Your daily dose of seething with rage...

[usernamenumber]

Haven't posted in a while, so why not a political screed?

To quote londo:

"""
The Archdiocese of D.C. is apparently threatening to pull all social services/break relevant contracts with the city if they pass a certain non-discrimination law primarily dealing with homosexual couples.

Washington Post article

Don't take my or the WP's word for it. Read the Archbishop's op-ed yourself, on his own website.
"""

...or, if I may paraphrase the archbishop:

"But... but we want to take public money and be dicks to a sizeable portion of the public!"

Cry me a river.

To me the most irritating thing in that op-ed was the repeated use of the phrase "recognize and promote", as if the one follows from the other. This notion that acknowledging the existence, or even the legality, of something promotes it, or put another way, that refusing to acknowledge such things is a legitimate or constructive way to express disapproval, pisses me off something fierce.

If the poor babies have that hard a time complying with the law by offering equal benefits to equally committed couples in their employ, and then have the special mix of nerve and idiocy required to cite "the creation of children" as justification for such behavior, and then even have to think about whether their discomfort around that is more important than the charitable services they provide, then boy oh boy do I hope to enjoy the view of them in my rear-view mirror as they're consigned to the past. Good riddance.

One thing about religion, though, is that it's a force-multiplier for the worst and the best in people. In other words, the churches get charity done, so I can't fully mean the previous paragraph until there are more secular charities, motivated by nothing more or less than the belief that each other is all we have, to take their place. If anybody knows some good ones, lemme know. I'm looking to donate.

/vent.

Comments

[manana.livejournal.com]

I have mixed feelings about charity. For reasons like these. It's pretty dubious whether charity as such is actually helpful to a society, especially in this country, since you're basically taking government/taxpayer money (via tax exemptions) to provide services that should be provided by the government (assistance to the poor, food banks, shelters, etc).

Personally, at least, I feel like donating to groups like the Union of Concerned Scientists, or the ACLU, is more productive in the long run. Or if you want to give productively to poor nations, I like the idea behind this organization.
(Not incidentally, those are all areligious secular organizations . . . also, over at the Kiva site, this ranking is pretty gratifying)

This (3rd hit from googling "secular charity") seems like a pretty good resource if you'd like to look through more options.

[manana.livejournal.com]

On an unrelated note, if/when Obama wins a second term in 2012, you should add a "+" to that icon.

[heiligekuh.livejournal.com]

There's also a wide swath of religious-based charities that are *not the American Catholic Church.* That our government should provide more essential services (feed, clothe, house) is undeniably true, but I reject the notion that there's a principled stand against helping people because it would be better done another way.

http://www.er-d.org/GiftsForLife/
http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=10634

http://www.uusc.org/
http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=4599

The other thing to note is that many of the best church-based charities succeed because their focus is incredibly local and specific. It means I don't have good links to throw up here, but it doesn't undercut their value.

[dirkcjelli.livejournal.com]

Who gets "charity" done better-- Religious US or Secular Europe/Japan?

Me, I'd knife a few politicians/priests to get myself some of that quality foreign health care. (Not that this is a problem solvable with just a shiv.)

[archangelwells.livejournal.com]

Everything is solvable with just a shiv, in the right places.


I think in addition to the already stated rant, the part that went missing was that the Catholic Church (American? Universal? I'm not sure if the elsewhere ones would feel differently) supports *new* babies, in an already overcrowded situation, for couples or individuals who have *no way* to raise them (or no intention, or whatever), such that they end up in the already overcrowded and poor foster home system, when there are couples who *want* babies, and can't *make* babies, but this is *bad*, and shouldn't be allowed, much less supported, and if we do allow or support it, then it *encourages* the problem.

(Sorry if that got long and twisted and convoluted, I think it's just one of those days.)

[heiligekuh.livejournal.com]

The first time I heard a deeply pro-life Catholic expound on how corrupt and damned my wife and I were for having an IVF baby, my jaw just dropped.

They quickly went in the pile of people it's just not worth talking too.

[usernamenumber.livejournal.com]

Someone... actually said that??

And there's today's dose of seething with rage*... =:\



* mitigated only by the fact that Anneka's birth means one more datum to balance out the douche/not-douche ratio of people on the earth.

[dirkcjelli.livejournal.com]

The Catholic Church has been a man's foot in fancy shoes and a robe stomping on a human face for ~1600 years and counting, yes.

My argument against shiving is threefold:

1) this is a public post
2) it is not, historically speaking*, very effective
3) it is not a pragmatic way to effect change

* Though, the spanish anarchists gave it a good try, and might have managed if they hadn't had to fight Germany, Italy, half of Spain, the US, France, England, etc all at the same time.