dewayneestes

Reading your experience makes me feel that a lot of our assumptions about people in the military are wrong.

It’s portrayed as though everyone in the military is heterosexual and homo and trans phobic. And that we should support them because that’s how it is in the military (I’ll give you a moment to gather your composure regarding the ‘everyone in the military is Hetero’ comment).

Your comment about your chain of command illustrates that there are different levels of acceptance both inside and outside of the military and that the trans and homo phobes are both in the small but vocal minority, and often times (as with Trump and literally ALL of his supporters) have literally no military experience.

Well thank god rural every mans don’t look down on us out of touch urban elitists. If only there were some sort of fair and balanced way to amplify the voice of the pseudo rural ‘muricans so they could enforce their far superior way of life.

I’m a huge fan of cray cray, both this whole aliens thing as well as the turn of the last century spiritualist movement. Being a “big fan” though does not mean being a big believer. What is really alarming when you dig in on it is the veiled racism that pops up from time to time as you point out. I don’t think Tsoukolos is racist but there is a lot of underlying ignorance (surprise).

Madame Blavatsky was one of the worst. She believed Pacific Islanders and most “brown people” were born without souls and wasn’t until they interbred with whites that they developed them. Very weird and sometimes dangerous stuff.

Are you familiar with St. Anthony’s Community in Santa Barbara? It was a very strong Catholic community that came apart after allegations of abuse going back 50+ years.

The LA Archdiocese could no longer afford to staff it and tried to shut it down. The community (in compliance with Vatican law) elected priests from their community because the church could not provide them with priests, and the last official pastor ordained them. They are married men, ordained as Catholic priests, in accordance with Vatican law. I’d love to hear your thoughts on it.

Ps: I’m not an atheist or agnostic but thought I’d jump in anyways! :-)

I feel like I was there.