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Showing posts with the label Church

In the name of the Father, and the son, and...

(Names are changed) A controversial photo appeared in 1989 called "Piss Christ" (click on the title of this post to be taken to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piss_Christ) It garnered a lot of attention primarily because an anti-National Endowment for the Arts group used it as exhibit one in its attempt to cut or eliminate tax-payer funding of the NEA. The photo was of a crucifix submerged in a beaker of urine - the artist's own urine. The argument was that tax payers who were offended by such displays should not have to have their tax dollars go to fund the work. The NEA really took a beating and was made to look like they were anti-Christian, anti-Christ (double meaning intended), and pro-atheist. The photo had a different impact on me - it reminded me of an event from my childhood that I had suppressed so well that I had never thought of it for almost 30 years. Here's the story as I remember it now. I grew up in a small town where the largest facility owned and opera...

Birthday Dinner Discussion

I'll start this entry by saying that I don't know exactly where I am going with it - it hasn't been thought through like my other entries but by the time I finish I hope that I understand a reaction I had a couple of weeks ago and maybe both of us can learn from it? It was my birthday and to celebrate my partner invited four of our friends to dinner at Sampaio - my favorite Brazilian restaurant in Austin. We all know each other, some better than others, so I was looking forward to a nice, relaxing, fun conversation. We are all gay, fairly liberal politically, literate, educated, well-read and skilled conversationalists - what could go wrong? Religion. Maybe that's the biggest source of difference for us and in hindsight perhaps something we should have avoided. It started innocently enough; we were talking about relationships - the six of us constituted two single guys and two couples. One of the single guys, let's call him Jay, said that he made a pact with a singl...