Because I am about to type something that is complete heresy.

Yay Wal-Mart! (Oh my god- is my hair on fire, am I going to be struck down by the progressive gods?)

From the AP

MADISON (AP) – A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit brought by a pharmacist who claimed he was fired by Wal-Mart Stores Inc. for his refusal to fill birth control prescriptions.

But wait, there’s more.

Wal-Mart and the staffing agency that hired the guy tried to work with him on his beliefs. He was not required to fill birth control prescriptions because there was always another pharmacist on hand to fill them.

But that wasn’t enough for the guy. Instead, he left people calling about birth control on permanent hold and didn’t tell the other pharmacist when someone came to the counter to fill a birth control prescription, so the person went away thinking that the prescription could not be filled.

Wal-Mart fired him for insubordination, which is a lot more than I can say for Target*.

Damn, I hate it when evil empires do something good.

* That I have to link to Big Girl John Arovosis pisses me off, but it was the best thing I could find for a 7 month old story.

PS- This is our 300th post. Who knew we were so verbose?

I have to drop the marriage equality talk for a while because it physically pains me- I mean heart sick, nauseous, migraine inducing pain- to continue the argument with people I am friends with on something that is such an integral part of my character and values. It’s easy to disagree so vehemently with people you don’t respect, but I feel vicious anger coming on and I don’t want to unleash that on someone I like.

With that, I ask you to try some empathy. You may not think that marriage equality is a life or death issue, but for some it is. For others it is just the day to day discrimination that wears them down. You can start with reading the stories at Freedom to Marry.

First, I am not against same-sex marriage. It probably needs to happen and I look forward to the public debate toward its resolution.

I AM against falling on our swords to see it happen. Whether I am for it or against, I realize a passage of a ssm rights bill, either nationally or in the states is an uphill battle. It is one I hope happens, but one that I am assured has no chance at all under our current right-wing theocracy.

What I highly object to is using the black population to gain its passage. Blacks have never been in the position to deny this right to homosexuals. Does homophobia exist in the black community? Undoubtedly. Can the gay community work with the former to assuage its existence? Hopefully. But to say that the struggle for gay marriage is the same as the one for Black emancipation is both insensitive and irresponsible. If you want to pass ssm laws, find another tactic.

Many of the discussions about ssm point to how the families of gay lovers ignore the promises lovers may have made to one another. Is this a black issue, even it occurs among black families? No, it is a social issue that needs to be addressed for what it is.

I support, no, applaud and celebrate feminism. I feel the same about gay rights. But never have I said that I know what if feels like to suffer the oppression of women and gays; I simply don’t know that experience. If I said I did, all would know that I am lying. I expect the same respect from the gay community, no matter if I support them or not.

Abraham Lincoln did not run on a platform to free the slaves. Nor did he win in 1860 because people thought he would. He ran on the promise to save the Union. Freeing the slaves in 1863 was as much political ploy as it was an attempt to tilt the war to the side of the north.

Lyndon Johnson did not win in 1964 on the promise of assuring Blacks could vote. No matter what nobility can be seen in his successful effort to pass the voting rights act, Johnson was ever aware of where he stood with the American public. A book entitled “Cannan’s Edge” details the ultimately nasty reality of what really happened between and to both Johnson and Martin Luther King. Both for a time used each other for their own gains. That’s how politics works. Don’t take my word for this. Read the review..

Politicians who run solely on principle turn into “lobbyists”. It is an ugly reality, one that the left needs to not only take to heart, but one that it needs to learn up and down, backwards and forwards.

Until then, pray for miracles, but cover your ass!

I have no problems with being both religious and political, but the “Christian left” as a movement is pretty much doomed.
Now that’s not to say that some individual liberal Christians will not become more active politically, and maybe help remove some of the odious Republicans from office. But there will never be a Christian left the way there is a Christian right.
There are many reasons why, but one fundamental one stands out: Liberal Christians just aren’t willing to do — maybe they don’t have — what it takes to be successful in the political context.
What do I mean by that? Bottom line is that there is only one way to affect policy in American politics, and that is to elect candidates who will go to the wall for your proposals. Liberal Christians want to focus on the policy part without getting involved in the election part. As a result, their influence in the aggregate is practically nil.
If there is such a thing as a card-carrying member of the Christian left, that would be me. Raised in a Christian home, educated at Christian colleges, I came to the conclusion at a young age that Jesus would have fit in more on the “liberal” side of the fence if he were alive today. If you translate the Bible’s message to policy, it would side more with food stamps than stamping out gays.
For years I read Sojourners, the first and maybe still most influential Christian left publication run by the Rev. Jim Wallis, who is the poster boy for the movement. But Wallis is so dead set against being perceived as partisan, his writings became almost comically evenhanded. I found myself continually frustrated and angry by his “on-the-other-handism.” Even on issues where the magazine clearly sided with Democrats, he couldn’t come right out and defend the Democratic position. A negative comment about the Republican’s voting for something like funding “Star Wars” had to be followed by a swat at the minority Democrats — who voted the way Wallis wanted — for some trivial slight.
During the 2000 election, when it was clear that Al Gore represented a far more worthy clear choice when it came to the issues that concerned liberal Christians, Wallis was ridiculously evenhanded, obsessing over George W. Bush’s patently phony compassionate conservative rhetoric and faith-based pandering. On core Sojourners issues like racial and gender equality, war and peace and justice for the poor, Al Gore was a screaming better choice. Wallis, however, focused on the splinter issues without noticing the beams getting rammed into his eye.
The point is that getting things done in politics is a fairly dirty business. You win, you get the spoils. With their “God is Neither a Republican nor a Democrat” mantra, Wallis and his ilk remain smartly above the fray but also unable to produce any results. Christian liberals can have the warm fuzzy knowledge that they are technically right about Yahweh’s political affiliations. Meanwhile, the poor are getting poorer, bigots are running the roost and World War III is on the horizon.
No matter how much I despise Jim Dobson and the evil snakes of the Religious Right, I have to admit they know how the system works. They have created influence by getting people elected — they bang their shoe on the table and the Republican establishment quakes.
Now I don’t think that it is the proper thing for Christian liberals to become Democrats in the way evangelical churches have become outposts of the GOP. That is a debasement of religion. And I don’t have all the answers to what is no doubt a thorny and age-old problem.
But some first steps need to be taken. One is that liberals have to admit that there is a dichotomy. Another is that they have to clearly denounce evil for what it is, and if that sounds partisan, well, so be it. There is no truth or justice in phony evenhandedness. Christian liberals like to draw inspiration from Biblical prophets, and that is not the way they operated.

The NY Times magazine has a fantastic piece on the presidential race in Mexico and the left-wing candidate.

Something to consider while reading -Mexico is at the same economic stage the Spain was at when it joined the European Union. If Spain could improve rather quickly- so can Mexico.

Go read the article.

Anyway who knows me knows I am on the extreme left on most issues. I do have my doubts about the gay marriage issue, but let’s disregard that for the moment.

On this forum I have sometimes taken a middle-ground, devil’s advocate stance. Face it. We live in very liberal, accepting Seattle. Right or wrong, we are often clouded by where we live. As the last few elections have shown, our views are not shared by many in this nation. As musch as I like The White Papers, I don’t enjoy preaching to the choir; I will sometimes take a more middle ground to foster debate (sorry, I don’t know how to be a right-wing Nazi!). Please understand my strategy and motivation in this.

Having said that, if I had to choose between a politician who will lose based on his/her principles and one who might win because s/he knows how to make intelligent compromises, I will pick the latter in almost all cases. I am liberal (progressive, whatever) but I am not blind.

The Kid has a pretty severe fear of heights. Tall buildings and bridges make him dizzy.

I have 2 really unusual phobias. When people hear about them they are shocked that a relatively fearless girl could be afraid of something so mundane. The 2 are related though.

I am afraid of walking barefoot in grass. I can walk barefoot on just about anything else, but grass freaks me out. Even feeling it tickle my ankles when I am wearing shoes makes me squeamish. I am also afraid of swimming in water that is not in a swimming pool or Lake Tahoe (which is where I grew up mostly and is as familiar to me as my own hand ). I get freaked out by the thought of something living in the water touching my feet- like the sting rays on the Gulf Coast of Florida.

Neither of these things will send me into a panic attack, but I avoid them. I think very carefully and have to steal myself before taking a step on grass, and if it’s more than a few steps I will find another way to go, even if it’s longer or more difficult.

So Kids- Is it just me with the fucked up phobias or is there something really ridiculous that freaks you out.

First- to keep me from getting headaches trying to follow the marriage equality comments, please post all comments on the last post by DeeK: Gay Marriage and Color part II.

The rest of the posts regarding gay marriage are:
Red Queen: Veil of Ignorance
DeeK: The Left, Gay Marriage and Color
And the one that started it all (though DeeK I think has been spoiling to have this debate for months)
Red Queen: The Tyranny of the Christian Right