aj
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Posts posted by aj
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Saw this and thought it might be of interest.
Gov. Sarah Palin's church is promoting a conference that promises to convert gays into heterosexuals through prayer.
By The Associated Press
ANCHORAGE ? Gov. Sarah Palin's church is promoting a conference that promises to convert gays into heterosexuals through prayer.
"You'll be encouraged by the power of God's love and his desire to transform the lives of those impacted by homosexuality," according to the insert in the bulletin of Wasilla Bible Church, where Palin has prayed for about six years.
Palin's conservative Christian views have energized that part of the GOP electorate, which was lukewarm to John McCain's candidacy before he named her as his vice-presidential choice. She is anti-abortion, opposing exceptions for rape and incest, and opposes gay marriage and spousal rights for gay couples.
Focus on the Family, a Christian fundamentalist organization, is conducting the "Love Won Out" Conference in Anchorage, which is about 30 miles from Wasilla.
Palin has not publicly expressed a view on the "pray away the gay" movement.
Larry Kroon, senior pastor at Palin's church, had no comment.
Gay activists in Alaska said Palin has not worked actively against their interests, but early in her administration she supported a bill to overrule a court decision to block state benefits for gay partners of public employees. At the time, less than one-half of 1 percent of state employees had applied for the benefits, which were ordered by a 2005 ruling by the Alaska Supreme Court.
Palin reversed her position and vetoed the bill after the state attorney general said it was unconstitutional.
But her reluctant support didn't win fans among Alaska's gay population, said Scott Turner, a gay activist in Anchorage.
"Less than 1 percent of state employees would even apply for benefits, so why make a big deal out of such a small number?" he said.
So, here we go again.
cheers!
aj
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So last night as I sat at my gaming computer (everything else is accomplished via the workhorse laptop) and prepared to toke up my longest lasting addiction yet, which would be World of Warcrack, I started to troll Nifty.
Whoohoo! Someone else who shares my addiction! I'm currently working my pallie through the battlegrounds in a quest for better gear, 'cause I don't play on the weekends so I can't run instances or raid with the rest of my guild. Looking forward to WoLK and working like heck to get geared for it.
Ok, back to the original topic!
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aj
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As a medical professional, I'm astonished that this even needed to be ruled on by the Supreme Court or any other court. Regardless of one's religious beliefs, the medical profession carries its own set of obligations, and the choice to enter the field of medicine trumps personal beliefs. "Do no harm" applies here, and kudos to the CA courts for enforcing one of the elemental, foundationary ethical standards of our industry.
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aj
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Hmm...I guess I have to disagree about missing the climactic ending. I actually thought it ended the way most of these kinds of things end, in real life - 'not with a bang, but a whimper.' Maybe I'm just revealing something about my own character, though.
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aj
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Ah. That being the case, a couple words added will convince the reader of the narrator's sympathetic view and form the opinion of the narrator that you want.
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aj
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Or, he just plain forgot.......
Never forgotten, 'nutz. I've taken a look at the chapters you sent me already, and started to work on some solutions for what I'm looking at.
cheers!
aj
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The only ambiguity I found in this little gem was, what made him feel like the luckiest man alive? Was it the fact that he didn't suffer the same injuries that his brother had, or was it the fact that his brother was still alive and able to request help as he did? Stepping entirely away from that autobiographical nature of this story, I'm viewing it entirely as a piece of literature, and that means I can allow my opinion of the narrator to be based on the content of the story. If it is the former, than I will form one opinion of the narrator...if the latter, then I will hold an entirely different one. Perhaps that's the point of the story, though: the shift of opinion that can happen with only a couple words added or deleted.
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aj
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Yes, like little maiden aunties we are, all sitting and holding our...er...teacups! Yes, our teacups, in a grip that is amazing like how we hold...well, you get the picture.
Love the NZ-isms. keep 'em!
Too much sex? Is there anything else, really? a momentary pause to explore some other issue - bullying in school - and then right back at it. Nothing wrong with that, of course...except in the disingenuousness of the question. The story, thus far, is about sex between two brothers. However, I have a feeling that it will not be limited to that topic fairly soon, and the characters are sturdy enough to manage a transition to a story going just about anywhere you want it to go.
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aj
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Update:
Chapter 22 is currently finished and 'in the can,' as is chapter 23. Jamie has the first edit of chapter 24, and is looking it over while on a teaching-out-of-town trip. I expect that I will hear from him fairly soon about it.
Overall, the plan is to get several chapters ahead...about a six-month cushion...before we start posting again. At two chapters a month, that means we need a minimum of 12 chapters prepped and ready before we even consider going ahead with posting. Jamie continues to write and I continue to edit, so this will happen before too terribly much longer, but we'll have better information on a timeline once we get a little further into the process.
Thanks to all of you for your continued interest in the tale...we hope we can provide some more good reading soon.
cheers!
aj
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Gee aj, I am not all certain that I agree with the idea that only Americans champion individual rights.
By definition, democracy at its core, is based on allowing and accommodating dissent of the minority view, of the opposing political ideology and primarily the individual view.
Another example of my unintentional and still prevalent cultural filtering. As much as I want to be able to stand outside my culture and try to see it from the outside, I'm still very indoctrinated in its precepts - one of which is the bias that you responded to. *sigh* I still have a very long way to go.
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aj
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Part of what puts us (americans) at odds with a lot of other cultures around the world is a difference in priority in assigning and protecting rights. We, as a culture, value most highly the rights of the individual. We weigh them equally with the needs of the society, under the theory that a strong society starts on the individual level.
Outside of Europe, most of the rest of the world finds this a very strange concept. From Africa to the Middle East to Asia, the harmony of the society as a whole is far more important than the rights of the individual. Every crime and punishment and all the privileges extended to the society are based on creating and maintaining harmony and peace within the society. If a few noisy, obnoxious troublemakers who insist on defying the rules that create peace and harmony get it in the neck, so be it. In terms of social utility, those people don't matter anyway. No one has the right to place their own needs above the needs of the group. The pitfall of this kind of thinking, of course, is that it is much easier to define individual rights than it is to define societal needs, and that can lead to abuses.
We, as americans, are so indoctrinated in the primacy of the individual that it is hard for us to imagine a society run any other way. That basic difference is what I have to keep in mind when I look at ethics across cultural lines, I guess.
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aj
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Thanks for your answers, guys. It helps to hear from others about this. I recognize that there won't likely be a black and white answer to this question...there rarely is when this kind of thing is discussed. It's good to know that I'm not the only one who thinks about and struggles with this question.
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aj
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There is something that I've been doing a great deal of thinking about lately, and I don't know of a bunch of guys more likely to answer this kind of question seriously than you guys. I suppose it's a bit abstract, but I've been stuck on it for awhile, and would welcome some input.
Let me start with a story: I'm sure most, if not all of you, heard the story that was circulating a while back about an arabic woman who was accosted by six men, dragged out into the desert and gang-raped by all six. When she returned to her town and complained to the authorities, she was arrested, incarcerated, and then publicly lashed...the rationale being that good muslim men would never have raped her if she had not incited them to the act, thus causing them to sin.
Whether this tale is true or not, I don't know. But it's a good place to start my question:
If an act that is ethically repugnant in my cultural view is acceptable in another cultural system, is it wrong and does it need to be corrected? How much should I allow my own cultural biases to dictate my views of the actions of those who live under very different cultural value systems? Is there an absolute set of ethical standards which apply across all cultures? Are we, or anyone else, justified in imposing what we view as correct on someone else if they don't share our cultural values?
cheers!
aj
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Found this very nice little tale over on Nifty the other night, written by Dragonwriter. Beautiful writing, with good characters and a fully visualized world. Definitely a 'need to check out' in my book!
http://library.gaycafe.com/nifty/gay/sf-fa...iry-tale-sorta/
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aj
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I think that there is a 'flavor' difference as well...'may,' to my mind, has a slightly more formal feel to it, don't you think? I know that this sort of thing is pretty subjective, but such differences are more important to me - though I hesitate to admit it - than whether it's subjunctive, adjunctive, or recyclable.
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aj
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More importantly, I think, is a very long standing policy that states that any power not given to the federal government within the constitution is automatically within the purview of the state governments. It's called 'state's rights' and we actually fought a war over it...so it's protected pretty aggressively.
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aj
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I must admit that i usually answer questions about 'my friend's clock' and the color of briefs worn by freight train conductors with a yawn and "Who cares? Let's talk about something that matters...like angelfood cake versus black forest cake, or World of Warcraft, or the state of politics in Zimbabwe." Unless I'm pulling the conductor's briefs down past his knees or checking my friend's clock to see what time his wife gets home (!), I can't summon up much enthusiasm.
And BTW...I hate Scrabble, too.
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aj
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The thing that made this story for me is that it doesn't address the 'big issues.' it's all about the nit-picky stuff, the tiny little annoyances that we end up spending so much time on. What made it so heart-breaking for me was that he was worried about his 'stuff' and his AP papers when he was about to off himself. I know that I sometimes prattle on and on about the 'sense of immediacy' that for me is the hallmark of skillful writing...this piece has it in spades.
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aj
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Well, one can hardly blame them...after all, if they don't do something - ANYTHING - it's back to the carwash for them.
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aj
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What an odd little tale! It reminds me of when I used to read The Urantia Book. The writing is solid, the characters are strong, and if it is a little outside the usual parameters of what I like to read, all the better. Who'd have guessed that all those new-agers were right?
I reccomend it as a departure from the standard gay romance fare.
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aj
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Just read the second chapter of this tale, and once again I am blown away. As I told Duncan, there is a gentleness, a tenderness and respect for his characters that I find absolutely irresistable. I'm taking notes, you can believe that!
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aj
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I think it's possible for someone to be so self-deluded that they play out a complete heterosexual lifestyle and they may or may not at some point suddenly realise they've been living a lie. I don't think they just turned gay, I think they just woke up to it.
I have a very dear friend that I grew up with who is just going through this very experience. He had a lot of homosexual type experiences as a boy, but then put them away when he 'became a man' and entered into a straight marriage, and adopted two special needs kids with his wife.
A few years later, she ran off with her lesbian lover and divorced him, leaving him to raise the two kids alone. Then, years later he met Wayne, his first male lover of his adult life, when he was 45 or so. His relationship with Wayne was essentially done in by his ultra religious family, and he has finally reached a place where he's like "F it. I'm not Bi, I'm gay and it's time to get on with my life." I've been writing to him and giving him support and advice ("Dude, kick your family to the curb!" kek!) for a couple years now. It's been a fascinating process watching him wrestle with, and finally gain a grip on, his sexuality.
cheers!
aj
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I think it's possible for someone to be so self-deluded that they play out a complete heterosexual lifestyle and they may or may not at some point suddenly realise they've been living a lie. I don't think they just turned gay, I think they just woke up to it.
I have a very dear friend that I grew up with who is just going through this very experience. He had a lot of homosexual type experiences as a boy, but then put them away when he 'became a man' and entered into a straight marriage, and adopted two special needs kids with his wife.
A few years later, she ran off with her lesbian lover and divorced him, leaving him to raise the two kids alone. Then, years later he met Wayne, his first male lover of his adult life, when he was 45 or so. His relationship with Wayne was essentially done in by his ultra religious family, and he has finally reached a place where he's like "F it. I'm not Bi, I'm gay and it's time to get on with my life." I've been writing to him and giving him support and advice ("Dude, kick your family to the curb!" kek!) for a couple years now. It's been a fascinating process, watching him wrestle with and finally gain a grip on, his sexuality.
cheers!
aj
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I think a lot of how that story has been taken depends on the interest of the readers. Those who seem to like science fiction and fantasy appear more likely to accept the story at face value.
I see your point here...I think part of my perspective comes from having done a stint as a psyche nurse in a center for involuntary committment. The narrator shows many of the signs of acute PTSD - delusional thinking, paranoia, extreme denial to the point of repressing the traumatic incident, significant behavior changes, etc. He's just short of flashbacks, which would have been a dead giveaway and thankfully was not included.
Though I'm very interested in s-f, this one just didn't strike me that way.
Bruin's story: Also very fine work! I love the sense of innocence and debauchery that pervades the story. This was written with such obvious respect and care for the narrating character, it was very touching. Eroticism beats porn every time! Thanks for this story, Bruin, and I can't wait to see the next one!
cheers!
aj
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Heavenly Body
in Flash Fiction
Posted
An astonishingly lovely piece...I wish I had his 'lack of talent.' Beautiful!
cheers!
aj