"PRAY FER 'MERICA" The Bus Stops Here

DA BUS

That’s the bus. That’s the only picture that I’m including of the bus, although I did get a couple of others that I sort of liked. Because as tacky and awful as that fucker is, it’s not the point. It points to the point, but it’s not the point.

Okay, lemme back up a second here. There’s this bus making a trek across America (Murrca!) encouraging people to pray for America in a pretty blatantly political, Dominionist-y kind of way. We heard about it here. A couple of us decided to crash the party. One of us (not me, I suck at those things) is hassling them online and in email for the way the article was written (as though everyone in Omaha is presumed to be Christian, and not just that, but the sort of Christian that thinks Separation of Church & State is A Very Bad Thing). And in a blog post, which I shall link here as soon as I have it. You’ll love his blog posts. THEY ARE AWESOMESAUCE. Plus, the title of his blog. I mean, come on: All These Pious People. How good is that? At any rate, this is a little photo essay of the experience. (You’ll have to pardon me on not getting correct the finer details, whatever the fuck they are, of photo essay-ing. This is my first go at just quite this sort of blogging/essaying/photoing.)

DA TENT

Why they actually put the outdoor canopy up in the middle of the indoor facility is not actually that baffling. It just makes the fact that it’s pure propaganda that much more blatant.

DA PREACHERMAN

A predictably old white dude who was just as predictably trying to preach to the kids while not excluding the adults (who were all predictably in the very front and very eager beaver, while the kids were in the back and… not so much?

DA COHORT

Okay, I'm gonna stop with the DA BEARS references. Shit, I'm not even from Chicago.

I think we managed to get so close and personal because they took us for some sort of journalists. Which, I suppose, we are. (Not that we actually talked to any of them, except for the one lady who commented on my shirt [a Kaylie/Morton Salt mashup which I absolutely love] saying, “That’s an appropriate shirt for today,” and then I think I actually said, under my breath of course, “You… don’t know what it is, then.” It also turned out that I’d completely missed her meaning though [it was raining cats and dogs outside, and Kaylie's holding that umbrella - you know the one] so I guess turnabout is fairplay.)

There weren’t actually all that many people there, I thought. At least not for something that’s supposed to be this big national tour thing. I may have just had inflated expectations.

The age range you see represented here in these two pictures was pretty much it, whichmay have been a quirk. But I doubt it. These kids were fucking bused in from wherever. Already creepy, right? At any rate, there were the teens, and then the over 50 crowd with very very little in between. In fact, the little Latina making googoo eyes at the pastor on the far right of the second of these was pretty nearly the only representative of any other age range, near as I could tell. Not that I’m the best subjective judge of ages, I guess, but you get the point, right?

A couple that are, I’m presuming, on staff. I included this one because something about the tilt of her head, her posture, and her clasp on her husbands arm speaks volumes to me.

This one is here for two reasons, both are very very serious. I found the backrub that the one girl was giving the other girl through the whole fucking thing slightly… odd, given the prayerful, preacherful, evangelical context, and a little amusing. Now, I know that there may have been absolutely no erotic undertones whatsoever, and the other girl may have just needed some knots worked out after volleyball practice or whatever. But then again, teenagers. Hormones. Raging.

The other reason is that the look on the middle girls face at just that moment said something to me. Actually, it’s one of the few of these that I really thought the lighting worked for me for just a second, too. This kind of gymnasium flourescent indoor lighting is my fucking worst enemy. (Well, almost, anyway.) I hates it. Aaand that’s as far down the photo-geekery rabbit hole as I’m gonna let myself go for the moment. I do have to warn you, though. That’s gonna happen from time to time. Because I love photo-ing. So, nyeah.

So after doing some preaching, and trying to get the adults not to answer the question of what the kids were struggling with (when he finally got a kid to answer [the back-messaging girl from above], the answer was, “they’re disrespectful.” What? Really? That’s your biggest fucking struggle in life? Of course, it was immediately re-couched in the appropriately biblical “honor thy mother & father” terms), preacher man invited all of the other preachers up (a good 1/2 or more of the non-bus-riding adults present) and began praying over them, for strength against persecution, strength to stand up to the sinful ways of godless ‘murica, etc, etc. There was the typical laying on of hands, the raising of hands, the tight closing of eyes, the nodding of heads, and even the low-voiced glossolalia that they call “speaking in tongues.”

Then, for the culminating event, the real brainwashing power of which I hope to leave to the photos and my cahort’s description (because it just creeps me the fuck out thinking about it), he invited the kids out. To hold up their arms, to pray for the pastors, to give the pastors strength. Woah.

And yet, the stances of some of those people read discomfort. Maybe some of the same discomfort I felt as an awkward kid when people were doing this shit, and I wanted to believe, I wanted to be in the ingroup, I wanted to be able to pray like that, I became that, dove deep inside and refused to acknowledge the fourth wall of my brain that was SCREAMING WITH WHAT THE FUCK. (Remind me to tell you about the time my best friend & I went to a YWAM Conference Thingy when I was around sixteen or so & I figured out the Speaking In Tongues Is Bullshit.)

Here was the tongue talker walker whisperer. I swear I’ve seen this guy before.

Afterwards, they broke into smaller groups. The bus’ preacher man invited anyone who was troubled and needed specific prayer to come up to the front, vaguely under the tentish, along with some of the other preacher peoples. And the general intensity dissolved, sort of, or devolved into some people being released from the tension while other were gathered up more intensely into the smaller little prayer huddles of mostly twos, but one very intense little circle of five or six.

This adorable, timid woman was hesitant to interrupt the two people praying just a couple of feet away, but really wanted to listen and to help them pray. So this is the, “I’m praying with you, but not intruding,” stance. Then again, maybe some part of her wasn’t really so timid, because I’m pretty sure that this is her purse, too.

And then this. The quality of the image came out for shit because I’d just switched lenses to try to get a wider shot, and my little 18-55 doesn’t do that well in low light, but then we saw this. It had to be shot. So regardless of the graininess and what-not, I still think this is a telling, compelling image. A pretty decent summary and closing line.

Hate, Choice, and Identity. Or, Bigotry Makes My Head Explodey

That right there is a fucking fact. People CHOOSE to be bigots, to do violence to another person, to hate. And it does not actually much matter where one comes down on the nature/nurture debate as it relates to being gay, hating someone and carving that hatred into another human being’s skin is FAR MORE OF A CHOICE.

Think about it, though. Why would someone choose to be a person who can be hated to such an extreme, so much so that they know that there are people out there who want nothing more than to carve “dyke” into her skin with a knife? No one chooses that! It just doesn’t happen. But the hatred does happen. And it is chosen. It is latched onto. Just at this very moment, I have no desire to try to delve into that mind and understand it. I will, eventually, in my private thoughts, try to understand what could possibly have brought someone to that level of hatred, and to empathize to some extent. But right now, I need the anger. (And oh my, yes, I see the dangerous line of potential hypocrisy looming up ahead as I stride that fine line bordering towards cognitive dissonance.)

Yesterday, very, very early in the morning, three men broke into the home of an openly lesbian woman in Lincoln, NE. Read the story here. Now imagine that you are her. Find something about yourself that is not part of your privilege, something about you that places you as a part of some sort of a minority population (nearly everyone has something about themselves that is like that).[1] Now imagine that three masked men, screaming obscenities and waving weapons around, shock you into consciousness; you’re confused, not quite aware yet of what is going on. You suddenly find that in the midst of their guttural slurs and threats, your hands and feet have been bound. It hurts. They cut your clothes off. You can’t tell, but the knives in their hands look dull and rusty to you. Their breath reeks, the rot in their brains apparently making its way down to their lungs and out of their open and panting mouths. They begin to carve the slurs of your minority status onto your face, your arms, your chest, your belly. The pain begins to take on an unreal, distant sort of quality, but full on shock won’t set in, yet, you won’t let it, because you know you have to escape. Maybe after that. Maybe not.

Alright, I think that’s enough of that exercise. The point is to empathize with the terror, the panic, the horror, the fucked-up-edness. And realize that someone is doing that to you because of WHO YOU ARE. And because you are willing and able to say aloud to the whoever is listening, whether they agree with you or not, This is who I am. I am who I am. Someone out there is apparently so uncomfortable with the fact that you are who you are, that they CHOSE to take a knife and carve the fact of who you are, the fact of their hatred of who you are, into your very body. It doesn’t matter what it is, at that point in the game; whatever it is, it should not be hard to see that they chose their hate far more than you ever chose whatever-it-is.

Hate is far more of a choice than ANY IDENTITY ever was or will be.

What has been beautiful to see is the response from the communities in both Lincoln and Omaha. That gives me hope that all of these beautiful people will rally to give this woman the strength to bear what she has born, to bear what she will have to bear. So that in the midst of hate that pushes back, pushes down, shoves, and tears, she will have the strength of beautiful people to take the next step forward for all of us. So that the children that see us doing this don’t have to suffer the same things. So that she can heal. This community will link arms and push back against the hate to ensure that she and so many others have a safe space to heal in. They will also push out, push up, push forward against hate.

Hate is far more of a choice than ANY IDENTITY ever was or will be. I do not, even from within the chaotic heat of my anger, choose hate. I choose love. I choose beauty.

I will choose beauty, along with a whole mess of other beautiful people, here. Join if you can, in your thoughts if nothing else, because that does make a difference.[2]


EDIT: I should also add that there is a fund set up to help out the woman, who has no insurance. http://starcitypride.org/victim-recovery-fund/

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[1] I know, right? It’s no fun, and requires that you recognize and acknowledge those parts of yourself that *are* part of your privilege.

[2] Not in some woo-woo pseudo-spiritual way, either. I think it is consciousness-raising, something that you take back out into the world later, and it affects not only the way that you think and behave, but also, through that, the way that other people behave around you.



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Watch My Fucking Language

This is a post about a teeny little thing. No, I am truly not being sarcastic, it really is a minor thing, but it was something that came up recently, and it’s something about which I have, as it turns out, turned over in the shadowy coils of my brain late at night, the sort of thing to which my brain turns when trying, for instance, to avoid pondering things of greater importance for fear that the things-of-greater-importance will send my heart scampering off in a pounding fit of anxiety.

I do. I love it. Very diverse word.

It’s about blasphemous language of various sorts. For instance, why do atheists persist in saying things like, “Oh my God?” Shouldn’t they say, “Oh your God?” (This is also perhaps linked to the musings on what an atheist utters mid-coitus.) But really it’s about blasphemous language in general and some things that sort of came up in conjunction; that was just the question that kicked it off and reminded me of all of the thoughts on the subject that I was barely even aware that I had been thinking, much less translating from thought to practice. And so I thought to myself, this is a thing about which I will have ALL THE THOUGHTS. 

Now, let’s be clear, here. I fucking love expletives. Dearly. They have an emotional oomph that normal language simply does not and cannot have, a fact that has some scientific weight behind it. For some explorations of the value of profanity, follow the links. But those rational explanations of the value of taboo language are only part of the reason that I relish them so much.  And I’m not so much interested here in those explanations, valuable as they are and genuinely interesting and cool as they are; I have other additional reasons, and that’s more what I’m interesting in exploring a bit here. Because this is my blog, and I get to do some self-exploration here (get your mind out of the gutter, you) that often I don’t otherwise take the time to make explicit (again, mind, gutter, you, out).

See? Very Diverse.

If I am to be perfectly honest with myself, it’s because I thoroughly enjoy the freedom to say these delicious words without guilt; it’s because for the majority of my life, I felt intense guilt about “taking the Lord’s name in vain” and all other forms of blasphemy and swearing. So when it comes right down to it, it was all about the fear of damnation. Because I said a word that had been imbued with a taboo meaning, there was the potential that I could be damned to hell. So, now there is a thrilling freedom in being able to utter the utterly damnable without the damnation bit. I don’t have to be scared any more. This, in turn, is really quite intimately connected with the much more serious idea that, if the carrot and the stick are imaginary, then I then carry the full weight and responsibility for the consequences of everything that I do. There’s no getting out of things by praying for forgiveness. So, breaking out of the guilt cycle imposed by religion[1] also means that I cannot get the reprieve, the temporary release from the tension of real guilt when I do actually do something remarkably stupid, which I am wont to do from time to time.

It really is sort of an odd thing, though, if you take the idea literally, of saying something like “Goddammit!” and not expecting any results. Whether one is a believer or not, though, the culture that we Westerners soak in through the societal water is without a doubt thoroughly steeped in Judeo-Christianity and theistically-tainted psychology. The result of which is that when I say, “Fucking Hell,” Or “Goddammit!” the biochemical reactions that fire off in my brain are somehow hooked like Velcro to that framework and it seems probably that no amount of work is going to completely clear my innards of all of that. So, I will bow to that, and hijack it for my own expressive purposes. 

This becomes relevant(-ish) in a moment. For now, just let it sink in.

And besides which, the vast majority of Christians and other believer aren’t taking it as literally as their institutions would have them do, either. With very few exceptions, I have yet to meet many persons of any faith who aren’t perfectly capable of cursing up a storm of epic, Rainbow-Brite-vomit level proportions. Here's a recent personal example. Last Friday, there was a local counter-protest for the Anti-Choice and blatantly religious bigotry motivated “Stand Up For Religious Freedom” protests taking place in scattered spots throughout the States. I was there. After the majority of the protestors had begun to retire, having prayed their useless prayers, sung their useless songs and in general felt very good about themselves, I think, a few of them inevitably wandered over to argue with us. Which was fun, since I do love to argue. (This particular format of arguing is still quite new to me, and I’m afraid I didn’t do it very well, but it was a learning experience.) Of course, I spiced up the arguments with the occasional, “fucking” this, and “fucking” that. One upper-middle-aged, clean cut gentleman who looked as though he may have recently retired, took umbrage with my use of the word, “fuck.” I asked him what the fuck that had to do with anything, and he responded with something, I don’t remember precisely what, that included the word “shit.” Me: “Wait, what? So, shit’s alright but fuck crosses the line? How does that make any sense?”[2]

And lastly, for those that argue that cursing is simply a sign of a poor vocabulary, a lack of intelligence, a lack of creativity, an inability to otherwise express oneself, I will offer the wise retort of Mr. Stephen Fry:

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[1] Which is not, like, a one-time thing that happens and then I’m magically free of all the jagged little shards of my brain’s glass prison; a lot of those jagged little shards stay embedded for a long time and have to be picked out one by one as I repeat, over and over as necessary, the process of breaking the glass.

[2] He then devolved into some incredibly hurtful ad hominem attacks. More importantly and what was really much worse (but less pertinent to the topic at hand, thus the footnote), was that it worked. His attack was intensely painful to me for reasons that he could not have been aware of, and it shamed me and stunned me into silence for a minute.

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Close the Closet Door Behind You

I live in the Omaha Metropolitan area. The population here (depending on just exactly what you are considering the “area” of the Omaha Metro area to be) is between about 409,000 to 1.2 million. Purely for the sake of simplicity, I’m going to round that number off and say, conservatively, about 500,000. According to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life’s U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, the percentage of card carrying, flag waving atheists in America is around 1.6%. Purely for the sake of simplicity (read: so that my poor, tired, already-tax-numbers-beleaguered head doesn’t have to work too hard), I’m going to call that around 1%. Note that this is at the way down at the bottom end of the percentage of people that I’d like to call community allies of some sort in a freethought, skeptic-y sort of way, which is around 16%.

Now I’d like to take a look at the membership of all of the various atheist organizations in the Omaha Metro area. There’s an umbrella organization by the name of CoRTEX (part of a broader national movement of umbrella organizations) in Omaha, and according to their best guess, the membership of ALL OF THE ORGANIZATIONS COMBINED is around 500.

Now here’s the part where the math comes in (and the vast oversimplification of my numbers above begins to make sense, too). 500 is 1/10^th of 1% of the population. That is incredible to me. That is 1/10^th of the low end of the estimated Atheist percentage of the low end of the overall population estimate. To say that this is a proportionally inaccurate representation of the Atheist community is an understatement. So, even at the LOWEST of the LOW end of estimation, this represents a gigantic FAIL. Something is wrong here.

At least a part of that something that is wrong is that we have been quiescent. We have not wanted to create waves, to rock the boat, to make Atheists and Atheism look bad. But, you know what? Fuck that. Those numbers up there are one of the reasons that I want to be out, I want to be up, I want to be visible. I do not want to be timid in my Atheism. I want to rock the fucking boat. I want to be inspired. I want others to be inspired around me and with me, I want to be a part of that. I want to be a part of what inspires others. (And as an aside for those worried that we might make us look bad, I think in some sense that it is just as well that the broader civic community around us see ALL of thing that is Us, warts and everything; trying to hide the warts of their faith hasn’t worked out well for the religious – just sayin’.)

I have said in the past, and will probably continue to say, that there are simply a large number of people who are at the very least functional atheists, but for whom the issue of faith in a deity or religion are not that great of a concern, and who are therefore not likely to feel the need to belong to an organization of this sort. I’ll have more to say on that later, but for the moment, I’ll just say that I don’t think that those numbers can possibly account for the disparity represented by 1/10^th of 1%.

If we are not out and open, the numbers will never even out and it will never be okay or acceptable for anyone at all to be an atheist in our Midwestern metropolitan area. Or any area. Anywhere. I want anyone no matter who they are, what personality type they are, no matter where they see themselves fitting on the “scale of activism” to feel like it’s okay to be us just the way that we are. Come on out, boys and girls, come out and play. Close the closet door behind you.

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