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My stance on #StandYourGround, in reply to an insulting comment under 13WMAZ.com’s story:

I have lived most of my life without needing or using a gun. I have lived with the expectation that 1) the police are supposed to give the proper reaction to a criminal act and 2) disrupting the conditions which lead to violent cultures lessens the need for both police and handguns.

And for the record, I lived as a civilian in #WarnerRobins with my mother from 1992 to 2013. Even when we lived in a troubled low-income neighborhood for part of that time (Oldtown), we never had a gun in the house. I didn’t end up getting trapped in what so many other families found themselves, so I never needed a gun for self-defense.

What separates me from those who ended up going to jail for gun-related or drug-related crimes, the type that is supposed to be addressed by this expansion of gun laws?

They didn’t have a support network to draw upon during their turbulent years, they were easily drawn into violent cultures, they weren’t engaged in their youth, they were in poverty-driven homes.

This is a perfect breeding ground for petty violence in defense of self, of “honor”, of one’s gang, or of one’s trade in drugs. I saw the cycle with my own eyes while a teenager, and I’m sick of the cycle. Why aren’t we addressing the instability and poverty in our neighborhoods? SYG only reacts with fire when we should be healing our neighborhoods, our schools. SYG, in the longer run, makes no sense, and only adds more guns to the violence and instability.

So I see no part of my comment as being “stupid”. I’m 27, I lived without needing to defend myself with a gun in the house or pocket, and I managed to make it out OK in the heart of Georgia. Your anger at me is unjustified. I say “Yes” to “Fix Our Neighborhoods”. I say “Yes” to “#RaiseTheWage”. I say “Yes” to “Two-Year National Service”. I say “Yes” to “Affordable Healthcare”. I say “Yes” to “Decriminalization of Marijuana”. I say “Yes” to “#BanTheBox”. I say “Yes” to breaking the cycle of violence and poverty. I say “No” to “Stand Your Ground” and the further weaponization of our neighborhoods.

On one common objection against #RaiseTheWage: Actually, I don’t mind higher prices for your services or products. I may not be able to access your services or products most of the time, but when I do, I expect to be paying for the experience of making and presenting the product as is. That includes the experience of those who made it and their need for full compensation for their labor. That includes a wage that they can live on. You don’t have to be Wal-Mart. You don’t have to be China. You can aim for better quality, for your products as well as your labor.

Idea: Unitarian Universalist Sports Ministry

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Many UU congregations with their own edifices possess a room that is used as a lending library for books, DVDs and other materials. For example, the UU Fellowship of Columbus, which I’ve attended variably since last year, has a lending library which shares space with the fellowship’s nursery. 

But something that I don’t see mentioned on any UU church site is a sports/fitness space of any kind. 

I’m helping set up a youth/young adult group for this congregation, and we’re starting out small (as a Facebook group). I don’t mind that we’re starting out like this, given that the church’s demographic is largely within the senior citizen demographic. 

But in addition to the many events that we’ll probably do if we attract enough people, I think a solid way to attract young adults to the UU church is through an appeal to fitness and sport. 

I see that many UU churches sponsor trips to mountain resorts, camp sites and whatnot, but a dedicated space for storing sports goods and playing sports would be interesting to hear about from a UU church. I can imagine people coming to UU churches after school or after work during the week, at least to work off stress without having to join an expensive gym or use a recreation center. 

For the UUs, I think the benefit would be an opportunity to operate a sports/fitness space along UU principles. These spaces would emphasize equality, freedom and solidarity.

Finally, I think that such play spaces would start to expand the UU movement’s principles from the exclusively-“intellectual” stereotype of its members to people who are more interested in physical activity and engagement. I think those who are less interested in “intellectual/academic” pursuits are not being engaged enough, and can just as well benefit from UU principles in their personal experiences and social relations. 

Many UU churches also have a meditation room, so why not a gym?

We dropped him off with his company just now, and we may see him onto the bus going to AIT in Fort Lee. The way I feel about Brandon right now is something I’ve felt since yesterday. His facade of emotional readiness is only shown to fellow service members. He has been tired and sullen all day, a far cry from January, and none of it is his fault. This is a bittersweet day, and I found it hard to look at him; he, Mom and I know the heavy significance of all of this. There was nothing to celebrate, only to mark. I fear for him.

Idea: An Interfaith Radio Network

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From my end, interfaith multireligious broadcasting seems an extremely-distant, small-scale phenomenon.

But interfaith broadcasting is something that I sometimes wish was more of a force in U.S. society. Right now, literacy in the diversity of religions and religious history is important, and we are ill-served in this respect by religious media. This illiteracy manifests in the militant ignorance of not only politicians, and not only political activists, but also religious parishioners themselves.

When politicians and political activists talk of representing “people of faith” (a controversial nomer if I’ve ever seen one), how many people of another faith do they claim to represent in the voicing of perceived public concerns? Do they really know that many people of faiths other than their own? Or are they projecting only parishioners of the same or similar faith as the only “people of faith” for whom they really assert representation?

Are they really aware of the diversity of religions out there? Are those parishioners also “people of faith” in their eyes?

We need literacy, we need exposure, and we need to be challenged in our assumptions about the world. And current major religious media outlets do none of the above.

We need interfaith radio. Multi religious, liberal and with a taste for social justice and comparative analysis, but also willing to expose the religious and their ideological intricacies to each other. Through this, starting with a (hypothetical) interfaith radio network, I hope that more people will be able to assume less and learn more about the world around them.

Right now, however, there are only a few interfaith or intervalues series, many of them merely podcasts:

South Africa/Uganda: LGBT Advocate Won’t Be Deported To Uganda

A few years ago, I was a regular reader of the anonymous “GayUganda” blog, which was written by a man in Kampala who poked at the powers who were conspiring to enact the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, especially the bigoted Christian preacher-moguls such as Martin “eat da poo poo” Ssempa.

Until today, I did not know that GayUganda had come out of hiding in 2012 at an AIDS conference as Dr. Paul Semugoma, an LGBT/AIDS advocate and medical doctor from Kampala.

The only way I found this out was through Box Turtle Bulletin, which posted that Semugoma was just released from detainment at OR Tambo Airport in Johannesburg. His visa was allegedly expired, according to the government, and he had just entered the country across the border with Zimbabwe, only to be arrested yesterday for deportation to his native Uganda.

Today, the Coalition of African Lesbians scored an indefinite work visa on Semugoma’s behalf, and he was greeted fulsomely by LGBT activists as he left the airport.

Cheers to Dr. Paul “GayUganda” Semugoma and the CAL for getting out of a sticky and life-threatening situation!

Can ‘Bear’ Be a Gender?

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Last week, Facebook did something which helped to seriously dilute the gender binary: now, up to 56 options for one’s publicly-identified gender are available on all Facebook profiles. Personally, I’ve never seen so many gender options in one space, and reading WaPo’s rundown of a few samples helped in some ways and frustrated in others (i.e., so many overlapping definitions!). Slate has the full list.

The title of this post is something that I’ve been thinking about since I read the full list. The “bear subculture” tends to include the following:

[…]

a large, hairy man who projects an image of rugged masculinity. Bears are one of many LGBT communities with events, codes, and a culture-specific identity.[…]

Some Bears place importance on presenting a hypermasculine image and may shun interaction with, and even disdain, men who exhibit effeminacy.The Bear concept can function as an identity, an affiliation, and there is ongoing debate in Bear communities about what constitutes a Bear, however a consensus exists that inclusion is an important part of the Bear community.

Reading this is of interest to me because of how it shows a partition in the “masculinities” among those who manifest “masculinity” in the “bear” body type vs. a more heteronormative, differently-manifested masculinity.

To me, a bear in the above sense is different in its manifestation of masculinity, setting oneself apart from a more pervasive masculinity by narrowing its focus upon the “bearish” body type, aesthetic bearish “taste” and bearish thresholds of gender performance (a lot of which derives from “lower-class” cultural practices of “masculine” performance). Bearish gender performance is particularly distinctive because, unlike the majority of the trans/intergender options listed on Facebook, “bear” identity manifests almost squarely from within the masculine span of the gender spectrum.

So different do I think of the bear “subculture” from the more heteronormative ideals of masculinity that I think “bear” should be its own gender identity option.

Yes, one should be able to identify as a “bear” gender on Facebook.