who will speak up for love and justice if not us…?

For the past several days, myself and Joel have been discussing the truly disturbing, “Anti-Homosexual Bill” on the table in Uganda and how best to communicate with those who might bear influence to block it. of what we might each want to say in any such communication we try and make to them.

it is easy to feel hopeless when one hears little more from Christian leaders than weak evasions that avoid taking an actual stand against legislation that would be rightly described as fascist, or an avoidance of voicing principled support for basic human rights.
this is not a controversial issue. there should be no thinking through what the response of Christians should be when faced with this level of civil oppression. but it is seen as controversial. as if there is more than one reasonable response to this kind of law.

i hope more denominations follow the path of the United Reformed Church in standing up unequivocally for what is right, and just and good.
i hope, and pray that a strong collective, ecumenical chorus will rise up on this issue and show its support for the human rights of those in Uganda and Rwanda.

will that happen? i fear not.

i continue to be deeply troubled by the scapegoating being made of LGBT community in the name of Christianity, much of which claims these days to be against homophobia but fails to be in active support of love and would deny one group of people the experience and gift of loving partnership. instead, encouraging life long celibacy as the way of discipleship even while acknowledging same sex attraction may never be “overcome”. as if this ‘lifestyle’ was a disease or an addiction and such celibacy an act of faithful sobriety. i consider it a horrible exercise of heterosexual privilege to claim that one person’s love can be fully and mutually expressed and another’s cannot. that God will bless one but not the other.
as Keith Olbermann said a year ago after Prop 8 in California, “What is it to you?”
but i don’t want the situation in Uganda and Rwanda to be about criticizing Christians who do not support everyone as equal, as whole. instead along with my hope that people will choose the side of justice, i want it to be about what it is we can be for… and i am certainly for this:

marriage equality didn’t make it through the senate in New York state yesterday. however disappointing yet another defeat for equality may be, this speech made before the vote by New York State Sentator Diane Savino, who i’ll confess i’d not been aware of before today, is incredibly powerful. it is in support of love and commitment. i somehow believe the arc is bending toward justice and these words of Savino’s, like Olbermann’s, will stand the test of time…

LB

hyper-real

the face of the day on the daily dish today was from this great photo-feature on 6 artists working in fantastic photorealistic/ hyper-realistic sculpture. some of these pieces are deeply… freaky. i love it.

i quite possibly shared some of these images from the contemporary art floors of Denver’s DAM in October ’08. they have some great sculpture, including hyper-realistic, not all of which could be photographed, including a Ron Mueck head sculpture if memory serves…

more sculpture photos after the jump note: there’s one sculpture of a boy some folks may be uncomfortable with, (involves nudity).

creepy tales

darkness of a whole different kind…

Joel recently found himself driving alone with an almost empty tank, close to lost, in the middle of the night, on the back roads of the wonderfully appropriate Barren County, Kentucky. no wonder then that he tried to dissuade me from listening to The Old Road, the final episode in series 2 of The Man in Black on bbc radio 7. as he no doubt knew i would, i ignored him. and i’m glad. this is radio drama at its best.
also worth hearing is Angel in Disguise and the particularly gruesome, Flesh.
it’s all a superb take on the tradition of the classic, “spooky story” in contemporary settings… you know the inevitability of what’s coming and yet it doesn’t spoil the listening… one can’t help but grin… 

the tradition of scaring ourselves around campfires and by torchlight with stories of strange happenings and things that go bump and growl in the night are our way of dealing with our fears and the real darkness we face… a curious form of entertainment and yet somehow telling creepy tales pushes back the world and those real fears… as host Mark Gatiss would likely concur, there is comfort in knowing after all, that it’s only a story…

isn’t it?

LB