Leaving the Lifestyle, Baby!
The one trait that religious fundamentalists share, that I notice the most, is innumeracy. They have no sense of the size of numbers, or the place of numbers in the world, and it makes them look silly.
Their problem starts, of course, with numbers in the bible. Once upon a time, say 2500 years ago or so when the parables and myths in their infallible book were taking shape, large numbers were still a new idea (recall that zero was not to be invented for at least millennium yet) and, in fact, many of the large-number names that we use today, necessary for describing our nation's debt, for instance, hadn't been invented. For many cultures, counting was still at the one, two, three, many stage.
And thus it was that there are many references to numbers like forty thousand, a popular biblical number, which is a combination of "forty", a mystical number at the time, and "thousand", meaning really big. These numbers were not meant literally as counts of anything, of course, but that's confusing to a literalist.
Then there are the creationists who are convinced that the Earth was created in -4004 (forty hundred and a four is a pretty fabulous number, no?), which creates a bit of conflict with every known fact about the earth, the sun, and the rest of the universe. But their god has a sense of humor that way.
More recently there has been the growth industry in creating fabulous numbers for the time interval during which marriage–between a man and woman–has been traditional and unchanging. What started at a thousand years (does that sound precise, or does it sound more like "really big number" = "virtually forever"?), then it moved to two-thousand years, then over four-thousand years (i.e., late creation, the week before Adam & Eve who, however, don't actually seem to have been married). I've even heard ten-thousand years, but that's an embarrassing number for young-earth creationists since it's before the beginning of the world. One could be biblical and say forty-thousand years, but perhaps it's best just to go with "forever".
But, it should go without saying that, at least in this country, traditional marriage as it is practiced today is not the same as traditional marriage as it was practiced in, oh, 1965. Think Loving v. Virginia and remember that black people and white people were forbidden to marry. At the time, by the way, this was upheld as very, very biblical. Black people have been such a nuisance for fundamentalists.
And now, another fine example of fundamentalist innumeracy. Andy Towle reminded me of the case of one Crystal Dixon, formerly employed at the University of Toledo ("Fired UT HR Administrator Crystal Dixon Files Lawsuit", Towleroad, 3 December 2008). She was let go after she published an opinion piece (mandated by her god) in the Toledo Free Press badmouthing gay people. The University thought that she might not be unbiased in her job, VP of human resources.
Anyway, we're reminded that at the time she wrote the following:
As a Black woman … I take great umbrage at the notion that those choosing the homosexual lifestyle are civil rights victims. I cannot wake up tomorrow and not be a Black woman. Daily thousands of homosexuals make a life decision to leave the gay lifestyle.
Let's avoid for the moment the silly notion that gay people can simply click their heels three times, say "there's no lifestyle like the straight lifestyle", and "leave" it. (I'm sure this is just one of the twelve impossible things Ms. Dixon believes before breakfast every day.)
Instead, let's look at this latest in fundamentalist innumeracy. Consider the assertion that "Daily thousands of homosexuals make a life decision to leave the gay lifestyle." Woa! Thousands!! Hallelujah!!!
Just imagine, thousands "leaving the lifestyle" (I'm hearing them singing "I'm Leaving the Lifestyle, Baby!"), every single day. How many thousands? Let's be generous, allow for a bit of hyperbole, and imagine that it's just one thousand who leave, one measly, little, thousand. ("Forty thousand" would have been a much more symbolic number, of course.)
One thousand each day. Seven thousand each week. Thirty thousand each month. An amazing three-hundred-and-sixty-five thousand every year! (An extra thousand for leap years, except in 2000.)
That is so exciting. Especially since, with a population in the US of roughly 300,000,000, and a gay and lesbian population of perhaps 10,000,000 (let's be generous), we'd run out of homos in about 27 years and 5 months. So, if we reasonably imagine that this mass exodus from teh gay lifestyle began with the election of St. Regan–a most reasonable assumption, I'd say–we'd be running out of homos, oh, right about now.
Right now we'd be down to the last 40 homos or so (a very meaningful number, no?), who do seem to be kicking up quite a fuss, probably because they've only got another few hours left in the lifestyle. Things will be so much easier now: no more recruiting, which is so time-consuming.
Oops, must dash….
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I welcome comments -- even dissent -- but I will delete without notice irrelevant, rude, psychotic, or incomprehensible comments, particularly those that I deem homophobic, unless they are amusing. The same goes for commercial comments and trackbacks. Sorry, but it's my blog and my decisions are final.
on Thursday, 4 December 2008 at 04.27
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LOL, or as Reader's Digest puts it, laughter is the best medicine.
It really is jarring for educated, disciplined people to confront, even to have to contemplate, fellow human beings whose understanding of what constitutes fact is wholly — and as those folks would have it, holy — different.
Oh, I'm sure your average fundamentalist would be as irate as you and I if they were to discover the local gas station delivers only 9.5 gallons when the pump says 10. But as for the age of Earth, the earliest origin of human beings and a bunch of other things, the only facts most fundamentalists seem to believe necessary and valid are those in the Bible.
No surprise then that they have trouble processing the entirely logical notion that, in nature's scheme of things, the existence of heterosexuals makes inevitable the existence of homosexuals — that all creation ticks and hums not with dogmatic sameness, but rather with diversity.
on Thursday, 4 December 2008 at 14.25
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I am continually surprised at the non-biblical things fundamentalists have no trouble accepting — Blackberries, airplanes, the internet — versus the things they find to be so obviously satanic or worse: secular. My self-confidence in the correctness of my own points of view is usually buoyed by realizing that the church sometimes makes mistakes [!] but is slow about admitting so; witness Galileo and the 350 years that took for them to get right.
I have in my time heard lots and lots of "theories" (some silly, some sillier) for why evolution would "allow" or even "create" homosexuality, but I think you might have the simplest, most elegant explanation there, SW.