Bringing Down the House

The first opera I ever saw was Camille Saint-Saëns' Samson et Dalila. I was 16 and just starting to take voice lessons, with no interest or view at all to taking on opera as a potential career. I just thought maybe I should go hear what "real" singing sounded like, and figured this one was safe because even though I didn't speak French (and this was pre-supertitles), I knew the basic story.

I was transfixed.

The real Samson saga, however, as told in the book of Judges, is pretty appalling. Samson strikes me as a thoroughly unlikeable person. Maybe it's because he took three hundred foxes, tied them two-by-two, tail-to-tail, set them on fire and sent them running through the Philistines' crops. (15:4-6) That, and he was a philandering mass-murderer.

For no apparent reason the other day I found myself thinking about him.

We all know how his story ends; seduced and betrayed by the Philistine woman Delilah, Samson is captured, blinded, shorn of his hair (the secret source of his strength) and chained up between two columns in the pagan temple to be mocked and abused by his captors. After a final prayer, he regains his strength, pushes against the pillars, collapsing the temple on himself and the Philistines.

It is awfully hard to reconcile ugly stories like this with the God who sent us Jesus who taught us to love our enemies, pray for those who persecute us, turn the other cheek, etc. What to make of this passage? Does God sometimes show His love and righteousness by empowering people to a mass-murder/suicide?

Then that still, small voice asked me to step back a pace from the details of this story and see it in more symbolic terms. Samson at this point is a deeply troubled, broken, penitent person. Despite his many failings, it remains that he himself has been betrayed by someone he trusted, tortured and humiliated. Robbed of his strength (literally), he turns to God. Now we may not like much what happens next in the story; it certainly fills me with discomfort. But what I began to understand in my meditation was that Samson didn't just casually lean against the columns and with a gentle nudge knock them over, though that might have been the case in his earlier days. No, in great pain, using every last fiber of his strength, both mental and physical, battling his own certain fear of ugly, imminent death and straining against his limitations, he did the unthinkable: with his bare hands he brought down a building.

The lesson, I think, is not that God empowers us in our desperation to commit awful crimes as long as the intended victims are judged even less worthy than ourselves. I think what we are to take away here is that when we are at our absolute nadir of weakness, God gives us the strength that is necessary, not so that things are easy, but merely so they are possible.

I Thought I'd Seen Everything

You know, I feel like more than 13 years of living in Manhattan allows me to be pretty jaded about quite a lot of stuff.

Nonetheless, when I was strolling around downtown Portland this morning and witnessed a man with his pants down around his ankles humping a trashcan, I have to say I was surprised.

She Thought Africa Was a Country

FOX News doesn't just throw Sarah Palin under the bus, they tie her to the bumper and hit the gas.

CA Prop 8 to Face Court Challenge

Opponents of Proposition 8 in California have refused to concede the election, citing the approximately 4 million absentee ballots that have yet to be counted. That's probably a long shot, but apparently we have another ace up our sleeve.

Originally I believed there would be no recourse in the courts; after all, Proposition 8 amends the state constitution, which the state supreme court must uphold and enforce. However, an emergency appeal was filed today by Lambda Legal, the ACLU and the National Center for Lesbian Rights urging the invalidation of Proposition 8.

Here's the argument: in May, the court cited numerous precedents and reiterated that marriage is a fundamental right. Proposition 8 improperly eliminates access to a fundamental right by targeting a specific group. To put that another way, it's as if California voters had passed an amendment to deny the right of free speech only to women, or the right to vote to non-whites. According to the brief filed today, "any measure that would change the underlying principles of the constitution must first be approved by the legislature before being submitted to the voters. That didn’t happen with Proposition 8, and that’s why it’s invalid."

There's even a precedent for this. In 1990, the state supreme court reversed an initiative that "improperly attempted to strip California’s courts of their role as independent interpreters of the state’s constitution. "

The state legislature voted twice to legalize same-sex marriage in the state, and the supreme court ruled 4-3* back in May in favor of marriage. Proposition 8 may yet fall.

The bigots will scream bloody judicial activism, but we have to win this. Proposition 8 is a manifest injustice. Under the banner of righteousness, these people campaigned on fear and deception to villainize and victimize thousands of their fellow citizens. Prop 8 protects nothing -- least of all children or the free expression of religion -- and serves only to deny thousands of Americans their fundamental rights for the sake of outright prejudice.

In yet more reassuring news, the California Attorney General issued a statement today that the 18,000 same-sex marriages that have already taken place will continue to be honored.

This is not over!

* In the original version of this post, I inadvertently wrote that the supreme court ruled "unanimously" in favor of marriage; I was thinking of New Jersey's Lewis v. Harris. In the California case, three justices concurred and dissented in part.

Confession (2)

I am freakin' NERVOUS!!!!!!!!!

Practical Uses for Pornography

Over the weekend I was in the town of Monmouth, Oregon to lead another LGBT faith outreach workshop centered around the documentary For the Bible Tells Me So. Just to put this in context, the giant billboard alongside Highway 99W just north of town proclaims in bold red letters, "POLK COUNTY IS PALIN COUNTRY." (In 2004, Polk went for Bush by 12 points.)

After the screening, we broke up into small groups for discussion. I talked about the challenges of trying to conceal my sexuality as a teenager from a born-again father. "That must have been very difficult for you," said a concerned, sympathetic older woman. Then I recalled one of my more brilliant strategies.

"Yeah. I used to hide pictures of naked women in my bedroom for my dad to find, to throw him off the trail."

Where Have I Heard That Before?

From the New York Daily News:

"Rep. Pete King (R-N.Y.) said the Arizona senator wasn't talking about "real New Yorkers."

"He's talking about Park Ave. and the upper West Side, which is inhabited by the liberal socialites and the media types who, yeah, are certainly elitists," King said.

As it happens, the U.S. zip code that's given the most to the McCain campaign - $909,128 - is Manhattan's 10021, which includes a swath of Park Ave. "

* * * * *

Also this today from James Carville: "The reason Republicans are happy about Joe the Plumber is they're glad they got somebody hanging around a toilet other than Larry Craig."

Might Have to Wait Until Next Week to Retire

The Year-to-Date Rate of Return on my 401(k) is now -41.4%.

Who Told You You're Allowed to Rain on My Cookie Parade?

Damn this economy!!!!!

While driving to work this morning, I heard on NPR that Mother's Cookies filed for bankruptcy and ceased operations. They were unable to get a loan to make payroll.

Those pink and white frosted circus animal cookies were one of my absolute most-needed comfort foods for bad days. Definitive proof that George W. Bush has wrecked the country.

The Crucial Geek Vote?

Umm...why is Gordon Smith advertising during Stargate Atlantis on the SciFi channel?

When You Wish Upon a Star...

Please...please just don't let it be Evan Bayh.

Poor Hillary

The New York Times reports today on the, shall we say, tepid response from Democrats to Barack Obama's gallant request for donations to help Senator Clinton retire her $23 million campaign debt.

Ahem.

I think it was a nice gesture on Obama's part -- he even personally contributed the legal maximum of $2,300 -- to acknowledge Senator Clinton's historic accomplishment.

But I am confused about this notion that there should be any obligation on the part of Democrats -- especially Obama supporters -- to provide financial aid to one of the world's richest, most powerful couples.

Gas prices are soaring, the US is hemorrhaging jobs, people are rioting around the world protesting the skyrocketing costs of basic food staples (16,000 children will die today from hunger-related causes) and we're supposed to dig deep into our pockets and pass a buck to a Senator and her ex-President husband who are collectively worth $109 million?

Senator Clinton was not some political neophyte. She knew well what she was doing when she spent $11 million of her own fortune -- check it, folks, eleven million dollars of her own money she spent, and she wants help!?!?!?!?!? -- on her presidential campaign. That was a gamble, not an investment. Even if she'd won the nomination, there's no guarantee she'd recoup that loss from donations.

It was many weeks from the time that her path to the nomination became mathematically improbable until the day she surrendered -- pointedly, not on the day Obama clinched the nomination; no, on that evening, she delivered a bizarrely Bushian alternate-reality speech in which she announced she would ponder her options -- and during this time her campaign wildly spent beyond its means.

It is particularly ironic that she wants help from Obama supporters, after she spent months (and millions of dollars) trying to damage his reputation with cheap guilt-by-association smears and misrepresentations.

I think we can breathe a sigh of collective relief that she will not be put in charge of fixing our economy. No wonder conservatives deride welfare and entitlement programs, when you have millionaire liberals telling the Times that they are "bitter" that no one is rushing to help them recover from their financial folly. Imagine if the Clintons had to pay for their own debts! Why, by my calculations, that would leave them with only around $80 million. Poor dears. How would they get by?

I don't know what she's going to do. Maybe she'll have to write another book?

The New Racism

So, thanks to "Anonymous" and the links he posted, I've been given access to a whole new, scary world, an alternate universe of political reality. In the same way there are right-wing holdouts who insist that Saddam and Al Qaeda were in cahoots and that the WMD's are still there (or, as some versions go, were actually discovered and everyone knows it, but the "mainstream media" covered it up), it sadly appears there are "Democrats" who just know that the nomination was stolen from Hillary Clinton.

I'm not talking about disappointed Hillary supporters. I'm talking about people who hate Barack Obama.

Here's the theme that strikes me. In the minds of these folks, they're not racists. No, they are open-minded, genuine liberals and supporters of equality. It's Barack who's the racist.

Well, Which Is It?

CNN: "Dem Delegate Deal Could Boost Clinton"

NYT: "The advice from Democratic Party lawyers is a blow to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s efforts to seat the full delegations from Florida and Michigan."

Holy...!

I just paid $3.94 for gas!

help?

Any Mac users out there?

I bought a wireless router. My Mac says I am connected to "Linksys" and the signal is at full strength, but no webpages will load. Help?

UPDATE: And, we're good to go!

The moral of this story, apparently, is, "If at first you don't succeed, try, try, try, try, try, try, try, try, try, try again, call friends in panic, try again, have some Diet Coke, consult various geek websites, try again, call tech support at: BestBuy, Linksys, try again, call Linksys back, read your favorite Psalm, listen to the automated set-up line instructions twice, and try again."

A special thanks to KR who called to give me a pep-talk. : )

Oh, and also...I found the antique Lohengrin score! I'd packed it separately in another box. So, that's good. I think the rest are gone. : (