$23
Apparently, in Palestine, this is the value of a human life.
A 16 year old kid was told his parents would receive $23 if he wore a belt of explosives onto a bus and blew himself up. Luckily, this kid had a change of heart and turned himself in to Israeli authorities before following through on this act.
How desperate do you need to be to end your life in return for $23 dollars? What did you last spend $23 on?
This event goes along way towards proving my point that economic desperation is the source of 99% of all the problems in the world. If that kid had hope that he had another source for those $23, he wouldn't have done that. Kids in inner city America wouldn't steal and kill one another if they had a viable economic future.
During the late 90's, as we were experiencing a perhaps false economic boom, crime rates hit all-time lows. As our economy has soured in the intervening years, the crime rate has increased. In places like Sao Paolo, Brazil crime rates are astronomical, with the rich living in fortified compounds and shop owners employing armed guards to prevent theft. People with little hope of economic improvement see no other option.
50% of the world's population exists on less than $2 per day. That's 3 billion people earning $6 billion dollars/day. That's $730 per year.
You can argue that the cost of living is less in most of the rest of the world, and you would be right, but $2 doesn't buy most of these people access to clean drinking water, sanitation, or an education. They are 300 years behind in their standard of living.
If instead of spending $150 Billion dollars 'rebuilding' Iraq, we spent that money (and encouraged the rest of the world) improving the living conditions of people in places that are 'breeding grounds' for terrorists we might do far more good than imposing democracy on portions of the world with 2000 years of development in that direction. Third world debt relief would go along way towards helping this situation as well.
Spend that $23 wisely.
3.26.2004
3.05.2004
With all the hullabaloo lately regarding gay marriage and The Passion of the Christ, I've been assaulted by the generally mediocre discourse on the subject of the role of religion in our world. It tends to be one of those subjects that some people won't touch with a ten foot pole. Not me. I'm happy to wrap my scrawny arms around it and squeeze with all my life. So here we go....
Gay marriage: there seems to be a fundamental belief that colors everyone's belief on the anti side of this debate. Namely that homosexuality is a sin, clearly characterized as such in Leviticus (note to self: do not pass seed through the fire to Molech: same chapter of Leviticus). Like many such beliefs it requires you to close your eyes to some obvious (to me anyway) realities.
If homosexuality is a sin, it is by definition a choice, something that you do that you could choose not to. This is inconceivable. (and yes, I know what that word means) The physiological realities and scientific basis of homosexuality has not been completely determined, but anecdotal evidence is so overwhelming as to be undeniable. At no point in our lives do we come to a fork in to road, one way leading to homolopolis, the other to heterodale. That path was laid out at birth, and if you want to put religious spin on things, the choice was made by God. God made you, and ____sexual is what you are. God might also have given you blonde hair and blue eyes, and while scary, those things aren't sins either.
The other argument bandied about is that letting homosexuals marry will diminish the meaning of marriage. Forget for a second the 50% of all hetero marriages that end in divorce, the large amount of spousal abuse, infidelity, etc that makes we heteros hardly worthy of anything remotely self-righteous in this regard. What evidence is there that a loving relationship between two individuals is anything but a good thing? I've heard none.
There are real issues associated with government sanctioned marriage. There are in excess of 1000 legal implications of the relationship defined by marriage, the most obvious relating to tax, child custody, property, and inheritance. Marriages cross state lines. Civil unions do not. If a gay couple are on vacation out of state with a child that one of them has adopted as part of their civil union and are in a car accident that kills one, injures the child and leaves the other partner alive to take care of the child, what happens? Well, unless the child was co-adopted by both partners, the living one may not have the legal right to make decisions about the healthcare of that child. That child may become a ward of the state, despite the fact that their is a loving parent available to care for it. That's serious shit.
The Passion of the Christ: in addition to having too many 'the's in the title, and Mel Gibson's father being a Jew-hating nut, IT"S A MOVIE, telling one small part of a much larger story.
It blows my mind that the same groups that would dismiss any number of other movies without ever seeing them, embraced this movie as the greatest thing since Papal Indulgences, renting out theaters and taking their young children to see a movie that they hadn't previewed. Talk about bad parenting.
In my mind, if growing up Christian, you emerge as an adult thinking anything other than 'do unto others as you would have done unto you' as the primary message of Jesus, then you missed the point. If you like the fire and brimstone angry God of the Old Testament, but feel comforted by the fact that somebody else took the heat for your angry intolerant life in the New Testament, you're a turd. You can't have your cake and eat it too. Jesus would have stayed a Jew if he believed the Old Testament was all that. He taught tolerance and forgiveness, turning the other cheek, etc. Of course, since he taught tolerance, he's not likely to bring the global smackdown for your heresy, in sharp contrast to that angry, chock full 'o' retribution Old Testament God. That son of a bitch would have kicked your ass and mine a long time ago.
Gay marriage: there seems to be a fundamental belief that colors everyone's belief on the anti side of this debate. Namely that homosexuality is a sin, clearly characterized as such in Leviticus (note to self: do not pass seed through the fire to Molech: same chapter of Leviticus). Like many such beliefs it requires you to close your eyes to some obvious (to me anyway) realities.
If homosexuality is a sin, it is by definition a choice, something that you do that you could choose not to. This is inconceivable. (and yes, I know what that word means) The physiological realities and scientific basis of homosexuality has not been completely determined, but anecdotal evidence is so overwhelming as to be undeniable. At no point in our lives do we come to a fork in to road, one way leading to homolopolis, the other to heterodale. That path was laid out at birth, and if you want to put religious spin on things, the choice was made by God. God made you, and ____sexual is what you are. God might also have given you blonde hair and blue eyes, and while scary, those things aren't sins either.
The other argument bandied about is that letting homosexuals marry will diminish the meaning of marriage. Forget for a second the 50% of all hetero marriages that end in divorce, the large amount of spousal abuse, infidelity, etc that makes we heteros hardly worthy of anything remotely self-righteous in this regard. What evidence is there that a loving relationship between two individuals is anything but a good thing? I've heard none.
There are real issues associated with government sanctioned marriage. There are in excess of 1000 legal implications of the relationship defined by marriage, the most obvious relating to tax, child custody, property, and inheritance. Marriages cross state lines. Civil unions do not. If a gay couple are on vacation out of state with a child that one of them has adopted as part of their civil union and are in a car accident that kills one, injures the child and leaves the other partner alive to take care of the child, what happens? Well, unless the child was co-adopted by both partners, the living one may not have the legal right to make decisions about the healthcare of that child. That child may become a ward of the state, despite the fact that their is a loving parent available to care for it. That's serious shit.
The Passion of the Christ: in addition to having too many 'the's in the title, and Mel Gibson's father being a Jew-hating nut, IT"S A MOVIE, telling one small part of a much larger story.
It blows my mind that the same groups that would dismiss any number of other movies without ever seeing them, embraced this movie as the greatest thing since Papal Indulgences, renting out theaters and taking their young children to see a movie that they hadn't previewed. Talk about bad parenting.
In my mind, if growing up Christian, you emerge as an adult thinking anything other than 'do unto others as you would have done unto you' as the primary message of Jesus, then you missed the point. If you like the fire and brimstone angry God of the Old Testament, but feel comforted by the fact that somebody else took the heat for your angry intolerant life in the New Testament, you're a turd. You can't have your cake and eat it too. Jesus would have stayed a Jew if he believed the Old Testament was all that. He taught tolerance and forgiveness, turning the other cheek, etc. Of course, since he taught tolerance, he's not likely to bring the global smackdown for your heresy, in sharp contrast to that angry, chock full 'o' retribution Old Testament God. That son of a bitch would have kicked your ass and mine a long time ago.
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