No cake for you!

During this past week the number of page views of this blog has passed 70,000! That is since May of 2010 when the Blogger system I use started keeping track. Over the last few months the number of views per post has settled in at 40. Recent visitors to this blog are mostly from America, Russia, Germany, Ukraine, France, and Britain.



All the other stuff that has been in my browser tabs...

Roger Denson, writing for Huffington Post takes a look at same-sex relationships during the 4th through 12th Centuries. During this time both the Catholic and Orthodox churches used the same liturgies to bless same-sex and opposite-sex couples. Denson reviews evidence, especially from artwork of this time, then ponders why this tradition stopped and was forgotten.

Part of that forgetting was because of the confusion between erotic and pornographic (the first is both attraction and underlying feelings). Another part is the blurring of sexual desire and same-sex friendship. All fascinating reading.

Denson has a reason for his review. Same-sex couples in Indiana should be able to claim that a strong component of their religion is that they get married. Therefore the state – and other religious institutions – must honor that marriage.



Benjamin Corey takes a jab a bakers who refuse to make cakes for same-sex couples. If they were truly following their religion in declaring, "no cake for you!" there another 10 types of customers who should be getting the same treatment. A proper Christian wouldn't endorse these people either. These include career minded brides (a woman's place is in the home); weddings where there would be gluttonous eating, drunkenness, unwholesome music and provocative dancing, or an expensive gown; and any couple where at least one of them wasn't Christian. A friend responded, don't forget receptions that feature shrimp in the buffet line.



One might think that since polls show black Americans are less supportive of marriage equality they would also be more supportive of Religious Freedom laws. But that is not true. Black people have too much experience with structural discrimination.



Disappointing: The Supremes declined to hear the case about whether the Wisconsin voter ID law is constitutional. However, there are more such cases in progress, and the Texas case might be better because it is much easier to document that it was created in order to discriminate.