For those who cannot see or hear the video, I don’t currently have a transcript, but you can check out this article on Mosby’s speech. Her description of the efforts to undermine the investigation, is infuriating. and while I’m glad to hear about reforms that are being made, it’s mind-boggling that they needed to be made in the first place.
I spent a semester in Tanzania in the Fall of 2006, and it was an interesting experience for a number of reasons. One thing that added to it was the month I was lucky enough to spent in Kenya three years earlier, which gave me a limited ability to compare the two countries. In both trips, I spent some time as a paying guest in people’s homes, and some time in more tourist-oriented scenarios. My trip in 2003 was with my parents, as part of the work my mother was doing with Quakers in Kenya at the time, so I spent a lot more time in religious services there, and had the astonishing experience of seeing a Quaker church designed to seat thousands. For comparison, the largest Quaker meeting (church) in New England has somewhere between 300 and 400 members, last I checked, with closer to 100-200 attending any given meeting for worship. In Tanzania, I went to one Catholic service, and one Lutheran service. So it’s possible I missed out on some preached homophobia in Tanzania that would have matched what I saw in Kenya.
Kenya was my first experience with kind, thoughtful Quakers, who also preached fire and brimstone about homosexuality. It was a deeply uncomfortable experience, and I can only imagine what it is like for anybody who’s not cisgender and heterosexual to visit. In Tanzania, the subject basically never came up at all, at least in my experience, with one exception. In one of the homes I stayed in, the television was on non-stop. It was the home of an important figure in the local Lutheran church, and most of what was playing on TV was an endless succession of Christian music videos, most of which were pushing the prosperity gospel bullshit. Certainly, my host had profited from religion. There were also a number of movies with a heavily Christian theme. One in particular is on my mind today, in which a young woman, engaged to be married, turns out to have a relationship with another woman, who fits just about every shitty stereotype bigoted Christians have about lesbians. Basically, she ends up getting caught and rejected by everybody, the wedding is broken off, she is left miserable and alone, and we’re all supposed to feel good about this.
In that context, it’s disappointing, but not surprising to see that apparently someone in the government of Tanzania decided that banning lube was a good idea It’s also disappointing that gay sex (only between men) is punishable by life imprisonment in Tanzania. I’m ashamed to say I didn’t know that until today.
The claim is that this law is to combat the spread of HIV by halting homosexual sex. Aside from this being another example of bigoted morons thinking that gay men always have anal sex, and that straight people never have anal sex – and passing LAWS based on that delusion – I expect this law to cause an increase in infection, if anything. No lube doesn’t mean no sex, it means the sex that people do have is more likely to cause internal tearing, both in cases of anal sex, and in situations where women are forced to have “dry” sex. That means open wounds, potentially blood, and so increased risk of all sorts of infections. Unprotected anal, vaginal, and oral sex all carry a risk of HIV transmission, and anal seems to have a higher risk, but the solution to that is MORE lube, and condoms.
Getting rid of lube will make life better for precisely NOBODY, and will make life worse for a whole lot of people. I suppose this is a minor thing compared to life imprisonment for having sex, but it’s going to cause real harm all by itself, and it’s another example of how ignorance, bigotry, and stupidity drive people to do harm not only to those they hate, but to everyone else, just so they can twist the knife a little bit more.
For more information on the pros and cons of different types of lubes, I’ll turn you over to Laci Green:
For the vision/hearing impaired, there are a number of links to useful resources below the video.
We live in a world that is so rife with conspiracy theories that it’s easy to forget that real conspiracies do, in fact, exist from time to time. More than that, some of them are a matter of public record, it’s just that because they’re ongoing, and they’re focused on misinformation, a lot of people remain unaware that they exist. Perhaps the most destructive of these, in the long term, is the multi-industry campaign of science denial that has been waged in support of nuclear, lead, fossil fuel, and tobacco industries. By now, most of you are probably aware of the ways in which the climate denial campaign has been influenced by the efforts of the tobacco lobby to mislead people about their product. If you’re not, here’s a short video from Yale Climate connections that will give you an idea what I’m talking about:
There are a lot of reasons why I want action on climate change, but one very personal one is that I hate hot weather. When the temperature gets above 90F, I’m reduced to a puddle of sweat sitting in front of a fan. The prospect of longer, hotter heatwaves as I grow older may well be the grindstone that shapes me into a bitter old man a few decades in the future.
I’m pleased to announce that my first novel, Exits and Entrances is now available in paperback and e-book formats on Amazon.com! This is the culmination of years of writing, learning, and re-writing, and I’m delighted to have it out!
My publisher described the book as a metaphysical fantasy, and I think that’s a good fit for it. This novel is the first of a trilogy, with book two well underway. I invite you all to read it, and to tell your friends about it. [Read more…]
Sam Vimes, Snuff
It should come as no surprise to any of my readers that Fox News has a uniformly terrible record when it comes to honest or accuracy on reporting about climate change or climate science. For me, at least, it’s a source of morbid interest – at what point will they stop lying about it? What will it take to get them to that point? How will they go about telling the truth if they do get there? I seriously doubt that if they do start telling the truth, they’ll acknowledge their mistakes or the role they played in making the problem worse. Either way, here’s a fun ad on that subject:
Continuing the series “Conversations with Strangers, here’s a non-climate one, in response to a Huffington Post blog post on Pascal’s Wager. There are better responses to it out there, but I’m fairly happy with what I wrote:
Me:
Pascal’s wager is a case for dishonesty – you can’t choose to believe, but you can choose to lie and pretend that you believe.
So integrity is one thing that you lose if you accept this argument.
Beyond that, religion changes how you interact with the world. Do you pray over a decision, or do you reason through the pros and cons of it? How do you view people who don’t share your religion? How do you treat them?
There are a number of resources that are essential to modern society, without that fact being broadly known. My favorite is the blood of horseshoe crabs, which is currently irreplaceable as a detection mechanism for the presence of toxins on any medical equipment or medicines that will be entering the human body through the skin. If horseshoe crabs go extinct, modern medicine will take a big hit. Another such resource is helium. I didn’t know how useful it was until college, and my hunch is that a lot of folks remain ignorant about it throughout their lives.
While it has a large number of uses, arguably the most important use of helium is in its liquid form as a super-coolant, keeping the superconductors of MRIs and NMRs at the temperatures required for the work they do. While I put effort into doing as little lab work as possible during my college years (while doing what was necessary for my biology degree), the importance of the NMR in analyzing substances was clear, and it’s hard for me to imagine how much damage the loss of that technology would do. It wouldn’t cause the downfall of civilization, but it would remove a powerful tool in our efforts to diagnose illness, and to understand the universe we inhabit.
MRI diagram
Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? And am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?
I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you this day rejoice are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence bequeathed by your fathers is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak today?
What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is a constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes that would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation of the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour.
At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could reach the nation’s ear, I would, to-day, pour forth a stream, a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and the crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.
Go here to hear James Earl Jones reading it. I recommend it.