Brooklyn bishop bans donations, speaking engagements by lawmakers who voted for NY same-sex marriage

Via Christian Post:

Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio has asked all Catholic churches and schools in the Diocese of Brooklyn to ban state lawmakers who voted for gay marriage in New York.

DiMarzio, the leader of the Brooklyn diocese, has urged the Catholic institutions to decline donations and speaking engagements from Gov. Andrew Cuomo and any lawmaker who voted “yes” on the bill legalizing same-sex marriages. Calling New York’s passage of gay marriage “another ‘nail in the coffin’ of marriage,” DiMarzio issued a statement two days after the New York gay marriage bill was approved by the Legislature demanding that “all pastors and principals to not invite any state legislator to speak or be present at any parish or school celebration.”

The Catholic bishop also said the church should now speak more “forcefully and clearly” against gay marriage.

Joseph Lentol, an assemblyman representing Brooklyn’s 50th district, saw firsthand just how serious the Brooklyn Diocese was. The Catholic legislative assembly member who openly voted for same-sex marriage made a donation to Our Lady of Mt Carmel Parish School. The donation was declined. Along with the return of his $50 donation, Lentol received a letter from Monsignor Joseph Calise, the church pastor. The letter stated: “Bishop DiMarzio has requested that all gifts received from politicians supporting same-sex marriage legislation be refused.”

DiMarzio has a record of stooping to thuggish tactics. In 2009, when the New York legislature was considering a law that would make it easier for victims of sexual assualt to sue their rapists, the bishop threatened lawmakers by promising to close churches in the districts of representatives who voted ’yes’ the bill.

An Asperger Geiger?

Via Futurity:

[A]n MRI scanner [is used] to take pictures of the brain’s grey matter. A separate imaging technique was then used to reconstruct these scans into 3-D images that could be assessed for structure, shape, and thickness—all intricate measurements that reveal autism spectrum disorder (ASD) at its root. Details are reported in the Journal of Neuroscience.By studying the complex and subtle make-up of grey matter in the brain, the scientists can use biological markers, rather than personality traits, to assess whether or not a person has ASD.

“The value of this rapid and accurate tool to diagnose ASD is immense,” says study leader Christine Ecker, a lecturer in the forensic and neurodevelopmental sciences department. “It could help to alleviate the need for the emotional, time consuming and expensive diagnosis process which ASD patients and families currently have to endure. We now look forward to testing if our methods can also help children.”

…

Until now, diagnosis has mainly relied on personal accounts from friends or relatives close to the patient—a long and drawn-out process hinged on the reliability of this account and requiring a team of experts to interpret the information.

“Simply being diagnosed means patients can take the next steps to get help and improve their quality of life. People with autism are affected in different ways; some can lead relatively independent lives while others need specialist support or are so severely affected they cannot communicate their feelings and frustrations at all,” says Declan Murphy, professor of psychiatry and brain maturation, who supervised the research.

…

The research studied 20 healthy adults, 20 adults with ASD, and 19 adults with ADHD. All participants were males aged between 20 and 68 years. After first being diagnosed by traditional methods (an IQ test, psychiatric interview, physical examination, and blood test), scientists used the new scanning technique as a comparison.

The brain scan was highly effective in identifying individuals with autism and may therefore provide a rapid diagnostic instrument, using biological signposts, to detect autism in the future.

Former MN Gov. Tim Pawlenty announces 2012 bid

Former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty has announced of the formation of an exploratory committee.

Like most candidate propaganda, it’s comically self-congratulating. Tim Pawlenty has been to almost all of the states! Tim Pawlenty put on a jumpsuit and talked to factory people! Tim Pawlenty plays touch football with small children, and his team probably won, because Tim Pawlenty is strong, and he runs fast on high strong legs! But the really comical part is when a track of uproarious applause begins (1:28) when he announces his exploratory committee. Average  Americans have not only heard of Tim Pawlenty, but they’re so happy he’s running for president!

Also: Allfather Ronald Reagan (1:15) personified all of America, and his contributions to the Union get priority over Lincoln’s, again.

But overall, the ad isn’t as negative as I expected. There are only passing references to “taking our government back,” which is so commonplace it’s only disturbing if you think about it. (“Take it back” from…who? The 69,456,897 people who voted for the current president?)

***

Earlier this year, I covered Pawlenty when he went on the radio show of Brian Fischer, a fanatic dominionist who wants “elegant” biblical law enforced in the US, believes Native Americans were punished with conquest, alcoholism and poverty for not converting to Christianity, has called for the barring of Muslims from the US military, and claimed that letting people’s houses burn down is “the Christian thing” to do. I find it astounding and depressing that a candidate for highest office in a nation explicitly founded on Enlightenment principles courts theocratic thugs like Fischer and his listeners for support.

“I have lots of options for the future”

Sharron Angle, the failed 2010 GOP nominee for Harry Reid’s Senate seat, who suggested “second amendment remedies” to Obama’s policies, used air quotes around the word “autism,” mocked the concept of paid maternity leave because ”I’m not gonna have any more babies,”  who told a roomful of Latino students “ look a little more Asian to me”, who once belonged to a third party whose literature referred to gays as “sodomites” and “brazen perverts,”  and who once fled her own press conference without answering any questions, has not ruled out a 2012 presidential run. She’s in Iowa–a traditional testing field for would-be runners–this week, previewing a comically un-self-aware creationist movie.

A second GOP nominee for 2012?

In an appearance the talk radio show of Brian Fischer (the charmer who argued that Tenessee firefirghers did the right thing when they let a man’s house burn to the ground), former Republican Governor of Minnesota Tim Pawlenty was floated several hypotheticals about “if [he] became president in 2012″ about reinstating a ban on out gays in the military, defending DOMA, and appointing anti-abortion judges.  

Two takeaways: First, it’s simply appalling that there are mainstream politicains who will argue for keeping America in the ranks of countries who still prohibit gays and lesbians from the military, whose membership reads like the rogues gallery for the axis of evil–Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, etc. Secondly, and more relevant to the point in my headline: Pawlenty did not ask Fischer to slow down and deny that he had no plans to run in 2012.

There’s been chatter about the possibility of Pawlenty running for some time (the first phrase Google suggests when you type in his name is “pawlenty 2012″), some of it initiated by the man himself. As of late he has toured his book, Courage to Stand, the sort of inspirational-autobiography-cum-policy-manifesto that generally marks interest in higher office.

In which I laugh at the funny jokes in the “Little Fockers” movie trailer

Now, in the past I have not enjoyed the comedy film Meet the Parents and its two sequels, the most new of which is Little Fockers. I have been told that this is because I am too young to have in-laws so I cannot ”get” the humor in these films. But there is no one who is too young to get the humor of this newest film! Observe the trailer, particularly the most laughable sequence beginning at the one-minute mark exactly and ending thirty seconds later. Go and watch!

Now, you see? HAHAHA! It is funny, you see, because Robert DeNiro in the nineteen-seventies in such films as Taxi Driver represented raw and dangerous sexuality, but now he is in his twilight years, and thus a candidate for erectile dysfunction medications! Such is the toll of time on the body! And with the body goes away dignity as well! HAHAHAH! One wonders if perhaps there will be a third sequel to Meet the Parents after Little Fockers in which the inevitable aging of the greatest actor of his generation is further derided, perhaps by putting him in Depend-brand adult-incontinence undergarments!

Funny as it is, this joke would not be so well received in distant China, where elders are revered for their accumulated wisdom and dues well paid. But in America, we can laugh at the genitals of our elders with impunity, because what will they do about it? They are locked away to rot alive in nursing homes from lack of adequate mental and physical stimulation!

And also still is the child’s intrusion on Misters DeNiro and Stiller while they are in the bathroom tending to the former’s chemically-induced erection. Such a misunderstanding! Little boy, your father was not holding another man’s penis because he is a homosexual, but because your grandfather has a serious medical condition! HAHAHA! Now Mr. Stiller’s character must reassert his heterosexuality to his disturbed son! Because despite the strides in visibility and the securing of civil rights by homosexuals, there remains a stigma associated with homosexuals which makes even many sympathetic heterosexuals feel compelled to re-assert their heterosexuality when they deviate outside the rigid demands of gender-role behavior. What an odd place for our culture to be in! And what opportunities for funny humor it provides, an opportunity well-exploited by the makers of the Little Fockers movie!

In conclusion, I look forward to the opening of Little Fockers December twenty-second because of its thoroughly humorous jests on two topics, the plight of the elderly and the fear of being thought of as a homosexual. But should these topics not been subjects appropriate for guiltless mocking that they are, this film would be a grievous indictment not only of the filmmakers, but also of the public which demands it, indeed.

Halloween–just for kids?

Not according to David Frum:

… Americans spent an estimated $800 million on costumes for children, $1 billion on costumes for adults.

Wither this revival of the masquerade?  

As best we can tell: in San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood. In the 1970s, that neighborhood emerged as the heart of a new home-owning, bourgeois, coupled gay community. A local variety store had long sponsored a Halloween street festival for kids. In the 1970s, the street festival transitioned into an adult party of lavish costumed theatricality. The “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence” — a troupe of transvestite nuns — got their start here.

The Castro Halloween party spread to other gay neighborhoods in the 1980s: Greenwich Village, West Hollywood, Key West, Florida. In 1994, University of Florida anthropologist Jerry Kugelmass published a book on the new trend, “Masked Culture,” describing Halloween as an emerging gay “high holiday.”

And after a while — the straights imitated.From the spread of disco in the 1970s — to the habit of paying money for sparkling waters such as Perrier — culminating in Halloween, gays have incubated and developed major cultural trends. Straights adopt, and then ungratefully forget whom they are adopting from — just as American Christians forget how much of the modern Christmas music they enjoy was written by Jews, starting with the most popular of them all, Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas.” The majority culture forgets what the minority culture has produced.

The “masked culture” first developed by the gays of San Francisco has reached across the lines of orientation — and now jumped across the boundaries between nations and languages. It’s not just a party. It’s an ideal of personal emancipation, self-expression and self-fulfillment — an ideal that loses none of its power when it takes the form of a sexy nurse’s outfit.

I think that last sentence need some qualifiers. Sure, if a woman is confident to step out in a white miniskirt and stethoscope one night a year, all power to them. But when there is an expectation that adult women will drape themselves in “sexy” costumes instead of what’s most fun or comfortable for them, a new opressive social pressure is present. And many American women do feel the pinch; observe features like this one on Jezebel validating sexless or frankly unappealing costumes. Women, already subjected to overt sexualization in everyday life, find even greedier gaze turned on them Oct. 31st.

The remedy is to recognize, as Frum says, Halloween is about self expression; and if an adult wishes to express oneself as a sexy nurse or as Florance Nightingale in ruffles and a hoop skirt, it’s not our place to judge.

This is what a feminist looks like, if that's her thing.

But I did see a lot of judging on my college campus–not against the sexually unpretentious, but against the sexy nurses. Invariably, there was a late October column amounting to a 700-word sigh over the “lack of creativity” in “Slut-o-ween” getups. The irony in that critique, of course, is the columnist’s conscious or unconscious repetition of a theme given vent at the exact time and in the same space as it was last year. Self-congradulatory platitudes aside, reativity is not infinite. Real originality is a rare and precious thing, and those who exhibit it are as highly esteemed as the most wise and gentle statesmen, if not moreso. I will go so far to say that there in even the most radically creative persons, there is nothing self-created, nothing really new within them. They only organize words and ideas into hitherto unobserved combinations, or give a new poetic dress to ideas and impulses as old as humanity itself. They have only the materials of their own instincts to work with, and the collected data of the world, which is shared in common by the elites and unread masses alike.

So can we really fault a stranger on the street for not slaving over a truly original costume? I think not; most people do not do work that can be reasonably be considered “creative,” so those faculties are underdeveloped.  It is as cruel to expect the average person to produce a radically new unseen avant garde costume every fall as it is to expect them to be an inch taller every year. Even if they pluck from the air a fully-formed costume idea, the effort in putting it together and making it look good is daunting, and challange enough in itself. And, as I am given to understand, most people don’t want to be challanged at parties; they want to have fun. So here is my radical suggestion: Let them, even if they do look stupid.