Tag: Roy Moore

How Do You Do

Good morning! How is everyone feeling on this day after the holiday? I feel good, actually, and very well-rested this morning and ready to get through my last day in the officer for the week, which feels kind of weird. I did some more thinking about writing yesterday, primarily how to structure the second chapter so we learn more about the main character’s past without getting bored, which is always the worry. I also cleaned up and did chores around here, so tomorrow I won’t be playing catch-up on everything heading into the weekend. I still have Monday off, which is going to be another lovely at-home day–and will shorten the week dramatically, which is nice.

Paul worked at home yesterday but rarely came downstairs; it’s weird how we can both be home all day and not see each other a lot. We need our plumber to come in and do some repair work; the sink upstairs isn’t draining, there’s an issue with the shower, and of course the garbage disposal/dishwasher situation needs resolving as well, which will be great to get all fixed now. Yay! It’s just a matter of when Randy has time to come out and work on it all.

I read for a while yesterday morning; Horror Movie is quite good, and am looking forward to spending some more time with it this weekend. I also should be reading queer writers this month, and it does not speak well of me that it took me this long into the month to realize and recognize that. Bad gay, bad gay! I will resolve that by reading the new John Copenhaver, and I may make July my Queer Reading Month. I also worked on one of my Pride posts yesterday but didn’t finish it. I’ll try to get another one done today–International Male catalogues would be a good one, especially since they are no longer in business; it’s an important part of gay male fashion history, isn’t it? I did spend a good part of the day watching old “what the 1970s were like” videos–pop culture and some news, mostly; but it’s nice to be reminded of things like old commercial jingles, or what fast food work uniforms looked like, and what movies/television shows were being released and were in the zeitgeist.

In other “Louisiana is becoming a Puritan dictatorship” news, our shitbird governor signed a bill requiring the Ten Commandments be displayed in every public school classroom in the state. Never mind that Roy Moore tried this shit in Alabama only to get slapped around for it by SCOTUS, but there’s no doubt in my mind that the Christofascists running that branch of the government would uphold this law. The idiocy of this, not only on a Constitutional level but a Christian one as well; it’s basically apostasy and everything Jesus warned about in the New Testament, but of course all the people who think they are decent human beings only because of a fear of going to hell are also into ostentatious displays of their faith–because it is so hollow no one will know they are Christians from how they behave and how they treat people, which is how you are supposed to bear witness.

Not to mention that they should believe that they have a new covenant with God through Jesus, and the Old Testament’s rules and edicts about behavior are the old covenant; so why would you show your devotion to Christ by displaying relics of the old one? Which Jesus had nothing to do with it? Again, it’s very hard to take Christians seriously when they don’t even understand their own faith, you know?

Not to mention there will be lawsuits–which Governor Landry “can’t wait” to be sued. Um, that’s Louisiana taxpayer money you will be using to defend these unconstitutional laws, and while his Bible-thumping is playing well with the racist cosplay Christians of the state, the ones who’ve never read or studied their Bible but do what their preacher says, I’m going to say his popularity will undoubtedly crest within the next two years and people are going to start turning on him, as they did with Bobby Jindal. Louisiana votes may not be the brightest bulbs in the chandelier, but they eventually see through charlatans who tell them what they want to hear and do nothing for them. Jindal and David Vitter both found that out the hard way.

And hilariously, they don’t even follow the Ten Commandments themselves. What is a cross if not a graven image? How many of them take the Lord’s name in vain (which isn’t saying god damn it or Jesus fucking Christ, but rather false prayer or using the Lord’s name for something false–like claiming to know God’s will)? How many of them bear false witness? How many of them honor their parents? How many of them condone or look the other way from adultery? And on and on it goes; in fact, placing the Ten Commandments in classrooms–indoctrination–is actually taking the Lord’s name in vain.

So many “christians” (like our governor) love to take the Lord’s name in vain and are in for a big shock when they reach the pearly gates and find out they were self-righteous, not righteous in the Lord.

And yes, I speak evangelical.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Thursday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again later.

If Ever You’re In My Arms Again

Thursday! It’s hard to believe Christmas is just next weekend. But I mailed my Christmas cards last night on the way home from work (I am very proud of myself; I generally don’t do cards. But this year I not only bought them, but addressed and stamped them and put them in the mail. Not sure how this all came about, but there you have it.), before stopping at the grocery store, and there it is. I’m a bit worn out this morning, tired despite sleeping well (one lovely thing about colder weather is that I sleep better), but I don’t have a lengthy day today and tomorrow is a short one. I hope to start revising stories today while also working on the book some. We shall see how that goes.

I”m still processing the election results in Alabama the other night. I pretty much saw the whole thing as a foregone conclusion; I am from Alabama and my family is from there, and outside of my immediate family, almost everyone on both sides still lives there. I am very well aware of what the Roy Moore supporters are like, how they think, etc. I didn’t need to red Hillbilly Elegy–I did try, but it’s Appalachian apologia was so smug and frankly, wrong I not only put it in the donation pile but I also donated the cover price I’d spent to the Southern Poverty Law Center. (For the record, I think that book is a falsehood designed not only to fool liberals but to lure them into a false state of understanding; one that will hoodwink them into being fooled again and again. There was nothing true or profound in that book.)

I love Alabama in spite of not only itself but myself. The Alabama values the entire country saw on display during the Roy Moore campaign (a pedophile is better than a Democrat; the entire country is out to get us in a liberal conspiracy; we had no race problems here until Obama; Roy Moore waving his pistol at a rally; everything about Kayla Moore–from her teen pregnancy to  her adulterous affair to her divorce to her gold, diamond encrusted earrings she wore on every occasion to prove to everyone just how much more Christian she is than everyone else) are something I am well-acquainted with; I’ve dealt with that mentality my entire life and have tried, unsuccessfully, to wrap my mind around it for fifty-six years: a Christianity that has nothing to do with the actual teachings of Jesus; an almost fanatical belief that their belief and values are the only right ones and anyone who disagrees is in the service of evil; that Satan is very real and working his evil on the country and the world through the Democratic party; and an absolute, unwavering faith that they are going to Heaven and anyone who disagrees in the slightest way with the way they think is going to straight to Hell unless they repent and change their ways and believe what they do and get on board with their version of not just religion but politics. Religion and politics are very much mixed in the South, and don’t ever believe otherwise; they are used interchangeably to validate the other.

It has always been thus; thus is may always be. And don’t mistake it–this election was far closer than it should have been.

Maybe my outlook is a bit bleak, but the county where my family is from in Alabama went 76% for Moore. So I know whereof I speak.

A while ago, I talked about rereading To Kill a Mockingbird and having a lot more issues with it than I did when I originally read the book, back when I was ten or eleven. Don’t get me wrong, the central message of the book–racism is terrible and wrong–still comes through just as strongly as it did when I originally read it, and it’s still incredibly beautifully written. The problems I saw with it, though, went way beyond the notion or concept of the white savior; which Atticus Finch certainly was. Probably the most false scene in the book to me, and the most problematic, was the scene where Tom is in jail and the sheriff comes to get Atticus because those trashy Ewells have gotten some of the other trashy rural people in the county riled up about Tom’s alleged rape of Mayella Ewell; and they want to lynch him. When I originally read the book the horror of those terrible racists coming to exact an unjust punishment on Tom terrified me, and I was thrilled that the upright citizens of the town came to stand off against them and save Tom. Rereading that as an adult–well, every bit of it read to me as not only false but a-historical. Anyone who knows anything about the Jim Crow south knows that the sheriff wouldn’t have gotten some “good men” together to protect a black man accused of raping a white girl; the sheriff would have been one of them. All one has to do is read accounts of what happened to Emmett Till…and so many others, to call bullshit on this part of the book.

Not every white person in Alabama is, or was, a racist; an active member of the KKK. But those who didn’t stand up to those who were? The word we’re looking for is complicit.

I still haven’t read Go Set a Watchman, but I will at some point. I’m still amused at all the people, mostly white, who were so upset and horrified that their beloved Atticus Finch turned out to be a racist and a segregationist after all. I never once got the sense when I was reading To Kill a Mockingbird, even when I was a child, that Atticus wasn’t a racist; he was appointed by the court to represent a black man accused of raping a white girl–and he did, as he was an ethical lawyer, bound to to defend him to the best of his ability. He did so. Did that make him a better man than a lawyer who might have refused to take the case? Yes, it did. It also made him a better man than a lawyer who would have taken the case and botched it. But what also strikes me as false about this book was the judge who appointed Atticus, knowing he would do the best job possible. Really? Again, all you have to do is read accounts of Jim Crow justice in Alabama to know this is also false. If Tom Robinson wasn’t lynched  he most certainly would have been railroaded. He was found guilty despite the great job Atticus did in his defense, despite proving that Mayella Ewing’s testimony couldn’t have been the truth. That, indeed, seemed real and true to me. But the system in 1930’s Alabama trying to be fair to Tom? Bullshit.

Don’t get me wrong: To Kill a Mockingbird is still a beautiful book, and its message is a good one. But it’s also a fairy tale; a fiction that would have never happened in the time period in which it was set. I also can see why Harper Lee’s editor persuaded her not to publish Go Set a Watchman, in which Scout deals with her father being a segregationist, and write To Kill a Mockingbird, in which her father is a hero fighting prejudice and racism, instead. That was the book that needed to be published at the time; and it was a very savvy move. The book was a huge bestseller, has never been out of print, won the Pulitzer Prize, and was made into an Academy Award winning film classic.

This election, in which a small majority of Alabama voters, led by people of color, chose not to elect the racist homophobic evangelic Christian child molester, was a wonderful outcome on every level. akin to the Louisiana electorate choosing the Democrat over adulterous whoremonger David Vitter for governor. But is this is a sea change for the two deep red Southern states, both of which have a proportionally large evangelical Christian population who seriously believe there were no racial issues in their state until Barack Obama was elected president? Only time will tell–and progressives and Democrats have a lot of work to do in the meantime. A lot. But the South can be won back. It won’t be easy, but it can happen.

And now back to the spice mines.

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