dagblog - Comments for "In Praise of Fred Rogers"

I said what I said:

Doctor Cleveland — Wed, 09 Sep 2015 15:34:00 +0000

I said what I said:

Only a tiny, tiny minority of Christians believe that handing same-sex couples a wedding license is somehow sinful.

Clearly, the original sentence is not about gay marriage, but about doing the paperwork for someone else's gay marriage.

If you want to pretend that I said something else, you have entered the Kingdom of Make-Believe.

A long post of splitting

PeraclesPlease — Wed, 09 Sep 2015 15:33:23 +0000

In reply to Well, pp, I used the words

A long post of splitting hairs, but basically "followed by only a... tiny, tiny minority of Christians" you might see a stat like "35% of practicing believers under 40 support the ruling on gay marriage".

Someone yesterday sent me a guy's rant confusing the Pledge of Allegiance with the Constitution, and I've seen fundamentalist politicians who maybe could name 3 of the 10 (or 12?) commandments, but that's hardly a litmus test for whether they're in one of the US Christian churches - I imagine many people screw up basic "facts" of the Bible, and few probably understand what are the critical tenets vs the various adornments like avoiding crayfish. (a PRRI poll notes that Catholics often conflate the Pope's stance on gay marriage according to their own - whether for or against. Of course with the previous pope being gay, I can understand the closeted response).

Your criticism of Catholics against gay marriage but not against interest-based-lending seems a bit pedantic & academic outside the Arab world - yeah, the world+dog doesn't follow the Bible verbatim - such a shocking Revelation. So then we move on to the real world...

Pew Research puts 1/3 of Protestants as disagreeing with gay marriage - not quite a "tiny minority" but of course not a majority either - it's not 1969/Stonewall. The PRRI poll puts Catholics opposing or strongly opposing gay marriage at a similar 33% - significantly more than the gay population, one might note.

So I'd say "tiny" is a bit inappropriate here, and in terms of respecting minority feelings & rights, its probably worth trying to understand & accommodate many points of view and like with any transition utilize some lessons from Change Management rather than dismiss and ride roughshod over people's feelings. Of course utilizing your laic position as a clerk to promote your religious beliefs rather turns the Bill of Rights on its head, but not everyone is so activist in the matter - it's still useful to understand that there is controversy & respect why there is even if it's changing.

Well, pp, I used the words

Doctor Cleveland — Wed, 09 Sep 2015 12:45:00 +0000

In reply to Aside from proclaiming that

Well, pp, I used the words "tiny, tiny minority" to describe the number of Christians who think handing out the marriage licenses jeopardizes Christian souls. And I think it's fair to say that even most people who object to gay sex on religious reasons don't think that.

On the other hand, my description of the anti-gay-sex taboo as a minor doctrine is not a reflection of my own beliefs, or as a denial that my own denomination does have a doctrine against gay sex, but as a factual description of the hierarchy of doctrines within most Christian groups.

It is a fact that there are Christian denominations that have largely or completely done away with this doctrine, but clearly remain Christian. The United Church of Christ is one prominent example. There are gay Episcopal priests, including gay Episcopal priests married to people of their own sex. They are obviously still Christian.

Every religion has a large number of teachings and doctrines. But a smaller body of those doctrines are definitional, things that you absolutely have to believe or you're out. The anti-homosexuality rule is a doctrine of many Christian sects, but has never been one of the definitional doctrines of any major sects.

If you're a Catholic who's okay with gay marriage, you're a Catholic who's ignoring a teaching of the Church, and that's a real thing you should worry about. But if you're a "Catholic" who's against gay marriage but doesn't believe that Jesus was God, you are not Catholic at all. (If you can't agree with everything in the creeds, you miss the cut.)

You won't find, say, Luther or Calvin making homosexuality a primary focus of their thinking.

The anti-gay-sex rule in the Catholic Church has roughly the same standing that the oft-ignored anti-capital-punishment does, or the who-knew? prohibition against consulting psychics or fortunetellers. Catholicism does actually teach that it is sinful to go to, say, a tarot card reading. An actual doctrine, but a minor one.

Now, the anti-gay-sex rule does have some standing in the Old Testament, but that's not theologically comfortable because there are many rules in Torah that Christians dispose of. The anti-gay-sex rule has no backing in the New Testament, and doesn't flow easily from any of the major denominations' key theological teachings.

The no-divorce rule, which most Christian groups bend, has a much firmer grounding, and the no-lending-money-at-interest rule, now almost universally abandoned, has very firm Scriptural backing.

This is why Christians denouncing gay marriage resort to arguments about "Natural Law" as a supplementary guide to behavior, because they don't have enough Scriptural or theological material to make the case otherwise. When you hear someone talking about how gay marriage is unnatural because it can't produce children, that's an argument they are actually making because they have no actual Christian theology to back them. It's actually an indirect confession that they don't have a specifically Christian objection to make.

Aside from proclaiming that

PeraclesPlease — Tue, 08 Sep 2015 06:35:26 +0000

In reply to In Praise of Fred Rogers

Aside from proclaiming that Christian objections to homosexuality are "tiny" and "minor" by a "minority", do you have anything objective to back that up with? From what I recall, the Christian missive about Sodom & Gommorah is a stronger and more commanding lesson than almost anything else in the Old Testament other than "sex is dirty/don't eat apples (fruit) from some tart", "growing veggies is lower than slaughtering red meat, but for Baal's sake don't kill your brother over it", and perhaps "if you hear God tell you go to the town of X, do it or you'll be swallowed by a whale - but live to tell about it" (which would make me more inclined to try it, but I only think of whale digestive juices in the abstract) - but in any case, dodging whales in the Mediterranean is a lot less frequent event for most Christians than say warding off buff cleft-chin right-amount-of-stubble metrosexuals at the gym. That God/angels apparently thought it was better to throw your virgin sister to the crowd of homosexual leches than see a guest violated says a lot about family values/attitudes towards women, along with Mideast ideas of hospitality. (presumably you could go about the Middle East pretending to be gay and get offered a lot of virgin sisters, but I haven't heard of anyone trying). Of course Lot's 2 daughters got him drunk and slept with him, so they were pretty much in-bred trailer-trash to start with, so maybe that was the qualifier, but then why the big flame in the desert and wife turned into a salt pillar over a bunch of rednecks? "God's mysterious ways" only starts to explain it - some kind of perverse Game of Thrones wannabe back before HBO, I guess.

Watched a Katy Perry special last night, and you can be pretty damn sure that her parents didn't approve of that "kissed a girl" thing, and considering there was a whole Santa Barbara community where she grew up missing out on anything related to popular culture and singing only religious songs- but for much of the evangelical swaths of the United States, this seems to be exactly how people (don't) swing. During my last trip to the US, I'd try to find something on the radio and instead it was frequently 6 or 7 religious programs at a time *on a weekday*, and ominous billboards overhead about obeying God being more important than understanding, in a creepy Great Gatsby/East Egg/TJ Eckleburg kind of way.

As for Mr. Rogers, I'd have more trouble with him than the fairly flamboyant presumably gay music teacher I once had - Mr. Rogers may have been nice, but his communication skills were a bit bent - something like the pilot & Jimmy in "Airplane".

Anyway, thought I'd leave you with Saddam and Gamora

Or was that Gamera? Damn Sumerian spelling's all over the place.

I was born in 1962 and my

arc — Mon, 07 Sep 2015 11:23:30 +0000

In reply to He recorded a message for his

I was born in 1962 and my family moved to Pittsburgh in 1968, so I very much grew up in Mr. Rogers' niehgborhood. In fact, he and his family lived across the street from my piano teacher and, by 1978, my best friend was dating one of his sons. So it was hard to leave the 'hood (literally) without leaving the town, which I ultimately did - not because of Mr. Rogers per se, but because unconditional love (as a doctrine) can also be suffocating.

I listened to the recording above and it's the first time I've heard Fred Rogers' voice in several decades. It still makes me uncomfortable. I have a bad reaction to what I hear as 'baby talk.' I have that reaction whenever I listen to parents talk to their children as if they were soft in the head, I had that reaction at 16 when my mother, denying the realities of sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll, still talked to me like I was 3, and I'm afraid I have that reaction even now when I hear this recording.

My parents, assimilated, secular Jews, lived and breathed the gospel of unconditional love, which made them unassailable as loving parents, at the same time I could never talk to them about real-life things that were going on, because those things were too messy. Which brings me back to a childhood where I was advised gently not to watch Sesame Street because it was too loud, too fast-paced, in short, too street.

My dad died last year and, as he lay helpless to control the world he'd built for us, for the first time I learned that he (a former Navy man) could swear like a sailor. Only at the end could he let go of a lifetime of repression. I wish I'd met that person sooner.

While I appreciate Doctor Cleveland's homage to Fred Rogers (which reminds me of the many long-overdue tributes to Jimmy Carter), at the same time, that voice just grates on me, representing as it does, to my ear, certain mechanisms of repression, sugar-coating the world in ways that make it difficult, once you leave pre-school, to confront and hash out not-so-nice things.

I agree, this is a fine

Richard Day — Sun, 06 Sep 2015 15:10:26 +0000

In reply to A beautiful tribute, Doc. I

I agree, this is a fine tribute.

A beautiful tribute, Doc. I

Ramona — Fri, 04 Sep 2015 21:02:59 +0000

In reply to In Praise of Fred Rogers

A beautiful tribute, Doc. I knew there was a reason I liked Mr. Rogers. Now you've given me many. Well done.

I often, as an adult, found

MrSmith1 — Fri, 04 Sep 2015 04:02:04 +0000

In reply to In Praise of Fred Rogers

I often, as an adult, found myself watching him. Not on purpose, I'd be channel surfing and I'd catch a moment of him, and his directness never failed to draw me in. I just liked being in the presence of such a man. There was no guile, no artifice, just a nice person who wasn't trying to sell me anything. So I'd watch a little of his show to get a booster shot of his spirit. It was reassuring that such a person could be on TV. I can see why he could talk to kids so effectively. He didn't talk down to young children, he looked them in the eye and talked right to them. He gently explored their fears, and reassured them that what they were feeling was okay. You're right, his show was a ministry in the best sense of the word, and your blog was a joy to read. Thanks for reminding me of this sweet, gentle man.

He recorded a message for his

barefooted — Fri, 04 Sep 2015 00:35:42 +0000

In reply to In Praise of Fred Rogers

He recorded a message for his "grownup fans" a few months before he died. Goodness ages well.