Garrison Keillor's war on Xmas

I once came to the defense of Garrison Keillor when a friend said he "loved Jesus" too much for her to enjoy his work. "He's not so bad," I said. Well, maybe the stroke did some damage to his brain, or maybe she was right all along.
I saw the evidence of this when P.Z. Myers blogged about this screed Keillor published in the Chicago Trib, in which the voice of Lake Wobegon accuses "Jewish guys" of "trash[ing] up the malls" with their Christmas music that's not about Baby Jesus ("Rudolph and the chestnuts and the rest of that dreck").
He then informs us that

Christmas is a Christian holiday -- if you're not in the club, then buzz off.

No, Garrison, I'm afraid it's not. If it were, the churches wouldn't have to go to such trouble every year to remind us that "Jesus is the reason for the Season". It's a cannibalized set of traditions that have been further consumed by the culture at large. It's a time to be with family, to enjoy rest, to give gifts, eat, drink and have a good time. So I'm not going to buzz off. I'm going to enjoy Christmas like everyone else. And I hope you do too. Merry Christmas and Io Saturnalia.

What else is interesting is when I went looking for this piece I found this version, which seems to have been chopped down a bit regarding those Jewish fellows and the buzzing off and what not. It seems the Trib might be responding to the backlash from this column. To this I say: you can't unring a bell.

A small victory?

If everything goes as expected, a gay marriage bill will pass in Washington, D.C. tomorrow. The mayor has already promised to sign it and things are looking good. Of course this  will not fly with the National Organization for Marriage or the Catholic Church among others, and they have vowed to fight tooth and nail. Susan Gibbs, speaking for the Archdiocese of Washington, said this:

Being gay is not against church teaching, but we do understand marriage in a specific way, and we need to be able to follow that belief.

Well Susan, I don't understand how one can think an image of a bloody corpse nailed to a piece of wood makes for good interior decorating, but you don't see me petitioning Congress to ban it. It's your right.
What really gets me is the doublespeak. Just come out and say it. You think homosexuals are evil. All this talk of 'it's not a sin to be gay, just if you act on it' does not make you tolerant. It's like a high school kid who thinks it's Ok to tell a joke about lynching a black person if he prefaces it with "I'm not racist or anything..."
Besides, it can cut both ways. With the increasing number of equality laws, like the one recently backed by the LDS Church here in Salt Lake, more and more it's not illegal to be a bigot, but it is illegal if you act on it.

Choose your own salvation

This survey from the Pew Forum indicates an increasing number of Americans are playing mix and match with their faith. This is not terribly surprising; religions have been borrowing from each other since they first came into existence. Now with the world at nearly everyone's fingertips through technology and globalization, it's much easier to find the bits of other spiritual worldviews that one would like to take for a test drive and perhaps even add to their own supernatural garage.
What I find myself wondering is is this a good thing or not? While I welcome the departure from literalist fundamentalism, it seems to me people are just moving their irrationality around and the door is left open for a revivalist snapback once the elusive answers are not found in the tarot cards or healing crystals. It still bothers me that a quarter of the people I encounter out there think they can know something about me just by cross-referencing the D.O.B. on my driver's license with an arbitrary series of charts and tables.
Rather than a step toward the new age of reason I hope for, this is just a reshuffling of the deck. I'd still rather hear "God is in the trees" than "God hates fags", but there is a lot of room for improvement.

I'm a little disappointed

When I heard Orrin Hatch (Utah's own Singing Senator) wrote this Hanukkah jam, I was expecting him to join in for a little more than a few 'la la las'. But the lyrics he (or his aide) typed up are worth, well, not much. Don't expect there to be any marijuanica smoking in this

songabout the Festival of Lights.

The cowards of Albany

Progress toward equality took another hit on Wednesday in New York. As advocates for freedom for all stood and bravely spoke, the bigots and cowards sat back and quietly agreed to keep a minority group out of the club.
The non-delusional opponents of gay marriage all know the jig is up. They know their arguments are weak and refutable at best and unconstitutional at worst, so they resort to red herrings like Senator Tom Libous':

“I just don’t think the majority care too much about it at this time because they’re out of work, they want to see the state reduce spending, and they are having a hard time making ends meet. And I don’t mean to sound callous, but that’s true.”

So, what does that have to do with the topic at hand? Nothing.  Sen. Libous is playing on the fear of New Yorkers, because he knows fear works. The only thing passing this bill could have done economically is throw money at caterers, formal wear shops, photographers et cetera, helping them make ends meet.
The principals of freedom we are so proud of in this country are special because they are fragile. A weakness of the democratic process is if enough people get together and decide to shut a minority group out, they can do it. They know they are doing it, and they should feel the appropriate shame.