Category Archives: Ecology, religion, justice

Public support of same sex marriage

Join the Impact is organizing a nationwide protest against Proposition 8, the silly ballot question that banned same-sex marriage in California, in reaction to the legalization of marriage in that state. Join the Impact has organized gatherings in cities in every state this Saturday, November 15th, to express our opposition to Prop 8 — check their Web site for locations — including one in Boston at 1:30 p.m.

I’ll be going to the gathering in Boston. The organizers are working on permits for City Hall/Government Plaza, but it’s not finalized yet The organizers have confirmed that City Hall will be the location. Check their blog, or their Facebook event page for latest news.

As the organizers put it: “This is not just a California issue! This is an issue of equality for all Americans!” Even though same sex marriage is legal here in Massachusetts, it would be very good if we could get a large turnout of people across the country to show support for same-sex marriage.

If you can’t go yourself, let all your progressive friends know about this event! (And thanks to Erin for letting me know.)

Sensawonder

“Sensawonder” is a slang term among science fiction fans to refer to that awe-struck sense of wonder you get when contemplating the amazingness of the universe. I’ve been getting my sensawonder fix from following the Phoenix Mars mission over the past few months. In its five months of operations since landing, the Phoenix Mars lander has sent back some amazing observations, including a video of snow descending from Martian clouds, and evidence that there was running water on Mars in the past.

But now the Martian winter is closing in, with shorter daylight, more clouds, and more dust in the atmosphere, with the result that the lander is no longer getting enough power from its solar panels to send or receive radio signals to and from earth. The control team on earth issued a press release on November 3 to say that although they had hoped to get another couple of weeks of weather observations, dust storms were making that seem unlikely. As of today, they are reporting that they haven’t heard from the lander since November 2, making it seem likely that the lander has completely lost power.

The lander was designed to operate for only three months, so the last two months of operation have been a welcome bonus of additional sensawonder for us. Analysis of the data collected over the past five months has barely begun, and we can expect lots of additional science (and more wonder) to come out of the Phoenix Mars mission.

The ineffectiveness of racism as a political strategy

So at Folk Choir rehearsal tonight, I heard about an incident that happened here in southeastern Massachusetts, which happened roughly like this:– white woman with two black children in tow walks into a store, a couple of young white men ask her if she’s going to vote for Obama, she says yes, they say they hope Obama doesn’t get into the White House because then it would be the “black house,” the N-word was thrown around, and that was the end of that. Well, that was the end of that except for going home and taking a long hot shower to wash the slime off, and then calling some friends to tell them about it, one of whom was a member of our choir.

Oh yes indeedy, there are people like that here in liberal, blue-state Massachusetts. But you know what? The effectiveness of racism as a political strategy is finally waning. Obama is going to win this state and all twelve of its electoral college votes no matter what those two young white men said. And I think most of us would agree that throwing the N-word at a couple of little kids in order to support your own political candidate is only going to make your candidate look bad. So we have made progress, since back when I was a kid, thirty or forty years ago (all right, forty years ago), veiled racial slurs were still an effective political weapon. No matter who wins tomorrow (and at the moment the polls are leaning towards giving Obama the electoral college vote), this is the year we discovered that racism, no matter how veiled, just doesn’t work very well as a political strategy any more.

On the other hand, it looks like calling someone a Muslim has become a pretty effective political weapon. No wonder I hate politics.

Hooray for Connecticut.

From the BBC Web site today, a story about “US state legalises gay marriage“:

“Connecticut’s Supreme Court has overturned a ban on same-sex marriages, making it the third US state to legalise such unions….

“The governor of Connecticut, Jodi Rell, a Republican, said she did not agree with the ruling but would uphold it…. The governor said she believed any attempt to contest the decision, either legislatively or by amending the state constitution, would fail.”

Hooray for Connecticut.

We should discuss creationism in the classroom?!

That’s what Michael Reiss says. He’s a former teacher with PhD in evolutionary biology, now director of education at the Royal Society in the U.K.: “What Reiss believes is that when the issue of creationism or intelligent design is raised in the class room (and he expects it to be raised increasingly frequently) the teacher should discuss it as an alternative ‘worldview’ but show why it is not a scientific theory and why evolution is a scientific theory.”

More at the Nature Web site.

Phillip Pullman on banning books, and religion

What with all the allegations that Sarah Palin wants to ban books (not true, by the way, according to Librarian.net), it’s worth hearing what Phillip Pullman has to say about book banning in a recent opinion piece in the U.K. Guardian:

“…They never learn. The inevitable result of trying to ban something — book, film, play, pop song, whatever — is that far more people want to get hold of it than would ever have done if it were left alone. Why don’t the censors realise this?”

Pullman’s book The Golden Compass a.k.a. Northern Lights was one of the top five books in the American Library Association’s most-challenged books of 2007 — and his experience has been that when people want to ban his books, his book sales go up.

Interestingly, Pullman points out that the American Library Association reports that people challenged or banned his books for religious reasons. Pullman goes on to say this about religion in general:

“Religion, uncontaminated by power, can be the source of a great deal of private solace, artistic inspiration, and moral wisdom. But when it gets its hands on the levers of political or social authority, it goes rotten very quickly indeed…. Destroying intellectual freedom is always evil, but only religion makes doing evil feel quite so good.”

I think Pullman goes too far in the direction of calling for religious quietism — after all, quietist religion too often gets co-opted by authoritarian regimes which then use it to keep the masses in line. I’d put it this way:– religion should promote intellectual freedom in part by staying in a critical, adversarial relationship with civil government and civil authority. For example, from my religious point of view that adversarial relationship might well include actively promoting books that politicians might prefer went away. You know, actively promoting books like the Bible which actively challenges U.S. government policies in Iraq, because the Bible tells us to be peacemakers, which means we should not be at war in Iraq. Stuff like that.

Thanks to.

It’s snowing on Mars…

Yup. The Phoenix Mars mission has discovered that it snows on Mars. News release on their Web site. They also have this video showing clouds on Mars — and although they don’t claim it’s snow, in the video you can see occasional white schmutz blowing by the camera.

I grew up on science fiction stories that talked about life on Mars. Planetary science long ago demonstrated that the Martians of H. G. Wells, Stanley G. Weinbaum, and Ray Bradbury are nothing more than fairy tales. Now science is showing us something even more fascinating than the old science fiction stories:– the existence of frozen water on Mars, and the possibility that Mars have have seen liquid water in the past; all of which suggests a possibility that Mars once had life forms of some kind.

Same sex marriage news

Yesterday, the Marriage Equality Coalition of Massachusetts reported:

“By a vote of 118 to 35, Massachusetts House passed legislation this afternoon repealing the 1913 law, which prevents out-of-state same-sex couples from marrying here if they could not marry in their home state. The legislation was passed by the Senate earlier this month and is expected to be signed by Governor Patrick in short order…. Once the bill is signed, we’ll be in touch with more information about what this means for same-sex couples in other states — including when the law goes into effect.”

Ultimately, this might mean that any same sex couple who wished could get legally married here in Massachusetts. Of course, it would remain an open question whether other states or the federal government would recognize all legal rights that should be accorded to such marriages, and we should probably expect the resultant litigation to go all the way to the Supreme Court.

But when the new law does go into effect, I hereby offer to officiate at weddings for any out-of-state same-sex couple for free.