The thought that life could be better is woven indelibly into our hearts...

...and our brains.

Well, now, I don't know about that ninety-nine. I think that's necessary too. That prepares the ground. That last straw isn't a special, extra-heavy straw. It would have no effect, without the rest of the bale that went before it.

He doesn't speak the language. He holds no currency. He is a foreign man. He is surrounded by the sound, the sound of cattle in the marketplace, of scatterlings and orphanages.

He looks around, around: he sees angels in the architecture spinning in infinity. He says Amen and Hallelujah!

Sorry, Niall.

Continuing in Niall's estimable tradition:

just slip out the back, Jack
make a new plan, Stan
don't need to be coy, Roy
just get yourself free
hop on the bus, Gus
don't need to discuss much
just drop off the key, Lee
and get yourself free....

Rob

Are there no copy-editors at Wiley?

. . .

. . . for the mother's restless son
Who is witness to, who is a warrior,
Who denies his urge to break and run.
Who says "Hard times? I'm used to them.
The speeding planet burns, I'm used to that.
My life's so common it disappears,
And sometimes even music cannot substitute for tears."

Reach in the darkness
A reach in the dark
To overcome an obstacle or an enemy

And don't cry, baby
Don't cry, don't cry....

And I see that Rainflame@14 has beaten me to the line from that album most appropriate to the news that an American religious conservative has actually changed his mind, publicly. Age of miracles and wonder indeed.

Of course, he still has some convoluted mumbo-jumbo about some difference between civil marriage and church-blesséd marriage, but it's a definite, positive first step towards rationality.

My favourite reply over on the ex-omNOMnomer's post has to be the matter of fact, "So do you want a cookie or something?"

The world didn't go into fireworks, but they had dialogue, and friendship. And (I heard later, though can't confirm) that one of the anti-abortion activists later dropped out of activism.

Communication. It ain't just for breakfast.

"I can't run, but I can walk much faster than this..."

Louis Marinelli has at least started to walk in the right direction. Too bad he ran so far the other way first. (or possibly drove a bus there...)

He didn't. He said, in public; because he had been acting against it, in public, that he had changed his mind, because he had realised he was wrong.

That is the courage of his convictions. abi started with a Simon and Garfunkel song which I really identify with, for the last verse:

In the clearing stands a boxer
And a fighter by his trade
And he carries the reminders
Of ev'ry glove that layed him down
Or cut him till he cried out
In his anger and his shame
"I am leaving, I am leaving"

That's what happened to Louis Marinelli. To his credit, and the country's benefit, "the fighter still remains."

The System Of The World, p. 289 - 295 (William Heinemann trade paperback) contains part of the story, but it's spread through most of the trilogy.

It was good for Marinelli
To get up there on the telly
And proclaim he's now an ally*,
And that's good enough for me!

* Yeah, you try finding a third perfect rhyme that fits the context!

It's uplifting that he's still chopping wood, and carrying water.

"The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls
And whispered in the sound of silence"

I think I better admire the man who can change his opinion because he has listened to the views of others, and says so though it will cost him dearly -- than one who follows the herd because it is safer to do so, is self-righteous in opinions he can't promote without resorting to bullying and abuse, and who forsakes mercy and compassion because he gains personal pleasure from crushing into the dust any he views as an enemy of the cause.

Disagreements?
Work 'em out.

Wirelizard @19:
Of course, he still has some convoluted mumbo-jumbo about some difference between civil marriage and church-blesséd marriage, but it's a definite, positive first step towards rationality.

I see it as the seed of his next aha: the value of real separation between church and state.

I don't think the guy wants a cookie, by the way. He said he was sorry loudly because he was sorry about loud things he'd done. He doesn't seem to be hanging around looking for everyone to praise him. For instance, he didn't turn up in the comment thread of the apology post (that I could see—I didn't read the whole thing). And he's not wallowing in it on his blog, either.

Instead, he's just going on with his political-blogging life, being wrong about some things and right about others.

Presumably that's rather louder than a Mini Cooper and therefore good for driving away earworms?

...actually, I think I'll go and have a listen to that popular beat combo: Mr Vincent Furnier and his Orchestra.

I may be some time.

I am reminded of the case of Milton Kleim who was a neo-Nazi activist on Usenet, and who came to repudiate his racism.

Elvis is a watermelon

Some years ago, it was your posts here on Making Light that made me realize why civil unions are not enough and converted me to whole-hearted support of gay marriage. So your efforts are not wasted.
----------------------------
I'm still stuck on "all lies and jest". I always heard that line as "all lies in jest", with 'lies' as a verb, not a noun.

Mary Aileen: I hear it that way too, sort of, but the verb is "jest", so that the mumbles such are promises are papered over with the idea of jokes/hidden in jokes.

oh, never mind

I'm probably just totally misunderstanding you.

Surely you jest.

In a couple of days they come and take me away
But the press let the story leak
And when the radical priest
Come to get me released
We was all on the cover of Newsweek
And I'm on my way
I don't know where I'm going
I'm on my way

Try jest a little bit harder.

(My humor parser sometimes sticks on 'literal'. Sorry.)

No, I had a similar reaction. I mean, yes, "jest" can be a verb, but in that sentence, I'm not sure the verb isn't actually the implied "are" between "lies" and "in."

I jest wasn't going to say anything, because I try to avoid being unhelpfully pedantic.

I expect there will be long-term resistance to it, though I also think we'll see it become legally accepted in most or all of the country in the next 10-20 years. Racism has stuck around, despite the fact that all the widely-held belief systems in the US tend to oppose it. (I mean, people tried, but it's quite hard to find anything in the New Testament to support treating people badly for being black. Cf discussions about Samaritans and who your neighbor is.)

By contrast, a lot more of the core teachings of Christianity (and Judaism, I think) include some pretty specific prohibitions of homosexuality. Not every church reads things that way, but many do, and they're not likely to shift their teachings because the laws change. (Nor, in general, should a church change its moral teachings based on political consensus or polling numbers, though in this case, I'm not thrilled with the likely results.)

But the prohibitions against divorce are more explicitly and more authoritatively stated than those against gays. Paul talked about homosexuality, but Jesus preached on divorce.

And yet American Christians have learned to live with it. Even quite conservative ones.

In retrospect (hey, I didn't like highschool -- I was an adolescent then, okay?) I was incredibly fortunate in attending Herbert Hoover High School, in Glendale, CA, during the mid-'40s (when, e.g., Glendale had two Black families, grandfathered-in, and a Sunset Law... with the police politely offering a ride to the nice (albeit Bible-reading) lady next to me on the streetcar-bench to the next-town stop so she'd be there before they would have been required to arrest her).

But my highschool teachers were quite strong on "Ask questions, and carefully scrutinize the answers". That hasn't made my later life easy, but I'm sure it has made it better.

abi, #47: It occurred to me recently that pointing out that Jesus didn't have anything to say against homosexuality, and that he did say that his teaching was intended to supersede Mosaic law, might be a useful push-back. As in, "It's in the Old Testament, and it's in Paul, but Jesus didn't say anything against it; you're a Christian, aren't you supposed to be paying attention to what Jesus taught?"

Instead, it's just a run of the mill "Please please please leave us alone" thread that is worn too thin in the last decade or so.

Still, I'll keep writing what I do. There's no reason to stop even though it has all been said before. There's not really anything astounding for us to say in this debate - the request is too simple to allow for massively inspiring content.

-RJ

I tend to use "Chuck Berry's Golden Decade" myself. Only time it didn't work Teresa was able to suggest singing "Excelsior" to the Underdog theme, which took care of the problem.

Thanks for coming by. Welcome to Making Light; feel free to poke around and make yourself at home.

By the way, I really don't want you to think, from what I said, that I didn't like your post. I did. My point was simply that it was not magic. It was achievably good, manageably persuasive. It was the sort of thing that many people can say. I hope the people from this community, like Xopher, keep saying it.

Perseverance matters. Patience matters.

(Since you probably have no idea where I'm coming from on this issue: I'm straight, but I care very much about marriage equality. I think the community of the married would be immeasurably enriched by the inclusion of same-sex couples. And I have a number of LGBT friends and relatives who would like to get married one day, an ambition I support them in. So you can count me as an ally.)

In the New Testament, again IIRC, Jesus never mentions homosexuality; it's all Paul's words. I have been known to muse that Christianity would be better off if Jesus' teachings were followed more, and Paul's less.

WRT the original issue, I have a strong (if forty-year-old) recollection that my dad's copy of BOTW had a lyric sheet, which would be almost dispositive (strangely enough, sometimes lyric sheets are created by having some intern transcribe the record, rather than by consulting an ur-text).

I do requests/just the ones that have three chords in/and I disregard the rest (Fred Wedlock, "The Folker," from an almost equally old memory, and tying into the open thread)

The evidence that suggests this basically amounts to this: Jesus was looking for a radical overthrow of society as it then was, and Paul turned right around and supported it. "Slaves, stay with your masters" is only the tip of that iceberg.

I want to say, I grow old, I grow old/ I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled, but Paul Simon is here to remind me that We're not old; God is old.

(And Don Fitch @48, remembering a Sunset Law, makes me feel thankful to be young.)

I just bought a turntable from a coworker (I still have about 1500 LPs), but I haven't got around to fixing the left channel (I'm pretty sure it just needs a bit of soldering).

Never been lonely/ never been lied to
Never had to scuffle in fear/ nothing denied to
Born at the instant/ the churchbells chime
Whole world whispering: you're born at the right time.

It's "all lies AND jest" on the lyrics printed on the cover, which I think makes "jest" a noun for Simon's purposes.

I want to see the complete abandon of the word "bullying" for the appropriate words "harassment" and "assault".

You said this in the context of LGBT teens being tormented by their peers. But that sort of treatment isn't limited to gay students, nor indeed to students in general. And it's obvious that, as a society, the behaviors we classify as "bullying" are by and large given a free pass. Whether it's "kids will be kids" or "just ignore him, everybody knows he's an asshole," we fail to label harassment and assault for what they are, and we fail (by and large) to discourage or punish them. Perhaps one step toward getting past that attitude is to reframe such behavior away from the get-out-of-jail-free card called "bullying".

She slurs it just like Simon does in the original: "all lies n' jest" is the closest I can come.

Many's the time I've been mistaken
And many times confused...

My thinking on Paul has changed a lot over the years, and I think it possible he is the most misunderstood figure in the NT, of not the entire bible.

I don't agree with your take on Paul; but to the extent that 'slaves obey your masters' is the tip of the iceberg, Romans 13.1 'The powers that be are ordained of God; therefore he who resists against authority resists against God' is the whole iceberg.

(and comparing the bluntness of that with the subtlety of 'render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's' - which seems designed to make you ask the further question - to which no unambiguous answer is given - 'and what, exactly, is Caesar's?' seems to sum up much of the difference between Jesus and Paul.)

On the other hand: it looks to me as though without Paul, Christianity remains a strange antinomian Jewish sect, rather than a universalist religion.

I think that the problem is not so much Paul as what the church - or parts of it - has made of Paul: the treating of his works as revealed truth rather than the writings of a flawed and troubled man - with great organisational and expressive gifts - trying to come to terms with faith. (Even Mrs. Thatcher's beloved 'if a man will not work, neither shall he eat' makes sense to me when its understood as a bad=tempered outburst in a particular context rather than an attempt to enunciate a timeless truth about just distribution.)

(Wait, what? This isn't the 'ask an atheist' thread? OK then, sorry.)

Paul is useful to people who want to reject the authority of the church because Jesus doesn't spell out how to live in a Christian community, or for that matter whether living in community is how Christianity is to be accomplished at all. The fact that the apostles had to work all this out, and that they created a community as the means to do so, provides an opening to go back and argue that they got it all wrong.

On a note related to this thread's other subject, I recently learned that a woman I've known for a few years and her girlfriend are planning to marry, and are considering alternatives if this country doesn't get with the program in a timely manner. I didn't even know she had a girlfriend, but then I'm generally terrible at noticing when people are in relationships.

(via Fred Clark.)

I'm glad I'm not the only one who knows the correct lyrics!

Graceland wa the first albumn I ever bought, my previous musical purchases being the singles 'Convoy', by I don't know who and '99 Red Balloons', by Nina.

It wasn't even funny once.

Lila @ 81
I came late to being interested in music, so may be a little older. I bought Graceland as soon as it came out; it got me through a long hard summer job, in a traditional Lancashire cotton mill, between my 'A'-level years.

Dave Bell @ 83
I think it's worse than you remember - the title is '69ing Gay Raccoons'. Probably not one to listen to at work.

Kudos to the folks who came out to protest against NOM in Atlanta, and the folks who managed to be civil in engaging with Mr. Marinelli on the internet.

Xopher - I mostly lurk, but when I see your name (not just here...I also lurk on a few SF threads where I see you commenting) I read with interest. I'm in the choir on marriage equality but you still come up with things that make me say "wow, never thought of it that way." Allies might be on your side but not fully get it -- and hearing an argument formulated with style and direct from the heart gives your allies more linguistic ammo when we are having conversations of our own with others!

So I wasn't as likely to try and formulate *arguments* for these positions. Reading people who've had to think these things through makes me think about it, revise my positions where I see unconsidered prejudices slip through. It gives me arguments to present to others, and reasons to speak up instead of just assuming silent support is ok.

I'm very happy that Marinelli is starting to come around. I am hoping that he will eventually move away from his still-extant views that homosexuals (who, by implication, are all male) are disease-carriers whose behavior is a public health threat. Baby steps, I guess.

I always loved this sentiment.

Thanks for the uplift!

S

As far as the civil/religious thing goes, there IS certainly a difference. The Christian church did not recognize marriage as a sacrament until about 1000 a.d. You can thank Augustine for that one. It was a property arrangement, which, in the end, is all civil marriage is. The irony there is that I could find a dozen churches in Kansas City, Kansas or Missouri, that would perform a religious service, but neither state recognizes those or the civil one I had in Iowa. (Of course, apparently, neither does my wife, but that's a different story for another thread.)

Personally, I have zero use for organized religion of any kind, however, I DO feel strongly about the seperation of church & state and that's for the protection of BOTH church & state from one another. As says one of my favorite buttons from my youth, "The last time we mixed politics with religion, people got burned at the stake."

And so as to not completely stray from the theme...

"Let us be lovers we'll marry our fortunes together. I've got some real estate here in my bag."

Well it's not just me and it's not just you
This is all around the world

(How does Paul Simon manage to make lyrics that sound so cynical sound so uplifting? If I read the song's text, I perceive a point of view that's too worldweary to see people as individuals anymore. When I hear it sung, I feel relieved of a burden. "We're all the same, really, and that's why we're not all alone. Be glad." I still feel sorry for the tired talk show host, though. He sounds so sad and resigned.)

What Augustine did was make it the case that only a marriage sanctified in the church was supposed to count. It took a bit for that to take root, but the pauline ideals on marriage were a dramatic change to the emotional landscape, and without it the odds of, "romantic" marriage as the ideal would probably not have taken root as the ideal, if at all as a broadly accepted cultural concept.

Many of the, "virgins" touted by the church as martyrs were women who refused to not marry because it was to a match that would fail the pauline rules of mutual respect/responsibility/obligation.

--Dave, It Gets Better, but slowly