Combat Queer Online

Ultimate Wolverine Vs. Hulk #6 - Bad Ass Finale

I managed to find a comic store right off post this afternoon. It was not, sadly, the best comic book I've ever seen. It had a certain ambiance, one much life a cave. And not a good cave. No, I'm talking about the sort of cave where it only goes back fifteen feet and the floor is covered with used pornography and skoal cans. There going to be a soiled mattress and crude drawings of female genitalia done in permanent marker in that cave. It smells like old urine and desperation.

And that was the off-post comic book store.

But the important thing about it is that I was able to buy the final two issues of Ultimate Wolverine Vs. Hulk. I've said it before, but I really think that Marvel's Ultimate Universe had a big drop off in quality after the second run of Ultimates. The UU went from being a place where big stories were told in fascinating, hip ways, to little more than a collection of fan-fiction(I exclude Ultimate Spiderman from this description because those stories continued to pop all the way up until the end, and hey, there's a trans-superhero. That's freaking badass, and it makes me want spider-powers again.)

Seriously thought, later Ultimate Marvel books had a bad habit of expecting the readers to put up with a lot of seriously bad story telling for sake of the emotional pay-offs that simply made zero sense. For instance, remember when Prof. X died and came back two issues later? Or when Nightcrawler turned out to have always been evil, then kidnapped Dazzler 'cause he loved her a bunch, or anything from Ultimates 3? No? That's because the story telling was awful, and no one cared.

But Ultimate Wolverine Vs Hulk is really an artifact from the early stages of the Ultimate Marvel Universe, and it shows. In issue five, there is a genuinely fun plot twist that plays with the differences between the standard Marvel world and the Ultimate one. The story plays with one of the central problems with Hulk stories, basically that for all the whining Bruce Banner does about being the green Goliath, it looks like it might be pretty awesome to me and the rest of the audience. The story moves on without trying to pick up a load of emotional baggage, and in doing so we actually get a look at the characters. 

What I really what to talk about, though, is the final issue, which is very cool. We follow Wolverine as he tracks down the two Hulks. Wolverine has two unbreakable collars, and if he can trap them on either of the Hulk while they're in human form, it'll kill them if they Hulk out. The collars are a nice little plot device, and I'm glad that(spoiler alert) the story doesn't cheat and have the Hulk break the unbreakable collar. As much as I like the Hulk to smash everything in his path, I really think the stories suffer when the Hulk doesn't have any rules to play by

But I think the real jewel of the issue is the conversation on the airplane between Wolverine and Banner. It's  quality banter, and it does a good job showing off the facets of Wolverines character. Fun stuff to read. Also, Banner's willingness to put his life in danger, forcing Wolverine into a decision, it's a good swing for the fences. Sure, the situation mirrors one from an earlier book, but the setup is inventive enough that I'll give them credit for it.

That this series has managed to keep it's focus on the question of whether or not the Hulk and Wolverine are good people, it entertains me that that question even needs to be asked. Marvel sometimes forgets that it does its best work when it has its heroes unsure of their place in the world, unsure of their purpose and mission, but this series had done a very good job of playing with those question.

It ain't Watchmen, it ain't Fun Home, and it ain't Persepolis but I loved it. 

"Love Your Enemy" Is Difficult, All I'm Saying

So, I'm working the night shift. And I got in a fight tonight. But, uh, it wasn't your normal fight. If fact, this one left me with slightly more to think about than how much I've scrapped my fists up or how much trouble I'll be in if the command finds out.

There are some civilian contractors working on this here Army base, and some of the folks from my unit got to talking to one of them. The contractor was an old guy. He had been in the infantry back in Vietnam, and was still very proud of that fact. This guy was spouting off with every sort of neocon talking point, and it was getting on my nerves.

Now, in this Army, I'm pretty used to stuff getting on my nerves, so I wasn't anywhere near fighting level yet. Old Dude, it turned out that he had once been an Episcopalian, but had left the church after Gene Robinson had been made a bishop.(For those of you with better things to do than follow Episcopal Church politics, Bishop Robinson was the first openly gay bishop. It caused all sorts of crying and carrying on, mainly from those outside the church who felt that the existence of a queer religious figure somehow threatened their own faith. Yeah, yeah, bitch bitch bitch moan.)

Now, normally when I deal with someone who is just in love with radical Right Wing bullshit who jumped ship from the church, well, normally I find my self thinking some variation of “Good Riddance,” but I don't know, this time I decided to consider the ways in which the division of the Church was detrimental to both sides. 

Oh Dear Reader, let me tell you, I was feeling pretty darn loving and accepting of my Conservative brothers and sisters there for a second.

And then Old Dude started talking about how great it would be if that one state succeeded from the USA, and how much better things would be once that had happened and... well Dear Reader, there is something about the concept of people who think of themselves as “Real Americans” who also want to destroy this country that just flips a switch in my head. It just makes me incredibly angry. Maybe that has something to do with the double standard where, no matter how much I do for this nation, because I'm a damned queer I can never be as much of an American as Joe the Unlicensed Plumber. It just really pissed me off.

And, after another half hour of listening to Old Dude repeat Rush Limbaugh bullshit, I entered the conversation. And two minutes after that I pointed out that it was ridiculous for him to consider himself a patriot at the same time he wanted his home state to secede.

Now remember, this is a guy who fought in Vietnam in the Infantry, and has continued to work on Army bases ever sense. 

How do you think he reacted to being called a traitor by someone a little more than a third his age?

Yeah, he reacted exactly that well. Old Dude exploded a little bit.

...

A while later I ran in to him again, and I apologized for insulting him. He apologized for going off on me. We actually ended up talking for about three hours. Now, this fellow really hates Obama, and wants to see most of congress hanged for treason, but here's the thing:

Once you get past the basic politics, this guy and I have a lot in common. We're both opinionated as hell, hot headed, and unable to back away from a fight. As the conversation wore on, Old Dude admitted that he gets along very well with lesbians, and really doesn't have anything against people so long as they do their jobs. We talked about family stuff, about how strange and confusing close interpersonal relationships can be.

It was really weird, but here's the thing. Old Dude and I will never agree, not in a billion years, on a lot of issues. That's just the way it is. 

Despite that, I don't think we have to be enemies. I think that, maybe, if we stop acting like idiots for the moment, we might find value in each other. Or something. 

I suck pretty hard at the whole “love you enemy” think, but I'm trying.

Sam Schulman And "The Worst Thing About Gay Marriage"

So Dear Reader, remember a few weeks ago when I posted something about how one of the great things about being a godsdamned queer is that it sets you free of many of the oppressive systems of the world? And, at least as a Christian in today's America, it frees you from the heresy of believing yourself to be a perfectly morally righteous person? Remember?

Well, I may not have said it that clearly, but that's what I was going for.

Here's an article that a friend laughingly sent me:

 

http://weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/016/533narty.asp

The author Sam Schulman argues that it's just fine to be anti-gay marriage because it's not just the bigots and the Bible-thumpers who believe that one group should be excluded from a set of rights enjoyed by others. Sam says that the real problem people have with gay marriage has nothing to with morals and ethics, but is rather a question of kinship.

Now friends, you might be saying, “Kinship? Really? What is this, Freshman year anthro class? ... And if it is Freshman year again, why I aren't I more hungover?”

Well Dear Reader, we for better or worse are here in the present, as we always tend to be. What's going on here, I suspect, is that it has started to penetrate many Conservatives mental shields that there's something wrong with discriminating against queers solely on the basis of who they develop sexual and romantic feelings for. They are, Lord help them, starting to feel guilty about their bigotry. 

And that's a good thing. I firmly believe that it's possible for people to get along. We can love each other, make things work. The world doesn't absolutely need to be in the state that it is. A new world, a better world is possible. That, friends, that is the world that I believe Christ was calling us to.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Real quick, let's take a look at Schulman's four ridiculous reasons for claiming that homosexuals will never be able to fully participate in systems of kinship:

Here's the core of his first argument: 

Marriage, whatever its particular manifestation in a particular culture or epoch, is essentially about who may and who may not have sexual access to a woman when she becomes an adult, and is also about how her adulthood--and sexual accessibility--is defined.

and later

This most profound aspect of marriage--protecting and controlling the sexuality of the child-bearing sex--is its only true reason for being, and it has no equivalent in same-sex marriage.

 Without systems of kinship, Schulman says, no one has “a duty to protect her virginity until the time came when marriage was permitted or, more frequently, insisted upon.”

So basically, women need not only protection, but also a clear outside force telling them when or when not they can have sexual relations. With homosexuals, there's no one telling women what to do with their bodies. And God only knows what a woman will get up to with out a powerful force regulating her body.

Schulman seems vaguely aware that this is a stupid and horrible thing to say, but he comforts himself and his readers with the following statement:

But the duty of virginity can seem like a privilege, even a luxury, if you contrast it with the fate of child-prostitutes in brothels around the world.

Yeah, see? If it weren't for men telling women what to do with their bodies, it'd be nothing but horizon to horizon child-prostitute brothels.

He is saying that the only two choices for women is to hand over control of their bodies and their virginity to powerful men or to be whores. The system is what keeps women safe, and nothing else. If women do not submit themselves to the system, then, says Schulman, they are doomed.

Moving on to argument #2:

Second, kinship modifies marriage by imposing a set of rules that determines not only whom one may marry (someone from the right clan or family, of the right age, with proper abilities, wealth, or an adjoining vineyard), but, more important, whom one may not marry. Incest prohibition and other kinship rules that dictate one's few permissible and many impermissible sweethearts are part of traditional marriage. Gay marriage is blissfully free of these constraints. There is no particular reason to ban sexual intercourse between brothers, a father and a son of consenting age, or mother and daughter. There are no questions of ritual pollution: Will a hip Rabbi refuse to marry a Jewish man--even a Cohen--to a Gentile man? Do Irish women avoid Italian women? A same-sex marriage fails utterly to create forbidden relationships. If Tommy marries Bill, and they divorce, and Bill later marries a woman and has a daughter, no incest prohibition prevents Bill's daughter from marrying Tommy. The relationship between Bill and Tommy is a romantic fact, but it can't be fitted into the kinship system.

(I swear, I was going to dig out the most telling bit of that paragraph but the whole thing is evidence of the ridiculousness of this argument)

To restate Schulman's claim, because homosexual relationships violate one part of Schulman's idea of kinship, he sees no reason by they shouldn't transgress every taboo, law, ethic and moral known to man.  It is somehow unimaginable to Schulman that all the same societal rules would remain in place with the exception of the gender of the two participants in the relationship. This assumption of the utter depravity of a homosexual relationship only makes sense it one can imagine homosexuals to be entirely incapable of good.

Here's another way of looking at it: Let's imagine that I enjoy drinking Coca Cola and you enjoy drinking Pepsi. More than enjoying Pepsi, you believe that Pepsi is the only thing worth drinking, and that it is terribly wrong to drink anything that isn't Pepsi. If someone's not drinking Pepsi, you say, why wouldn't they be slaughtering children and drinking the blood? If someone doesn't like Pepsi, you say, well then you just better not drink anything, no matter how thirsty you are.

It has nothing to do with the benefits of drinking the Coke or the Pepsi,  is all about the sanctity of the system, the sanctity of the idea that Pepsi is the best product. It is madness.

Also, oddly, a lot of Schulman's big questions seem to be less about incest and pedophilia, and more to do with whether or not it's ok for homosexuals to cross race norm, leading of course to “ritual pollution.” Can a Jewish marry a Gentile? An Irish woman marry an Italian woman? It seems that Schulman puts inter-racial relationships on the same level as a father having a sexual relationship with his son. 

I don't know if anyone has told Schulman, but it's ok for folks to have inter-racial relationships. Most folks no longer consider that as bad as incest and pedophilia.

But, leaving that alone, let's move on to #3:

Third, marriage changes the nature of sexual relations between a man and a woman. Sexual intercourse between a married couple is licit; sexual intercourse before marriage, or adulterous sex during marriage, is not. Illicit sex is not necessarily a crime, but licit sexual intercourse enjoys a sanction in the moral universe, however we understand it, from which premarital and extramarital copulation is excluded. More important, the illicit or licit nature of heterosexual copulation is transmitted to the child, who is deemed legitimate or illegitimate based on the metaphysical category of its parents' coition.

and later

Gay lovers live merrily free of this system. Can we imagine Frank's family and friends warning him that "If Joe were serious, he would put a ring on your finger"? Do we ask Vera to stop stringing Sally along? Gay sexual practice is not sortable into these categories--licit-if-married but illicit-if-not (children adopted by a gay man or hygienically conceived by a lesbian mom can never be regarded as illegitimate). Neither does gay copulation become in any way more permissible, more noble after marriage.

So basically, straight folks can have both licit and illicit sex, which is important because it determines whether or not their child is a valid member of society. Homosexuals, though, homosexuals are incapable of licit sex. While Schulman does admit that the children of homosexuals don't count as “illegitimate,” as he never goes so far as to say that they are “legitimate)  The idea here is that since everything homosexuals do is immoral, there is no reason to sanctify it in marriage. 

One of the problems here is that once again Schulman can only imagine a coercive, dominating societal rule in which people must be placed into neat, clean categories from which they may near escape. For Schulman, a child must be either legitimate or illegitimate. A woman must either be a virgin or a whore. If we start dismantling the systems by which we define people and assign them their proper place in society, asks Schulman, how will they be properly controlled? 

The other problem, and this is the big one, is that Schulman can not imagine a real, beautiful, spark of divine love existing between two people of the same gender. Love is notoriously hard to define with hard and fast logic. If Plato, Omar Khayyam, and Augustine couldn't nail down what love is, well the ol' Combat Queer probably isn't going to do much better. All I know is that the God I follow, the one I search after, He was tortured to death because of His love for us. He defined Himself by His love for us. If we poor humans can find some love, if we can find someone with whom to try to build a shelter against the storms of the world with, and build that shelter in love, then it seems to me that that love, that relation is worthy of honor.

Schulman isn't worried about love. He only cares about the system, and making sure that everyone from illegitimate child to 

Moving on to #4:

Fourth, marriage defines the end of childhood, sets a boundary between generations within the same family and between families, and establishes the rules in any given society for crossing those boundaries. Marriage usually takes place at the beginning of adulthood; it changes the status of bride and groom from child in the birth family to adult in a new family.

and later

A wedding between same-sex lovers does not create the fact (or even the feeling) of kinship between a man and his husband's family; a woman and her wife's kin. It will be nothing like the new kinship structure that a marriage imposes willy-nilly on two families who would otherwise loathe each other.

Now, the only way that I can imagine someone making this argument is if they have never spent time which the family of a homosexual whose family loved and welcomed her or his same-sex significant other. I've know several such families. I've heard a friend's mother regularly refer to her son's long term boyfriend as her son-in-law, wholly without irony. Family's who love their children, a lot of them will eventually accept the fact of their kids' homosexuality. It just happens. Marriage does not magically bind the fates and fortunes of two families. We're not royalty tying together two warring nations. The idea that straight marriage somehow magically makes two families get along is ridiculous. I have lived through many, many fights among in-laws. It's just a part of the world.

Schulman, for whatever reason, really hates the idea of people being free. More than anything else Schulman wants people bound up in chains of tradition and worldly bullshit. In the Gospel of Luke, Christ called us out of exactly this kind of thing. (http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=luke%2014:25-33;&version=31;)

Christ calls us to throw away the systems of the world. Why? Because these systems are bullshit. 

These systems of control only exist to turn human being into products, into commodities. These systems only exist to prevent us for understanding each other as being equally human. These systems that Christ freed us from only exist to let us know who we can kill, who we can use, who we can treat as things. These systems tell s that we are Americans and they are Iraqis, and that makes it ok that we've killed a million of them for no good reason. 

It's absolute bullshit, but some folks want to keep us in those chains. The strange freedom is somehow far more frightening than that familiar entrapment. 

New Least Favorite Thing About The Army

So, I have a new least favorite thing about the Army. No, it's not the long hours, the separation from those I love, the danger, the boredom, the PTSD, the attitudes, the ever present danger of rape, none of that.

No, my new least favorite thing about the Army is the “Chocolate Hooah Bar.” 

“Chocolate What-Now Bar?” I hear you asking. For those you whose short hairs are not presently gotten by the Army, the word “hooah” might not be familiar. You see, this job requires you to constantly show a great deal of motivation for every plan and activity your boss comes up with, and given the generally low expectations for creativity in the Army, well, there's one word for “yes,” “I understand,” and “good.” Used by itself, “hooah” can be used to show general excitement or motivation. Used as an adjective it tends to mean bad-ass, but in a particularly Army way. Used as a verb it means to push forward in difficult situations.

Even with its manifold meanings, it is never proper to ask what someone means when they declare an object or activity “hooah.” The idea is, as far as I can tell, that if you can't see why something is hooah then you probably aren't hooah enough yourself.

A good way of increasing your hooah-ness is through large numbers of push-ups. True story. 

Anyway, the Chocolate Hooah Bar. Whoever came up with this thing, I can only imagine that they were counting on their consumers not to consider what is hooah about this bar. This thing, this thing bugs me on a lot of levels. The only place I have ever found a Chocolate Hooah Bar is in an Army issue Meal Ready to Eat(MRE). MRE's are your standard field rations. They're actually not as terrible as they could be, so long as you don't mind the fact that they are processed to an almost unimaginable level. You kind of have to have their word that the chicken breast was once part of a real live bird or that the bread contains any plant produce that ever grew in real live soil. It's a little creepy, but you get used to it.

But not the Chocolate Hooah Bar. As I was saying, the only place I've ever found it is in an MRE, but the possibility that it will one day make it out onto the open market is a constant source of worry. 

Let's talk about the packaging for a second. It looks like your standard component of an MRE, you know, basically an envelope of tough green plastic, except it has “Chocolate Hooah Bar” written in a large, disturbingly friendly font on the face of the package. Also, there is a picture of what appears to be a Hershey's chocolate bar on the front. Seeing that picture, some poor fool might be tricked into believing that within such a package might rest a delightful candy bar the eating of which would more or less be analogous to eating a Hershey bar. But that poor fool, that creature could not be more wrong.

See, Chocolate Hooah Bar itself bears no similarity to a Hershey bar. It in fact contains no actual chocolate. It is heavily, heavily processed “fig product(?)” with corn syrup, a cocktail of vitamins, and chocolate flavoring added. 

It has no real shape. Well, that's not true. It's just a flat, brown, sticky Florida looking thing. It doesn't break easily. Like, you can bite it, and not nessicary pull any of it away from the rest. There are occasional crunchy bits. At first I took those to be seeds from the “fig produce,” but of further examination, well, I'm really not sure.

So, basically, this thing is a lie. It is not chocolate, it is just barely a bar, and friends, it is not hooah. I may not be the most masculine soldiers in this nations Army, but I've been here a while, and I can identify hooah. The Chocolate Hooah Bar is simply not.

I don't know why this thing is put into my MREs. I don't know why some food technician out there wants me to show enthusiasm for it. I don't know a lot of things about this world, but Dear Reader, I know we can do better than the Chocolate Hooah Bar.

Terminator Salvation: Fan Fiction Drinking Game

Well friends, I spent the afternoon of my Memorial Day at the movies. It was either that or go to my unit's Bar B Q, and as much as I love those folks, I see plenty of them without spending my days off with them. 

I was trying to decide whether I wanted to catch the Wolverine movie or the new Terminator one. I went to see Terminator. It was upsettingly bad.

Seriously, how do you spend that much money to make a movie with absolutely nothing new to offer? And I don't mean that it was the standard old "Hey, these ideas and basic story elements have worked in the past, why don't we use them again" kind of thing. No, no, this movie was straight up fan fiction.

It took me about half an hour to realize it, but that's what was going on with the movie. If you happen to watch this, this... thing, here's a little drinking game for you: 

First, sneak in a couple of beers(you're going to need six or seven per person) and take a very small sip anytime a famous line from one of the original two Terminator movies is awkwardly used. Take a second drink if the actor emphasizes the line in a way that makes absolutely no sense in the context of the story, just to make sure the audience hears it. 

Second, take a drink when a character makes decisions that make exactly zero sense from a tactical perspective, despite that character having been made out as a tactical genius. This might include the robots not killing their big, game-winning target even when there is absolutely nothing preventing them from doing so. This might include the human tactical genius making an open, worldwide radio transmission outlining the details of the big, secret attack that was about to go down on the robots. This might include... well, almost every element of this movie's idiot ball plot.

Then, take a drink when you recognize a robot from another big name, non-Terminator movie or television show. This is really where you might want to think about bringing along the second six pack. You're going to see Transformers, Cylons, the weird hunter-killers from The Matrix, and others besides. Somehow director "McG" forgot the clunker from Lost in Space, but I'm pretty sure he'll showed in the DVD extended cut.

And finally, take a drink when the movie is doing everything it can to tell you that there's a big, emotional moment happening, but once again it is utterly unclear why you as a viewer should care. The last fifteen minutes in approximately 97% comprised of such moments. 

You very well might need your stomach pumped after this one. It just, it hurts me.

The Fat Captain

So, there's been a real live shit storm around here. While I obviously cannot discuss the vaguest detail of what's actually happened, well let's just say that there are some real, real stupid people who like to play soldier, but have no fucking idea what they're doing.

Let's take a moment, Dear Reader, to discuss a specific species of idiot. Let's talk about the Fat Captain, the five-meal-a-day eating individual who loves to talk about “how real soldiers do it.” This fellow has not passed a PT test in five years. He has not run for more than ten steps in three years. The push-up in only the vaguest memory in the world to him.

He has great difficulty understanding anyone as existing for their own sake. Instead, he understands every human being's existence only in relation to him. I once heard him screaming at his wife over the phone over his unhappiness with his sister-in-law's choice in a husband. “What she needs to understand,” he howled, “is that her primary responsibility is being an aunt to my children!”

Many of those that meet the Fat Captain are struck by the impression that he is mentally retarded. A regular topic of conversation among the younger, newer members of the unit is the exact nature of the Fat Captain's mental retardation. The sad fact though, is that the Fat Captain has no disorder beyond that he is always either becoming, or recovering from being, seriously drunk.

The Fat Captain's favorite place to consume alcohol is, of course, the titty bar. Though he often brags about being married, brags about how much happier he is than the young, unmarried guys and the queers, the Fat Captain is a great connoisseur of pornography and strip clubs. There is some evidence that he is a customer of prostitutes but, it is better not to inquire too far into that matter.

The Fat Captain prides himself on being an especially hard worker. Another favorite recreation of his is making fun of those working around him, while he avoids actually accomplishing anything. He often leaves his office for hours at a time, assuming that he has no responsibility to explain his whereabouts to those working for him, and hoping that he will not be asked to explain his whereabouts to his superiors.

In keeping for his love of “how real soldiers do it,” he enjoys forcing his subordinates to do any task in the slowest and most difficult way possible. He is extremely suspicious of efficiency, as it suggests to him that his workers has an insufficiently difficult time in accomplishing whatever he set them to do.

And that is the Fat Captain.

Memorial Day Heroes

So, I know this is sort of theme of in my stories, but I just sat through about fifteen minutes of listening to a chaplain talk about how for memorial day he hoped that America's children would stop paying attention to the “faggots and whores” and pay some hero worship to America's really bringers and producers of freedom, Vietnam Veterans(and yes, by whores he meant women in general. I asked).

The worst part was the way in which he said he. Chaplain teared up, started sniveling. He is just constantly broken hearted over the freedoms that women and queers have. It does his spirit great harm that they are allowed to walk the streets like they were people or something. The real heroes aren't women or queers, they are old men. 

Now, I got noting against 'Nam Vets. My dad was one. I grew up hearing about how hard it was to come back from that. I'm aware that the world is a shitty place, and that it was especially shitty for that particular group of vets. 

But you know what? Fuck it.

I'm in this war, I'm a queer, and I deserve to have the right to take action against some asshole who talks that derisively and hatefully about me and others like me. I do my part. I keep my mouth fucking closed. I do my job, and I do it well.

And it pisses me off that I have no recourse, no way to tell some damn Army shaman who feels bad that Nam ended before he had a chance to get over there and shoot him some gooks(his words, but don't worry, he followed it up by saying that he was kidding, so it's all cool). I deserve to have the right to tell someone who is talking to me in such an unprofessional manner to go to hell.

But no. No. You know what I get for doing my job? You know what I get for being a damn good soldier? I get insulted. People I love are insulted. And, in a lot of ways, the worst part is that I am expected to share those ideas and beliefs. Assholes like that chaplain want me to join in and attack queers and women. It isn't enough that I have to sit there and quietly take it, they want me to be or to become a person who hates queers and women.

 It is bullshit. I just want to do my job.

This Little Light of Mine

So, I was driving one of my captains around yesterday. This fellow is an alright guy, a pretty effective officer but, gods help him, he loves listening to Rush FatDrugAddict and regurgitating all the talking points. Yesterday, he went on a tare about the hate crimes bill that's slowly making its way through the legislature.

It was all the usual nonsense. The lies about how it will put ministers who preach against homosexuality in jail and will force churches of all denominations to hire gay priests and make day care centers hire perverted old gay men to watch defenseless children, etc.

He just went on and on and on about this bullshit.

The general thrust of the argument was that Obama's government will use the issue of fairness for Queers to try to wipe out Christianity in America.

“The nominal Christians will just fade away,” the Captain says, “but this is when the real Christians, the people with actual faith, will burn the brightest.”

You want to know the truly odd part? As I was sitting there beside him and listening to him rant about how American Christians...the most wealthy, most powerful, and most free religious group in the world...were in danger of persecution, I found myself agreeing with him.

Dear Reader, don't worry. I'm not pulling a Benedict Arther here. I'm not Hagarding out on this by denying the truth and heading back to the closet. No. What I mean is that now, in the time of struggle, we Christians have to stand up.

We need to stand up against the normalizing pressures of society. We can't be put in our place. We are weirdos, outsiders, and queers. That's what the Lord God has for us. We have to stand up against the slander, the hate, the...God help us...normality of the people who hate us. These people who would see us without rights, freedoms, or protections.

Christ was a freak like us. Christ lived outside of and against the social norms of his day. He became such a threat to those norms that the government nailed him to piece of wood. As queers, we too are outside that nice, pretty, and petty set of norms. We need to use this opportunity to be free of all the chains that Christ broke on the cross.

If we do it as queers and Christians then it becomes undeniable that something is happening. If the conflict is painted as “Christianity vs the Queers,” not only will we lose, Christianity itself will be deeply harmed. As I'm sure you know, Dear Reader, we're not going against Christ. How could we ever go against Christ except by buying into the bullshit of the world? By surrendering to capitalism, consumerism, selfishness, racism, imperialism?

No, we as Queers are not going against Christ. If we stand up for our rights as Christians, if we burn brightly in faith as well as in sexuality, then the world will see that this current fight isn't the Queers versus Christ. They will see that it is the weak against the strong, transformative love against gray conformity.

We need to take this time and burn bright. We can do it.

Debunking "Be All You Can Be"

I got called a “prude” the other day. Shocking as it may seem, I had made the comment that maybe, just maybe, college-aged privates should not be going out to bars, picking up young women of uncertain age, and bringing them back to the barracks to copulate. Now, I know that's tantamount to saying that it is obscene for women to show a little ankle but, I was a little surprised at the negative reactions given when mentioning my theory to other sergeants.

Dear Reader, from their reactions you might think that I said that we should stop wearing a flag on our uniforms, swear an oath to Atheism every morning, and shoot the company dog every night. Apparently, young soldiers having ridiculously damaging and stupid sexual relations with basically anonymous women, apparently that is one of the corner stones of the United States Military. It doesn't matter how many guys end up having to support a child before they turn twenty, it doesn't matter how many guys get charged with rape, it doesn't matter how many guys see their entire future washed away in the furious repercussions of a single night. No. Those kids' right to go out acting drunk and stupid must be protected.

Let's hold on a minute and figure what the point of all this is. There's this weird thing going on where the attitudes of an over active twelve-year-old are somehow taken as the gold standard of maturity and adulthood. For a huge number of folks in my unit, the only reason you wouldn't go out every night to drink as much as you possibly can and have meaningless sex with as many anonymous partners as you can is if you are somehow “not mature enough” to do so.

For these folks, the standard of maturity seems to be a measure of what you can instead of what you should do. Some people off in a hypothetically good part of the world might define maturity as doing one's job competently, not allowing one's own emotional issues effect others, taking responsibility for one's own actions, all that textbook stuff.

On the other hand, some of these folks in the my unit define the standard of maturity as how much one can drink, how many women one can fuck, how often one can attend the activities at a titty bar. In a sense, these are all things that are gotten away with.

There's something going on here and, frankly, I'm really not sure what it is. I suspect that it relates to the ways in which the Army treats enlisted soldiers. The Army often thinks of enlisted soldiers as essentially being high school delinquents. We get saddled with safe curfews, searches, and questionings familiar to any grounded child. This often goes beyond your standard accountability into the world of finger-wagging.

I sometimes wonder if folks aren't just acting the way they are expected to. If they're used to meeting low expectations.

Thoughts?

To My Dear Readers

Well, Dear Reader, I have not been able to write three words worth reading in about a week. I've just felt like I had rocks in my head or something. Now, by keeping a stockpile of posts ready to go, I've done my best to protect you from my dry spells, but friend, it's been hard on me. When I'm not writing, I feel like I'm not thinking. It is unpleasant.

I had my first little wrestling match with homesickness this week. I've been away from the family and friends for about two, three months now, so I suppose I was bound to run into this eventually. One night last week I had a couple of hours of free time, I was away from the barracks trying to relax, and I got a phone call from my sister back home. I didn't know her very well(or “at all,” you might say) growing up, but we've really gotten close over the past two years. We only talked for a five or six minutes, but after, I don't know, I just felt ready to leave. I just wanted to get off post, wanted to go home, wanted to girl out entirely, have curry, and not have anything to do with the Army.

It was lame. See, most of the time I try not to get all dramatic, all emotional, all that, but friend, I felt just like shit.

It's weird. When I'm busy, when there's god work to take care of, I never feel too bad about things. I don't worry to much about having had to stop the transition, I don't long for the folks I love too bad. When I'm working, I can just get on by and I'm fine with that.

But man, when I get that break, that free time...ugh...I just want the people I love. I just want to set the burden of place down a little.

Anyway, forgive my whining. I'm working on some good posts for this coming week, and also, hope of all hopes, I may be getting an editor. Yeah, how awesome is that? Imagine not having to dig through my jungle of typos, misspellings, and poor grammar in search of a few grains of meaning. It's going to be fantastic.

More soon,

Combat Queer