Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. “They’re Ruining People’s Lives” Bans on Gender-Affirming Care for Transgender Youth in the US (June 3, via) "Parents reported traveling long distances, sometimes across multiple states, incurring costs for airfare, gas, hotels, and lost wages. Two families reported having to re-establish care twice as new bans forced them to relocate again. Families and advocates reported that insurance companies routinely deny coverage for out-of-state treatment, forcing families to bear significant financial burdens. Some families reported facing costs of up to US$4,500 every six months for medications alone. These challenges disproportionately impact low-income families and rural residents, who often lack the resources to afford regular interstate travel for care."

2. Vietnam ends its longstanding 2-child policy (June 4) Oh wow, I actually had no idea that other countries besides China had policies like that. (China's one-child policy ended in 2016.)

3. ‘I’m really scared’: Elderly and disabled Californians with more than $2,000 could lose Medi-Cal (May 29) "'It’s draconian — $2,000 is no safety net for people,' said Kim Selfon, an attorney with Bet Tzedek, a legal services organization in Los Angeles."

When I first heard that there are policies which kick disabled people off of government benefits if the amount of money in their bank account is above some threshold (not necessarily the California one, but policies like this existing in general), it sounded completely bonkers to me. I've always heard financial advice about how it's good to save your money, have an emergency fund, etc- isn't that what the "personal responsibility" Republicans are always saying?- but for disabled people, if they are able to save up their money, they get punished by losing government benefits.

4. Builder.ai collapses after revelation that its "AI" was hundreds of engineers (June 3, via) "'We were told to never mention our location or use Indian English phrases,' said a former Bangalore engineer."

5. Greta Thunberg: Silence and Inaction Is More Deadly Than Me Sailing to Gaza (June 4, via) "We cannot just sit, sit around and do nothing and watch this like live-streamed genocide unfold in front of our very eyes. So we are doing this because we are human beings who care about justice. And when our complicit governments fail to step up, it falls on us, unfortunately, to do so."

6. CCM star Michael Tait accused of sexual misconduct by multiple men, drug use: report (June 5) Holy crap, I'm really shocked about this. Back in the 90's, Tait was a member of DC Talk, a Christian band, which was my favorite band. Later he became the lead singer of the Newsboys, also a Christian band, which was my second-favorite band, so I was excited to see where that was going. 

Unfortunately, after that, the Newsboys got involved with conservative culture-war stuff- their song "God's Not Dead" was a big part of the "God's Not Dead" movies. (The movie "God's Not Dead" literally has a scene where the Newsboys are performing a concert.) And one day I happened to stumble upon a song by the Newsboys (with Tait as the lead singer) called "Guilty," which is about how if society makes it a crime to be Christian, "I wanna be guilty"- like what is this persecution fantasy crap, what on earth?

Tait also has been part of the "faith leaders" meetings with president orange. Yeah, I've been really unhappy with Tait for a long time about this stuff. Dragging the good name of DC Talk through the mud. Did not expect the drug use and sexual assault allegations though.

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. 'No Kings' protests planned against Trump military parade; see when, where (June 3) Yesssss get out there and protest. June 14.

2. Judge orders Trump admin to let those sent to CECOT challenge Alien Enemies Act removal (June 5) "The Trump administration, under Boasberg’s order, has a week to provide their proposed solution."

3. Trump issues new travel ban covering a dozen countries (June 4)

And: Trump's travel ban includes Afghanistan, where thousands await U.S. resettlement (June 5)

4. Judge blocks deportation of Boulder attacker's family (June 4) !!! Oh my goodness, ICE was going to deport the attacker's family? What is this????? If there's evidence they were involved in the attack, then bring the evidence to an actual court. There are actual laws for this! (So far I haven't heard of any such evidence.) This comes across like the MAGAs were super excited for any kind of reason to deport immigrants, whether or not it makes sense.

5. Debunking the South African “White Genocide” Nonsense (May 29) "This is going to shock you, but it turns out that that’s a lie, too!"

6. In recorded calls, reports of overcrowding and lack of food at ICE detention centers (June 6) "J. is one of the many family members of detainees who called NPR to report their loved ones not receiving meals or getting rotten food. Detainees who NPR spoke to over the phone confirmed this, and many said they'd had to sleep on the floor for weeks."

7. ICE agents detain at least 10 immigrants as elected officials try to block officers in the South Loop (June 5) "'Then, in a Gestapo fashion, 50 agents or so walked down the street, stood right here in front of the driveway, then aggressively came through, knocked me down, assaulted me and other community members here today, then pulled out weapons and also pulled out their sticks, pushing some of us, punching some of us to get through to this driveway,' Quezada said, adding that he was pushed three times by ICE agents."

Blocking them, trying to stand in their way- it does help. Keep doing this.

And: ICE raids grow tense as protesters confront immigration agents (June 6)

8. Months after detaining 47 people accused of being Tren de Aragua in Austin, authorities offer no evidence of gang ties (June 4) "'We all started shouting that there were babies — ‘Babies, there’s babies,’' recounted a 30-year-old Venezuelan man, who said he was at the house to celebrate the birthdays of his son, who turned 5, and his best friend, who turned 28."

9. Kilmar Abrego Garcia, wrongly deported to El Salvador, is back in the U.S. to face smuggling charges (June 6) Wow! This is good news, but I don't know what to make of these new criminal charges against him. Does the government have evidence for these charges? If there's actual evidence, why wasn't that mentioned before? Very strange. 

Blogaround

1. Eid Trees, Gingerbread Mosques, and the Multiplicity of Asian American Religious Life (November 27) "As the two reports reveal, Asian Americans embrace a religious and spiritual life characterized by multiple belonging, hybridity, and fluidity, as well as a skepticism and uncertainty about applying the label of 'religion' to their beliefs, practices, and identities."

Wow, love this article because of the way it talks about religion/spirituality in Chinese culture. It puts into words something that I always kind of wondered about but couldn't quite understand, having lived in China for 10 years. See, there are statistics that will tell you "most Chinese people are atheists", and there's the idea that the communist party is "officially" atheistic- and so, coming from an American background, I'm imagining "atheism" as in, skeptical, only believe things that have scientific evidence, totally not believing in anything spiritual at all, claiming that spiritual beliefs are just completely ridiculous and nonsensical- but then I came to China and I saw A LOT of things which looked very "religious" to me. Burning paper money during Chinese New Year, to send to relatives who are in heaven. Traditions about things you should or shouldn't do for "good luck"- there are a million of these- like which holidays you should or shouldn't get a haircut, paying a baby-name expert to find out what name to give your baby to give them a good life, don't take out the trash during Chinese New Year because that means you'll also be throwing away your success in the next year, don't cut up a pear to be shared by multiple people because 分梨 [fēn lí, split a pear] sounds like 分离 [fēn lí, separate]. And so on.

The linked article talks about how, in East Asian culture, it's very common for people to have these kind of spiritual beliefs, but they don't feel the need to be a member of an organized religion, so then they say they aren't religious. And they don't view it as an "identity" thing. Wow, this explains a lot.

2. Add to Heart: Single Seniors Looking for Love at IKEA (November 30) "She shares that someone once introduced her to a man who was financially secure and suggested they live together, with the caveat that if one of them were to fall ill, that person would go back to their own children to receive care. 'It’s laughable when I think about it,' Nannan says. 'In other words, while I’m still mobile, I’ll be your free housekeeper, do your laundry, and cook for you. But when I get sick, you want me to go back to my own kids. Are you out of your mind?'"

3. Henry Kissinger, War Criminal Beloved by America’s Ruling Class, Finally Dies (November 29) I've seen a lot of people on the internet celebrating his death, and I didn't really know much about him, so I didn't understand why. This article goes into a lot of detail explaining it- basically he helped to start wars in Cambodia, Vietnam, and other places, which led to millions of people dying.

In China, though, he's remembered positively for the work he did to improve the relationship between China and the US: Chinese people will remember Kissinger's important contribution to China-US ties (November 30)

4. Metal singer performs "Amazing Grace" (April 7) Oh my goodness, this is incredible, I love this so much.

5. That's My King Dr. S.M. Lockridge - [OFFICIAL] (2008) [content note: images of Jesus' crucifixion] I know I've shared this before, but I love it, so here it is again.

6. China's new visa-free policy sees over 2,000 visitors from 6 countries on inaugural day (December 2) Cool!

7. How the kink community taught me that sex doesn't exist (November 12, via) "Nobody looks at me strange for having limits around certain kinds of sexual contact, and I have in fact met many asexual people in the community."

8. Healthcare is harming asexual people: In conversation with Yasmin Benoit (November 22, via) [content note: medical trauma] "Following a similar pattern, other respondents spoke about having to go through smear tests, despite being uncomfortable doing so, since the tests can be especially painful and traumatic for people that have never had penetrative sex. One respondent described facing 'excruciating pain' during the test – even though she hadn’t had sex before, she was put through it anyway by her doctors, who didn’t believe her."

9. I laughed way too hard at this (source):

10. ‘Nothing to do with it’ (December 2) "The interview gets jumbled at this point as it becomes clearer that Ron DeSantis does not know what 'empathy' means"

On "Unjust Marriage"

I searched google for "levirate marriage" and this is the diagram I got. It's a family tree, with circles (women) and triangles (men), and one triangle is crossed out and an arrow is drawn from the wife to the brother. Image source.

A while ago I saw this blog series "When Marriage is Unjust" by Herb Montgomery- here's part 1, part 2, and part 3. It's about Luke 20:27-38, where the Sadducees come and ask Jesus this weird hypothetical question about a woman who married 7 brothers in sequence because they keep dying on her- whose wife will she be at the resurrection (ie, in heaven)? Jesus tells them that at the resurrection, there will be no marriage.

Montgomery's take on this passage is:

Jesus explains that in the age to come, an age of justice, there will be no marriage. How unjustly must the institution of marriage have been that Jesus couldn’t imagine it in the coming age of justice? Jesus states that all who are children of the resurrection will be “like the angels.” We can debate whatever that means, but the implication of the phrase is that marriage will be no more because all injustice will be no more.

Marriage in the time of Jesus was so unjust and oppressive to women, that Jesus says it cannot possibly exist at the resurrection, when there is perfect justice.

(Montgomery's blog posts also raise some good points about the practice of levirate marriage- which is what the Sadducees are describing, a widow has to marry her dead husband's brother- and how it was so centered on men. Like the dead man's "need" to have an heir is more important than his widow's right to make her own choices about things like marriage. I've heard the argument that this practice was intended to help the woman, because if she was single and didn't have a son, she basically had no way to provide for herself- even so, the problems are all caused by patriarchy.)

I find this fascinating because it's so different from what I was taught "the bible says" about marriage, growing up in evangelicalism and purity culture. Purity culture teaches that "God has a plan for your life" about what person you will marry. That God picked 1 specific opposite-gender person for you, and that's "God's plan" (and you have to pray really hard and be really stressed about trying to figure out who it is, or else you're ruining God's plan). And that when you follow all of God's rules, don't have sex before marriage, and marry the one magical person that God picked, the result will be so perfect and magical and amazing. You'll have such a loving, intimate, romantic connection. You'll have the best sex ever. You'll fit right into your gender role, and it will feel so natural and fulfilling.

That was how I viewed marriage. You find someone you can truly trust, that you can love with everything you have, and you build a life together, as equal partners. I thought that's what marriage *is*. (And yes, lucky for me, that *is* what my marriage is about.)

Turns out that's a pretty modern idea- having a marriage based on romantic love. And historically, the way it often worked was, women have a bunch of less-than-ideal options, and one of those options is to get married- so that's why they get married.

It really amazes me how obvious it is that there are no women in the bible who followed the "purity rules" and then had a perfect marriage, and I totally never noticed this, until I had already started to question purity ideology. I'm a bible nerd, I knew all the stories, I knew all the messed-up ways that men of the bible treated their wives, and yet somehow I still bought this idea that "God has picked 1 guy who is perfect for you, and if you follow these biblical rules, it guarantees a perfect marriage." HOW??? (I ended up writing about this here: "God has one perfect guy for you!" Yeah, that's not biblical.)

As I was thinking about the idea of "unjust marriage" and getting married because it's the least-bad option, I thought about this article I had read, from Sixth Tone: A Vietnamese Bride’s Chinese Dream. It's about a Vietnamese woman who didn't have many options for getting a well-paying job in Vietnam, and then she heard about a cousin who had married a Chinese man and moved to China. She decided to look into this option for herself too, which meant taking a very shady bus ride hundreds of miles into China, with some other Vietnamese women. They came to some small village in China and met the available men. She says this about the man whom she decided to marry:

The next family offered 100,000 yuan and had a two-story brick house. The suitor was in good physical shape, had a junior high school diploma, was five years older than me, and looked to be freshly shaven.

The first time I saw him, I felt nothing; my only concern was the bride price. After weighing it up, I decided to marry him.

It really surprised me, the way marriage is talked about in this article. It's not about "you know this person and you love this person and you want to spend your life with them." Instead, it's talked about like... do you think you could tolerate this person? If you had to live with him and have his children, could you accept that? Is it a better situation overall than the life you have in Vietnam?

The article also talks about the difficulties that this woman has because she entered China illegally. Not having id, worrying about being deported, not even having the right documents to be able to go back to Vietnam- and also, she couldn't speak Chinese at all when she first arrived. Immigrant women in this kind of situation are extremely vulnerable. What if her husband turns out to be abusive? She can't easily leave him because then she may get deported.

This is the reality of what marriage is, for a lot of people in the world today. It's a way to get out of a bad situation, into a different-and-hopefully-less-bad situation. And I think reading about women's experiences today, choosing marriage for these reasons, can help us when we read what the bible says about marriage. 

We read words like "marriage" or "divorce" in the bible, and we think of those terms in the way we see them defined in our culture today- which is very much because of the work of feminist activists, pushing for changes in society so that women would have better options. And as a result of that feminist work, it feels normal to us to marry someone because you want to be with them, rather than because it's the least-bad option available to you. And also, the work of LGBT activists- because the concept of same-sex marriage is very much dependent on the idea of marrying someone because you want to be with them, not because of societal expectations, or economic reasons, or being expected to have children. (But also there are legal things like health insurance, hospital visitation, etc, which are very important reasons same-sex couples need to have the right to marry.) So this is how we see marriage, and then we read the bible and we assume that's what the bible means when it uses the word "marriage", but wow it is NOT.

So, in summary: In purity culture, I was taught that God has a plan for all of us to have a wonderful marriage with an opposite-sex partner, whom we work together with so incredibly well, and that we love and trust fully. And yes, I'm married now, and I'm glad my relationship with my husband is like that- we work together well, it's romantic, we love each other, etc. (But I don't believe in the gender-roles stuff, and also it's important to me that I chose to marry him, instead of just coasting along on "God's plan.") But, this view of marriage is a very modern thing- and actually, there are many cultures in the world today where that's not what marriage is at all. Instead, marriage is about financial needs, or immigration opportunities, or fitting a role that your family wants you to fit... And the concept of marriage that we see in the bible is much closer to that than to romantic ideals about "we want to spend our lives together." 

When we read what the bible says about marriage, we should remember that's the kind of marriage it's talking about. And we should be grateful that because of feminist and LGBT activists, marriage in our culture has become something so much better than what it was in biblical times.

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And 1 more thing I want to say: We can help by donating to charities that help women around the world have better economic opportunities, and charities that help immigrants. For example, there's Women For Women International, which focuses on women who are survivors of war.

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Related:

"God has one perfect guy for you!" Yeah, that's not biblical. 

This "Do Not Intermarry With Them" Stuff Hits Different Now 

It Doesn’t Actually Matter What Jesus Said About Divorce

US Immigration and the Definition of Marriage 

Blogaround

A very useful diagram which shows us that if a chocolate wafer, white filling, and chocolate wafer is an "oreo", then a wafer, filling, wafer, filling, wafer is "oreoreo", 5 layers of filling is "rerererere", a stack of 5 wafers is "ooooo", and so on. Image source.

1. Explaining in the Guise of Listening: A Review of Josh Harris’ New Documentary (posted December 27) "Harris appears to have done less actual analysis of his teachings than I have here on this blog—or a dozen other bloggers." AIN'T THAT THE TRUTH.

2. ‘What if someone was shooting?’ (posted December 26) [content note: gun violence] An article about how school lockdowns are traumatizing for children.

3. Anonymous donor provides free lunches to Georgia district's families in need during holiday break (posted December 26)

4. Visionary Brain Genius Elon Musk Has Invented The World's Worst And Most Expensive Subway (posted December 19) "Literally the only innovation here is that it’s a worse version of both driving and riding the subway, and only available to people who’ve bought one brand of car."

5. Trump Moves to Deport Vietnam War Refugees (posted December 12) Nooooo. Support all immigrants.

6. CCM Comes to a Presidential Funeral (posted December 8) Michael W. Smith performed "Friends" ("friends are friends forever") at Bush's funeral.

7. The Dangerous Rise of the IUD as Poverty Cure (posted January 2) "This sort of language should set off alarm bells because the idea that limiting women’s reproduction can cure society’s ills has a long, shameful history in the United States."

8. #MeToo law restricts use of nondisclosure agreements in sexual misconduct cases (posted December 31) "'Women don’t want to sell silence and lawyers shouldn’t be selling or buying silence,' Smith said."