TENNESSEE CONSERVATIVES should use reliable data

by Audrey deCoursey

Today, the Dunker Journal (the BRF blog) runs a post so short that it seems to miss some important points of the news article it is citing. Its post declares “MR. GORE SHOULD BE MORE CONSCIENTIOUS about turning off his unused lights.” and links to an interesting article about a conservative organization, the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, which is apparently trying to make a stink about how much electricity Al Gore uses in his Tennessee home.

Of course, Mr. Gore should be conscientious about reducing his energy consumption, as should every one of us so privileged as to live in a country that has claimed a disproportionate amount of the world’s natural resources. As an environmentalist, he must also be aware that he will be under special scrutiny in his ecologically-impacting choices. It is just a bit easier to believe criticism of Gore’s environmentalism when it’s coming from others inside the environmental community, instead of folks outside and against that community – folks like the Tennessee Center who, the article says, dispute that global warming is a concern. (It’s so hard to work up sympathy for folks holding someone accountable to standards that they themselves reject!) A Gore spokesperson (Kalee Kreider) quoted in the article makes an interesting point:

“Sometimes when people don’t like the message, in this case that global warming is real, it’s convenient to attack the messenger.”

That’s a good warning to us all to be aware of when we’re debating – even though talking about issues and interpretations is more inconvenient than attacking individuals!

But the problem with the Dunker Journal’s use of the article is not only that its one-sentence summary spins the article into its own perspective; it omits some important facts that are right there in the article. (Are they supposing that most of their readers won’t bother to check out their link? Do they assume their readers will be unable to exercise criticism of their own media, too?) Namely, the fact that Nashville Electric Services, the electricity company that the Tennessee Center claims to have gotten its numbers from, says that they have never been in contact with the Center. Hmmmm. Did the Tennessee Center just make the numbers up? How can we get in a huff about Gore’s excessive energy usage when we don’t even know for certain what his energy usage is?

Is this the sort of manipulation of media that we want to be teaching our fellow Christians to be using – ‘proof-texting’ news articles as well as Bible passages, in order to get out the message we want to find in it? Pulling out only the pieces that support the message we bring into the reading of a text, and ignoring the rest of what’s in there? Interpreting texts, just like interpreting life, takes a lot of effort to try to understand all the perspectives involved, to research the background to what we’re told, and to be open to new truths emerging, even against our preconceived beliefs. I think the Dunker Journal blog is fully capable of this, as are we, and I just hope that they take the time to present healthy and accurate perspectives on the information they are spreading under the noble name ‘Brethren.’

Womaen for President? First Gentlemaen?

by Jan Eller, Caucus Worker

I was recently thinking about something which occurred when I was in Jr. High school. I don’t know why I thought about it other than the fact that lots of campaign news has been heard with new candidates declaring daily, almost. I was in 9th grade in 1960 when the Kennedy-Nixon campaign was in high gear. Some of my friends and I were talking about the campaign. Except that we didn’t focus on the candidates themselves and their fitness for president. No, we were talking about their wives.

We had agreed that Pat Nixon would make the better First Lady as she was more in tune with the kinds of women we saw in such positions. Jackie Kennedy was just too “modern” or something. I don’t know if I fully concurred with that evaluation or not, as our family was true blue Democrats, on the liberal side of that spectrum. It seems so strange to me now that we would have even considered that the spouse would be the deciding factor in who we would vote for!

Dear Mike, and the VOS listserv

To: Mike et al on the listserv for Voices for an Open Spirit
From: Audrey deCoursey

You ask us about Paul’s challenge in 1 Corinthians 5:9 -
‘I have written you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people’

I take that challenge seriously.

I am very concerned about sexually immoral people. I agree with Paul’s suggestion that one of the best ways to deal with sexually immoral people is to distance myself from them, especially when they have hurt me.

The sexually immoral people I am worried about are many: rapists, pedophiles, customers of the sex industry (pornography, prostitution, and strip clubs), bosses in the sex industry (I am NOT against the women and children who have to work in the sex industry), sexual harassers, traffickers who kidnap women and children to enslave them in brothels, and domestic abusers. Sadly, there are lots of people whose sexual immorality I am concerned about: all the people who hurt other people using sex. It takes a lot of effort to struggle against all the ways sex is used to create violence against other people.

In fact, it takes so much effort to struggle against the damage these people are causing to our world, that I have no time left to invent or revive codes of morality that label some people’s sexual practices immoral, even though they harm no one. I am NOT concerned with the supposed sexual immorality of people who are not harming other people. LGBT folks engaged in consensual adult relationships are not harming other people.

It makes me really wonder why some of us put so much energy into fighting against what they call ’sexual immorality,’ which are really loving relationships that harm no one, when there are instances of REAL sexual immorality around every corner. Do they not see the pain of real sexual immorality? Why do they exhaust themselves fighting against LGBT people? Why are they not devoting this energy into ending domestic violence or the sex slave trafficking rings that lurk in every nation? Why distract others from the real work of ending violence and oppression? Anyway, these little Scriptural challenges may backfire.

It’s fine to cite Paul’s suggestion about how to deal with sexually immoral people, but we must realize that we are setting ourselves up for quite a bigger struggle than just picking on a few LGBT folks – we will end up having to dismantle patriarchy as we know it. But that’s fine with me; we feminists are happy for some company in this struggle.

A New Spin on Fighting Heterosexism

by Audrey deCoursey

Are you as sick as I am of two-year celebrity weddings defaming the institution of marriage? And as tired as I am of righteous commentators claiming that homosexual unions are unnatural because they can’t produce children (without clinical aid)? And as sick and tired as I am of everybody (even people who screech about abortion being bad because pregnant women should put their babies up for adoption instead) looking down on adoption as not as legitimate a form of parenting as vaginal birth (within, it is assumed, the confines of a heterosexual marriage)?

Well then, we’d all better move to Washington state, where a new bill has been proposed to require married couples to produce offspring:

Proponents of same-sex marriage have introduced an initiative that would put a whole new twist on traditional unions between men and women: It would require heterosexual couples to have kids within three years or have their marriages annulled.

It makes you consider what marriage is really all about.