A Second Hand Emotion

Another Christian couple we know is divorcing. This one, "childed" three times, made it about seven years. Here's what they seemed to have going for them:
advanced degrees
financial security
church going
clearly designated and strictly enforced "gender roles"
"traditional values" oriented
'Eh, I'd say they had all that going against them too.

The husband is intensely misogynistic, more than just the way most American Christians are. He says some pretty stupid things about the way men are and the way women are, and how much better men are than women simply by virtue of their being men or women. As I said, most American Christians aren't too keen on the ladies so I don't know that this caused the divorce... then again I guess most Christian marriages end in divorce so... maybe. Still it seems many people are perfectly content to participate in their own devaluing. But maybe the intensity of the misogyny is suggestive. There's only so many places you can go when a man so vehemently declares how worthless women are and how much he prefers the company of men. We'll see if that shoe drops too.

They live in a state that is passionately pro-family. Of course by pro-family, I don't mean that they support a minimum living wage, universalizing health care, creating and supporting high-functioning successful schools or things like that. I mean they hate gay people and the idea of them getting married. I guess they didn't hate gay marriage hard enough to save their own. And they're smack dab in the middle of the Bible Belt, the state in the Bible Belt that has the nation's 6th highest divorce rate and doesn't consider it a hate crime to beat someone up because they're gay.

...sigh...

The same week the Mark Foley Sexually Predatory Alcoholic story broke there was another story in the San Francisco Chronicle that in another context might be called a human interest story, but here and now it has a very political content. It was about a couple who have been together for the past 26 years. Over these past 26 years they have raised five children. These children were abandoned by their parents, exposed in the womb to alcohol or drugs, had few options other than emergency residential or group home placement. After having worked as a social worker, I would guess it impossible to conceive of a hell for children worse than group homes or temporary emergency placement- temporary placements that more often turn out to be permanent. To be fair I suppose some people can't imagine a hell worse than their having two dads.

The narrative I'm supposed to buy along with the Foley story contains a few elements that make it impossible for the Chronicle story to exist in the same universe as the Foley story: that somehow his behavior was promoted by the permissive environment created by out of control political correctness, that he could creep around unafraid because no one wanted to be accused of gay-bashing, that the gay in a gay person makes them dangerous, less, scary, failed. I'm supposed to figure Foley stalked teenagers because he was gay, not because he was a jerk. I am supposed to believe that there is something integral to the being of a gay person that makes them not only sexual predators, but incapable of doing anything like raising children. These guys raising these kids are not supposed to be able to do anything other than pursue their own narcissistic sexual gratification. So in that sense, I suppose there really is a crime against nature here.

26 years. That beats my parents. That beats most divorcees I know. And five kids. Five adopted kids. That's seems pretty selfless- maybe pro-life even. Don't these guys know they're gay?

If Lady Skybalon ever decides to divorce me, I'm guessing it'll be because she got sick of hearing me complain about a messy bathroom. But I guess now you can say it's because of my weak stand against the gays.

So I switched to Beta- what am I supposed to do with that? I I preferred editing in HTML. And labels? Doesn't that impose some kind of method to this, now I have to think of things as connected and part of my oeuvre? Labels!? We'll see about that.

Meg White Has a Horrible Voice
Overjoyed- Stevie Wonder
No Way- Pearl Jam
Midnight Rambler- The Rolling Stones
Last Stop: This Town- Eels
Half a Person- The Smiths
Passive Manipulation- The White Stripes
Landslide- Fleetwood Mac