Rainbow’s Point

In case you were unaware of just how fucked up Texas is. With appreciation to feministing.

the pope is dead.

i have mixed feelings about it, and about him.

i’m not catholic, for one thing, so he’s never been the head of a religious order i paid a great deal of attention to. on the other hand, he was a tremendously charismatic leader who managed to attract a considerable personal following.

also, he’s the only pope that i, and anyone younger than i, remember. he was pope for 26 years; i just turned 31 years old, so i was 4 when he was elected in 1978.

anybody can read elsewhere about the criticisms leveled against him for his conservative stances over women, birth control, sexuality, the whole bit. and i agree with them.

on the other hand, he does command a certain respect from me. at the very least, even when he was (by my estimation) wrong, at least we knew exactly what he believed, why he believed it, and that he wouldn’t “flip-flop.” he was always consistent, on-message, and within his frame of reference, lucid.

the newest potter has arrived. congrats and all that good stuff.

as a jew, i feel compelled to comment on something that i was told about a couple days ago, and just got the opportunity to track down. i was horrified.

jews are commanded to circumcize boys at 8 days of age. this is typically done by a person called a mohel (or moyel if you’re from eastern european traditions). typically a circumcision isn’t a big deal, and frequently, at least in the united states, it’s done in the hospital early and the mohel is more a formality than anything else.

this is important to me because my own boys were circumcised in the hospital, and while we’re raising them jewish, it’s necessary for me to have them formally converted to judiasm. because jewishness is passed maternally and my wife is catholic, my kids are officially not jewish. at this point it’s a drop-your-pants-for-a-quick-prick-and-bleed for them. in another post i’ll bitch about how i think it’s stupid to even require this for them at this point.

anyway, onward. new york papers are now reporting a case in which rabbi yitzchok fischer seems to have given at least three boys a case of herpes.

it works like this: rabbi dipshit whacks foreskin, and then to make it bleed to “cleanse the wound” he sucks on it with his mouth. this is done in a small minority of ultra-orthodox (right wing frummies) cases.

after one of the affected children died of his herpes infection, the new york department of health ordered rabbi dipshit to quit it while they figured out whether or not the herpes came from him. he refused and is now being sued over it.

and this is not the first time this has been recorded.

and some are now bitching about the new york department of health attempting to regulate religion. puhleeze.

it makes one wonder how far “tradition” should go and when we stop some of these practices and recognize that this is disgusting and dangerous.

a certain church has always seemed, to me, to contain more than its fair share of stupidity. here’s proof.

what’s wrong with this?

doctrinal statements have always been the province of churches. churches have the right to set standards for practicing their rituals and for specifying the way in which those rituals must be observed by their adherants.

but a basic tenent of every religion i’m familiar with is that the sanctity of life is inviolate.

consider: judiasm forbids the mutilation of the dead, but organ donation is acceptable — even encouraged — as promoting life.

at least in judiasm, for example, halachic law is clear: if engaging in a religious practice would make you sick, you are exempt from the practice. fasting on yom kippur is traditional and required, but not if you’re a diabetic, because not eating for 24 hours can kill a diabetic.

in a religion that professes to support life, one wonders why it would require its adherants to practice rituals that would kill them.

yet when church leaders are unwilling to make exceptions to their doctrines that would preserve the lives of their worshippers, one must wonder just what these people really care about: do they care about the spiritual well-being of their flock, or do they just care about their little narrow-minded interpretation of the rules?

I’m not Catholic. Never have been. But it remains a fact that Christianity and its teachings impact my life today, if only because I live in a country seemingly driven by Christian idealogues.

The note on The Rabbit Lived, which is good reading, reminds me again why I’m sort of a mix between pro-life and pro-choice.

I find myself personally pro-life. That is, I counsel those I come in contact with away from abortion, if they trust me enough to seek my counsel.

But I am politically pro-choice. That is, I want the legal option there for people who, for whatever reason, want to have an abortion. I shy away from laws that make moral judgements, and that’s what abortion laws are all about. Moral judgements, in my opinion, are best left to the individuals living the lives being judged.

Political statements by churches really, really aggrivate me. Especially on such personal points as these.