Orthodoxy and Hiccups

Over the years, I’ve noticed that Peter hates hiccups.  Hiccupping makes him crazy. He’ll try any folk remedy (and has tried most) to get rid of them.  To me, they’re harmless and interesting.  The muscles that control one’s diaphragm get ‘irritated’ and start twitching involuntarily.  It’s like applying a toilet plunger to your lungs.  Hiccups end as mysteriously as they start.

Last night, I hiccupped through a phone call with my older gay sister who was offering me comfort that a “family tree” had been printed and mailed that would give our relatives the impression that I was either an unwed mother of three children or a typical American divorcee.  It turns out she’s not into hiccups either.  Her folk remedy was to drink water through a paper napkin held over the mouth of the glass.  Failing to persuade me to try her remedy, she carried on bravely despite her irrational dislike of muscles doing their own thing.  She couldn’t resist pointing out much later in the conversation that my hiccupping had subsided.

A pair of balls beats a vagina, any day

One has to reach back in time 13 years for the beginning of the story of how two sisters, one straight and one gay, find out that life, to paraphrase Forrest Gump, is exactly like a box of chocolates – you should be curious enough to try each one until you’ve learned what you like.

Raised in ‘orthodox Hindu’ households, my parents had every right to expect that their seven children would continue the tradition of marrying whomever their parents select for them.  [Darwinists take note: there is no natural selection – no ‘survival of the fittest’ – within orthodox cultures.]  Their illusions were first shattered when I “came out of the closet” to reveal I had been shacking up with a southern Redneck (genus unknown) for almost two years.  Emboldened by my act of courage, my sister immediately followed up by coming out to them.  Peter and I used to joke that his stock shot up immediately.

Roots and fruit

So, yesterday, I was deeply hurt when my father forwarded the ‘family tree’ sans my husband’s name.  An accidental omission, my father later stated.  My reaction was ‘emotional’, not based on facts.  While it was the right thing to do to include grandchildren’s spouses’ names, my father was not aware of their intentions to add these details.  He conceded that the relative in charge of creating the family tree could have placed a phone call.  My father concluded:

Inspite of the above clarification, if you still want do not want the corrections made for distribution at the time of the function, and if you do not want your name at all in the list, I guess I will have to oblige you, because it will be your choice.

Being omitted entirely in the corrected notice distributed on the day of the function – my grandfather’s centennial birth anniversary – an option?  Discount my own existence entirely?  That’s a hiccup of epic proportions!  Maybe gays and I do have something in common…

Orthodoxy and non-natural selection

The orthodox do not practice natural selection.  So, it’s easy for them to prove that evolution is bunk.  Darwin didn’t prove a damned thing writing about the ‘best genes’ banging each other.  It’s survival of the fittest cultures, not genes!  Man has documented enough of his own history to prove it, too.  The traditions and culture passed on the next generation are more important than the existence of any one member of the culture.  As a consequence, ‘pedigree’ is the key criterion to successful breeding. 

Hindus and other orthodox groups have been running the equivalent of ‘breeding’ farms for millennia.  There are royalty running all over Europe trying not to bang each other!   Even in cultures where there was never a clear history of dynasty building, monarchies took off because people can’t resist titles like ‘King’ or ‘Prince’ or ‘Queen’.  Americans ruined it with our insistence that all men are created equal and, well, despite the Kennedy’s best efforts to create an American Camelot, it’s since gone to the dogs… [Kennel Club members, take notes: you may learn a thing or two.]

The right language, the right caste, the right astral signs, the right family, the right connections – all of these factors are taken into account when matches are made.  One only has to go to the India Times matrimonials website to document the tragedy of our post-modern existence.  Girls are described as ‘wheatish’ in tone.  Boys described as ‘fair-complected’ don’t remain posted for long.  ‘Caste no barrier’ is posted by those whose caste is the problem.  One would think from reading the India Times that modern India is becoming as deliciously infused with the vigor of cross-fertilization as the Latin America of the last 500 years but, alas, that is not the case.  People stick to what they know and are often blind to what they don’t know since their culturally-ingrained prejudices keep them from seeing what they don’t know.

‘Love’ marriages generally do not get the kind of extended familial support that ‘arranged’ marriages do, no matter how heinous the outcomes.  Unfortunately, two or more rights frequently end up making one BIG wrong (or cause a lot of in-breeding)!  For example, my father’s oldest sister was married at 13 or 14 to a sub-prime human being who came with all of the ‘right’ qualifications.  My father’s family rescued her from the typical physical violence aimed at new daughter-in-laws that had escalated to a drenching in gasoline.  It’s still not clear to me if she was trying to end her own existence or if her new ‘family’ was to blame.  She never divorced, but she never lived with her husband’s ‘family’ again.  She raised her daughter on her own and remains, to this day, a quite independent gal.

Doing what is right is not easy

I didn’t need convincing that my parents would treat my first-born differently if he were born out of wedlock – it was an easy concession that, surprisingly, came with medical and dental benefits.  My sister argues that gays should be legally allowed to be married.  I agree.  Marriage is a social contract.  It may even pre-date the religious sacraments since societies form to ensure that the current generation will be survived by a generation indoctrinated in its unique culture, traditions and customs.  Marriage is also a legally-binding contract, as evidenced by the numerous lawyers who traffic in divorce proceedings.  Gays are denied the legal protection marriage offers to the disposition of assets acquired during the marriage.  They are also denied the right to negotiate or defend custodial agreements, a volatile and particularly bruising aspect of divorce.

Congress loves the implicit social contract of marriage so much, they wrote it into law!  The Administration for Children and Families’ website has this to say about marriage and the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA):

When Congress enacted PRWORA and established the TANF program, States were given the authority to provide marriage support services as an acknowledgement that two-parent households are the most effective environment for raising children.

PRWORA was Bill ‘I did not have sex with that woman’ Clinton’s prized legacy!  It would have been delightful irony if Bill had been sued by a state attorney general for child support under PRWORA but – sigh – he read the bill before he signed it into law!  In retrospect, PRWORA was a slippery slope for liberals. As the saying goes, “Where a window closes, a door opens.”  A decade later, Congress is moving into our bedrooms with the backing of an administration that supports ‘orthodox’ beliefs about marriage.

Been there, done that

God’s not here to contradict those who claim to know his position on gays, straights and marriage, so there’s no way to put this whole thing on trial, like they did during the Scopes monkey trial.  It turns out that ‘playah haters’ existed then too!  Douglas Linder, in The Scopes Trial: An Introduction (2002), wrote:

The early 1920s found social patterns in chaos. Traditionalists, the older Victorians, worried that everything valuable was ending. Younger modernists no longer asked whether society would approve of their behavior, only whether their behavior met the approval of their intellect. Intellectual experimentation flourished. Americans danced to the sound of the Jazz Age, showed their contempt for alcoholic prohibition, debated abstract art and Freudian theories. In a response to the new social patterns set in motion by modernism, a wave of revivalism developed, becoming especially strong in the American South. 

Our orthodox don’t dress up in black wool or force their women to wear hijabs.  They don’t smear their foreheads with ashes once a year or envelope themselves in saffron-colored robes.  It’s hard to tell ‘them’ apart from ‘us’.  The orthodox can be found anywhere where biological diversity is consistently being stamped out of our gene pool.  They are the ones at the shallow end of the gene pool trying to control the evolution and growth of our species with short-term, narrow-minded purpose.  In the end, however the orthodox will lose because Darwin was absolutely correct:

In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment.