Burundi Outlaws Homosexuality. You Can Do That?

Joining such geniuses as "President" Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe in his condemnation of gays, the President of the lovely lil' African nation of Burundi said that he will sign new legislation outlawing homosexuality. The punishment will be up to three years in jail and heavy fines.

Our friend Wikipedia notes that Burundi is one of the poorest nations on the planet. Over 80% of its people live in poverty. I'm so glad this country's leaders are focusing on the things that are really important. Screw food and shelter; imprison them gays!

I wonder if anyone took the time to explain to Burundi's elected leaders that you cannot choose to be gay. Recent scholarship uncovered that the oft cited "gay conversion" studies of the 1970s may have been faked. It's like one man interviewed for a psychological study once answered in response to the question of whether he chose to be gay: "Who wakes up one morning and decides to be society's definition of a deviant?" And, really, anyone who "chooses" to limit his dating pool to 10% or less of the population would just be stupid... or really bad at math.

While no one would mistake American conservatives for Burundi nutjobs--I mean, I'm sure no Republican politician would advocate putting gays in jail just for being gay... well, unless he was from a solidly red district--the two groups do share something in common: focusing on something retarded when there are real problems in the world. Burundi's people would probably like some, oh, I don't know, food? And Americans would like jobs and their 401(k)s to recover.

I'm not a religious person like I used to be. But having grown up very religious, I've been blessed to be able to look at the world through the eyes of a person of extreme faith. And the question I so often want to pose to those foaming at the mouth at anti-abortion rallies or spewing hatred and outright ridiculous lies at anti-gay marriage rallies (or even villifying those unAmurican illegal immigrants who are takin' our jewbs!) is this: When you're standing before God on the Day of Judgment, don't you think He might be a little disappointed with the fact that you spent so much time and energy trying to control His children rather than... donating to the poor (as Jesus instructed), visiting those in prison (as Jesus instructed), healing the sick (as Jesus instructed)...?

Wouldn't it be funny if the real factor that ended up driving gay equality in the U.S. was just sheer fatigue combined with a sense that maybe there are bigger problems in the world than letting Adam & Steve get married? Perhaps they can honeymoon in Burundi. Oh wait... it still sucks. Nevermind.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T Your Reader

Someone recently relayed this message to me. It was sent to him by someone on the Internets:

"hey sxc , wat u doin do u hve msn or anotha chat? :)try chat sometim.hve a webcam i use thats instead of a pic and least u no its me so is thats ok so i cn at least shw u wat i look lyk so u no who u r chating to lol"

Grammar and spelling seem to be dying a rapid death. I pity my sister, a college English professor, when I read what her students are passing off as papers. I had a class in undergrad in which we had to write a fake résumé. The professor told us that if we had two grammatical errors, we'd receive an "F" on the assignment. The class groaned. And I immediately thought, "If it were a real résumé, and it had two grammatical errors, you idiots wouldn't be getting the job. You should be thanking the professor for being a hardass."

The best advice I ever learned about writing came from law school. It's a shame that teachers do not stress it at younger ages. The advice is simple: The purpose of good writing is to make your point as clearly as possible to your reader.

If your words require a lengthy description, be liberal with your words. If a paragraph will do, use a paragraph. Someone once asked Abe Lincoln--a rather tall guy--how long a man's legs should be. Lincoln replied that they should be long enough to reach the ground. Touché, Mr. President.

But length isn't the worst problem today. That would be the inability to hold down the shift key, inability to properly punctuate, and this incessant abbreviation. OMG, englsh nvr usd 2 b this silly be4! LOLz.

When you get right down to it, it's a problem of disrespect. Selfishness. It's an arrogant/careless writer who cares more about himself than about the person for whom he is writing. I have no proof to back up this claim, but I suspect people who write craptastic blurbs like the one above are the same type of people who hit little old ladies with their cars, steal from the collection plate, and fail to use deodorant.

Guns for all Law Abiding Citizens!

HuffPo reports that robberies on the CTA (Chicago's trains and buses) are up 77%. Can I now legally have a gun to protect myself, Mayor Daley? Or are you still going to pretend that the Second Amendment doesn't apply in Chicago?

I still haven't heard the mayor's explanation for why gun violence has increased since the total ban on handguns (minus those grandfathered in) went into effect in Chicago in 1982. Sounds like keeping guns out of the hands of people who want to protect themselves is working swimmingly there, eh, mayor? After all, we all know criminals always stop to ponder the legality of their actions before they buy a stolen gun for $10 on a street corner, right?

In a perfect world, there would be no guns. In America in 2009, I think the only reasonable approach is the following: the criminals have guns. Lots of guns. So how on earth are you going to tell a law abiding person he cannot have one to protect himself?

Droopy Drawers and Stoopid Citizens

The city of Riviera Beach didn't like those pesky kids with their saggy pants. So they passed a law outlawing droopy drawers. $150 for the first violation; $300 for the second.

A referendum endorsing the ban was supported by a whopping 72 percent of city voters. Wow. Letting the people decide things is a great idea! I love democracy!

Except, well, when the stupid laws that people pass are unconstitutional. Which is exactly what a Palm Beach County judge ruled yesterday with respect to the saggy pants law. Yes, much like the black arms bands worn in public schools to protest the Vietnam War, clothing can be a form of free speech. Damn that pesky First Amendment!

Remember Riviera Beach the next time someone starts whining about gay marriage and letting "the people" decide. If 72% of the voters wanted to tell kids how to wear their pants, just imagine how many of them would tell you what you're allowed to do in the bedroom if courts didn't put a stop to such stupidity. Remember, it wasn't until 1972--1972!--that the Supreme Court struck down laws which prohibited unmarried people from possessing contraception.

People aren't experts in constitutional law. And, more often than not, they're just a bunch of old farts waving canes and shouting, "Get the hell off my lawn, you damn kids!

Thank you, beloved judiciary.

Miss California is not a law professor. So don't treat her like one.

Must have been a slow news day. Yesterday, the networks were all blabbing about how Miss California came in second place in the Miss USA pageant. When she was asked whether she supported gay marriage by gay blogger Perez Hilton, she said she did not. Fox News claimed she was robbed because of her answer... Miss California issued a statement standing up for her beliefs... Perez Hilton called her a "dumb bitch" in a video blog following the telecast and later apologized... And in the midst of all of this nonsense, the whole point was lost by everyone who covered the story. In my humble opinion, that point is as follows: She's a beauty queen. Don't ask her hard questions. Don't expect good responses.

In other words, the focus shouldn't be on Miss Cali and her piss poor answer (piss poor if for no other reason than she was being asked a gay rights question by a gay judge--someone who would determine her fate--and she gave an undesirable answer). The focus should be on Perez for asking her--a bleach blonde Barbie--such a politically charged question to begin with.

This reminds me of the time some network asked Britney Spears if she supported President Bush. She said, "I just think we should trust our President in whatever decision he makes and we should just support that." Britney caught flak for that statement in the media. And the minute I saw this retarded little soundbite, I got angry. Not a Brit Brit, though, but at the retarded reporter who decided to ask her such a politically charged question. For Christ's sake, she's Britney Spears! She gets married and unmarried in Vegas in the span of two days, then she marries her backup dancer and divorces him, then she goes into rehab, then she shaves her head, then she hits paparazzi with an umbrella, and then she lip syncs her way through life. Who cares what she thinks about the President?! I don't even care what she thinks about soap!

Maybe it's the "America" in us. The rugged individualism. The professed egalitarianism. In other words, this silly notion that each one of us has an opinion that's just as equal and valid as everyone else's. It's the reason people get so riled up about these "unelec'tud judges legislatin' from the bench and takin away mah rights." They're judges for a reason, Wilbur; they're smarter than you. Hush up now, the adults are talking.

Miss California and Britney are most certainly entitled to their opinions. This is America, after all. And if nothing else, the beloved First Amendment protects the right to make a fool of yourself with your uneducated fly trap. But good pageantry (and good journalism) recognizes that we just want to see how well Miss California's silicone holds up when she struts across the stage in heels, and we just want to see how well Britney lip syncs through "Oops, I did don' done it again." They are there to entertain us, not educate us. Ready? Good. Now, dance, monkey, dance.

Let's direct our annoyance not at those purdy little interviewees responding politely to the questions posed; let's direct our annoyance toward the interviewers who thought that any of us gave a damn what people like Miss California and Britney had to say about important issues.

(On the other hand, if all beauty queens answered questions as poorly as Miss South Carolina did a year ago, I'd Tivo every single pageant and play it on repeat when I had a bad day.)

One Man's Discriminatin' is a Another Man's Common Sense

Back in college when I worked the guest service desk at Target, I once had an angry, rotund woman roll up to my desk to pick a bone. She was spitting nails. You see, when you sign up for a Target credit card, Target gives you 10% off your purchases in the store that day and also gives you 10% off your first purchase on target.com. My customer didn't like that. From her angry, fat mouth she ejected these remarkable words, "I don't have a computer. So this program dis-crim-i-nates against me!" sounding out each syllable in the word "discriminates" as though she was being--oh, I don't know--denied a promotion, denied a marriage license, tortured at Buchenwald?

I stood there in shock, unsure what to say. I was trying to connect the logic in my mind: this one woman in central Pennsylvania did not have a computer; therefore, a 10% online coupon discriminated against her. And, boy, was she was angry! I wanted to gently place her chubby little hands in mine and say, "What a sad, dark place it must be inside that mind of yours." To this day, I wish I had.

I thought of this angry little creature this week when I read that United--like many other airlines already do--will now begin charging overweight people for two seats if they spill into the seat next to them. The policy was instituted after United received over 700 complaints about obese passengers intruding on the space of the person next to them--sometimes to the point of physical pain. A non-scientific poll shows 67% in favor of the policy and 33% against. I suspect the 33% think there's some discriminatin' going on. As my Target lady might have surmised, "If I don't have a computer, no one can have an online coupon! Likewise, if I'm so large that I take up more space than is reasonably allotted, it must be discrimination! Must be!"

But, of course, the other side of the coin that these me-me-me types are missing is that the person whose seat is half taken over by the large passenger isn't getting the full seat that he or she paid for. You buy one, you get one. You need more? You pay more. Seems pretty simple to me.

Obesity, per se, is not a protected class under anti-discrimination statutes in the United States. If you have a valid medical condition that results in your being overweight, then that's a different story. In a perfect world, perhaps we could charge only the lazy fat people for two seats, and allow a doctor's note from medically fat people to serve as proof that the person need only pay for one.

The overweight airline passenger saga is just another variation of the age old problem the world's alleged first children asked: "Am I my brother's keeper?" Should we pay for Octomom's eight babies? What about the 16 year-old girl who needs an abortion? (Or do we force her to have the kid and then spend 18 years' worth of taxpayer dollars to raise it?) Do we help people refinance their mortgages? All people? Just the ones who didn't "buy more house than they could reasonably afford"? Is letting gay people get married (and therefore getting tax breaks only married couples can claim) a way of jacking up the national debt due to decreased tax revenues or is it a matter of equality to give them what other couples already have?

Do religion and morality shed light on the answers to these questions? Should they? And perhaps most importantly, is morality the same thing as a perceived sense of fairness?

It's hard to draw lines in these questions. Your answer probably depends on your level of compassion, socio-economic status, political affiliation, and whether you think a person "deserves" their life circumstances. It also depends on how strongly you believe people can change and whether you think you've gotten what you deserve thus far in life.

How many people are opposed to the idea of government-sponsored needle exchange programs for junkies? "They shouldn't have done drugs in the first place!" Right? But what if the program helped keep those people from dying, from contracting HIV, or even helped them get into treatment so they could become productive, taxpaying members of society?

Personally, when I pay for one full seat, I want one full seat. Maybe I don't feel too compassionate for large people. When I hear tax dollars are being spent for needle exchange programs or to give some reckless girl her fifth abortion, I cringe, but I wonder if it's better than the alternative. When I hear that gay couples pay a ton more in taxes because of their inability to get married, I get angry at the inconsistency of the tax code.

What's fair? What do I owe you? What do you owe me? There are--and perhaps never have been--any easy answers. Only questions. Jesus said, "Sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor." Luke 18:22. Once we recognize that that's absolutely nuts, the next question must be: "Well, just have much should I give? What do I really owe to the junkie, the homo down the street, the fat airline passenger taking up half my seat?"

Cain asked, "Am I my brother's keeper?" The only real answer we have for him is the same answer we've always had: sometimes. But not when you're in my damn seat. Buy two seats. And put down the Twinkie.

Note to Protesters

Note to protesters: Stop looking so pathetically emo and maybe someone will take you seriously. Shave. Bathe. Your appearance doesn't help your cause.

But I guess basic hygiene would be, like, conforming, right? Doing what "The Man" wants?

Down with capitalism! Down with--ummmm... soap!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/01/g20-protesters-jam-downto_n_181665.html