YOU LIVE INSIDE A BOTTLE AND PRETEND YOU'RE IN A CAN: John Schwenkler's post on "closeted Christians" in academia reminded me of a conversation I had with a young, conservative lesbian, just after my piece on ex-gay ministries was published at National Review Online.

She expressed surprised that NRO had wanted the piece; and I may be wrong, but I felt as though she was implying that she wouldn't've pitched it to them. Whereas my approach was basically, "Well, this might not work, but hey: I'll email K-Lo and see what she says." And Kathryn Lopez proved amazingly supportive, helping me when I had a hard time gaining access to the conference and sending me a follow-up email making clear that she really understood what I was trying to say with the piece. I took a chance on her.

I wonder how often we sit inside cages when the doors are wide open.

COME, MUSE, AND LET US SING OF RATS!: Movie reviews.

Actually, only two of these movies involve rats. But two is enough, don't you think?

The Rats: The Hulu description promises killer rats at Christmas! That would've been awesome.

In fact, the Christmas element is virtually absent. I have no idea why it was even introduced. Why not rats in Christmas trees, rats attacking Santa, rats in church? Gremlins did much better with this movie's attempted anti-consumerist theme (although Gremlins also cast that anti-consumerism in Pat Buchanan xenophobic terms, so hey, what you lose on the dogs you gain on the ponies).

Nonetheless, this is an '80s horror movie about killer rats in New York City which does not analogize street criminals and vermin. For this lack of creepy, bourgeois good-people dehumanization alone, it is to be commended.

It's also kind of hilariously delicious.

If you only want one killer-rat movie, I'll still recommend the Willard remake (haven't seen the original yet). But it turns out that I want multiple killer-rat movies; and this one is serviceable.

Welcome to the Dollhouse: Okay, I really hated this. But it's entirely possible that I missed the point, so I welcome arguments in my email inbox.

My main problem is that its genre- and tone-shifting didn't work for me. It felt as though it just switched randomly from genre to genre, rather than genuinely combining genres. In the terms of this post, it was Harry Potter, not Veronica Mars.

I was in the market for an intensely painful satire of high-school hell. Maybe some kind of combination of Heathers, Cruel Intentions, and Donnie Darko--the Grand Guignol of bullying, something which would make the audience complicit, or else maybe make the realistic portrayals of bullying seem just as absurd and degrading as the fluorescent, lamb-dressed-as-mutton-dressed-as-lamb fashions. Maybe something like this article translated to Suburbian.

Some scenes really did that. Dawn's costumes; her locker; the bathroom scene. But then you have the idiotic "Lisa Simpson bonds with Nelson Muntz, after he threatens to rape her" scene; and the kidnaping plotline, the reason for which I cannot fathom.

If other people get it, get how this movie hangs together and does something not merely groundbreaking (because I could probably buy that) but artistically great... email me, for real, because I did feel like I was missing something. Were my expectations wrong, or too specific? Did I miss the point of the kidnaping thing? I've been wrong in my first impression of movies before. But I genuinely didn't get this.

Arachnophobia: Heh, this was fine. Bog standard '80s spider horror; does what it says on the tin. Nice "city vs. country" storyline, in which although the city wins, there isn't any sense of contempt. Overall the story handles lightly a lot of elements which could become really heavyhanded, e.g. gender role reversal (the husband needs the wife to kill spiders), or "never ever ever move away from where you live, or travel anywhere else."

It may not affect others this way, but I definitely found myself a bit freaked out by shadows and similar possibly-spiders! after watching this.

Graveyard Shift: Based on the Stephen King short story, which is better. Creepy mill is creepy; filled with rats; needs to be cleaned; cleaners discover horrific Rat Queen hiding in basement. I had fun with this, because I love "out of the past"/coverup/creepy old building stories, but it's really Session 9 without the good parts.

And wow, the Rat Queen is risible. Sorry, Rattus!

You can kind of tell my problem with the movie when I say that there's a scene where someone discovers all the old mill files which have been relegated to the basement--and all I wanted was for us to get a look at the horrors hidden in those files. Those files are Annie Wilkes's "Memory Lane" book; they're Jack Torrance's memories of the speech-and-debate tournament from The Shining; they're Jame Gumb's basement with the uneven floors.

We don't ever get to see what's in them.

Anyway, the close-credits song is hilarious--different lines from the movie remixed to a dance beat! Listen to it here (with the end of the movie, so spoilerous). Best part of the movie by far.

The heavens are telling the glory of God;
and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.
Day to day pours forth speech,
and night to night declares knowledge.
There is no speech, nor are there words;
their voice is not heard;
yet their voice goes out through the earth,
and their words to the end of the world.
--Ps. 19:1-4

LET'S YOU AND HIM FIGHT. So apparently there's this kerfuffle in the American Philosophical Association about whether schools which require their faculty to abstain from gay sex should be allowed to advertise in the APA's job listings.

There's a petition, and a counterpetition, and my name came up in comments on the latter, because apparently I've been weaponized now? I tried to post this at Brian Leiter's site, but the comment wasn't accepted--not sure if it's in moderation, or if it's too long (for which I apologize!), or if this is just some computery glitch, but just in case, I'm reposting it here.

It's nothing new if you read this site regularly, but I figured I'd post it in case people are still finding me by Googling for stuff about this issue--if that's how you got here, I suggest checking out my sidebar under "Sicut cervus: Resources on God and homosexuality," and/or the "Gay Catholic Whatnot" and "romoeroticism" tags.... I promise to have some more interesting stuff up Saturday, inc. possibly some Gay-Catholic-Whatnot for those who can't get enough of that wonderful Duff. Plus reviews of movies about rats.
-----------

Well, now I know why so many people have been coming to my site by Googling "Eve Tushnet and John Heard"....

I feel as though I have been pushed into the middle of someone else's fight--I don't think the best model of a Catholic university is one in which all faculty must pledge to profess and follow the Catholic faith--but... fine. My take on some of the issues involved in this question.

1. Some of the arguments in the counterpetition are quite silly. ("Many of the greatest..." etc.)

2. But y'all are really arguing that "You cannot make sense of someone's sexual orientation apart from the acts that embody and constitute that identity"? Really? (This from the movement that claims Cardinal Newman was gay?--sorry, cheap shot.)

Many, many "gay people"/"people with same-sex desires"/(your term here) have chosen celibacy, for a variety of reasons, not all of which have anything to do with religion. Gay people choose celibacy as a form of fidelity to a deceased beloved. They choose celibacy because they're bitter about their experiences in a gay community (my guess is that Djuna Barnes, for example, might fit this one). And of course they (we) choose it as a form of fidelity to Christ. You can judge some of these reasons as much better than others--bitterness is something I'd try to alleviate, not recommend--but they don't make the people involved any less gay. "Between the emotion/and the act/falls the shadow," as TS Eliot didn't say....

(You're really telling me I'm... what? Straight? Nothing neither way? Romoerotic?)

I don't think this analogy works:

Though if the counter-petition's argument is that one is capable of discriminating only against those that act upon their orientation while not against the broader category of those that have that particular orientation, then it seems to me that it is legitimate to hire a person who have an orientation towards a particular religious faith on the proviso they don't act on that faith (e.g. attending services, partaking in Communion etc.)

If you're Catholic, for example, there are lots of things you're supposed to do. (Those things really are intrinsic to being Catholic.) Are gay people supposed to have sex? Is sex the vocation of the lesbian, as witness is the vocation of the Christian?

Now, you could argue that the vocation of the lesbian can be expressed in lots of different ways, including some forms of celibacy, but religiously-motivated celibacy cannot be among them. I am not sure why the APA should endorse this viewpoint.

Anyway, at least the religion analogy is much better than the race analogy; I'm not sure what I could possibly say to someone who thinks I'm analogous to a black girl bleaching her skin in an attempt to become white.

4. Finally, I understand why people want to marginalize and stigmatize religions which bar homosexual acts. But do acknowledge that that's what you're asking the APA to do.

Ahhhh, this is too long. I'm sorry.

Yeah well, happy Lent to me, I guess. I had to cut a lot of stuff from that, including my defense of Catholic universities hiring all manner of religious flotsam and moral jetsam--God and Man at Yale is wrong, y'all, and The Closing of the American Mind is right--but rest assured I know that sots and lechers and even Presbyterians can be good teachers....

YOUR AMAZINGLY AWESOME THING OF THE DAY. Via Mark Shea among many others.

UH... OOPS. Reader Dr. Weevil pointed out that I really made no sense in my earlier call for DC-area Catholic school alumni. Who I am actually looking for:

DC-area alumni of DC-area Catholic schools.

In other words: You live nearish here now, and you went to school nearish here.

The other criteria in that post still apply (LGBT/same-sex-attracted alumni especially encouraged; I don't care what you think about gay stuff; if your Catholic education was elementary, middle, or high school, that is most awesome, but college might also work).

Sorry for ambiguity, and please do email and/or spread the word!

I HOPE YOU KNOW THAT THIS WILL GO DOWN ON YOUR PERMANENT RECORD: Hey, are any of you guys alumni of DC-area Catholic schools (esp. elementary and HS, but I think college might also work) and living in the DC metro area? If so, can you email me? LGBT/same-sex-attracted alumni are especially encouraged (regardless of your current religious/moral beliefs), but believe me, you can definitely still help me even if you're straighter than Anna Karenina.

Also, if people in the area wanted to put this notice on their blogs, that would be great. My email is eve_tushnet@yahoo.com.

Thanks. Once this project is further along I'll post more about it, but for now, just shoot me a quick email and I'll give you the scoop.

EDITED to clarify that I'm looking for DC-area alumni of DC-area Catholic schools.

TODAY ON MARRIAGEDEBATE: More discussion of possible compromises on gay marriage; the most convincing take I've seen so far on how Proposition 8 passed; arguments that "gay marriage put an end to gay sex" and that "the right's baby love is undermining conservatism"... and more.

I'm going to stop doing these, really, but I want you guys to see that I'm getting new, provocative content up there every day.

THERE GOES MY WEEKEND! Audio recordings of Allan Bloom lecturing on Nietzsche, and (now with cool pix!) Plato.

Awesome, all-too-awesome.

PROFILE OF NEW PRESIDENT OF THE NAACP INCLUDES THESE BITS:

...Only a few years out of college, Jealous quickly climbed the ranks of the nonprofit world. In 2005, he was named president of the Los Angeles–based Rosenberg Foundation, which grants money to groups working in low-income communities. Jealous whipped the foundation into fiscal and managerial shape and directed its money toward an emerging method of dealing with mass incarceration: re-entry programs that help former inmates readjust to society and find work. Jealous plans to prioritize these issues as president of the NAACP. "A hundred years from now we're going to be judged by our grandchildren," he says. "They're going to look back, and they're going to say, this country had the most incarcerated on Earth. Young black people were the most incarcerated in modern history. What did you do about it?" ...

For Jealous, mass incarceration is the civil-rights challenge of this generation. Addressing it, he says, requires more than just changing draconian drug laws; it also requires confronting poverty and a failing public-education system. Young black folks, particularly the urban poor who most need an organization like the NAACP to look out for them, are facing problems of violence, drugs, AIDS, and unequal education. ...

Jealous must figure out how to hold Obama accountable without drawing "the hate." Melissa Harris-Lacewell, a professor of politics and African American studies at Princeton, is optimistic. The NAACP "could become the authentic supportive and yet challenging voice to the Obama administration," she says.

This is the role Jealous envisions. "It would be disrespectful not to criticize [Obama]," he says. "If we don't let the brother know when he's not living up to people's expectations, he's only going to be there four years."

more

(via Jack and Jill Politics)

DAY JOB: There is just a cornucopia of links up at MarriageDebate today, people. First up we have the NY Times piece co-penned by David Blankenhorn and Jonathan Rauch, "A Reconciliation on Gay Marriage." Then I have trawled the vast reaches of the interwebs to bring you this round-up of reactions to the piece. If you have seen others you think I should include, please email me at eve_tushnet@yahoo.com!

If you scroll past all that, you'll find scads of other fascinating links, on subjects from religious liberty to the story of a transgendered sorority brother. I also have a bunch of great links on deck for posting tomorrow--and, in general, I hope to do better about posting every day.

I am not being paid to tell you this (although I do work part-time for iMAPP), but I figured a lot of my readers would be interested in these topics. Go read!

"WHAT IS HOLY SEX? WHO NEEDS CHRISTIAN FRIENDSHIP?": Check out this Dreadnought discussion, & help him shape his upcoming talk at the University of Sydney....

VICTOR MORTON VS. THE OSCARS.

The entire life of a good Christian is in fact an exercise of holy desire. You do not yet see what you long for, but the very act of desiring prepares you, so that when he comes you may see and be utterly satisfied.
--St. Augustine, via

CUPID AND PSYCHO: I'm sure someone could come up with a lot of really annoying psychoanalysis of me based on the particular points at which I shift from being incredibly attracted to Bernadette Peters's witch to identifying intensely with her and back again. I'm just right--can't they see?!

I SHOULD BE DRINKING A TOAST TO ABSENT FRIENDS/INSTEAD OF THESE COMEDIANS. The inimitable Abhay Khosla on Scott Pilgrim.

IN MY HEAD, I'M ON MY KNEES: I review Catholic and Feminist: The Surprising History of the American Catholic Feminist Movement in the latest First Things. Subscribers-only for now.

Keep in mind that when I make a statement, I'm standing behind that statement; but when I suggest, or question, it's because I think my questions are a better way to approach the complex truth than any partial or provincial comment I could make.

The cross, therefore, is always ready; it awaits you everywhere. No matter where you may go, you cannot escape it, for wherever you go you take yourself with you and shall always find yourself.
--The Imitation of Christ

ALIAS LOVE: I make myself ridiculous all over the prospect of more Bendis/Gaydos Jessica Jones complete awesomeness.

SHAMED CULTURE: Shamed Dogan (rhymes with "Club Med") is back online!