Another Philippines Trip - Ngong Ping 360 Cable Car - Hong Kong - August 22, 2011

After a lengthy delay, I'm finally getting around to writing about our trip to the Philippines this past summer.

This being our third time, the trip is starting to take on a familiar rhythm.  We flew out of JFK on a Saturday night on Cathay Pacific and had a brief stopover at Vancouver where some of the passengers departed and the cleaning crew came on to tidy up the plane before new passengers boarded.  I have to say I really like to the food they serve on Cathay Pacific.  I don't remember all of the meals I ate, but I do remember having liked the seafood congee. 

We arrived at Hong Kong International Airport on the morning of August 22, 2011 at around 7 a.m. local time, as usual.  Our connecting flight to Cebu in the Philippines wasn't scheduled to depart until roughly 4 p.m., so as usual we had some time to kill in Hong Kong.  The last two trips, we rode the Air Train into Central to meet a business acquaintance of mine for lunch.  This time, I wanted to do something touristy, so I decided that we would ride the Ngong Ping 360 Cable Car to the Tian Tan Buddha Statue on nearby Lantau Island. 

I ordered the tickets online before we left New York.  The option I chose was to ride the Crystal Cabin (which is a cabin that has a glass bottom) to Ngong Ping village and a regular cabin car for the return trip to Tung Chung.

My plan was to ride the bus to Tung Chung, which is where the cable cars depart for Ngong Ping village, but I wasn't able to figure out which bus to get on.  I decided to play it safe and go there by cab.  In Hong Kong, taxi cabs are colored based on where they go in the city.  For Lantau Island destinations, you take, if memory serves, the blue colored taxis.  The trip cost the four of us 50 HK dollars, which is roughly $7.00 US.

We got to Tung Chung a bit early as the ticket office for the Ngong Ping cable cars wasn't open yet, so we went to a nearby shopping mall to kill some time.  Around 9:30, we headed back to the ticket office.  There was already a long line, but thanks to my infinite wisdom in ordering our tickets online, we got to go directly to the ticket office and obtain our tickets after only a brief wait.  From there, it was probably another 15-20 minutes wait online before we were able to board one of the crystal cabins.

What follows are two videos of our ride on the crystal cabin.  We shared the cabin with a Chinese family who sat across us.  The wife and the daughter (I'm guessing) were directly in front of me when it came to shooting the video of what was in front of us, so they show up in the video from time to time.  Also, there were moments when I was holding the camera while it was still recording while I was not looking into it, which probably explains why the camera seems to linger on them here and there.

Luckily for me, the memory card had just enough memory left in it to hold out until we actually came in sight of the giant Buddha statue.   If you watch the videos and listen to the audio, you can tell that we had a lot of fun on this ride.  If Hong Kong is ever part of your vacation itinerary, or even if, like we did, you find yourself with a few hours to kill while waiting for a connecting flight, the Ngong Ping 360 cable car ride is a good way to spend your free time.  The potential downside is that the Ngong Ping 360 is sometimes closed for service, and when I went on the website to get the link for this post, I saw a message that it is closed for the next two months.  So it looks like it might not be up and running again until April of 2012.

When we got off the cable car, we began to make our way to the Tian Tan Buddha Statue and took some pictures along the way.  Ngong Ping village is basically a theme park, so you shouldn't get the impression that you are experiencing an authentic Chinese village.  But it did make for a nice time killer.

No, I didn't end up buying him the hat.

A very pretty arch that evokes classical Chinese architecture.

The Tian Tan buddha at last.  The view from the bottom.  My wife took this picture and if you click on it to enlarge it, you can make out me and the kids at the midway point, with me waving to the camera.

Almost there.   It was a hot August day and I was already dead tired and sweating my ass off by this point.  Then I remembered that the first noble truth of Buddhism was that life is suffering.

The view of the way I came from near the top.

I wasn't intentionally trying to get a silhoutte in this close up of the statue.  As you can see from the sky in the background, the sky was rather cloudy, so the Buddha statue wasn't well lit.  To see some really good photos of the Buddha statue and the Ngong Ping village, Nino of My Kafkaesque Life has photo rich blog posts here and here.  Nino is a Slovenian expat living in Taiwan who has an excellent blog that I highly recommend if you ever plan to visit Taiwan, and I will provide further links and references when I get to the Taipei leg of our trip. 

After a long, exhausting walk, we rejoined my wife at the foot of the stairs and made our way back to the village where we had lunch at a noodle restaurant before riding the cable car back to Tung Chung.  When we got there, I was able to find the bus station nearby.  You can catch either the S1 or S64 bus back to Hong Kong International Airport.  For the four of us, the cost was a mere 10.5 Hong Kong dollars and the buses run about every 10 or 15 minutes.

Aqua Lung Hot Shot Fins and Departure Carry On Bag - My Review

As I wrote in my post on day one of the Bahamas trip, I had brought along my newly purchased Hot Shot travel fins by Aqua Lung.  I also bought Aqua Lung's Departure Carry On bag, which was specifically designed to accommodate the Hot Shot fins.

I'm happy to say that I was able to pack all of my diving gear into the departure bag, namely, the aforementioned fins, my travel bcd, my regulator, my mask, my underwater flashlights, and my body skin.  However, it wasn't easy and I had to figure out by trial and error on my first few attempts before I could get everything to fit properly.  One trick was to stick some of the smaller items, like my dive lights, into the foot pockets of the fins.  All in all though, it worked out really well and I liked that I could have all my dive gear with me rather than being entrusted to the mercy of airport security checking my luggage or baggage handlers possibly misplacing it.  On the other hand, if I was travelling to a dive location where the water was warm enough to require a wet suit, I don't I could have gotten the wet suit to fit into the departure bag.

Now on to the Hot Shot fins.  For me, the best apart about them, besides being able to fit them into my carry on luggage, was how easy it was to slip them on and off.  There was no need to fiddle with clips.  All you need to do is to pull back the foot strap and slide your foot into the foot pocket.  As for their performance underwater, being a novice diver and having experience with only one other pair of fins, I couldn't say how they stack up against other fins.  I can say that I didn't have any trouble getting where I wanted to go with them.  I did relate in my Bahamas trip posts how I found myself in a couple of situations facing a strong current and having difficulty making headway, though it's highly likely that I wouldn't have fared any better with regular sized fins.

There is one caveat I do want to raise with respect to the Hot Shot fins.  According to the description of the fins on Leisurepro.com:

This fin is designed to wear without dive boots, so leave the boots at home. Aqua Lung has designed the foot pocket to give unsurpassed comfort with the top and side of the pocket manufactured from a soft, comfortable against the bare skin material.

If you are going on a vacation trip where you will be doing just a handful of dives, you should be fine diving with bare feet in the Hot Shot fins.  This is not the case, at least based on my personal experience, if you are going on a trip on a liveaboard or dive resort where you expect to be diving anywhere from three to five dives a day for an entire week.  By the third or fourth day of the trip, my feet started to become badly scraped in a number of spots.

When I got home from the Bahamas trip, I tried to see if I could fit my feet in the fins wearing the neoprene booties I had, but they were too thick for my feet to fit into the foot pockets.  I ended up buying a pair of dive socks from a local dive shop and I was able to slide my feet into the foot pockets without any trouble.  I am expecting to go on a trip to the Caymans this coming July and I will see how my feet hold up wearing dive socks.

So, in conclusion, if you want to go on a dive trip to a warm, tropical destination and plan on flying there, the Aqua Lung Hot Shot fins and Departure bag are a great choice.  From my experience on the Bahamas trip, I realized that when it comes to diving in warm waters during the summer months, I can make do with just a t-shirt and a pair of shorts.  It's no problem, under those conditions, to fit everything I will need for my dives into the Departure bag.  I just hope the next five months go by quickly so that I can get into the water again.

Interesting Observation of the Day

One Million Moms, the organization that tried to get JC Penny to fire Ellen DeGeneres as the company's spokesperson because she is openly lesbian, has barely more than 40,000 "Likes" on its Facebook page.  On the other hand, the Facebook page of Ellen DeGeneres has well over two million "Likes."  Maybe they should change their name to Forty Thousand Moms.

The Order and Pattern of Creation

So far, Putnam and Campbell's Amazing Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us has been a veritable gold mine for me when it comes to blogging topics.

In my previous post, I wrote about one of the churches visited by the authors, Our Savior Lutheran Church in Houston, Texas.  There is far more material on this church in the book, and after a few pages on the abortion issue, the next topic covered is the role of gender in the church.

One easy way to tell that a particular religion is man made is if it puts the emphasis on the Man part.  Our Savior Lutheran's Pastor White sets the tone.  "When God created mankind, at the core of that creation was gender."

The book goes on the quote one of the male congregants:

Congregant Jim Carver echoes this view: "To say it doesn't really matter that Adam was created first" is to "forget the order and pattern of creation," adding that "as protector and provider man has all the responsibility."   Really?  God created Adam, and then after some time went by, He thought, "You know, now that I think about it, Adam probably could use some pussy."

Get enough women to believe that, and they will become complicit in their own oppression.  Our Savior Lutheran does not allow women to vote in its congregational assemblies.  A woman congregant, Sharon Middleton, is quoted as saying "Pastor White will show you exactly bibilically that women aren't supposed to vote."  She goes on to add "There may be a lot of people that will disagree but that's one good thing about Pastor White...you do according to what the Bible says."

And that is the order and pattern of control, at least when it comes to religion.  Convince a number of people that a text or collection of texts contains divine commandments and then convince these people that your interpretation of those commandments is the only correct one, thereby putting yourself in a position of authority over them.

"...doing the Devil's work"

The recent kerfuffle over the decision by the Susan G. Komen Foundation to withdraw the funding it had provided to Planned Parenthood for breast cancer screenings reminded me of something I had read in Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell's American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us.  In Chapter 7, the authors focus on Our Savior Lutheran Church in Houston, Texas. 

Our Savior Lutheran plays host to Houston Lutherans for Life.  The authors describe one Sunday afternoon meeting attended by "about twenty-five people, mostly retirees."  I got a mild chuckle out of one of the passages.

Finally, an older man shares that recently he "went down to Planned Parenthood" where he was shocked to find that pro-choice people "volunteer their Saturday mornings to make sure that women go in and kill their babies.  He suggests the chapter "pray for our enemies."  "We could all consider Planned Parenthood our enemy...doing the Devil's work," he adds gravely.

I couldn't help but think of that scene from Casablanca where Captain Renault declares that he is shocked, shocked, that there is gambling going on.  Of course, it never occurs to this man that women might want to be able to enter a medical clinic without being badgered and harrassed by a bunch of religious busy bodies and that there are sympathetic minded people who feel the same way.

At the end of the meeting, a guest speaker from Houston Coalition for Life tells the attendees that the previous day at a gathering outside a Planned Parenthood center a pregnant girl decided at the last minute not to go in and have an abortion.  He quotes her as saying to the demonstrators "Can I stand with you?  I decided not to kill my baby today."

I have to say, reading that really set off my bullshit detector.  It sounds to me like a noble lie that these people tell themselves to keep their morale up and make them believe they are making a difference.  While he likely pulled the story out of his ass, it wouldn't surprise me if incidents like these are sometimes staged, with a pregnant young woman playing the part of a would be abortion seeker making a show of walking towards the entrance of an abortion facility and then suddenly changing her mind and joining the demonstrators as a new member of their flock.

After all, as the man quoted above from the book said, Planned Parenthood is the "enemy."  These people are at war with Planned Parenthood, from (mostly) Republican politicians down to the street corner anti-abortion demonstrators, and when you're in a war, you fight with any means at your disposal.  That includes lying, imposing bogus regulations and hijacking charitable organizations like the Komen Foundation.  And these people will not cease their attacks until they learn that there is a price to be paid.

This issue matters to me on a personal level because some years ago, I turned to Planned Parenthood during a difficult time in my life that had nothing to do with abortion.   They were there for me when I needed them and so I will be there for them.  In the wake of the Komen episode, I called Planned Parenthood today to double my monthly regular contribution to them.   And I owe it all to you, Karen Handel.  If you would like to donate to Planned Parenthood as well, here is the link to their online donation page.

The Assault on Religion

An article in the January 18, 2012 edition of Newsday titled "Parents push back on school closings" highlighted the efforts by parents of children who attend six Catholic schools in the Diocese of Rockville Centre on Long Island that are slated for closure at the end of the school year.

As an atheist, I don't normally have a personal interest in such stories.  I can empathize with the parents in the sense that they are very disappointed, and in some cases, distraught, that the schools they want their children to attend are closing.

But what caught my eye in this story was a quote attributed to one of Long Island's representatives in the New York State Assembly.

The article quoted Alfred Graf, a Republican (of course!) from Holbrook, as saying, "With the onslaught of attacks on religion, I feel it is important for parents in my district to send their children to a religious-based academic institution."

An onslaught of attacks on religion?  What the hell is he talking about?  The last time I checked, there hasn't been any wave of vandalism against churches, synagogues and mosques on Long Island.  Religious people are not being physically prevented from going to their houses of worship.  Bibles, Torahs and Qurans are not being confiscated from peoples homes.

Want to know what an attack is, Assemblyman Graf, ask Jessia Ahlquist.

Newt Gingrich, a former Speaker of the House and a current contender for the Republican presidential nomination, declared not long ago that an atheist has no business in the White House, and went on to add:

“Does faith matter? Absolutely,” Gingrich said. “How can you have judgment if you have no faith? How can I trust you with power if you don’t pray?” He continued, “the notion that you are endowed by your creator sets a certain boundary of what we mean by America.” Gingrich said that Americans should value religion first, above morality and knowledge.

This from a guy who couldn't be trusted to honor his marital vows to his first two wives.  I think the only reason why we shouldn't expect him to cheat on his third wife is because at his age and physical shape no other woman would be remotely interested in sleeping with him.  

No, religion is not under assault in America.  What is being challenged (I think assault is hardly the right word to use) is the notion of religious privilege in this country.  And history shows that whenever people believe that their privileged position is threatened, they lash out, sometimes violently, though more often it is confined to verbal vitriol.  

Witness Jessica Ahlquist's state representative, Peter Palumbo, referring to the 16-year old girl as an "evil little thing." 

If you look at the press release page for Palumbo's web site, what would you think of him had you known nothing about Jessica Ahlquist and what he said about her?  One conclusion that you would draw is that he is an advocate for parents of children with autism.  Another area he focuses on is strengthening laws against sex offenders.  Palumbo also regularly goes on volunteer humanitarian missions, most recently to Nicaragua.

If you are an atheist and all you knew about Palumbo was the terrible things he said about Jessica Ahlquist, you might think that he is one of the biggest assholes in the world.  I would be more nuanced about it and say that Palumbo overall is probably a good guy, but because of his religious beliefs, he reverts to being a knee jerk asshole when the religious privilege he supports is challenged.

Where does this anger and hatred stem from?  I intend to do a fuller post about it at some point in the near future, but in summary, I would attribute it to the ceremonial deism that suffuses this country, the notion that we are a "nation under God", or as I like to call it, one of the bullshit stories we tell ourselves.  Because we supposedly have some special connection to a deity that is said to have created the entire universe, it's taken for granted by a segment of the population that having "In God We Trust" on our money, "under God" in our Pledge of Allegiance, and having Christian denominated prayers and sayings on display in our schools and court houses is not only normal, but obligatory.   People don't like having their cherished myths challenged.  It is that myth that is starting to be challenged, and, which I would argue, should be replaced by a better reality, one that acknowledges that we are a diverse, pluralistic nation of believers and nonbelievers that can and should serve as a beacon to the rest of the world.

Indonesia Sucks

Many in the atheist blogosphere by now know that an Indonesian man has been arrested for writing that God did not exist on a Facebook page.

According to the Indonesian Embassy website, "Six world religions are formally recognized in Indonesia: Islam, Catholicism, Protestantism, Confucianism, Hinduism and Buddhism."  Of course, atheism isn't a religion, but the Indonesian government doesn't even give you the option to opt out of having to select any religion at all.

The problem with Indonesia is more than just the fact that atheism is not legally permitted.  Even adherents of officially recognised religions are facing increasing discrimination at the hands of militant Sunni Muslims.

The following excerpt from this article from Human Rights Watch tells the story:

Religious tolerance in Indonesia is in danger. There has been a surge in deadly sectarian attacks against religious communities and dozens of mosques and churches have been forced to close. In the first nine months of 2011, the Setara Institute, which monitors religious freedom in Indonesia, documented 184 incidents of religious violence — a higher rate than the annual average of 204 such attacks over the last four years. About 80 percent of these attacks took place on Java, which is predominantly Sunni Muslim, and targeted Christians, Shia Muslims, Bahai, and the Ahmadiyah, who consider themselves Muslim but whom many Muslims consider heretics.

Attacks against the Ahmadiyah have gotten increasingly violent because perpetrators know sectarian violence is not seriously prosecuted in Indonesia. In a deadly attack in February, a 1,500-strong mob of Islamist militants beat three Ahmadiyah men to death and seriously injured five others in the village of Cikeusik, Banten. Although the brutal violence was captured on film, only 12 of the attackers were tried and they received prison sentences of just three to six months. The prosecutors claimed the Ahmadiyah provoked the attack and sentenced one victim who nearly lost an arm to six months in prison for assault and disobeying police orders.

The Ahmadiyah are not the only victims. This year, militants have burned down Christian churches in Temanggung, Central Java, and a suicide bomber targeted a church in Solo, killing himself and wounding 14 churchgoers. Churches in Riau were burned down in August and now, perhaps in retaliation, a mosque in predominantly Christian West Timor is facing similar pressure to close.

The situation will only get worse unless the Indonesian government starts to take this problem seriously.  No pluralistic society can survive if the fanatic members of one group start engaging in discriminatory and violent behavior against the other groups.  My fellow atheists should condemn those who seek to denigrate, by their words or by their actions, people of other religions just as they would condemn those, like a certain presidential candidate, who attack atheists.

The address and contact info for the Indonesian Embassy are as follows:

2020 Massachusetts Ave. N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20036, USA
Phone (202) 775 - 5200; Fax. (202) 775 - 5365

The Bahamas Trip - Closing Thoughts

Yeah, I know.  The trip was nearly six months ago and I'm still writing about it.

If you are looking to go scuba diving on a live aboard, you can't go wrong with the Aqua Cat.  For myself, it was a different experience than most divers, as I took my two kids with me, aged 10 and 8.  Unlike my Belize trip in 2009, this wasn't going to be a complete escape from the daily humdrum of life.

Still, I am glad that I took my son and daughter along for the trip.  It was a chance for them to experience something totally different from what they had done before.  For my son in particular, it proved to be an opportunity to push his boundaries and do things that I never thought he was capable of.   My son is normally a timid child who is hesitant to take chances or do anything outside of his comfort zone.   But on this trip, as I believe I wrote in an earlier post, he took me totally by surprise.  Not only did he take to snorkelling, getting the hang of it quickly in a rather calm lagoon, he took the bold step of going into waters filled with Caribbean Reef sharks. 

Andrew might even go so far as trying his hand at scuba diving when we go on our trip to the Caymans in July.

Where my kids are concerned, I have to give a special shout out to Aqua Cat crew members Nathan and Stacey.  Nathan in particular spent a lot of time with my kids and keeping them occupied with fun activities.  My kids each got to captain two of four teams in a series of contests that required participants to engage in some silly and sometimes embarrasing tasks.  My daugher's team The Goofballs ended up winning, and in the video below Kellyanne gets her prize.

Stacey was the crew member kind enough to take my son snorkelling while I was away on my diving misadventure.  She is the one pictured in the photo above with the yellow finds swimming alongside Andrew.  Stacey also was in the awkward position of being the lone female in a crew of ten.  I hope that future voyages had some better gender ratios for her.

For myself, it was a wonderful trip.  Our group included a lot of friends I made from the Belize trip and some great new people.  When I made the decision to go to Belize in 2009 and take up scuba diving, it just opened up a whole new world for me and changed my life for the better in so many ways.  When I hit middle age, I had a yearning to do something adventurous in my life, and scuba diving really fit the bill.

Exercise in Futility at Reason Rally on March 24, 2012

I've just recently become aware of the Reason Rally scheduled to take place in Washington, D.C. on Saturday, March 24.  Barring anything unexpected that might come up to prevent me from going, I am planning to attend.

If you haven't heard about it yet, here's the website for Reason Rally. 

The Reason Rally is an event sponsored by many of the country’s largest and most influential secular organizations. It will be free to attend and will take place in Washington, D.C. on March 24^th, 2012 from 10:00AM – 4:00PM at the National Mall. There will be music, comedy, speakers, and so much more.

If anyone from the New York area wants to go and is interested in carpooling, let me know and we'll see what we can work out.  Just leave a message in the comments.  I imagine some people will want to head down there Friday evening, though I'll more likely drive down very early in the morning and either return Saturday night or stay the night and return early Sunday.

Exercise In Futility Drunken Blogathon

In a sort of tribute to the late Christopher Hitchens, I will be doing a blogathon tonight while under the increasing influence of alcohol.  It's a cold Friday night, I'm stuck in the house, so why the hell not.  Let's see if the quality of my posts goes up or down as the night progresses.  Alright, here we go!

Shifting Attitudes on Gay Marriage and Abortion - The Personal Factor

I finished Putnam and Campbell's Amazing Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us last week.  In Chapter 11, titled Religion in American Politics, the authors look at how attitudes towards gay marriage and abortion have changed over the recent decades.

The authors cite a 1988 General Social Survery in which only 12% of respondents supported same-sex marriage.  In the 2006 Faith Matters survey, 34% of respondents supported gay marriage while another 30% supported civil unions.  Support for same-sex marriage rises among younger generations.

Putnam and Campbell attribute greater acceptance towards gay marriage among people to two main factors.  First, younger Americans "have become politically and socially aware during a period in which homosexuality has been increasingly featured positively in the popular media.  Gay characters are common in TV programs and movies and many prominent gay celebrities project an image of respectabilty."

Second, "[y]oung people are also the least religious age group.  Since religiosity is such a strong predictor of attitudes toward same-sex marriage, and homosexuality more generally, it comes as no surprise that the most secular cohort of the population is the most accepting of gay marriage."

The trend towards increasingly liberal views among younger Americans with regard to social issues like gay marriage or premarital sex is not matched by increasing acceptance for abortion.  The authors note that this does not mean that younger Americans are increasingly supportive of banning abortions completely, but rather are more in favor of restricting abortion in certain circumstances.

Putnam and Campbell do offer "another hypothesis for young people's unease with abortion that...remains a plausible hunch rather than a tested proposition - the prevalence of in utero ultrasound images."

This could explain why the anti-choice movement has its best successes when it aims to chip away at abortion rights a piece at a time here and there.   For example, Texas passed a law last year requring women seeking an abortion to view an ultrasound image of the fetus before getting an abortion.  Other states, like South Dakota have sought to impose mandatory waiting periods and to require women seeking an abortion to visit a crisis pregnancy center.  But when the anti-choice movement tries to go for the whole enchilada, as with the Personhood ballot initiative that was shot down by voters in Mississippi last year, they tend to lose badly.

Another factor cited by the authors, and one that I have seen mentioned elsewhere, is that younger voters today are far removed from the era of backalley abortions that existed prior to Roe v. Wade.  In a way, the very success of the pro-choice movement to provide safe, legal abortions for such a long period of time has seen the coming of age of a generation that knows almost nothing about the conditions that gave rise to the pro-choice movement in the first place.

While probably true, there is another reason that attitudes towards abortion have not matched the increasingly liberal views towards gays and same-sex marriage, and that would be the personal factor.  In this day and age, I think it is safe to say that an overwhelming number of people in the United States who are heterosexual have a family member, friend or acquaintance who is gay and who is known to that heterosexual to be gay.

It is a lot easier to demonize homosexuals when they are some abstract other, reduced to crude stereotypes of parading drag queens and limp-wristed sissies.  It is not so easy to be homophobic when the person who admits his/her homosexuality to you is your beloved sibling, uncle, close friend, popular teacher or someone else you have long admired.  A person with negative attitudes towards gays in such a situation finds themselves faced with a dilemma.  Does one's loathing towards homosexuals outweigh the high regard held for the person who has come out to you as a homosexual?  Or does one's love and affection for that person tip the scales towards acceptance?   If this person will be a part of your life for years to come, the realization seeps in that not only is this person a homosexual today, he or she will still be gay tomorrow, next week, next month, next year and so on.

Of course, having a family member or close friend who is gay does not automatically translate towards acceptance of homosexuals.  Think Newt Gingrich and his lesbian half-sister Candace.  Phyllis Schlafly, one of America's longest serving right wing culture warriors, who has a gay son.  And then there's Alan Keyes and his lesbian daughter Maya.  What probably does happen for most people in such a situation is a gradual shift in attitudes towards gays.  Accepting a close family member or friend who is homosexual might result at first in a grudging acceptance, sort of "Well, this one is okay, but the others are still just a bunch of queers!" to gradual feelings of repulsion at hearing homophobic rhetoric when one realizes, "Wait a minute, my best friend is gay, so how can you say that?"

With abortion, the personal factor greatly diminishes.  As I wrote above, a person who is gay today will be gay tomorrow and for the remainder of that person's life.  Abortion, on the other hand, is something a woman who opts for the procedure might need once or at most twice in her life.  Unplanned pregnancy and abortion is generally a private matter that a woman in such a situation will keep entirely to herself.  No woman will tell her boss, "I need to have next Thursday off.  I just found out I'm three weeks pregnant and I need the day off to get an abortion."  She won't walk out of the clinic after the procedure sporting a button on her shirt that reads "Be Nice To Me.  I Had An Abortion Today." 

Because abortion is such a private matter, the personal factor does not come into play like it does with gays.  We probably all are related to or are friends with women who have had abortions but have no idea that they have had an abortion.  It probably makes it a lot easier to support restricting or even banning abortion when you do not know of any women who have ever had one, and just as importantly, why they felt they needed it.  The secrecy of abortion might also contribute to the phenomenon of women who have gotten abortions themselves but who still believe that abortion is wrong. 

One of the reasons why acceptance of homosexuality increased in recent years was due to an active campaign by the gay community to encourage gays to come out of the closet, which forced many heterosexual Americans to face the choice that I described above.  With a record number of abortion restriction measures being introduced, and in some cases passed, by state legislatures in 2011, perhaps the time has come for a similar Out campaign by women who have had abortions.  I'm sure that there are some women who are pro-choice activists who do speak about their own personal experiences when lobbying and advocating for abortion rights.  Indeed, when I was at a Planned Parenthood rally in downtown Manhattan last February, several of the women speakers did say that they themselves had an abortion at some point in their lives.  Still, I don't think it is as easy to form a large scale campaign for women who have had abortions that could match the gay Out campaign.  As I reiterated already, gay people will always be gay.  A 47 year old woman who had an abortion when she was 20 because she didn't want to have kids before she finished college and who will likely never need to have an abortion again at her age might see it as something from her past better left undisturbed. 

That being the case, with the anti-choice movement trying to push personhood amendments and fetal hearbeat bills in state legislatures, there is going to have to be a strong pushback from the abortion rights to put the focus where is belongs, back on the women whose bodies the forced birthers want to hijack with the backing of the coercive apparatus of the state.  One way of doing that would be a vocal campaign made up of large numbers of women who have had abortions, thereby putting a true human face back on the debate instead of ceding the debate to ultrasound pictures.

God's Quarterback Part 2

The picture above basically sums up what the New England Patriots did to Tim Tebow and the Denver Broncos yesterday in an incredibly lopsided 45-10 win.  If it weren't for the one pass that Denver intercepted in Patriots territory putting them in good field position to score their one touchdown, the score likely would have ended up being 45-3.

In last month's post, God's Quarterback, I put forward what I call my Tim Tebow Challenge.  If Tebow could win three consecutive Super Bowls, one for each part of the Trinity, I would become a born again Christian.  Thanks to Tom Brady and the New England Patriots, the Denver Broncos won't be in the Super Bowl this year, thus earning me a one year reprieve.  If Tebow is ever going to notch three Super Bowl victories in a row, I'm good until at least February of 2015.

In an interesting irony, the Denver Broncos this season were 1-4 when Tebow took over as starting quarterback, and in Tebow's last five games, the Denver Broncos are 1-4.   A reversion to the mean, perhaps?

Still, because I strive to be fair-minded, I'm happy to give Tebow and the Broncos their due.  They achieved far more than their critics predicted.  During Tebow's time as their starting quarterback, the Broncos went from being in the basement to being in the playoffs.   As I wrote in my previous post on Tim Tebow, the part of me that wants to root for the underdog got a kick out of seeing Tebow defy his critics who said he couldn't cut it in the NFL.  I know a lot of his critics like to dismiss his winning streak, chalking it up to injuries on the opposing team, the other team playing not to lose in the 4th quarter, or just dumb luck, among other things.  While there is validity to these criticisms, ultimately, a win is a win is a win. 

On the other hand, what I cannot abide are the Tebow fans who accuse his critics of being motivated by Tebow's religiosity.  While clearly some are, as I've written before, this atheist couldn't give a shit about Tebow's ostentatious religiosity.  In fact, I love it, precisely because when he and the Broncos get their asses kicked by top tier teams, it shows how ridiculous Tebow's Bible thumper fans are to claim he is some kind of divine instrument when the Broncos win in overtime on a Matt Prater field goal.

I like to think I see Tim Tebow for what he really is, a mediocre quarterback given to public displays of Christian piety who is sometimes somewhat better than his critics give him credit for.

With Denver knocked out of the playoffs, thankfully we won't be hearing much about Tebowmania for the next 8 months until the 2012 season gets under way.  My prediction for Tim Tebow and the Denver Broncos is that they won't have an awful season like this season's Indianapolis Colts, nor will they have any six game winning streaks like they managed this season.  Tebow will probably have a season like Mark Sanchez of the New York Jets had in 2011, he'll win a game or two, then lose a game or two, and so on until the end of the season.  Not exactly what one would expect or hope for if Tebow really was God's quarterback.