29 August 2010

John Locke Stumbling Block

John Locke Stumbling Block

2 August 2010


From John Locke’s “Two Treatises on Government” Introduction “...(I) cannot but confess myself mightly surprised that in a book which was to provide chains for all mankind, I should find nothing but a rope of sand, useful perhaps to such whose skill and business it is to raise a dust and would bind the people, the better to mislead them, but in truth not of any force to draw those into bondage who have their eyes open and so much sense about them as to consider that chains are but an ill wearing, however much care has been taken to file and polish them.”


Once in a while, upon ocassion

I ponder my religious persuasion.

Growing up innocent and unwary

I was told it was in my best interest

To serve as a Mormon missionary,

But unfortunately it left me depressed.

Following my excommunication

I wanted to make a religious determination.

Atheism in it’s superficiality

Had no ethics or morality.

By the way

Let me say

I am gay.

It seemed for me

The best church was MCC.

Their Jesus was easy to follow

Even if the theology was hard to swallow.

I had my precious Jesus, nevertheless

While on a camping trip I met the Goddess.

My quest was far reaching

To find any pagan teaching.

From commandments I was freed

By obeying the Wiccan Rede:

As long as the harm is nil,

Go and do as you will.

I noticed a dichotomy after a while

It had me puzzled and irked

In the neo-pagan lifestyle,

If magic really worked,

The disparity, which is

There are no rich witches.

One day while watching TV

I found my morality.

The program on evolution

Provided my ethical solution.

All life on earth

Is deserving of worth.

Everything living here

Has equal right to be there.

While growing up, when being overawed

All good things came from God.

While bad things and horrible circumstances

Were blamed on bad luck and happenstances.

Interesting how life seems to woo

And confirm any point of view.

Unfortunately, while it’s different than what’s wished,

While recognizing that no good deed goes unpunished

What goes around does come around

So let random acts of kindness abound.

Be a creator, not just a consumer.

And don’t forget sex and witty humor.

19 August 2010

Connecting The Dots

Connecting the Dots


I think I have been underestimating the power of sex. Let’s consider the holy trinity of love, sex and marriage. Because I’m gay until recently I only focused on putting love & marriage together. Anybody familiar with the way gay men act, knows that in the gay community frequently sex has nothing to do with emotions or commitment. Sex between men is a simple act of pleasure for pleasure’s sake. That’s where conservatives get their panties in a knot. Sex between a man and a woman takes negotiation, give a little to get a little. There’s the rub. Gays get lots of free and easy sex while for straight men it comes at a price.

The other day at work in the lunchroom I saw an older coworker holding hands with her husband. From past observations I know the woman is very religious. Then it hit me. She gets to have church and sex together. As an excommunicated gay man I had never connected religion and erotic that way before. The thought of sex with a woman doesn’t do anything for me, but the message I get from larger society is that sex with a woman feels very good. Now if you combined the emotional high of religious ecstasy with sexual ecstasy, you just couldn’t get any higher than that. Marriage frequently is a religious rite. Which puts sex under the church umbrella. Then after marriage, all societal messages and blessings are saying go for the gusto. In my life never having connected church and sex, I think I’ve been cheated.

Now let’s expand the religion-sex connection a bit. The way I understand it, suicide bombers make the sacrifice on the promise of sex in the afterlife. After all, what’s the point of having 72 virgins if you don’t get to deflower them? In Mormon theology, people are eventually resurrected with fully functioning bodies. And the faithful ones benefiting from Heavenly Father’s presence go on to become like Him, as gods themselves peopling other worlds with their own spirit children. Now just how do you suppose those spirit children come about? Could it be sex? In other words, obedient Mormons get to have sex forever; and not all with the same wife.

Maybe the way I connected love and marriage without sex can be twisted to an analogy of why straight men oppose gay marriage. Straight men, the power brokers in today’s world, having connected marriage and sex, are repulsed by the thought of marriage being represented by two men having sex. And don’t mention polyamory. They aren’t even going there. Maybe polygamy, but not polyamory.

Yes, I think I’ve been underestimating the power of sex. Life experience leads me to conclude that decisions are made emotionally then rationalized logically. Because some people can’t conceive of themselves in a same-gender marriage or polyamorous arrangement, they seek to deny those relationships to all others.

15 August 2010

Stongarm Poor Farm

Strongarm Poor Farm

13 August 2010


There’s an odd little ditty

They’re singing in the city.

It’s really not that pretty,

About the committee.


If you listen just right

You’ll start to see the light

Of who’s wrong, who’s right

And just who to indict.


Jerry and Donna were in the mayor’s race

Now they’ve done an aboutface

And they’re playing kissy face

With a very public embrace.


The issue is over who has been lax

And how to increase the sales tax.

The old boys pat each other’s backs

While the public has apolectic attacks.


Taxes on the docket

Send emotions on a rocket,

Will get the funds out of your pocket

So you pawn your mother’s locket.