it was completed in '75. Little did I know Simply Saucer were blasting away less than an hour's drive away.

11. Hearing about the Three Mile Island meltdown in '79 and having the first seeds of doubt planted in my head regarding the sustainability of the ideal of purity of academic conception, though at the time was still avidly bullish in support of the NRC [Nuclear Regulatory Commission] as a freshman
at a high school in Trenton, Michigan.

3:31 AM  |

Saturday, July 3, 2004

Zach at Eclectic Amateur has come up with an inspired "Separated at Birth." It's John Forbes Kerry and...well, I won't spoil it for you.
10:10 PM  |

The Ugly Americans

Marlon Brando, one of the most influential actors of the 20th century, dies.

The New York Times' headline is, "Marlon Brando, Oscar Winning Actor, Is Dead at 80." The New York Post's headline is, "FILM WORLD'S STORMY REBEL HAD A STARDOM NO AUDIENCE COULD REFUSE." USA Today's headline is, "An Unforgettable Method Actor."

Then there's 365Gay.com, whose headline describes the most important thing about Brando in five words. Well, three words, actually, because two of them are his name. Actually, make that two descriptive words, because one's a verb. Can you guess what it is?

"Bi Actor Marlon Brando Dies."

A fellow headline writer here at my work suggests they could have made the headline even simpler: "Bye Bye Bi."
5:30 PM  |

Dustbury.com's Charles G. Hill has an excellent distillation of the story behind "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," taking it all the way down to the current Disney lawsuit.
3:51 PM  |

I have an offbeat headline in today's paper. It's about a restaurant owner denying rumors that he's bankrupt. I wrote, "Eatery owner: Don't stick a fork in me."
2:15 PM  |

The GOP Lightens Up

Op-ed writer Robert George (pictured with Julia Gorin, flanking me) got a hearty laugh from me right at the beginning of his comedy set Thursday night at the Don't Tell Mama nightclub.

"I work for the New York Post," he said, "which is the third least-credible paper in New York City, after The New York Times and the Daily News."

That got me. It's not often that one hears a comic tell it like it is. But this was the Republican Riot, a regular event, so I had an idea of what to expect, though I'd never attended it before.

Robert gets lots of comedic mileage out of his heritage and background—he's a black Catholic Republican who used to work for Newt Gingrich. He notes that when he tells people he worked for Gingrich, they often ask how he could work for a man who's considered insensitive to women.

"I tell them that I tried to get a job in Ted Kennedy's office—[cue laughter]—but I failed the driving test [cue groans]."

While Robert's onstage presence is poised, even suave, headliner Julia Gorin is a rubber-faced lunatic, and I mean that in the nicest way possible. I think we all want our comediennes to be beautiful women who are unafraid to make themselves look ridiculous for laughs—think Lucille Ball and Gilda Radner—and Julia fulfills that marvelously.

Being Jewish and basing much of her humor on Jewish stereotypes—the gentle kind that are funny to Jews and non-Jews alike—Julia alternates seamlessly between the characters of princess and matron. It's the first time I've ever seen a woman who can evoke both Molly Ringwald and Molly Goldberg.

She had me from the start, when she put to bed the idea that Republicans don't feel for the underprivileged. She described seeing a woman with a "small, tight butt" and thinking, "How sad that some should have so little"—here she gestured at herself—"while others have so much!"

She's also a good impressionist, even doing a surprisingly credible Bill Clinton. She offered an image of him reading The Hunting of the President and calling over to Hillary, "See, honey, I told you! I was framed! It's all in this book!"

12:23 AM  |

Friday, July 2, 2004

Get Religion has an informative entry on Tony Hendra, noting the connection between the sexual freedom that he champions in his new book, Father Joe, and his own alleged abuse of his daughter. The blog also gives several examples of Hendra's rabidly anti-conservative pieces from The American Prospect. I wrote about Father Joe in the entry "Erroneous Monk."
9:41 PM  |

Margaret Sanger Explains It All for You

The features editors at the tabloid newspaper where I work still haven't responded to my offer to replace their dating columnist, so I've decided to try for a different writing gig. Now I want to be an expert columnist for Planned Parenthood's Teenwire.

As I wrote in an earlier post, Planned Parenthood's main Web site assures donors that the organization is devoted to helping teens make "responsible decisions" and giving them information about contraception methods. It also touts the "social-norms approach" to sex ed, which combats the idea that "everybody's doing it."

Planned Parenthood does not encourage its donors, or anyone out of their teens, to visit Teenwire, the organization's sex-ed Web site for kids age 13 on up. And it's no wonder, because that site is built entirely on the "everybody's doing it" approach. (I distilled the essence of Teenwire in three previous posts: "Disgusteen," "No 'Wire Sangers Ever," and "Pencil Pushers.")

One of the main features on Teenwire is its daily "Ask the Experts" column. This is where I think I could provide a refreshingly different point of view. But you can be the judge. Following are three genuine "Ask the Experts" questions, each followed first by my answer, and then by the real answer given by Teenwire experts. In my mind, every answer should be applicable to kids at the lower age limit of the Web site's target audience—that's 13.

Real Teenwire Question #1:

Dear Experts,

Can you be too fat to have sex? I really want to and I'm not fat, but I'm not a size 6. I'm a size 11 and am I too big to have sex? Can sex still be enjoyable if you're not as skinny?

Ella707

My response:

Dear Ella707,

The question is not whether you're too fat to have sex, but whether you should be having sex at all. It's natural for a girl your age to want very badly to experience sex for the first time. But once you open that door, you let in lots of dangers, both emotional and physical. Plus there's so much more joy left to experience in life and relationships—joy that will be cut off from you if you start having sex at such a young age.

Check out the youth group at your house of worship. You'll meet boys there, but it'll be in a safe environment where you can really get to know them and enjoy their company without feeling pressured.

God bless,

Dawn

Teenwire's response:

Dear Ella707,

Sex can be enjoyable for people of any size! Even though there's often a lot of social pressure on women to be thin, the fact is, there are many bigger women — even very fat women (and men, for that matter) — who have healthy, happy sex lives.

It is perfectly normal for teens to worry about their body size, but remember that it's totally unrealistic for most people to look like models. As for sizing, just remember that those numbers can vary depending on the kind of store and the designer. A size eight in one store may be a size 10 in another and a size six in yet another. Getting hung up on being the "perfect" size will only lead to frustration.


Hope this information helps!

Take care,

teenwire.com Editors

Real Teenwire Question #2:

Dear Experts,

When you are having sex what positions are the most comfortable?

b_rit8

My response:

Dear b_rit8,

You shouldn't be thinking about what position's comfortable for you. You should be thinking about whether sex itself is right for you at this time in your life. Only a year or two ago, you were playing with Barbie. It's a big leap between fantasizing a date with Ken and going on a real date with a flesh-and-blood teenage boy whose hormonal output is outpacing his mental and emotional development.

See if your town has a chapter of an organization called Young Life. It's a Christian group where teens can do a wide range of social activities in a safe, friendly, and fun environment. Or, if you're Jewish, check out the teen programs at your local JCC. At your age, you want to do things that will give you cherished memories—not a lifetime of regret.

God bless,

Dawn

Teenwire's response:

Dear b_rit8,

There's no right or wrong answer to this question! It's different for every person, and it's something that partners have to figure out themselves through experience and communication. Letting our partners know what feels good and what doesn't is the key to having sex play that is comfortable and enjoyable. It's important to stop having intercourse if anything hurts and communicate with your partner about how you feel — sex play that is painful or uncomfortable should not continue.

Hope this information helps!

Take care,

teenwire.com Editors

Real Teenwire Question #3:

Dear Experts,

I'm a lesbian just coming out and I was wanted to know how most lesbian couples even have sex? I've never done it before and I wanted to know how its done.

Wedde_64

My response:

Dear Wedde_64,

You're at an age when you're just discovering your newly developed body. Your sexual urges are coming to the fore for the first time. Most boys are smelly jocks or oily nerds, and a lot of them are cruel or just awkward. It's natural to be put off by them.

You see the girls your age who seem so poised and graceful by comparison, and you want to be accepted by them. For a woman to find you attractive would be more of a compliment than for a man to feel the same way, because women are harder to impress.

But start having sex with women, and you are making a big mistake.

You will spend the rest of your life with resentments and a nagging sense of incompletion.

There is a reason why studies show, as the Associated Press recently reported and as lesbian groups acknowledge, that lesbians have higher rates of smoking, obesity, and alcohol use. Your body and soul were made to be complemented by a man, not a woman.

Talk to your pastor or rabbi, or your school psychologist. It's not too late to get help. You deserve the best in life—to grow up healthy, happy, and able to enjoy a committed love relationship with a man.

Best,

Dawn

Teenwire's response [warning: sexual language ahead—and remember, this advice is targeted at 13-year-olds]:

Dear Wedde_64,

There are many ways that everyone — lesbian, gay, bisexual, or heterosexual — can be sexual with a partner, including kissing, masturbation, erotic massage, body rubbing, fantasy, and using sex toys for clitoral, anal, or vaginal stimulation. These kinds of sex play are referred to as "outercourse." Many people also enjoy oral sex, which is when someone uses her or his mouth to stimulate a partner's genitals.

Everyone is different when it comes to what they enjoy sexually. People have various likes and dislikes and only you will know what feels good for you.

Women don't need to worry about getting pregnant when they have sex with other women, but they do need to protect themselves against sexually transmitted infections. While transmission rates are lower for women who have sex with women, it's still possible for lesbians to acquire and transmit infections through outercourse.

Women can reduce the risk of infection the same way straight people can — through safer sex, including lower risk behaviors and the use of latex barriers — like using Glyde dams for oral sex, and condoms on sex toys.

Hope this information helps!

Take care,

teenwire Editors
3:38 AM  |

Thursday, July 1, 2004

Chapter and Voice

The following is from an e-mail I just sent out to my friends—that is, all the friends whose addresses are in my address book (I'm sure I missed quite a few, ironically those whose addresses I know by heart). Since you're my friend for reading this blog, you get it too. Just don't start asking to borrow money:

I'm writing to make sure you know about the readings I'm giving in Manhattan next week to commemorate the release of a new rock-journalism anthology to which I contributed a chapter: Kill Your Idols: A New Generation of Rock Writers Reconsiders the Classics, edited by the Chicago Sun-Times' Jim DeRogatis along with Carmel Carrillo.

Each chapter in Kill Your Idols (which is available on Amazon) takes on a supposed "classic" album. I chose the Beach Boys' Smile, the unreleased album they did during the time when Brian Wilson felt he could compose best by putting his entire piano in a giant sandbox. The fact that his dog chose to use the sandbox as a litter should have told him something. The book's on Barricade, which puts this faith-based wingnut in the strange company of Helen Gurley Brown, The Turner Diaries, and Margaret Sanger: Her Life in Her Words. But, hey—ars longa, vita brevis.

I will be reading at the following events:

• July 9 @ 7 p.m., free: Reading/book release party at Housing Works Bookstore, 126 Crosby St. in SoHo (phone: 212-334-3324), with editors Jim DeRogatis and Carmel Carrillo and other New York/New Jersey contributors. Singer/guitarist Tris McCall will perform songs from albums reviewed in the book.
  
  If you attend the Housing Works reading and want to make a night of it, I'll be taking the PATH afterwards to Uncle Joe's in Jersey City for an all-rock/no-readings book-releasing party featuring bands playing songs from albums reviewed in the book—including my friends the wonderful Anderson Council.



• July 10 @ 8 p.m., $8: Reading/book release party at Sin-é, 150 Attorney St., a k a "downtown somewhere" (phone: 212-388-0077), again with editors Jim DeRogatis and Carmel Carrillo and other New York/New Jersey contributors. I'll be sandwiched before or between a host of rockers, including Grand Mal (covering Springsteen), Wounded Knees (Jimi Shields/Suzanne Thorpe), The IO's (covering Smashing Pumpkins and Wilco), the Milwaukees and Jim Testa.
  
  Tickets for the Sin-é event are available on Ticketweb. They're expecting it to sell out.
  
  PLEASE NOTE: If you do go to the Sin-é event, please come early, as I'll be reading at the beginning of the show. At 9:30, I must disappear to deejay at the monthly POP GEAR! Sixties multimedia dance party at Rififi at Cinema Classics (East 11th Street between 1st and 2nd aves.), a free event to which you're also invited. I'll be deejaying at POP GEAR! from 10 to 11 and then dancing 'til midnight, when I turn into a pumpkin (it's a work night).

6:04 PM  |

"I'd Like to Help You Son,
But You're Too Young to Vote"

Good morning! I can't start you off on the entry I wrote today, "Kill Pill" (the next one down), because it's awfully heavy for a hot summer's day. So I went into my archives from my rock-critic years and pulled out the following story about the Eddie Cochran classic "Summertime Blues." This originally appeared several years back in the English music magazine Mojo. Enjoy:

There's real teen frustration in this protest classic, also a hit for Blue Cheer and the Who. When Eddie Cochran recorded "Summertime Blues," in the spring of 1958, it was intended only to be a B-side. At that time, Liberty Records head Sy Waronker was much more accustomed to overseeing Julie London's career than that of Cochran, who was the first rock and roll artist signed to the label. Despite Cochran's proven songwriting talent ("Twenty Flight Rock"), Waronker remained wary of Cochran's original songs in general and rockers in particular. And the more pressure Waronker applied, the more Cochran wanted to let out his frustrations in raw rock and blues.

Sharon Sheeley, his girlfriend at the time, who was in the 1960 car crash which took Cochran's life, recalls of Liberty, "Eddie fought with them constantly. They would bring in these schlocky little ballads and say, 'You gotta record this,' and he wouldn't want to. He liked to do originals instead, and he loved the blues. He would beg them, he would say, 'Please, just let me make one instrumental blues album.' And Sy Waronker would say, 'No, no, no. Not commercial. You can't do it.'"

However, Waronker had no problem with Cochran's recording a sentimental ballad Sheeley had penned, "Love Again." With "Summertime Blues" safely tucked away on the B-side, the disc came out in June 1958, only one month after Cochran's previous single, "Teresa," had missed the charts entirely.

Much to Liberty's surprise, disc jockeys bypassed "Love Again" in favor of "Summertime Blues." It took a couple of months for jocks around the country to realize that they should flip the single over, but, before the summer was over, "Summertime Blues" was in the Top Ten. And Cochran's blues lessened considerably.
3:52 AM  |

Kill Pill

Prevention magazine has hired a publicity firm to promote its August cover story, which bears the provocative and very lengthy headline, "Access Denied: Find out why growing numbers of doctors and pharmacists across the US are refusing to prescribe or dispense birth-control pills."

The article by fitness editor Caroline Bollinger is the typical women's magazine "investigative report": It begins on the assumption that evil Christians are taking away women's natural rights, then gets testimonials from "wronged women" and vitriolic propaganda from the mouths of not one, but two Planned Parenthood spokeswomen. It does get quotes from a few pro-lifers for balance, but only so it may then discredit their claims.

The story's premise is that a small but growing cabal of woefully misguided doctors and pharmacists are refusing to prescribe or dispense birth-control pills to women, out of an utterly unfounded belief that the Pill can cause the death of fertilized eggs. In fact, recognized medical experts have found a strong likelihood that the pill may kill fertilized eggs, as detailed in a study published in the prestigious Archives of Family Medicine. But Bollinger manages to dismiss this study by noting that one of its authors is from Salt Lake City (gasp!) and is now a Bush appointee (oh, the humanity!).

As a committed pro-lifer, I sympathize with doctors and pharmacists who would not want to take the chance, however small, that the pills they are prescribing or dispensing might kill a human life.

Bollinger makes a point of noting that not all women take the Pill for contraceptive purposes. Many do so because of health conditions. So these doctors and pharmacists, whose job is to protect life, are in fact—by denying women the Pill—potentially harming their patients. But is that what's actually happening?

From Bollinger's narrative, it's impossible to say. She does tell of one woman whose former doctor allegedly prescribed her the Pill for health reasons. This woman had to switch doctors, and her new one refused to prescribe the Pill. But notably absent from Bollinger's account of the woman's meeting with her new doctor is any suggestion that the woman's explained to the doctor that she needed the pill for non-birth-control reasons.

Bollinger even interviewed the doctor, yet she doesn't offer any quote from the physician on how she could have denied a patient something that's not only birth control but also necessary medicine. One is left suspecting that the patient's health problem was really just that her ovaries released an egg every month.

I have good reason to be genuinely concerned if this Prevention report is true, because I am on birth-control pills for a health condition.

I first went on the Pill for my health because of a little mishap that happened a while back—the Fall. But once I accepted Jesus, I felt uncomfortable having such an inducement to casual sex, so I quit the medication.

Two years later, in 2002, I started to have an inordinate amount of bleeding. It could have been due to the thyroid medication I'm on, or a mild genetic disorder that runs in the family. I never found out, because my doctor put me back on the Pill and the problem went away completely.

I hate taking the Pill, because it comes in this glaring pink case that looks like it fell off a Barbie house. It screams to everyone around, "Hey, look! This girl's making sure that she doesn't have to suffer the physical consequences of casual sex!" But I take it, and I'm glad for it. So any possibility that a druggist might decline to fill the prescription would certainly concern me.

But I don't think it's going to happen like Prevention magazine is attempting to scare readers into believing it will, and here's why:

Bollinger's fearmongering is based upon the presumption that the professionals who refuse to prescribe or dispense birth-control pills are unreasonable people. Like so many secular reporters covering religious topics, she assumes that no intelligent, feeling human being would believe that life begins at conception. One senses in her article the liberal paranoia that President Bush and his appointees, if given the chance, would turn America into an evangelical-Christian theocracy.

But I don't believe that Christians stop working their brains when they start working their faith. I believe that the very same person who would have the faith and courage to take a principled stand on a life issue, would also have the reason to see when it's fair to make an exception.

Even if one day I went to the drugstore and the pharmacist refused to fill my prescription, I still can't imagine being unable to find a pharmacist who would fill it. When one has faith in the reasonable nature of people in general, one does not fear the opinions of a few. The First Amendment, which allows Americans to remain faithful to their religion in the workplace, assures that this nation will not be a theocracy, because it protects the diversity of citizens' opinions and faiths.

So let the pro-life doctors and pharmacists take their stand. And don't wait until the last minute to get a refill of that juvenile-looking pink case. It's better for a few people to be mildly inconvenienced, than for us all to be prevented from maintaining our integrity on the job.

TRACKBACK: Kevin Miller, a theologian who works with pro-life doctors, notes that "physicians who don't prescribe [birth-control pills] do seek to provide better treatments" for women with health problems that would normally be addressed by the Pill.
1:27 AM  |