Beautifully Unique Sparkleponies: On Myths, Morons, Free Speech, Football, and Assorted Absurdities (10 page)

Aghgh! Stop it! No one enjoys it when you stroke someone’s forearm while expounding earnestly on the merits of double flushing, or when you drape your arm over a guy’s shoulder while going over the TPS report. It’s gross, it’s creepy, and it’s really not cool, man. Notice how I’m not humping your leg while we’re having a conversation? Extend the same respect to me, please. If I wanted to be touched inappropriately, I’d go drop some soap in the prison shower, but we’re fully dressed in the middle of an Applebee’s, so knock it off.

Seriously. We all know you got that handicapped placard from your doctor buddy whom you have a five-martini lunch with every Thursday out at the golf course, and when I have to walk by BGMONEY or PWRPLYR parked in the disabled spot, I want to take a nine iron to your scrotum, especially when you come running out of Starbucks because you’re late for your tee time. You’re a giant fraud, and if there’s any justice in the universe, one day your car will run over your ankles so you’ll actually qualify for
that sticker. I hope your triple latte sets your upholstery on fire, and your wife runs off with the cabana boy.

“Oh, that’s amazing, you came in second place in your track meet, just super; did I ever tell you about the time I won the Boston Marathon while running backward and suffering from Ebola? It wasn’t really a big deal, I only spent two years training under the Dalai Lama to focus my seventeen core chakras, reaching a level he said he’d never seen before, but I have to say, I think it definitely helped me nail that Oscar-winning role in the remake of
Les Mis
I starred in—no, not the one they premiered at the Guggenheim, that place is sooooo overrated, ours was at this eco-friendly fair-trade village that was built for starving African orphans with typhus, and it was absolutely marvelous—life-altering, even. Why are you grabbing that baseball bat?”

Just absolute wastes of oxygen. Think they’re so special with their itemized descriptions and clever bullet-point formatting. Douches.

O
ne chromosome. That’s all it takes to change how the world perceives you as a human being. Somehow, this one chromosome determines how much money you’ll make, how much freedom you’ll be allowed to have, how much education or knowledge people think your brain can hold.

Why?

Why do we place so much emphasis on one chromosome? Why have we, for so long, decided that this one chromosome is the only way to judge a person’s worth? What is it about having a dick that makes so many people act like one?

I’ll tell you why. It’s because we value strength over empathy. We think that the ability to apply physical force is the defining measure of humanity, when in fact it’s our ability to work together and protect the value of the mind no matter the body it resides in that has made us the dominant species on the planet.

Any jackass can apply the threat of violent coercion. It doesn’t take intelligence to menace someone with a club, to point a gun and demand submission. It takes intelligence to realize why doing so is ultimately harmful to the fabric of society, that without the protection of freedom and life, we will all drag ourselves back down to rocks and sticks.

Don’t buy into the hype. Don’t think that because you happened to be born a man, you somehow have the right to tell other people what to do. Don’t think that a single chromosome gives you the right to invalidate someone else’s free will, to take away anyone’s choices and opportunities.

XX, XY, XYZ, and beyond—none of it makes a single bit of difference when compared to how someone acts, how someone behaves, how someone reveals his or her true identity time and time again. Man, woman, or whatever the future may hold—nothing gives you the right to enslave someone else.

One chromosome. What is that, when weighed against your very humanity?

Dear Archbishop Nienstedt and Pope Benedict XVI,
¹

“Blessed are they who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

“But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”

“Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged; and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.”

I read your views on gay marriage in the
Star Tribune,
Archbishop Nienstedt, and it fills me with great sadness and regret that a steward of the Catholic Church on this Earth feels the need to take a stance of oppression, intolerance, and fear.
Surely, is this not what Jesus spoke of when he said, “Either make the tree good and his fruit good; or else make the tree corrupt, and his fruit corrupt; for the tree is known by his fruit”?

How can we reconcile our vision of the Catholic Church as salvation to the sick, the needy, and the poor with this demonstration of the Catholic Church as oppressor, tormentor, and executioner? Where in all of Jesus’s teachings did he ever say to deny the humanity of other human beings? Where did the Son of God proclaim that mortal man knew God’s will? Where, pray tell, did Jesus ever say one should harden his heart against those who may not be exactly the same as him?

I say to you—nowhere. Nowhere does Jesus preach hate, or intolerance, or loathing. Nowhere does Jesus say, “You shall deny the humanity of gay people because they make you feel uncomfortable.” Nowhere does Jesus say, “And the mortal men of the Church shall be the sole conduits of the Word of God, for they are perfect and infallible.” Nowhere in all of the recorded teachings of Jesus does it say anything about discrimination or prejudice.

“But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.”

Millions of children are being raised in the Catholic faith. Some of these children will be gay, not through any choice of their own, but because that is how God created them. What does it say to those children when the head of their religion in
this diocese, a man who claims to “explain and defend the teaching of the Church because I have been ordained to do so and I believe those teachings with all my heart,” a man acting under the auspices of the pope himself, tells them that they are less worthy than some others, even though they believe in the teachings of Jesus? What will these children think as they suffer the barbed insults of their classmates and teachers? I ask you, sir, what will these children think as they are belittled and tormented due to teachings you espouse? What judgment will be passed on
your
soul when yet another poor child reaches for the knife or the noose to end the earthly torment he or she has been subjected to because of your example?

Do you presume to speak for God, Archbishop Nienstedt? Will you tell these children, faithful children who attend Sunday school and earnestly pray every day, that they are somehow less than others in God’s eyes? Will you grasp that millstone, Archbishop Nienstedt, clasp it all the way to the bottom, clutching at the heavy weight of earthly power and influence, even as it drags you down?

“No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.”

“Then saith he unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.”

Tell me, Archbishop, Pope, what purpose does it serve for the Church to attempt to influence the affairs of a secular
state? The federal benefits under law that are currently denied gay couples certainly fall under the realm of things that are Caesar’s, don’t they? No one is forcing the Catholic Church to marry gay couples if that is not the Church’s wish. You can keep the sanctity of Catholic marriage solely between heterosexual couples if you feel that is what’s required (again, though, I caution you on the dangers of presumed infallibility). All I am asking is for you to extend the open hand of tolerance, not the closed fist of fear and hate. As American citizens, we respect everyone’s right to practice whatever religion (if any) he or she chooses to. Haven’t we learned enough from the Crusades, the Inquisitions, the Talibans of the world? What does it benefit the Church to attempt to influence secular policy in this country, especially when that policy is a denial of some people’s basic human rights? Will you now assume Caesar’s throne, grasping the ephemera of worldly power and control while forsaking the eternal kingdom of Heaven?

All I ask of you, Archbishop Nienstedt, and of you, Pope Benedict XVI, is that you practice that most basic teaching found in the Bible—empathy. If you strike me, I shall turn the other cheek. If you ask me to walk with you for a mile, I will go with you two. If you ask me to respect your faith, your beliefs, then all I ask is that you do the same for everyone else. For is that not the most pertinent of Jesus’s teachings, and one that everyone, no matter his religion, can strive to achieve?

“Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This
is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.

“On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

This piece was originally written in response to an opinion letter penned to the
Minneapolis Star Tribune
by one Mr. Riley Balling, an attorney (I’m assuming he has paperwork to back up that claim somewhere).

Balling’s point can be summed up in the following paragraph from his editorial: “For many of us who favor traditional marriage, marriage is about raising children in a healthy environment. Thus, any change to the definition of marriage affects our marriage. Our ‘traditional’ marriages and the children they produce are our greatest source of happiness, and we desire that our children will live in a world that will promote their ability to make the same choices that brought us happiness.”

You can find this piece at
http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentaries/171613511.html
. If you don’t want to bother looking it up (and I
don’t blame you if you don’t), he basically said, “WARGLEBLARGLE GAY PEOPLES ARE RUININ’ MY MARRIAGES” and then forgot to provide examples.

Dear Mr. Balling,

I read your opinion piece in today’s
Star Tribune,
and I would like to take a brief moment to offer you some assistance in your future writing endeavors. I can only assume that you’ve never been trained in classical logic, debate techniques, or basic empathy, so I will humbly offer my own meager knowledge in these fields as it relates to your literary masterpiece “Why Same-Sex Marriage Affects My Marriage.”

You start off strong, with an opening salvo ostensibly proclaiming that every group has the right to its own views (if we ignore the fearmongering subhead of the article, “The goal is to move society—in this case, away from a safe environment for children”), but then, much like a Michael Bay plot, your argument starts careening off the rails. Your first mistake is what is termed a mind-projection fallacy—the assumption that the way you see the world is the way the world really is.

You state, “As we have seen, and understandably so, people in homosexual relationships are trying to change society to more readily embrace and promote their view of their identity. This is possible largely due to the disassociation between sexual relationships and procreation.” But what you’re really saying is “Those gay people do sex things that I find icky, and we should oppress them because they can’t have babies.” You completely ignore the fact that homosexual people are trying to change
society not just because they want to have teh butt secks (or rise and grind, for the ladies), but also because they want to avoid, oh, I don’t know, things like homosexuals being tortured and tied to a fence post until they die (Matthew Shepard), shot to death while attending school (Lawrence King), shot to death for being transgender (Moses King), committing suicide by hanging due to repeated bullying and taunting (Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover), shot to death and burned while standing military guard (Seaman August Provost), and stabbed to death after serving in the Vietnam War (James Zappalorti). Every single one of these attacks occurred because of the victim’s sexuality. Let’s not even get into the over eleven hundred federal benefits gay couples are legally unable to obtain in the state of Minnesota because they can’t get married—things like health care, survivor benefits, and legacies to pass on to their families (including children).

Deep breath.

Moving on, we come to the next little pearl of wisdom hidden in your manifesto, that hoary old chestnut of traditional marriage. In this case, you’ve made the logic error of the etymological fallacy: the assumption that the original or historical meaning of a word or phrase is necessarily similar to its current meaning.

Which version of the term
traditional marriage
would you like to use, Mr. Balling? Should we go back to ancient Israel and practice polygamy, in which the only right a woman had was the right to own her own tent? Or should we use the ancient Greek definition of
marriage,
one more concerned with
inheritance than with love, one that forced a woman to divorce her current husband and marry a sibling if that was required to continue the family? Should we force a brother to marry his dead sibling’s wife? Or perhaps we should make arranged marriages with child brides; that’s certainly traditional enough. Wait, I know, let’s go with the one where you have to pay three goats and a cow in order to ensure the woman is yours to keep forever, and you can stone her to death if she cheats on you. That one sounds terrific!

You see, Mr. Balling, since you don’t actually provide a definition of the term
traditional marriage,
I think your definition of it boils down to “I want to make people who believe differently than I do miserable by taking away their free will, so I’ll cloak my hate in the guise of
tradition
and
history
without knowing what those words really mean,” and, well, I’m not really okay with that. Also, traditional marriage has traditionally been rather tough on 50 percent of the human population, what with the whole enslavement and forced-childbearing and stoning-to-death thing (I’m talking about women, if you haven’t figured it out [sorry to the people who figured it out like five minutes ago, but I wanted to make sure he got it]), and I’m not really okay with that either.