Autumn woes

Autumn is a beautiful season here in Barona and the Midwest in general. The trees are turning lovely yellows, oranges, reds and purple. The air is brisk and skies clear -- when it's not raining!

Even so, there is a sadness to the season that seems to go beyond just shorter days and less sunlight. The leaves that fall are beautiful and they swirl in the wind like confetti at a party. But they are signs of dying. Soon the colors will be gone and the branches will be stark and gray until snow comes to whiten them for a bit.

Damien reminds me that nature's lesson is that nothing dies, nothing is lost. Things change, things transition. The leaves that fall become food for little beasties and what was once vegetable becomes animal and that then dies and decays and becomes vegetable after passing through who knows how many stages. The cycle goes on.

Each step has its beauty if we look for it. These days lots of things make me see the ugliness behind the beauty in the world. I need to learn to see the beauty behind the ugliness behind the beauty behind ... well, you get it.

The tragedy of our times?

Not International Walk Like an Egyptian Day!

Damien tells me it's International Talk Like a Pirate Day ...

Makes sense, though potentially disappointing

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - People seeking clues about how soon the Supreme Court might weigh in on states' gay marriage bans should pay close attention to the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg told a Minnesota audience Tuesday.

Ginsburg said cases pending before the circuit covering Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee would probably play a role in the high court's timing. She said "there will be some urgency" if that appeals court allows same-sex marriage bans to stand. Such a decision would run contrary to a legal trend favoring gay marriage and force the Supreme Court to step in sooner, she predicted.

She said if the appeals panel falls in line with other rulings there is "no need for us to rush."
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Many of us will be disappointed if we have to wait another year or more for the issue to come to the high court, but it has become the court's tradition not to step in until there is conflict among the circuit courts of appeal or if there is urgent national concern. This last point is the claim of those states that are petitioning the court to hear the issue, but the court may not be convinced.

All we can do is wait and see.

Speaking on behalf of Damien and myself, who were able to marry this past spring, I know that being married makes a difference and that it is harsh to make people wait, apparently just to satisfy a judicial custom. The law, however, is much about custom and that is simply the way it is, for all the ranting about judicial activism.

May the day come soonest!

Thank you for sharing, Travis!

From Travis's Guys

Sure got my Monday morning off to a good start!

American Foreign Policy

While it is easy to make fun of Senator McCain for this, I must ask how different this is from the foreign policy this country has pursued under both Republican and Democratic administrations.

What mugs!

Thank you, God, for lending me this penis!

Controversial pastor Mark Driscoll is in hot water already. The evangelical calvinist pastor recently stepped down temporarily from Mars Hill Church, the Seattle, Washington megachurch he co-founded. “This is without a doubt, the most abusive, coercive ministry culture I’ve ever been involved with," one well-respected evangelical pastor, Mark Tripp, wrote in a letter co-signed by nine Mars Hill Church pastors.

Driscoll's problems were highlighted by charges of rampant plagiarism, but they extend far deeper. 

Pastor Jim Henderson says "Driscoll is popularizing and legitimating spiritual bullying for young men, and is infecting thousands of young men" with his ideological machismo, Vox reported.

But all those issues aside, news comes today of just the type of spiritual beliefs Driscoll promoted.

On a church message board in 2001, Driscoll called man's penis a creation of God, and said that God created woman to house man's penis.

"The first thing to know about your penis is, that despite the way it may see, it is not your penis," Driscoll, under the pen name of William Wallace II, wrote, according to Libby Anne at Patheos. "Ultimately, God created you and it is his penis. You are simply borrowing it for a while."

"While His penis is on loan you must admit that it is sort of just hanging out there very lonely as if it needed a home, sort of like a man wondering the streets looking for a house to live in. Knowing that His penis would need a home, God created a woman to be your wife and when you marry her and look down you will notice that your wife is shaped differently than you and makes a very nice home."

Some would say. "Therefore, if you are single you must remember that your penis is homeless and needs a home," Driscoll continued. "But, though you may believe your hand is shaped like a home, it is not. And, though women other than your wife may look like a home, to rest there would be breaking into another man’s home."

He concludes, homophobically, "if you look at a man it is quite obvious that what a homeless man does not need is another man without a home."

This from the pride of the evangelical movement, a man with 15,000 parishioners, a man who penned several dozen books and was "named one of the 25 most influential pastors of the past 25 years."

Bible fun

Click on image to enlarge.

Petition for new legislation

I am a lawyer and I want to start collecting signatures on a petition to outlaw television commercials that mention trans-vaginal slings. If you are interested in joining this effort to clean up America's airways, contact me at this blog.

Thank you for you concern!

Does it date me to say that I lived through this whole thing?

Hey! At least I survived!