It’s time for music now. This week I want to introduce you to an artist you probably haven’t heard of, named Angie Aparo. He’s a Georgia singer/songwriter who has been working to create authentic, wonderful music for well over a decade, and you may not know it, but you probably know one of his greatest songs. One of Faith Hill’s greatest hits is a song called “Cry,” and sorry, no love lost for Faith, but she didn’t do it justice. It was on Angie’s record The American years back, along with the other songs I’m posting, “Gravity” and “Hush.” The latter song ranks as one of my favorites to crank up in the car and sing along to. It’s an exceptionally difficult song to sing, as Angie’s voice is truly something special, but on those good days when I, as a singer, can nail it, it feels really good. If you don’t listen to all of the songs, at least listen to “Cry,” and hear what it sounds like when the composer of the song does it. All of these songs are particularly meaningful to me.
Now we hit shuffle on the iTunes and see where we are ten songs later, listen to music, etc. More videos after the jump!
1. Echospace – “Empyrean”
2. The Rolling Stones – “Midnight Rambler”
3. Gov’t Mule – “New World Blues”
4. Princeton – “Oklahoma”
5. The Roots ft. Dice Raw – “Diedre vs. Dice”
6. The Byrds – “Eight Miles High”
7. Digable Planets – “Dog It”
8. Gary Jules – “Wichita”
9. Tori Amos – “Girl”
10. Tori Amos – “Cool On Your Island”
“Cool On Your Island” is highly appropriate, considering the songs I started with. Though the version that came up in the shuffle is a live recording, I’m using the Y Kant Tori Read version below, and if you know what that means, I like you.
Weird quote from “ex-gay” PFOX leader Greg Quinlan:
“I want to talk first of all about something I heard from the very beginning by people of this Legislature that we are bigots as people of faith, because we do not hold that homosexual marriage should be codified. That somehow we are bigots and we are ideologues because we are people of faith. I want to address that hate. Everyone in this room who is a person of faith deserves an apology from one of the sponsors of this bill for calling us bigots.
“To date there is zero evidence that anyone is born a homosexual, zero. In fact it’s homosexual researchers and scientists that are proving that homosexuality is not innate and had no biological ideology. Homosexuality is not immutable. There are many ex-gays; Anne Heche, to name one, Sinead O’Connor and myself. I left the homosexual lifestyle almost 20 years ago. Lived as a homosexual activist for 10 years of my life.”
Wait, I’m confused. Did Anne Heche and Sinead O’Connor go through brutal, discredited “ex-gay” ministries, the patients of which often end up driven to deeper levels of depression and sometimes suicide, in order to pray themselves straight. Or did their lives just change? I don’t know about Anne, but I highly doubt Sinead O’Connor would appreciate her name being used in that way by such an ignorant, hateful bigot.
Anyway, the rest of it is just the usual whining. “Tolerate our unhinged hatred!” Whatever.
After more than a decade of laying the ground work and fretting that the votes would be just out of reach, state Sen. Ed Murray watched Wednesday night as the Senate easily passed legislation that would legalize gay marriage.
The vote was 28-21.
[...]
While it wasn’t final passage, the Senate always has been viewed as the biggest hurdle for same-sex marriage legislation, as it was for gay-rights bills in previous years.
The measure now heads to the House, where supporters say they have more than enough votes. It’s expected to pass as early as next week. The governor strongly supports the bill as well.
Of course, here comes the bigots with their new and different idea of voting on people’s civil rights, which goes against the definition of “rights,” but whatever.
Scott Lively, hate group leader extraordinaire, speaking at a church in California:
I want to just attack this idea that people have raised that homosexuality is just another sin because that’s not true and the more that we embrace that, the more that we accept that as a concept, the more distant we are from understanding the warning that God gives us when we see this phenomenon in our society.
Gay is especially bad! And not only because gay is the thing that Scott Lively is unnaturally fixated with!
When you see the gay pride parade going down the street in the major cities, what banner are they flying over them? They’re flying the banner of the rainbow. What is the rainbow? The rainbow is God’s covenant with man never to destory the Earth by water again …
God never promised not to send a flood of gays to cover the earth. Loophole!
So there’s an enormous warning there and, at the same time, we’re also given a clue as to what’s happening with apostasy in the modern age when people will raise the rainbow flag – and there’s a passage in Isiah, I forget the chapter and verse, that says “they parade their sin like Sodom.” And that is what is exactly going on with people who have defined themselves by this particular behavior and lifestyle. They parade their sin like Sodom. And they do it under the rainbow banner almost as if they’re saying “God, you can do nothing to us” because they don’t believe that Sodom was destroyed because of homosexuality so they aren’t learning the lesson from that.
Because the only way you can believe that Sodom was destroyed because of homosexuality is if you A. Have been taught that repeatedly and never looked at the verses for yourself, B. Only halfway glance at a bad translation and also do not own or know how to use a concordance, as the actual sin of Sodom is explained fourteen times throughout the Bible, and it’s not Gay, or C. Are like Scott Lively, and have such a weird, unhinged hatred of gay people that, even though you’re theoretically capable of studying the text for yourself, you simply continue lying because it props up your smelly bigotry.
In fifty years we have seen this tiny group of people – they really only represent about two percent of the population – that has grown from being a reviled subculture to now having more power in the legislatures and courtrooms of the world than the Christian church does.
Uh, no.
In fifty years! Nothing has ever grown that fast globally, nothing. Not Islam, not Darwinism, not Marxism, nothing has ever grown that fast. Which shows you that this is a spiritual phenomenon that is unparallelled and that’s why God has selected it, singled out this particular behavior to be the indicator of extreme apostasy, the furthest edge of deviance and the warning sign that things are in really, really bad shape.
Islam is a huge, ancient world religion with over a billion adherents. Darwinism is what morons call “evolutionary biology,” and as such, its “spread” is referred to as “education.” Etc. But none of these things have grown faster than GAAAAAAAY, says Scott.
Perhaps it’s more that none of those things keep Scott Lively awake shivering at night, and that’s why he views the gays as more powerful.
Oy. The more he talks, the more I’m inclined to feel sorry for him. Right Wing Watch has the video.
Tragically, Rutgers freshman Tyler Clementi committed suicide last fall after being outed by his roommate. His death was a starting point in what has become a rallying cry for the LGBT community and our allies in stopping the bullying and humiliation that so sadly leads far too many gay kids to take their own lives.
His older brother James is also gay, and has written his little brother a series of beautiful, sad letters, published by Out. Please read it all, and have tissue handy. I’ll excerpt some of it here, and then click over.
James describes the moment when he realized that his younger brother was also gay, and how they eventually came out to each other:
I ’m not sure when I first realized my younger brother was gay. I think I knew he was for as long as I knew I was. I had no idea how to bring it up; it was just something we left dangling in the air, unsaid. I was open about my sexuality with friends, but around my family there was this barrier that felt unbreakable. It slowly dawned on me that I wasn’t the only one, that I had a brother who was also gay — my baby brother, whom I had always felt protective and paternal toward. I knew I was in a position to be a confidant, a role model. But I wasn’t ready to do any of that. It would have made it much less lonely for me to grow up with an older brother who had gone through and understood everything I was dealing with — and I wanted to be that for Tyler.
[...]
It was the Fourth of July. We had spent the day at the movies, the diner, the fireworks. So many opportunities, and I kept chickening out. That night, I found him in the house listening to Katy Perry, and I saw that, if I couldn’t do this now, something was really wrong with me. I overthought it — because it ended up being this simple.
Me: “I’m gay.”
Tyler: “Oh. Me too.”
Heh. Now a few excerpts from the letters:
Pipsqueak,
You were one noisy kid. I remember walking inside and the most beautiful sounds of Tchaikovsky and Mozart would waft through every room. And I hated it.
Remember how I used to bang on your door and scream at you to stop being so loud? It was so unfair that I had to listen to your noise all the time — why couldn’t you just pick up a quieter hobby!? I would refuse to attend your recitals and concerts because I had to listen to you play all the damn time at home. Wow, do I regret that.
It is so quiet now. You were really talented; it was a gift. I’m not sure I ever told you that… maybe you didn’t care. It’s not like you needed my validation; I know nothing about classical music and you knew you were the shit when it came to that damn violin. I just feel really bad for not telling you how awesome you are, how much I respect your skills and dedication. I regret not listening to every note with open ears, not going to more concerts. Fuck you for making me feel bad; it’s not fair that you did that to me. But I would tell you now if I could, I really miss the noise!
About all the publicity surrounding Tyler’s death:
I wonder what you would think, seeing all the commotion you’ve caused. It is surreal and meaningless to see you as a mere story on The New York Times, a brief glimpse at a life with none of the detail. You were a typical college freshman, trying to adjust to a dorm room, make some friends, meet a cute guy, and enjoy your independence, and no one noticed. The headlines tell of how you were violated and ridiculed; your last moments are a cautionary tale, a scandal, something to sell and entertain.
You are on every talk show, newspaper, and blog, being held up as the issue du jour for the masses to “care about,” like they ever read you a story or wiped away your tears or spun you around in the air until you were dizzy. I wish it didn’t take you dying for your soul to know peace. I wish you could read the hundreds of letters we got, hear the thousands who rallied and marched for you, know the millions who followed your story on the 6 o’clock news. You were never alone; it just felt like it.
Having a younger brother who is close to me, I can’t handle the beginning of this letter:
Little Peanut,
I always thought that, between you and I, you were the stronger one.
That entire letter is amazing, but I don’t want to spoil it by merely excerpting it. Nor do I want to spoil the rest.
The Washington state Senate was expected to vote endorse legalization of gay marriage Wednesday night, which would move the state a step closer to becoming the nation’s seventh to recognize same-sex unions.
[...]
Democratic Senator Ed Murray, its chief sponsor, said last week proponents had secured the 25 votes needed for a simple majority in the 49-seat chamber. Murray has said he hoped to end up with 27 or more votes, though the controversial issue was likely to result in a lengthy floor debate that could last well into the night.
With passage in the state House of Representatives already seen as virtually assured, opponents of same-sex matrimony say they will seek the measure’s repeal with a referendum asking voters to reaffirm marriage as being exclusively between one man and one woman.
The House will likely vote on the bill in the coming weeks and Governor Chris Gregoire will sign it.
Of course, Religious Right bigots will then try to repeal the bill through referendum, blaming “activist legislatures,” at which point they just might get handed a nice big loss, in which case they will blame “activist voters.”
Rick Perlstein doesn’t think Mitt Romney’s Mormonism will ultimately matter to Evangelical voters, and I tend to agree. You should read the whole thing, but here’s how his piece starts:
I’ve never been impressed with the argument that Mitt Romney makes for a weak Republican nominee because conservatives don’t like him. That’s not how that party works. Like they say, “Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line.” Don’t believe me? Think back four years. When the race was still up in the air, the venom aimed at McCain was ten times worse than anything being suffered by Mitt. I collected the stuff back then: Rush Limbaugh said McCain threatened “the American way of life as we’ve always known it”; Ann Coulter said he was actually “a Democrat” (oof!); an article in the conservative magazine Human Events called him “the new Axis of Evil”; and Michael Reagan, talk radio host and the 40th president’s son, said “he has contempt for conservatives, who he thinks can be duped into thinking he’s one of them.”
Then McCain wrapped up the nomination, and Mike Reagan suddenly said, “You can bet my father would be itching to get out on the campaign trail working to elect him.” One thing Republicans understand: In American elections you have to choose from among only two people – not between the perfect and the good.
He adds a bit later:
I think they’ll get over it. In American religious history, theological qualms tend to get pushed aside when politics intervenes.
Consider that little more than a generation ago, Catholics had it even worse than Mormons do now. “Theological qualms”? Try this one on for size: Once upon a time many, if not most, Protestant fundamentalists identified the Roman Catholic Church as nothing less than the Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the Earth – the dreaded “Whore of Babylon” described in Revelation 17 and 18. More prosaically, they identified Catholics as an alien force. Billy Graham reassured his followers in 1960 that it was legitimate to vote against Catholic John F. Kennedy out of religious prejudice, because the Roman Catholic Church “is not only a religious but also a secular institution, with its own ministers and ambassadors.”
Fast forward to now: extremist Catholic voters and activists are in lockstep with extremist Evangelical voters and activists, because conservative religious people in this country, at least of the “Judeo-Christian” variety, have united about that which they hate.
It’s actually a little bit astonishing to look at how much American theology has changed in the past century. Rick’s piece looks back on that time not so long ago when Evangelicals really, honestly, didn’t care about abortion. For some of us who weren’t around in the 1970′s, it’s hard to imagine, but they used to consider that a Catholic issue and they kinda sorta totally hated Catholics. Now the enemies are gays, women, Muslims, etc. We’ll keep hearing the prognostication about whether Evangelicals will vote for a Mormon up to the day that Romney ties up the nomination. At that point, wingnuts, like they do, will fall in line.
It’s time for music now. This week I want to introduce you to an artist you probably haven’t heard of, named Angie Aparo. He’s a Georgia singer/songwriter who has been working to create authentic, wonderful music for well over a decade, and you may not know it, but you probably know one of his greatest songs. One of Faith Hill’s greatest hits is a song called “Cry,” and sorry, no love lost for Faith, but she didn’t do it justice. It was on Angie’s record The American years back, along with the other songs I’m posting, “Gravity” and “Hush.” The latter song ranks as one of my favorites to crank up in the car and sing along to. It’s an exceptionally difficult song to sing, as Angie’s voice is truly something special, but on those good days when I, as a singer, can nail it, it feels really good. If you don’t listen to all of the songs, at least listen to “Cry,” and hear what it sounds like when the composer of the song does it. All of these songs are particularly meaningful to me.
