The Binary Circumstance

Makeoutcity links to Ray Overbey who has some insights about The Passion and the nature of faith.

When the Jewish man assists his countryman Christ in carrying the cross up the hill, whilst the Roman thugs whip him mercilessly, and the man finally screams at the Romans, begging them to stop, when the Jewish woman offering Christ water is rebuffed by the soldiers— why weren’t these discussed in the alarmist previews of the film? I am utterly confused by this. Everyone comes out badly in this film, be they Jew or Roman. When Christ is taken from the cross, and Mary holds him in her arms, she looks up, directly at the camera, directly into the eyes of the viewer. The camera pans back, revealing the bloody corpse in her arms. She’s still looking at you, and her gaze accuses. It’s your fault, she says.

The critics who attack the film for historical inaccuracy confuse me to no end. You can’t choose both the Gospels and rational, objective history. This is a movie meant to inspire or reinforce faith, and faith is irrational. Get over yourselves. This is a movie about living, sensual, bloody, strong religion. It’s irrational, it’s devotional, it’s about surrendering entirely and trying (and failing) to live up to the obligations of servitude and faith. It’s no wonder journos find it repulsive, but can’t speak their minds about it. The roots of the objections- that they find real religion to be dangerous and possibly unethical, would not sell many newspapers.

He goes on to say:

Mel Gibson’s work confronts us with strong religion. He confronts the viewer with a fundamental choice: either you take the words of this book seriously, or you do not. And after this movie, I’m hoping there are more people who choose the latter. The former is way too bloody and barbaric for an allegedly civilized society.

As a recovering Catholic, I’m interested in this movie but I’m not into S&M and from what I’ve read it’s really over the top with whips and blood. I also don’t want to give Mel Gibson my money, given how well he’s hyped it and the fact that much of that money will probably end up in the hands of the Catholic Church, specifically Opus Dei.

I wonder what it would be like to watch the movie without giving any credibility to the faith-based aspects of it; assuming that Jesus was nothing more than a man who suffered from some pretty serious delusions. Then it would just be the story of an individual being persecuted by both the church and the state. That would be a story I could identify with.

I’d like to watch the movie from that point of view, but don’t want to be a victim of the marketing. So we’ll see. Maybe Mel will read this post and send me a free ticket, good Christian dude that he is.

Last week Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan once again sounded the alarm about Social Security. He said that benefits would have to be cut in order for Social Security to remain solvent.

Back in 1983 Greenspan successfully proposed that Social Security taxes be raised so that baby boomers would be able to collect when they reached retirement age:

Since 1983, American workers have been paying more into Social Security than it has paid out in benefits, about $1.8 trillion more, so far. This year Americans will pay about 50 percent more in Social Security taxes than the government will pay out in benefits.

Those higher taxes were imposed at the urging of Greenspan, who was chairman of a bipartisan commission that in 1983 said that one way to make sure Social Security remains solvent once the baby boomers reached retirement age was to tax them in advance.

On Greenspan’s recommendation, Social Security was converted from a pay-as-you-go system to one in which taxes are collected in advance. After Congress adopted the plan, Greenspan rose to become chairman of the Fed.

So what has happened to that $1.8 trillion? The advance payments have all been spent.

The money was spent to pay the ordinary expenses of running the federal government. Read the full story in the Seattle Times.

They didn’t just borrow millions of our retirement dollars to pay the normal expenses of government and they didn’t just borrow billions. They borrowed $1.8 trillion dollars that was stolen out of individual paychecks supposedly for retirement. Now they don’t have it and they want more or they’re going to cut the benefits. How will they pay their debt to Social Security? Higher taxes or more printing presses. Both solutions will create even more problems for the economy.

That our politicians, both liberals and conservatives are morally bankrupt is obvious to anyone who is paying attention. As I pointed out in a previous post, it is also becoming increasingly clear that our government is probably financially bankrupt as well. This PDF article, written by a prominent economist and historian, details just how bad the situation is. It is not for the faint of heart.

miscegenation n marriage or cohabitation between a white person and a member of another race [Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary]

Previous rulings by the courts that overturned bans on interracial marriages may provide the legal precedents to overturn bans on same-sex marriage. It was just 56 years ago that the California Supreme Court overturned California’s ban on interracial marriage.

The court acknowledged a long line of cases upholding race-based laws, including a widely cited 1869 Georgia ruling saying mixed-race procreation “is not only unnatural, but is always productive of deplorable results.” But in a 4-3 ruling, the California court said such viewpoints, and the laws they supported, were discredited by science and were contrary to basic concepts of equality.

Marriage is “a fundamental right of free men,” wrote Justice Roger Traynor in the rhetorical style of the day. “Legislation infringing such rights must be based on more than prejudice. … By restricting the individual’s right to marry on the basis of race alone, (the prohibitions) violate the equal protection of the laws.”

Just as the government once drew lines between whites and other races with laws that banned miscegenation, it continues to draw lines between gay and straight and male and female in the arena of marriage.

The remarkable thing about love is that it does not recognize the irrational boundries that are defined by laws and government. Love and committment are a function of individual values. A government does not have a mind or any other biological apparatus to engage in rational thought or to feel emotions. Therefore, government cannot have values.

The government is simply a tool for domination, a weapon that certain individuals use to impose their will, their values and their boundaries upon others. At the root of the same-sex marriage debate is the question of who has the right to control the life, the choices and values of each individual, the individual or somebody else?

The government as an irrational inanimate entity cannot make choices. It is irrational to ask if the government has the right to control the lives of individuals. The government cannot have such a “right” because it does not even have the capability. The question is whether certain individuals have a “right” to use government to control the most personal choices that individuals make in their lives.

To accept the premise that certain individuals exist to give orders and others exist to obey them is to accept that some people are superior simply because they possess a desire and an ability to give orders, not because they are more intelligent or have contributed more to society. This premise awards social superiority based on dominance and nothing else. Whether individuals have value depends entirely on who gains control of the government and nothing else. This is the worst form of anarchy and dehumanization.

Miscegenation laws defined interracial relationships as inferior to white-only relationships, just as bans on same-sex marriages define heterosexual relationships as superior to homosexual relationships.

The ban on interracial marriage was based on the asserted “superiority of the white race,” said attorney Jon Davidson of the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, which has joined in the defense of same-sex weddings in San Francisco. At the heart of the current marriage prohibition, he said, is “an attempt to keep gay people inferior.”

Do those who support bans on same-sex marriages really want to live in a society where superiority and their value as a human being is determined by laws, by words written down on paper, and nothing else? Maybe they do. At least as long as they’re the ones writing the laws.

But what will happen when different group of social engineers gains control of the government and uses the same premise to declare them inferior and their voluntary associations invalid? You only need to look at Nazi Germany and the plantation south to see where that road leads.

In previous posts I have discussed some of the problems with state-sactioned marriage. I think the state should get out of marriage altogether. But that is not the world we live in. Given that we do have state licensing of marriage, it is only fair that the state not discriminate against any two consenting adults who wish to get married.

The first couple to get married in San Francisco were Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin, two lesbians who have been together for 51 years.

They met in 1950 when both worked for a trade publication in Seattle called Pacific Builder and Engineer. Martin carried a briefcase. Lyon was riveted. Three years later, they moved to San Francisco and set up house. While pulp paperbacks of the day preferred euphemisms such as “The Unfortunate Flesh” or “Warped,” Martin and Lyon opened a joint checking account.

They were occasional visitors to Mona’s and the Paper Doll, but the lesbian bars were vulnerable to police raids. Along with six other women, they formed a social club called Daughters of Bilitis. The name was a reference to a Sapphic love poem. After a year, Martin and Lyon grew restless with the limitations of a secret social lodge and decided to take Daughters of Bilitis in a political direction. By the early 1960s, nearly 200 Daughters of Bilitis chapters had formed around the country.

In 1964, Martin and Lyon helped found the Council on Religion and the Homosexual, an organization that taught clergy members about gay behavior. They campaigned to remove homosexuality from the American Psychiatric Association’s diagnostic manual of mental disorders.

There are those who do not believe that the institution of marriage should be permited for same-sex couples who stay together for 51 years:

“There are lots of old ladies who are friends, but they don’t have the right to turn marriage upside down,” said Randy Thomasson, executive director of Campaign for California Families, one of two conservative groups suing San Francisco’s mayor to stop the marriages. “This was all done to victimize marriage, voters and state law.”

How does one victimize marriage? Marriage is a contract. You can’t beat it up or deprive it of its humanity. The same goes for victimizing state law. Law and marriage are irrational, inanimate entities; they cannot be victimized. Only people can be victimized. And it’s often done by law.

A small band of Christians, ever-mindful of Jesus’ command to love thy neighbor as thyself, showed their love:

The day after the mega-wedding reception at the Hyatt, six protesters are across from City Hall, holding signs that read “GOD HATES FAGS” and “FAGS ARE LAWLESS.” The group is from Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan., led by anti-gay activist Fred Phelps Jr.

“Homosexuals are lawless,” Phelps says, gesturing to the line of gay couples. “The law means nothing to them.”

The law means nothing to those who wish to be lawfully married? Perhaps it means too much.