Last Sunday Thoughts

"Of well" in the previous header is an old Scottish saying that means "he's blind." Even though we have the 37th best health care system in the world, Johns Hopkins Wilmer Eye Clinic is the best in America and one of the best in the world. And having said that,my surgery was technically excellent but I still can't see out of my left eye and the prognosis will take time. But remember I survived and General Haig didn't. So for the future we will have some doozy typos and misspellings. Soon I will be made an honorary tea party member. Or just think of me as Homer.

I forgot to comment on Miss Beverly Hills' Lauren Ashley's contribution to our wisdom. Lauren is not from Beverly Hills but Pasadena and there is no beauty pageant for Beverly Hills. But notwithstanding these minor incoveniences, Ms. Ashley was interviewed in a doctor's office where she was receiving botox treatments and commented on gays. She cited the Book of Leviticus saying that homosexual sex brings about death from God. According to the same scripture so does eating lobster and shell fish.

I want to defend Leviticus, which is being misused in the constant quest to rationalize homophobia.

Leviticus, as Mary Douglas and Jonathan Z. Smith from the University of Chicago will tell you, is the oldest document we have to demonstrate human beings ability to classify and make distinctions. It is the first text we have that shows that we can think in terms of categories. And for that we should be thankful.

Now what the book is really all about is to guide Jews in their behavior to distinguish them from surrounding pagans. Homosexual sex is a ritual violation as is "idolatrous sexuality", which means frequenting temple prostitutes, who worship fertility goddesses. Later we will see this in the New Testament, which tries to teach Christians how to be distinct from Hellenic Greeks who live around them. There Paul warns against the "ecstatic" religions, which practice sex between any gender as a form of worship. In other words, you have to understand the prohibition as against other religious practices at the time. In Leviticus, you will not be struck dead. As I pointed out in another posting, if you are a sodomite, you are greedy boastful and will not feed the poor. It's not that you are homosexual. In Christianity, the earliest teaching--the Didache--has a prohibition against paedophilia and that's it.

Of course, none of this matters because it's hip to be ignorant. However, Lauren might want to think about what both Jewish scripture and the New Testament say about women wearing bikinis in front of the public and getting artificial beauty treatments.

The Prop 8 trial will start its closing arguments soon. Judge Walker is pressing to have the closing arguments televised, which would do a great service and diminish the ability of the right to spin this ad nauseum. The plaintiffs have filed a 294 page summary of the trial and its findings about the discrimination against gay and lesbian couples. The opposition will present the time-honored prohibition by religious traditions and maybe even throw in Lauren Ashley as evidence. I think this trial is a big first step to legalization of gay couples but I believe it will meet resistance at the Supreme Court level.

President Obama got his medical check-up today and it's clear the man has trouble giving up smoking. Who could when you're being called racist, Hitler, a Muslim terrorist? And, apparently, he has some problems with his knee--which he will use as an excuse for missing a basketball shot.