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Battle Hymn of the Church-public

By Micha L. Rieser (Own work by uploader (wreath and picture)) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons

I waged an internal debate this morning: Do I post about Dave Ramsey or the War on Christmas? Christmas won. Other people have already addressed Dave Ramsey better than I could, and well, I’m in a holiday mood.

Oh, sorry. I’m in a Christmas mood. Because naturally, that’s the only holiday happening right now. Wait. It’s not even Christmas yet? Well, shoot. And here I was all ready to sing a few rounds of Silent Night.

I’m glad we have a few well-meaning folks to remind us that everyone should wish people Merry Christmas instead of Happy Holidays. Unless, of course, you know for a fact that your friend celebrates something else. Then you should probably (grudgingly) accept that fact and wish your greetings accordingly.

Never mind that the same people shedding tears over the loss of Merry Christmas are also probably watching Elf or How the Grinch Stole Christmas, both of which mention Christmas but with nary a word about Jesus (who just kinda happens to be the reason for Christmas, no?). Of course, that hardly matters–why, Christmas is as American as baseball and apple pie!

Here’s the cold, hard truth: It isn’t really about Christmas or any other holiday celebrated at this time of year. If it were, people would quietly honor their religious and/or family traditions on the actual day. It wouldn’t matter one iota what people celebrated or didn’t celebrate, what greetings they used or didn’t use. I guess it would be a lot more like Thanksgiving–you know, the day that falls between Get Lots of Candy Day and Buy Lots of Stuff Month. Fairly unnoticed and not particularly commercial.

If it were really about the religious holiday, theoretically, we ought to find Christians being glad that their holiday greeting isn’t being taken in vain. After all, isn’t one of the premises of evangelism that most people do not already know Jesus? Why invoke the percent of people identifying as Christian now? Sadly, this is actually about a small number of very vocal people looking for another way to play Persecuted Christian.

There are several other things to consider in talking about this supposed War on Christmas:

I don’t care how you greet me. Wishing me Happy Holidays is fine by me–it makes me feel warm and squishy inside. We may be strangers, but it feels for just a moment like you actually do care whether I have a happy time.
Only about half the people I know are Christians. Sure, some of the people who aren’t also celebrate Christmas, but not all of them. When I’m with people I know personally, I’m free to wish them whatever holiday greetings they prefer. That’s not always the case. Why should store employees need to ask personal, invasive questions about your religious affiliation when a simple, generic greeting will do?
Have you all noticed the sheer volume of Christmas-themed stuff in the stores? It’s truly staggering. How about the television ads, social media promos, and mailers? Where is this alleged War on Christmas? They may be using the words “Happy Holidays” or “Season’s Greetings,” but the intent is certainly clear.
Don’t any of you War on Christmas types ever celebrate the New Year? That’s not an extension of Christmas; it’s a holiday of its own. I’m just guessing here, but aren’t a lot of stores/people/places that use “Happy Holidays” probably including New Year’s in their generic greeting?
As far as school is concerned, I’m happier not having my religion stepped on. In exchange, I won’t step on anyone else’s. I also prefer that school be a place of learning. Do they really need to have a party with a lot of sticky candy canes? If my kids want to celebrate Christmas, we have friends and a church for that. School really isn’t the place.
Have we forgotten that there are lots and lots of people who might prefer not to be greeted seasonally at all? This is a pretty hard time for many people. Fixating on the words used by store employees detracts from the love and care someone may need. Don’t waste time and energy crying foul over Happy Holidays–do something to show love to someone instead.
Finally, a big old what. the. hell. Are you kidding me? This is really an important issue? So, rampant holiday consumerism is less significant a problem than the type of greeting the store employee offered you. I see. Well, good luck with that, then. I hope you have a damn skippy “holiday” filled with luxuries I probably can’t afford.

I’ll admit, I love this season. I like driving downtown at night and seeing the streets festooned with lights. I enjoy putting up the tree and bringing out the special decorations. I appreciate the neighbors’ outdoor displays (yes, even those giant inflatable snowmen). The song “Silver Bells” sums it up pretty well for me. Guess what, though? None of that has anything to do with my religious beliefs. It’s just a fun part of the transition from fall to winter. Spiritually speaking, it’s the traditions of Advent that draw me back to the awe and wonder of my faith. Perhaps the ability to separate the commercial from the sacred is why I don’t believe there is a War on Christmas at all.

This might be a shortcoming of conservative evangelical Christian culture–more often than not, the actual reason we get a whole month is lost on people who think High Church tradition is “irrelevant.” Those churches that do not teach or understand the liturgical year have caused their own problem. How many people in those churches know that we just celebrated the Christian New Year? This is our season of hope and anticipation, yet it’s full of shopping sprees and fighting about Happy Holidays vs. Merry Christmas.

Here’s my charge to you: Go do some research. Google is a wonderful thing. Search for Advent, and read about the traditions. Take a break from your usual daily devotional (if that’s your thing) and read the Advent Scriptures instead. Create an Advent wreath with your family and light the candle each night, adding another every Sunday. Read the prophets and the Magnificat.

And then do this: Enjoy the hustle and bustle of the outside world. Have fun shopping and wrapping and baking and partying. Drink egg nog and mulled wine. Sing “Jingle Bells” (and maybe ride a sleigh with actual jingle bells). Watch Ernest Saves Christmas (you’ll thank me later). There is nothing wrong with any of that. Just do it knowing that really, cookies and egg nog and sleighs and Rudolph have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the miraculous event of God descending to us as a tiny babe.

Happy Holidays, all.

How Plato ruined everything

Life, Social Justice, Writing

All right, maybe “everything” is a bit of an exaggeration. Still, I’m convinced that Platonic notions color so much of our culture (not just Christian religion) that it’s hard to know where to start.

I suppose a word of explanation as to why I’m thinking about this is in order. I haven’t blogged much this fall; there are several reasons why not that I won’t go into here. One of the reasons, though, has to do with online politics and the constant pressure to get it right. It was a crisis of correctness, I suppose, that led to my on-and-off writing over the last three months. I blame Plato for that, too.

In an ideal world, life would work like this: No one would ever be distracted by the appearance of another person; every act of justice would take into account every possible situation and person; and no one would ever get off on picturing themselves licking whipped cream off a naked celebrity.

We don’t live in that world.

The problem with that world is that it doesn’t exist anywhere except in the heads of would-be online philosophers. In all things, there’s some imaginary line that Must Not Be Crossed when it comes to behavior. It might not have overtly religious overtones, but there’s still the same message: If you don’t do things right, you are flawed. Broken. Damaged.

Instead of learning respect and consideration, we end up with the same fears often instilled by our religious communities–that we are not good enough and must seek to work towards this imaginary standard to which no human can measure up. How many seconds is too long to stare at someone’s half-undressed body? Which fantasies are okay to have when masturbating? How carefully do we have to phrase things to make sure someone disagrees with our views and not our word choice or tone?

There’s no answer to that outside the heads of a few people who have styled themselves the Gatekeepers of Blogging.

My husband and I had an interesting conversation the other night. He’s been taking a philosophy class–don’t ask me the details; I’ve never had much interest in that sort of thing. I didn’t entirely follow everything he said, but the gist of it was that some people live in the realm of ideas and some people live in the realm of practicality. About eighty percent of people are in the latter group. The difficulty I see is that (at least on the Internet), the other twenty percent often see themselves as being at the top, and the rest of us should conform our practical existence to fit into the theories they’ve developed.

Well, screw that. I can’t live that way. When I started writing, it was because I was in a religious context in which I felt that there were specific people being marginalized (namely, LGBT people) and that the church had it dead wrong in how to care for them. I remained anonymous for about a year and a half. When some of my Christian LGBT offline friends began sharing my writing (not knowing it was me), I told them. At that point, I decided hiding was a disservice to people I love in my non-bloggy life. If they were out, why shouldn’t I be public too?

Note that I never said I blogged because I had some Magic Words of Wisdom on the church and LGBT people or any other issue regarding church teachings (which I also covered). Honestly, I just wanted those I love to know that, and I wanted anyone like me who might be an ally in enemy camp to know they were not alone. Practical purposes, people. Nothing philosophical.

I recently stopped blogging as much because I had started to feel the same sense of “not good enough” that I’d had for over twenty years in the church. I couldn’t blog about LGBT issues and the church because I didn’t know enough about intersectionality. And other people who needed my support. And not tagging every post on social justice issues as triggering (because, realistically, every post could trigger someone for something). And not actually being LGB or T myself. And not criticizing progressive Christians correctly. The list goes on.

That, right there, is Platonism at its finest: There’s a right way to blog about these issues, and you’re not doing it. There’s often a sense that the critic doesn’t actually know what the right way is, just that one must exist. Well, no. There is no hypothetical idealized advocacy. There are some things that get it decidedly wrong (go research Human Rights Campaign, for example;p see also the Good Men Project). Most of the time, though, it’s a matter of different people wanting or needing different things.

Another serious problem with forcing advocacy into a Platonic ideal is that the vast majority of the time, the people pushing it at the rest of us genuinely believe they have it right and we have it wrong. There’s no sense that they might also be falling short of an unnamed ideal or that their particular philosophy might not be the best version because it still leaves some people vulnerable. It’s an unfortunate reality that there are people out there who simply do not care about hurting people they think are in the wrong. I’ve seen things get pretty ugly when one person gently explains why they need a particular type of ally and another person says the equivalent of, “That’s the wrong thing to want” rather than, “Tell me more.”

I spent several years deconstructing my faith. I’m now in process of reconstruction, and there are some great people I can trust along the way. Deconstructing social justice advocacy feels pretty similar. I’m disappointed with the online community in a lot of the same ways I was disappointed in the church. Before someone gets all heated about it, I’m not saying that social justice movements are abusive. But are there abusive, powerful people within them who want to control the rest of us at any cost? You bet. (“No! I don’t want to control you! I just want you to get it right, dammit!” is, in fact, controlling–particularly when the person saying it does not belong to the group for which they are advocating.) Those are the people I’m trying to steer clear of.

There’s no way to know where this will end up. I don’t want to stop writing, but some days, I think I have no choice, at least when it comes to blogging. I do know that it won’t change anything in my everyday life; my loved ones will still know they can count on me. As for the online advocacy police? There’s no reason I should care about their Platonic ideals.

WIPpet Wednesday: Copier Cat

Other Relationships

It’s been a long time since I posted anything here. Mostly that’s because I’ve been working on a longer project. A couple of fellow writers introduced me to WIPpet Wednesday. I don’t normally participate, but I’m finally at the point where I’m really excited about this project and wanted to share a bit of it.

For those who don’t know what WIPpet is, it’s a post from your current work in progress (WIP). The excerpt must have something related to the date. Today is 11/20/13, so here are 44 (11+20+13) lines from one of my favorite scenes.

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There was already someone else in the copy room; a slender brunette with a pixie cut was punching buttons on the copier. When it started, she turned to Phin. “Are you from the copier company? This will only take about ten minutes, and then it’s all yours.”

“Uh…” Surprised, Phin was momentarily at a loss. He shook his head. “I’m not—”

“I’m just going to go grab something I left in my classroom. Since you know the machine, can you just watch it while I’m gone?” She ducked out of the copy room without waiting for an answer.

While Phin stood there waiting for the copier to finish, another woman appeared in the doorway. She was considerably older than the first, and she had only a few pages in her hand. She turned to Phin. “I heard that. Ten minutes my fanny. This thing’s been acting up since last Thursday. Watch, two minutes in, it’s going to jam.” She leaned against the wall and studied Phin. “You’re not from the copier company. Who are you subbing for?” she asked.

“Oh, um, I’m not,” Phin said, caught off-guard once more. “I’m—”

The copier chose that precise moment to jam.

“What’d I tell you?” The woman set her papers down on the table in the corner and began fiddling with the copy machine. “Damn thing does this every time the copy lady’s out. I’m pretty sure it’s possessed, and the demon inside it only likes her.” She huffed and opened the paper jam compartment. “Doesn’t help that Gia took off in the middle of her job. Some people.” The paper came free and the blinking text on the copier stopped. “There.”

The woman managed to restart the copy job. When the pages had resumed cheerfully spitting out into the tray, the woman turned to Phin again. “I’m Eunice Clark,” she said, extending her hand. “And you are…”

“Phin Patterson.” He didn’t offer more details.

The woman blinked. “Phin Patterson? Well, damn, honey. I’ll bet you don’t remember me.”

“Uh…no. Sorry.” Phin racked his brain, trying to recall if they’d ever met before.

Eunice laughed. “I used to babysit you when you were tiny.” She threw an arm around Phin’s shoulders, and he tried not to stiffen. “You inspired me to go into teaching.”

Phin twisted slightly to get a good look at her and raised his eyebrows. “I did?”

“Well, no, but it sounded good, didn’t it?” She laughed. “Now, I already guessed you’re not here to fix this piece of garbage.” She waved a hand at the copier and eyed Phin. “Or was I wrong about that? Because if so, I just did your job for you.”

“Nope. I promise I’m not here about the copier. At the moment, I’m just helping Dani—uh, Ms. Sloane—in the office.”

Eunice returned her attention to the copier, which was still churning out copies. “When Gia gets back, I’m going to let her have it. I’m tired of her leaving her job running so she can go do whatever, while I sit here for fifteen minutes just to do a thirty-second job.”

Just then, the other woman—Gia, presumably—returned to the copy room with a textbook. She frowned at the copier. “I thought it would be done by now.”

Eunice laid a hand on Gia’s shoulder. “Oh, sweetie, the copier got hung up again, right in the middle of your extremely important job.” Her voice was thick with artificial sweetness.

Gia’s face fell. “I’m sorry. You’re not mad, are you?”

“No worries,” Eunice told her. “We fixed it for you. I’m sure you didn’t really mean to leave it for us to take care of. I just hope all your copies came out right.” She peered past Gia and winked at Phin, who stored the moment in the back of his brain for later use. He was left wondering exactly what Eunice had done to Gia’s copies that she would discover back in her classroom. Apparently, there was some Secret Copy Room Code he would have to learn before he would be able to blend in.

Book Preview: Dying Embers, by Adrian J. Smith

Books, Guest Post

Today, I get to do two wonderful things: promote a book and promote a friend’s work–all at once. I have the honor of being the first stop on author Adrian J. Smith’s virtual book tour. If you like what you read, please follow the links at the end of the post to follow the author on Twitter, Facebook, and Goodreads or to order the book from various sellers.

I had the good fortune to be assigned to read a chapter of Adrian’s previously published book, Forever Burn, through Project Team Beta, a beta-reading web site for which I volunteer. I loved her work from the word “go.” Since then, we’ve stayed in touch and I’ve worked with her on several other projects, including Dying Embers. I hope you enjoy her writing as much as I do.

______________________________

From Dying Embers

She thought she was on the right path, but life keeps tugging Addison back to her past and her gift.

Addison Lee struggles to make a new life in Norwich, one where she can be the Battalion Chief of Fire Station Seven and live life as she sees fit. She wants a life without the complications of an ex-fiancé and a job that put her life on the line for little more than a gift she was born with. Learning the ropes of a new job can always be tough, and being a Battalion Chief means she has a great responsibility to her crew and to the city. Nervous about her first day already, Addison realizes that adding in a one-night stand with a future employee has left her on rocky ground.

Plagued by visions of a dying woman, Addison continues to cope with difficulties at her new job. She has no idea who the dying woman is, where she is, or even, when she is—and no means to find out. Addison is distracted from the dying woman and her new job when called to Wyoming on an emergency, where she discovers it’s not as easy to leave her past behind as she hoped.

She needed to pry her eyes open, which required more effort than she thought she could muster. She worked mucus covered lids apart and felt the pleasant pop of her lashes separating. She looked around, and blinking rapidly, moistened her eyes. Mentally, she knew she was looking around as she felt her eyeballs pivoting in their respective sockets. Yet, everything looked the same. Dark. Black. Nothing.

No memory. No hints. No clue of her location. She panicked. Her heart pounded. Bam, bam, bam. She tried to slow the beats: beat, beatbeat, beat. She took a breath; the air sucking into her lungs nauseated her.

She choked and coughed as she squeezed her fingernails into her palm. Her body stopped rocking from the force of hacking, but she needed oxygen and air. She craved it. Her lips parted, and her head was thrown back into the dirt—a strand of hair clung to her cheek. She didn’t dare raise a hand to brush it aside.

Her heartbeat eased, but she remained on her back. She knew she should probably take stock of everything; mentally run through her body from her head to her toes, thinking about how each part of her anatomy felt—she needed to do this. She didn’t. Her eyes remained open and on the ceiling, or at least, she assumed she stared at the ceiling. Her eyes hurt. The muscles in the backs of her sockets ached, and she had a hard time keeping her lids open. She had to remind herself that she needed to keep looking up above her at all costs. To close her eyes would be a death sentence.

Air flew through her nose and down to her lungs, causing particles of dirt to lodge on the sides of her throat. They clung, staying inside her body until swallowing felt like drinking sand. She started to hack again. Her diaphragm violently surged upward, her chest thrust forward, and air came out in short bursts. She was floored by how long it lasted. She couldn’t stop, and her head started to spin. She couldn’t figure out where her feet were. She floated.

A stream of fiery pain licked up from her toes. The agony grasped hold of her ankle and consumed inch by simmering inch. She squirmed, trying to get away. But she couldn’t. She needed to move—she had no other choice. Pain tried to grab her as her insides tried to crawl away. Her guts felt as though they left her form behind. Her body cringed from the anguish—a hollow shell of what she had been was the only thing left.

She lost feeling. Her limbs numbed, and the blackness before could not compare to the darkness that began to consume her. Little hexagonal shapes took over her vision in mass quantity; more and more came, tearing through her vision and ripping it apart at the seams. Where did they come from? Ants—they looked like ants crawling all over, and she couldn’t shake them, couldn’t make them go away.

A short breath before a long one. She was off her rhythm. Her balance was gone. She felt like she rolled as if on a ship out in a hurricane; her body would not stop moving, yet she knew she lay in stillness in the dark caverns of the room. The ship rolled her around, shoulder over shoulder, from one end to the next before the movement sent her back to her original position—eyes blazing into the pitch black. The point came where she couldn’t figure out which way was up. She didn’t know where the ground was, and she didn’t know what direction she faced. No grasp on reality, no idea of where she lay, and no idea of who she was. She started to give up. Nothing mattered.

Confused, head spinning with dizzy circles: her mind refused to focus. She couldn’t think long enough to figure anything out. She needed to start to unravel her predicament, but her breathing increased. There was no way to win. Her nails dug into the dirt below as her mind rose higher and higher: the click, click, click of the track as it pulled her up, up, up with the pinnacle in sight. The point where she would go down, down, down, and there would be nothing to help her. Nothing that would be able to stop her.

Holding her breath, she waited. The dizziness became greater, the rolling more violent, and the air in her chest stopped moving.

Then, she fell.

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About the Author

Adrian J. Smith, or “AJ” as she is often called, is a part-time writer with an epic imagination, sharp wit, and kind heart that gets her into a bit of trouble when it comes to taking in all the neighborhood stray cats. Being obsessed with science fiction, Smith often goes off on tangents about the space-time continuum. She is also a part-time lunatic with a secretive past. It’s been rumored that she was once a spy for the government, but anyone who has gotten close enough to know the truth has never lived to tell the tale. When traveling around the world on various classified tasks, Smith requires the following be provided: buffalo jerky, mimosas, and eighty-six pennies. This is all we know about the reclusive woman.

Follow Adrian J. Smith at:

Twitter: @AdrianAJSmith
Facebook: Adrian J. Smith
Goodreads: Adrian J. Smith

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Ruining our kids

Discipline, Parenting, Social Justice

I was already in an irritable mood after seeing Christianity Today refer to Rachel Held Evans as having a “meltdown” because she pointed out the flaw with The Nines conference’s lack of women. It didn’t help that this awful post on parenting turned up in my newsfeed–more than once, I might add, and not because anyone was being critical. Nope, everyone seemed to love it.

I can’t speak for other parents, but I’m very tired of people who think that yesteryear’s parenting was so much better than today’s. It’s like all the other times people talk about wanting to return to “the good old days.” While there may be some good things we’d like to keep–or reclaim–there’s also a whole lot of terrible things that, unfortunately, cannot be separated from the things we like. (And there are relationships between them that we’d prefer not to see, as is the case with “1950s values” and racism.)

In this particular post, I was most disturbed by the way that she emphasized the result of what she sees as bad parenting (coddling, apparently) without mentioning a single word about the consequences of other parenting flaws. For example, she’s concerned that her boys won’t be able to play shoot-the-bad-guys at school, but seems unconcerned that parents might not be adequately teaching their children who is or isn’t “bad.”

There were some specific things that bothered me about what she had to say: boys will be boys (what about girls who like that kind of play? or boys who don’t?); bullies perpetrate physical violence but claims of emotional bullying are more or less just whining; people become suicidal as a result of a single nasty remark; and college students and new graduates are going home crying over every failure and quitting (as though this didn’t already happen with people born into extreme privilege).

Believe it or not, I don’t care what you let your kids do. Buy them toy guns? Whatever. Don’t buy them? Whatever. The reason is that it’s not in the purchase or non-purchase of a particular toy that learning non-violence happens. Kids are not better off because they are allowed to play cops and robbers or because they are forbidden from playing. Ms. Metz has it wrong–boys don’t somehow magically grow up better because they were allowed to play certain types of playground games. Not only that, boys do not grow into better men because they played those games. That’s part of a particular view of masculinity that says there are certain Normal Things Boys Do, and anyone outside that must either have freak parents who regulate their play or else there’s something unmanly about them. Weirdly, she seems to be blaming parents for the lack of gun play at school, when it is, in fact, the rules of the school restricting play. She’s conflating parenting with public education and really seems hung up on this gun thing throughout.

As for bullying, I’m super happy for Ms. Metz that she got over whatever things were said to her. Perhaps she’s just very confident in herself. I think it’s far more likely that she simply never experienced the kind of emotional, verbal, and sexualized bullying some of us did. Maybe she doesn’t know what it’s like to go to school and wonder how many hurtful things will be said to you that day or whether the boy who sits behind you is going to grab your ass yet again while the teacher looks the other way. She might not understand how it feels to walk into a room to a class full of kids calling you an elephant and making “boom” noises at you while you walk, every day. She probably doesn’t know what it’s like to spend three years trying to find a lunch table where the other kids won’t slowly slide over while you’re eating until you end up on the floor, followed by laughter and fake apologies. I’m just guessing here, though.

I suppose because Ms. Metz doesn’t understand that kind of harassment, she’s more likely to also misunderstand being suicidal. I do not know any person who has felt suicidal or attempted suicide or has succeeded who did it simply because some random girl called her a bitch one day. If a single episode of name-calling sends one to such a dark place, then it wasn’t just because of the mean word–that was just the proverbial straw. I find Ms. Metz’s words hateful, hurtful, and inappropriate. They lack any sort of empathy. I have no idea where she got her information that this is all it takes to make teenage girls commit suicide, either–apparently, she also doesn’t read all the way through stories about bullying and suicide enough to get the whole picture.

On the other hand, college students with helicopter parents are a real issue, so I’ll give Ms. Metz credit for spotting that one. The way she presents it, though, makes it sound like she’s saying this is happening in dire proportions compared to the number of students enrolled in college. She’s making blanket statements about “today’s parenting” being responsible for this. Oh, really? Because that wasn’t happening before. Spoiled, bratty kids going to college is totally a new thing, right?

My biggest problem with this post is that it’s so vague. She never actually says what she thinks is the bad parenting responsible for selfish, needy kids. She hints that it has to do with “catering” to them, but what does that even mean? How, exactly, is it “catering” to kids to have a philosophy of not buying toy guns or allowing shooting play? And how are her kids better off for being allowed to do those things? In what way does stopping verbal bullying prevent people from being emotionally healthy? She gets at it a little with her comment about not giving in to them unless they use manners. But if what she meant is that kids have no manners, why didn’t she just write a post about that? She says her boys will be emotionally hurt but that she’ll cushion it as much as a mother can. Isn’t that catering to them? How will they learn to deal with things if she’s “cushioning” them?

Like the post about how “marriage isn’t for you,” this just smacks of self-righteousness. The big FAIL for me is that she never once suggests that the best way to help our kids grow up to be responsible, respectful people is to teach them how to treat others. I didn’t see even one reference to, say, the Golden Rule. I saw nothing in there about teaching our kids about kind words, respecting personal boundaries, or helping people who need it. There wasn’t a single word about making things right when we’ve hurt other people.

Ms. Metz claims that she “respects” others’ right to parent how they see fit. I’m not that nice. I think if you’re abusing your child, you are a sorry excuse for a parent, and I do not respect your “right” to harm your child. Beyond that, I’m just not that concerned with what you do. As for me, I’m going to worry less about whether I’m “overprotective” and more about whether I’m teaching my kids that all people have value. That strikes me as far more important than whatever vague badness Ms. Metz is suggesting I avoid.

Health class and hook-ups

Education, Sexual Morality

Last night, I got an email from one of my readers.* She sent me the link to this mind-bogglingly awful blog post by Matt “Stay-at-Home-Moms-Are-Awesome” Walsh. I’m not sure that we should have expected anything different from his guy, given the chipper and vaguely misogynistic tone of the post about motherhood. Please be sure to read Matt’s post, or none of this will make any sense.

Let’s start with the “email” Matt received from “Jeremy.” Aside from the fact that it doesn’t sound like anything a teenage boy would write, I had to laugh at this:

One of my teachers actually mentioned it in class once after you wrote something (she didn’t mention it in a good way lol)

Oh, really, letter-writer? I suppose it’s possible that one of Matt’s previous posts could have been popular enough to be read by an apparently non-Christian high school health teacher. It’s not anywhere near likely that the teacher would have mentioned it in class, and almost certainly not including the name of the blogger.

“Jeremy” goes on to say that his teacher does the following things that I’m pretty sure I’ve never heard a teacher do and still keep his or her job:

Calling abstinence “out-dated” and “unrealistic”
Encouraging students to have casual sex
Asking students to raise hands in a show of sexual history

This is a classic argument against sex education in high schools. It doesn’t actually happen this way–in fact, more often than not, teachers hands are tied in regard to giving students proper information because some parents throw a fit every time the teacher tries. The conservative families who don’t want comprehensive sex education come up with strange arguments about how teachers are going to start telling kids to just go ahead and do it.

The sad reality is that there isn’t nearly enough good education about sex. I grew up in a non-religious household, but I knew people whose parents wouldn’t even allow them to go to school during fifth grade puberty lessons. I remember those classes being embarrassing but halfway decent; my sex education steadily declined thereafter. It ranged from having to diagram a penis for an exam (but not a uterus, because dicks are more complicated, ya know) to a teacher putting in a filmstrip about STDs. The one teacher I had who might have done a better job never got the chance. My grade 10 biology teacher had us submit 3 questions we wanted answered, and he was going to spend one double (lab) period answering them. That was the year we had a huge ice storm, lost a week of school, and that lab got slashed as “unnecessary.” Unfortunately, my teacher gave us the list of questions (ranging from “I think this whole thing is a joke” to good questions about relationships) without giving us any of the answers.

Anyway, if I were a teen in need of support, Matt Walsh is probably the last blogger I would write to. His response to this “kid” is full of the same self-righteous crap spouted by most conservatives. It’s condescending, it’s shaming, and it won’t help anyone make good decisions.

Believe it or not, I tend to agree with Matt that it’s not a great idea for teenagers to be having sex. I’m not unrealistic enough to think they won’t, but that doesn’t mean I won’t teach my kids that it’s not a decision they need to make in high school. I absolutely agree that the vast majority of adolescents are not equipped to make adult decisions about relationships. We don’t expect our teens to know how to navigate the adult world in other ways; why should sex be different? But the way Matt approaches it–including referring to teens as “emotionally immature juveniles” (that’s not at all condescending)–isn’t helpful.

I think this may be my favorite part of the post:

There’s plenty of ignorance on the subject. Plenty of confusion. But it’s the lies I hate. The lies that come from people who know better. The people who have made mistakes and now encourage others to make them, too.

I hate the lies, too, Matt. I hate when people use their religious convictions to make up fake emails (whether this was Matt or a “concerned parent” posing as a kid, we may never know). I hate when kids are given misinformation or none at all because of fear that telling them something will make them go try it. I hate that kids are growing into adults who also don’t navigate sex and relationships well. I hate that people are shamed for what they chose (or were forced) to do. I hate the heteronormativity inherent in these conversations.

Casual sex proponents are the ones who have turned sex into something trivial, banal, utilitarian, pointless, joyless, one-dimensional, lifeless, lonely, and disappointing. How could the ones who hold it as sacred also be the ones who make it “boring”? No, it’s mainstream culture that’s made sex boring. It’s mainstream culture that is, in fact, afraid of sex. That’s why we spend so much energy shielding ourselves from every natural aspect of it, other than the physical sensation itself.

I’m so glad that Matt thinks he knows the minds of every person and how they feel about their sexual experiences. Plus, he cleared it up for us–there are only two ways of thinking about sex! We can have “meaningless” casual encounters, or we can have holy married sex. Whew! Good to know. Now when I talk to my kids, we don’t need to have a conversation about sex in a long-term, non-married relationship. Great!

This is exactly my problem with having conversations about sex with a certain brand of conservative-minded people. They set up these straw-man arguments about how “the world” is teaching us that we should (Matt’s words here) “throw ourselves at strangers.” Not even one word about the damage done by purity culture and how shame plays a big part of it–especially for girls and anyone who isn’t straight.

My second degree is in health education. One of the first things we learned is that statistically speaking, abstinence-only education does not make any difference in rates of STDs and pregnancy among teens. On average, teens who pledge abstinence wait 6 months to a year longer than their peers. What is different is that with abstinence-only programs, students don’t learn how to be responsible. Would you like to know what does make a difference–regardless of religion–in keeping kids safer and healthier? Parent involvement.

Yep, that’s right. It’s not about what the teacher says or doesn’t say. It’s not about abstinence-only or standard sex ed or even some teacher spouting off about the perks of casual sex (not that the last one ever happens outside the made-up world of certain conservative Christian bloggers). It’s about parents who are willing to have open communication with kids–not just a one-time “birds and bees” lecture but a lifetime of teaching them to respect themselves and others.

Believe it or not, this is the line that disturbs me most:

And, when the time comes, you’ll express love. Then, you’ll be able to say that you only ever expressed this sort of love to the one person who deserves it.

“Deserves it”? That phrase haunts me. Was I more deserving because when I got married, nothing other than a tampon had ever been in my vagina? Is someone who has had casual sex–and enjoyed it–less deserving? Or is this just a reference to how awesome married sex is? I can’t tell. I would like to hope that Matt didn’t mean it to sound so shaming, but I’m not convinced.

If “Jeremy” is real, here’s what I would like to say to him (and any other “Jeremys” our there): If you want to wait, that’s cool. Don’t feel pressured to do anything you’re not ready for just because someone else said you should. Don’t listen to people who tell you that you must have sex in order to know for sure if that’s the person you want to marry. But also? Don’t listen to Matt Walsh or anyone else who tries to tell you that there are only two options–hook up with strangers or marry your one true love. Don’t listen to anyone who tells you that you should feel ashamed of your choices. And don’t feel like you need to figure this out on your own. Find people you trust who are open to talking about it. In the end, the decision is yours and yours alone who you choose to have sex with. You have the right to live your life without shame.

______________________________

*Dave Barry always said those letters were from Alert Readers. Stephanie Drury (of Stuff Christian Culture Likes) calls them “email of the day” or “comment of the day.” I suck at naming things, so if anyone wants to suggest a clever name, feel free.

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