Humanlight

As the holiday season approaches, people of different religions and cultures celebrate Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanzaa, Pancha Ganapati or other alternatives. Humanlight is a secular, Humanist version of the late December festivities for non-religious people. Here is more on the holiday: http://humanlight.org/, and and there's an introductory video on youtube on the holiday also:

A Judeo-Christian-Pagan society?

It appears that by 2012, a year which is already filled with prophetic significance and is expected to inaugurate a New Age, Wicca will become the third major religion in the United States. Wicca generally enjoys great popularity among young people.

Biblical Family Values

I'm repulsed by Christians who use the Bible to legitimize homophobia by claiming that the Bible teaches 'family values', which is one of the most absurd, insulting things I've ever heard. The Bible was written by a primitive people who stoned women to death on the streets for adultery and yet allowed men to have multiple wives, and who ordered the stoning to death of disobedient sons.

Jacob had multiple wives (chapter 30 of Genesis depicts how he had sex with his two wives and two slaves - these are the four mothers of the 12 tribal patriarchs of Israel), not to mention kings David and Salomon who had a harem with both women and eunuchs or transgendered women. There are girls getting their dad (Lot) drunk and having sex with him. There are brothers selling their little brother (Joseph) into slavery out of jealousy. Who would have a mind twisted enough to call these attrocities 'family values'? The Torah even gives us the price of a woman (50 silver coins, see Deuteronomy 22), should we decide we want to sell our sisters or daughters.

If by family values we mean 'heterosexual marriage', then we read accusations from Paul, who never met Jesus and did not share his values. He states in his letter to the Romans that the cause of homosexuality is ... idolatry. Like modern religious foes of gay rights, he does not feel that he has to provide evidence of this link that he claims to exist between homosexuality (or any form of sexuality for that matter) and idolatry. Today we know that no such link exists, in fact most gay people who are coming out today were raised in monotheistic traditions, and the 800 million practitioners of Hinduism, a polytheistic tradition, show no higher ratio of homosexuality than the rest of humanity.

Paul was evidently expressing the prejudices of Jews of his own generation, who believed that all gay men were temple prostitutes. However, his lies ended up in the Bible and have been repeated by ignorant and hateful homophobes and his fabrications have become 'Bible truth' by virtue of having been included among the Biblical texts and being mindlessly repeated over and over for centuries.

Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen. Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men.

- Romans 1:22-27

Further study of this text also reveals that Paul believed that it was GOD himself who turned idolaters gay, which would necessarily mean that gayness is not a choice, but a God-given condition, which he nonetheless labels as shameful although he believes it's God's will that gays be gay ...

But Sarah ... said to Abraham, "Get rid of that slave woman and her son, for that slave woman's son will never share in the inheritance with my son Isaac."

- Genesis 21:10

The events concerning Hagar and Ishmael, the true firstborn of Abraham, are also shocking from the perspective of true family values. The intrigue generated by Hagar having Abraham's child and the jealousy of his first wife Sarah led to the EXILE of Hagar and Ishmael into the desert, where they could have died from hunger, thirst, or even from a serpent or scorpion bite. A single woman and a child with no protection in the desert, in those days, was unthinkable.

The irresponsibility of Abraham, his treachery towards his own son, and his inability to say no to Sarah, do not in any way communicate family values to me. If my father, under the spell of the whispers of one of his wives, had cast me and my mom into the desert with the serpents, it would have taken me many years to forgive him, if I ever did forgive him. Patriarch Abraham was what we today would consider a deadbeat dad.

Regardless of how many times you repeat the mantra 'Biblical family values', that will not turn the Bible into a document that teaches family values. That is simply dishonest, particularly when you ponder the modern meaning of this notion that Christians conceive. The Bible does not even teach monogamy. It does not even teach heterosexuality as the only ideal, but the status of an 'eunuch' is promoted, a status which includes sexual minorities - and this not only in the teachings of Jesus, but even of Isaiah (chapter 56).

That eunuchs were not thought of as celibate is plain when we consider characters from history such as Bagoas, the 'favorite' of King Darius and, later, of Alexander the Great whose effeminate beauty was scandalous and world renouned. Eunuchs often entertained kings and soldiers returning from war with music and performances ... and with sex. The later notion that an eunuch was a celibate person, which became the common Christian conception of the eunuch, originates with none other than Paul.

Jesus himself did not favor marriage, much less heterosexual marriage, as an ideal, nor do we see him in any way putting out his energy protecting the 'nuclear family' like some Christians do today (clearly not in imitation of Christ). Said behavior is therefore, literally, unChristlike. Instead we see him flatly denying his family access to him when they came to see him saying that those who follow him are family to him. If he came to us today and did this, his message would be labeled as pro-gay propaganda by modern conservative Christians

In the book of Matthew he says: 'There are eunuchs who are born such ... it is better for these to not marry ... let him who can accept this, do so.' We see Jesus instead clearly defending the rights of sexual minorities to what in those days represented a non heterosexual lifestyle!

But then, WHAT IF the state had to recognize that monogamous heterosexual marriage is a Christian institution?

WHAT IF we concede that, even if we know it's a fallacy? What then becomes of marriage, being a religious institution, in a SECULAR society with SECULAR laws?

Having established the fallacy of calling our modern institution of marriage by the label "Christian", then that means that we have to deal with the modern conservative Christian insistence, based on openly mystical, supernatural and theological proclamations that are not shared by everyone in the country, that marriage is a religious, and furthermore Christian, institution.

If we concede that it is, then clearly the boundary between religions and the state was crossed when marriage became recognized by the state, and marriage should therefore be either abolished, or a comparable, but secular, separate institution needs to be put in place by the state so that Christian marriage can remain sacred and heterosexual for the Christians while the state is able to recognize only those people who enter either 'civil unions', 'contracts' or whatever the secular version of marriage ends up being named.

This idea has been proposed before and is making more sense to me now, as I realize that in Islam (and early Mormonism) polygamy is practiced, and since Muhammad their prophet practiced it, millions in the Muslim world would never dare transform that tradition. Muslim Marriage is between one man and up to four wives! That's how it was in Muhammad's time and that's how it will always be!

Not only that, but Muhammad's youngest wife was six, and then nine years old when she consummated the marriage with a 60 year old Muhammad. If marriage is to be considered a sacred and religious institution, then the state better respond with a modern alternative that is more rooted in our modern taste and sensibilities than in millenia-old Semitic traditions that are starting to become seriously dangerous to our democratic, secular, modern values as more Muslims bring their traditions with them into the Western world, and as Christians are beginning to feel that secularism is bad and that it is their place to dictate our secular laws and to turn the USA into a land where people fear their God.

By challenging the secular nature of our laws and imposing a religious model of marriage on everyone, religious or non-religious and of every denomination, what they are doing is in fact not only articulating a modern, superstition-based RELIGIOUS marriage but also killing secular marriage and leading us non-religious people to propose a new institution to replace it at the state level, one that is based not on the laws in Deuteronomy that appraise women at 50 silver coins but on the radical contemporary idea of equal relations between all men and women.

Where the Wild Things Are

It was interesting to watch the movie Where the Wild Things Are ... just as news were flashing about a boy whom, they thought, had been taken away in a balloon by accident. The whole story was so outlandish! But it was the timing that I thought was interesting.

Joseph Campbell, the mentor of George Lucas and a lifelong mythology enthusiast, used to see linkages between random events and how they affected the collective psyche of humanity. He was heavily influenced by Carl Jung and his school of analytical psychology.

Joseph Campbell, being a mythographer, was naturally a great storyteller and it was very easy for him to weave meaning into things. One of the main Joseph Campbell stories that I remember was his story about the Earthrise pictures, that is, the pictures that were taken from the moon by the Apollo missions as they saw the Earth rising in the lunar sky.

He explained that this was an epiphany because throughout all of history humans have imagined their Gods as celestial objects. Astrology and mythology were linked intricately in the human psyche. The planets have the names of deities. Now the Earth, we confirmed, was a Goddess also. She was a majestuous heavenly object.

At around the same time as this picture started circulating, the Catholic Church announced that the dogma of the Assumption of Mary into heaven had been declared official doctrine of the Catholic Church and that Catholics had to adhere to this belief. Classical Greeks used similar imagery for their deified mortals. Campbell saw a connection between these two new feminine faces of Divinity and their new status, just as the feminist movement of the sixties and seventies was blossoming and changing human civilization forever. All of our assumptions about womanhood were about to be turned upside down.

According to the Jungian school, there is a collective psyche, and according to Joseph Campbell all of these symptoms in the culture indicated that something was stirring in the collective mind of humanity, something that was feminine, sublime, numinous and powerful, that it was awakening and that there would be no turning back.

I watched the movie Where the Wild Things Are with a friend the day it came out. To me, the movie dealt with child psychology and how children sometimes cope with stress by escaping into their imaginal realm.

But if I was to draw a link with the balloon incident (which took place, curiously, on the eve of the debut of the film) like Joseph Campbell did with the Earthrise and Assumption of Mary incidents, it seems to me like there is a new myth that is being born, an archetypal image that is being constellated in the collective psyche, of a child who was almost spirited away but returned, having gained wisdom or insight from the experience. It is a hero's journey dealing with the evolution of the puer aeternus, the eternal youth, in our culture.

The tendency of the puer aeternus is to be an idealist, to run away from responsibility and reality. I think of Peter Pan, of Michael Jackson, of men who never grew up. Now, I see that he experienced the running away but retains his groundedness. We do not have to fear losing him to the imaginal realm. He can discern the difference between imaginary and objective reality.

The writer of the book on which the movie Where the Wild Things Are is based mentions that the movie is made in such a way that it respects children. Looking at all the crazy things that are being done to children everywhere, from marriage of little girls to grown-ass men in the Muslim world, to the frequent gang-rape of girls in Sudan and South-Africa, child abuse by church and laity everywhere, and even slavery of children in sweatshops in China, India and elsewhere, I'd say that any advance in human rights for minors would be welcome.

It is the misery of the children that produces the need to escape reality, to go 'where the wild things are', and the incentive to never come back ... which ultimately produces dysfunction. If we alleviate said misery, we will find that children are better able to live happily and be wholesome and productive.

Hopefully these are all good omens.

Exodus 22:18 and the Women's Holocaust

Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.
- Exodus 22:18

Jesus himself said that we 'should know them for their fruits'. I have at times turned this rhetoric around on Christians in my arguments with them and studied the fruits of their own scriptures and the people who wrote them. In addition to the order to commit genocide against gays in Leviticus, I believe that Exodus 22:18 is one of the thorniest verses in the whole Bible, in terms of its fruits.

The month of october always conjures up (for me, at least) Western society's collective memories of the dark ages and the inquisition, particularly the burning of witches, which is a very unpopular subject even today, and many people like to dismiss it saying that those were remote times, but I believe it's so important to keep it alive in our memory. Should our descendants dismiss the Jewish holocaust when the II World War seems remote enough?

More to the point: Why do we use the word holocaust when we refer to the Jewish tragedy during the II WW, but not when we refer to the inquisition? Clearly we do not want another mass extinction of a whole people, be they Jews or Gentiles. But it's no less obscene to think of what the church did to women during the feudal age, yet the rhetoric in the history books is absolutely dishonest when it comes to the genocide of women.

According to some estimates, up to 9 million people, 80% of whom were women, died during the inquisition. This may seem exagerated, but we should keep in mind that this happened over around 300 years, so many generations saw these events, many generations of children had to watch their mothers, aunts and grandmothers being burnt, and there were entire villages in France that were wiped out by the Christian church, including Trière where it is said that no one was left alive, and an adjacent village where only about two people survived, apparently due to the fact that they celebrated festivals that were considered Pagan.

The genocide of women should also be compared to the burning of the Library of Alexandria, except that their cultural treasures were intangible and oral knowledge. With those women, died an entire culture, customs died, traditional songs and fairy tales died, even kitchen recipes died, and the knowledge of how to use certain herbs and medicines. The same herbs that are today used by the pharmaceutical industry, were known by many of these women. A paranoid, murderous, neurotic clergy burnt all of this, and the momentum of thousands of years of European cultural history and infrastructure was halted when they mass murdered all those women. The cultural soul of Europe died, literally, to be replaced by something that was dictated by Christian priests.

The church was particularly worried about the midwives, who challenged their god's will when they tried to relieve the pain of giving birth, which was their god's particular curse upon the women in relatiation for Eve's transgression. They were also accused of propagating abortion and family planning practices ... some things never change.

What's worse, the burning of women was very lucrative for the church. Lawyers made money, people who worked for the legal machine of the inquisition had to be paid, and greed was often the main reason behind the accusation of witchcraft: all of the property of women who were massacred by the church became church property. This is why it so happens that many of the victims were widows: they had no one to protect them and many of them had inherited some property that the church wanted.

We're living in a post-colonial era and history should be told from a more honest perspective. October is the month when we're invaded by imagery of witches: it's plain wrong to forget the voices and the memory of the women who were categorized as witches in feudal Europe, and what those events mean. People were cooked alive due to greed, stupidity, intolerance and superstition. A huge lesson of History (or HERstory, in any case).

We shouldn't want the Jewish holocaust to be forgotten, but also we shouldn't want the holocaust of the women to be forgotten. It should be treated with the same level of solemnity as the Jewish holocaust. Hallowe'en should be reclaimed as an occassion to remember the ghosts of the female ancestors of Europe and their trials and tribulations. This should be a time to tell their story.

Amalia

The song Amalia (No Quiere Ir Ebozo) (which translates roughly into 'Amalia don't wanna go husband' in 18th century Black Caribbean Spanish), might be based on a true story of an enslaved African woman who was sold or given to marry against her will and separated from her family. Her voice and story persist today in this sad, but beautiful, wailing bomba - which is an ecstatic Afro-diasporic musical genre from the Spanish Caribbean island of Borinquen.

In addition to the compassion that it awakens and the natural, organic flow of the song, I think one reason why I love this song so much is because history was told to us from the perspective of the conquerors. The conquered, often not even knowing how to read or write, had no other resource outside of their music, and so they danced their pain away. Amalia is a song which was preserved in this way: it is memory which is reproduced in the body of the bomba dancer. It is a dramatized, danced, intangible historical document. The ancestors dance and raise their voices, long forgotten, and tell history from their viewpoint through bomba, and now with the magic of the internet the whole world can hear them!

Amalia was popularized by salsa giant Willie Colón, then by legendary performer Héctor Lavoe. The version in this video is from William Cepeda, from one of the most well known bomba families in Puerto Rico.

One of my Favorite Christians

The view of the cross as the sacrifice for the sins of the world is a barbaric idea based on a primitive concept of God that must be dismissed.

- Liberal Episcopalian Bishop John Shelby Spong