Why am I stupid enough to read the comments to news articles?
There's a controversy going on about the virtual version of the board game "Life". It seems (gasp!) that:
"Kids Game Promotes Same-Sex Marriages
"Concerned parent cries foul when she discovers the virtual version of the popular board game Life lets you go gay."
http://www.playsavvy.com/articles/features/should-the-game-of-life-ditch-two-mommies-/?icid=main|htmlws-main|dl5|link3|http%3A%2F%2Fwww.playsavvy.com%2Farticles%2Ffeatures%2Fshould-the-game-of-life-ditch-two-mommies-%2F
So why was I stupid enough to read a few of the comments to the article when I know it's going to make me mad?
Just once, I'd love it if a fundamentalist could explain to me what the Biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah has to do with two men living in a committed same-sex relationship? The Sodom and Gomorrah story describes a planned gang rape. Can't the fundamentalists tell the difference?
Don't get me started on Leviticus. If a fundamentalist uses Leviticus to condemn homosexuals, that person ought to be following the dietary laws to the letter. If they aren't, can we spell hypocrite?
Gah!
"Kids Game Promotes Same-Sex Marriages
"Concerned parent cries foul when she discovers the virtual version of the popular board game Life lets you go gay."
http://www.playsavvy.com/articles/features/should-the-game-of-life-ditch-two-mommies-/?icid=main|htmlws-main|dl5|link3|http%3A%2F%2Fwww.playsavvy.com%2Farticles%2Ffeatures%2Fshould-the-game-of-life-ditch-two-mommies-%2F
So why was I stupid enough to read a few of the comments to the article when I know it's going to make me mad?
Just once, I'd love it if a fundamentalist could explain to me what the Biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah has to do with two men living in a committed same-sex relationship? The Sodom and Gomorrah story describes a planned gang rape. Can't the fundamentalists tell the difference?
Don't get me started on Leviticus. If a fundamentalist uses Leviticus to condemn homosexuals, that person ought to be following the dietary laws to the letter. If they aren't, can we spell hypocrite?
Gah!
Now this was the sin of Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen.
—Ezekiel 16:49-50
Useful quotation
Re: Useful quotation
We may have already passed the point where climate change is preventable, and there's still morons trying to prevent anything being done to save millions (possibly billions) of lives over the next century. I wish they all had to live in Polynesia (which will mostly vanish under rising sea levels), or in a drought-stricken area in Africa, or in part of India where the Ganges will dry up in summer once the Himalayan glaciers are gone.
My last boss (the one who laid me off in 2007) was like that. Always ranting and raving that climate change was a myth. He liked to say it was "something Al Gore invented to make himself look important". That man drove me nuts! It was absolutely impossible to ask him to look at any "on-the-ground" facts.
My brother once worked for the weather service, and once in a similar job had the opportunity to review unpublished weather charts for southern California for the past 150 years, and there it was, the sudden upticking in temperature a few decades ago. (I forget the exact details, but I know he'd have them at his fingertips.)
Why I a) clicked, b) started to read, c) continued to read even after becoming outraged remains a mystery to me. I have less sympathy for myself than the posters. They may well be ignorant or just plain stupid and not know better. I'm supposed to be smart enough not to read stuff I can't change and will just ruin my morning.
So if you ever figure it out, please share.
I guess there is a part of my past I can't put behind - the part I spent living in a virulently racist, homophobic, right wing western Arizona town when I was a teen and into my 20s. What can you say about a place which was Timothy McVeigh's last address before he blew up the Oklahoma Federal Building?
My boss at my first full time job was one of those guys always going on government conspiracies and the evils of the feds. I could never get past the cognitive disconnect of the fact that he was a deputy county assessor - a civil servant. A government employee. Hello?
I spent my teen years in that town, and buried myself in science fiction and gothic and historical novels; wanting to be anywhere and anywhen than where and when I was.
But after I got away (at the ripe old age of 22) and moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, about as opposite as I could possibly get from that town, part of me still knows that people like that exist. I remember their faces. I remember their voices.
I just have to say to myself, "Step away from the keyboard...."