Like a Record, Baby, Right Round Round Round

There are certain subjects that I have decided are off limits in this blog, but I'm going to have to travel along the edges of one of them to tell this story.

My friend Mark and my brother are of two divergent (and frankly competing) faiths, and each is actively involved in their respective religious institutions as well, so naturally their points of view are going to show up on their Facebook posts.  Today, each of them posted the same story, but each post had a spin that reflected their own personal predjudices.  I find spin fascinating, but I rarely get to see it displayed so starkly.

Anti-Bullying Speaker Curses Christian Teens

http://radio.foxnews.com/toddstarnes/top-stories/anti-bullying-speaker-curses-mocks-christian-teens.html
By Todd Starnes As many as 100 high school students walked out of a national journalism conference after an anti-bullying speaker began cursing, attacked the Bible and reportedly called those who refused to listen to his rant “pansy assed.” The speaker was Dan Savage, founder of the “It...

Christians walk out on anti-bullying talk

http://www.examiner.com/
Gay Activist and founder of the “It Gets Better” anti-bullying project, Dan Savage recently spoke at the National High School Journalist Conference in Seattle. ..

I watched the video and read the story, and my point of view didn't quite line up with either presentation.  It's probably because I've been conditioned to recognize this particular type of hypocrisy (and please understand that this is not a judgement; I believe hypocrisy is just human nature), but if I were writing the story it would have a very long headline.

Dan Savage Uses The Bible and Religion To Justify His Predjudices Against People Who Use The Bible and Religion To Justify Their Predjudices. 

But then I guess that could be considered to have it's own spin.

I, Solation

    The bar at the hotel has a few regulars who happen to be gay.  One of them, who also happens to be a reporter for a local TV station,  came in with a large group of his friends the other night.  I think they were celebrating a birthday.  Most of them were young, most were good looking, and it was obvious they all liked each other. For a while, during the slow process of leaving and saying goodnight, they stood on the front sidewalk where I was working, and I got to observe them as they engaged in affectionate banter the way real friends do, and the hugs and kisses as they left for the night.
    A couple of mornings later, one of my co-workers facetiously asked me if I enjoyed seeing all those young gay guys together in a group.  (Teasing comments are part of our normal conversation.)  He didn't know that I had actually been thinking about that group of guys a lot.  I said, "No, actually it just made me sad."  Of course I had to explain what I meant.
    Fact is, I miss having a crowd.
    I'm nearly 50 years old.  I'm nocturnal.  I'm poor.  The friends we do have either don't know each other or don't like each other, and some of them live in the land of Far Far Away.  (We live in Edmond, which, in OKC's gay scene, is like living at the North Pole.)  And everybody is busy busy busy.  So getting together with, say, half a dozen other people is difficult at best.
    I have friends at work, but even getting together with them is difficult.  We went to a party recently that was being thrown by a co-worker.  Gaby and I were first to arrive and first to leave because I had to work that night.  Most of the rest of the guests arrived after we left, including those I wanted to see most.
   Our normal Monday night routine has been to go out to The Park, but we haven't been going out much lately, mostly just because of scheduling problems  (I've been working a lot of Mondays lately, dammit).  Plus, Gaby's  been a unwilling to go even when we can, and I'm not often willing to go without him.  Most of the people we know at the clubs are people we used to see at The Park on Monday nights.  But Mondays have changed since the "show" moved from The Park across the street to The Phoenix, and when we do go out, the people we know aren't there because they just haven't made the switch.  I did make one new friend at the Phoenix -- through a co-worker, no less -- but that friendship hasn't been cultivated because we haven't been there to do it.
    I read somewhere online recently that the gay clubs, at least from the social aspect, are a lot like church.  I can definitely see that, but Gaby and I are attenders who have not gotten involved with any ministries, so our  social connections are tenuous at best.  But the weather's getting warmer now, and both The Park and the Phoenix have a patio out back, away from the thumpa-thumpa, and it's so much easier to get into a good conversation with someone when you can actually hear each other.  Conversation is my favorite thing; the challenge is finding someone interested.
    Right now I'm busy with art shows, so I have little time myself to socialize.  But what I really want to do is to find a couple of our friends who are willing and able to go with us out of town for a couple of days.  But who?  And I'm not sure Gaby's on board with this because the first time I brought it up to him, he gave me a bunch of reasons why it was unlikely to happen instead of helping me figure out how it could happen.  But I have vacation time I need to use, and this is how I want to use it.  I just got to figure out how.

Lack of Support

Hm.  I tried to open blogspot, but was informed that my "browser is no longer supported by Blogger. Some parts of Blogger will not work and you may experience problems."  Whatever that means.  In order to write this I had to download Google Chrome.  Now everything is supposed to be much easier.  And perhaps it will... eventually, when I've finally figured out where everything is, like the Favorites Bar.  That may take a year or so.

Even Jay Leno Fails Once In A While

Last Tuesday morning I noticed that my old friend MW had posted a link to a CBS story about some remarks that the President had made concerning the Supreme Court's review of the health care law. He commented, "Marbury v Madison. Perhaps we should send Professor Obama copies of the decision?" I wasn't particularly interested at the time, so I didn't read the article. If I had, I would have seen that the President had said that he was "confident" the Court would not "take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress." Of course, that's silly, since deciding that type of thing is one of the courts primary functions. (He tried to clarify later, but it didn't quite take.)
Saturday, I was getting ready for the treadmill, and decided to watch Tuesday's edition of The Daily Show while I was exercizing. In the second segment, Jon talked about this same subject, making fun of the President for saying what he said, showing a clip of FOX and Friends making fun of the President for saying it (and talking about the same case that M mentioned in his post), showing a clip of Sarah Palin saying something similar to what the President said, another clip of Sheldon Whitehouse (D)RI saying the opposite of what the President said, and a clip of Mitt Romney saying, "We Conservatives stand for causes that are to important to allow unelected judges to force their own biases on an unwilling nation." Jon then went on to talk about what the Supreme Court was doing while the Republicans and Democrats were "swapping places."
Feeling amused, and in a jocular mood, I decided to comment on M's post: "Judicial Activism. It's not just for liberals anymore." Instead of an LOL, I got corrected. Hm.
I tried again with a simple (and factually incorrect, as it turned out) redirect based on M's response. This time I got corrected by a friend of his. Well, fine. If you guys don't get the joke, I don't feel the need to explain it to you. I abandoned the conversation.
But I'm still wondering how I wound up on the other side of an argument by agreeing with the other participants.