Adoptive Dads recently mentioned a new law in Italy prohibiting prospective adoptive parents from trying to choose the ethnicity of their children. Kind of leads one to wonder just how diverse a nation Italy is…

I mentioned in a comment there it might be a good law for a country which is diverse, but i can’t imagine it being a good idea in the US because we still have too many racist communities. The community i currently live in is a perfect example. Bad place to raise a non-white child.

So yes, if i were to start the adoption process today, living here, i would ask for a white child. I prefer to avoid putting any child in a situation like a non-white one would live in here.

The next logical question, though, is how good is it for a white child to be raised in a racist community? How non-racist can a child become when he’s raised among adults who consider racism to be acceptable? Of course, we can’t go so far as to turn ‘you can’t adopt because your neighbours are unethical’ into law, but it is yet another issue to deal with.

Disclaimer: I’m Protestant Christian.

I’m also a sentient life form. I have this ridiculous liberal notion God gave me a brain and must therefore mean for me to use it once in a while, rather than automatically agreeing with the more Fundamentalist members of my religion.

Yeah, i know. Blasphemy. This is what happens when you allow equal rights. Oh, wait…

God created everyone equally! Except for you; you don’t matter.

It wasn’t too long ago Fundies still believed anyone with dark skin was ‘marked’. The most famous, but hardly only, example is the Mormons. I learned at least three different variations on this as a Christian student, always with the disclaimer ‘Of course, nobody believes such things anymore; we know God created everyone equal!’

Everyone. Even girls?

A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent – 1 Timothy 2:11-12

Note the ‘i’ here is the apostle Paul – not Jesus, not God. ‘But Paul was being inspired by God, so it totally counts.’ Totally.

It could be argued Paul was referring more to a woman’s lack of education than anything else, a common issue then. The counter-argument is something like, ‘Well, Paul never specifically mentioned education, so he must have meant women can’t lead.’ Hurray for literalism.

I suppose i can take some comfort in the knowledge women aren’t the only ones mistreated by Fundamentalists.

You’re Catholic. I’m Protestant. It’ll never work.

I disagree with the Manhattan Declaration to start with and i don’t put much stock in petitions anyway, so i’m not signing the Manhattan Declaration regardless of who wrote it.

But i’m not signing it specifically because i disagree with it. There’s plenty of other Christians* who agree with it wholeheartedly but refuse to sign anyway:

I care deeply about these issues, but I cannot in conscience sign on with those with whom I have fundamental disagreements on the nature of the Gospel. – Alistair Begg

Because, y’know. It was written and signed by a combination of Evangelicals, Catholics, and Orthodox.

I should note, for those who haven’t read it, one of the issues in the Manhattan Declaration is abortion. Seriously? You can’t sign a petition to stop baby-killing if members of the ‘wrong’ religion are involved? If going to Mass would stop murders, i’d be there every time the church was open.

What are they going to do when an atheist comes up with a pro-life bill? Is all the pro-life marching, the attempts to convince non-believers life begins at conception, the picketing at abortion clinics, going to be for nothing? ‘Sorry, i can’t sign this petition. But i’m sure all the aborted babies who will never have a chance at life will be very understanding when their little souls get to Heaven and God explains all the religious implications.’

And they wonder why they have so much trouble getting people to agree with them on important issues.

ZOMG, we are SOOOO persecuted!

It seems any pro-Christian movement nowadays puts undue emphasis on ‘persecution of Christians.’ Pro-life? ‘The government might force a Christian doctor to perform abortions!’ Anti-gay? ‘Ministers might be forced to perform gay weddings!’

The Manhattan Declaration is a perfect example: it’s half ‘save the babies and stop the gays’, half thinly-veiled whining about the perceived persecution of Christianity.** Now, the pro-life bit, i can get behind; i disagree with pro-life legislation (despite being pro-life myself; another example where thinking too much gets me in trouble), but i can respect people who think they’re saving lives. Anti-gay-marriage loses me a bit, as i don’t see how a couple getting married affects anything, but it’s preached against in the Bible so i can see Christians disagreeing with it. It’s the third part of the Declaration, where they whine about how supporters of abortion and homosex are trying to ‘eliminate conscience clauses’, (and, by extension, ‘[trampling] upon the freedom of others to express their religious and moral commitments’) which completely throws me.

Yes, there’s been a situations where a Fundamentalist’s rights and a non-Fundie’s rights have been at odds. And sometimes the Fundamentalist has lost. Sorry, that’s what happens when everyone has a chance at equality, instead of just members of a certain group. ‘People we disagree with are equal’ shouldn’t mean ‘blame it on Teh Gay Agenda!’, right?

Well, bad stuff is all the (gay/Muslim/atheist)’s fault, anyway.

Westboro Baptist Church has turned this into an art form, though i think using them to prove a point constitutes a violation of Godwin’s law. Regardless, ‘God is punishing someone who disagrees with us’ has been used to explain virtually every tragedy in the world, from the murder of non-Christian individuals to Hurricane Katrina.

Massive weather problems i’m willing to accept. Murder, though? ‘A Wiccan’s been murdered! Proof God disagrees with Wiccans!’ What, God forced the murderer to kill the Wiccan? So the murderer didn’t have free will? Does that mean the Wiccan didn’t have the free will required to choose eir own religion?

Besides, Christians are affected by tragedies as often as anyone else. By this logic, Christianity isn’t the right religion. Quick, someone go to the senior centre, find an octogenarian who managed to spend a minimum of twenty-nine years exposed to no suffering whatsoever and spent the past forty-five years teaching how to end suffering, and ask what his religion is. Because obviously he’s doing it right.

Oh, wait: ‘When Christians suffer, it’s just God testing our faith, like in the Book of Job.’

The ‘loving’ God who sends the unfaithful to Hell is purposely doing His best to make more people unfaithful and thus send more people there? No. Just, no. Try again.

Well, i don’t know why it happened. Let’s just say ‘God works in mysterious ways’ and pretend it’s relevant.

Here’s a hint: if ‘i don’t know’ would work, it’s a better explanation than ‘i don’t know, but God must have had something to do with it!’

If God granted free will, then people pull all kinds of crap on their own. People, not God, cause drive-by shootings, drug wars, and child abuse. (If God didn’t grant free will, then He does all the sadistic shit on His own and we can drop the pretence of Him being ‘loving’.)

I’ve been obsessed with adoption research lately. One theme which i’ve seen a good bit lately is adoptees who wish they hadn’t been adopted. Not necessarily because they dislike their adoptive families or culture, but because being adopted means they lost everything else and no matter how much they love their new families, the loss still sucks. The Fundamentalist response is ‘Well, God meant for you to be in this awesome new family! So your sucky loss is just His ‘mysterious way’ of getting you here!’ Ew. I much prefer Tonggu Mama’s way of describing it:

God allows for suffering because, without free will, our choices to follow Him or not follow Him would mean very little. Because of this, I believe that yes, God worked to bring the Tongginator into our family… but… BUT… I believe that we were quite definitely His plan B for her life. – Tonggu Mama

And that? Is everything i want in talking to Christians. ‘God controls the universe without being a dick about it.’

So basically, today… i’m arguing with the Fundies.

And by extension i’m arguing with the people who say i’m not good enough for God. I’m arguing with the people who care more about religious politics than their own morals. I’m arguing with the people who claim persecution while blaming others for all the world’s problems. I’m arguing with anyone who can’t form an argument which makes sense according to their own twisted logic, let alone mine.

Yeah… i’m in a bit of an argumentative mood today.

*I found nine in about three seconds of Googling, including one who thinks it’s a New Age plot.

**As per my copy-paste job into a word processing document, which put the life and marriage sections combined at 2 556 words and the religious liberty section at 1 086 words. As there were mentions of religious liberty in the life and marriage sections, it’s probably actually far more skewed.

I found one of my old diaries this week.

It’s mostly from 2001, but there’s one entry dated 2003. My fake-whiny-depressive-emo years. Yeah, i was one of those kids. Even if i’d written every day, i doubt i’d have any accurate records of that time of my life, because i was busy making every problem i had out to be a big deal. To re-read any of my writings, i had the worst life ev-ar and nothing i did would ever make it any better.

I actually don’t feel particularly bad about this. Yeah, if i could tell my seventeen-year-old self anything, it’d probably be something like ‘Oh, quit whining,’ but what teenager doesn’t have an over-dramatic, over-emotional, my parents are so horrible and nobody will ever understand me and life sucks! phase? Everyone i know did. Different ages, different reactions, and some have quite frankly never grown out of it, but everyone went through it.

My rather poor choice of how to handle the Over-Dramatic Years consisted of picking at every problem outside of my control until they eclipsed all the problems i could control, making my life out to be one big dramatic mess. I knew even back then it was a load of bullshit, but at the time this made me feel better – or at least i thought it did: ‘Look at my awesome self, managing to handle all these horrible disasters. Okay, so i’m not actually doing anything with my life yet, but give me a break, look at all the stuff preventing me from even managing the bare necessities!’

I thought i was proving myself to be strong. In reality i was proving myself to be weak – too weak to solve any problems on my own, to do anything but roll over and blame everyone and everything else for my problems. Self-deception of the most irritating form.

Actually, the really irritating bit is i’m starting to slip into those old patterns of self-deception again. You’d think i’d have learned my lesson, and i have, to a certain extent: i’ve settled on ‘content’ instead of ‘miserable’ this time around. I even occasionally poke ‘happiness’ with a stick. ‘But, but, but, i can’t do What-i-Want X because i don’t have enough money and i can’t get more money at work because of Problem Y and i can’t get more money outside work because of Problem Z…’

Quit yer bellyachin’, Emo Sherry.

random other stuff…

• I will stop linking to random Cat and Girl comics when they stop being horribly appropriate for the situation.
• I also like Gretchen Rubin’s post on positive arguments, if for no other reason than because it gives me an excuse to argue with myself :P

A little speedpainting of the place i used to play when i was a kid, which wasn’t quite in my da’s backyard. I moved around stuff to fit all my favourite things in the picture, but i’m pretty surprised by how well i remember everything, even though i haven’t been back in years.

I’ve read a couple of articles recently (well, fairly recently, if ’sometime in the past year but long enough ago i can’t for the life of me remember where i saw them’ counts as recently) on how kids today play outside less than they used to. That’s a huge ‘duh’, and usually blamed on electronics sapping their social lives and the ever-increasing homework load of NCLB killing all playtime.

There’s been other articles, though, citing studies which indicate parents don’t let their kids wander as far as they used to. I know if i’d been banned from the neighbour’s cowfield and the little creek separating his property from Da’s, i’d probably have rarely bothered going outside. As it is, i’m fairly certain no other kid moving into my da’s old house will be allowed to play where i used to. Part of the area i used to play in is visible from the kitchen window, but not nearly all of it. Many parents – including my mother, come to think of it, though the creek near her apartment was far deeper and more dangerous than the one near Da’s – won’t dream of letting their children unattended near a body of water. And then there’s the Fence.

I have no idea why the Fence was initially put up – or, rather, i don’t know why it hadn’t been there all along. It surrounded the cow pasture of the neighbouring farm, but creek side of the pasture was left open for years. Maybe the cows simply didn’t enjoy crossing the creek. All i know for sure is, one bright autumn day when i was about ten, i scrambled down the bank with the intent of going straight to my favourite tree, and found my way blocked by this thin wire thigh-high Fence.

Had the Fence been there all my life, it probably would have actually been enough to stop me from ever wandering into the cowfield. As it was, it stopped me only long enough to determine the best way past it. It was too high to simply step over, too low to crawl under – at least, not without significant risk of touching it, and considering how much it looked like the electric fence my grandparents surrounded their horse’s field with, i wasn’t willing to risk it. So i instead followed the Fence until it brushed against a tree with a low-hanging branch, swung myself over, and went on my way.

It never even occurred to me the Fence might be intended to keep meddling children out of the cowfield, but only two weeks later the farmer saw me playing out with his cows and brought me some bread to feed them (yes, bread. Mouldy bread at that, which they eagerly devoured with their long green tongues. Cows rock.) It’s probably therefore fairly safe to assume he didn’t really care about me hopping over his Fence.

The next kid to grow up in my old house, though, will probably get in significantly more trouble for the same adventures i had freely. Eir parents won’t want em trespassing on another person’s property; then there’s the danger of hopping over the thinly-iced creek in the winter or crossing the rain-flooded stream on fallen logs and rickety footbridges in the summer, or attempting to be friendly with the two-thousand-pound animals who wander the same area. How many parents encourage such things nowadays?

Well, e’ll have at least one tree to play on. And even a tire swing.

There’s a 1001 Day Project which keeps catching my attention, and which i know full well i should avoid. The basic idea is to do 101 things you wouldn’t normally do over the course of 1001 days. I come up with enough ridiculous ideas without trying to cram over a hundred of them into a not-quite-three-year-period, thankyouverymuch.

Still… the idea intrigues me. No matter how many times the smart, logical part of my brain says, ‘You’re already illustrating a book. And writing a book – three, in fact, during that time. Aren’t a few big projects enough? You have to add ninety-seven little extras?’

Then the more irrational part of my brain notices the local airport still offers flying lessons, currently promoted with the tagline ‘Who’s that lady pilot?’, and ‘learn to fly’ gets added to the list i keep telling myself i’m not making.

Maybe i should learn to drive a car first, though.