[Vision2020] Melynda, Keely, and Dick

[Joan Opyr]

Dear Visionaries,

When it comes to defending her beliefs and defending herself, Keely 
Emerine Mix does not need my help.  She is brilliant.  She is eloquent. 
  She is a thoughtful, articulate, passionate woman, and she is 
thoroughly grounded in all of the issues on which she chooses to post.  
What she is not is this creature of guilty mystery that Dick Sherwin 
has conjured up from deep within his own terrified psyche.  When I read 
this sort of nonsense from Dick, below, I don't wonder what's wrong 
with Keely; I wonder what's wrong with Dick.

He wrote:

> If you are getting "pissed off", live with it.  You have an angry 
> streak
> over something, you know, a chip on your shoulder like you are 
> expecting to
> be attacked at any minute.  It has been my experience that sort of 
> anger is
> usually brought on by some guilt in the person being angered.
>
> If you are letting me anger you, you are letting me control you.  That 
> is
> your problem, not mine.  It is not my intent to anger anyone but I get
> impatient with the childish name calling and snippy attitudes from 
> some of
> the people here.  If you can't openly discuss any topic without getting
> angry, then maybe you should figure out why.

Once again, we find Herr Pot paging Monsieur Kettle.  Pick up the white 
courtesy phone, Dick.  Do you recognize that voice at the other end?  
By golly, it's you!

What, honestly, do you think you have demonstrated by way of 
constructive, adult, intelligent dialog since the unhappy hour when you 
joined this list?  Snippy attitudes?  Childish name-calling?  Bad 
temper?  Accusations of mental illness and of deep, dark, terrible 
secrets?  Wayne is correct; when challenged on any topic having to do 
with religion or homosexuality, you seem to suffer from a kind of 
situational Tourette's -- you slaver and you froth; you shout and you 
shriek.  You are, in short, irrational.  For me, watching this 
spectacle has been more painful than aggravating.  I am sorry that you 
cannot debate calmly and sensibly; I am sorry that when your views are 
challenged, you fall to bits.  Why is this?  Is your faith so fragile 
that it cannot withstand any questioning?  Is your God so weak, so 
petty and insubstantial, that He might blow away on cloud of spittle if 
a few stubborn liberals fail to fall into line with your thinking?  
Whatever happened to a mighty fortress?

Keely is angry with you, Dick, because you keep accusing her of things 
she has not done.  She has not had an abortion.  She wasn't obliged to 
tell you this, but she did.  You goaded her into it, and that's not a 
thing to be proud of.  Keely doesn't goad easily.  She's a devout 
Christian, and when you try her patience, you try the patience of a 
woman who genuinely tries and tries hard to walk in the path of your 
savior.  Shame on you.  Unlike Keely, I am easily goaded.  I have a 
terrible temper.  I would have told you to kiss my shiny pink ass; that 
whether or not I had had an abortion was none of your damned business.  
But she didn't.  She responded openly and honestly, and how did you, in 
turn, respond?  You accused her of lying.  What do you want from Keely, 
Dick -- a doctor's note?  I think what you need is a doctor's visit -- 
a nice long doctor's visit that involves you lying on a couch and 
telling the nice bearded man with the Viennese accent exactly why you 
smoke such big cigars.

That's all I have to say to you, Dick.  I don't wish you ill; I wish 
you peace.  Literally.  For heaven's sake, find some peace.  Get some.  
Embrace it.  I tried putting you on my Bozo filter, but I was afraid 
I'd miss the Grand Mal.

---------------------------------------------

So that's Dick in a can, but as long as I'm here, I'd like to address a 
related topic.  What is it that compels some of us to feel that we have 
the right to define a particular set of religious beliefs for others?  
What gives a fellow like Doug Farris or Mike Lawyer the right (or the 
hubris) to define Christianity for all the world and its wife?  When 
exactly did they meet God?  (And don't tell me between the pages of the 
Bible.  Experience suggests that God's too big to fit.)  When was it 
that Jesus Christ handed them the keys to the kingdom of heaven?  Did 
he really give them instructions to step through the gate and lock it 
behind them or are they just making that bit up?  It's not that I care 
what they believe, but the fact of the matter is that I have more 
confidence in the aphorism I found in my last fortune cookie than I 
have in their collective ability to read and interpret a collection of 
ancient Hebrew texts.  They can't seem to read a post to this list 
accurately.  Why should anyone trust them with matters of life and 
after-death?

Listen: I wouldn't presume to define Judaism for any Jew but me.  I 
wouldn't presume to define God or what constitutes legitimate and 
acceptable religious practice for expressing a belief in God.  Why?  
Because I'm not God.  I'm a human being and therefore weak and 
fallible.  I am not infinite.  I am not all-knowing.  Who the hell is 
Mike Lawyer to tell Michael Metzler (or anyone else) who is and who 
isn't a "real" Christian?

Want to know what "One America, Under Doug, Indivisible, with Liberty 
for Doug and Injustice for All the Rest" would look like in practice?  
Then check out Michael Metzler's blog, Pooh's Think, at 
http://www.poohsthink.com.  Doug Wilson's right-hand man, Mike Lawyer, 
has a post up there that describes my mother-in-law, Rose, as a woman 
who "claims to be a conservative Christian," but she really can't even 
be a Christian because she allows her lesbian daughter and her lesbian 
daughter's same-sex "nonChristian" lover to live in her (Rose's) home.

Where to begin?  I suppose I could point out that Rose has never 
claimed to be a conservative Christian.  She's a liberal Christian, and 
a garden variety Quaker, at that.  Second, although this is certainly 
Rose's home, it isn't her house.  Melynda and I bought the farm from 
Rose and Don last year.  Third, what could be more narrow, more blind, 
more stale and provincial than dividing the world into Christian and 
non-Christian?  Taste the rainbow, Mike Lawyer!  Get thee out to the 
Renaissance Faire!  Meet and greet.  Chow down at the Filipino food 
booth or at the beans and burritos for Costa Rica tent.  Open your eyes 
and look, man.  You've got to get bored with your own navel sometime -- 
let that time be now.

Finally -- and this is important, sir -- I don't think of myself as a 
non-Christian.  I think of myself as a Jew.  I am not an anti, I'm a 
pro.  I am not the un-you; I am the me.  Do you get the difference?  Do 
you understand?  Or am I going to have to trot out the unCola versus 
Sprite analogy?  I hope not.  That would be sad, very sad indeed.

Joan Opyr/Auntie Establishment
www.joanopyr.com