Getting In On The Controversy

I didn’t participate in Day of Silence this year, though I wanted to. My mother is coming into town to visit me and while she is very supportive of gay rights, she is not so supportive of me not speaking to her. Also, I had my big law discussion class and it was inconveniently scheduled that today would be a “speaking” quiz in which we all had to put forth an opinion to get a grade, and while I do believe that equal rights are more important than whether or not I get an A, it was kind of just an icing-on-the-cake reason not to.

Despite all that though, this is a little story/quote thing I wanted to share in support of this day. I’m sure you’ve heard it before, but in case you haven’t, take a read. It’s short.

An engineering professor is treating her husband, a loan officer, to dinner for finally giving in to her pleas to shave off the scraggly beard he grew on vacation. His favorite restaurant is a casual place where they both feel comfortable in slacks and cotton/polyester-blend golf shirts. But, as always, she wears the gold and pearl pendant he gave her the day her divorce decree was final. They’re laughing over their menus because they know he always ends up diving into a giant plate of ribs but she won’t be talked into anything more fattening than shrimp.

Quiz: How many biblical prohibitions are they violating? Well, wives are supposed to be submissive to their husbands (I Peter 3:1). And all women are forbidden to teach men (I Timothy 2:12), wear gold or pearls (I Timothy 2:9) or dress in clothing that ‘pertains to a man’ (Deuteronomy 22:5). Shellfish and pork are definitely out (Leviticus 11:7, 10) as are usury (Deuteronomy 23:19), shaving (Leviticus 19:27) and clothes of more than one fabric (Leviticus 19:19). And since the Bible rarely recognizes divorce, they’re committing adultery, which carries the rather harsh penalty of death by stoning (Deuteronomy 22:22).

So why are they having such a good time? Probably because they wouldn’t think of worrying about rules that seem absurd, anachronistic or – at best – unrealistic. Yet this same modern-day couple could easily be among the millions of Americans who never hesitate to lean on the Bible to justify their own anti-gay attitudes. ~Deb Price, And Say Hi To Joyce

I’m a Christian. But I support gay rights.

See, we have this concept in the US of separation of Church and State. It’s why we’ve only had one Catholic president — we don’t want the Pope, or anyone or anything else — trying to dictate our lives. So, why should we let a book, a book that only 76% of Americans believe as truth, dictate the laws governing what 100% of Americans are allowed to do? I’m not a math major, but that must mean that 24% of Americans are not Christians. As of July of 2009, the US population stood at 307,006,550, meaning that Christians who try to force everyone else to live by the Bible are forcing 73,681,572 people to live by a standard they don’t believe in. Because, yes, homosexuals, bisexuals, transexuals, whateversexuals are people too.

Maybe I’m naïve, with my whole idea of fair and allowing everyone to enjoy the same freedoms they’re supposed to be guaranteed by this nation, but it seems really fucked up to me that we (yes, I’m including myself here because I am a Christian) think we get to tell other people what the “right” kind of love is and discredit their’s.

And before you say this nation was founded by conservative Christians and should be run by conservative Christians: No, no it wasn’t. It was founded by liberal-extremist DEISTS who were basically agnostic and believed that there might be a God maybe, but Christ was not His son. Just saying.

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Laconic Wit

Sometimes, in between studying for finals and trying not to strangle my professors, I forget exactly why I love history like I love chocolate chip cookies. [That's a lot!] Then I stumble across moments in history like [Photo]threatening letters between Philip II of Macedon and the Spartans.

Philip II: You are advised to submit without further delay, for if I bring my army into your land, I will destroy your farms, slay your people, and raze your city.
Spartans: If.

Zing!

1066: The Year of Conquest

Okay, so I'm such a nerd that I actually enjoy reading textbooks. And you know what? I'm PROUD of that.

But, this is one y'all should read too if you have even the least bit of interest in English history -- kings, queens, court intrigue, wars, etc.

It technically isn't a textbook, though my English History class is using it as one. It's a tiny little book (think 4 by 7 inches) of 201 pages that is so interesting I finished it in two days. It's called 1066: The Year of Conquest (but you could have guessed that from the title of this entry) by David Howarth. He's funny, bluntly honest about the messier, lustful, dangerous, and hilarious parts of history, and makes it interesting. It isn't all memorizing dates (because it happens all in one year) or locations, and he delves into how people actually acted in 1066. People in this book have a personality and you'll find yourself passionately hating some and falling in love with others. You'll hardly remember you're learning anything.

Learned: Rain boots are a must-have

I’m learning a lot on this trip – you know, why it’s called backpacking, that peach schnapps are all right… and now that rain boots are a must-have for a trip to Europe.

This isn’t my first trip to Europe. Or second, or third, or fourth. I’d venture to guess it’s well into the double digits, actually. But, it’s taken me this long to realize that rain boots are a must have when traveling to Europe. Why, you ask? Because it will rain at least once, and it will be miserable.

Oh, and no, your really cute TOMS do not count as appropriate rain shoes.

If you couldn’t guess yet, it rained a lot today. And I was wearing really cute TOMS because we weren’t expecting rain and therefore none of us had rain boots. It wouldn’t have been so bad if we hadn’t decided to go on a (really stinkin’ awesome) tour two hours outside of Munich that required a thirty minute hike. But other than the freezing rain and my TOMS that were once off-white but are now brown, the tour was amazing. (The picture is what they used to look like. Weren't they cute? http://www.tomsshoes.com)

We visited one of King Ludwig II’s (or, in German: König Ludwig) dream castles, Neuschwanstein (again, in German: Schloss Neuschwanstein), which is nestled high in the mountains above a tiny little town. I’d be surprised if you feel like that’s a familiar name, but if you do, it’s because it’s the castle that Disney based the castle in their company logo on, as well as many of the castles in their movies. I won’t give you a full history of König Ludwig’s lifetime and reign, but I’ll cover some basic facts for you: many often say that Ludwig was slightly mentally incompetent/insane. In his childhood, he withdrew from his parents and the proper grooming to become a king of Bavaria, and when he was suddenly shoved into the position prematurely at eighteen, he was entirely unprepared to take control of the kingdom for many reasons. Instead of trying to rise to the occasion, he brought composer/playwright Richard Wagner to Bavaria, gave him a home, and asked him to bring Ludwig’s childhood fantasies to life.

As Wagner brought these fantasies to life, Ludwig ordered the building of three castles to house these fantasies, attempted to get married, lost a war, and began what can only be deemed as a controversial relationship with Wagner. All of this eventually led him to ruin – Bavaria lost it’s military independence to Prussia, he never married his betrothed (that's a picture of statuettes of them to the left) and never fathered an heir, he fell into immense debt (yet was planning a fourth castle when he died), and his courtiers became suspicious of Ludwig and Wagner and demanded that the playwright leave Bavaria or they would. Ludwig was eventually deemed mentally insane due to intense substance abuse (morphine and cocaine at the same time), was asked to abdicate the throne, but was probably assassinated before he was ever able to appear before the parliament and make his case against mental insanity. I say ‘probably’ because the day after he was served the papers declaring his incompetency to rule, he and his psychiatrist were found “drowned” in a lake near Munich, but the autopsy showed no signs of water in their lungs.

Because of his death, Schloss Neuschwanstein was never completed, but from what was completed, his childlike mentality seems clear. Other than his throne room, which is decorated to look like a Byzantine church with lots of vivid colors and scenes depicting the Apostles, every room has a different legend as a theme – his bedroom shows the story of Tristan and Isolde and another passageway was constructed to appear like a cave so he could play out a scene from one of Wagner’s plays. A huge hallway is decorated with stained glass, carvings of mythical creatures (I’m talking unicorns here) and baby animals, and other frolicking things adorn the walls. It’s beautiful, and interesting, and adorable, but it looks like it was decorated to be a play palace for the children of a royal family, not the castle of a grown ruler.

Maybe he wasn’t totally mentally incompetent; maybe he was just “eccentric and gentle” as my sometimes-too-kind-for-her-own-good mother said. Either way, he’s still considered one of the favorite past rulers by people in Germany because his immense building projects boosted the economy not only then but to this day. He seems cool; I would have liked to have met him.