OVO

Oldies.com has something new to make me feel old.

During last year’s senate race, Keyes referred to gays and lesbians as “hedonistic sinners” and talked hypothetically about his own family. “If my own daughter were a homosexual, or a lesbian, I would love my daughter, but I would tell my daughter that she was in sin,” Keyes said in August. [...] “Before I deny god, before I deny Christ, before I deny my faith, I would die. Surely, then you would understand that I consider the eternal salvation of my children to be the real aim of my parenting, not how they feel today,” said Keyes. [...]

At a gay rights rally in Annapolis, Md., [daughter] Maya Keyes said she is coming out as a lesbian in response to escalating tensions with her parents, including her arch-conservative father, whom she worked for in last year’s Illinois senate race. Keyes said she also wanted to highlight the struggle of gays in the closet, including a gay friend who died last week after months on the street. [...] Maya told the Washington Post Monday her parents kicked her out of the house and will not pay her college tuition.

[Photograph of Maya and a friend from Maya's blog at http://i.xanga.com/Xmisled0youthX/dirtyqueers.JPG

Sideways is a fine film directed by Alexander Payne in 2004. I can’t find a good Web page for it that isn’t clogged with pop-up ads, javascript yadda yadda, or giant don’t-mind-if-I-do automatic downloads. So if you are in the Portland area, just go see it at the Roseway Theater (7229 NE Sandy Boulevard, Portland, OR 67213).

The comic book adaption of City of Glass (Paul Auster, author; Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli, artists) is easily one of the best comic books ever. [sample page] [review] [publisher]

I don’t agree with everything radio commentator Mike Malloy says, particularly about religion. He says that the murderous, insane, knuckle-dragging morons, apes and jackasses that call themselves the Religious Right are not really Christians, while I say that the murderous, insane, knuckle-dragging morons, apes and jackasses that call themselves the Religious Right really are Christians. But in general, Mike’s right on the money and a pleasure to listen to. Starting Valentines Day (February 14th) and for the next few Mondays thereafter, Mike will be manning the mic for Randi Rhodes on Air America while she recovers from surgery. So listen to Mike LIVE Monday afternoons (whenever Randi is broadcast in your area) and enjoy a “Best of Malloy” Monday nights during Mike’s usual time. In the mean time (and these are mean times), check out Mike’s Home Page and download hours upon hours of commercial-free Malloy from Air America Place Dot Com.

Helen Kennedy of the NY Daily News reports: “A conservative ringer who was given a press pass to the White House and lobbed softball questions at President Bush quit yesterday after left-leaning Internet bloggers discovered possible ties to gay prostitution. [...] [Jeff] Gannon began covering the White House two years ago for an obscure Republican Web site (Talon-News.com). He was known for his friendly questions, including asking Bush at last month’s news conference how he could work with Democrats “who seem to have divorced themselves from reality.” Gannon was also given a classified CIA memo that named agent Valerie Plame, leading to his grilling by the grand jury investigating her outing. He came under lefty scrutiny after revelations that the administration was paying conservative pundits to talk up Bush’s proposals. By examining Internet records, online sleuths at DailyKos.com figured out that his real name was Jim Guckert and he owned various Web sites, including HotMilitaryStud.com, MilitaryEscorts.com and MilitaryEscortsM4M.com.”

[...]

“The White House didn’t return a call asking how someone using an alias was given daily clearance to enter the White House. On his TalonNews Web site, Gannon had written that liberals were out to get him because he’s a white conservative man who owns a gun, drives a sport-utility vehicle and is a born-again Christian. Yesterday, however, he abruptly quit, and all of the stories he wrote were erased from the Web site. A great many were on gay issues, including one detailing John Kerry’s ‘pro-homosexual platform’ that was headlined mockingly, ‘Kerry Could Become First Gay President.’”

[Oh thank heaven for archive.org, which has copies of Talon News before it was scrubbed. Note that this pleasanteer has no objection to homosexuals and supports the decriminalization of prostitution... but people who put down others for qualities they themselves act on are worthy of public scorn.]

Is it appropriate for the United States to solicit at a place of worship by linking worship and military service? If you are unsure how to answer this question, here is an example of just that occuring to help you form an opinion. Thanks as always to American Samizdat.

The New York Daily News reports: “New York City health officials are investigating whether a baby boy died after contracting herpes from the rabbi who circumcised him, the Daily News has learned. The probe was launched after city officials realized that three infants in the city who tested positive for herpes last year all were circumcised by Rabbi Yitzchok Fischer. The Rockland County-based Fischer is a prominent mohel – someone who performs religious circumcisions.

Under Jewish law, a mohel is supposed to draw blood from the circumcision wound to remove impurities. While many mohels do it by hand, Fischer uses a practice little known outside ultra-Orthodox communities called metzizah bi peh, in which the mohel uses his mouth. On Oct. 16, 2004, Fischer performed a bris, or religious circumcision, on twins. Ten days later, one infant died of herpes, and the other tested positive for the virus, according to papers filed in Manhattan Supreme Court by city lawyers. [...] The custom of metzizah is thousands of years old. But experts said that these days, many mohels breathe in through a sterile tube to draw the blood instead of using their mouths directly on the wound, although in some ultra-Orthodox sects, the oral practice is mandatory. The city asked Fischer to submit to a blood test in November, and ordered him to stop performing metzizah by mouth while waiting for the results, court papers show. Officials told him to use a sterile tube and gloves in the meantime. But the Health Department got a report that Fischer wasn’t following the order, so the city filed the legal complaint to compel him do so.

Just because adult men have been sucking blood from the penis of infants after non-elective, unneccessary genital surgery for thousands of years doesn’t make it right. That infants are dying and being infected with incurable diseases due to this practice is evidence that it is wrong. Oh, wait, it was done for religious reasons. That makes it okay. It would be discrimination, maybe even racist, to say that anything done in the name of religion was bad. And even if it was bad, it was just this one guy in this one place this one time that did the bad thing. Nothing like this has ever happened before and it certainly won’t ever happen again. All the other Jews (and Christians and Hindu and Muslims and Buddhists) don’t have any responsibility in failing to ‘clean house’ and get rid of monsterous practices like this; after all, who’s to say what is right when it comes to the invisible monster that lives in the sky? Maybe it’s part of G_d’s beautiful yet mysterious plan that some infants should have their genitals mutilated, then sucked by grown men, then die from disease.

[first published at American Samizdat]