My Life

It has for some time now been my opinion that the day will come when the LDS church will accept homosexual people in full fellowship into its ranks.  And I don't mean in the second-class citizen way that they currently accept gay people.  At the moment, gay people are welcome to be members of the church, but are asked to either remain single and celibate or to marry someone of the opposite sex, despite their orientation.  I mean to say that I believe that the day will come when the LDS church will allow gay people to marry (someone of the same sex) within the church, and be equal in every other way to heterosexual members.   Why do I believe that?  Because of the way that leaders and members of the LDS church spoke about black people and interracial marriages prior to the "revelation" in 1978 that black people should be allowed to have the priesthood.   The following is a quote from a letter written by the First Presidency of the LDS church on July 17, ...

It's one of those things that always happens to "someone else".  It'll never happen to me.  And yet, it did.  It happened.  It sounds like something you'd read in a tabloid or something you'd watch on a hyperbolic sitcom.  But it happened to us.  The house burned down and the dogs died. I was young and ambitious when I bought the house.  More specifically, my wife was ambitious and her ambition rubbed off on me.  We bought the house with grand ideas of flipping it.  We knew there were things wrong with it.  The deck needed to be replaced and the windows needed to be replaced.  We wanted to refinish the hardwood floors and renovate the bathroom and kitchen. It was fun.  We chased away opossums .  We renovated the bathroom  and the kitchen.   It was great.  But then we started noticing other problems.  The basement leaked.  The roof leaked.  The water heater broke.  The air conditioner ...

I've been thinking a lot lately about faith.  Many anti-theists talk about how faith is such a bad thing.  I think that I would like to make a distinction between faith and dogma.  For the purpose of this post, I will stick to rather simple definitions.  I'm sure many theists and atheists alike will disagree on the definition, but these are those that I'm using.  "Faith" will mean "belief in something without evidence".  "Dogma" will mean "a principle which is accepted as incontrovertibly true". To me, faith is not in itself a dangerous thing.  It may often be silly.  However, it is often times relatively harmless.  It is harmful when it leads to dogma, or dogmatic thinking.  But just believing in something without knowing proof of it really isn't that harmful.  In the loosest interpretation of the word, I have faith in many things.  I have faith in medicine.  I have not taken the time to put in my due diligence to learn...

There are a lot of misconceptions about diabetes, and a lot of ignorance and misinformation.  Some people are unaware that there are two types of diabetes.  Some people are unaware of what the differences are between the two types. Type I diabetes is when the pancreas does not produce enough insulin to lower glucose levels in the blood.  This is typically a condition that a person is born with that is triggered by some illness or event.  It is an auto-immune illness.  Anyone who has this condition cannot be blamed for it.  Nothing that they did caused them to have it.  It is purely genetics. Type II diabetes is when the pancreas produces insulin but the muscle and fat cells in the body have become resistant to it, so that the insulin no longer does the job that it is supposed to do in the body.  This is also genetic, but not purely genetic.  Certain people are predisposed to getting this type of diabetes because of their genes.  Howe...

It's been a long and difficult process, but I think that at this point, I've weeded out most of the toxic people in my life, or they've weeded themselves out.  I've lost a lot of friends during the last three years.  And it has hurt a lot.  I hate saying goodbye to friends.  There are many people that I was rather attached to that are no longer a part of my life.  Some walked out of my life, and some I shut out of my life.  Just as treating a wound can be painful, so too can be the process of eliminating unpleasant people from one's life. But the thing is, I am much happier now.  I don't have the angst and conflict that I had when I first came out.  I don't have the constant arguments, trying to get people to understand that I'm still the same person.  I don't have to explain how being gay is different from contracting HIV.  The people who are in my life now accept me and love me, and I love and accept them.  I have many many new ...

I think I'm a very amicable person and I like having fun with friends.  I'll sometimes do things that I don't personally enjoy just because I'm with friends who enjoy it.  For example, when I went to gay pride for the first time back in 2011, I met some friends there and they wanted to go to the bar for the after party.  I didn't want to go, but I wanted to be with them, so I went.  I think that it's important to have some degree of acquiescence when socializing with others.  If you're overly rigid with the types of activities that you will or won't do, it may be hard to find friends to hang out with. But, I've come to realize that sometimes I am too acquiescent and do things that I simply don't enjoy, or that even feel completely disingenuous to me, just because I want to spend time with certain people who enjoy doing those things. So, now I'll stop being vague and get to what I'm talking about.  Last night I went to two different cl...

So, a while back I blogged about escalation , and how one of the causes of escalation is often that each party in a disagreement feels that the other is not listening or does not understand.  Recent events in my life have helped me understand more about the power of listening. There are certain hymns that have always been very dear to me, and have struck a chord with my heart.  I will quote them here. I would be my brother's keeper, I would learn the healer's art. To the wounded and the weary I would show a gentle heart (from " Lord I Would Follow Thee ") Fill my mind with understanding; Tune my voice to echo thine. Touch my hand with gentle friendship; Warm my heart with love divine. (from " Help Me Teach with Inspiration ")  I have a healer's heart.  I love seeing people make up, become friends, overcome obstacles, heal from wounds.  I love taking care of people while they are convalescing.  I hate being around when people fight.  I hate f...