Couple of new links added. I changed the Tamara and Allie link from "T and A" (which is apparently their "official" blog name) to the longer version because I didn't like the way the short link looked on the sidebar. Hope nobody minds. I also added Retroactive Continuity and ireneQ to the list. Woo. (more...)

Admittedly, I'm feeling better tonight than I have been in the past few days. Which isn't to say that I'm bubbling over with mirth (I doubt I'd be that joyous even if I sold a story -- still waiting on those rejections from Playboy and Ideomancer...), but I'm not as down as I was this time last night. (more...)

In hindsight, I'm thinking I should've called that last post "mein kampf". 🙂

Wendy writes some of her thoughts on "race" in response to my previous post (click there or scroll down, as necessary), so read those first if you haven't already. While hopefully this post would be an interesting and illuminating solo read, I write it with intent to clarify the views I put forward in last night's offering. It seems that I've already been misunderstood in one instance, so I'm worried that the anecdotal elements confound my point (which is often the case with arguments). Hence the clarificatory entry. (more...)

Well, this one's a pretty long and disjointed piece -- try to follow along. Took me a while to write, and you're missing out on a handful of anecdotes that I wrote down and excised from the version below. The essay's an odd mix of anecdotes and commentary, so hopefully the pound breaks will be helpful. Suffice it to say that if you understand even half of this essay -- particularly the latter half -- you'll know me better than my own mother ever will.

Here we go. (more...)

I'm still feeling a little drained, and I'm not sure I have a ton to say about the subject, but here goes.

Contrary to what some people have argued, I have no doubt whatsoever that the words of the Bible explicitly disapprove of homosexual relations -- and Judaism and Christianity are clearly not the only religions that view homosexuality as sinful in nature.

However, the topic of gay marriage is not properly an issue of religion, but an issue of state. (Perhaps these two forums -- state and religion -- are not ultimately so easily divorced, as the laws must appeal to, in the end, some conception of the good, which, I think, must be transcendent if it is to mean anything. However, there is supposed to be a marked separation of church and state, and, in any case, we are not discussing these subjects on the meta-level at which they converge.) (more...)