1. notleia says:

    The moral I take from this (very probably the unintended one) is that if you’re gonna piss someone off, might as well do what you figure is best. To quote Uncle Kurt Vonnegut (he’s everyone’s cool/weird, cussing uncle!):
    “Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you’ve got a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — ‘G** d**n it, you’ve got to be kind.'”

    PS: All the gay people I’ve ever met don’t think the highest aim of humanity is to be sexual. I’d like to see the poll where you’d get those stats from. “What is the highest (concrete) aim of humanity? A) Self-determination, B) Space exploration, C) Achieve the least amount of suffering, D) Filthy butt-touching.”

    • All the gay people I’ve ever met don’t think the highest aim of humanity is to be sexual.

      This is actually a very charitable phrasing. 🙂 Biblical Christians believe that, by nature and from birth, the person not redeemed by Jesus is dead-set against the supremacy of God (who rules and sets rules) in His own universe. This applies to our sexuality and to everything else were given: we want God’s gifts and not God himself, on our own terms, not His.

      People may deny this … but this idolatry affects us all. Only Jesus can save us from it.

      Similarly, all professing Christians would deny that they believe the “gospel” of Americanism is more important than the actual Gospel. Yet their actions speak louder than words.

      • notleia says:

        Eh, that argument just strikes me as being as absurd and reductionist (and also absurd) as saying that letting boys play with dolls will destroy society. Thus, Calvinism, I guess.

        You’re setting yourself up for a false dilemma, because there’s no compelling reason to believe it’s that all-or-nothing, especially considering a lot of this is based on human interpretation. Yes, even Calvinism is based on interpretation.

        • You’ve wrongly interpreted my beliefs as being simplistically “Calvinism.” This is incorrect. Christians have believed since the beginning that men and women are different, and that marriage ought to occur only between one man and one woman, based on the words of God himself (dating back to Genesis in the Old Testament), repeated and codified by none other than Jesus Christ.

          Some Christians, or religious people, have also made up some gender-related notions in the United States, such as “if boys play with dolls, they may as well be girls.” I can understand that this causes confusion. Please try to understand the difference. Your solution will begin with more understanding about what Christians have believed for centuries — looking to the ancient texts from across the world, rather than merely looking to the example of your seemingly backward evangelical neighbor from across the road. 🙂

          • notleia says:

            Dude, there is no such thing as “all Christians have believed for all time.” The vast majority of it all has been cultural, just like thinking boys get cooties from dolls. There is no Purest, Most Authentic Christianity Evar, not even Calvinism+”Biblical”+appealtomajorityaboutgendercustoms. I firmly believe in, “Test everything; hold fast to what is good.”
            Polygamy had already died out from OT Jewish custom due to Greek & Roman cultures already favoring monogamous marriage. If European cultures after the Romans hadn’t also favored monogamous marriage and polygamy made it into Catholicism, one-man-one-woman would not even make it into this argument.

    • Autumn Grayson says:

      I don’t think he necessarily meant sex itself was what people see as the highest aim. I think he was speaking to the whole culture around gender identity and all the stuff around people’s sexual inclinations. There are a lot of rules revolving around what people are supposed to believe about gender identity, and people who deviate from the liberal understanding of it are often seen as ignorant or bigoted. Some people even have certain aspects of their lives or character attacked because of this.

      This is partially because gender identity issues are so important to people that it becomes the lens they see the world through, and many of those people expect others to take similar stances as them. With the focus the gender identity culture takes in some people’s lives and how many rules there seems to be regarding that stuff, some people may say it almost feels like a religion, or at least something that ends up replacing religion in some people’s lives.

      • notleia says:

        Interesting note: he’s talking about sexuality, you’re talking about gender.

        But I don’t find the “rules” hard, because it boils down to treating people the same (i.e., politely) regardless of what gender they are. That’s basic, non-sexist courtesy, innit?

        • Autumn Grayson says:

          Yeah, sorry. The reason I brought up gender was because I was trying to point out that he seemed to be using the word sexuality to mean who a person wants to have sex with, and in your initial post you seemed to take it to mean the desire to have sex itself. I was in a hurry, so I wasn’t sure how to point that out without using the word sexuality again, since my initial attempts to explain that using the word sexuality just made my post confusing. So I brought up gender identity and sexual inclinations(as in what people/genders someone wants to sleep with) in hopes that it would illustrate what I was trying to say. Gender identity and sexuality are often discussed in the same conversations anyway, so…

          I think we should be as fair and kind as possible, so I’m not dismissing that when talking about ‘rules’. But there are a lot of rules that are hard to follow because we don’t always know when we are going to offend someone. I mentioned this situation to you before, I think, but one time I saw a person who seemed to be part of the LGBT community write a story about a (probably cis straight) girl cross dressing and going to an all boys school. Some people found the story extremely transphobic, while others saw it as nice and perhaps even pro trans on some level or other. Which rules should we follow here? The ones that imply that we should represent all genders and normalize transgender behaviors in stories, or the rules that say that it is offensive to have a cis person cross dress in a lighthearted story, even if nothing in the story is insulting to trans people?

          People should be polite to everyone, but some people inventing rules about these things aren’t actually as polite as they’d like to think. With that story I mentioned, the people who left negative reviews probably thought they were doing a good thing. But I’m sure the author was kinda hurt when their story was called transphobic by several people, especially since the author seemed to be LGBT and some of the reviewers calling the story transphobic weren’t entirely polite.

          • The reason I brought up gender was because I was trying to point out that he seemed to be using the word sexuality to mean who a person wants to have sex with, and in your initial post you seemed to take it to mean the desire to have sex itself.

            It’s a common equivocation nowadays. 🙂 If you question unrestrained practice of sex with anybody you like (and who likes it with you), people imply or state outright that you don’t want people to have fun. To compare, this is like suggesting that if a person opposes gluttony, then they must want children to starve and the human race to go extinct. (This gets more amusing when you recognize that most of the sexual practices people are pushing, for widespread celebration, don’t offer any benefit for the reproduction of more humans.)

            • Autumn Grayson says:

              Yeah, though at that point in the conversation I see people implying that homosexuality will help reduce overpopulation because of that, which isn’t necessarily true, but it’s an argument people make anyway.

          • notleia says:

            I consider those more opinions than “rules” per say. Gays and transgender people don’t actually have any codified rules other than the basic “being gay/trans is okay.” (Heck, some of them don’t agree with that because they prefer to stay in the closet for whatever reason. They still don’t get to force people to stay in the closet with them.)

            As for the part Burnett quoted about gender v sex, I’d argue that on a practical, individual level, who you want to have sex with is hard to disentangle from whether you want to have partnered sex at all. Sexuality for most people is conditional (even if the conditions are lax). Heck, most relationships are pretty conditional (ditto laxity). I’m sure not even the sluttiest pansexual would really want to have sex with an egregious asshole. Some asexuals have a sex drive but don’t want sex with any other person.

            But I forget where this is going except to reiterate the talking points about I think gays are fine and you disagree.

            • Autumn Grayson says:

              Well, I’m not trying to say that the LGBT community has some codified rulebook they all agree on. But some groupings in there seem to have unspoken rules like that and get angry whenever someone violates them, whether or not their rules are fair.

              And my point in all this wasn’t to say that I disagree with homosexuality, but ok.

  2. Paul Lee says:

    Yes, but in a way we are all alone. Each of us is alone in our unique web of associations we have to navigate, and in the ways we suffer from being misunderstood.

    Realm Makers is perhaps the most striking and real thing that I’ve had the pleasure to watch unfold over the years during my long career as a blog troll. I associate Realm Makers with a confluence of several categories that I respect: moderate big-tent evangelical Christianity, fandom culture, traditional oldschool sci-fi and fantasy writer culture, the Mormon writer major leaguers, and Internet maker culture.

What do you think?