Sorry, but freedom of religion doesn't protect your bigotry

Take it away, Senator:

[Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) ] went further and “said if someone is openly homosexual, they shouldn’t be teaching in the classroom and he holds the same position on an unmarried woman who’s sleeping with her boyfriend — she shouldn’t be in the classroom.”

Controversy over DeMint’s position on this issue first arose in 2004 during a Senate debate, when he was asked whether he agreed with the state party’s platform that said openly gay teachers should be barred from teaching public school. DeMint said he agreed with that position because government shouldn’t be endorsing certain behaviors.

[…]”(When I said those things,) no one came to my defense,” DeMint said on Friday in Spartanburg. “But everyone would come to me and whisper that I shouldn’t back down. They don’t want government purging their rights and their freedom to religion.”

So, let me get this logic straight:

1. Your religion thinks homosexuality and sex before marriage is a sin.

2. Freedom of religion makes it so your religion must be followed by every person in this country, regardless of their religious beliefs or lack thereof.

3. Therefore, allowing these sinful people to have jobs and interact with children is repressing your beliefs.

…

Yeah, can someone please this Senator how our Constitution works?

This would be laughable if he was just some kook for thinking this way. Unfortunately, this sense of entitlement is common and has real effects on people. An Oregon teacher was just reassigned to a different school district because he answered a 4th grader honestly when asked why he wasn’t married – because he loves a man and marriage is not legal for them in Oregon.

Yep, because it’s better that we extoll the virtues of lying than be honest about something any 4th grader probably already knows about just from watching tv. Gotta love those traditional, Christian values that deem certain types of love inappropriate.

For the people who told me to read PhD comics…

I’ve already been reading them for two years. This is probably part of my problem.

And while I could generally relate to them thanks to undergrad research, I’m now convinced the artist has a spy camera set up in my apartment. Take today’s comic for example:I read this comic cuddled up in bed exactly like the main character, skimming Google Reader while I decided if I wanted to hit snooze again or get out of bed.

I got out of bed.

And here comes the Impostor Syndrome

I was going to make this massive upbeat post about starting graduate school, how excited I am, and how proud I am to be the first person in my family to pursue a PhD, or really, to study science at all.

Then I actually went. And now I’m having massive Impostor Syndrome.

In summary, feeling incredibly stupid, overwhelmed, and unprepared is not what I needed heaped on top of the general melancholy I already felt for being utterly alone in a new city. Did I mention I suck at making new friends? Well, I do.

It doesn’t help that all of my grad student friends are telling me to get used to it, because it never goes away. Or that when I’ve tried to confide in some of my fellow first years, they look at me like I’ve sprouted a second head because they totally understand the papers we’re reading. Or that I feel like I can’t even discuss it here on my blog, since apparently everyone in the department knows about it. I say apparently because within five minutes of me showing up to a department event, someone new approaches me and goes, “So, I hear you have a blog!”

I mean, that’s a great thing for people in your new department to read, right? “I have no idea what any of these papers mean, not to mention I’m completely uninterested in them, and I’m not quite sure how I got accepted here anyway.” The whole point of Impostor Syndrome is that you feel like you need to hide your ineptitude. Maybe if I voice my concerns on a popular blog, I’ll be cured!

…Or not.

I just can’t shake the feeling that I don’t know what I’m doing. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy science and doing research. And I have about a million different research ideas running through my brain. My problem right now is I think all of my research ideas are surely retarded, which is why no one has thought to do them before (not because, you know, they’re potentially innovative or something). So instead of piping up when someone asks me, I sit quietly and seem totally uncreative and stupid.

It doesn’t help that on top of that, I look back at how much I enjoyed my summer. Right now I would love to do nothing but write books, blog, speak for student groups and conferences… I’m not sure if that’s just me having escapist fantasies, or if that’s what I should actually be doing. I always told myself you need training to be a research scientist, and that you can paint and write books on the side, not the other way around. But then I come home exhausted from a day in the lab, realize I haven’t done any artwork in the last four years and that all of my novels sit half completed, and I wonder if I’m just deluding myself.

Of course, if I tried to make a career out of writing, I’d probably be sitting in my apartment starving, wishing how I could be off in a lab discovering some new aspect of evolution and actually getting a paycheck.

Sigh.

I apologize that this post is so crappily written and without a real point*, but I just needed to think out loud for a bit.

*Ugh, apparently I have Blogger Impostor Syndrome too. Sorry.

Am I supposed to be giving sex advice now?

Why is Dan Savage in Indiana? Have we traded places?

Though I am genuinely curious. He’s been making posts about being in Bloomington, IN for a while – almost since I moved to Seattle. Is IU getting up to some awesome sexual shenanigans again? Man, why can’t Purdue be cool enough to have Dan Savage visit, let alone camp out there?

I mean, I’ve always been the unofficial Sex Advice Giver of my group of friends, thanks to scientific curiosity. Freshman year of high school I had the “Birds and the Bees” event in Science Olympiad, which forced me to learn a lot about human sexually. Soon I had read everything on Scarlet Teen and Ask Anne, and then I spent many years listening to Love Line. And then I spent many years listening to the Savage Lovecasts to undo most of the sexist crap I learned from Love Line (though it wasn’t all bad). Add to that the four classes I took at Purdue dealing with sex*, and all the random books** and papers I’ve read, and… well, yep, I’m a bit academically obsessed.

So, sex advice wouldn’t be out of character for me. Though I guess I’m really only qualified to talk about rodent sexuality. I’m going to guess no one is having problems with their partner’s copulatory plugs.

Hopefully.

*For the curious:
Sex, Gender, & Sexology (Health and Kinesiology Dept)
Human Sexuality (Psychology Dept)
Evolutionary Psychology (Psychology Dept)
Sex & Evolution (Biology Dept)

**I highly recommend:
Dr. Tatiana’s Sex Advice to All Creation
The Red Queen
As Nature Made Him

Help a Purdue lesbian couple get married

I’m glad I still check out my old student newspaper, because I found this wonderful story (emphasis mine):

Indiana regulations on homosexual marriage could be ignored for a Purdue Director of Communication in the College of Education and her partner when they entered to win a wedding in Washington, D.C., where binding their love is legal. Tonya Agnew and her spouse Amy Crampton received an e-mail that could bend the rules of gay marriage and reinforce love with no boundaries.

With a 200 word essay, any gay couple could enter to win a $100,000 wedding ceremony in the nation’s capital. Expenses could cover anything from the rings to the flowers to the entertainment. The winner is determined through online voting that ends Sept. 30. Anyone can vote in the contest, Freedom 2 Wed.

Agnew and Crampton are one of six finalist pairs that anticipate Thursday’s results, waiting to see if other applicants beat their first place standing of over 4,000 votes. Even though they live in a conservative state, putting faces to their names has brought overwhelming support and encouragement from friends and strangers.

“I was pleasantly surprised with the responses we were getting and many people have come up to us and thanked us for doing this,” Crampton said. “I started crying.”

Not only has this been an exciting experience for Agnew and Crampton, but marriage directly influences the lives of their two sons, Jesse, 17, and Leo, 7. The affirmation of their family was the primary inspiration for partaking in the competition, but it was also about letting the voters know that they are as equally committed to their family as anyone else.

Former co-worker to Agnew, Jennifer Jeffries, said winning will highlight compassion and love regardless of sex, because communities like Lafayette and Purdue are strengthened by the presence of strong and caring families.

“Tonya and Amy love each other, but they didn’t enter the contest to make a statement,” Jeffries said. “It is a response to their 7-year-old who couldn’t understand why, in the land of the free, his parents couldn’t marry.”

The eldest son, Jesse, has been an advocate for their cause and believes that his parents should have the same rights and freedoms as any other citizen. For that reason, Agnew says that having an actual ceremony where they will be legally recognized demonstrates that “if it’s good enough for our nation’s capital, it should be good enough for the rest of the country.”

Since the role of Crampton and Agnew as a joined family has become exceedingly more important to their children, their status as public figures and leaders in the gay community is also having an impact on Agnew’s work at Purdue.

“I feel responsible to be available and out and proud, especially for those who can’t be for whatever reason,” Agnew said. “Hopefully we are raising awareness and breaking down misconceptions.”

It’s not being out at Purdue, and it’s even harder being out in the rest of Indiana. What these women are doing is brave, and will hopefully serve as an example of how loving and normal gay couples can be, just like any heterosexual couple. It’s a message Indiana definitely needs to here.

I’m sure any of the couples in the competition are worthy of winning, but I’m going to play favorites for my Alma mater and ask that you vote for Amy and Tonya here. Voting ends 11:59pm EST TONIGHT, so please hurry! They’re in second place – let’s have Blag Hag readers get them into first.

Need more convincing? They even stopped by the Society of Non-Theist’s Blasphemy Day event today and took a photo with our secretary.So, go vote!

During my first day of grad school

I was walking around the building with the professor I’m doing rotations with this quarter, and we ran into (who I now know is) one of the secretaries in our business office.

Secretary: Hi! *pauses awkwardly* …Is this…?
Me: ?
Prof: *long confused pause, then realization* …my WIFE?!
Secretary: *nods*
Prof: *laughing* No, this is my first roton!
Secretary: Oh, I’m sorry! I just remember someone saying your wife was younger than you, so…

Real thoughts about grad school to come later, you know, when I’m not actually busy with grad school.

How one Christian responded to the "It Gets Better" project

Did you come here hoping this was one of those times a Christian defies negative stereotypes and welcomes gays with open arms?

Well, sorry to disappoint you.

A couple days ago I mentioned Dan Savage’s wonderful It Gets Better project, which aims to reach suicidal gay teens via YouTube since many can’t get help anywhere else. I can hardly watch the videos without getting choked up. But here’s a video this Christian decided to upload as a response, named the Lot Project:

A partial transcript for those who are too enraged to watch to completion:

“Billy Lucus, who hanged himself, obviously because he was gay, and unable to endure the guilt that the words of others prompted in him. This was indeed a tragedy, but not anywhere near the tragedy that Billy will discover in eternity when he faces the wrath of God upon rebellious and unrepentant sinners. Then, he will realize that his sin could not be atoned for by his own death, and he will realize that people like Dan Savage who encourage sin are deceivers. He will see them for what they are, the blind leading the blind. And he will realize that he has fallen into that ditch that the blind leading the blind inevitably fall into: that’s eternal destruction and misery. Sadly, it’s too late for Billy. For those who are viewing this video, however, their remains the opportunity of turning from sin to the obedience of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Now, before someone jumps in here screaming about how I’m a horrible person for assuming all Christians are this hateful, delusional, and ignorant – save your breath. I know. Plenty of Christians are wonderful people, pro-gay rights, and even gay themselves. This by no means represents every single Christian on the planet.

But you know what? If you want us to think those good, loving, caring Christians outnumber the awful ones, maybe you should put forth just a *tad* bit more effort in making that obvious, since this version of Christianity seems pretty common to me.

And no, hollering that this man isn’t a “true” Christian doesn’t help your argument.