Stupid Writing Cliches, the revenge: Political cliches

I seem to be going after a lot of cliches lately. First there was the Christian cliches from a few weeks ago, now this.

ILLEGALS.

Want to give this alien a work permit?

This pisses me off because I'm a New Yorker, and I know how the world works on this. At least in New York City.

The usual cliche is "Oh, illegals can't come forward on crimes because they might be deported!"

WRONG! When pigs fly. When this is pulled on tv, you know it's crap.

For the past 15 years, New York has been an "asylum" state for any and all undocumented / illegal immigrants. Deportation doesn't happen. Period.

If you want to make the argument "They don't trust cops in their countries, because it's all corrupt where they're from,"  fine. You can make that argument. It's even a valid argument.

But to suggest that anyone is sending any illegal back anywhere? That's just a joke in most of the country, since the federal government has to ship them back home, and they haven't even thought about it in six years.

But this especially rings false in New York -- which is where you usually see the cliche anyway.  Hell, we can't even ship back criminals who enter the country illegally. Some of them make Al Pacino's Scarface look like a documentary. (I prefer Paul Muni, myself)

Also, the good, pure and virtuous illegal? Don't believe it. In the last year, tens of thousands of the undocumented immigrants are members of gangs, like MS-13, who traffic in drugs and people. These are not nice people.

Now, if you want to give me a story of the men and women who come to America, put in the time, energy and effort to become legal citizens? That's a story I will happily read, and happily wallow in. Because that's a story worth reading. And one that's far, far more believable.

DADT, Gay Marriage: Who cares?

Last week wasn't very good as far as blog posts went. And I'm sorry for that. This week, I've got three posts already written.  This one is considered "timely," as my Examiner.com editors like to say.

A while ago, I wrote an article about gay marriage in New York.  It was entitled: Gay Marriage, so what?  I suspect you can guess what my general conclusions were.

I collect all sorts of weird articles, and magazines.  On the one hand, I could read Guns and Ammo, then the Spring catalog for a major publisher, then Time Magazine (until they went anti-Semite), the list goes on.

One such magazine is Salute, the magazine of the archdiocese for the military services, USA.

Yes, the military has their own archdiocese -- their Cardinal is the Cardinal of New York City.

In their Summer, 2011 issue, there was a statement from Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio, the Archbishop for USA military services. (An Archbishop is more hands on.)

His statement was two pages long, and here's an excerpt ...

"The church is unwavering in her commitment to the pastoral care of all persons in need, regardless of sexual inclination or anything else.  All people in need are served by Catholc Chaplains with zeal and passion for bringing the reality of the Risen Lord to all.  Whether Don't ask don't tell persists or not is immaterial to that bedrock principle.  The faithful .... must never forget that those with a homosexual inclination must be treated with the respect worthy of their human dignity."  [Typed by hand, any typos are mine]

In short: that's nice, we don't care if they're outed, it doesn't matter to us.

The message then cited Federal law (1 USC subection 7)... which I believe is commonly known as the defense of marriage act (DOMA).

So, "yes, you have DADT repealed. Who cares? We don't like it, but we're not going to marry gays, and you're not going to make us. We can continue, business as usual."  Everyone can move on.

Which is pretty much what I said the first time about gay marriage.

It's so nice when the Catholic Church listens to me.
[More below the break]

Gay Marriage: So What?

Gay marriage was deemed legal in New York State over the past weekend....

As someone who's spent a lot of time on this blog doing Catholicism for dummies, I guess I would be expected to comment on this sort of thing.

To which one part of my says ... "So what?"  My personal politics says who cares. I don't care what anyone else does as long as they don't harm anyone else. I'm a little libertarian that way.  In fact, I had proposed a few times that we just make all "marriages" properly labeled.  Atheists and gays can have civil unions (because, really, marriage should be something religious). and anyone who can get married in a church can get married in any church that will have them. The End.

[More below the break]

Index: Atheists, Lent, and Evil Religions

Throughout Easter and a Lent, I did a lot of what my friend Jason called "High Intellectual" articles.

I'm never making that mistake ever again.

However, since it did have some interesting fan support.... if "fans" could be people screaming for your blood ... I figured I'd put it into a nice, compact little section on the blog. Think of it as a season in review that, with luck, I'll never inflict on anyone ever again.

The Snarky Theology series. My way of translating dogmatic theology into something that human beings can understand.

Snarky Theology 1: Catholic Cannibals. Looking at the theology of Swallow the leader. Eating your deity.

Snarky Theology 2: FAQs about Lent. Some fun facts about Lent that turned into a minor war.


The Flame war is postponed While I was busy having a flame war with an idiot on the blog, someone did soething stupid online. I fought back in the name of all sane people everywhere.

Snarky theology 3: Evolution, Creationists, and other Irritants. Evolution, what is it good for? My answer: who cares?

Snarky Theology 4: "Things that go boink in the night." Catholicism on Sex and Gays Pretty much what it says.

GOD H8TS JAPAN; Twitting with Phelps & Co.  Hint, it was published on 4-1-11


Snarky Theology 5: The Passion, Jews, and Good Friday. 


Snarky Theolgy 6: Easter: HE IS RISEN



The Guest Blog Index -- "Catholic fiction"

-- I had two weeks off from Snarky theology for two virtual book tours. One was a bit of Sherlock Holmes with Murder in the Vatican, and some Catholic science fiction from Karina Fabian's Infinite Space, Infinite God II

Murder in the Vatican Author Margaret Ann Lewis.

Guest blog (on writing historical figures in fiction) and Interview (on writing a book on Sherlock Holmes and Pope Leo XIII), and a Review of Murder in the Vatican, which can be found at Amazon.com


I did the same for Karina Fabian.

The Guest blog: where she talks about writing religion and science fiction

The interview, where I unleash my inner nerdom ...

And a review.


I think that was the most fun I had had that Lent. They were both a joy and a pleasure to have.

Anti-theist complaints: Mormons, gays

When Lent started, I figured I would do a whole bunch of "Snarky Theology" blog posts, followed by "Evil Religion" blogs. And, while I was at it, I asked Matt, friend of this blog, artist, anti-theist, and a few other things, to generate a list of what he found to be problematic with religion. He gave me a few.

I promised him I would use it. And I keep my promises

This is the last week I'm doing what my friend Jason calls "high-intellectual" blog posts. They are time consuming, draining, a lot of work, and I'm not sure they are at all entertaining. They've garnered some response, much of it hate mail.

My replies are long-winded, so this may take a few posts.

If you find yourself here by accident, or have no interest in the topic, I invite you to look around. Our most popular blogs are in the sidebar, as are the short stories, what this book is about, and we have entries on why anyone can enjoy this book, any politics involved, spytech, and even a section for fans of Sherlock Holmes and science fiction. If we don't have something you like ... wait five minutes. :)

Anyway, onto the complaint ....

-Mormon (and other sects) mistreatment of homosexuals

Mormons, I hate these guys … I've been to Utah, and the Stepford Wives effect is creey as all hell.
However, I think that religion has nothing to do with the overall question...

Bear with me.

I'm going to define "mistreatment" rather loosely. I've heard mistreatment as being everything from stoning to simply not being married in a Catholic church. I'm going to go with the lightest definition of mistreatment, where you can define it as simply being considered "other."

Let's start by removing religion from the equation, shall we?

Mr Phelps, You Are Disavowed…

[This blog is rated PG, for mild intemperate language..... if you want to read an article done in a more professional format, just click here.... I get paid if you click there, so, that would be my preference.]

I do not feel the need to disavow every single stupid thing a Christian group has ever done. For one thing, I'm Catholic, so most Christian sects, denominations, etc, have already disavowed me. So when other folks in other Christian groups do something stupid, I generally don't care.

Like, for example, when a creationist museum that has what appears to be a Garden of Eden setting … with a Velociraptor off to the side.

Thankfully, I can usually say, “Yeah, that's stupid,” and move on. Because it is stupid: even ignoring that human beings and dinosaurs were separated by about a few BILLION years of development, you'd think that the museum designer would have picked a dinosaur that was more friendly in appearance, and what wasn't the primary adversary of one of the top grossing films of all time.
 
So, with idiocies like that, I don't care. It's not my church, not my problem.

And then there's Fred Phelps.... who may or may not have appeared in one of our stories.

Philosophy, Religion, and Sex.

Dear Pope Benedict, I've been a fan of your career since you worked under John Paul II.  The press hated you because you were hostile to them, and for that I applaud you.  But you have to stop having statements come out so close together, it messes up my schedule.

Last week, I explained why the Catholic Church wanted to hire exorcists.

This week, because no one in the Vatican can shut up, I'm going to try explaining something else that was recently in the news.

The New York Times recently reported that, "Yippie, the Pope is giving in and endorsing condom use."

The old gray hag of The New York Times has, once again, gotten it wrong.  One day, they may actually try to get a theologian to explain theology to them.  Unfortunately, given most theologians, that may not help much.

Let's start at the beginning: Why does the Catholic Church have an issue with condom use?  Or any contraceptives?

It basically involves philosophy ... bare with me a minute, I'll keep it short and comprehensible ... and what is the function of "a thing."  In the case of sex, the mechanism of sex is "insert tab A into slot B."  The "function" of sex is procreation, and a darn good time, if you're doing it correctly.

Contraceptions mess with the natural function of sex by removing elements that are inherent to the act -- procreation comes with sex.  The Vatican position is, that if you mess around with it and start taking out elements, then you are messing around with things that are not yours to mess with.

If you are pondering what the Catholic church's advice is on STD prevention when you have sex with your boy/girlfriend, the Church's position is that you should be having sex with your spouse, only with your spouse, have a nice day, thank you.  Under this rubrick, STDs are not a problem, since if you only ever insert one tab A into one tab B, STDs are not an issue; pregnancy remains in effect, but in the Catholic church, marriage is a contract to have sex, have kids, and spread the spawn around the globe, carrying the faith with it.

You are currently up on previously held positions.


The NY Times said, on November 21st .....

“Pope Benedict XVI has said that condom use can be justified in some cases to help stop the spread of AIDS . . . .”

However, George Wiegel, papal biographer and general Vatican busybody, corrected the Times report.  You can find the full text online, but since that will take forever for you to read, I'm going to translate it for you, gentle reader, into something easily comprehensible.

The pope's actual statement, in context, was during an interview.  The pope mentioned how the Catholic Church runs more AIDS hospitals, and stresses "prevention, education, help, counsel, and accompaniment."  IE: The pope pointed out that, unlike pontificating reporters, the Church actually does something,

The pope even stressed that "we cannot solve the problem [of AIDS] by distributing condoms. Much more needs to be done. We must stand close to the people, we must guide and help them; and we must do this both before and after they contract the disease."

The pope continued:

.... people can get condoms when they want them anyway. But this just goes to show that condoms alone do not resolve the question itself. More needs to happen. Meanwhile, the secular realm itself has developed the so-called ABC Theory: Abstinence–Be Faithful–Condom, where the condom is understood only as a last resort, when the other two points fail to work. This means that the sheer fixation on the condom implies a banalization of sexuality .... the attitude of no longer seeing sexuality as the expression of love, but only a sort of drug that people administer to themselves. This is why the fight against the banalization of sexuality is also a part of the struggle to ensure that sexuality is treated as a positive value and to enable it to have a positive effect on the whole of man’s being.

Short version: sex is important, has an effect on a person, and is also for the purpose of expressing love.  Throw in a condom, and you just make it another way to drug yourself into a stupor.

The part where the NYTimes gets confused is probably in the following section:

There may be a basis in the case of some individuals, as perhaps when a male prostitute uses a condom, where this can be a first step in the direction of a moralization, a first assumption of responsibility, on the way toward recovering an awareness that not everything is allowed and that one cannot do whatever one wants. But it is not really the way to deal with the evil of HIV infection. That can really lie only in a humanization of sexuality.

When asked if "the Catholic Church is actually not opposed in principle to the use of condoms?"  Pope Benedict XVI answered that "She of course does not regard it as a real or moral solution, but, in this or that case, there can be nonetheless, in the intention of reducing the risk of infection, a first step in a movement toward a different way, a more human way, of living sexuality."

Short version: If it's someone infected with AIDS, yes, the Church would rather that they NOT KILL PEOPLE by infecting them further.

Basically, it's like robbing a bank -- if you rob a bank, the Church would rather have someone use an empty gun; it'll lessen the risk of someone getting their head blown off.

So, despite news reports, the Catholic Church's position hasn't changed.

With luck, we can all move on to something important now.