My husband and I watched our nephew play with the Tyresö Royal Crowns against Limhamn Griffins this afternoon. American football has a limited audience in Sweden, but the few who like the sport are true enthusiasts.

(Via Bögjävlar.)

A few days ago, an Indian woman accused of witchcraft was beaten, gagged, and burned to death:

The woman was dragged out of her home, her hands and legs tied and taken to a crematorium where she was set on fire in front of the village which ignored her screams for help.

The incident took place in a tribal village in Orissa and occurred last week, but came to light on Thursday with the arrest of three villagers.

The victim was murdered by the husband and relatives of a neighbour whose death was blamed on her witchcraft.

Pretentious left-wing actress Susan Sarandon says if John McCain gets elected, she will move to Italy or Canada.

I bet the Republicans are trembling.

The rainbow flag in front of RFSL Rådgivningen’s office in Malmö.

Gay marriage to begin in California on 17 June, the Associated Press reports.

New York will recognize same-sex unions from elsewhere, writes the New York Times.

The blogging has been slow the past few days. There are two reasons for that. Firstly, I underwent surgery about a week ago and the swelling and sutures are driving me mad. Secondly, I have been busy finishing an essay on homophobia I presented at Lund University yesterday. I’m pleased with the result, and so are my professors who gave me a very good grade. I feel quite good about myself today.

Last night, a regular reader sent me a link to a Wikipedia article on elephant homosexuality. I quote it here:

African as well as Asiatic males will engage in same-sex bonding and mounting. Such encounters are often associated with affectionate interactions, such as kissing, trunk intertwining, and placing trunks in each other’s mouths. The encounters are analogous to heterosexual bouts, one male often extending his trunk along the other’s back and pushing forward with his tusks to signify his intention to mount. Unlike heterosexual relations, which are always of a fleeting nature, those between males result in a “companionship”, consisting of an older individual and one or two younger, attendant males. Same-sex relations are common and frequent in both sexes, with Asiatic elephants in captivity devoting roughly 45% of sexual encounters to same-sex activity.

Homosexuality is common among all mammals and most other species as well. Animal culture is not restricted by religious ethics and ridiculous traditions. Homophobia is a distinct human phenomenon.

I think this is truly amazing:

A NASA spacecraft plunged into the atmosphere of Mars and successfully landed in the Red Planet’s northern polar region on Sunday, where it will begin 90 days of digging in the permafrost to look for evidence of the building blocks of life.

Less than two hours later, the Phoenix Mars Lander beamed back four dozen black-and-white images including one of its foot sitting on Martian soil amid tiny rocks. Others included the horizon of the arctic plain and ground with polygon patterns similar to what can be found in Earth’s permafrost regions.

More here.

After the Supreme Court in California ruled the ban on gay marriage unconstitutional, homophobic groups are demanding a state referendum in November. This echoes what happened in many states after a similar ruling in Massachusetts in 2004. However, things are rapidly changing in gay America as same-sex couples no longer live in hiding. And this is troubling news for homophobic conservatives, whose propaganda demands a depraved “gay lifestyle”. With more gay families living openly in conservative homeland, stigmatization becomes more difficult.

From an article in this week’s The Economist:

Across America same-sex couples are becoming more ordinary. Their numbers are growing most rapidly outside traditional magnets like California, New York and Vermont (see map). One of the steepest increases has been in Utah, probably America's most conservative state. Indeed, of the 34 states with above-average increases in the number of gay couples, 21 voted for Mr Bush in 2004. This does not mean there has been a sudden outbreak of homosexuality in conservative states; rather, it means gay couples in such areas are swiftly becoming more open about their relationships. That alters the politics of gay marriage.

I almost feel sorry for the conservative Christians. What will they do when the queer aren’t that queer anymore?

On 30 April, I wrote about a monument commemorating the gay victims of Nazi Germany being planned for Berlin. I just learned that it will be unveiled on Tuesday.

In ancient Greece, beauty was highly esteemed. The ideal man was young, tall, and athletic and had a bronzed skin. Naked he was most beautiful. It’s therefore no surprise that athletes were often praised as the most beautiful people. I think the Olympic Games ought to go back to this appreciation of human beauty and nudity.

Tomorrow is Memorial Day and America remembers its fallen war heroes. Meanwhile, John McCain is throwing a party. Bon appétit!

Tor Billgren, one of my favourite bloggers, has written an article about anti-gay rhetoric for Swedish daily Sydsvenska Dagbladet. Read it here.

Only 19 kilometres separate Malmö from Copenhagen, but the differences between the two cities and countries are sometimes bigger than you might think at first. Alannah Eames has written a spot-on article about what really separates Sweden from Denmark.

A cute guy makes the argument.

People have been fascinated by human nakedness since the dawn of humanity. Here’s Antonio del Pollaiolo’s Battle of Ten Naked Men from 1465.

Johnathan Pearce is angry after British police tried to prevent people from criticising Scientology:

Any attempt to censor criticism of belief systems is an outrage. So long as the critics do not try to violate the lives and property of the people they are criticisng, the law should stay well out of it.

I agree.

From Sydney Morning Herald:

Despite being fully booked by naturists wanting to take off and strip off, a German travel company says it has decided to scrap a special nude flight that had been scheduled for this summer.

The July 5 flight was due to be the first of many and was aimed at east Germans nostalgic for the naturism that was authorised and extremely popular under communist rule.

But OssiUrlaub.de, the firm organising the service to a picturesque Baltic Sea island, said it has had second thoughts after “moral objections” in the media and from visitors to its Internet portal, a spokesman said.

I think nude flights are an excellent idea. The nudists should take no notice of people with moral objections. Personally, I would welcome more nakedness.

I know many friends of Israel and Middle East democracy have doubts about Barack Obama. It’s true he expressed some worrying ideas a few years ago, but after Jeffery Goldberg’s Obama interview, I’m sure the fears are ungrounded.

I came to think about this as I just read an article on the issue in Jerusalem Post. It’s written by Salomin Kalach, a “long-time pro-Israel activist”, and I think it’s well worth reading. Obama is no threat.

“A man has been detained after attempting to bring highly explosive material into a nuclear power plant in southern Sweden on Wednesday morning,” The Local reports.

Friends of nuclear power always tell be that it’s so safe and environmentally sound. They are wrong on both accounts. Nuclear power if safe only as long as there are no accidents or sabotage. But when something goes wrong, it’s disastrous.

An invention worthy of a Nobel Prize:

Two Belgian beer fans have launched a video game named Place to Pee, which allows players to fly down ski slopes or kill aliens while relieving themselves at urinals.

Who would have thought Bart Simpson was a conformist? Personally, I question everybody and everything. I figure that is what separates libertarians from mainstream liberals in contemporary politics.

I’m sitting here waiting for the result from the Democratic primaries in Kentucky and Oregon. Hillary Clinton seems to be the clear winner in Kentucky, but no results from Oregon are in yet. In any case, Clinton’s win tonight doesn’t move her any closer to the White House. Barack Obama is still way ahead of her in the delegate count.

By the end of June, Sweden’s state-run pharmacy will begin to sell dildos and sex toys. Many ridicule the company for doing this, but I think it’s a great idea.

During its upcoming EU presidency, the French government will urge the United Nations to pressure countries to abolish bans on homosexuality.

It won’t result in anything, as the UN is more concerned about toady to religious bigots than to promote human rights. But it’s a nice gesture nonetheless.

A new study shows that many American biology teachers take fiction for science:

One in eight U.S. high school teachers presents creationism as a valid alternative to evolution, says a poll published in the Public Library of Science Biology.

Of more than 900 teachers who responded to a poll conducted by Penn State University political scientist Michael Berkman and colleagues, 32 percent agreed that creationism and intelligent design should be taught as scientifically unsound. Forty percent said such explanations are religiously valid but inappropriate for science class.

However, 25 percent said they devoted classroom time to creationism or intelligent design. Of these, about one-half—12 percent of all teachers—called creationism a “valid scientific alternative to Darwinian explanations for the origin of species,” and the same number said that “many reputable scientists view these as valid alternatives to Darwinian theory.”

(Seen in the picture is the fresco Fall and Expulsion of Adam and Eve by Michelangelo.)

Gambian President Yahya Jammeh wants to decapitate gay people:

Addressing supporters at the end of his meet the farmers tour here Sunday, Jammeh also ordered any hotel or motel housing homosexuals to close down, adding that owners of such facilities would also be in trouble.

He said the Gambia was a country of believers, indicating that no sinful and immoral act as homosexual would be tolerated in the country.

He warned all homosexuals in the country to leave, noting that a legislation “stricter than those in Iran” concerning the vice would be introduced soon.

(Via Niclas Berggren.)

In a short essay entitled How to Cure a Fanatic, the Israeli writer Amos Oz says that the seeds of fanaticism are uncompromising righteousness. Fanatics, Oz writes, are often sentimental and motivated by a willingness to do good. The problem is that they are unable to take in their opponent’s arguments and find it hard to cope with human shortcomings. Oz borrows an example from his colleague, the novelist Sammy Michael.

Michael sat in a taxi and listened to the driver who spoke about the need to eliminate all Arabs in Israel. He asked the driver who would kill the Arabs. The driver answered that the Israeli Jews should split the Arabs among them and each kill his or her quota. Michael then asked if the driver would be able to kill an Arab infant if assigned to. The driver was quiet for a while and then complained about Michael’s cruelty.

This story says a lot about the nature of the fanatic. Oz makes the observation that many fundamentalists are also great sentimentalists. I think he is right. Uncompromising people are emotional and quite often weak in character.

When I studied political theory a few years ago, I read about many of the most horrific tyrants. I learned that despite ordering the killings of thousands of innocent people, dictators like Hitler and Pol Pot shared a sentimental side. While some of the most horrendous genocides went on, these men spent days worrying and sobbing over wounded pets and injured friends. I realized that evil is not primarily about rage and hatred, it is about angst and insecurity.

According to Amos Oz, righteousness is the seed to fanaticism. It is what makes it grow. However, the inner core of fanaticism is the desire to force change upon others. Step one is to know you are right. Step two is to make everyone act accordingly.

It is a mistake to think that the fanatic is a selfish person. A selfish person does not spend time and energy on helping others if it does not benefit him. No, the fanatic is an altruist who forces people to obedience because he cares about others. And because he knows what is right, he sees it as his duty to pass this knowledge on. This is why Osama bin Laden wants to change the world by force. It is true that he hates democracy, individual liberty, and the western lifestyle, but only because he knows that everything would be so much better for everybody if the world turned to his very rigid interpretation of Islam.

Amos Oz has a twofold cure for fanaticism. It is so simple that I took it for a joke when I first read it. Thinking about is some more changed my mind. The cure is imagination and humour.

I think Amos Oz’s prescription for curing fanaticism resembles the British philosopher Richard Hare’s so-called prescriptivism, which says that parties in a conflict must imagine what it is like being the opponent before making a judgement on what is right. Oz does not mention moral philosophy, but he wants the fanatics to use their imagination when considering the implication of their firm beliefs. Like the taxi driver, people who advocate brutal and drastic measures against others need to think of the consequences.

The second part of Oz’s cure is perhaps easier in theory. Humour works miracles. I write “in theory” because I know humour is very difficult indeed. In some countries, ironic remarks are commonplace. In other countries, irony is simply not working and people get offended. I know this from working in an international environment where tiny cultural differences could cause annoyance and mistrust.

However, few things put an idea in perspective better than the ability to laugh about it.

The most tedious aspect of the debate on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is its dualistic nature. People feel a need to either pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian, or the other way around. Therefore, it is liberating to read Oz’s essay Between Right and Right in which he suggest we all should recognize that both Jews and Palestinians are right in this conflict. Amos Oz advises us to focus on finding a peaceful solution. Everybody will be hurt, but the end result must be two states living side by side. Palestinian refugees must be allowed to return to a country of their own, and Jews everywhere must be able to call Israel their home.

Another thing I find interesting in Between Right and Right is the remarks on Europe. I sense bitterness towards Europe when Oz writes that the Middle East may have severe problems now but that it will not take the region a millennium of war to agree on a common currency.

Amos Oz’s two essays are well worth reading. He does not duck out of the difficult questions, and yet he refuses to give up his optimism. It is a rare combination these days.

I have spent the past three days with a small group of gay men at a safe-sex workshop in Höör, a rural community about 50 kilometres from Malmö. We stayed in large boarding house with a beautiful garden and picturesque surroundings. I share some of the pictures I took.

When conservative Americans say that same-sex marriage is a threat to traditional values, I think it’s fair to say that they echo the debate about interracial marriage fifty years ago. In 1948, ninety-four per cent (94%) of white Americans opposed a reform that would allow people of different colour to marry. Those who complain about yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling in California and call it “judicial activism” should be reminded of the fact that it was the court system that legalized interracial marriage in 1967.

It is harsh, but the title is the only clever thing about Charles Kimball’s book When Religion Becomes Evil. It is unfortunate, because the subject is too important to be handled so carelessly. There is no doubt in my mind that Kimball sincerely wants to examine and discuss what it is about religion that makes it vulnerable to evil interpretation, but what makes his noble aspiration a failure is his apologetic approach. Kimball, like so many apologists before him, is unable to acknowledge that to really fight back the evil in religion we must declare some religious “truths” invalid. When, for example, Christians say that believing Jesus is the Messiah is the only way for people to make atonement, they would either contradict themselves or act unchristian if they did not try to persuade others to believe in Jesus. Either way, they would rightfully be accused of not taking their own faith seriously.

In order to avoid nasty confrontations with any other religion, Christians must be open to the possibility that they are wrong, that people might actually do quite well without Jesus. But that would be a heretical act for a sincere Christian.

In the book, Charles Kimball lists five—in my view obvious—warning signs of corruption in a religion:

1. Absolute truth claims
2. Blind obedience
3. Establishing the “ideal” time
4. The end justifies any means
5. Declaring holy war

Although I feel that his reflections on each of these five warning signs are superficial, I recognize that they are worth examining. Like Kimball, I think it is important to try to find healthy alternatives to these warning signs. Religion plays in important part in many people’s lives, and that makes its dangers everybody’s concern.

I think it is self-evident that religions make claims of absolute truth. At least this is the case with the mainstream traditions. Religious humanism is a fairly new phenomenon, and to my knowledge only recognized in the Jewish community as a way for Jews to maintain their identity while rejecting the covenant between God and Abraham.

Kimball does not deny that every religion claims to hold the truths about divinity. However, he stresses that there is no need to universalize these claims. A moderate and critical approach to truth is possible.

At first, I thought this seemed like a nice enough idea, but after reflecting on what it meant, I found it illogical. It goes against the whole idea of truth-value. When Christians say that “Jesus is God”, they make an assertion that is either true or false; but when relativists claim that “Jesus is God to some people sometimes”, they only make the observation that people have different opinions about Jesus. Nothing is said about Jesus’s divine status. In other words, this solution to the problem of absolute truth claims is not sound. You cannot give an alternative answer to a questing by replacing the question.

It is easy to agree with Kimball when he warns of selective and uncritical reading of sacred texts. This, I think, is the most common cause for tension. Tiny differences in interpretation have often led to dramatic conflicts within religious societies. The fact that most people read the Bible in translation does not make it easier to agree on what is the one true understanding of a certain paragraph. It is no wonder holy texts are read in so many ways considering the imperfect translations, the time that has passed since the texts were written, and that the cultural context is completely different. Kimball suggests we should be aware when someone demands his or her understanding of a sacred text should be considered an absolute truth. I second that.

This leads us to the next warning sign, which is religious leaders demanding blind obedience from their followers. In the book, Kimball makes an interesting comparison between well-known charismatic leaders to prove his thesis that such leadership can serve both good and evil purposes. The good is represented by the freedom fighters Mahatma Ghandi and Martin Luther King. The bad is represented by the doomsday cult leaders Jim Jones and Shoko Asahara.

Kimball wants to illustrate that charismatic leadership is not a threat in itself, but rather that it becomes evil when it demands blind obedience. Neither Ghandi nor King requested obedience from their followers. On the contrary, they appreciated individual liberty and intellectual freedom. To be free meant to be able to question authority, and that was what their movements were about.

Unlike the sects of Jim Jones and Shoko Asahara, Ghandi and King did not seek solitude and isolation from the wider community. Instead, they sought to be active members of society, which meant that anyone—friend or enemy—was able to scrutinize their work. The teachings and inner life of reclusive sects as Jones’s Peoples Temple and Asahara’s Aum Shinrikyo were unknown to the general public until the day they decided to carry out their destructive plans. To the Peoples Temple, it meant collective suicide; to the Aum Shinrikyo, it meant releasing a toxic nerve agent in the Tokyo Underground.

The differences between the two types of charismatic leadership ought to be obvious to anyone. Had the members of the two destructive sects been encouraged to challenge and question their leaders, the outcome might have been different. And had the outside world been allowed insight, the devastating acts might have been avoided. Kimball is right; the danger is blind obedience, not charismatic leadership.

In a paragraph, Kimball writes that promises of a better tomorrow are fundamental to all the major religions. Our time is incomplete, and various religions offer different explanations to why it is so. Some say we must seek to copy the society of a particular epoch in the past when the world was perfect; others say we have to strive to comply with a divine plan that will make the future perfect. In many religions, worldly imperfection are linked to human behaviour. However, I would argue that utopian visions are dangerous whether they are religious or not. Utopianism is always, in itself, a warning sign.

Marxism is perhaps the most obvious example of a secular ideology that promises a utopian future. And like its religious equivalents, Marxism says that human nature is the major obstacle. Where Christianity blames sexual desires and secularism, Marxism blames greed, selfishness, and entrepreneurship. The world would be perfect had only humans been less human.

Kimball discusses a few examples of dangerous utopianism in his book. To a reader with some knowledge of current affairs and religion, his examples are predictable. It is the Jewish extremists who wanted to rid the Temple Mount in Jerusalem of the al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock; it is the al-Qaeda hijackers who crashed aeroplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 11 September 2001; and it is the conservative Christians in America who want to rid the state of secular influence. All of these groups act on the idea that the ideal time will materialize if only they destroy certain obstacles.

Kimball offers democracy as a healthy alternative to this narrow-minded fundamentalism. I am not sure this is a sufficient answer to the problem since most people with these convictions tend to regard worldly law as subordinate to divine law. Democracy may be an answer in matters not covered by the Holy Scriptures, but I think it is naïve to think that Christian extremists in America (or any other extremists) will ever accept the majority decision on something as sensitive and controversial as free abortion.

When I read the chapter about this warning sign, I could not stop thinking about Immanuel Kant. One of the truly agreeable parts of his moral philosophy is the so-called Second Formulation of the Categorical Imperative, which states that human beings “must be treated never as a mere means but as the supreme limiting condition in the use of all means, i.e., as an end at the same time.” (From Lewis White Beck’s translation of Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals.)

Like Kant, Kimball rejects the idea that any measures are allowed to realize a goal. He exemplifies his position through a number of historic events, such as the rampage violence between Muslims and Hindus in India and the mass killing of Jewish settler Baruch Goldstein. These examples show the danger posed by religion when it makes a single component unimpeachable.

The middle way Kimball presents is, again, quite naïve. I think anyone agrees that all belief systems must be liberal enough to allow change over time, but considering that even small changes often result in communities splitting, I have more faith in the increasing marginalization Kimball writes about in the end chapter. Even if the extremists of today will disappear, new generations will find the same ideas and make them theirs. The best we can hope for is that the number of people attracted by extremist interpretations will decrease.

It goes without saying that it is a warning sign of religion going astray when people begin to declare holy war. I do not think I am the only one who finds Osama bin Laden’s holy-war rhetoric amusingly old-fashioned. Yet, it was not long ago warrior kings of Europe fought each other in the name of God. Something every smug westerner ought to think about when Islamist organizations like al-Qaeda and Hamas communicate with us. To some of them, the Christian Crusade is not a closed chapter.

Kimball seeks a healthy alternative in the peaceful objectives of all religions. There could be an end to holy wars if only the bellicose extremists were overthrown by the peaceful mainstream. Wishful thinking perhaps, but to have faith in humanity is our best option.

Religions may host the potential to be both good and evil. What side prevails is up to the people. I said earlier that Kimball was naïve when he wrote about democracy. I think he is. However, it is humankind that decides what role religion will play in the world. I am too cynical to believe in Kimball’s ideas about unity and people working for a common good. Nevertheless, I do recognize that in order to refute evil, we must have faith in humans.

“To use children as guinea pigs in radical San Francisco-style social experimentation is deplorable,” says Matt Barber, policy director for cultural issues at the a homophobic lobby group Concerned Women for America, in a comment on the California Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage.

Guinea pigs? He is talking about the children whose parents are gay.

Bob Unruh of World Net Daily, a conservative news website, if furious with hate. In an article entitled “Black robes trash traditional marriage”, Mr Unruh says the ruling “trashed society’s traditional institution of marriage” by opening it up for “same-sex duos”.

Words are important. Any bully knows that. So it is no coincidence Barber, Unruh and other Christian propagandists reduce gay families with children to duos with guinea pigs. The goal is to dehumanize us, to make us less human. Joseph Goebbels used the same methods.

Great news from California:

The California Supreme Court ruled today that same-sex couples should be permitted to marry, rejecting state marriage laws as discriminatory.

[...]

Today’s ruling by the Republican-dominated court affects more than 100,000 same-sex couples in the state, about a quarter of whom have children, according to U.S. census figures. It came after high courts in New York, Washington and New Jersey refused to extend marriage rights to gay couples. Before today, only Massachusetts’ top court has ruled in favor of permitting gays to wed.

But the hatemonger lobby won’t give up:

A group has circulated petitions for a November ballot initiative that would amend the state Constitution to block same-sex marriage, while the Legislature has twice passed bills to authorize gay marriage.

Read the court verdict here.

365gay.com has more here.

(Photo by Michael Petrelis.)

“The Vatican’s chief astronomer says that believing in aliens does not contradict faith in God,” the Associated Press reports.

I knew it! The Spaghetti People were right all along.

For us who live in Sweden, the study Bill O’Reilly’s referring to is truly surprising. The truth of the matter is that more Swedish couples are getting married now than ever before.

(Via an anonymous comment on Tor Billgren’s blog.)

I’m sure neither Clinton nor McCain want to be associated with this nasty T-shirt, but the thought that anyone does is bad enough. From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Marietta tavern owner Mike Norman says the T-shirts he’s peddling, featuring cartoon chimp Curious George peeling a banana, with “Obama in ‘08” scrolled underneath, are “cute.” But to a coalition of critics, the shirts are an insulting exploitation of racial stereotypes from generations past.

“It’s time to put an end to this,” said Rich Pellegrino, a Mableton resident and director of the Cobb-Cherokee Immigrant Alliance. He was among about 15 people who protested outside Mulligan’s Bar and Grill Tuesday afternoon against the sale of the “racist and highly offensive” shirts.

“There’s no place for these views, not in this day and age,” he said.

Ron Huldai, the Mayor of Tel Aviv, says Israel’s first monument honouring the homosexual men and women who were persecuted due to their sexual orientation and perished during the Holocaust is to be built in his city:

A quarter of a million homosexuals were persecuted during the Holocaust, and tens of thousands were murdered because the Nazi Party believed their sexual preference to be deviant. In the concentration camps in which they were imprisoned, gay men were forced to wear a pink triangle while lesbian women wore a black patch.

Plans for the monument’s erection were initiated by Itai Pinkas, one of the homosexual community leaders and a member of the Tel Aviv Municipality City Council, who serves as the mayor’s advisor in matters of the gay community.

Riccardo Bevilacqua writes about his problems with Swedes refusing to recognize his Italian passport. From The Local:

Recently I tried to buy a bed at Ikea in Uppsala. There was an offer for payment over 12 months without interest. This time I came prepared: I had with me both an official document stating my personal identification number and my Italian passport.

But the guy at the customer service desk refused to let me apply for the offer.

“You do not have a valid ID”. Referring to my Italian passport, he stated: “This is not a valid passport, since it does not have the personal identification number”.

Of course I tried to explain him that a foreign passport will never include a Swedish personnummer, to which he retorted: “If you do not have it in the passport, it means that you do not have it, thus you are not eligible”.

So I showed him, again, my ID document from the tax office and his answer was: “Well, if you have a personnummer, just go and get a Swedish passport”.

At this point I asked to speak to a supervisor. The guy phoned his supervisor and told him he had a problem with a customer (me) who had a passport “that he claims to be from Italy”.

Finally I was able to talk to the supervisor. But he had some bad news for me.

“I am sorry, we cannot offer you the 12 month rate since you are not an EU citizen”. Try as I might I could not convince him that Italy actually is a member of the EU.

Riccardo Bevilacqua’s problems with Swedish ignorance are not uncommon. Most European citizens I know have faced the same ordeal when they first settled in Sweden. I blame the Palme-esque nationalism and xenophobia. For decades, Swedes were taught that the “Swedish Model” is superior and that Sweden has nothing to learn from continentals. When the Social Democrats changed their mind about EU membership in the mid-1990s, they knew they had to use more xenophobia to convince their arrogant supporters. So, to many leftist Swedes, joining the EU was all about selling our superior model to the rest of Europe.

The Swedes who refuse to accept Bevilacqua’s Italian passport are acting on this very Swedish idea of a one-way approach to the EU. I bet the same people would be very upset had the Italians not recognized their Swedish passport. It’s a matter of superiority.

Gershon German, an Israeli family court judge, refuses to apply the law governing family matters to same-sex relationships because “these relations conflicting with the values of the state as a Jewish state”.

In an excellent article published in Haaretz, Tzvia Greenfeld writes:

Do non-Sabbath observers also not deserve to have their day in court because their behavior conflicts with the values of the Jewish state? After all, the Torah states: “Six days shall work be done, but on the seventh day there shall be to you a holy day, a Sabbath of solemn rest to the Lord; whosoever doeth any work therein shall be put to death” (Exodus 35:2).

The punishment for homosexual activity in the Torah is no more stringent than that meted out for doing work on the Sabbath. Are most of the secular residents of the country not fit to appear before German’s court because their values apparently conflict with those of the Jewish state? It’s impossible to keep from wondering where exactly the honorable judge is living.

The issue of what exactly a Jewish state means in our time and what its values are supposed to be is an open question that the Israeli populace, which is casting about for its Jewish identity, has yet to clarify seriously for itself. We need a lot of inspiration for this large task, which needs to be carried out for the first time out of a sense of political independence and moral responsibility. One thing is certain: If Judge German thinks that discrimination, insults and a revocation of rights can be part of the meaning of a Jewish state in our time, then maybe we would be better off without it.

The Venezuelan ruler—best known for his habit of silencing anyone who dares to criticize him—is again projecting his own shortcomings onto others. This time his target is the Chancellor of Germany. From The Local:

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Sunday sharply attacked German Chancellor Angela Merkel ahead of her Latin America visit, calling her a political descendent of Adolf Hitler and fascism.

The leftist leader slammed Merkel for recent comments saying the Venezuelan leader was not the voice of Latin America and calling on Latin American leaders to distance themselves from Chavez.

“She (Merkel) is from the German right, the same that supported Hitler, that supported fascism, that’s the Chancellor of Germany today,” Chavez said in Caracas.

Andrew Sullivan shows the nasty side of the Clinton base. Unfortunately, politics is becoming increasingly about smear campaigning not only in the US but also in the rest of the world. People in this country (Sweden) often think of our democracy as more honest, but this is not true. Prior to the 2006 general election, the Social Democrats handed out pamphlets comparing the opposition leader to paedophiles and mass murders. I think it’s difficult to sink lower.

The democratic election process seems to be increasingly about appealing to the ignorant. To actually offer better solutions is old school.

The city is full of young birds. They are too cute to resist. I just had to take a picture of a family when I walked through the park.

A short film from the Freakonomics team at the New York Times tells us how the six-pack came to be.

Laura Hodes of the Chicago Tribune makes an interesting observation:

Much has been made of the male frontal nudity in “Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” and with good reason: Penis shots, even quick flashes such as those with actor Jason Segel, are rare in film.

With women, though, directors are far more libertine. And languorous.

Look at the uneven treatment of men and women in another new comedy, “Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay.”

When the lead characters arrive at a friend’s house for a “bottomless party,” they are greeted by a woman wearing no panties. The camera gives a close shot of her pubic hair, trimmed into a landing strip. Then, in a slowly shot scene, we see at least 20 women in full view.

The difference is not just how much nudity we see and for how long. There’s an underlying disparity: The naked female body is a source of sexual arousal and objectification. The penis is played for laughs.

The women’s bodies at the “bottomless party” are too sexualized, too perfect, to be funny. The audience when I saw “Harold & Kumar” was silent during the party scene. The only moment of laughter came when the party’s host showed his penis, a slip of a thing buried in a mountain of pubic hair.

I think it has a lot to do with the idea of women as the only socially acceptable sexual objects. The reason many giggle when they see a naked man is that we have been taught not to judge men for their bodies.

I need to lose some weight. My biggest problem, apart from my lazy nature, is my fondness for fast-food joints. It’s killing me. But after reading about the rats at McDonald’s restaurants in Gothenburg, I have something to think about that will make the Big Mac seem less attractive.

(Photo by Jan Wiridén.)

Good news from the Gay City News:

In a cryptically worded one-sentence order issued on May 6, the New York Court of Appeals, the state’s highest, declined, for the time being at least, to review a February 1 appellate court ruling out of Rochester that a lesbian couple, Patricia Martinez and Lisa Ann Golden, who married in Canada in 2004 are entitled to legal recognition of that marriage by Monroe Community College, Martinez’s employer.

Since the Rochester ruling is the only New York appellate court ruling—coming from the Appellate Division’s 4th Department—on the marriage recognition question issued to date, the decision stands as legal precedent statewide unless contradicted by one of the other appellate departments or reversed by the Court of Appeals.

The Empire State Pride Agenda, New York’s statewide LGBT lobby group, taking note of that precedent, was quick to claim victory from the high court demurring on the issue.

“Today’s action by New York’s highest court means that the state of the law remains the same,” said Alan Van Capelle, ESPA’s executive director, in a written statement. “Same-sex couples who have gone to places like Canada to get married, or have moved to New York from places like Massachusetts, will continue to be treated as the married couples they are here in New York.”

Matthias Schepp of Der Spiegel reports from the first Red Square arms parade since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

“A homosexual couple has taken the Swedish tax authority (Skatteverket) to court for registering their marriage in Canada as a partnership,” The Local reports.

The outcome of this case could change everything for gays in this country.

The world is full of stupid people. Here is an example from Box Turtle Bulletin and World Net Daily.

The mother of a homophobic man—who has been charged with a hate crime after he verbally insulted and physically assaulted a young gay man—came up with this hilariously stupid excuse for her son’s behaviour:

“This would never have even been an event if this was another heterosexual male and he had a conflict with, and that’s just unfair,” she said. “I am a conservative Christian, and my son is. All we are doing is asking for prayers and support from people that may be opposed to this sort of thing happening.

“This has just uprooted our whole life, and I don't know that it’ll ever be the same. I don’t know that, even if everything is dropped, that it’ll ever be the same,” she said.

She’s right. There wouldn’t have been an event as it is highly unlikely her son would have directed homophobic comments towards another heterosexual male. Either the woman is missing the whole point, or she seriously thinks being a “conservative Christian” legitimizes abuse of gay men.

A poll finds that both Democratic presidential candidates would defeat the Republican candidate John McCain, the Los Angeles Times reports. Voters are said to doubt McCain’s ability to handle the economy.

Today is Europe Day, which was established in 1985 as a day for commemorating the Schuman declaration of 9 May 1950. This day is ignored by most Europeans, except for the Europhiles and Eurosceptics who take the opportunity to honour or ridicule the European Union.

Personally, I’m a very critical friend of the European project. I like the idea of a federal Europe and think a new, minimalist constitution would be the best way to set the limits for the EU’s federal, supranational parliament and commission. Unfortunately, the bureaucrats and politicians writing the treaties have a very different idea about the EU than I have.

Last night I went for a drink with some friends. When I waited on the bus home, I noticed a wall covered with posters next to the bus stop. I realized that tourists would be excused for thinking that this is a communist country. Every poster on the wall had some link to tiny but aggressive communist organizations. As you can see in the picture, famous extreme left-wing mass murderers appear on most of the posters.

The irony is that the men and women who put these posters on the wall would have been imprisoned or killed had their totalitarian ideas been implemented. Without the liberal system of democracy they hate so intensely, none of these posters would ever see the light of day.

Today is the fifth day of Iyar, and Israel celebrates sixty years of statehood.

“The government today defied the advice of drug experts and upgraded cannabis from class C to class B,” the Guardian writes. The newspaper article continues say that the “decision to upgrade the drug went against the recommendations of the government's scientific experts, the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs.”

But who cares about silly and irrelevant things like facts when there is a war on drugs to fight? Swedish governments of the past thirty years never bothered about scientific facts. If people want to believe cannabis is a dangerous gateway drug that kills, then that is what it is.

At first, I admired Hillary Clinton’s determination, but after yesterday’s big loss in North Carolina, I just think she’s silly and stubborn.

OMG!

I’m all for this type of protest:

Police on Monday afternoon arrested a 27-year-old yeshiva student for undressing in a Bat Yam supermarket, wearing only a sock to cover his genitals, to protest a recent controversial court ruling which permitted the sale of chametz in some businesses.

Since Israel was declared an independent Jewish state in 1948, conversion to Judaism is not only about the religion itself. Being a Jew—by choice or by birth—means you have the right to settle in Israel, to make an aliyah. But things are not that easy. Rabbis of various denominations do not always recognize each other’s converts. I’m no expert on this, but I understand that the subject is a constant cause for annoyance. (I will never forget the furious hour-long monologue one of my friends held on the subject after a service at the CBST in New York.)

Now things seem to be more complicated still. From the Jerusalem Post:

Last week, a panel of three haredi, non-Zionist rabbis belonging to the High Rabbinical Court, the state’s highest rabbinic institution, caused an upheaval in the Orthodox rabbinical world after publishing a caustically incriminating indictment of the head of Israel’s Conversion Authority, Rabbi Haim Druckman, who is a religious Zionist.

The haredi judges’ decision effectively annulled retroactively hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of conversions performed between 1999 and 2003 by Druckman.

I don’t know what—if any—consequences this will have for those converts that have made their aliyah, but I guess questioning their conversion is harmful enough.

Some words are used so carelessly that they lose all meaning. Apartheid seems to be one of them. At least that was my first thought when I read that Iran’s government thinks it’s the victim of Western “nuclear apartheid”.

Starbucks won’t have it:

Laissez-faire. It’s a policy that made Starbucks vastly successful. But don’t try to put that phrase on a customized Starbucks Card.

The cards are supposed be personalized to reflect customers’ tastes and uniqueness. They are available in a range of colors, often given as gifts and used by regular customers who prefer to prepay for their java.

But when my friend Roger Ream, president of the Fund for American Studies, received a Starbucks gift card for Christmas, he found there was a limit to how personalized a card could be. His card required him to customize it on the company’s Web site. So he went to the site and requested that the phrase “Laissez Faire” be printed on his card. A few days later he was informed that the company couldn’t issue such a card because the wording violated company policy.

Update: In the end, Starbacks did allow for “Laissez Faire” to be printed on their gift cards.

About six months ago, I came across a blog that fascinated me more than most. The writer was a young Swedish man who was about to convert to Judaism. I don’t know who the man is in real life, but reading his blog made me feel like I did. Corny, I know; but that is an effect some well-written blogs have on me.

When I turned on the feed aggregator today, I found a new entry in which the soon-to-be-Jewish blogger announces that he, after standing before a Bet Din (religious court), is now a Jew. I know it’s silly being happy for someone you don’t know, but I am.

Although I’m a very secular man and a fierce critic of religious superstition, I have always defended the right of anyone to be religious. I think there is something particularly attractive about conversion because it is a choice.

As regular readers of this blog know, I am very fond of the Jewish people and its culture. Some might think this is odd considering my somewhat hostile attitude towards religion. But there are three reasons for this. First, I had many Jewish friends growing up. Second, as a gay man I see that our enemies are often the same and use similar prejudiced arguments against us (“the Jewish/gay lobby controls politics”, “media is controlled by Jews/gays”, “Jews/gays threaten the majority culture”, etcetera). I know many feel uncomfortable about this comparison, but this is how I see it. And third, I seriously think Judaism is the sanest of the three Abrahamic religions. When I discuss ethical questions and theological matters with people of faith, I always get the friendliest response from the Jews. With Judaism’s long tradition of Talmudic commentary on the Torah, I find that even Orthodox rabbis are more open-minded than most contemporary Christians and Muslims.

I congratulate my anonymous Jewish friend on his conversion. You picked the right religion.

Postscript: Here’s a link to his new, post-conversion blog.

Update at 18:29: By the way, if I was to become a Jew, I would pick this society.

Øresund and the bridge linking Malmö to Copenhagen yesterday afternoon.

I received an email from a reader in Egypt. He says the gay community in Cairo is very excited about a new underground film entitled “All My Life” (طـول عُـمري). The trailer can be seen here:

What will the Muslim Brotherhood say about this?

I think this is quite impressive. A gay-pride parade in Eskilstuna, a Swedish town with a population of 60,000, attracted 1,500 participants this weekend.

“Senator Barack Obama appeared to win the Democratic caucuses in Guam on Saturday, defeating Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton by seven votes,” the New York Times reports.

Seven votes! What happened to the Obama revolution?

On this day in 1945, the last of the so-called White Buses transported rescued political prisoners to Malmö in Sweden. From the History Research Guide:

White Buses was a humanitarian effort headed by the Swedish count Folke Bernadotte that by the end of the Second World War saved thousands of Norwegian and Danish resistance fighters from German concentration camps. The name comes from the buses that were used, and that were painted white, with a red cross on the sides and on their roof.

In September 2007, a monument was raised in Malmö as a memorial to the survivors and those who saved them. About an hour ago, I snapped a few pictures of this memorial. When a stood in the square surrounding the monument, I tried to imagine what it looked like sixty-three years ago when newly liberated prisoners from the Nazi concentration camps arrived in the hundreds.

I publish some of the pictures below.

(Via The Atheist Jew.)

Postscript: Here’s the Atheist’s Wager.

From Forward:

Meet Hannah and Philip Schein, undercover investigators for the animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Now, for the first time, they are going public with their identities.

Since 2002, the Scheins have taken on about 20 undercover cases, as well as others they have conducted publicly. The targets of their stings have run the gamut from an egg farm managed by Trappist monks, to a Canadian bear-baiting operation that has supplied fur to the British Royal Guards, to songstress Beyoncé Knowles, once an enthusiastic wearer of fur.

But thanks to their background and their knowledge of the laws of kashrut, Hannah, 33, and Philip, 43, have come to specialize in investigating kosher slaughterhouses. Indeed, PETA had not investigated kosher operations until the Scheins came on board; since then, the group has been involved in about eight such cases. Philip in particular has been credited with becoming an expert on kosher slaughter.

I know many people feel very strongly about animal welfare and therefore oppose kosher slaughter, but as I have written before, I cannot see how this could be more cruel than the slow and painful death animals suffer when shot by hunters in the wild. And knowing PETA, my guess is that they like to target the kosher abattoirs because cattle soaked in blood makes dramatic pictures that generate more paying members.

Malmö’s inner harbour a few hours ago.

Charlie Weimers denies ever comparing same-sex marriages to human-animal relationships. I accused him of this in an entry yesterday.

In my defence, I want to stress that I acted on information received from a source I considered trustworthy.

I apologize to Mr Weimers for making my harsh comment.

Marxism and nationalism have much in common with fundamentalist religion. It is therefore a mistake for any secular state to actively try to replace religious identities with nationalistic sentiment and class-war rhetoric.

In its review of Noah Feldman’s The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State and Mark Juergensmeyer’s Global Rebellion: Religious Challenges to the Secular State, from Christian Militias to Al Qaeda, The Economist makes some good points:

If you are trying to make people risk their own lives and take the lives of others, then calling the enemy “infidels” (or, literally, demonising them) is more effective than calling them foreigners or class enemies.

And:

As any thieving Balkan warlord knows, decent people often kill in the name of a half-forgotten national cause and for a religion in which they hardly believe. Using both tricks at once is especially effective.

This is why secularists cannot afford to be naïve about religion in our time. The liberal democracies managed to defeat Marxism because they were able to offer a system more successful in everything communism promised but could not materialize. The problem in the contemporary battle between fundamentalist religion and liberal democracy is that the former appear to offer a better deal. To succeed, secularists must become better at addressing cultural issues. It’s time for missionary work.

After more than a month of alleged counting, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission has revealed the result of the presidential election. Only a fool would take them for being correct.

In this mock election, the de facto dictator Robert Mugabe got 43,2 per cent to democratic challenger Morgan Tsvangirai’s 47,9. One might think that would be it—that Mugabe is out. But the beauty of the scheme is that, with the rigged result, no one managed to get half the votes, which allows for a second round.

While the Electoral Commission pretended to do its job, Mugabe loyalists intimidated those who voted for his opponent. People living in opposition strongholds have been beaten, killed, or forced away from their homes.

Conservative candidate Boris Johnson has won the London mayoral elections, the Evening Standard reports.

“Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men’s penises,” Reuters reports.

Reports of so-called penis snatching are not uncommon in West Africa, where belief in traditional religions and witchcraft remains widespread, and where ritual killings to obtain blood or body parts still occur.

Rumors of penis theft began circulating last week in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo’s sprawling capital of some 8 million inhabitants. They quickly dominated radio call-in shows, with listeners advised to beware of fellow passengers in communal taxis wearing gold rings.

Purported victims, 14 of whom were also detained by police, claimed that sorcerers simply touched them to make their genitals shrink or disappear, in what some residents said was an attempt to extort cash with the promise of a cure.

(Via the ranting Sandmonkey.)

Malmö City Library a few hours ago.

I never browse the Internet for pornography. However, about five to six days a week I accidentally come across dozens of homepages with adult material. I swear I never stay more than half an hour at these immoral websites.

On those rare occasions when I look at filth on the Internet, I sometimes find amusing articles. I found one today when looking through the latest entries on Fleshbot. It’s about Italian mega-porn-star Rocco Siffredi’s new film entitled Eskade: The Submission:

According to Siffredi, “Eskade” seeks to “capture the essence of female domination” in a crazy plot about an ancient game involving orgiastic gatherings, sexual slavery and mysterious vials filled with womanly juices; we are also promised that the journey through this twisted sexual labyrinth includes mice, scorpions, beautiful women, toilet sex, gangbangs, Omar Galanti in semi-drag, and lots of sodomy. Sounds like the only thing missing is cake! Mmm, cake.

This film I have to see. With all those scary things, it must be better that Seven.

Here’s the link, but it’s not safe work and certainly not family friendly!

ABC News made a social experiment recently. They monitored the bystander reactions to affectionate same-sex couples. In Birmingham, Alabama, a woman called the police about two men kissing. Spontaneously, I felt this was a sad reaction to something so harmless. But I valued it differently after reading this comment:

“If 911 calls are because two guys are kissing and holding hands on a bench, that’s great news! I mean, there’s not much real crime happening if 911 calls are placed because two guys are kissing every once in a while. And that is awesome!”

In the debate on same-sex marriage, opponents often refer to a “homosexual lifestyle” they claim is incompatible with family values. Their argument doesn’t acknowledge the impact discriminatory legislation has had on gays and lesbians; what it meant not being able to raise a family in a homophobic society.

The opponents of gay rights routinely refuse to see that the sex-driven queer culture is not that different from the heterosexual equivalent. Straight men and women look for sex in bars and nightclubs, too. And the only thing that separates the gay bathhouses from the straight swingers clubs is the gender of those participating.

Allowing gay people to get married would normalize same-sex family life. I think that is what scares the homophobes the most. They want us to be freaks.

On 27 April, the New York Times published an article about a new generation of gay men who—unlike my generation—is able to form open, stable, and publicly recognized relationships from early adulthood. Read it here.

I must say I envy the young gay men of today. When I was a teenager, so much energy was wasted on hiding my love life and to fear for violence and stigmatization. The progress in the past fifteen years is truly amazing.

The youth organization of the Swedish Christian Democrats (KDU) elected Charlie Weimers as their new chairman yesterday. It is probably a good thing for them since the party’s base consists of conservative Christians who consider hating minority groups a virtue. Mr Weimers is perhaps best known for his extremely hostile homophobia. For one thing, he likes to compare gay people to animals by suggesting same-sex marriages are equal to sexual relationships with cats and dogs. With Weimers in charge, we can expect more insults of the kind in the future. After all, the inability to acknowledge the obvious differences between gays and animals could logically result in demands for incarceration. I bet Charlie Weimers would love that.

Update: In a comment to this entry, Charlie Weimers denies the accusation and says he never compared same-sex marriages to human-animal relationships. I acted on information I received from a source who wish to remain anonymous. I apologize to Mr Weimers for making my harsh comment.

In a comment on his own blog Athens & Jerusalem, the pseudonym Withywindle writes, “Conservatism is a human thing—mutable and imperfect.”

I like this modesty about many true conservatives. They are willing to admit to flaws in their ideological standpoints in a way advocates of other ideologies rarely are.