Ephilei

Heterosexist Hypocrisy

2009-03-06T15:04:00.000-06:00

A new standard for hypocrisy is being set this week. In the past couple decades, homosexuality has reached new highs of acceptance in the West. For every step pro-gay people, anti-gay people also take a progressive step. First gays were spawns of Satan. Then they moved up to the status of still evil humans. In CA in the 70s during a battle to allow gays to not be automatically fired, the conservatives said gay teachers were recruiting kids to be gay. Now the fad (in most places) is that gays are victims of bad parenting and are morally obligated to change their orientation. The most progressive anti-gays are saying gays and their allies are committing a minor sin, mainly an error in judgment. Until now, I believed they were honestly changing their beliefs, not just their rhetoric.

But first some context. In the battle over gay marriage in CA last fall, many religious leaders, notably LDS, said they did not object to the rights given by civil unions (which was not under debate and the majority supported). "The Church does not object to rights for same-sex couples regarding hospitalization and medical care, fair housing and employment rights, or probate rights."(source) Sounds good, right?However, here in IL without civil unions, they said the civil union bill was immoral and personally threatening. The Vatican, which is against capital punishment, said an exception should be made for killing gays. No joke.

This week, Exodus, the very people who say they love the sinner, traveled to Uganda, are supported the current law that criminalizes gays, not for "sin" behavior but merely for being atttracted to the same sex. Even celibate, gay Catholics there are threatened. The punishment? Replace the current prison sentence and send them to Exodus for therapy where Exodus will rake in the bucks. Become straight or go to prison.

What scares me most is this isn't old school backwardness. This is the same people who counseled a friend of mine. The same that hosted a conference for my pastor. What horror lies in the recession of hearts.

The Sin of Marriage

2009-03-01T10:58:00.000-06:00

The hypocrisy of Christians and marriage has bothered me for years. Besides ignoring what the Bible clears says on divorce, they likewise ignore 1 Cor 7.

8 Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I am.
9 But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.

... anyone who reads and understands the Bible properly* must know that the Church (and all Christian leaders) should, like St. Paul, be teaching that the highest calling for all Christians is to celibacy, while marriage, even though a sacremant as well as a civil right, should be seen only as the last resort for those Christians whose libidos are such that they cannot remain celibate. trans-cendence.blogspot.com

I would replace "properly" with "literally." Stripping the passage from her context, we have only a harsh command against marriage, same-sex or heterosexual, as a last resort. Marriage is only for the weak Christians. I won't even touch Paul's anti-sex feelings! Yet Christians also strip the "gay" and "transgender" verses from their contexts believing that if an act itself is spoken against, Scripture doesn't care who or what motivation is involved.

The Bible contains 6 admonishments to homosexuals and 362 admonishments to heterosexuals. That doesn’t mean that God doesn’t love heterosexuals. It’s just that they need more supervision. - Unknown

TransChristians Update

2009-03-01T09:22:00.003-06:00

New pages:

Walt Heyer
Marissa Dainton
Response to Whitehead's Free Endorsement

I've been busy creating another website, http://genderadvocates.org, for Illinois Gender Advocates. Proof that I can build a "real" website, if I want.

TransChristians.org updates

2009-02-17T15:41:00.000-06:00

I've been updating a lot, but hadn't created an announcement. The main deal is the Intersex section which applies the existence of intersex people on philosophy about sex. In an altnerate form, I wrote up a whole chapter about it.

Also,Jerry Leach contacted me with a take down notice for his own articles. Seems he doesn't want the public knowing anything about him. I can't say I'm surprised as reading his old site exposed a lot of dirt.

I wrote up my own transgender biography in Coming Up Queer.

It's Official: Evolution Is Christian

2009-02-13T09:52:00.001-06:00

And Intelligent Design is a "cultural" phenomenon. The Vatican this week stated this week that evolution is compatible with Christianity and her Scriptures. Apparently Aquinas even believed in micro-evolution of related species a thousand years back. Since more than half of Christians worldwide are Roman Catholic, most Christians are technically evolutionists. Unfortunately, most Catholics are more Protestant in their sense of authority.

Update:
Pew has a handy study (US only) and Catholics already lead the herd. Nice to see my Orthodox brethren just behind them!

XGW Guest Post

2009-02-11T22:41:00.001-06:00

Hmm, what a nice post. I should get in touch with that author.

Ex-Gay Watch: Little Boy Lost

Understanding Heterosexist Marriage Values

2009-02-06T18:46:00.003-06:00

Same-sex marriage is being debated in New Hampshire this session.

Republican state Rep. Daniel Itse said gay marriage would cause out-of-wedlock births to rise in New Hampshire, adding that the debate itself and civil unions have already cheapened marriage.

“Young people now see no need to get married,” Itse said. “It just doesn’t mean anything anymore.”

I'm not defending his argument, but here's where I think he is coming from:

As a conservative, I don't like change. Change in general is a confession that we got it wrong the first time. Therefore our idea of marriage was wrong because it was incomplete. We can no longer look at marriage as a perfect institution (something controlled only by divine, supernatural, or untouchable powers) but as an institution controlled by us regular humans. Further, for generations we've been adding value into marriage. Every heterosexual wedding we celebrated and built it up. If marriage changes, some of that value will transfer but some will not.

Again, not to defend his point of view but this is my attempt to understand it. I also think he's using his words as a euphemism for "letting in those dirty fagots will soil the exclusivity of our club" but I won't go there. Being pro same-sex marriage, I have a response to each idea.

For the first, consider that marriage is a human institution. As a Christian I believe it is also divine (as most things in Christianity blend divinity and humanity together) but even my cursory knowledge of anthropology clearly teaches me that marriages are dictated by the culture that performs them. Given that fact, better to embrace marriage's human element than pretend it does not exist.

For the second, I think altering our cultural definition of marriage will subtract some value. But combine it with the fact that allowing another 9 million americans to marry will add to our value of marriage. When the math is done, we end up ahead. Besides, in a few generations we'll get that value back anyway.

Post a Secret

2009-01-26T16:27:00.002-06:00

Because I'm a professional IT person, electronic stores give me comfort because I can ask stupid questions without embarrassment.

Jesus Makeover

2009-01-24T18:18:00.002-06:00

This video demonstrates what I have noticed for some time - the femininty of all our current depictions of Jesus. Even though Christians aren't aware of it, our collective unconscious tells us that the gender of Jesus, as the one we are all women and men called to emulate, must be androgynous. That androgyny is reflected in our art. Remove the beard, and suddenly Jesus looks very feminine.

The video also points out how much difference a beard makes. As transmen know, facial hair overrides any amount of other feminine appearance or behavior. Our minds are inclined to assign manhood much stronger than womanhood. We are basically looking for an excuse to believe someone is a man. A mathematical equivalent would be that for every gender cue we assign a number and the total of cues assign gender. Man is, say, 10 and woman is -10 and we start at zero. The genders are equal though as every man cue is worth 5 and women cues are worth only -1. Reaching womanhood requires perfection; reaching manhood requires only one or two cues. That's why it's so much easier for transmen to pass than transwomen.

Al Sharpton and Righteous Indignation

2009-01-16T13:37:00.002-06:00

Proof that you don't need to be pro-gay to be pissed with heterosexist politics.

“It amazes me when I looked at California and saw churches that had nothing to say about police brutality, nothing to say when a young black boy was shot while he was wearing police handcuffs, nothing to say when the they overturned affirmative action, nothing to say when people were being delegated into poverty, yet they were organizing and mobilizing to stop consenting adults from choosing their life partners,” Sharpton told a packed audience on Jan. 11.

“There is something immoral and sick about using all of that power to not end brutality and poverty, but to break into people’s bedrooms and claim that God sent you,” Sharpton added.

...

“I am tired of seeing ministers who will preach homophobia by day, and then after they’re preaching, when the lights are off they go cruising for trade,” Sharpton said, his words generating a roar of response from the crowd.

...

“We know you’re not preaching the Bible, because if you were preaching the Bible we would have heard from you,” Sharpton said. “We would have heard from you when people were starving in California, when they deregulated the economy and crashed Wall Street you had nothing to say. When [alleged Ponzi schemer Bernie] Madoff made off with the money, you had nothing to say. When Bush took us to war chasing weapons of mass destruction that weren’t there you had nothing to say. … But all of a sudden when Proposi

http://www.sovo.com/thelatest/thelatest.cfm?blog_id=23441

Hat tip, Box Turtle.

English vs Eskimo-Aleut

2008-12-18T15:16:00.002-06:00

English has more words for snow than the Inuits. Who knew?

I scored as good with Islam+Paganism (6/7) as JudeoChristianity (6/7).

Demonstration of evolution

2008-12-11T12:29:00.003-06:00

This is fascinating.

And a good demonstration of how a system can input random data and output ordered data.

Vatican Supports Capital Punishment for Gays

2008-12-03T11:41:00.005-06:00

From Box Turtle,

— as part of a what it sees as a consistent “pro-life” ethic — opposes the death penalty. But the Vatican’s representative in the United Nations is opposing a measure calling on governments around the world to decriminalize homosexuality — including countries which impose the death penalty on gays:

Archbishop Celestino Migliore said the Vatican opposed the resolution because it would “add new categories of those protected from discrimination” and could lead to reverse discrimination against traditional heterosexual marriage.

“If adopted, they would create new and implacable discriminations,” Migliore said. “For example, states which do not recognize same-sex unions as ‘matrimony’ will be pilloried and made an object of pressure,” Migliore said.

The proposed measure does nothing to extend rights to anyone — unless you consider the elimination of the death penalty, imprisonment or fines for homosexuality a special right. Because that’s all the proposed resolution does: it only calls for decriminalization.

Actions like this make me realize how atrocities like the Holocaust and Inquisition came about. When you let the ends justify the means and your ethics contradict logic and simple human compassion there's no telling where you'll turn up. You would think a group with so much emphasis on the suffering of Jesus would realize that if faced with receiving pain or inflicting pain, (which in this case is a straw argument anyway) the Christian response is to receive it with open arms. I have long wondered why Jesus was not angered by greed or adultery or non-believers but whenever Jesus encountered a hypocrite, hellish fury arose. I might be beginning to understand.

Most countries that criminalize homosexuality with death lump transexuality together with it so I view this as an attack against my transexual brothers and sisters as well. I can't be angry though. I'm too shocked for anger. Instead I'm devastated that in the 21st century the world's most powerful religious leader would rather kill queer people rather than "be pressured" to let us marry.

Fraudulent and Invisible

2008-11-17T12:44:00.002-06:00

Irony.

Obama on His Faith

2008-10-23T10:20:00.003-05:00

Not bad. He's no theologian, but it's not bad.

My father, who returned to Kenya when I was just two, was born Muslim but as an adult became an atheist. My mother, whose parents were non-practicing Baptists and Methodists, was probably one of the most spiritual and kindest people I've ever known, but grew up with a healthy skepticism of organized religion herself. As a consequence, so did I.

It wasn't until after college, when I went to Chicago to work as a community organizer for a group of Christian churches, that I confronted my own spiritual dilemma.

I was working with churches, and the Christians who I worked with recognized themselves in me. They saw that I knew their Book and that I shared their values and sang their songs. But they sensed that a part of me that remained removed, detached, that I was an observer in their midst.

And in time, I came to realize that something was missing as well -- that without a vessel for my beliefs, without a commitment to a particular community of faith, at some level I would always remain apart, and alone.

And if it weren't for the particular attributes of the historically black church, I may have accepted this fate. But as the months passed in Chicago, I found myself drawn - not just to work with the church, but to be in the church.

For one thing, I believed and still believe in the power of the African-American religious tradition to spur social change, a power made real by some of the leaders here today. Because of its past, the black church understands in an intimate way the Biblical call to feed the hungry and cloth the naked and challenge powers and principalities. And in its historical struggles for freedom and the rights of man, I was able to see faith as more than just a comfort to the weary or a hedge against death, but rather as an active, palpable agent in the world. As a source of hope.

And perhaps it was out of this intimate knowledge of hardship -- the grounding of faith in struggle -- that the church offered me a second insight, one that I think is important to emphasize today.

Faith doesn't mean that you don't have doubts.

You need to come to church in the first place precisely because you are first of this world, not apart from it. You need to embrace Christ precisely because you have sins to wash away - because you are human and need an ally in this difficult journey.

It was because of these newfound understandings that I was finally able to walk down the aisle of Trinity United Church of Christ on 95th Street in the Southside of Chicago one day and affirm my Christian faith. It came about as a choice, and not an epiphany. I didn't fall out in church. The questions I had didn't magically disappear. But kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side, I felt that I heard God's spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truth.

...

And even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools? Would we go with James Dobson's, or Al Sharpton's? Which passages of Scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is ok and that eating shellfish is abomination? How about Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount - a passage that is so radical that it's doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application? So before we get carried away, let's read our bibles. Folks haven't been reading their bibles.

This brings me to my second point. Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason. I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons, but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God's will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.

Now this is going to be difficult for some who believe in the inerrancy of the Bible, as many evangelicals do. But in a pluralistic democracy, we have no choice. Politics depends on our ability to persuade each other of common aims based on a common reality. It involves the compromise, the art of what's possible. At some fundamental level, religion does not allow for compromise. It's the art of the impossible. If God has spoken, then followers are expected to live up to God's edicts, regardless of the consequences. To base one's life on such uncompromising commitments may be sublime, but to base our policy making on such commitments would be a dangerous thing.

Source.

Bias & The Election

2008-10-22T11:13:00.004-05:00

I make a point of avoiding politics more or less and I make a stronger point of knowing about our personal biases. Project Implicit is one of the great tools for doing that. It simply measures what feeling, positive or negative, you automatically assign to a person or idea. Possible scores are "slight," "moderate," "strong," or "no preference". What's remarkable is that it completely bypasses what you actually think about the issue. I.e, you might think you're not racist at all but it reveals accurately your subconscious. I recommend this to anyone with ten minutes to spare. It just might change your life.

They recently added a test to score feelings about Obama and McCain combined with race which I took. I scored "no preference" for black and white preference and a slight preference for Obama. I'm surprised by both results. Several years ago I took a test exclusively for race and scored "moderate preference" for whites over blacks so I'm surprised to have changed so far in so little time. I'm sure it was accurate the first time because I took it two or three times trying to get a improve my score and failing and other people have the same experiences. I'm chaulking my improvement up to several things:

Consciously trying to associate blacks with positivity
Searching and realizing that they images I'm surrounded with are anti-black and pro-white without justification
Living in Chicago versus Greenville
Working at a job with more blacks than whites
Supporting a candidate who is black and partly doing so because he's black

Having taken the race test earlier and done a lot of soul searching regarding it, I'm aware that I am racist against blacks. Or perhaps, now, that I was racist, though I'm reluctant to congratulate myself just yet. For every person you know you form an opinion of them with various dimensions always including a general positive-negative dimension. Don't take this too literally; it's not really so bizarre but I can't think of a more realistic way to phrase the idea. I supposed that subconsciously my bias was bringing every black person I knew down a notch on that dimension and this disturbed me intensely. So I started to consciously and manually move people on that scale up a notch; sometimes this was as blatant as saying to myself, "So and so is probably a little better than I'm give credit for." Jesus would might do this for every person, but I'm going one step at a time.

With most people, this is a brief and tiny process if even conscious but for political candidates up for election every moment with them is constantly re-evaluating my opinion of them. For Obama, I might have twenty reasons to like him and race is one. Well, technically two because I think being non-white is a tangible asset to the office in regards to foreign opinion and the hope to every colored citizen that the Oval Office is not a glass ceiling. I do this, in fact, for McCain too because I'm fairly sure, though with no test, that I harbor a bias against Republicans because of the people I'm around. In fact, he gets two points because it's likely a much stronger bias than race.

I was a little surprised to have only a slight preference toward Obama and not a moderate preference. I simply cannot vote for McCain in good conscience and that, to me, says more than a slight preference.

MPAA Ratings

2008-10-21T13:35:00.003-05:00

I'm quite disappointed to see my blog only earned a PG rating. Clearly, poor algorithms. What good is writing if I can't be controversial?

It reminds me of Mia Vie En Rose, a fantastic film about a transgender seven year old. It was rated R for language, a grand total of two swear words! The trans people I watched it with agreed it could only be because of the issues it raises.

Jonathan Baker-Johnson

2008-10-20T21:11:00.008-05:00

O search engines: Why can't you find me? Maybe this will help.

Update: I had realized that googling my legal name hardly reflects anything about me because I never use that name online. This post is already the first hit now. If only I used Wordpress, I would never have had the problem. Googling ephilei is more effective anyway.

Orthodox Theology and My Theology

2008-10-04T00:42:00.001-05:00

Things I agree with and like about Orthodox that are not present in much or all of Protestantism. Interestingly, with the exception of Mary's virginity, I believed all these things before realizing that the Orthodox believed them. I'm not including anything on worship because I want to limit this to just theology. Worship is much less uniform in Protestantism anyway.

Rejection of the penal substitution theory of the Atonement. I'm still in the process of understanding their view of the Atonement and I love everything I've encountered so far.
Their understanding of symbols as something that is real (or as communicating the real so to speak) versus something only metaphorical.
Transubstantiation. The the Eucharist is the Christ's blood and body. Goes back to symbols.
Baptism as sacrament and remission of sin. Going back to symbols again.
Fasting.
Perpetual virginity of Mary.
Salvation comes through both faith and actions.
Openness to salvation outside the Church.
Authority of tradition.
Understanding of original sin.
Theosis.
Rejection of the perseverance of the saints, total depravity (depending on how you understand it), unconditional election, and irresistible grace
Salvation as process. No point of conversion or justification.
Near ignorance of justification.

Then there are a couple beliefs I don't affirm, but I recognize I may change my stance in the future.

Understanding of the afterlife. That heaven is a place we (may) go to immediately when we die.
The intercession of the saints and Mary. Simply because of the above aspect. If it turns out the saints are conscious now, I would request their prayers.
The canon. I am leaning heavily Orthodox on this at the moment.

And a few things I disagree with and I expect to always disagree with.

Their authority of tradition. Yes, I both like and dislike this.
The degree of the Church's authority.
Gender complementarianism. Yields rejection of female ordination and same-sex marriage. It doesn't demand but does imply a negative stand on transgenderism.

You'll notice I'm far closer to Orthodox thought that Protestant, even if I don't change any more of my beliefs. If I compared Orthodoxy with Roman Catholicism I'd have a similar imbalance.

Back to the Future

2008-08-19T15:15:00.003-05:00

I read this fun magazine from 1979 predicting what the future would be like in 2000. I was impressed that they managed to predict anything correctly, albeit our fish farming doesn't utilize dolphin, the "sheepdog of the sea."

Instant voting of 100 million votes in an hour to determine how a TV show progresses (American Idol)
World population of 6 billion
Most mail will be electronic
Hip replacements
Common satellite TV
Millions of workers telecommuting
A portable device giving directions
TV recording
Genetically engineered crops

Link: http://www.pointlessmuseum.com/museum/usbornebookofthefuture001.php

Sonia

2008-08-17T12:42:00.001-05:00

This is Sonia. She's resting after earning 50 rupees begging, the safest occupation for trans people in Mumbai.

My Calendar

2008-08-14T19:24:00.002-05:00

Not that I do many scheduled activities or always post them, but here's my calendar. You can bookmark the link: http://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=ephilei%40gmail.com&ctz=America/Chicago

Clownfish Deal Blow to Conservatives

2008-07-13T02:58:00.009-05:00

Despite their cute and seemingly innocent exterior, clownfish are dealing a major blow as they reveal themselves as the most perverted of God's, now Satan's, creation. Transexuality, homosexuality, pedophilia - it's the norm in a clownfish household.

Defying both Natural Law and the Word of God, clownfish are seeking and completing sex changes at a staggering rate exceeding 50%. Clownfish, as God's punishment for their perversion, are exclusively born male. Not getting God's genocidal hint, individual males form "harems" of two reproductive and several pre-pubescent fish. The larger of the post-pubescent males changes sex into a female who commits an abomination with ~~her~~ his "partner." Quite a few abominations as "she" lays hundreds or thousands of eggs. If the sex obsessed transexual "female" dies, the father will continue her perverted legacy by having a sex change too. Then, proving that transexuals are pedophiles too, one of the young harem boys "coincidentally" happens to become old enough for sex at the same time the females dies. As these freaks raise their children, the circle of immorality continues.

This raises some questions about Pixar's corruption of America's youth in the blockbuster Finding Nemo.

Nemo's mother was a male to female transexual.
Since Marlin had sex with his "wife," he was gay because he was having sex with someone born male
Marlin is a chaser.
Presumably, Nemo won't become a transexual because his little fin will keep him from growing larger than their clownfish peers. But will likely have sex with one later in lfe.
Marlin is eligible to either find another transexual wife or change sex himself and marrying a husband.

Rumor is the Republican Party is drafting a Constitutional amendment as we speak that will remove the custody of clownchildren to foster homes where they can be adopted by cisgender fish as well as a gag order against worms, snails, and some species of frogs.

10 Ecelectic Facts in My Life

2008-07-02T21:28:00.002-05:00

I'm officially glad summer's here this week but I was disappointed this evening to see the days are already noticeably shorter.

Changing bike tubes make me feel inadequate.

On a Mac you can make a PDF your wallpaper without any steps. It came in handy.

Gonzo is neither male nor female but a "whatever" (as shown in Gonzo's choice of bathrooms) now becoming my favorite muppet behind Statler and Waldorf.

I miss Erin Watson.

The advantage of bad memory is that when you experience old media again after some years, you get all the surprises and fascination you had experiencing it originally.

I now believe Mary is a perpetual virgin. My belief is entirely based on community, tradition, and myth and not at all on Scripture, Creation, or what I grew up and surprisingly little Reason. All of that is evolution.

Autistic people can be fascinating.

Echoing ancient sentiment of their ancestors, Columbia's court made a decision officially declaring that trans people "a source of invaluable social wealth" and "It is our duty, to listen to these people, to learn to live with them and to learn from them." I concur.

I love the old Batman cartoons. I'm looking forward to the new film, but the character of The Joker in the cartoons will be difficult to match.

Integrations

2008-06-19T18:56:00.003-05:00

I've been updating Firefox add-ons that I had to disband during the beta. Of course I'd never remember all the add-ons and Greasemonkey scripts I liked, so a while ago I made a general guide for just this kind of situation. I was pleasantly surprised to see how many things have become unnecessary as Fx has improved: AutoLogin script, change email links to a webmail client, Google suggest, and hiding gmail spam numbers (actually a Gmail improvement), and a Growl-Firefox application. Foxmarks should be replaced by Mozilla Weave eventually and the Activities add-on as the Web evolves to catch up with Firefox's microformats.

I also noticed how many Mac OS X applications I don't need anymore because OS X has created better replacements in the latest version: Chicken of the VNC (for screen sharing), Boot Camp, Monolingual (decreases OS X's footprint), X11 (a Unix framework), Uno (changes window appearances), and a virtual desktop app. The next Quicktime honestly looks like it may decrease my reliance on all the media codecs I have, support for more compression formats, and exposure to their hibernation support which Apple hides for some reason.