More About Self-Definition

    

 

Tucson Weather Today

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Note: I am keeping Eva company this week.


I want to attempt to write about my honest thoughts and inner feelings about homosexuality, my 'true' thoughts. I'm not sure I can do so properly, but I intend to try.

I believe that I believe that love, either spiritual love or romantic love, intellectual love or emotional love, or any kind of true love should not be in any way castigated by a society of thinking citizens. I do suspect that casual sex (meaningless animal copulation) between two people, whether gay or straight, even between consenting adults, is not the smartest activity in which to indulge. But this belief of mine is just that, a belief; admittedly it's probably an unfounded belief. A belief derived from a lifetime of personal observation and somewhat peripheral experience, and accompanied by a great deal of clinging emotional baggage I cannot seem to completely reject.

But after so many years (from the 1950s) of careful observation, encompassing a veritable cascade of differing eras, one after another, from the nearly absolute denunciation of homosexuality in any form by the majority, to today's growing acceptance of gayness as being only another face of the complex features we call normalcy.

And now, in this second decade of the twenty-first century, I can truthfully say that I do not consider homosexuality to be wrong while heterosexuality is right -- although I admit that during my teen and young adult years in the 1940s and '50s, that is exactly what I did believe.

What changed my mind? For the most part, I suppose, it was due to my discovering that some of my friends were gay, and were willing to talk to me about it. I learned that not all homosexuals were depraved, sex-crazed beasts prowling the nights and searching for innocent victims to attack, abuse, and degrade. My new friends who happened to be gay, were kind, gentle, loving human beings.

I also learned much from reading books. And I came to realize that not all books are equal. Some were quite obviously wrong, especially the one's described as being holy.

Now, when I allow my mind to dive inside my consciousness and delve within its depths I find that, even though I still feel the actual physical act of male-on-male sex to be repellent, disgusting, and totally unacceptable, I realize that this is so because I am genetically heterosexual. And that is how I probably should feel. Feel, not think. And I know that love between two individuals, no matter what their genders, is not, cannot be, wrong in any sense of the word.

A few moments ago I paused to go back and read over the words I had just written. I believe I have expressed what I truly believe.

So I will end this blog entry for now.

Although . . .

I just have to include here a short passage from Giovanni's Room, written by James Baldwin.

Giovanni had awakened an itch, had released a gnaw in me. I realized it one afternoon, when I was taking him to work via the Boulevard Montparnasse. We had bought a kilo of cherries and we were eating them as we walked along. We were both insufferably childish and high-spirited that afternoon and the spectacle we presented, two grown men jostling each other on the wide sidewalk and aiming the cherry pits, as though they were spitballs, into each other's faces, must have been outrageous. And I realized that such childishness was fantastic at my age and the happiness out of which it sprang yet more so; for that moment I really loved Giovanni, who had never seemed more beautiful than he was that afternoon.

Not only would (or should) that paragraph make even the most vocal of gay-baiters stop and think about what was written, and think deeply about what it really says. I could be wrong about that, of course, but I don't believe I am. Regardless, even staunch bigots are surely able to recognize the excellence of the writing itself.

That's all about that for now.

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Did You Know . . .?

Theodore Sturgeon wrote the very first stories in science fiction which dealt with homosexuality, The World Well Lost and Affair With a Green Monkey.

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HISTORICAL EVENT

On this day in 1906 a devastating mine disaster killed over 1,000 workers in Courrieres, France. An underground fire sparked a massive explosion that virtually destroyed a vast maze of mines. At about 3 p.m. on the afternoon before, a fire began 270 meters underground. Unable to immediately extinguish it, workers decided to close the pit's outlets and starve the fire of air. The following morning, with 1,795 workers inside the mine's deep tunnels, a huge explosion issued forth from the Cecil pit.

As bodies began to be found, a mortuary was established near the mine. It took weeks for the all of the bodies to be recovered and identified. In the end, the casualty toll from this disaster was 1,060 miners killed, with hundreds more suffering serious injuries.

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WORD FOR TODAY

distend
verb
to swell or cause to swell by pressure from inside.

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CELEBRITY BIRTHDAYS

 

Carlos Ray "Chuck" Norris
(born March 10, 1940)

Chuck Norris is an American martial artist and actor. Norris appeared in a number of action films, such as Way of the Dragon, in which he starred alongside Bruce Lee. He played the starring role in the television series Walker, Texas Ranger from 1993 until 2001. Norris is a devout Christian and politically conservative. He has written several books on Christianity and donated to a number of Republican candidates and causes.

Olivia Wilde
(born March 10, 1984)

Olivia Wilde is an American actress who has appeared in a number of television and film productions. Wilde has starred in TV productions such as The O.C., The Black Donnellys and House, and in films such as Tron: Legacy, Cowboys & Aliens, In Time, and Drinking Buddies.

Sharon Vonne Stone
(born March 10, 1958)

Sharon Stone is an American actress. She first achieved international recognition for her role in the erotic thriller Basic Instinct by Paul Verhoeven. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress and won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Drama for her performance in Casino.

Shannon Lee Tweed
(born March 10, 1957)

Shannon Tweed is a Canadian actress and model. One of the most successful actresses of mainstream erotica, she is identified with the genre of the erotic thriller. Tweed lives with her husband Gene Simmons, co-lead singer of the band Kiss, and their two children. Tweed is also known for Gene Simmons Family Jewels, a television reality show that portrayed the life of her family from 2006 to 2012.

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The world is so obsessed with defining sexuality for everyone and attaching labels to it. Any time any person openly leaves the sexual norm, their sexuality becomes, more often than not, the absolute defining characteristic of that person.
--Dan Pearce

Single Dad Laughing, the blog

Single Dad Laughing, the book

NASA TV

This Is Who I Am

    

4-5-13

My reasons for posting the above picture are that I so much enjoy reading the works of Mark Twain because of his writing style and because I so often agree with his insightful conclusions about life in general... and about the childish foolishness that is organized religion.

You might have to click the pic to enlarge it enough to read the text.

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Tucson Weather Today


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The TV News yesterday informed me that Roger Ebert, the popular Chicago film critic, has died. Here is what he had to say about death.

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Teach Not Preach is a website written by a World Religion teacher in a public school who shares in his blog his thoughts and experiences.

Below is what he says about himself:

"My name is Jim Morrison. For nearly eighteen years I have taught a world religion course in a public high school in Red Wing, Minnesota. It is a course and curriculum that I developed. What I do is very rare and controversial, and people often assume that what I am doing is illegal. It is not. The Supreme Court has made it very clear that teaching about religion in public schools is not only legal but necessary for a student’s understanding of the world."

I have read several of Jim Morrison's blog entries and found them fascinating. And, having placed a shortcut to his site on my desktop, I intend to read each new entry as it appears.

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Last night I forgot all about watching the first program in the new Hannibal series. I went to bed early instead.

What more can I say about that?

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WORD FOR TODAY

homosexuality
noun
-  erotic activity with another of the same sex.
-  sexual interest in and attraction to members of one's own sex.

Female homosexuality is frequently referred to as lesbianism; the word gay is often used as an alternative for both "homosexual" and "lesbian," though it may refer specifically to male homosexuality.

Wikipedia states: Homosexuality is romantic attraction, sexual attraction, or sexual activity between members of the same sex or gender. As an orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectionate, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same sex." It also refers to an individual's sense of personal and social identity based on those attractions, behaviors expressing them, and membership in a community of others who share them.

Since I am not a homosexual, I find it difficult to understand (and somewhat distasteful) how it is that a man can feel sexual attraction for another man. But since I have always been so strongly attracted to females I can quite easily understand how a woman can be sexually attractive to another woman.

This mild distaste I admittedly feel for the male-male homosexual act does not mean that I have any intellectual objections at all to homosexual pairings or civil unions, or to the open practice between consenting adults of homosexuality itself. No. It takes the hypocrisy of organized religion for that.

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CELEBRITY BIRTHDAYS


Judith Arlene Resnik
(April 5, 1949 – January 28, 1986)

American engineer and a NASA astronaut who died when the Space Shuttle Challenger was destroyed during the launch of mission STS-51-L.

Eldred Gregory Peck
(April 5, 1916 – June 12, 2003)

American actor and one of the world's most popular film stars from the 1940s to the 1960s, Peck continued to play major film roles until the late 1970s. His notable performances include Atticus Finch in the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird, for which he won an Academy Award.

Frank John Gorshin, Jr.
(April 5, 1933 – May 17, 2005)

American actor and comedian. He was perhaps best known as an impressionist, with many guest appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show and Tonight Starring Steve Allen. His most famous acting role was as The Riddler in the Batman live-action television series.

Colin Luther Powell
(born April 5, 1937)

American statesman and a retired four-star general in the United States Army. He was the 65th United States Secretary of State, serving under U.S. President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2005, the first African American to serve in that position.

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"One forges one's style on the terrible anvil of daily deadlines....The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work."
--Emile Zola