Sunday, October 26, 2025

2025 Ace Community Survey


The 2025 Ace Community Survey is now open:

The Ace Community Survey is run by the Ace Community Survey Team–a community-based volunteer organization–in collaboration with Northwestern University.  It collects valuable information on the demographics and experiences of members in the ace community, including asexual, demisexual, gray-asexual, and related identities. Participants also have the option to make data available to external researchers, or only to our team.

The survey is open to anyone: ace, non-ace, or still questioning. As long as you are 15 years of age or older, we want to hear from you! We want to get a wide variety of responses from as many parts of the community as possible, so we encourage you to share this link with any other potentially interested individuals you know or any ace communities you participate in.

Click here to take the 2025 Ace Community Survey: 

https://redcap.fsm.northwestern.edu/surveys/?s=44EAW3J8FRWXMNTC or https://tinyurl.com/AceSurvey2025

You will be able to view any published results from the survey at https://acecommunitysurvey.org. If you would like to receive an automatic email update when new results or announcements are posted, you can subscribe here.


Thursday, October 23, 2025

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Air Bud Pt. II: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (Web Exclusive) (October 20, 20-minute video) I love when people take the details of a fictional universe way too seriously.

2. From definitions to motivations (October 21) "Educators must be on guard against the shitty imaginations of skeptical audiences."

3. An explainer about kiwi farms. (October 21) "Kiwi farms has always existed as a community designed to foster, celebrate and encourage online harassment of vulnerable people."

4. Iceland reports the presence of mosquitoes for the first time, as climate warms (October 22) [content note: article has a close-up photo of a mosquito]

5. Reversing peanut advice prevented tens of thousands of allergy cases, researchers say (October 21) I'm kinda surprised to read this- I have little kids and so I've been through the whole process of how to introduce new foods to a baby, and the concerns about allergens, and the impression I got was basically "Don't give foods that are possible allergens to your baby until they are 1 year old! Oh, but wait, there's this other scientific evidence that giving potential allergens to the baby earlier can actually prevent allergies, and that also makes a certain kind of sense. Hmm, both sides have good points here, hard to say which one is right." But this article is saying yeah that standard advice has changed, now we are telling parents they should introduce potential allergens to their babies earlier, and this is a real thing with scientific evidence to back it up, and wow look how many allergies it has prevented. I'm really surprised to hear that "U.S. health guidance changed in 2015 and 2017"- that was before my kids were born, but when I was doing this for my kids, I very much did not get the impression that this advice was well-supported by evidence. I have always seen it talked about in parenting social media groups like "well, there's a certain logic to the idea that introducing these foods earlier can avoid allergies, but who's to say?" 

Could be that different countries have different standard advice? The groups I'm in are moms from all different countries, currently living in China. Or it could be that parents are overly-cautious, and view delaying introducing these foods as the "safer" move- even though that's not what the research says- but I can understand how intuitively it "feels" safer.

6. ‘Huge Lesson’: A Beijing Farmer Learns to Live in Climate Extremes (October 22) "It was 4 a.m. on July 28, when record-breaking downpours struck the mountains in Miyun District, northern Beijing, part of a storm system that swamped valleys overnight. By dawn, the flood had erased his 30-hectare farm."

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Links related to the antichrist:

A lot of bad stuff going on... don't get discouraged by all of it; instead, find ways to take action. Protest, donate money, connect with people near you to see how you can help.

1. Trump’s college compact is a trap (October 17) "The only reasonable response for now is for colleges to show solidarity and refuse."

2. We Found That More Than 170 U.S. Citizens Have Been Held by Immigration Agents. They’ve Been Kicked, Dragged and Detained for Days. (October 16) "'If the officers learn that the individual they stopped is a U.S. citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States,' Kavanaugh wrote, 'they promptly let the individual go.' But that is far from the reality many citizens have experienced."

3. Millions Show Up AGAIN To Tell Trump They Hate Him (October 20) Photos and videos from No Kings protests across the US. [content note: one of the photos shows a giant penis costume]

4. Trump posts AI video showing him dumping on No Kings protesters (October 20) "President Donald Trump on Saturday posted an AI-generated video depicting him in a fighter jet dropping what appears to be feces on U.S. protesters." What on earth.

5. Why the State Department handed U.S. informants over to El Salvador (October 21) "So a core part of an informant relationship is that the United States says, you know, if you give us some information, we're not going to turn around and send you to the very government that you are giving us information about. That just doesn't happen."

6. White House begins demolishing part of East Wing for Trump ballroom (October 21, via

7. Legal experts question Rep. Goldman’s call for NYPD to arrest ICE agents if they act unlawfully (October 21) "'It is abundantly clear that the Trump administration is unwilling to police its own officers or hold them accountable for gross misconduct,' the letter states. 'Accordingly, NYPD — pursuant to the department’s own mission, values and oath of office — has an obligation to intervene and take appropriate action, including arrest, when federal immigration officers engage in conduct that is unlawful under state law and beyond the scope of their federal enforcement authority.'"

Also from Gothamist: Federal judge in NYC rules ICE can keep detaining people at immigration court — for now (September 13)

8. Arizona Attorney General’s Office confirms lawsuit against House Speaker Johnson (October 21) "Representative-elect Adelita Grijalva has still not been sworn in four weeks after her win. Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes is suing House Speaker Mike Johnson, citing 'taxation without representation.'"

9. Home missions (October 21) "For 21st-century white evangelicals, Hudson Taylor and Lottie Moon are too 'woke.'"

Also from the Slacktivist: Get angry. Stay angry. Do better. (October 22) "That anger is the thing missing from all of the recent stories of more than merely 'problematic youthful indiscretions.' These stories involve plenty of defensiveness and dismissal and diminishment, but no self-reproach. No anger."

Wednesday, October 22, 2025

My Parasocial Relationship With God

Photo of a large electric fan, with the text "I'm a big fan." Image source.

I recently wrote a post called The Power Dynamics of the "Personal Relationship With God". It was about why the evangelical Christian concept of a "personal relationship with God" is not healthy for me and I'm not going to have that kind of relationship again. 

So instead, I have a parasocial relationship with God.

What is a "parasocial relationship"? It's a sort of one-sided thing where a fan follows a celebrity, and the fan knows all sorts of things about the celebrity's life, but the celebrity doesn't know the fan, and they don't have an actual relationship of any kind. They don't actually know each other.

And it doesn't even have to be a real celebrity- people have parasocial relationships with content creators on the internet all the time. Some youtuber or blogger posts a lot of things about their life, and people follow their content, and people feel like they know them, even getting emotionally invested into the details of their life.

Typically when people talk about parasocial relationships, they are seen as a negative thing. Like, you feel like you know this person because you watched all their youtube videos, but hold up, let's have a reality check: They do not know you. You are not friends. And it can be an extremely weird thing for the celebrity/ influencer/ internet person to have random strangers making references to the minor details of the celebrity/ influencer/ internet person's personal life. You posted it online, so all these people know about it, but you have no idea who they are.

I mean, I don't think a parasocial relationship is necessarily a negative thing. (And maybe I don't have the terminology right here- maybe "parasocial relationship" is specifically referring to the unhealthy version of this, where you incorrectly believe that you're friends with this celebrity, and there should be a different term for just being a normal fan? Not sure on that.) The key thing is, though, you have to keep it in perspective: You are not friends. And they are a person with a regular person life, not whatever larger-than-life image about them you have in your mind.

Anyway, so, that's how I think of God. (Well, except the part about the "regular person life" I guess.) I don't talk to Them, but I'm a big fan of Their work. Just spending my time following Their work, but I don't want any actual personal connection.

It's just like how I'm a fan of Taylor Swift but I don't think I really want to meet her. Like, what would I even say? It would be a cool experience to tell other people about, but ... not really meaningful beyond that.

And here's another thing: maybe God has a parasocial relationship with me. God knows all about my life. God loves all of us, individually.

Wait, can 2 people both have a parasocial relationship with each other? What does that even mean? Yeah, sure- what if they are both celebrities, and they both know who the other person is and maybe have some kind of opinion about them, but they've never interacted directly. Or what if someone follows my blog, and I also follow their blog, but we've never actually talked to each other? Like that.

Actually, I think there are Christian denominations that *do* believe people have this kind of parasocial relationship with God. (Not that they would use those words though.) They don't have the evangelical habit of praying and then listening to see if God speaks to them. They don't believe God gives them individualized commands that they're supposed to follow. 

I've been in churches where I judged them for the way that they prayed, like they were just sending the prayers off somewhere far away and weren't expecting a response. And I judged them for the way that they relied on their church's teaching about the bible to tell them what to do, rather than each individual asking God for the details on "God's plan for your life" and expecting God to tell you what specific choices you're supposed to make. And the way their church felt like just a tame ritual that you do, rather than the Creator of the universe coming down and grabbing you by the heart and overwhelming you, and it's wild and thrilling and emotional, and you feel that the only response that makes sense is to devote every part of your life to this God.

I'm not judging them any more. Maybe what they were doing was more healthy than telling everyone "you need to have a personal relationship with God." But also, I don't really know much about that variety of Christianity; it's so different from evangelicalism. I'm actually really curious about this but I shouldn't say too much here because I probably have a lot of misconceptions about it.

(I mean, obviously I know they're not standing in church saying "we have a parasocial relationship with God.")

It might seem weird and paradoxical, that I say I love God and I think about Them all the time and They are very important in my life, but also I don't want to talk to Them or have any kind of "personal relationship." But the way I think of it is, it's a parasocial relationship. I'm a fan.

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Related:

The Power Dynamics of the "Personal Relationship With God"

I Deserve God's Love 

"Maybe God Is Like That Too" (kids' book review) 

God and the Overton Window

Tuesday, October 21, 2025

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Michael Tait | CCM's Biggest Star Abused Others For Decades [re-upload] (August 2) 1-hour-46-minute video from Fundie Fridays. I've posted other links about this before. Here is a long video which explains the whole entire thing. It's really horrifying the way he sexually abused people.

2. Israel strikes Gaza as both Israel and Hamas accuse each other of breaching ceasefire (October 19) 

3. Story of The Split: a zine about ace community history (October 19) "This term—this specific string of words—does not come from the ace community. It comes from people framing ace community vocabulary writ large as a threat to gay people."

4. Never Too Late: China’s Takeout Apps Remove Tardy Delivery Fines (October 20) "Under the pilot rules, drivers will no longer face immediate cash deductions for late deliveries."

5. Enchanted Capitalism (2023, via) "In the past, humans generally believed that the metaphysical structure of the world was determined by God. In a capitalist society, money plays that role: without money, you, or at least your needs as a human being, don’t exist."

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. No Kings, October 2025 (October 18) "If you google 'how to prepare for a protest', I think the advice is overly cautious, preparing for the worst.  But the median protest is entirely safe."

Also: Photos: Scenes from the No Kings Protests (October 18)

Photos: ‘No Kings’ Anti-Trump Protests See Massive Turnout Across the Country (October 18)

2. As tensions rise in Chicago, volunteers patrol neighborhoods to oppose ICE and help migrants escape (October 17) "Witnessing ICE arresting people in this area has become an almost daily occurrence over the last few weeks, Ivan says. A few days ago, he took a video of an enforcement operation happening at the nearby grocery store." (I posted a different link about this same group a few weeks ago.)

3. The Pro-Massacre, Pro-Segregation, Pro-Eugenics Administration (October 17) "Put another way, we’re no longer in the usual realm of Republicans whitewashing or downplaying the darkness in our history, e.g., the Supreme Court saying we don’t need voting protections because racism isn’t so bad anymore. This administration has upgraded the earlier model, showing through word and action that it believes the shameful sides of America’s past were, in fact, good—even examples to follow today."

4. In Shambles (October 20) "Petro tweeted that 'US government officials have committed murder and violated our sovereignty in our territorial waters. Fisherman Alejandro Carranza had no ties to drug traffickers and his daily activity was fishing.' He added, 'We await explanations from the US government.'"

5. Unfettered and Unaccountable: How Trump is Building a Violent, Shadowy Federal Police Force (October 18, via) "Speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, the official rattled off scenes that once would’ve triggered investigations: 'Accosting people outside of their immigration court hearings where they’re showing up and trying to do the right thing and then hauling them off to an immigration jail in the middle of the country where they can’t access loved ones or speak to counsel. Bands of masked men apprehending people in broad daylight in the streets and hauling them off. Disappearing people to a third country, to a prison where there’s a documented record of serious torture and human rights abuse.'"

6. Adelita Grijalva was elected to Congress. But she's having trouble doing her job. (October 20) "Democrats in both Washington and Arizona have ramped up pressure on Johnson to schedule Grijalva's swearing-in ceremony, with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., on Friday sending a letter to the speaker demanding he swear in Grijalva during a short session, as the speaker has done in the past with Republican members-elect."

Sunday, October 19, 2025

The Power Dynamics of the "Personal Relationship With God"

Image text: "A personal relationship with God", with a hand reaching down from the top of the frame, and another hand reaching up from the bottom. Image source.


"He must become greater; I must become less." 

- John 3:30

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In romantic/intimate relationships, it can be a red flag when there's a big power difference between the 2 people. A relationship between a boss and an employee, between a professor and student, etc- these are recognized as totally unethical because of the power difference. It's a situation where one person can be coerced into things they don't want in the relationship, because the other person holds such power over their life. 

But what if it was a relationship between a person and God?

I'm talking about this in the framework of romantic/intimate relationships, because the evangelical concept of the "personal relationship with God" is supposed to be that intimate. Actually, more intimate than that, I would say. God knows you completely. God knows every thought in your mind. God knows all your motivations for all the choices you will ever make. And you are supposed to dedicate yourself completely to God. Sacrifice whatever things in your life God doesn't like. Take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. Pray more- however much you are praying now, it would be better if you were praying more. Pursue God all the time, with all you have. No matter the cost. 

It's hard to imagine a more one-sided relationship than that. God is perfect, we are the ones who are imperfect, so anything that goes wrong in the relationship must be our fault. We are sinful. We didn't pray enough. We didn't love God enough. We are weak, and we are flawed, trying to reach through the haze to access the power of God and the goodness and joy of God, if only we would get our act together.

Oh, and in this ideology, God is all you need. Anything else in your life, if you lose it, it will be okay because you still have God. Rely on God to be your everything.

When I had a "personal relationship with God"... it was... I loved him. I was obsessed with him. I wanted to do whatever he wanted me to do, and I was willing to give up anything. I wanted God to speak to me, I wanted to feel his power, I wanted to see the amazing things he was doing in the world, I wanted to be part of it. 

If only I could know what God was telling me, what God wanted me to do- but it was so hard to hear him. It was so hard to know what I was supposed to do. I worried about making the wrong choice- I was supposed to do what God wanted, but what if I really didn't know what that was? Why couldn't he just choose for me? Why couldn't he just take away all my choices- wouldn't that make it easier for everyone? We're working with a belief system that says there *is* one specific absolute right thing to do, and God knows what it is, and I don't know what it is but I'm the one who has to do it. And I tried so hard to sit and pray and listen to God, this distant and noisy communication channel- doesn't this seem inefficient? Why doesn't God just take over my life and make all my choices for me- wouldn't that be the ideal?

And the way I had to police my feelings because of him. If I was in a situation where I felt "God wants me to forgive this person" then that was it, I had to forgive them. I had to. God wants it, and God is absolutely always right. I couldn't think it through, couldn't process my feelings on it, because we already know the right answer. To seriously think it through would be to entertain the possibility of not obeying God. My obedience must be absolute- how can there be any hesitation, when we already know God is right? If I question it, if I have feelings of not wanting to do it, that would be a sin.

Many many times, I had feelings about something, and I had to stomp them down immediately because they weren't what God would want. To linger on those emotions would be a sin- and every little sin is "an infinite offense against a holy God." I deserve to go to hell for that.

When you're in a relationship with a person, and you disagree about something, there's some give and take. You both are right about some things and wrong about some things; you both should listen to each other and learn from each other. Even if it turns out one person was pretty obviously right and the other was wrong, you still talk it through and work to empathize with each other and understand each other. I don't even know if it's possible to have a healthy relationship with Someone who is always right. Like, you already know it's pointless to try to tell them why you disagree with them on something. You're automatically wrong. To continue to talk about your wrong feelings and wrong opinions, as if they matter, wouldn't that be a sin?

And I believed that, if anything bad happened in my life, it was okay because it was God's plan. He could do anything to me, and it would be right- somehow, from God's absolutely correct point of view, it would actually be a good thing, even if it seemed bad to me. 

Maybe God would take away the things- or people- that I loved, in order to teach me to trust him more. Yes, plenty of evangelicals have anecdotes along those lines- something bad happened to them, and they eventually came to believe that God had deliberately caused it, in order to teach them something. Or, perhaps God destroyed something because you sinfully loved it too much, and it was distracting you from loving God. Yeah, the God I believed in back then would totally do that kind of thing. He was a jealous God, and we believed that was a good thing.

OH AND I almost forgot to mention, this God believed I was disgusting and dirty and never deserved anything good. All humans deserve to go to hell right now, but luckily God has a bit of a weakness and loves us, so we're able to get a sort of temporary delay in getting the punishment we deserve- we're living our lives here on earth instead of going to hell right now. And for those of us who believe the correct things about Jesus, Jesus covers up our sin well enough that God can finally bear to look at us. So basically, my natural self is really bad, but fortunately Jesus is changing me into someone that can maybe kinda sorta please God. I just have to pray all the time and pursue God with everything I have. Any deviation from this, and I'm a dirty sinner that God can't even look at.

(And I won't even get into this other goal that the "personal relationship with God" is supposed to accomplish: We believe there is a spiritual world, which we can't see but it's more real than the physical world that we can see. And the closer your "personal relationship with God" is, the more in-tune with God you are, the more you will be able to sense the actual real reality of the spiritual world. Sure, we believe it exists, but it doesn't feel real- but if you have a really really good personal relationship with God, you can get to the point that the spiritual world does feel real- and that's what we should be trying to do. You want to get yourself to where it's intuitive to interpret things that happen to you in terms of what's going on in the spiritual world, and ignore the common-sense physical-world understanding of what's happening.)

I'm describing it this way, and it probably sounds pretty bad, the way God treated me, the way I sacrificed my feelings and independence and personality for him. But at the time, I was happy. I was so happy, and I loved God so much. I was happy because I 100% believed in this ideology that says God is right about everything. It was so hard, all the things I had to do to obey him, but I genuinely believed that those were the right things that I should do, and that any alternative would by definition be worse. And all that stuff about me being a dirty sinner, it didn't bother me because I believed it was true. If someone calls you a dirty sinner, why would you take offense to that, if you know that you really are a dirty sinner?

(Years later in therapy it turned out it DID bother me!)

I loved this quote from John the Baptist, talking about Jesus: "He must become greater; I must become less." I worked so hard, trying to be that perfect pure conduit that God's power could flow through, trying to get rid of my own weakness and sinfulness. I've heard evangelicals say- and I believed this back then- it's not that God is getting rid of your personality and uniqueness; instead, the personal relationship with God is the ideal environment where your natural personality can blossom, and you really become the person God made you to be, when you're following God rather than being weighed down by sin. And yeah, to some extent that was true. I did devote my life to God in a way that was uniquely mine. But living that way, I wasn't allowed to have any real choices. That really cuts off a lot of one's personality and identity- not being able to think about what you want, and choose to do something just because you want to, not because you're "supposed" to.

And this whole time, I chased God and wanted God and listened for God, and also I believed all the evangelical ideology. All the culture war issues, I had the "correct" evangelical view, and I was sure that God did too- of course he did. All this time that I wanted to know him, and I believed he knew me completely, I was totally sure I had the right beliefs about all these things, and I talked to him with the assumption that he believed those things too. It all fit together seamlessly- my personal relationship with God, and my taking evangelical talking points as if they were just self-evidently true.

My "personal relationship with God" fell to pieces as I gradually realized that so many evangelical beliefs were wrong- but God cannot change- God still believed those things, and I couldn't any more. He was revealed to be a heartless bigot who bought into misinformation.

It was so bad, going through that. My whole identity had been in this God, and he turned out to be a monster and I needed to separate from him. Everything I had thought was certain, everything I had thought I didn't need to worry about because evangelical ideology had a pat little answer, suddenly all these questions sprang up like a whirlwind, all these reasons that showed God is not worthy of worship. And my whole life I had believed I deserved to go to hell but I wasn't worried about that because Jesus covered me so it was fine- but now that I was leaving this God, the full burden of my sinfulness in God's eyes fell on me... I couldn't stop thinking about how I was so bad, I was so dirty- because I had always believed that was everyone's default state if they didn't have a "personal relationship with God."

And here I was, no longer even *trying* to have a personal relationship with God. Hard to imagine anything more dirty and sinful than that.

Yes, evangelicals very explicitly believe that if you do not have a personal relationship with God, you are not a Christian. You are going to hell.

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It may come across as strange that I'm talking about the personal relationship with God in the language we use to talk about abusive relationships. The idea that the partner with more power can coerce the other into things they don't want- well, that's totally different when it's God we're talking about. God is always good and right, so if God coerces you into something, that's actually a good thing. The control that is a bad thing in a human relationship is a good thing in the relationship with God. ... Right?

(And yes, it is very common for evangelicals to talk about God coercing them into things. Giving testimonies along the lines of "God wanted me to do [something] but I didn't want to. Silly me, I'm so sinful and selfish, haha, you guys know how it is, lol. And then God caused bad/annoying/inconvenient things to happen to me, until I finally gave up, and agreed to do the thing that God told me to do. God always gets us in the end, haha. [audience laughs]")

I don't think that any more, because I don't have a God I can trust. The God I used to worship, I don't believe in him any more, but he was very real to me back then, and he controlled my life. There are many gods that people believe in- how can you give up control of your life to a God if you don't even know if it's the right one?

I believe in a God now, and I love Them, but I don't want to talk to Them. The power dynamics are too... I just can't, I just can't deal with anything that hints in the direction of an absolute "this is what God wants me to do"- it feels coercive. I can't deal with "here's God's opinion on this or that topic"- because if I agree with it, I can arrogantly feel like I'm automatically right, and if I disagree with it, I should be forced to change immediately. The absoluteness of it is just incompatible with thinking with my own mind and feeling my own feelings. 

I need some space away from God, to think my own thoughts and feel my own feelings. Let me be wrong, let me figure things out on my own, let me change and grow. I don't want to talk to Them.

Any time I say something like "God wants us to [whatever]", that's my own opinion, based on a bunch of reasons that I've thought about. It's not "these words were handed down to us from heaven and are automatically right"- I don't want that in my religion.

The power difference between a person and God is so huge, and we are told me must give ourselves fully to him, give up everything for him, obey him even when it hurts. And I used to do that. But I can't any more. I'm never going to be in a personal relationship with a God again. It's not safe to have a relationship that intimate with that big of a power difference.

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Follow-up post: My Parasocial Relationship With God

Related

They Prayed About It (a post about the #NashvilleStatement) 

"Moon Knight" and Boundaries With God

Used By God 

My Identity was in Christ

This is what a "personal relationship with God" looks like. Be very afraid. 

I Deserve God's Love 

God and the Overton Window

Friday, October 17, 2025

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. 17-year-old trans girl’s suicide over NHS wait times was preventable, coroner rules (October 9, via) "Wait times for each clinic vary massively, from just three months in Nottingham, to 41 years in Belfast, and a staggering 224 years in Glasgow."

2. What Would Billy Say? (October 10) and also Slacktivist's comments about it. Franklin Graham has withdrawn two large evangelical organizations (Samaritan’s Purse and Billy Graham Evangelistic Association) from the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, an organization which keeps an eye on the leaders of evangelical groups to make sure they're not stealing money or abusing people. Uh... why is Franklin Graham withdrawing from this oversight group? Seems very suspicious. As the Slacktivist put it, "Or maybe you’ve got to ask if there could be any possible explanation for this other than the simplest, most obvious one."

3. 男高音艺术歌曲《我会自己上厕所》转自抖音 (2023) This is extremely funny if you understand Chinese.

Okay I'll explain it: So there's a song for Chinese toddlers called “我会自己上厕所” (I can use the bathroom by myself) featuring such profound content as “上厕所时不能吃东西” (you can't eat while using the bathroom), and apparently it became something of a meme on the Chinese internet because everyone found it hilarious, and people were making their own covers of this song. This video is an opera-style cover of it.

See this is what happens if you have kids. You have to listen to songs about potty training, and find humor in them or else you will just lose your mind.

4. Bari Weiss: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) (October 13, 34-minute video) Video about Bari Weiss and her media outlet "The Free Press"- apparently she is one of those people who claims to be too liberal for conservatives and too conservative for liberals. Whenever I've come across writing from people like that, it's confusing to me because they might have some "liberal" opinions on specific issues, but they don't seem to really understand the overall big-picture of why liberals would have those opinions, and how they would connect to other issues too.

5. A ‘Hardcore’ theological crisis (October 15) "She is his child and he is going to try to save her even if Almighty God has already decreed since eternity past that she is predestined for damnation."

6. Greta Thunberg: “They kicked me every time the flag touched my face” (October 15, via) "This is not about me or the others from the flotilla. There are thousands of Palestinians, hundreds of whom are children, who are being held without trial right now, and many of them are most likely being tortured, says Greta Thunberg."

7. Photos: Ceasefire in Gaza brings reunions amid devastation (October 15)

8. Doctors Without Borders permanently closes its emergency center in Haiti's capital (October 16) "'The building has already been hit several times by stray bullets due to its location close to the combat zones, which would make resuming activities too dangerous for both patients and staff,' said Jean-Marc Biquet, MSF head of mission in Haiti."

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Links related to the antichrist:

(I hope someday some historian finds my blog and says "wow, people back then believed Trump was the antichrist.")

1. There will be No Kings protests on Saturday, October 18~

2. Opinion: Why I'm handing in my Pentagon press pass (October 14) "Today, NPR will lose access to the Pentagon because we will not sign an unprecedented Defense Department document, which warns that journalists may lose their press credentials for "soliciting" even unclassified information from federal employees that has not been officially approved for release. That policy prevents us from doing our job. Signing that document would make us stenographers parroting press releases, not watchdogs holding government officials accountable."

Also related: Pentagon reporters have now turned in their badges – but plan to keep reporting (October 15) "Current and former Pentagon correspondents who spoke with the Guardian said that coverage would undoubtedly suffer from a lack of proximity to administration decision-makers – though many are intent on proving that the restrictions won’t stop the work, with some even saying they plan to take a more aggressive tack."

3. Protesters and Members of the Press Challenge First Amendment Violations by Federal Forces at ICE Facility in Broadview, Illinois (October 6) "A new lawsuit filed this morning argues that this wanton violence by the federal government is a blatant attempt to interfere with the most cherished and fundamental rights enshrined in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religious belief, and the right to peaceably assemble and express disagreement with the government."

4. Documents Allege a Federal Agent at Portland ICE Threatened to Shoot an Ambulance Driver (October 12, via

5. Gavin Newsom Vetoes Important HRT Stockpiling Bill For Trans Californians, Signs Other Pro-LGBTQ+ Bills (October 14) "Among all of the legislation passed this year, few bills would have offered such tangible protection for transgender people as SB 418—and yet, it’s the one that won’t become law."

Also from Erin in the Morning: Fenway Health Restricts Treatment for Patients Under 19 In Capitulation To Trump (October 15) "This is a fundamental betrayal to the core mission of Fenway and the patients they serve. Trans patients cannot trust this organization has their best interests at heart."

6. ‘We’re saving God’ (October 16) "The creeds would have to be completely rewritten to be compatible with the Trumpian theology of 'We’re saving God.' Think of all the arguments among different branches of Christianity, every doctrinal dispute about the nature of God, the relationship between God and humanity, eschatology, sin, salvation, sacrament, whatever. Every Christian in every era on every side of every one of those disputes would recoil at the blasphemous nonsense of 'We are saving God.'"

Thursday, October 16, 2025

"Ayi" vs "Aunt"

This has been bothering me for years. Dictionaries and Chinese teachers should not be going around telling people that 阿姨 [ā yí] means "aunt" in English. It does sometimes- but usually not!

I have made this venn diagram which explains the meanings of "ayi" and "aunt" and the small overlap they have:

Venn diagram with one circle labelled "ayi" and one circle labelled "aunt." The "ayi" circle contains "friendly term of address for any woman you meet who is your parents' age" and "woman who works as a cleaner/ nanny/ domestic worker." The "aunt" circle contains "dad's sister" and "mom or dad's sister-in-law." The overlap area contains "mom's sister."

Hope this clears it up!

There were LOTS of things people told me early on, when I was learning Chinese, that *this* word translates to *this* other word, and I believed them, and then later found out that was not true, in ways which seemed very huge and important to me. I don't think it's their fault though- I think in many cases they didn't speak English at a deep enough level to understand that the English word they were using did not mean exactly what they thought it meant. (Oh man, don't get me started on the differences between 已经 and "already.") They had a lot of awareness of the important things to consider when one is coming from a totally-Chinese background and learning English, but going in the other direction has a whole different set of important considerations. (And there were times when I was listening to another native English speaker speaking Chinese, and their mistakes made perfect sense to me and I totally knew what they were trying to say, but our Chinese friends whose second language was English couldn't follow at all.)

Or, a dictionary might say some word is the translation of some other word, because if you *had* to choose 1 word, that's the one you would choose, but there actually aren't any English words that truly are the translation of that Chinese word- the way to translate it totally depends on the situation.

Translation is hard! But anyway, the important thing is, "ayi" usually does not mean "aunt."

Tuesday, October 14, 2025

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. How to Make a Great Government Website (2024, via) "First is the required interview. Most of the time it’s a phone call. Often they’ll call from a blocked number. They’ll send you a notice of when your interview is scheduled for, but this notice will sometimes arrive after the actual date of the interview."

2. Beauty and the Beast - How bad was A.I.D.S.? (October 10, via) 56-minute video. It's a queer reading of "Beauty and the Beast," as is overlaps with what was going on with the AIDS crisis in the 80s and 90s.

3. AI Slop Is Destroying The Internet (October 7) 12-minute video from Kurzgesagt.

4. This post about Copilot in Excel getting a simple sum wrong. Apparently it's because the prompt didn't actually include any info about what cells the data was in. The AI doesn't give an error message or anything, so there's no way the user would have known that.

I haven't ever used Copilot in Excel so maybe I'm missing some key thing, but, uh... my reaction is, excel formulas update when you change the data, but if I'm using an AI for something that matters, I would need to carefully check the output. Having a human pay attention to the output every time it changes seems incompatible with having things update automatically (which is one of Excel's biggest strengths).

Doesn't seem great if every formula in every cell of your excel sheet has a mind of its own and you can't rely on them being right.

5. U.S. measles cases continue to climb, with outbreaks across the country (October 12) "Before widespread vaccination, pretty much everyone got measles in childhood. And 400-500 people in the U.S. used to die from it each year."

6. Hamas releases 20 remaining living Israeli hostages after two years in Gaza (October 13, via) "Parents were reunited with sons and children with fathers as those held were handed over to the Red Cross before finally rejoining their families with the help of the Israeli army."

7. Taylor Swift - The Fate of Ophelia (Official Music Video) (October 6) I like this song~

8. Michigan Republican pushing pornography ban linked to porn site, records show (October 7, via) So it was discovered that Schriver, a politician who's been trying to ban porn, used to have an account on a site with sex webcams and the like.

I'm posting this because people are calling it out as obvious hypocrisy, but I think it's a little more complicated than that. In conservative Christian culture, porn is seen as this evil bad thing that all men are naturally drawn to. If they don't have good enough self-control and/or restrictions on their computer, all men would go and make an account on a porn site. A lot of talk about how so many men are "struggling" with porn use, "addicted" to porn, how it's such a bad thing but they're all tangled up in it because it's so tempting.

It makes perfect sense to me that a lot of these conservative lawmakers supporting "porn bans" are men who have been part of this "struggling with porn" subculture- partly interested in it and partly repressing themselves and feeling so much shame- they try to make laws to ban it as a way to fight against their own "porn addiction"- as a way to show God that even though they keep failing in their resolution to not use porn, on some level they really are trying to fight it.

9. The Supreme Court’s First Blockbuster Case This Term Looks Pretty Fake (October 6, via) "And I think, in theory, there’s nothing wrong with bringing a test case. If someone’s rights are really at stake and they haven’t faced punishment yet—but they fear that they will—it’s legitimate for that person to sue. But what ADF does is really finesse the facts, often to the point of fiction, to justify creating a test case that the Supreme Court can use to change the law."

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. No Kings is on Saturday, October 18. Go out and protest if you can.

2. Chicago and the Horrors of Carte Blanche (October 4) "Authorities seized people first, without probable cause, treating merely living in the same complex as suspected undocumented migrants as a crime."

Also from Jay Kuo: The Hunger Games (October 3) "After all, why should the Democrats agree to keep the government open for another seven weeks to negotiate a “budget” if the White House can later refuse to honor it? What’s to stop the OMB from doing exactly the same thing with New York City transit funds and blue state energy projects even after a budget is passed and signed into law?"

3. Van Nuys car wash owner files $50M claim over injuries sustained during immigration raid (September 26) "Shouhed says he was terrified as he tried to explain to the agents that his employees were authorized to be on the job, yet he says they took at least five of his employees away in handcuffs. He says he screamed that he is a United States citizen and had proof in his wallet, but he says they did not listen."

4. 'I'm done being afraid': How the shutdown has led federal workers to speak out (October 10) "They say the best organizer is a bad boss, and we all have the same bad boss."

5. ‘Bring her back’: Delaware abuse victim rescued from ICE deportation (October 13, via) "Before agents rummaged through her home, Isabela demanded they show her an arrest warrant. They refused and broke down her door anyway, injuring her son with the doorknob as they barged in."

6. “I Don’t Want to Be Here Anymore”: They Tried to Self-Deport, Then Got Stranded in Trump’s America (October 10, via) "ProPublica spoke with more than a dozen Venezuelans who said they wanted to take the U.S. government’s offer of a safe and easy return. They signed up months ago on the CBP Home app and were given departure dates. But after those dates came and went, these immigrants said they feel betrayed by what the president told them."

7. MIT Rejects Trump’s Bid to Institute Trans Bathroom, Athletics Ban (October 11)

8. Multiple airports refuse to play Kristi Noem video that blames Democrats for government shutdown (October 13)

9. This frog protester in Portland, from this link: Everyone Is Pointing Out This 1 Reason Why The Anti-ICE Inflatable Frogs In Portland May Be The Best Protesters (October 14)




Saturday, October 11, 2025

Jesus Weighs in on "Being Right vs Doing Good"

Artwork showing Jesus healing a blind man. Image source.

This is a follow-up to my post Being Right vs Doing Good~

So, what did Jesus have to say to the question, "Which is more important: being right or doing good?"

Okay I'll just tell you the answer now: it's doing good. Jesus was not interested in telling everyone the "right answers" and making sure everyone had the "right beliefs." Jesus was interested in how people treat each other.

Here are the receipts.

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Who is my neighbor 

On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

“What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”

He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

“You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”

But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

So this "expert" asks Jesus a question- "Who is my neighbor?" In response, Jesus tells the parable of the good Samaritan. In this parable, a man is beaten by robbers, who leave him laying on the side of the road. A priest walks by and doesn't help. A Levite walks by and doesn't help. Then a Samaritan walks by, and stops to help this guy, bandaging his wounds, bringing him to an inn to take care of him.

That's Jesus' response. This story. This guy asked "who is my neighbor" and Jesus told a story. And then Jesus asked, "Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?" and tells him to "Go and do likewise."

Readers who are paying attention may notice that we still are not given a proper definition of "neighbor" here. We know the command is "love your neighbor as yourself," and surely we need to know what "neighbor" means, in order to understand this command, right? But Jesus doesn't give us that.

Jesus' purpose was not to make sure everyone knew all the exact nuances of "the rules", so we could rules-lawyer about them. It's not about that. The point of the story is not to teach you an exact definition of the command "love your neighbor as yourself." The point is that you should help people. That's what matters. What you do.

(As a person who over-analyzes things, I have to say, this annoys me.)

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The sheep and the goats

In Matthew 25:31-46, Jesus tells the parable of the sheep and the goats. He says that people will be separated into 2 groups- sheep and goats- and the King will tell the sheep that they will be rewarded because "I was hungry and you gave me something to eat" (and other scenarios where they helped him). The sheep then ask what he's talking about. He says, "Whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me." For the goats, it's the opposite- they will receive eternal punishment, because "I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat" and so on.

So I want to ask you this question: Is the purpose of this story to teach us the process by which people get judged and sent to heaven or hell? Or is the purpose of this story to teach us that we should help people?

I think the point is we should help people. 

I don't think the point is to tell us the mechanisms of how people go to heaven or hell. Like Jesus really wanted us to know that someday he's gonna divide people into 2 groups, and if you helped hungry/thirsty/sick/etc people then you go to heaven... wait, how much do you have to help such people? What is the threshold exactly? How do you know if you've done enough to get into heaven?

It's not about that. It's not about those questions. Jesus is not telling us facts about how heaven and hell work. He is telling us that we should help people. That's the point.

Maybe it's *not* true that there's really a judgment and a heaven and hell. I don't know. Maybe it's just a story that serves as a guide to getting us into the right frame of mind, to have an attitude of being open and generous and compassionate towards people as we live our lives.

And I'll admit, as a person who overanalyzes things, I *do* worry about "how do I know if I've helped enough people to get into heaven?" But I think if we're worrying about that, we're missing the point of the parable. Worrying about if I've done enough- that puts the focus on myself. But the point of the parable is we should help others. The point is not "we should make sure we've helped others enough to meet whatever Jesus' standard is, and we should constantly worry about that."

Maybe it needs to not be literally true, or else you do end up with those implications. 

(And I love how the sheep clearly do *not* have the correct beliefs about Jesus/heaven/hell. Jesus says "I was hungry and you gave me something to eat" and they initially disagree with him. Jesus doesn't care- what matters is what you do, not your beliefs behind it.)

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My point

When you read what the bible says about Jesus' life, well, it doesn't look like the sort of thing that one would do if one's goal was to teach everyone the correct facts about morality/God/etc. If that was his goal, he could have spent all his time giving clear explanations (and then Christians wouldn't have had anything to argue about amongst ourselves for the past 2000 years). He could have said, "okay, here's how it works. Here's how heaven and hell work. Here's the correct teaching about the nature of God." He could have told us the exact correct details about the Trinity, free will, how atonement works, souls, church hierarchy structures, baptism, etc etc etc.

Instead, he cared about people, helped people, healed people. His teaching was about what you should do- not how to have the correct beliefs about everything. And he often used parables, which introduces the risk that someone is going to understand the parables incorrectly. He was okay with that. (Contrast this with modern evangelical Christian media, which has to hit you over the head with the message, because wouldn't it be terrible if we used a bit of subtlety and then somebody didn't get the "correct" message from it?)

Yeah, Jesus didn't act like a person who thinks the highest priority is that everyone needs to have the correct beliefs about everything. Doing good is what actually matters. 

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Related:

Sheep and Goats

Friday, October 10, 2025

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. The Fatima Sun Miracle: Much More Than You Wanted To Know (October 2) An extremely long post overanalyzing a weird thing- this is the exact content I am interested in.

2. The phantom menace of biblical chronology (October 7) "No Star Wars fan will let you get away with suggesting that Episode IV: A New Hope was written as a sequel to Rogue One. They’ll be upset by the suggestion not just because it is incorrect, but because that error would change how we should understand and interpret both of those stories."

3. 30 Years Ex-evangelical (August 29, via) "In other words, I was under the impression that evangelicalism was a deep personal commitment to love Jesus for the sake of making the world a more just and beautiful place for all of God’s children. Lol."

4. Israel, Hamas reach a ceasefire, with hostages and prisoners to be freed within days (October 9)

Gazans stream towards wrecked homes as Israeli forces pull back under ceasefire (October 10)

And another thought related to this: That felon supposedly has a plan where the whole population of Gaza would "voluntarily" leave and then the land would be turned into a nice resort (?) and then the people of Gaza would come back (??). Uh, but, fact check, relocating a population is ethnic cleansing and can sometimes even count as genocide. I wish I had a good article that explained this. I think a lot of Americans may have this really naive idea that it's not a bad thing to just move people from one place to another. It would be nice to have a link which very clearly lays out what exactly the problem is and why this is a bad thing.

5. A rescue ship saved them from the sea. Now these migrants find a tough road in Europe (2024) "When the rescuers from Doctors Without Borders reach them, they find 162 people, 29 of them children, so tightly packed into the vessel that many can only stand. The overcrowded boat rocks precariously and if the crowd moves too fast toward the rescuers' dinghies, it could capsize."

6. Over 350 Rescued After Blizzard Hits Everest’s Eastern Slope (October 7) I saw some reports about this from other news sites, but since it's in China it's good to have an article about it from Sixth Tone.

7. How Birthday Party Lady Is Showing the World Boundaries in Marriage (October 8) "SIL sent a text at midnight the night before the party asking if it was still on. On the day of the party, no decorations had been bought, and husband got off work AFTER the party was supposed to start. But she held her ground."

8. The “Debate Me Bro” Grift: How Trolls Weaponized The Marketplace Of Ideas (September 17) "He was showing up armed with a string of logical fallacies, nonsense talking points, and gotcha questions specifically designed to enrage inexperienced college students so he could generate viral social media clips of himself 'owning the libs.'"

The difference between debating to "win", vs actually wanting to communicate and listen to people and learn from each other... I think this is really important, and it took me way too long to even realize the difference. (I'm thinking about my own experiences with apologetics.) When someone makes a point and you don't know how to respond to it, or asks you a question you don't know the answer to, do you try to come up with whatever "your side's" official answer would be? Or do you genuinely ask yourself what you believe about it and what your actual reasons are? To say your actual reasons can be embarrassing- and don't do it if you're in a discussion with someone who can't be trusted with that kind of honesty- but is a very necessary step to coming to a belief that makes sense.

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Action item: Submit a comment on this proposed change that would affect overseas voters (and other US citizens who vote by mail). This proposed change would require voters to show documentary proof of US citizenship, such as a passport, in order to register to vote. It sounds like this means people would actually have to go *in person*, which is impossible for US citizens like me who live overseas. (Comment period is open until October 20.)

2. Treasury Department may issue $1 Trump coin for 250th anniversary of U.S. independence (October 6) Eww, what on earth?

3. Eventually You're Going to Have to Stand for Something (October 5) "When Klein scolds that "we have to live here with each other" he is making a statement about who it is he is getting ready to live with and who he is getting ready to live without, and most gallingly he is ignoring the fact that when it comes to supremacists all of us have been living with them already all along. Nobody is suggesting mass deportation of white supremacists, or the dissolution of straight marriages, or stripping away health care for conservatives."

4. Federal workers sue the Education Department over partisan shutdown emails (October 5) "'Without giving notice to their employees, let alone obtaining their consent, the Department of Education has replaced employees' out-of-office email messages with partisan language that blames 'Democrat Senators' for the shutdown,' the complaint said. 'Employees are now forced to involuntarily parrot the Trump Administration's talking points with emails sent out in their names.'"

And also about the shutdown: IRS walks back guidance promising back pay for furloughed workers (October 10) Excuse me, what?

Schumer slams GOP health care policies: ‘No f‑‑‑ing way’ (October 8) 

5. Higher Education Leaders Reject Trump Administration's "Compact for Academic Excellence" (October 5, via

6. Standing up to ICE in the suburbs, the People’s Patrol puts its faith in resistance (September 29) "Racing toward the industrial park on an expressway, Cavazos says the People’s Patrol includes 180 people, all volunteers. The center holds trainings for the work every other Friday."

7. Judge William Young's ruling against Rubio and Noem is a lesson for all in the Trump era (October 2) "Throughout his opinion, Young focused in on several actions of this administration — allowing Rubio’s horrifying statements to speak for themselves, confronting America with a matter-of-fact description of what ICE is and how America’s immigration system operates, and damning the administration’s use of masks in its immigration enforcement."

And this quote (via) from lawyers who know what's what:

Plaintiffs of course understand the hardship the government shutdown places on everyone, including the government's attorneys and their clients. For that reason, Plaintiffs offered to agree to the stay Defendants seek if Defendants in turn would agree to refrain from enforcing the TPS terminations challenged in this case. But Defendants refused. They apparently have the resources to detain and deport thousands of immigrants with no criminal history to dangerous countries, but would prefer not to expend the resources needed to defend the legality of such actions in court. 

Also from Law Dork: Supreme Court lets Noem end legal status for many Venezuelans in the U.S. (October 4) "Explaining the stay request before the Supreme Court over Chen’s September ruling, Jackson echoed that concern, 'What should happen to 300,000 human beings while our colleagues on the Ninth Circuit, and then perhaps we, do the job of judging?'"

Thursday, October 9, 2025

Being Right vs Doing Good

Sign that says "Right" with an arrow pointing in one direction, and "wrong" with an arrow pointing the other direction. Image source.

Which is more important, being right or doing good? Having the correct opinions on every issue, or taking actions which make a positive difference in the world?

In the ideology of conservative Christianity and conservative politics, being right is more important than being good. You can see this in so many different issues. I have examples.

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"Saved by faith, not by works"

I was taught that this is the main message of Christianity: We are not saved by something we did; we are saved by what Jesus did. We can never do enough good deeds to earn our way into heaven- we just need to believe in Jesus, that's how we get to heaven. We are saved by faith, not by works. 

Evangelical Christians say it's totally legit if someone does all kinds of immoral things, and then on their deathbed they repent and convert to Christianity- on that basis, they get into heaven. It doesn't matter what they did. It doesn't matter if they did good things or if they murdered a lot of people. What matters is that, in the end, they had the correct beliefs.

I've seen conservatives speak out against "the social gospel"- ie, the idea that Christianity is about helping people here and now, that Christianity can be good news for the poor (as Jesus said in Luke 4:18), that Christians should fight for justice. Speaking out against "the social gospel" because it would be bad if people were too focused on this idea of doing good and helping people, and that caused them to place less emphasis on making sure everyone believes the right things. Yeah, conservative Christians are very suspicious of anyone preaching that Christians should do good deeds. Doing good deeds should be a secondary concern- we can't ever lose sight of the fact that being right is the most important.

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Focus on the Family

Focus on the Family is a conservative Christian organization which teaches that there is only 1 correct way to have a family. You have to follow all these rules- that's the "correct" way to live. That's God's way. This image of a hetero couple, with children, the husband as the head of the family, and divorce is not allowed.

If anyone is not living according to this model, well, they deserve whatever happens to them. They should be living the right way. See, we need to teach everyone that if you don't live the right way, then the natural result is that bad things will happen to you. That's just the way it is. It's a kindness, to let everyone know about the risks of living the "wrong" way.

One might point out, hey, wouldn't it be better if we do some research on people's actual family situations, and what kind of ideas/policies would actually help them? Ha! Of course not. In conservative ideology, we already know that people will only get the best outcome if they follow our rules. If they're not following our rules, we shouldn't support them in that. 

(See these posts from the Slacktivist: "Pro-Family" means anti-families and To truly be ‘pro-family,’ you have to be pro-worker)

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Is homosexuality worse than other sins?

15ish years ago, when everyone was arguing about marriage equality, sometimes people would point out that it seems like conservative Christians are treating homosexuality like it's worse than any other sin. What's up with that?

Back then, I was evangelical, and my position was that it's *not* worse than other sins, and we should try to have consistent beliefs about sin, treating all sin as significant but also able to be forgiven by Jesus. (And also, I believed it wasn't a sin to have same-sex attraction, but it was a sin to "act on it.")

But also, at the same time, it sort of made sense to me why we always talked about it in a way that gave people the impression that we thought it was the worst sin. Because there was something about it that intersected with this "being right vs doing good" dichotomy, in a way that other sins didn't. The issue wasn't just that "it's a sin to be in a same-sex relationship"- it was "it's a sin to be in a same-sex relationship, but some people are claiming it's not a sin, and they are wrong, and we need to make it very clear that they are wrong on this factual matter." If a Christian leader does something really bad, like abuse kids, or embezzle money, or whatever, they can stand up and make a big speech about "oh I did this sinful thing, but now I have repented and God has forgiven me." Regardless of their actions, they can proclaim that they now have the "correct" beliefs. But if a Christian leader gets outed as gay, well... they're going to continue to be gay. 

In an ideology where your actions don't really matter, as long as you say the right thing, a refusal to accept the required beliefs about homosexuality is basically worse than any actual bad thing you can do.

People might ask "Why are Christians making such a big deal about this? Aren't they supposed to be, like, helping the poor or something?" But see, nobody is debating whether it's good and important to help poor people or not. See, we all already know the "correct" answer on that, so no need to really make a big deal out of it. But this LGBT issue, well, people have the wrong opinions on it- so we need to argue with them all the time.

(Anyway, I'm queer now, and glad to not be in evangelical world any more.)

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Policies that actually lower the abortion rate 

In the "pro-life" movement, the belief that abortion is bad, and that those women who want abortions are evil and must be stopped, is treated as more important than actually creating policies that lower the abortion rate.

Statistically, we know that banning abortion doesn't really lower the abortion rate. You know what does? Giving people good sex education, and access to contraception. Oh, but the "pro-life" movement can't be supporting those things- because, we know the correct lifestyle is to not have sex outside of marriage. If you're following the correct lifestyle, obviously you will never need an abortion. (Fact-check: this is not true.) It's very important to make sure everyone knows the correct way to live, and if they stray from that path, well, no we shouldn't give them any help or support. Just keep telling them what the correct thing to do would have been.

And another thing that lowers the abortion rate: Policies which help women have more control over their lives, enabling them to set up their lives in such a way that they're able to have the number of children they want to have. Policies which protect pregnant people's rights. Paid maternity leave. Ah, but the "pro-life" movement doesn't advocate for these things. Because it's about having the "right" opinion on abortion- not about actually doing things that will decrease the abortion rate.

(See this post from Libby Anne: How I Lost Faith in the “Pro-Life” Movement)

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And every issue is like this

Seriously, most conservative political positions I can think of, they're about how we already know the right way to live and/or structure society, and therefore the most effective thing we can do is to tell people that's what they're supposed to do, and reward people who are already doing it. We can't give any help to people who aren't living the right way, ugh, that would be terrible, that would send the message that it's *okay* to live like that.

Political policies related to economics, for example. People who are college-educated, people who don't have credit card debt or student loans, people who are rich, people who own businesses- they are the ones doing things the "right" way. If someone proposes a new government policy that would financially help people who are not doing things the "right" way, well, obviously it's a bad idea- we should be teaching people what the right way is, and encouraging them toward it. Not rewarding their bad behavior.

Or another example- universal health care. Wow, wouldn't it be great if the US had universal health care? But conservatives oppose it, because the government isn't *supposed* to be doing that. We already know the "right" way to have a society, and it's that people should be responsible for themselves, rather than being dependent on the government.

(Very interesting that this belief about the "right" way to run one's government doesn't seem to take into account all the other countries in the world, and their different government structures and policies and the results they produce. Very interesting.)

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Conservatives would argue that doing things the "right" way *is* what's most beneficial

Now, I'm kind of framing this like conservatives believe they must follow what is "right" at the expense of doing what actually helps people- but this isn't exactly accurate. They would argue that getting everyone to do things the "right" way *is* what's most helpful, in the long run.

They would argue that, if you really had perfect information about the results of polices that promote doing things the "right" way, vs policies which naively help people who appear to need help- if you analyze these results and calculate which way does the most good, you would find that doing things the "right" way *is* what's best, in terms of real-world results. Sure, they believe this on an abstract, theoretical level, but if you point to a specific study that found that sticking to the "right" way was harmful, this is not going to change their minds. Just speaking for myself back then, when I was growing up republican, I would have said the study wasn't measuring the full scope of the results. (Maybe something seems like a good idea now, but in the long run leads to the downfall of society, ever think of that? ... It's very hard to come up with actual evidence to prove or disprove this...)

It's not really about the evidence. We already know the right answers, so there's not really much of a need to actually go out and collect evidence about the real-world effects of these ideas. We already know what the right way is.

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Which is more important, being right or doing good? Conservative Christianity and conservative politics say it's more important to be right. And this explains so much.

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See also, this post from the Slacktivist: Rights for me but not for thee, which discusses the idea "Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect." 

I personally feel it fits better to say conservatism is about being right (and I said in this post). But you could make the case that this "in-groups and out-groups" thing is kind of saying the same thing. The in-groups are the people who are doing things the right way- of course the government should support them, not put restrictions on them! And the out-groups are people who are not living according to the "correct" rules- well obviously the law should try to push them to live the "right" way- and definitely should not give them any support in their wrongness.

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Follow-up post: Jesus Weighs in on "Being Right vs Doing Good"

Related:

On Washing Machines and Republicans 

How long will you wait for your experience to match up with the bible?

Tuesday, October 7, 2025

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Journal Club: Global Asexual Solidarity (September 30) "Chen says this argument goes too far. They criticize it for relying on an Orientalist fantasy of a pre-existing “authentic” sexuality, and ignoring the agency of local activists."

2. The War on Science (September 23, 4-hour-2-minute video from Shaun) "This book is a collection of tired, irrelevant, right-wing, culture-war nitpicks being released at the most ridiculous possible time. These complaints have never been less relevant to reality, which makes the entire book read like one big joke."

Wow, turns out a lot of the essays in this book are some professor writing "I got fired because of some little mundane thing that THE WOKE MOB got angry about" and then Shaun digs up what actually happened and it turns out the professor in question was sexually harassing students/ had a long-term pattern of extremely racist behavior/ etc.

3. Jane Goodall, renowned chimpanzee researcher and animal advocate, dies at 91 (October 2, via) "He said Goodall was among the first researchers to make close observations of chimpanzees as individuals with personalities and quirks, at a time when other scientists were not trained to observe such specific details."

4. People Mountain, People Sea: Golden Week in Pictures (October 3) This week is China's "Golden Week" (the week we have off work for the October 1 National Day 国庆节 holiday). Usually it's 7 days off work, but this year it's 8 days because Mid-Autumn Festival 中秋节 happens to fall during this week too. This article has a bunch of photos showing the crowds of vacationers all around China.

Also, the phrase "people mountain, people sea" is a direct translation of the Chinese idiom 人山人海. It means it's very crowded. Like you look at a crowd and it looks like a mountain of people or a sea of people.

5. Israeli forces board Gaza flotilla, detain Greta Thunberg, other activists (October 1, via) "At least three ships from the Global Sumud Flotilla, made up of 44 vessels and some 500 activists, were intercepted approximately 70 nautical miles (130km) from the coast of Gaza, according to organisers."

And more updates on this:

Greta Thunberg ‘beaten and forced to kiss Israeli flag’, activists say (October 5, via

Greta Thunberg is among flotilla activists deported from Israel. Others remain in prison (October 7)

6. Multi-generational vulture nests hold 700 years of human artifacts (October 3, via) Cool!

7. This Is What Happens When Therapists Don’t Understand Asexuality (September/October issue, via) "As I scribbled darkly with a dark pen, my therapist talked with us about how I could move forward toward having penetrative sex a certain amount of times per month."

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. There will be No Kings protests on October 18. Join if you can!

2. UN says Fox News host apologized after calling for world body to be bombed (September 27) "'What we need to do is either leave the U.N. or we need to bomb it,' Watters said. 'Maybe gas it ... we need to destroy it.'"

3. Trump revives family separations amid drive to deport millions: ‘A tactic to punish’ (October 2) "Among Mukherjee’s clients are a two-year-old and a seven-year-old. 'An Ice officer has threatened to separate each of these children from each other and from their mother and their father, detain them in separate facilities, and put them on four different deportation flights,' she said. 'This is unnecessarily cruel.'"

4. Massive immigration raid on Chicago apartment building leaves residents reeling: 'I feel defeated' (October 2, via) "Armed federal agents in military fatigues busted down their doors overnight, pulling men, women and children from their apartments, some of them naked, residents and witnesses said. Agents approached or entered nearly every apartment in the five-story building, and U.S. citizens were among those detained for hours."

5. ‘Could have been an email’: Officials balk at Hegseth's generals meeting (September 30) "'It‘s a waste of time for a lot of people who emphatically had better things they could and should be doing,' said a former senior defense official. 'It’s also an inexcusable strategic risk to concentrate so many leaders in the operational chain of command in the same publicly known time and place, to convey an inane message of little merit.'"

6. The federal government is shut down. Here's what that means across the country (October 6)

Democrats united in effort to stop Trump's 'lawless activity,' says Sen. Van Hollen (October 6)

7. Trump Promotes Magical Conspiracy Beds (October 2) "In a serious country with democratic norms still in place, a circumstance like this would lead directly to journalists forcing Donald Trump to explain whether or not he posted the video, and as a follow-up they would force him to elaborate on whether or not he understands reality. Like, does he know he never said this? Does he know that magical beds don’t exist?"

8. A federal judge blocked Trump from sending the National Guard to Oregon — again. Here’s what we know (October 6)

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