Full Time Curmudgeon

Sunday's Sermon: The Silent Apostle

Sun, 20 May 2012 01:19:18 -0500

"On the bully attack of the boy with the bleached-blond hair, Romney issued a standard political..."

Thu, 17 May 2012 05:37:08 -0500

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On the bully attack of the boy with the bleached-blond hair, Romney issued a standard political non-apology, chuckling at first, saying he couldn’t remember what he called “high jinks,” but also not denying the incident.

Asked to clarify, he went into weasel mode. “I don’t remember them all, but again, high school days, if I did stupid things, why I’m afraid I’ve got to say I’m sorry for it,” he said on Fox News Radio, the corporate couch for Republicans who need a reassuring hug in a bad moment.

Still, Romney said he could remember one thing: the boy, John Lauber, who was pinned down and had his hair cut by force, was certainly not considered a homosexual, no sir. Not in those days. “That was the furthest thing from my mind back in the 1960s,” Romney said, in elaborating with Fox.

This is where it gets maddening. First, his explanation is not credible. One of the witnesses, Phillip Maxwell, said to the Times, “Certainly, for the other people that were involved, nobody has forgotten.” Second, what Romney seems to be implying — that bullying of effeminate-seeming boys didn’t happen in prep schools in the 1960s — is preposterous.

Romney could have just owned up to the takedown of the kid, as the other assailants did, and said he has grown as a man. He could use this episode to tell a version of his own story: how an annoying little rich kid became a thoughtful leader who wants to be inclusive. Or he could have used it as another way to explain the positive influence of his wife on him as he matured.

On same-sex marriage, Romney has shown a similar kind of willful amnesia. Over the weekend, Romney assured his commencement audience at Liberty University that marriage has long been, and will always be defined as “a relationship between one man and one woman.”

Except, in the case of his great-grandfather Miles P. Romney, whose idea of marriage was between one man and five women. Or his great-great grandfather Parley Pratt, one man who married twelve women.

Call them sexual outlaws, Biblical originalists, or just guys who liked a renewable supply of young women, but Romney’s not-so-long-ago ancestors were anything but practitioners of the kind of marriage Romney claims has been enshrined since the dawn of civilization.

He could use his background to say that even his own family strayed from the true intent of marriage, and that modern Romneys evolved on the issue, to become the devoted monogamists we see today. But instead, he acts as if polygamy – an audacious experiment that nearly brought the United States to a second Civil War, this one in the West — never existed, in his family or his faith.

We look to leaders to be bold and to go against the grain every now and then. When Rush Limbaugh called Sandra Fluke, a Georgetown law student, “a slut” and “a prostitute” for advocating basic contraceptive health care, the party’s leading demagogue was condemned – in a rare break – by many Republicans. But not by Romney.

Romney said Limbaugh’s slander of the young woman “is not the language I would have used.” The language he did use, then, was weasel-speak.

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- Timothy Egan, writing in today’s New York Times, “Romney’s Weasel Problem,” (via inothernews)

HB56 - A Bad Bill That Just Keeps Getting Worse

Wed, 16 May 2012 09:47:49 -0500

There’s a reason I’ve always called HB56 - the Alabama law aimed at curbing a nonexistent illegal immigrant problem - “Jim Crow Part 2.” It, in practice, criminalizes being in Alabama from another country.

This law has done nothing to improve the job market in the state, has hurt agriculture, made Alabama even more a laughingstock than it already was, and has served to sour the stomachs of foreign corporations once considering Alabama for their manufacturing plants.

The culprits are Scott Beason of Gardendale, and an ineffective and largely comatose Governor Robert Bentley. As I write this, the clowncar known as the Alabama legislature is considering “tweaks” to the bill which, if passed, will make the law even more racist and oppressive.

We either learn from our mistakes, or we die from them. It seems Alabama is choosing the latter.

It is my heartfelt prayer that one day,allpeople will be...

Mon, 14 May 2012 22:42:45 -0500

It is my heartfelt prayer that one day,allpeople will be free,allpeople will be accepted,allpeople will be one… regardless of race or ethnicity, gender or gender identity, sexual orientation or disability.

That day is not yet. That day may not be in my lifetime. But I will do everything in my power to make that day this day.

This is the audio from my May 13, 2012 sermon, “Have I...

Mon, 14 May 2012 14:44:41 -0500

This is the audio from my May 13, 2012 sermon, “Have I Mentioned That Love Wins?”

You can read the sermon text here: http://tragicpizza.blogspot.com/2012/05/have-i-mentioned-that-love-wins.html

Photo

Mon, 14 May 2012 14:07:17 -0500

epic-humor: First world problems & Third World...

Mon, 14 May 2012 13:56:43 -0500

epic-humor:

First world problems & Third World Succes.

http://epic-humor.tumblr.com

Funny how our “problems” compare the the world at large, huh?

The similarities are chilling… but not surprising at all.

Mon, 14 May 2012 08:34:24 -0500

The similarities are chilling… but not surprising at all.

epic-humor: http://epic-humor.tumblr.com/

Mon, 14 May 2012 08:23:06 -0500

epic-humor:

http://epic-humor.tumblr.com/

Photo

Mon, 14 May 2012 08:19:29 -0500

Sermon for Sunday, May 13, 2012

Sun, 13 May 2012 01:09:36 -0500

Sermon for Sunday, May 13, 2012

snazsr: eeeeeewwww And then explain why sushi is nasty,...

Sat, 12 May 2012 21:38:13 -0500

snazsr:

eeeeeewwww

And then explain why sushi is nasty, please…

OK...

Sat, 12 May 2012 19:47:02 -0500

I think I’m following back everyone who is following me. I’m new to this, so I don’t know. And is that even a “thing” for Tumblr??? Anyway, if I missed you, please let me know…

I have no words...

Sat, 12 May 2012 18:06:26 -0500

Once upon a time, I was a youth director. I still remember those years as the best I ever had, for the most part. I grew as a person in ways I cannot begin to describe.

Some of those kids have gone on to great careers. One is a model, another a nurse, yet another an EMT. Watching them grow and thrive and succeed brings me deep joy.

I just found out that one of those young people died. I don’t know the circumstances. Normally, I’d talk it out with friends on Twitter, but the powers-that-be there have suspended my account.

I honestly don’t know how to process this. I, of course, ask for prayers for the family.

agoodthinghappened: Stones, Trees and Bunker in Clearwater by...

Sat, 12 May 2012 14:48:33 -0500

agoodthinghappened:

Stones, Trees and Bunker in Clearwater by Pepeketua on Flickr.

Enthusiastically co-signed.

Sat, 12 May 2012 14:26:19 -0500

Enthusiastically co-signed.

This is the edited version… but it reflects my theology...

Sat, 12 May 2012 11:23:00 -0500

This is the edited version… but it reflects my theology pretty precisely.

You see, I’m convinced that, though Jesus spoke out against injustice, and had a lot to say about things like divorce, he never said a single thing against the LGBTQ community. Nothing.

I’m convinced that, rather than try to force people to act, think, look and worship in a manner he might have wanted them to, either through psychological manipulation or governmental edict, Jesus spent his life loving those people.

No prerequisites, no limits. Who are we to think we know better than Jesus?

A gift of ties…

Sat, 12 May 2012 10:48:57 -0500

A gift of ties…