Honestly, though, I have been in rapture of late, and that is why I have been distracted from commenting on life’s little happenings.  In the non-biblical sense, I have been carried away with a project that began out of the insistence of a good friend.  I was asked to consider writing a short story that could be self-published as an experiment for a possible business venture.  After a couple of conversations, I agreed.  The problem is that once I got started, I couldn’t stop.  What began as a request for a few pages, turned into a few hundred.  There is only a small pun intended when I say it’s like the proverbial hole in the dike.  I can plug the creative flow with work and family distractions, sure, but I find the personal pressure to put pen to paper is just too forceful to be stoppered.  As a result, I have a book.  Well, almost.  I have a couple more chapters to wrap it up.

What will I do with it?  Who knows?  All I know is that I have been on an emotional journey with characters that are part of me and part of my imagination.  It’s up to the reader to decide which part is which…that is, if it ever sees the light of day outside my hard drive.   I may just write a short story about a moment in time and keep this personal catharsis to myself.

In other news, this is the ‘Schmootz on:

The death of daytime soap programming – Let’s face it, the soap bubble has lost its luster.  The daytime serial, like the dinosaur, has met its meteor in the form of fewer stay at home moms and reality TV.  I agree with Oprah, and who doesn’t, that the American soap opera is an institution…but one whose time has come.  Dwindling ratings make it easy for networks to choke the lifetime out of a genre so dependent on the advertising sales of laundry detergent and toilet paper.  No amount of gimmicks or gay pairing pandering will ever sale enough Pampers to pay for this many actors, sets, and writers, and still make a profit.  Especially when it cost about a buck fifty to put on another inane talk show.  (Sorry, Oprah.)  So, I’m telling all my children that you only have that one life to live, and like sand through the hour glass, the days are numbered.

NBC’s The Voice – I started out a fan after the first few episodes, but after last week’s third round of head to head competition I was left shaking my head.  The song choices were puzzling, and the performers had more pitch problems than the Chicago Cubs.  I’ll try to stick it out until the live shows, because I like the premise, but if it doesn’t get better, I’ll be as surprised as the look on Reba’s face if I stick around much longer.

HBO’s Game of Thrones – It’s so bad, it’s good.  From murdering, incestuous brother-sister relationships to breast feeding nine year olds, to a dagger through any orifice, this drama is so wrong in so many ways…so much so that it keeps me coming back for more.  I find myself flinching at the gore, excited by the sex, and laughing at the humor of a whore-mongering imp, who just happens to be a little person.  HBO just has a way of making the wrong, just so right.

NFL Lockout – What can you say about a fight between billionaires and millionaires that would make the average Jane sympathetic to either side?  This is a time in our country when so many of us feel lucky just to have a job.  So to hear the word “fairness” fumbled around by those with two or more commas in their salaries, seems like a personal foul.  I understand the health concerns of the players and their desire for a secure future, but I also understand the average Bronco, Cowboy, and Ravens fan’s difficulty to process why a player can’t manage an adequate healthcare policy with a league minimum of a few hundred thousand dollars.  And as for the billionaires?  Don’t get me started.  The bottom line here is just find some common ground…any common ground…and get on with it.  No matter what happens the real loser is the ticket holder.  The owners won’t take the loss, they will drop back and pass the accounting on to the backs of the common fan.  If the NFL isn’t careful, America might begin to drop this organized Sunday religion, too.

Focus on the Family Concedes Gay Marriage (Well, almost) – Yep, as a real sign that the world could be coming to an end, one of the more realistically focused of The Family stated that after millions and millions and millions of dollars and hundreds of resulting Family jobs later, the high altitude haters are focusing their energies elsewhere.  Though back-peddling a bit now, he admitted the latest polls continue to show overwhelming American support for same-sex rights, including marriage.  Now, it would be folly to expect The Family to change their positions on gay bullying (for it) or sexual reprogramming (for it), but for now they are going to take my advice and focus more on their own damn family…for at least a day or so.

Now, back to the book.  Hell, if Snooki can do it…

Opening up another front in the war on sanity, Southern Baptist Seminary President, Albert Mohler, is making the call for Christians to avoid the practice of yoga as it is not an appropriate pathway to God.  Mohler takes exception to “the idea that the body is a vehicle for reaching consciousness with the divine.”  Dear God, and I use this term more of an impassioned plea than an exclamation.  In this day and time, don’t you think ANY pathway that leads us to a more open mind and a greater acceptance of the teachings of kindness, compassion, humanity, and charity is a good thing?  Sure, yoga has its origins in the far eastern religions of Hinduism and Buddhism, but quite frankly, Christianity has its origins in Judaism, right?  And if memory serves me correctly, many in the Baptist denomination have no problem picking and choosing mind-numbing, Levitical tenants from that eastern religion.

Can we get real for just a second here?  Yoga use by Christians, or any other American sect of religion or non-religion, is used more as a relaxation technique than any skewed fundamental set of beliefs.  The Focus on the Family board member should be more concerned with his narrow, pain in the neck, view of the world, and less about the techniques many of us use to alleviate the bodily discomfort that is the ramification of his rhetoric.  Perhaps the conservative evangelical’s headache is that he is out of spiritual balance, leaning far to the fringe side of right.  It seems to me that an ecclesiastical enlightenment comes when one is more centered in your faith.  I would suggest Five Pointed Star to the pastoral pundit.  Its practice promotes a more generous circulation and an obviously urgent need of oxygen to the brain.  No, this penta-pose is not a sign of Satan, sir, but a basic upright, respectful, and human stance.  Try it.

I am not often shocked.  I have witnessed red-blooded human nature at its most anemic, so I am never all that surprised to read of the attempted exsanguination of marginalized society by those who claim the highly publicized moral high road.  My usual head shake, however, became a double take as I read where the Christian media conglomerate, Focus on the Family, is claiming that anti-bullying education, as it pertains to LGBT issues, is pushing a gay agenda and is inherently discriminatory against evangelical teachings.  In doing so, this “tolerance” education is conveying homosexuality as normal and worthy of acceptance and should be removed from the curriculum.  So what are you saying?  Early home-schooled social misfits should be protected, but homos should have the hell kicked out of them because they are not your idea of normal?  Add this to the fact we have a national political candidate splashed across the mainstream media as having used words such as deviant, blasphemous, and abhorrent when describing gays and lesbians.  She also excuses gay bashing as “kids will be kids”, descriptive terminology of which Focus on the Family would agree in all probability.

GLSEN, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, just released their 2009 School Climate Survey that details key findings on the experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth in our nation’s schools.  Nearly 9 in 10 LGBT students have been harassed in the last year.  A new study was just released that states a majority of people consider the pet pooch more family worthy than a same-sex couple without kids.  When you continually bestow upon a group of human beings a status just below a dog, then is there any wonder why they are treated like one?  Or in this case…worse.

Let me tell you a story…

Two girls, one light in features, one dark, sit on the floor surrounded by nuclear physics homework, the lesson plans for a finger-paint art project, and what is left of an extra large meat lover’s double cheese pizza.   They are discussing their future.  One is well on her way to medical school, the other an early childhood teacher.  Though career paths are important, this discussion is of their future together.   You see, these two met early in their college days as sorority sisters that hailed more from the Lesbos origins of Greek than that of Pan-Hellenic.

The talk is not of the long hours of an intern or the pittance of a teacher’s salary, the discussion is how they will make it…together.  You see, this romance is in full bud during the years Debbie Harry could still hit the high note, and being gay was something akin to slapping your mamma in public.  Though on a exponentially higher scale of social faux pas, like wearing white shoes after Labor Day, it just wasn’t done.

The dark-haired girl is the stronger of the two, both physically and emotionally, and she promised her own Blondie that she would take care of her when they told their parents of the life that awaited them.  She had been through it all before, the whispering, the exclusion, and the early morning discovery inside an unlocked door that led to weeks in identity rehab.   Did it cure her?  No, no, no…it made her stronger.   Little did she know the upcoming strength required of her would demand that of Atlas.

She returned from class one day to find her light was gone.  Empty closet, no note, just gone.  The dark one drove looking into the night, all the time knowing what she would find.  Cut off from all around her, the light was diminished inside a familial fortress by jailers of chromosomal kinship, parental executioners of what they considered tainted love.  The impenetrable psychological shackles of mental and physical abuse, in the name of a bastardized version of a compassionate religion, replaced more tangible locks that could be picked.  Desperation, loss, one last act to end the pain…and the light was self-extinguished.  The other with the strength of Atlas fell to her knees, her world now too heavy to carry, and alone in her darkness.

This story is about loss, the loss of life, the loss of love, and the unfathomable loss of compassion.  The darkness of her life choice was blamed for her demise, and still is as a matter of fact.  But the darkness did not do this; an overwhelming lack in the willingness to sympathize in her suffering did this.  When do we stop making a game of human suffering where our side versus your side is measured in the win/loss column of human souls?  When a so-called Christian organization like Focus on the Family can openly call for the cessation of anti-bullying education for LGBT youth and young adults without so much as a whisper of media rebuttal, we have lost our passion for the sanctity of life.

For years, groups like Focus on the Family have quoted scripture at me to make a stinging point of my chronic abomination, so now it’s my turn.  I choose to quote my Jesus, one who also likes to use a provocative story or two to make a point.  In his story, JC tells of a traveler, probably a Jewish traveler, who was beaten, robbed, stripped, and left for dead along the side of the road in a pretty sketchy neighborhood.  A priest and another authoritarian religious man see the traveler, bloodied and dying on the side of the road, but decide to leave their brother to the reaper rather than pull their donkey over in this part of town.  I guess the traveler made the wrong choice, and he got what was coming to him.  Not long after, a Samaritan happened by and saw the dying man by the side of the road.  Now, I have to tell you, Samaritans and Jews despised each other.  They agreed on nothing from rights to religion to moral superiority.  To have left the man there to the mercy of his own free will would have been no surprise action by the Samaritan.  However, he goes to the man, gives him water, tends to his wounds, puts him on his own donkey, and leads him to shelter.  Before he leaves, the Samaritan pays for the traveler’s lodging and asks that he be cared for until he is able to continue on his way.  True story.  It’s gospel.

This, my friends, is compassion.  It has no political affiliation, it has no gender or religion, it has no cultural boundary, it has no book or testament.  It has no agenda.  It is a virtue that allows us to recognize human suffering and look past our petty prejudices.  So many of our young LGBT brothers and sisters are on that side of the road, emotionally bleeding while the righteous pass them by.  I knew an early childhood education major that would want me to say to Focus on the Family, “Diversity education has got to be applied…religiously.”

“It has been reported that we would not oppose any U.S. Supreme Court nominee over their ’sexual orientation.’ Our Judicial Analyst [Bruce Hausknecht] made a statement to this effect in an interview with The Plum Line. To be honest, this is one of those conversations we’d like to ‘do over.’ We can assure you that we recognize that homosexual behavior is a sin and does not reflect God’s created intent and desire for humanity. Further, we at Focus do affirm that character and moral rectitude should be key considerations in appointing members of the judiciary, especially in the case of the highest court in the land. Sexual behavior–be it heterosexual or homosexual–certainly lies at the heart of personal morality.”

Hmmm… “We can assure you that we recognize that homosexual behavior is a sin and does not reflect God’s created intent and desire for humanity.” I have to say, I am a bit confused.  Oh, about their statement, not my sexuality.  Does this mean they are saying God made a mistake?  That something in the perfection went slightly awry?  But according to everything I was programmed with, there are no mistakes, wholly.  Well, I assume what they really mean is that God’s perfect creation errantly evolved in some way.  But wait, evangelicals don’t believe in evolution, right?  I give up.  There is no corrective Focus for short-sightedness.

Today, I learned that CBS has been collaborating with Focus On The Family for months massaging the message that will go out to millions of Americans.  According to FOTF spokesperson, Gary Schneeberger, “We’ve worked with [CBS] almost since the beginning.” He continues, “Our senior vice presidents talked to CBS executives throughout the process. It was a very cordial, very professional, fruitful relationship.”  Fruitful?  When citing network standards and practices when rejecting the gay dating website, www.mancrunch.com, did the central network labor with them to define and re-define their message and vet the dialogue?  Of course they didn’t, because that would be a “fruit” of a different color. I have been writing about CBS for months, and whether daytime or prime time, CBS network standards are a double standard.

Initially, I attributed the CBS/Tebow family ad as simply the continued prostitution of fixated Family values. Focus is getting off on it’s political agenda and desire to proselytize, CBS is pimping its stable of airtime, and the mother Tebow is the beck-and-call girl.  After today’s revelation that CBS is not only pimping out its corporate conscience, but shaping the message, it’s quite evident that the network has a vision with a very narrow aperture in regard to social issues.  It seems CBS has a commercial preference for anti-choice (with the exception of corporate choice), anti-gay (with the exception of Danica Patrick in the shower with another woman), and anti-women’s rights (with the exception of the right for women to bare arms, butt, and boobs).  Curious…the latest independent polls from Quinnpiac University and CBS News/New York Times show a greater than 50% favor among Americans in regard to a woman’s right to choose and same-sex rights.  I guess when it comes to our public airways, choice is in the corporate EYE of the beholder.