Thursday, June 09, 2011

On trying to be something you're not

I usually don't expect much out of Gwyneth Paltrow. She's just another highly-paid celebrity to me. Perhaps I judge too fast. However, her recent blog post seems like a good place to start one of my own. I don't understand homosexuality and don't participate. It's not for me. I don't understand non-Euclidean geometry, either. That's also not for me. I'm not going to drag a math professor out of a classroom to give him a lecture on how advanced math doesn't make any sense to me any more than I'm going to drag a homosexual man out of a forum friendly to his lifestyle, like a gay bar or coffee shop, to give him a lecture on how I see whatever he's doing as wrong. However, if you're homosexual and in a forum friendly to my lifestyle, like a church I attend on a regular basis, I want the same respect shown to me. Arguing sensibly somewhere neutral is cool, but don't expect me to mix it up there, either. It's just not in me right now. I don't feel the urgent need to go on the rhetorical offensive against homosexuality as a whole at this crossroads in my life.

If you're literally inside the walls of my house, there will be some rules. Firstly, no bashing: If you've ever felt uncomfortable because everyone around you throws around poorly-thought-out, abrasive, somewhat insulting ideas with the assumption that everyone is a democrat, or a muslim, or a christian, a catholic, a lutheran, a steamfitter or whatever else despite the overwhelming evidence that not everyone is the same, you'll feel welcome here. I have lots of different friends; I want them all to feel welcome. I don't live in a gay bar, a high school locker room, a high school musical, a choir chamber, a church, or your local union hall. We're all probably different here, so keep the ganging up on different kinds of people to their faces or behind their backs the hell away from my house. Vigorous discussion is cool, and encouraged, but if it gets ugly, it's over. There are more rules, but those are the important ones for the subject at hand, and only apply inside.

My blog is different. Read and respond. I only delete obvious spam.

Wednesday, June 08, 2011

Two Liars

Two people can't keep a secret. I just saw Keith Barry, who calls himself a "mentalist" trick two awful liars to give up information on TV. I suspect the whole thing is a set-up. If the piece of film was legitimate, those guys couldn't lie or stall long enough to fool a keen observer for an hour. If the cops are worse observers than Keith Barry, and criminals are worse liars than these two, we're all a rather sad bunch.