Author: Julia

straight & narrow

A big BOO to the United Methodist Church for its decisions yesterday to defrock a lesbian minister, reinstate (with back pay) a Virginia minister who refused membership in his congregation to a gay man, and reject a declaration that there is a “difference of opinion among faithful Christians regarding sexual orientation and practice.”

The last point is the one that bothers me most. Does rejection of that declaration mean that the UMC is saying that people who hold different opinions on the issue cannot also be faithful Christians?

Scalito?

Bush is expected to announce his nomination of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court at 8 AM today. Alito is currently an appellate judge for the 3rd Circuit, but was not among the judges who ruled on The Circle School v. Pappert.

The Washington Post portrays him as conservative, but not inexorably so, and has this to say about comparisons to the dear Scalia, “His opinions and dissents tend to be dryly analytical rather than slashing.”

I guess we’ll see.

I’m ba-ack!

Well. After an unplanned hiatus, I’m back. I’ve switched hosts (the last one ate the SQL database that housed my blog, and was less than responsive to my pleas for help) and spent way too many hours trying to recover the stuff that I hadn’t backed up or was eaten. I lost much of May, and probably some comments, but overall I’m pretty pleased with the extent to which I was able to recover. Many thanks to Google’s cached pages. The poetry and gallery sections are not yet working, but I hope to get to them relatively soon. We’ll see.

Anyway, while I’ve been gone…School has continued to go well, and I’m now really excited for the coming semesters. It sounds like I’ll be able to tailor my McDaniel experience to my interests (well, interest: creative writing), and my advisor has been amazingly supportive so far. I haven’t officially made the switch yet, but I think I’m going to drop the Political Science piece of my major (I was English/PoliSci with a Writing minor) to give me more time to do the extra creative writing stuff. Again, we’ll see.

Non-academically, I am still loving my apartment here in Westminster, and I’ve made some on-campus friends I’ve really been enjoying spending time with. It’s also wonderful to have my sister here.

I would like to say that I will go back to updating regularly, but November is National Novel Writing Month and I have been convinced to undertake this insane task. They recommend lots of boasting before November starts so that failure to write 50,000 words carries with it a large dose of embarassment. So here’s my boasting: I’m gonna write 50,000 words in November! Yikes.

For now, I’m going to go do the dishes.

roe chart

My earliest memories of Arlen Specter relate to my mother’s despise for him. It wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I learned her biggest problem with him was his conduct toward Anita Hill during Clarence Thomas’s confirmation hearings. Since I’m too young to remember the specific atrocities he committed, I’m finding lately that I think I actually like Specter.

Today, he kinda made me proud to be a Pennsylvanian.

Arlen Specter displays the 38 cases in which the Supreme Court upheld Roe v Wade

confirmation of hypocrisy

I’ve been watching the “reruns” of the opening statements of the Roberts confirmation hearings and I’ve been totally struck by the Republican senators’ constant harping on this “judicial activism” thing. “Our courts are legislating from the bench!” they’re saying. “This is not what the Founders had in mind!”

I’m sorry, boys, but I don’t think the Founders imagined that you all would get so creative with the commerce clause. The Supreme Court hears cases about which there is a Constitutional question. If you stopped overstepping your authority maybe they wouldn’t have to overturn your legislation so often.

silence

It was not my intention, after the last post, to go so long without posting again, although I will admit I knew it was a possibility. One of the side effects of the new semester and new apartment is that I’ve been a little disconnected from my regular world. I spend far less time paying attention to current events, or thinking or reading for fun, and far more time reading for class and working to make my new space mine.

And, really, there was nothing I could say about Katrina, but it felt like it’d be weird to post without mentioning it at all. So there’s my mention. The whole thing is so terrible there’s not much else I can say.

So instead, I’m going to talk about: ME!

I’m really enjoying both my classes and my apartment. I picked McDaniel largely because I’d already examined and rejected nearly every other small liberal arts school in the country and it happened to enter my life at the same time. That’s pretty much how I ended up with my apartment, too. McDaniel, though relatively unknown, seems to have a very high caliber faculty who expect a lot from their students but are also extremely friendly and supportive. My apartment has high ceilings and wood-paneled walls that make me feel like I’m on a beach vacation. It’s a wonderful sanctuary. Eventually I’ll post some pictures.

For now, I am off to pick up my sister, who resides on campus, just a mile away.

gay california

The California Supreme Court passed down three rulings yesterday upholding the legal status of gay non-biological parents. Or, “lesbians who agree to raise children borne by their partners can be considered legal parents after their relationship ends with the biological mother”.

I feel a little weird talking about this being a good thing, because it doesn’t seem so much like this was positive action, but that instead it would have been ludicrous and completely backasswards for them to have decided otherwise. But then there’s this guy:

“Today’s ruling defies logic and common sense,” said Mathew Staver, president and general counsel of Liberty Counsel, which intervened in the state Supreme Court cases. “By saying that children can have two moms, the court has undermined the family.”

WHAT??? First off, I don’t think you’re allowed to keep the name “Liberty Counsel” if you’re going to talk like that; second, is he seriously saying that it’s better for “the family” for children of gay couples (or former couples) to have only one parent?