Child safety

First, hotel living SUCKS. But having a new kitchen in a couple more days? AWESOME.

My sincerest condolences to the family of the little boy who fell to his death at Pearson airport. I know you will never ever be the same. May your memories of him eventually bring you comfort. May your faith in God give you strength.

In other safety news, GIANT crib recall. Now, I'm affected by this - my son sleeps in a recalled crib. The same one his brother slept in. This worries me, because I've thought for a while that this crib sucks. The latches on the drop side suck. They're crappy crappy plastic. I can't help but think that Storkcraft products went to hell some time back. Like about the time they started outsourcing to China, I'm thinking. Maybe not. But that's just my feeling.

So now what do I do? Wait for the crappy replacement kit like I did last time there was a recall? Use the crappy replacement kit when it eventually arrives (took 9 weeks last time), even though the US is saying not to, because it's also crappy plastic? Use the crappy kit and then what? Then the side won't go down. Same problem if I buy a new crib. I have a very bad back. I can barely get him into a playpen when he's asleep when I'm having a good day. On a bad day? Forget it. And what are short women to do? My best friend is 4'11''. How she'd ever get a child into a crib without drop sides is beyond me.

It really bothers me that companies don't give a rat's ass about child safety, and give even less of a rat's ass about how Moms are going to get kids into those beds. Cribs are clearly designed by men, which is ridiculous because it is women who do that vast majority of the child rearing when the baby is crib age.

Rambling on about Christianity and the UCC

Holy crows. It's been 2 weeks since I posted. Where does the time go?! Oh right... the kids.

Snap, my 14 year old, is in Vancouver this weekend. She went to a big United Church youth and young adult event. She phoned last night, and told me she was having fun. Said there was one speaker who was REALLY impressive. Here's the write-up on the conference site:

Doin' Time with Peterson Toscano
Peterson Toscano In this presentation you will witness the Best of Peterson Toscano as he presents excerpts from original plays including The Re-Education of George W. Bush, Queer 101--Now I Know my gAy,B,Cs, and Doin' Time in the Homo No Mo Halfway House. Peterson will also share extracts from his newest play, Transfigurations, which looks at the stories and lives of transgender Bible characters.Mixed in with the performance Peterson shares his own story of trying to 'de-gay' himself and the process he took to integrate his sexuality with all parts of his life. You will laugh yourself silly and no doubt walk away challenged and hopeful about life, humanity and yourself.

Peterson Toscano is a theatrical performance activist from Hartford, CT. A Quaker, comic and world traveler, Peterson seeks to bring about truth and reconciliation through storytelling.

Well, colour me impressed. With the church for presenting this, him for sharing it, and Snap for being mature enough to handle it.

I've been thinking about my church and its progressive mandates. Especially in light of the nonsense Dr. Dawg is calling HUAC North and the UCC's recent controversy. Unlike the Catholic Church, the UCC is a bottom up church. The congregations make the policy. But, of course, each congregation is different, as I well know, as I go to two churches regularly (2 weeks to one, then 2 weeks to the other). A single congregation may not be nearly so affirming as to accept Mr. Toscano willingly and welcomingly. Another might feel like home to him. In Church A, a trans person may be openly gawked at. In Church B, treated like family. All in the United Church. Hell, all in one city! One of the churches I go to is full of about 100 old white people. There's one black lady, one Asian man and Iranian man. I am one of 5 regulars under 40 years old. There are two gay couples. Some people still refer to the acceptance of gay people in the church as "the big issue". It's mind-blowing. The other church is even smaller (about 40 regulars), but at least 2/3 are under 50 and there's an active youth program. It's less traditional. I suspect a male body in a dress wouldn't garner so much as a second blink at that church.

I'm not sure entirely what my point is here, except to remind the masses, and myself, that Christianity isn't a big monolith. Every Christian is different. Some are good people, some are not. All are trying. Some, in my opinion, miss the point by MILES! But here's the thing... if you know your gospel, you'll know the story of the blind man in the tree who was hollering for Jesus to help him. The people with Jesus shushed the man and told him not to bother Jesus. Jesus goes over to the man and cures him of his blindness. The point of the story that I was always taught was that no one is too lowly for God, everyone was worthy. But there's another point. Even the people Jesus chose to surround himself with missed the bloody point as often as they got it. Mind you, they didn't have two thousand years to study his teachings! You'd think that some people wouldn't be threatening to withhold food from innocent people in order to get their way. They make me sad.

So that's my rambling for the day. Hopefully I can find a few minutes to get on before 2 weeks goes by again. Especially because I'm having kitchen renos next week and my husband's parental leave will be over in 5 more work days! GAH!

Pumpkin Pi and other FAIL

Why yes. We are geeks. This was totally wasted on our neighbours, who totally suck. Not only because they don't do the Halloween thing - seriously, we had 3 kids, and we live on the busiest street in our little city. No, our neighbours suck, because they lined the street to watch the stupid Olimpdick torch relay go past. Not cool. I admit, I was seriously angry as it went past. After all, they cut massive amounts of services, just to throw this stupid sporting event. One service in particular affected my family. The EIBI program that my son was on the waitlist for is done. His best shot, gone. I thought I was over it, but no, as that ridiculous display of bullshit went past my house, I was livid. I was in tears. And I wanted nothing more than to go out there and holler obscenities at them all. And yes, I thought of going out there and protesting, but I didn't. And you know why? Because as a parent of two autistic kids and an infant, I couldn't find 20 free minutes to make a freaking sign. Blog posts I can manage because I can leave them and come back. If I left the markers and paper, I'd come back to a HUGE mess. Otherwise, I'd have been out there, pissing off the neighbours. And I wouldn't care, because if they can go out and line the streets to watch an oversized joint go by, they can line the streets to scream about funding cuts. But they don't. And they never will. That's Canada.

Catholicism and pedophilia

Loaded subject, right. Totally.

So in the news recently is Bishop Lahey, a bishop from Nova Scotia, who has been charged with owning child porn. Disgusting. (Though, honestly, with all the priests who are actually raping children, the "poor guy" has to be shaking his head).

As soon as the subject comes up, someone always brings up the "Well, if they let priests get married, this wouldn't happen as much" canard. Excuse me while I call bullshit. For several reasons: 1) Married men are abusers too. Many a father and stepfather has abused his kids. 2) Celibacy doesn't cause pedophilia. There are plenty of celibate people who don't fuck kids or collect child porn. If suddenly you couldn't have sex again - without breaking some self-inflicted ban on it, I might add, would you decide that children were a good alternative that didn't somehow violate your vow? No? I thought not.

All/most child abusers were abused as children - not to be confused with 'all/most people who are abused as children will become abusers', I might add. If the church wants to stop the child abuse, they will STOP THE CHILD ABUSE. Find out a priest is abusing a kid? Call the cops. If you're insistent on covering it up, and clearly the church is, then take the priest out of the parish and put him somewhere where there are no kids. Break the cycle! Because right now, the church is known to be a safe haven for pedophiles. There are men who become priests simply because it gives them access to children. There are men who become priests because priests abused them and it's what they know to do.

Stop the insanity. Stop the priests from hurting kids. Stop all men from hurting kids, and within a generation or two, it won't happen any more. Or at least not nearly as much.

H1N1 Fun

Well, my household is down with H1N1. I got it first, 9 days ago now, and I would say I could probably go back to work tomorrow, but because I work around a lot of elderly people, I'll give it another few days before I do. What a miserable bloody flu that was. The only one I've had that was worse was the Beijing flu that went around in 1992. That one laid me up for 6 weeks because I got pneumonia in both lungs and a sinus infection from HELL.

So, I've been looking after sick kids. Snap is okay, Crackle is grumpy, threw up once, isn't sleeping worth a damn, and has had a fever off and on, but is otherwise okay. And Pop? Oh my poor little Pop. He's 7 months old and just can't understand why he feels like crap. His one eye is goopy and his cry is so crackly and pathetic. Fortunately, he's the happiest baby on the planet, so it only really gets him upset when he's tired. Otherwise, he's pretty content.

And all that leads to, I've not been following the news or blogs much. I read some of my favourites, like Broadsides (though if they don't fix their damn code, I'm going to quit!), Dammit Janet, Canadian Cynic (even though he insists that it's okay to call specific women 'cunts', I can deal) Unrepentant Old Hippie and Dawg's Blawg pretty much without fail, but other than that, meh.

So what hit me in the news this week was how my demographic, that is, healthy, young women, is being hit hard by H1N1, and they can't figure out why. Let me provide my hypothesis: BECAUSE WE'RE OVERWORKED! We work too much and don't get enough sleep. Is it any wonder we're hit harder than any other group? Seems like a duh moment to me.

Anyway, my husband has Crackle out with him and Pop is sleeping, so now that I've had a little break and cleaned up the living room, I'm going to try to have a nap. What do you think the odds are? 300:1 against? Yeah, that's about right.

What the flaming hell?

Theoren Fleury gets my applause today. It's damned hard to come out as a survivor of sexual abuse. It's even harder when the damned media keeps calling it a "confession". WTF? He has nothing to confess - he's the victim (I suppose it's nice to know they don't limit their victim-blaming to female victims.) And yes, it would have been nice if he'd have done this before, when Kennedy needed the support, but damn it to hell, he's a victim, he can tell the world when he's ready and not before.

Here's a giant FUCK YOU to the assholes out there who are giving him shit for (a) talking about it; (b) talking about it now instead of years ago.

Radical hospitality

Well, I'm furious. Livid. Incensed. Absofuckinglutely ready to go on a rampage. Fortunately, I am out of the situation in which I could actually rampage.

There's a sickly looking homeless couple who comes by our place about once a week and collects our empties. While they're here, they look through to see if anyone else has left any recycling out. Our strata is trying to get rid of them. The old busybody who lives in the unit three doors down went out and told them to bugger off. They told him that I said they could come to my place to get my empties. I confirmed this with the old busybody who told me "But you don't want those kinds of people coming around here". Don't EVER tell me what I want or don't want. Ever. I said that I would ask them not to go through any one else's recycling, but that they were welcome to come to my place for mine. If he or anyone else caught them going anywhere else, fine, ask them to leave. But they are welcome at my house any time.

I will not compromise on this unless they start doing damage. As it stands right now, they walk around looking for recycling. They are poor; they are sick; they are homeless. What kind of Christian would I be if I sent them away when I'm in a position to help?

So help me GOD, I will NOT compromise my ethics just because some old asshole doesn't like the looks of "those people".

Trans-phobia and religion

In an article that actually refers to the transman by the right pronouns (for a nice change), we learn that a Catholic school board in Edmonton fired a man for letting them know he was changing his declared gender.

The Catholic school board is publicly funded, so they shouldn't be able to fire a teacher for being trans. However, if they're anything like the Regina Separate school system, they have a "conscience clause" in their contracts that allows them to fire an employee for behaving in a way that isn't consistent with the Catholic faith. So a legal challenge may fail.

On the religious issue, it violates the Catholic faith to live as a gender that doesn't match one's sex organs. (Men in dresses telling others not to cross-dress, I know). It comes down to Deuteronomy 22:5(King James Version) The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman's garment: for all that do so [are] abomination unto the LORD thy God.

So, the first thing to look at when studying the Bible is the historical context. Why was this a rule in that day? Was it that God hates queers? No, not so much. Was it that the writer of Deuteronomy hated queers? Again, probably not (though he probably wasn't as accepting of it as God). So what gives? One theory is that it had to do with pagan rites in which the worshippers dressed as the opposite sex. So it is possible that the rule had to do with idolatry and worship of pagan gods, which of course, would have been an abomination. Another theory is that dressing as members of the opposite sex would be an issue with regard to the property laws of the day. Because property was very much tied into the Jewish religion, and women and men had different rights, dressing as a member of the opposite sex would be a major problem.

And then there's that word abomination. It doesn't mean what most people think. I mean, today, child molesters are abominations, right? But keep looking at Deuteronomy, and you'll see it's used 16 times (KJV), most often in terms of idolatry. And of course, there's the oft-quoted Leviticus 11:12 Whatsoever hath no fins nor scales in the waters, that shall be an abomination unto you. So, God hates shrimp, right? Right? Now, sure, it says that the water creatures shall be an abomination unto you, not unto God. But that doesn't mean that I'm supposed to go out and make all the non-scaled, non-finned water creatures into fish, or destroy them, now does it? No, it doesn't. It simply means that I shouldn't eat them.

The Jewish people who still keep kosher don't require, or wish to require, anyone who is not Jewish to keep kosher, even thought the scripture says non-kosher food is an abomination before God. So if the bible says that queerfolk are an abomination before God, it says NOTHING of you. It doesn't say you must also shun them. It says God will. You are not God. Get over it.

I do not take the Bible literally. It is impossible to live biblically, ethically, and legally. Impossible. And stupid. People who claim to view the Bible as literal truth are simply ignorant of what is actually in there, and just listen to the shit their pastors spew. Harsh, I know, when I'm a self-declared tolerant person, but I do not, and will not tolerate hate. And that is what those people teach. There is nothing more against the spirit of Jesus's teachings than hatred and intolerance.

For me, the Bible is part historical document, part transcribed oral tradition, part divinely-inspired writing. I try to live in a way that I think would make the Jesus figure happy. Beyond that, I'm just guessing, hoping, and believing. And I don't for second believe that Jesus would want someone to lose his job, his livelihood and his dignity because his gender didn't match his sex.