Light of Truth

The radical queer/trans group Bash Back! that I wrote about a couple of months ago have taken responsibility for vandalizing a billboard in Memphis supporting a repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. In response, there were multiple rallies held by Memphis’ gay and lesbian community to help maintain a sense of safety, of course acting on the assumption that the vandalism was an anti-gay act. A Bash Back blogger writes:

I’m here to dispute the claim that this action was an anti-gay act. First, sending gays to be military fodder is NOT pro-gay or conclusive whatsoever to gay liberation. State militarism only reinforces the dominant structures, and the racism/heterosexism they perpetuate, as well as reducing the number of gay people in the world (both those in Amerikkka and the countries Amerikkka is colonizing/conquering). Second, we accuse the MGLCC of being flat out racist/anti-queer/anti-trans; and we furiously question how that the Memphis Gay and Lesbian Community Center can squander $3500 on military billboards, when Memphis has the highest trans-murder rate (11 trans women of color, 1 white transwoman and 1 transman of color), as well as one of the highest queer youth homeless rates in the nation, and how they can justify putting a pro-military billboard in the overwhelmingly POC neighborhood of Morris Park, when the poor Black community in Morris Park is disporportionately preyed upon by the military (through the court system’s ‘prison or military service’ rule for minor felonies as well as recruiters’ false promises of otherwise impossible economic/education opportunities)?

While there is some part of me that agrees that gay people shouldn’t go fight in wars to support a country that not only doesn’t support them but that actively discriminates against them, unfortunately, that’s not reality. For many people the military is their only way out of a desperate situation, and while in a perfect world no one would have to make that decision, this isn’t a perfect world. So that’s pretty much the only reason I support the repeal of DADT, to be honest with you. At least until the United States decides to practice what it preaches and makes every person equal (although really, does anyone still bother to espouse that nonsense, because no one really believes it do they?)? I say let the straight people go die if that’s what they wanna do.

I also don’t support Bash Back defacing overtly gay billboards in an attempt to bring shame to what they see as the community center’s racism and trans-phobia. There is already so much hostility directed towards queer people (especially in Tennessee), why contribute to that climate of fear and act as a breeze on the already smoldering embers of hatred, discrimination and violence? I agree that as a whole the gay world is still pretty racist and trans-phobic, and while I can still theoretically get behind protesting churches, this I cannot get behind. The comments on the above-linked blog are pretty funny.

In other radical gay news, after the Catholic Church’s appallingly stomach-churning threat against the Washington, D.C. area if gay marriage is recognized there, someone has started a web site to out gay priests who continue to support the church’s campaign of terrorism against gay people. And while I am also never in favor of outing queer people, I am in favor of outing hypocrites. Especially in the service of saving kid’s lives, both physical and spiritual.

I had a very emotional session with a 14-year-old client this morning who I go see at their school because their parents won’t bring them to counseling. Sweetest kid ever, and clearly in a lot of pain. So I’m a little fired up today.

Clear eyes, full hearts, uh….

Somehow, 4 seasons in, Friday Night Lights still has the power to reach into my soul and tear it in half. Okay, so that may be a bit of an exaggeration, but I just finished watching the first episode of the new season, and I was basically tearing up through the entire thing.

I think what I love so much about that show is its fearlessness in putting its main characters through hell. Sure, this could just be seen as a cynical ploy to get you to sympathize with, and like, them, but its more real than that. It treats the ups and downs of life not with reverence or disdain either one, but with the matter-of-factness with which we all have to go through life, at least those of us not on a TV show besides FNL. And in the process, it is also not afraid to make our most beloved characters look like assholes (is there really anything worse than seeing Matt Saracen as dejected, bitter and violent?). And why does it make us cheer on Riggins as he walks out of college about 2 seconds after he starts, and then melodramatically tosses the entire contents of his bookbag out his truck window on the highway? He’s a litterbug, a quitter, and an idiot, yet somehow we see why this decision makes sense to him, and in turn perhaps sympathize a little more with the yokels in real life who consistently vote conservative against their own best interests and cast as an insufferable commie elitist anyone with any intellectual aspirations. Never mind the fact that I can’t actually imagine Riggins ever voting for anything, one way or another, and therein perhaps you have the appeal.

The new season looks promising, with enough conflict and drama to pack an entire lesser series. The McCoys, naturally, are the villains de rigeur, which is a little bit regrettable. How much more compelling would that whole set-up be if they were even moderately sympathetic, as J.D. was throughout most of last season? Now he’s just another stereotyped caricature of a pompous, quarterback date rapist. Maybe he’ll gain back a little more nuance as the season wears on, but I’m not counting on it. Joe, well, with his golf cart and his evil smirk as all hell broke loose at the school assembly, will most definitely not be in line for any nuance, sympathy, or humanity, I’m afraid. But than again, that’s never why his character existed. But he was also never completely believable, and with a show that has such finely drawn and realistic characters, that seems like an almost lazy oversight on the part of the otherwise flawless writers. But I already miss the old characters, even though I’m looking forward to meeting the new ones. Watching this episode was more than a little bittersweet for me, and as much as I just wish maybe season 3 should have been the end of the line, I have a lot of hope and optimism for season 4. I know it’s just a resistance to change, but, like life, things can’t just stay the same all the time. I’m in it for the long haul, and Coach Taylor and Tami (Tammy?) need me, so I’ll be there for them. (Shut up; yes, they’re real people to me.)

And, can I also just say, Coach Taylor doesn’t look nearly as good in red as he does in blue. But maybe I’ll come around. Poor Coach Taylor. I think he might have engaged in some emotional eating over the summer, if you know what I mean.

Frustration!!!

Overall, things are going really well at my practicum site, except for one minor hitch: MY CLIENTS NEVER SHOW UP!!! I try not to take it personally, or to get too jaded about it, but I’m starting to. Which sucks for a variety of reasons, not least because I have to get a certain amount of client contact hours to graduate from school….

But with the clients that do come regularly, I feel like I’m doing really good work with them. Which helps me to not make it personal. I’m especially bummed today because I got a new client last week that I was super excited about. Just the type of client I’ve been wanting. So I did all kinds of research throughout the week about what I think their diagnosis is, then did research on diagnostic tools and tests to use when they come in to help solidify my hypothesis, and then I researched solutions and ways we can work together to get the best results. Of course they didn’t show up today. Which is not to say they won’t show up next week, but they’re not here now, which is a serious bummer. (Of course, I’m supposed to do all those things with every client, but this is the first time I’ve really done all that stuff independently, sans my supervisor helping me.

I did, however, have a really great appointment with a 9th grader this morning at their school. Awhile back, I wrote about not feeling especially “grown up,” and what that even meant. Well, I’ll tell you, walking into a high school under the guise of being a mental health “expert,” meeting with a kid in the nurse’s office, then talking briefly with the nurse will make one feel “grown up.” (Honestly, even walking the halls of a high school wearing my Cascadia badge made me feel miles from that world, in a good way; it was kind of surreal.)

So I’ll take the good with the bad, and hope my other client shows up next week, and doesn’t become just another in a long line of clients that are notoriously unreliable. I guess that’s just community health care.

Only the beginning

Fall has officially arrived, but only barely. I can’t wait until the leaves burst into their true glory. These are some trees outside our living room window that have started to turn. I really noticed them this morning. The pictures don’t do them justice; they’re stunningly gorgeous, and a lot more pink than they appear in these pics. But they’re pretty anyway.

Your mama’s not around, there’s no telling what we’ll do when we’re free

It occurred to me recently that I’ve become one of those boring old people that lionizes their youth beyond all recognition, despite the fact that I hated it when I was stuck in it (of course). This has come to my attention more starkly lately because I’ve been writing a young adult novel based on my youth. Not quite autobiographical, but not completely fiction, either. The events (mostly) are fictitious; the people, and the settings, not so much. The characters are all thinly veiled or composites, which, I guess, isn’t really so unusual for fiction.

What writing the book has done, is re-engage me with all of the things I did love about that age of the early 90’s, the summer of 1994 to be exact, especially the music and the aesthetic. It’s funny, because one cultural marker I keep returning to over and over while I’m writing is that appalling movie KIDS. How I loathe that film for its faux nihilism and reveling in violence both physical and emotional while pretending to condemn it. Besides, it’s just boring as hell. But man, I love the aesthetic of that film. I imagine my novel to be the anti-KIDS. Yes, my book contains a teenage suicide, some drugs, sex, a little violence, a gun. Kids wandering wild through the endless and desolate night (nothing new when it comes to teenagers, really). But those kids are me, and my friends, and things we really did and experienced, and while the kids also hate it at the time, I’m looking back at it through a lens smeared with the vaseline of nostalgia and longing. I get the feeling that Larry Clark filmed KIDS with a feeling of resentment and a giant boner, which is never a good combination. I also realize that KIDS came out in 1995, a year after my book takes place, but that’s irrelevant; the song remains the same.

It’s been really fun listening to a lot of music from that era that I loved, but haven’t listened to in a long time: old Hole, Automatic For the People, Nirvana, Little Earthquakes, a lot of random punk, some industrial (My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult, Ministry), Green Day, old Rancid, Smashing Pumpkins, Sonic Youth, and lots of 80’s music that my friends and I ate up at that point, like The Smiths, Concrete Blonde, New Order, Jesus and Mary Chain. If there is one song, though, that I’ve listened to over and over and over that I feel gets me in the mood to write, it’s “Natural One,” by Folk Implosion, which, yes, was from KIDS. And it’s just a fucking awesome song. I’ve also been pretty inspired by some newer music as well, though, that I think fits the tone and ambiance of the book, like Frightened Rabbit, Bon Iver (who I’m in love with right now), Blonde Redhead, and just in the last week, Big Pink.

It’s weird how much I feel like I’m siphoning off of that movie for my writing, but it’s almost like an attempt to rewrite that movie and get it right. One of my characters is even based, in a strange way, on Chloe Sevigny, probably my favorite actress, and to me, someone who represents a true adult product of that era that’s still around. I don’t know if anyone else remembers this Details layout, but I do, and I loved it. I really wanted to be those kids, at least until I saw the movie.

There was, without a doubt, a serious strain of nihilism and hedonism running through youth culture at that time, far more than now, I think. If Kurt Cobain was considered the spokesman for my generation, then it was nothing but shattered idealism and hopelessness. In some ways, the book I’m writing is a recognition, I think, of that pervasive feeling and attitude with which we all grew up, but also an attempt to move past it, to acknowledge that youthful malaise with a weary, but much wiser, adult sensibility, and to finally acknowledge that people like Cobain are no role models, and I kind of hope my future kids know who he is, but either think he’s just as much of a douche as I do, or that they just don’t care. I can’t quite concede that kids are better off with Lady GaGa than with Courtney Love, but maybe they are. Who knows.

Hopefully I’ll finish the damn book. I’ve written up to and a little past the climactic point, and the rest is all come-down and denouement. It’s been a lot of fun to write so far, and I hope that someone will find it a lot of fun to read someday. I’m writing primarily with a contemporary teenage audience in mind, but there’s definitely a part of me that hopes 30-something’s will pick it up and feel as nostalgic and silly reading it as I do writing it.

Lock & Load

Yesterday was one of the worst days of work ever. In addition to it just being totally nuts and out of control and violent for 10 hours, some kid got her hand crushed in our big, magnetic doors that go outside. Every door in every unit on the entire campus locks from both sides, and every staff has a master key that works for all of them. But they lock through these weird magnet things mounted on then, and they’re extremely heavy and spring loaded that they won’t stay open unless something equally heavy can prop it (I guess this is partly because of the magnets and partly for protective purposes).

So, we have two fenced-in yards in the crevice part of the L-shaped building where the ends of two separate units meet. When kids get particularly violent, sometimes we can just do a “transport” with two people and toss them outside, since we’re a lock-down facility; they can’t get out of the yard, though many have tried. That’s particularly useful when kids are setting up the entire unit and it looks like things could blow and then you have a small mutiny on your hands. And no one wants that.

So, on the unit that adjoins the unit where I usually work is the SCIP unit, where the worst of the worst kids go. And not always the “worst” in terms of behavior, but the ones who need the most care: the hyper-violent, yes, but also the psychotic, and the ones that need the most one-on-one attention. For instance, this is the only unit of 4 on the campus where the “staff counter,” where the computers, phones, etc. are kept, is enclosed in the same unbreakable plastic that is all over the rest of the campus where you might normally find glass, such as on windows. In every other unit, the counters are open. I cut my teeth on this unit when I first started working there, and I’ve occasionally had the opportunity to go back and work a shift, or part of a shift, but I don’t relish it.

So last night I came in from doing a restraint on one of our own kids in the hall, when my boss asked if I could go over to SCIP and help them out. I could already hear the blood-curdling screaming echoing off the walls, so I groaned and said, “Sure,” because that’s what you do. I knew shit was going down, but I didn’t know what.

So I get over there, and there are only two boys on the unit, but they’re going batshit crazy, and there are already 3 male staff over there trying to make sure they don’t get violent. I became the fourth. Just outside the door leading to the yard was the new girl, who’s completely insane, lying on the ground, screaming like she’s being tortured, surrounded by several staff, a nurse, and a therapist. As it turns out, they were tossing her outside (which, as it turns out, is against regulation….) when she ran back toward the door (which they always do when you throw them outside) and someone slammed it – catching her hand. Which then became stuck because the doors automatically lock because of the magnets. The kids in general there get very protective of each other when they’re not trying to kill each other, and when one kid gets genuinely hurt, they other kids freak out and think the staff are trying to kill them. (I won’t even go into the restraint I had to do with another staff a few weeks ago outside on a teenage boy who had a bloody nose that eventually got blood everywhere, and the kids starting ganging up on us because they thought the staff had bloodied him up, and there were no other staff around to help us, and it was really scary. And gross.) Which is why the two boys on the unit, two of the most violent and aggressive and crazy on the whole campus, were freaking out. The situation was eventually defused.

I don’t know who slammed the door on her hand, or what’s going to happen to them, because the girl is in DHS custody, and someone’s head will have to roll for it. But at least two of her fingers were crushed, literally, everything ripped off down to the bone. Gone.

To give you an idea of the environment in which I work, when the Team Leader for that unit came back inside and I asked if there was anything further I could do to help, she very matter-of-factly said that after they took her to the hospital, someone needed to clean up the large pool of blood on the step outside, and the chunks of skin that were all over the door. Then smiled at me.

Which immediately made me queasy, combined with the chilling screams I’m sure the entire city was hearing, and as soon as possible I sneaked back to my own unit and avoided any further blood or chunks of skin cleaning up duty.

Being physically and verbally assaulted non-stop by 11 pre-teens was preferable to that. This is what I do for money.

Change cracks everything open

So it seems that our fortunes in Portland have shifted yet again, and my and Tom’s plan to stay another year after I graduate next fall will most likely fall by the wayside. We both really love the city, and in some ways, it’s the nicest place I’ve ever lived (of course, I’ve only lived in 5 places), but neither of us especially want to stay here long-term. We both want to go back to Austin, probably sooner rather than later, but we’re leaving our options open.

Tom is steadfastly preparing to apply to graduate schools for a PhD program for next fall, which could basically take us anywhere (I’m crossing my fingers for UT or somewhere in North Carolina, but I’m open). I’ve also made a few tentative decisions of my own. I’ve been struggling with the idea of going on and pursuing my own PhD in Counseling, but I haven’t been super excited about it. There are several reasons for this, too nuanced and boring to go into here, but one decision I think I’ve made recently is that I’m no longer sure I want to focus primarily on therapy as a future career goal. I know, I know, it’s all I’ve talked about going on 4 years now. I still very much want to be involved in the mental health industry, but maybe in a slightly different capacity, with just doing some counseling on the side.

I’m not sure that sitting in a room by myself listening to people talk all day long is the best thing for me. I’m a social creature by nature, a doer, I like to be involved and be in the middle of things. I thrive on being active, and useful, and collaborating. Which has been leading me to believe more recently that maybe a career in social work would be more up my alley. I love non-profits, and organizations, and groups of people coming together to do something, and advocate.

A friend of mine here just started PSU’s combined Master’s in Social Work/Master’s in Public Health program, and I’ll be really anxious to hear what he thinks about it. Public Health is something in which I’ve become very interested in lately, but in a social welfare sense, not a medical sense. A degree like that would prepare me to manage or run non-profits, among many other things. I guess what I need to find out is whether or not a degree like that would really be necessary to work in the upper echelons of community service groups. I suppose it couldn’t hurt, regardless.

I enjoy doing therapy, but in the grand scheme of things, what most helps combat my inner darkness and despair at the fate of the world is being active. This is something I have discovered about myself over the past year or so. It’s good to know. I’m often completely overwhelmed by my own feelings of inadequacy or powerlessness, and in no small way, enriching my own community is a nice balm for that.

I’ve mostly given up on politics, especially at the federal level, to do anything meaningful to make the world a more equitable, hospitable, and kind place to live. It’s not going to happen. But if I can help make the place that I live kinder, gentler, and existing maybe just a little easier for a few people, perhaps my battered idealism can survive – bruised and tattered, but still flying proudly.

Not that I don’t think counseling alone can do that, but organizational power gets me excited. I’m not sure I’m ready to turn around and go back to school yet right away next year, but it’s something I’m looking at. When Tom figures out for sure where he’s applying, I’ll look there as well and see what’s on offer. Right now I’m still trying to just live in the moment, working a lot, spending a lot of hours at my internship, and enjoying myself.

Compassion Fatigue

Everyone in the “helping professions” feels it from time to time. They warn us about it in school and make sure we take time for “self care.” People who don’t take time for themselves are the ones that burn out. I didn’t think I would start feeling it quite so soon, but I think my particular case has more to do with my job with the imprisoned children than with anything else. My reservoir of compassion for dealing with constant disrespect and violence (and getting bloodied in the line of duty) is running dry.

Or maybe I’m just feeling fatigued. Been having an extremely difficult time getting out of bed in the mornings. Maybe sleeping too much. Fighting off allergies so bad that I’m having sinus headaches for days that make me nauseous. I’m resisting the idea that maybe it’s a low-grade depression setting in. The days are already so short. It’s raining more. The sky has been gray, and the days chilly and windy. I love fall; I’m looking forward to the crisp air and leaves changing, but dreading the gray skies and rain. Conversations with long-time Portlanders has again started to turn to UV lamps installed in living rooms and above headboards. I’m so worried about healthcare reform that my stomach is in knots and it keeps me awake. Before there was the potential for anything to be better, it was tolerable (barely). But now that we’ve gotten so close to such a better world, having it slip away will be devastating.

But the internship is going really well. I’m loving some of my clients, and doing really good work, which is pleasing me a great deal. There are some other organizations in town I’m super excited to maybe start getting involved with (like this one that I totally have a crush on, and that SMYRC is going to start working with in some capacity, and that thrills me) in all of my free time (*snort*). This city has such incredible social service agencies. It’s so inspiring. Too bad it’s totally fucked in almost every other capacity. The city can’t even pay schoolteachers anymore, so they’re just firing them all. During the last legislative session, the governor warned (perhaps somewhat hyperbolically) that if teachers want to keep schools open, they should start working for free. It’s incredibly depressing. Oregon is officially broke and jobless.

But I’m happy overall. With my internship. My clients. School. My little nest with my boyfriend and my kitten and my warm books. Leonard Cohen at the Isle of Wight in 1970 on the TV right now.

RAD

This past week I was assigned to read an article for class entitled “Reactive Attachment Disorder: What We Know About the Disorder and Implications for Treatment” from a professional journal titled simply Child Maltreatment. Reactive Attachment Disorder is a nebulous “disorder” applied broadly to children who, primarily, have suffered abuse and neglect from their primary caregivers before the age of 5, who then have difficulty forming close bonds with any other caregivers, and which presumably carries into later life, making it difficult for the child to form close bonds with anyone. Their relationships are generally marked by anxiety, distrust, fear, heightened arousal, hostility, etc. This can also, paradoxically, especially in young children, lead to indiscriminate affection, generally to strangers, which, in later life, can manifest in highly dependent or co-dependent relationships when the person with “reactive attachment disorder” hasn’t learned effective coping skills or age-appropriate self-care skills.

There is a lot of controversy surrounding the diagnosis in general (like, whether or not it even actually exists, for starters), but that’s not what I wanted to write about. Particularly when studying treatments for children, in the past there have many, many ill-conceived therapies and treatment methods with absolutely zero emperical basis in effectiveness, and in this article, the authors extensively review some of the more discounted and troubling treatments people in the past have used to treat RAD. Sometimes when you read these things you just slap your forehead and wonder what on Earth these “professionals” and “doctors” could possibly be thinking. And I quote:

One of the more controversial and more well known of these treatments is the coercive technique, also known as holding, attachment, or rage reduction therapy. As critiqued by James (1994), these types of techniques involve three primary components: prolonged restraint for purposes other than protection, prolonged noxious stimulation (e.g., tickling, poking in the ribs), and interference with bodily functions. More specifically, treatment appointments are scheduled in which several adults hold the child immobile for a prolonged time period. This restraining is not related to the child’s immediate behavior, and the procedure may be repeated daily. During the restraining period, the clinician actively attempts to provoke and arouse the child by providing noxious stimulation such as yelling repeatedly in the child’s face, poking or tapping the child, tickling, or pulling on limbs. The child may try to resist by screaming, fighting, or crying, but eventually breaks down. When the child reaches the point of surrender, he is then given to his caregiver(s), to whom he reportedly instantly attaches…the child is theorized to have repressed rage, which is interfering with his ability to form an attachment. The prolonged restraint, noxious stimulation, and interference with bodily functions are theorized to release the rage and teach the child that adults can and will control him. He is then thought to be capable of forming a healthy attachment. Parents may be told that this is the only way to keep their child from becoming a serial killer, murderer, or psychopath, and that alternative conventional treatments will not work for their child.

As someone who works with kids who could probably every single one be described as having some sort of reactive attachment whatever, I feel like I at least partially understand the desperation some parents, foster parents, or adoptive parents must feel when trying to deal with their kids. And as someone who does have to engage in “non-violent physical crisis intervention” holds on children who are getting violent, I can tell you that it’s awful, and makes you feel a little bit like a monster every time you have to do it. But in that case, the kids are displaying an imminent threat to themselves or someone else, and that’s what you have to do to keep everyone safe.

I don’t even know where to begin with what’s been described above.

A few witches burning gets a little toasty

I’ve been working for over 2 weeks now trying to come up with some sort of intelligent response to the comments written by Catherine on my last post. I don’t want to write a defense of myself, really, nor do I want to dispute her arguments, because I think they’re good ones. I think the reason I’ve had so much trouble coming up with a reasonable response is because I don’t really know how I feel. About what I wrote or about religion in general. Surprisingly enough.

Right after I wrote that last post, I had some time between clients at my practicum, and I picked up a book that was sitting on my office shelf called Gay Spirit (I’m always sort of amused by such titles), and flipped open to a random page. As it happened, I opened the book up to an essay by a gay priest called something like, “Telling a lie for Christ,” all about the relationship between the church and gays. God had been co-opted, he argued, by the haters, who acted as if they owned God and had some special privilege to how God was portrayed and worshipped in our society, and gay people had simply let this happen, thusly cutting themselves off from a rich storehouse of art, philosophy, ritual, community, and spirituality. The church has always had a rocky relationship with gay people, condemning their desires and lives to the fires of hell, while at the same time, many saints were known and obvious homosexuals (not to mention all the priests, bishops, ministers, and nuns who are gay), many of them living in times, places, and eras that didn’t frown so vehemently upon such things as western culture now does. The author also philosophized that much of this hatred of homosexuality in western culture has come about through our own utilitarianism. Everything in our culture must serve a purpose, and be useful in some tangible way, and the idea of homosexuality throws this belief into a tailspin. After all, homosexuals just have sex for the sake of having sex (gasp! no one else does that!), and not for the sole purpose of reproduction. Likewise in our society, art for the sake of art is frowned upon, because really, what could possibly be a bigger waste of time than simply creating art for the sake of enjoying it, or just to marvel at its wonder, beauty and possibility? I’m not sure why else one would bother creating art, actually, unless, of course, it is for the purpose of worshipping Jesus. Interesting theory.

Everything I would like to say about this subject would obviously never be able to fit into a single blog post. And while I think Catherine (full disclosure: she’s my cousin) has some great points, particularly that if my main concern about my own civil rights is a largely governmental one, why would I encourage and support protesting in churches? Well, I suppose my answer to that is that despite “official” separation of church and state, religion still has such a death-grip on politics in this country that until the church releases, government never will. And frankly, I don’t think I’ll ever back down from my love and support of theatrical protest, and I don’t necessarily think the example of the church protest that I wrote about was the wrong thing to do. Maybe the church and me just have some irreconcilable differences and we really should just call it a day. I resent that it is encumbent upon me to do the reconciling, and I won’t do it. Not anytime soon. I have been too hurt and felt too threatened by the church to simply extend the olive branch and smile peacefully. (Besides, theatrical protest can often change the course of events on major social issues.)

When I went to Portland Pride this year, I was shocked at the number of churches that participated in the parade. And not just fringy new-age or Unitarian churches. Methodist and Catholic churches. Marching alongside everyone else, with their rainbow banners and their frumpy middle-aged congregations, smiling and waving at the drag queens and half-naked, glitter-covered party boys. I guess that’s pretty ballsy, even in a city like Portland, and I have to respect and admire it on some level. But it doesn’t preclude me from thinking that they’re still part of the problem. Liberal and loving of the gays or not, you’re still a Catholic church that is engaged in an economic exchange with one of the most hypocritical, hateful, oppressive, and violent organizations in the world. And from that stance, I will not back down or apologize.

A wholesale rejection of god and faith is not conducive to moving forward in a so-called liberal democracy. I understand that. Religion will never go away, and I can acknowledge that religion can do a lot of good in the world and in people’s lives. But I can fully reject the hatred, fear and violence that comes along with evangelicalism and the right-wing in the United States (and elsewhere). Even though I feel deeply inside that there is something besides us out there, and some kind of spiritual world (though I would never be so arrogant as to assume that I know what it is, where it comes from or what it means), I believe that the idea of a benevolent personal god who hears prayers and has a vested interest in our outcomes as humans is ridiculous and ultimately trivializes the massive wonder and majesty of the spiritual world that I do believe exists.

This is my latest epiphany in my thinking about this stuff. It’s fun to think about. I enjoy it. I just wish that so many other people who are religious and claim to have a relationship with “god” enjoyed thinking about it as much as I do. If they did, they probably wouldn’t be filled with such fear and disingenuous certainty and fortitude that makes them so certain I am a cretin and a demon. That is not spirituality, that is politics. And until we reasonably untangle the two things in this country, I don’t know that a reasonable and open dialogue is possible.