Squashed

A poorly explained twenty-three hour delay (that included many people of widely varied ages in a not-so-heated station and at least one Amtrak employee assaulting somebody) left me feeling pretty ambivalent about Amtrak.

On one hand, I think public transit is critically important and I have no problems subsidizing it.

On the other, this was pretty ridiculous. If it had been a twenty-three hour delay for reasons like “the train was on fire” or “there are ten feet of snow on the track,” I could explain that. But this was twenty-three hours of a series of preventable problems—each announced with the promise that it would only be another hour before we would start moving again. So there wasn’t even a chance to go elsewhere or take a nap without risking missing the train.

On the first hand, even the best organizations have dramatic and sometimes hard-to-believe screwups. Coke 2. The Nintendo Virtual Boy. While delays are common, the length of this one was pretty shocking, even to Amtrak’s employees.

On that second hand, my train wasn’t the only one that was seriously delayed or screwed up.

But on the positive side, once the train started moving things were pretty good. They’ve been very nice and the trip by train across the country has been quite enjoyable.

But on the negative side, while I believe in subsidizing travel, train travel in the U.S. has sort of a luxury feel to it. It feels targetted toward those who can afford things like lounge cars or people who really like trains. While that’s a fine thing to target—I think it’s a poor thing to subsidize.

Ultimately, I think Amtrak could seriously use some competition.

I’ve heard a lot of people complaining. In some cases, I understand the frustration. When we’ve been offered four different reasons why the train is delayed, it’s not irrational to suspect soembody isn’t being entirely forthright. Of course, when passengers gripe to eachother, it doesn’t solve any problems. But other cases weren’t justified—and they tended to make people unhappy.

For example, a train track cracked. Michigan had an inordinantly cold night last night—and a train didn’t show up this morning because the track was broken. It happens—and there’s not a whole lot to do about it but fix it. But people were certainly happy to gripe about how they weren’t chartering a bus quickly enough.

So why do people do it? (Or, to be more specific, why do we do it—because I’m not totally innnocent on this front.) Is it a form of spontaneous, negative community building? Is the idea that we, the disgruntled would-be-passengers are unhappy and united against the employees?

I’m reminded of some of the nastier political movements we’ve seen. America first. Can we blame the immigrants for or problems? How about the gays? Or maybe we can blame the religious right. There is us, then there is the enemy.

This morning, I was very much looking forward to getting on a train and sitting for about thirty hours with no responsibilities save enjoying the train ride. I anticipated the lack of responsibility coupled with travel to be quite relaxing. Perhaps motion and progress and a sense of space and a connection to history are particularly appealing. The line is even called the Empire Builder.

I have not yet been on a train—but I have been doing a lot of sitting. Some of it was on a bus. Most of it was waiting for Amtrak to figure out how to thaw out a train. (I didn’t realize this was a new or unexpected problem.) As it turns out, waiting is much less relaxing.

Needless to say, squashed.tumblr.com will not be updating frequently for the next few days.

If I write something that includes the title of a novel, the rules of style require that I either underline it or italicize it, but never both. Since I’m not using a typewriter, I ought to italicize. But I’m also writing hypertext—so there’s no excuse for not creating a link to the books page on either Amazon, Google Books, or Wikipedia, whichever seems more appropriate. The link will appear with an underline. So which book title is correct:

The italicized hyperlinK?

Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash: Piracy, Sexuality, and Masculine Identity

The (probably imperceptibly) underlined hyperlink?

Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition: English Sea Rovers in the Seventeenth-Century Caribbean

Or the Unadorned hyperlink?

Wild at Heart: Discovering the Secret of a Man’s Soul

I spent some of my evening searching through used and new bookstores for a copy of William Goldman’s The Princess Bride. If you have read the book, you should appreciate the irony.

I read a lot of self-parody yesterday. Some was brilliant parody. Some wasn’t more self-summary rather than parody but was also interesting. Taken as a whole, it made me think that the blogosphere has a serious self-esteem issue. Or so I thought at first.

But I think this whole concept of self-esteem is over-rated. The implication of self-esteem is that we’re okay as we are and once we accept this we will be happy, healthy people. The unstated contrapositive is that if we are not happy, healthy people we have not sufficiently believed in ourselves and in the power of self-esteem. If we are doubtful or scared or feel lonely, it is not because this is the human condition but because of a failure of self-love and perhaps parental praise. And if we can just find some other person to say nice things about us, maybe we’ll start believing them and all our other problems will vanish.

There might be something to it—but it might also be bogus. Perhaps we ought not make too much of our own significance. Perhaps our doubts are not due to a lack of self-esteem but are part of our human vulnerability. Perhaps our discontent is meant to prod us to seek something greater. Perhaps our longing for companionship stems not from a lack of self-appreciation but from our nature as social creatures.

Can somebody explain to me why a card check approach is superior to a secret ballot? I keep reading that this allows employers to “intimidate” the workers. It certainly allows the employers to campaign against unionization or distribute “anti-union propaganda”, but shouldn’t the pro-union factions be be permitted to do the same campaigning?

I understand that there is a problem if employers are doing things to spread misinformation, but shouldn’t the proper remedy be to strengthen laws against harassment? Similarly, if employers are illegally firing those who agitate for unions, shouldn’t the remedy be beefing up wrongful discharge laws?

I’m not antiunion—though I sometimes think the unions do a better job looking out for themselves than for workers.

jeffmiller writes:

I understand what Squashed is saying here.  We’ve all felt the temptation to tell other people how to live their lives … what to eat, what to drink, who to love, and, of course, what to blog.  But Tumblr would be a rather boring read if everyone committed themselves to the same exercise.  And that fact that this particular blog post has been reblogged so many time suggests that Tumblr has become the kind of cultish, collectivist endeavor I feared it would become.

I don’t think Jeff quite understands the beauty of the collective. In as much as a meme is about interpersonal connections and the sharing of the information through which we define ourselves, participation in a meme is the self longing to be greater than the self. It is the way we transform that which we are into that which we long to be. The message of Blog Like a Parody of Yourself Day is not about individual reflection but about striving to se yourself through the eyes of others. What about you speaks most directly and uniquely to those who care about you. In essence, it is a day of empathy, and the practice of empathy is the first step toward a more peaceful world. Perhaps the greatest beautiy of the day is how inclusive it is.

By design, participation in Blog like a Parody of Yourself Day is not optional. It’s not that everybody must attempt to participate—it is that participation is assumed. When somebody, say Marco, writes about his wife and his glee with his new camera, I assume it’s deliberate self-parody. It’s funny because it’s true.

In honor of blog like a parody of yourself day, I wanted offer a few thoughts on capitalism and zombies. Since I don’t want to alienate anybody, I should emphasize that I haven’t made up my mind on either of these—I just think they are important issues. I’m ambivalent on both. In fact, I’m not even certain we can draw a clear line between the two.

What is the essense of zombies? Ravening hordes spread unstoppably across the globe consuming whatever they desire (to wit, brains) and destroying everything beautiful in the process. The cities fall first. Then the plague spreads until only a few geographically isolated patches of life and independent thought remain. The zombies aren’t even aware they are zombies. They lack even the meaningful volition for us to judge them. Are they so different than the capitalists?

Now, I don’t mean to suggest that capitalists and zombies are identical. And I don’t want to judge either group—just to point out that capitalists and zombies share some common interests. Both have this sort of infectious, irresistable appeal. Both transcend culture—or create some sort of global monoculture. They share some of the same problems. When a particular resisting enclave does not want to join them, there is often violent resistance. Neither the zombies nor the capitalists understand the why of this—but neither zombies nor capitalists are big on self-reflection.

Now, some might object. The capitalist might argue that capitalism is different than the end of zombieism. While neither is sustainable over the long run, the end days have a distinctly different flavor for each viewpoint. The zombie infestation would start rapidly—but it would probably take a while to mop up the last pockets of resistance. The death of humanity would come slowly but inevatably. The capitalists, on the other hand, start quietly, gain power, and really nobody would see the end until it’s too late to do anything about it. It might be a nuclear war or an unwisely engineered disease or something involving carbon-eating nanobots. It could even be the creation of zombies. That’s another crucial difference. The ungodly experimentation of capitalism could lead to the creation of zombies. Zombies aren’t foolish enough to create capitalists.

A zombie might also object to the comparison, saying, “Aughughuuhghchkuhar.” I don’t mean to paint a derogatory picture of how zombies communicate—I just don’t have the right characters to express phoenetically the gutteral, decaying sounds the zombies make. The sounds take some getting used to—though when one has listened to them day and night while holed up in a remote cabin, one can’t but begin to appreciate their beauty. But perhaps what the zombie means to say is that zombies elevate the brain above all else. The capitalist might respond that he too elevates the brain—but as with the zombie the brain’s purpose is subsumed by a different sort of hunger. The zombie might respond that be that as it may, he has no choice but to be a zombie but the capitalist chose to be a capitalist. The zombie might add that if he still had emotions he might grieve his loss of humanity. (I should note that I use the masculine pronoun for the zombie out of convenience. Again, our language lacks a proper pronoun to describe zombie society, which is very close to being a genuinely post-gender society and gets closer daily as the distinguishing bits rot and fall off.)

To be clear, we shouldn’t judge either group. In fact, both have stringent internal ethics. And as those internal ethics involve the consumption and assimilation of others, we might ask whether the approach to dealing with one is likely to help in dealing with the other. In both cases, we’ve seen that violent resistance does not work. Sure, it might seem to work, briefly, but they will regroup and overwhelm you. You will run out of bullets. Or your firing pin will jam. Your chainsaw might last longest—but eventually it too will run out of gas and you will be overwhelmed. Resistance is futile—and those who insist on fighting will inevitably be crushed.

So what can be done? Perhaps patience, love, and science will work best. Take care of those we care about. Build lasting communities. Don’t go out alone after dark. Perhaps the plague will burn itself out. Perhaps there is hope. After the earth is ravaged, there may still be a few survivors who can crawl out slowly and start a feeble neo-tribal society amidst the corpses of their predecessors.

Because sufficient self-awareness to know how to parody yourself is good for you.

I’ve glanced passed Proposition 8 law suits on both sides frequently enough that I thought I should check what was actually happening and whether any of them were likely to succeed. The results surprised me.

The pro-same-sex marriage side has sued, arguing that the proper procedures to change the California Constitution were not followed. This is not just a technicality. Changing a constitution is a serious deal—and if the constitution requires the legislature to approve a proposed amendment with a two-thirds vote before it goes on the ballot, a mere popular vote is insufficient. According to California’s Constitution, an “amendment” can be done by popular initiative, but a “revision” requires the support of 2/3 of of the legislature to go into effect. (See Art. 18 § 3).

So is this a revision or an amendment—and what’s the difference? The conspicuous absence of the word “revision” in § 3 strongly suggests that somebody meant the words to have different meanings. The California Supreme Court has acknowledged this before in cases like Raven v. Deukmejian (52 Cal. 3d 336), which held that a ballot initiative that would strip criminals of Californian Constitutional rights beyond those guaranteed by the U.S. Constition was a revision rather than an amendment. The test hinges on whether the amendment would radically alter the existing constitutional scheme.

Now, the preexisting Constitutional scheme determined that homosexuals have a right to marry under the equal protection clause of the California Constitution. (Art. I, § 7).

SEC. 7.  (a) A person may not be deprived of life, liberty, or
property without due process of law or denied equal protection of the
laws; [unless it relates to busing students].

(b) A citizen or class of citizens may not be granted privileges

or immunities not granted on the same terms to all citizens.
Privileges or immunities granted by the Legislature may be altered or
revoked.

Proposition 8 would add:

SEC. 7.5.  Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.

Note that while the language of § 7 is similar to the United States Constitution, it has a completely separate body of constitutional law. The California Supreme Court is the highest authority on it—and its interpretation is final unless the language of the constitution changes. So is Proposition 8 a revision or an amendment? The court has determined that prohibiting same-sex marraige violates this section. Proposition 8 would significantly change that section by taking a bit out of equal protection for a large portion of the population.I think that constitutes a pretty serious change.

Let’s deal with two possible objections. Somebody is probably thinking, “But the Constitution doesn’t say anything about gay marriage—so this isn’t a change.” The Constitution has been interpreted by California’s Supreme Court to require same-sex marriage. According to them, a ban on gay marriage is a violation of the equal protection of the law—and there is nobody who can speak with more authority on the matter. While the law hasn’t been settled particularly long, it has been settled.

Secondly, somebody might object that this is “an attempt to subvert the will of voters.” It is. And sometimes when fundamental rights get involved, it’s good to have a Constitution to subvert the will of the voters and a court to uphold the constitution when the voters want to illegally change it. One of the traditional roles of the courts has been to ensure that minorities are protected, even when it isn’t popular. Now, the constitution can be changed—but the proper procedure has to be followed. In this case, it takes a super-majority of the legislature to accomplish the change.

Will California’s Supreme Court make the right decision here? I don’t know. It would make a lot of people really mad if they did. A lot of people would rant about these crazy activist judges who’ve been co-opted by the gay agenda to do things like uphold the law when it’s unpopular. I think the precedent is reasonably clear. I know what the court should do. Will it?

A normally boring trip to buy eggs got a whole lot more interesting after the storm. I wouldn’t mind being snowbound, but baking is one great hallmark of civilization, and it usually requires eggs. If I’m out of eggs and stranded, the savagery starts pretty soon. So Carolyn and I got in the old Jeep (a ‘94 Cherokee, before they got all popular), and started out.

For reasons unknown, Ann Arbor isn’t so great about plowing roads. Our road in particular usually goes unplowed for about a week—so there was a lot of snow between us and a larger road three blocks away. The Jeep has four-wheel drive and the clearance to handle the snow, so we shoveled out and piled in. Six to eight inches of snow on the road wouldn’t be much of a problem for us.

Unfortunately, a few other people had decided they also needed eggs to keep the whole area from going Lord of the Flies. For whatever reason, at least five other cars (in three blocks) had decided to try to make a break for it and gotten stuck in the snow. Now, this isn’t the sort of neighborhood where you just drive by somebody without offering to help—so the trip up the snow-covered hill turned into an exercise in extreme neighborliness. It wasn’t purely altruism. If their car was stuck in the middle of the road, we couldn’t get past.

“Need help?”

“Not me. I was just trying to see if that guy needed help.”

Or, “Can I help you push [your car which is emitting an unfortunate burning smell]?”

“We’re going to let it cool down a bit then try again.”

We would slowly manuever around the stuck cars. At the very last intersection, a whole crowd of people were trying to help a car get out—including a toddler in a red wagon. I didn’t offer to help this time because there literally wasn’t enough space for more pushers.

They take this holiday spirit stuff seriously here. On the way back, we had to choose our route based on which way was likely to have the fewest stuck cars. “Take a left here. That guy up ahead doesn’t look like he’s going to make it up the hill.”

Monkeytypist and Robot-Heart are infavor of it because obesity is expensive and disproportionately hurts the poor. I thought helping the poor is a great idea—but think helping them by taxing them is a perverse way to do it. Robot-Heart writes:

A soda tax is a good way to fund all those special programs and parks you’re talking about. Moreover, the poor overwhelmingly purchase unhealthy food products because they are less expensive and more convenient.

Now, if the poor can’t afford non-soda beverages, they certainly can’t afford enough taxes to build parks and improve schools. But I don’t think this is really a case of what the poor can or cannot afford. While their desirable food options may be limited, water will still be the cheapest and best beverage option. So something more than lack-of-money is operating here. Many of the poor tend to continue being poor because they’re really bad at budgeting and planning ahead. Or, as Jeff Miller argues:

If you make a public health/public fisc argument about Big Macs, people with different values than you are likely to make similar arguments about the cost of freedoms you want to protect.

My morning coffee is pretty bad for me—but I’d have some issues if somebody tried to tax that. And the Mocha Mint Rasberry Holiday Latte from Starbucks likely has a similar sugar content to the can of Coke. Jeff Miller compares the tax to a premarital sex tax, which many would object to.

Of course, softdrinks tend to artificially cheap due to corn subsidies and the availability of cheap corn syrup. I have no problems reevaluating these. I also have no problems pressuring companies to offer healthier menu items. Nor would I mind if sugary-drinks joined alcohol on the things foodstamps cannot purchase. Pulling soda machines out of schools or doing other things to eliminate implicit government sponsorship could also help. If we’re really serious, we could start cautiously talking labeling laws.

Monkeytypist suggests that the government should tinker with my diet “because of the inordinate amount [I]’ll cost the economy when your liver fails.”

Unfortunately, there are a few problems here. First, any future liver failure of mine is likely to be a fully-insured liver failure which will create jobs and benefit the economy. Secondly, liver failure from softdrinks? It’s probably possible. But presumably Monkeytypist meant that I (or somebody like me but uninsured) might gain weight, have a heart-attack, and put a burden on the medical system when he has a heart-attack and can’t pay for medical care, thereby shifting the cost either to paying patients or the public.

Except that I’m not a particularly high risk for heart disease. Or liver failure. People make choices every day that increase or decrease risks. Cars. Alcohol. Red meat. Skydiving. Motorcycles. Not washing their hands. Eating salmon from Lake Michigan. Eating chocolate. But part of freedom is trusting people to manage their own risk.

If my previously suggested sentence for Muntadhar “The Shoe Thower” al-Zaidi is too boring, I could offer an alternative.

1. Sentence al-Zaidi to having two shoes thrown at him by Bush.
2. Bush, citing his busy scheudule, declines to go back to Iraq to throw the shoes, but says he’ll send somebody over to do it for him.
3. While there is speculation at who Bush will choose, Iraqis can argue over whether al-Zaidi should be allowed to dodge.
4. Bush can choose some hall-of-fame baseball pitcher with a hundred-mile-per-hour fastball.
5. Announce that al-Zaidi should be allowed to dodge.
6. Make sure a clip of that pitcher throwing a wingtip at a watermelon appears on YouTube. The watermelon should explode.
7. Just before the shoe-throwing, the Bush Administration should complain that in Western culture, shoes don’t carry the same level of insult.
8. Eliminate the shoes. Pies instead. Probably an apple pie. Or maybe an entirely new, entirely delicious kind of pie that will henceforth be known as the al-Zaidi.

I’ve always wanted to see an international dispute handled this way. This is one of the reasons nobody lets me handle international crises.

Here’s what the Iraqi government should do with the shoe thrower.

1. Try him in a court of law for two counts of simple assault.
2. Accept a guilty plea if offered. Otherwise, make the trial transparent and, most importantly, boring.
3. Sentence him to probation or whatever is appropriate for something like getting in a bar fight where nobody is seriously hurt.

Such an unexciting outcome could demonstrate Iraq has a functioning government and that its justice system is not swayed by passions. We’ll see if that actually happens.

Late last night, I posted about my ambivalence about Rick Warren’s selection to deliver the nomination and the heated reaction it has drawn. I have a few additional thoughts.

On the con side, Warren was incremental in the passage of Prop 8. That wound is pretty fresh. While Warren is willing to pay more attention to things like poverty than a lot of the religious right, he’s still right-of-center within the Christian community and I would like something to publicly break the impression that the right has a monopoly on the faithful.

But what’s at stake? It’s the invocation at the inauguration, not a cabinet position. There is a lot of symbolism in the position. And just as I wish the religious right would stop thinking they have a monopoly on the faithful, the religious right still thinks it has a monopoly on the faithful. In fact, some of the independent megachurches barely recognize us mainstreamers as fellow Christians. So the Warren would send a message to the conservative evangelicals that they have a part in Obama’s America. It might also send the message that they are the exclusive voice of the faithful.

And I’m still ambivalent.

I heard an antisemite on NPR tonight who explained that the financial crisis is all the fault of the Jews. The host handled it gracefully. Too gracefully for the tastes of the next caller. There was a time when this sort of Elders of Zion schtick would have drawn sympathetic nods rather than outrage—but we’ve moved past that as a society.

Many of our heroes had some pretty awful beliefs and practices—even regarding issues we consider them progressive on. Faulkner’s books promoting racial integration are chock full of stereo-types. Lincoln initially wanted to phase out slavery gradually. Jefferson owned slaves. Martin Luther wrote some pretty regrettable things about killing peasants. King Solomon collected a few more wives than we consider proper. History judges them kindly.

I’m a bit taken a back by the tone of some of the outrage that Rick Warren will be speaking at Obama’s inauguration. Rick Warren prominently opposes gay marriage and believes homosexuality is innately sinful. Andrew Sullivan is outraged. So are a lot of progressives. I have mixed feelings.

To be clear, I think Warren is wrong both morally and theologically. I think he’s on the wrong side of the issues and the wrong side of history. This is not a mere academic theological difference. This is a case of Warren and many others allowing prejudice and cultural assumptions to bias their core beliefs. It is a failing of love and justice. And yet….

And yet, a majority of the country agrees with Warren. And amongst the evangelical leaders who oppose gay marriage, Warren is one of the best. Unlike some of the others, he’s not stirring up hate. On this issue, he’s wrong, but in other areas, he’s done a lot of good things for many, many people. How should we interract with people we believe to be very wrong on certain critical issues? On one hand, I understand the anger. On the other, the bulk of the country agrees with Warren. Is calling Warren a bigot a constructive thing to do? When good people get some things terribly wrong, are they bigots or simply wrong? Rick Warren does not hold the stances he holds out of hate. On this issue, Warren is mistaken, tragically, but in good faith. Shouldn’t good faith count for something?

I’m a fan of Tumblr’s “like” button. It’s a useful, though unnuanced, feedback tool. Unfortunately, there is no “like, but not in a creepyway” button to respond to posts like this.  I’m sure this will be one of the features of Tumblr Pro. So will the button that says, “I only like this ironically.”

• Be concise.
• Revise mercilessly.
• Read more.
• Write more.

I put a lot of information here. But almost every post is me regurgitating somebody else’s research. I might even be offering my opinions on somebody else’s opinions of something some person way down the information chain discovered. I like to talk about places I have never been and politicians I have never met. As much as possible, I like to check sources or (if possible) read original articles or reports or court filings before passing judgment, but I have no employees or foreign correspondents or investigative reporters or expenses beyond my time and a trivial amount of bandwidth.

Most of the actual information read here comes from the kind of journalists who have sources and business cards. This applies to almost any news or political blog except the ones written by the journalists themselves. Once in a while the blogosphere actually breaks a story—but most stories originate in more traditional media. And traditional media isn’t making a whole lot of money off the blogosphere. While CNN.com and NYtimes.com may have significant traffic and ad revenue, the suffering Detroit Free Press (Freep.com) or the bankrupt Chicago Tribune (google.com/search?q=chicago+tribune) don’t have the same national audience.

Now, the blogs are doing an important thing in the processing and dissemination of information, but the expenses are still bourn by traditional media. This is not the first time something like this happened. During World War I, the Associated Press got in a squabble with the International News Service. The INS had written some unflattering war reports, and got themselves banned from the Allied telegraph lines. This made it essentially impossible to get timely information from their reporters. So they got their timely information the best way they could. The AP would publish a story in New York. Then, somebody from INS would read it and make sure it got to California in time for the West Coast papers to rewrite it in time to print. It was cheaper for INS. Unfortunately, it left AP at a competitive disadvantage—and unsurprisingly, they sued.

INS prevailed on the copyright issue. You can’t copyright facts. You definitely can’t copyright World War I. But the Supreme Court essentially invented a tort called “misappropriation” and told INS to stop doing that bad thing it was doing. (There haven’t been a lot of successful cases involving this tort since then.) But this worked when one company was blatantly ripping off another in a way that didn’t quite violate copyright law. And while the internet is certainly appropriating information from traditional media, it is doing it in a proper and desirable fashion. In this case, the information really does want to be free. The blogs aren’t just ripping content out of context and surrounding it with google ads. They are parsing, arranging, and distributing it. They are public discourse—and you should not stiffle it.

(On a side note, another problem for newspapers is Craigslist and Ebay. Who pays for a classified ad anymore?)

So how can you get money to newspapers to continue doing their newspaper thing for all our benefit? Public assistance causes all sorts of problems—the biggest being its threat to independent media. Corporate or private charity causes the same neutrality problems.

Or should the newspapers just fend for themselves. Maybe they will find a revenue model that works. The Detroit Free Press is cutting out its least profitable days. This can take a lot of pressure off the paper—and how many people read all of the Detroit Free Press every day? This may be a case where the market will sort out the winners and the losers and we’ll emerge with a newer, now sustainable model. I don’t have any better ideas.

I’ve seen people argue that discrimination against homosexuals is justified both by the Bible and by its traditional interpretation. It’s not Biblical—and the church tradition explanation is a little strange as church tradition predates any concept of homosexuality as an orientation by about 1800 years. So when did statements against homosexuality start creeping it into official church documents? In one case, the answer is 1962. (Bear with me—this is long and a bit dry at first, but I find the result as fascinating as it is shocking.)

Together, the Book of Confessions and the Book of Order are the constitution of the Presbyterian Church (USA). The Book of Order is essentially procedural—so the Book of Confessions is the book that contains the serious statements of belief. It isn’t Biblical—but it’s the next most authoritative thing. It contains the Apostles’ Creed, which is a fairly consise statement of faith. It also contains the Larger Westminster catechism, which says a lot of good things and also says the second commandment proscribes creating any “representation of God, of all, or any of the three Persons.” It was written by Puritans and should be interpreted in its it’s historical context. There are all sorts of things we would read differently today than we did then—but it’s still a major problem if there is an actual error in the book.

Unfortunately, The Heidelberg Catechism, as recorded in the Book of Confessions has a serious error. The Heidelberg Catechism was written in 1562, shortly after the reformation. (I know this is dry. Bear with me.) As you might image, a document written in 1562 in German and translated shortly thereafter into any Latin and then number of other languages might have a bit of scholarship associated with it. Unfortunately, I do not have a copy of the first English translation at hand—but one question went like this:

Q. 87.
Cannot they then be saved, who, continuing in their wicked and ungrateful lives, are not converted to God?
A.
By no means; for the holy scripture declares that no unchaste person, idolater, adulterer, thief, covetous man, drunkard, slanderer, robber, or any such like, shall inherit the kingdom of God.

(If I haven’t lost all my readers, I should intervene here to point out that “unchaste” has a different meaning in this context than celibate—otherwise the reformed faith wouldn’t have lasted too many generations.) Unfortunately, the version of the Heidelberg Confession recorded in the Book of Confessions records this answer to Question 87:

A. Certainly not!  Scripture says, “Surely you know that the unjust will never come into possession of the kingdom of God.  Make no mistake: no fornicator or idolater, none who are guilty either of adultery or of homosexual perversion, no thieves or grabbers or drunkards or slanderers or swindlers, will possess the kingdom of God.”

The language is substantially similar, with one critical addtion. Between the adulturer and the thief, we suddenly see “of homosexual perversion.” This is particularly significant because it is not parallel to “fornicator” or “adulturer”. The Heidelberg Catechism isn’t thrilled with extramarital sex—but “homosexual perversion” seems to condemn any homosexual relationship—even one that would qualify as “chaste” were it between married or unmarried heterosexuals. Where did that come from? It wasn’t there in 1562. Or at any point until 1962. Dr. Jack Rogers has the full story, as well as a chronicle of efforts to change the catechism back. Apparently a 400th anniversary edition of the catechism was released. The committee doing this pulled “homosexual perversion” out of a recent Biblical translation. The Greek words in question were malakos and arsenokoites. Malakos literally means “soft” and connotes effeminacy, which would be considered a moral failing at the time, as it connoted a lack of self-control and sort of a hedonism. (See this book, which I highly recommend if you find this topic interesting or important. See also, Homoeroticism in the Biblical World, which I have not read and cannot attest to.) Arsenkoites is a bit harder to translate, as this is the first time it appears. Some translated it as arsen + koites or “male + bed” or “male-bedders”. But a survey of other uses seems to suggest some kind of sexual and economic exploitation. (See Dale B. Martin, Arsenkoites and Malakos.) Either way, “homosexual perversion” is a dubious translation.

But even if “homosexual perversion” were not such a dubious translation, changing a 400 year old catechism is shoddy scholarship. How could this happen? The people in charge of putting together the new edition of the Book of Confessions just grabbed the new translation, not thinking that the two translators had taken some liberties. And why did the translators take such liberties? Jack Rogers asked, and here is the response he got:

We just thought it would be a good idea.

Following a number of other questions on weightloss and what sizes people should wear, Julia Allison asked her male readers, “Do women worry too much about their bodies?”

JGH’s response included, “TOP BEFORE POSTING THIS NONSENSE AND THINK ABOUT HOW MAYBE, JUST MAYBE YOU’RE CONTRIBUTING TO THE PATRIARCHAL SYSTEM BY ASKING THESE QUESTIONS IN THE FIRST PLACE.”

I’m glad to see somebody trying to stick an axe in the patriarchy—but I’m afraid JGH chose the blunt end of the axe with the ALLCAPS approach. May I translate into lowercase?

Let’s look at what is implicit in this question. Do women worry too much about heir bodies’ [appearance]. The question is not whether women take care of their bodies but whether women take care of how their bodies appear to others—presumably watching men. The female body is thus something to be seen rather than something to be used. The value of that body is defined by its value to whomever is watching the body rather than whomever is living in it. Even more concerningly, the questions imply that women should value the impressions of others over their own health.

But the questions assume an even lower value for women. They do not suggest that a woman should define her value by what somebody sees when looking at her. They ask about celebrity body-types. Apparently, a women should value herself based upon what somebody else sees when looking at a third person. No—that’s not quite enough. Because the third person is an airbrushed celebrity. Apparently women should strive to be as valuable and as beautiful as a page from a magazine. It is not that women are objectified—it’s that if women sufficiently torture their bodies and contort their appearances, they can strive toward objectification.

The problem isn’t that people care about their appearances. But when the language we use suggests that the primary concern one should have for ones body is aesthetic, we need to ask ourselves some serious questions about our culture. Even if we say the aesthetic is essentially about self-confidence, we should worry that we are defining one gender’s self-worth in by the other gender’s perceptions.

Suppose you sign up for some service like Tumblr. Somewhere in the process, an end user license agreement pops up. You don’t read it—but check the box saying you read, understand, and accept it. You later learn that somehwere in the lengthy agreement was the line:

Use of this service is conditioned upon an annual donation of $10 to the Red Cross every December.

Notably, this isn’t even mentioned anywhere else. You later learn about this. Are you  legally required to donate $10 to the Red Cross? How confident are you of your answer?

While I would welcome the thoughts of the lawyers or law students reading this, I am at least as interested in the perceptions of those who have never studied the law. (Comment).

(Edit: I removed a word from the license agreement to see if that changes responses.)