DADT, Gay Marriage: Who cares?

Last week wasn't very good as far as blog posts went. And I'm sorry for that. This week, I've got three posts already written.  This one is considered "timely," as my Examiner.com editors like to say.



A while ago, I wrote an article about gay marriage in New York.  It was entitled: Gay Marriage, so what?  I suspect you can guess what my general conclusions were.



I collect all sorts of weird articles, and magazines.  On the one hand, I could read Guns and Ammo, then the Spring catalog for a major publisher, then Time Magazine (until they went anti-Semite), the list goes on.



One such magazine is Salute, the magazine of the archdiocese for the military services, USA.



Yes, the military has their own archdiocese.



In their Summer, 2011 issue, there was a statement from Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio, the Archbishop for USA military services.

His statement was two pages long, and here's an excerpt ...

"The church is unwavering in her commitment to the pastoral care of all persons in need, regardless of sexual inclination or anything else.  All people in need are served by Catholc Chaplains with zeal and passion for bringing the reality of the Risen Lord to all.  Whether Don't ask don't tell persists or not is immaterial to that bedrock principle.  The faithful .... must never forget that those with a homosexual inclination must be treated with the respect worthy of their human dignity."  [Typed by hand, any typos are mine]

In short: that's nice, we don't care if they're outed, it doesn't matter to us.



The message then cited Federal law (1 USC subection 7)... which I believe is commonly known as the defense of marriage act (DOMA).



So, "yes, you have DADT repealed. Who cares? We don't like it, but we're not going to marry gays, and you're not going to make us. We can continue, business as usual."  Everyone can move on.



Which is pretty much what I said the first time about gay marriage.



It's so nice when the Catholic Church listens to me.

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Then, on September 30th, the Pentagon issued an order allowing all military clergy to perform gay marriage ceremonies ....



The response of Broglio?  It's pretty much the same. Not to mention, there is still DOMA.  It's a federal law.  How can a federal agency allow the existence of something that, legally, does not exist at the federal level?



And, come April, 2012, what will happen when all of the gay married couples file joint income tax? The IRS cannot acknowledge them -- the IRS is a federal agency.  Accountant friends (and relative) are already saying that the IRS will not accept joint filings from any of the new marriages from New York (et al) between two men, or two women.



Not to mention .... the military has bases all over the 50 states. Gay marriage is only passed in about ... Five? (CA, VT, MA, NY, HI).  Isn't that a bit of a problem? And arguing that they are federal institutions is a problem, when you consider that, again, DOMA is federal law. State laws do not matter in this instance.



Is it just me, or did someone not think this through?



As I said the first time: I'll start to care about gay marriage when someone comes after religion in its name.



I don't care just yet. Initial reports of this story said that "military chaplains are being forced to marry homosexual couples."  I cared for about five minutes, then I looked for more footnotes.



However, now that I found that it "allowed" gay marriage, instead of "requiring" clergy to perform them, I'm back to not caring. Though the legal situation is going to be hilarious.

Week in Review:7-1-2011

This week was sort of busy for me. I'm not entirely certain what happened to encourage all sorts of strange things to happen at the same time, but it did mess with my schedule a little.



Monday



Monday was especially busy. So busy that I ended up missing the daily music blog. Something I hope w



My day started with a three-part examiner.com series on being mugged: how to survive a standard mugging, what to do if you need to defend yourself and the attacker has a gun, or if he has a knife.



And, just because I could, I mentioned the top ten points to pummel someone into a new and better incarnation.

I was having fun.  Which may explain a lot of how I got the job.

Anyway.

When it came time to work on the blog, I had the self defense discussion up and ready to post. I think I had been building it for the entire month. 

And then people started to do something stupid.

For one, New York decided to allow gay marriage.  I don't think that was stupid, though I think it may be ill-advised, because I suspect that there will be lawyers. No, not "there will be blood." There will be lawyers. Which are far, far worse. I hope I'm wrong.

The blog was so good, I got a shoutout on Axes and Allies, and compliments from resident artist/atheist, Matt. 

And, of course, Image comics decided to go all tinfoil hat brigade with "The Big Lie."  Conspiracy theories, meet comic books.  Now, this was seriously stupid.

Tuesday

My fighting and writing blog. Basically, why I use Krav Maga in my fight scenes.  What is it, and where did it come from? Other various and sundry details.



Oh, by the way, if you live in and about Eastern Queens or Brooklyn, you might want to seriously look into trying out Protection Fitness Self Defense.



Trust me on this.



The music blog was E Nomine and Doctor Who ... mainly because they were both sort of awesome.



Wednesday



This was almost a last minute save. I had tripped over the music of the aborted Babylon 5 video game .... and, going by the music, if it had been made, would have been awesome ... and I tripped over it quite by accident.



And I discussed a bit more of Krav Maga, mostly where to find it in New York.



Thursday



Just the music blog.  A bit of a B5 video game, and a bit of Tom Smith.



I will most likely be taking this Fourth of July off. Enjoy everyone.

Gay Marriage: So What?

Gay marriage was deemed legal in New York State over the past weekend....

As someone who's spent a lot of time on this blog doing Catholicism for dummies, I guess I would be expected to comment on this sort of thing.

To which one part of my says ... "So what?"  My personal politics says who cares. I don't care what anyone else does as long as they don't harm anyone else. I'm a little libertarian that way.  In fact, I had proposed a few times that we just make all "marriages" properly labeled.  Atheists and gays can have civil unions (because, really, marriage should be something religious). and anyone who can get married in a church can get married in any church that will have them. The End.

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Index: Atheists, Lent, and Evil Religions

Throughout Easter and a Lent, I did a lot of what my friend Jason called "High Intellectual" articles.


I'm never making that mistake ever again.

However, since it did have some interesting fan support.... if "fans" could be people screaming for your blood ... I figured I'd put it into a nice, compact little section on the blog. Think of it as a season in review that, with luck, I'll never inflict on anyone ever again.

The Snarky Theology series. My way of translating dogmatic theology into something that human beings can understand.

Snarky Theology 1: Catholic Cannibals. Looking at the theology of Swallow the leader. Eating your deity.
Snarky Theology 2: FAQs about Lent. Some fun facts about Lent that turned into a minor war.

The Flame war is postponed:While I was busy having a flame war with an idiot on the blog, someone did something stupid online. I fought back in the name of all sane people everywhere.

Snarky theology 3: Evolution, Creationists, and other Irritants. Evolution, what is it good for? My answer: who cares?

Snarky Theology 4: "Things that go boink in the night." Catholicism on Sex and Gays Pretty much what it says.

GOD H8TS JAPAN; Twitting with Phelps & Co.  Hint, it was published on 4-1-11

Snarky Theology 5: The Passion, Jews, and Good Friday. 

Snarky Theolgy 6: Easter: HE IS RISEN





The Guest Blog Index -- "Catholic fiction"-- I had two weeks off from Snarky theology for two virtual book tours. One was a bit of Sherlock Holmes with Murder in the Vatican, and some Catholic science fiction from Karina Fabian's Infinite Space, Infinite God II

Murder in the Vatican Author Margaret Ann Lewis.

Guest blog (on writing historical figures in fiction) and Interview (on writing a book on Sherlock Holmes and Pope Leo XIII), and a Review of Murder in the Vatican, which can be found at Amazon.com

I did the same for Karina Fabian.

The Guest blog: where she talks about writing religion and science fiction

The interview, where I unleash my inner nerdom ...

And a review.

I think that was the most fun I had had that Lent. They were both a joy and a pleasure to have.

Evil Religions

And, at the end of may, when the Easter season was almost over, I did a series I call, simply "Evil Religion." The title, for the record, was Ironic. It wound up covering a lot of atheist theology. Not sure why. Maybe because the Dawkins-Hitchens crowd tend to whine alot.

I had a Preface to explain the premise.

One called simply "Allahu Akbar" Guess what that's about.

Jesus Freaks scare me

Baby-raping Catholic priests

The Ten commandments of Atheism, if I wrote them

Evil Religion: Atheism

Science and Religion: Stupid Catholics.

Anti-theist complaints: Literal interpretations. I asked my friend Matt what he thought was wrong with religion. I answered him.  This was pretty much a series all it's own from here on in.

Mormons and Gays.

Indoctrination of Children. Because religious education is brain washing, don't you know?

Doctrine Crapshoot. Because everything is just pick and choose, right?

Religious Superiority complexes: Because religion is the source of egomania, after all.

Random Beliefs. Because it's all so random, you know?

Conform, or else.... because no one ever goes against a secular norm.

Evil Atheist / Religion, Conclusion.  This is where I tie it all together.

Can you understand why this blog is now all nerd-dom all the time?  This was a draining, wrenching experience. One that I never want to relive.