Category: Opinion

Cilantro (Soap) on the Side

On By SarahIn Food & Cooking, Fun & Entertainment, Opinion7 Comments

I love Mexican food. I love Thai food. Why do the chefs at these restaurants have to ruin their delicious cuisine with the Evil Weed (as my friend likes to call it)?

It’s a little request, really. Just put the little green sprigs in a bowl on the side so those who enjoy it can sprinkle it liberally to their delight.

Seriously, the stuff tastes exactly like Palmolive to me. I can’t stand the smell of it! I know I’m not alone in this. And it has been suggested to me that those of us who taste cilantro as soap are slightly (or not so slightly) allergic to it. I don’t know because I hate the stuff so much I don’t think I’ve ever ingested enough of it to find out what the reaction might be. I guess the reaction of “blech!” is enough of an allergy for me.

Really. I was shopping last night, and every brand of salsa in the grocery store included cilantro. I have to make my own (which I’m not opposed to, but who has the time?). And tonight I had a meeting after work, and I had to grab a burrito at the Mexican restaurant down the street from my church, and it was laden with cilantro! I couldn’t eat it. I wanted to cry!

I know, I’m a little melodramatic, but seriously, when I’m hungry, you don’t want to mess with me. I get really cranky!

So, this blog is my soapbox, I just told someone, and let me tell you, I don’t like eating soap, or anything that tastes like soap!

Thank God for Casa Vallarta. They make an AWESOME chile relleno burrito, and their guacamole has no cilantro. This place is mere paces from my apartment, and I eat there frequently. For those of you in the ‘hood, this restaurant has amazing Mexican home cookin’. Really, this is a very tidy little hole in the wall whose fajitas really shouldn’t be missed. They make their corn tortillas by hand every day. And they don’t cook with cilantro.

I am so totally going there tomorrow.

Christians and Integrity

On By SarahIn Opinion, Politics, SpiritualityLeave a comment

It really is gratifying to know that there are conservative Christians out there with integrity. It gives me hope that we can find common ground, that some of them are critical thinkers instead of brain-washed zombies (Oops! Did I say that out loud?).

This week, over 200 students and faculty at Brigham Young University protested Dick Cheney’s upcoming commencement speech at the school. Apparently, they are asserting that he is not a good role model for today’s youth because he lied about the WMDs in Iraq in order to support going to war.

I am increasingly heartened by the fact that more and more conservative Christians are starting to think. They are starting to realize that they have been used as a political football. There are many who are starting to realize that there are more important issues than the ones that divide the nation. There are many moral issues on which all of us can unite and agree.

David Kuo is the perfect example. In his book Tempting Faith, Kuo speaks out about the hypocrisy of the Bush Administration and its lack of commitment to end poverty in this country. He was a White House insider working with President Bush on “faith-based initiatives,” and reports in his book that Republicans were really only interested in working with Christians in order to out law abortion rights and civil rights for queers. Kuo’s priority is economic justice, and he articulated an experience of being ignored, lied to, and promises not being fulfilled.

I think that most intelligent and truly compassionate people at the end of the day can recognize that it is important that a family have food on the table, that a homeless man have a warm and safe bed and an opportunity to go to rehab, that an illiterate adult learn how to read, that senior citizens who live alone be visited, that large corporations be held accountable for the pollution they cause in the communities where they have factories, that we all take responsibility to leave a lighter foot print on the planet so that it will be here for our children tomorrow.

There are issues about which people will likely always disagree, those being about abortion and homosexuality. It is interesting that these very divisive issues are about very private and personal matters. I think that perhaps as Christians, whether progressive or conservative, if we focus on the issues that effect all of us in the same way, finding common moral ground will be easier and our priorities clearer.

This may be a total pipe dream. I run from conservative Christians. I don’t know how to talk to them. They scare me. Really. They freak me out. I admit, I’m rather intolerant, and maybe even prejudiced. But I am interested in finding common ground. I’m committed to learning about what informs conservative Christian politics and seeing where there may be intersections. It’s my faith, too, and perhaps part of my effort to reclaim it will involve an effort to understand more about Christians whose politics are so different from my own.

The Easter Bunny vs. Secular Humanists

On By SarahIn Opinion, SpiritualityLeave a comment

Recently in nearby Walnut Creek, a controversy has erupted over the name of an annual springtime event there. For years, Walnut Creek has hosted an Easter Egg Hunt, but this year officials changed the name of the event to the “Spring Egg Hunt,” which has aroused the ire of Christians everywhere. Really, it has made the news not just locally, but it has been on CNN and even the Colbert Report.

Comedy aside, I feel compelled to speak on this matter not as a Christian, but as someone who is committed to creating a peaceful world where folks can learn about different religious and cultural traditions. As a Christian, I am not offended that they want to change the name of this event. I do think that the folks who wanted to change the name of the event are misguided in their good intentions, however.

The egg hunt is an Easter tradition. What is wrong with having a public reference to that Christian tradition? I am reminded of the story about the rabbi this last holiday season who complained to authorities about all of the Christmas trees and lack of Hanukkah decorations. Their response was to take down all of the trees. He hadn’t asked for that. He asked for them to display a menorah, too. That is all he wanted.

I am a Christian, but I differ from a lot of Christians in that I don’t believe that non-Christians are going to burn in hell. In fact, I don’t believe in hell. Well, I guess I believe that humans are responsible for creating their own hell, but God doesn’t punish us. We are fully capable of doing that all by ourselves. But I digress.

The point I’m trying to make is that Evangelical Christians who are out to convert people have made non-Christians, and even progressive Christians like myself nervous about celebrating any Christian holiday publicly. We don’t want to be perceived as trying to convert people, or that we believe Christianity is better than any other religious tradition. So we say Season’s Greetings instead of Merry Christmas. We take the Christ out of Christianity and call it secular. This is disingenuous.

I believe in the separation of church and state, but I think that government can acknowledge the religious traditions of the people it represents without proselytizing. I know that Christianity is more greatly represented in American public life than any other religion, and as a culture I think that all of us should create space for equal representation. It broadens our horizons to embrace and learn about other cultures and religious traditions. We can only benefit.

Teaching children about religious traditions is not akin to converting them. Teaching children that they will burn in hell unless they believe in one particular kind of god is conversion (and child abuse, if you asked me). But sending your kid to an Easter egg hunt is not teaching intolerance or that Christianity is the best of all religions. Most of us Christians don’t even know why we hunt for eggs on Easter. Really, I have heard all kinds of explanations about the roots of the Pagan spring fertility rituals and the Christian adoption of those traditions in order to convert the heathens to Christianity. But really, no one really knows why the heck bunnies and colored eggs are associated with the story of Christ rising from the dead.

Many holiday traditions exist for kids anyway. They’re fun, and kids learn about their own heritage, and hopefully the heritage of their friends. And hopefully these traditions give them spiritual fortitude and a structure to build a relationship with the Divine, a foundation of ethics, and teaches them how to be true to themselves and nice to others.

So let the the kinds hunt for the darn eggs, and call the event what it really is, an Easter Egg Hunt.

God and the "Gay Gene"

On By SarahIn Opinion, PoliticsLeave a comment

Many folks I know have argued with me over the years that they believe being gay is natural, genetic, people are born that way. The argument goes like this: If we could find a gay gene, all people would have to accept that there is nothing wrong with being gay. One could even argue that science can prove that God made us this way, and therefore we are exactly the way we are supposed to be.

I have always argued that if a gay gene could be identified, those in the anti-gay camp will eventually argue that being gay is a defect that should be fixed. Fetuses with the gay gene would be identified in utero and would be aborted. Parents would genetically engineer their offspring to be straight.


And indeed that is exactly what the Rev. R. Alber Mohler, Jr. is suggesting. He has actually argued that it is God’s will that we alter our offspring’s genetic material to ensure that they are born straight. He looks to the Bible to support his perspective. Here is an exerpt from his blog:

Conservatives opposed to both abortion and homosexuality will have to ask themselves whether the public shame of having a gay child outweighs the private sin of terminating a pregnancy (assuming the stigma on homosexuality survives the scientific refutation of the Right’s treasured belief that it is a “lifestyle choice.”) Pro-choice activists won’t be spared either. Will liberal moms who love their hairdressers be as tolerant when faced with the prospect of raising a little stylist of their own? And exactly how pro-choice will liberal abortion-rights activists be when thousands of potential parents are choosing to filter homosexuality right out of the gene pool?

Wow. “Little stylists?” Do we really want to take up a debate with this guy? I don’t think it’s worth our while.

Q: Why are we gay?
A: It doesn’t matter.

I know that it is human nature to ask questions about who we are and where we come from, and I’m not opposed to looking for scientific reasons about why people are gay or straight, per se. But why do we (and by we I mean LGBT people) want to find this scientific proof? To prove that we have the right to exist?

We don’t need science to prove that God made us exactly as s/he intended. We do not need to be defensive about who we are. We do not have to come up with scientific proof that we have the right to be fully engaged members of society.

People are gay or straight or somewhere along the Kinsey scale, and everyone has a different experience of their own sexuality. Our sexuality and our differences are a gift from God. We need to embrace who we are and love ourselves and each other the way that God intended.

The Conversion of Venus

On By SarahIn Community, Opinion, PoliticsLeave a comment

Michelle over at Metacentricities recently blogged about the conversion of Venus Magazine to an ex-gay publication. I really had to do a double-take when I read this. The website has the testimony of its publisher, who started the magazine thirteen years ago as a voice for the black lgbt community which is so often invisible in main-stream lgbt media.

I don’t subscribe to any lgbt magazines, but I pick them up occasionally when there is an article that interests me. In the past I have bought a copy of Venus, and I was always appreciative of the presence of that voice among all of the others in the lgbt community. Being a white lesbian with a black wife living in Oakland, I know how important this visible presence is.

I must say that this conversion saddens me for many reasons. First of all, I view converting to “ex-gay” as a self-hating act. So many lgbt folks have a hard time coming out in the first place because of all of the negative messages that we are bombarded with about what it means to be lgbt. We are taught to hate ourselves, to surpress who we are, to be something we are not. And it hurts.

Also, she is doing this from an Evangelical Christian platform. As a Christian, I feel this is sinful. Jesus preached about love, compassion, and community. He taught that the Kingdom of God is within each one of us, and God created us as S/He intended. The “ex-gay” movement is manipulating the words of Jesus to strike fear and self-hatred into the hearts of all lgbt people. As Woody Allen so insightfully stated, “If Jesus Christ came back today and saw what was being done in his name, he’d never stop throwing up.”

To hear about someone who had once embraced who she was, who had once even loved who she was, who fought for the rights of others like herself, who very publicly provided a voice and image for the black lgbt community, I can’t help but feel this is anything but tragic. Not to mention the fact that she is now using Venus as a vehicle for her Christian testimony and that of others who have converted to “ex-gay” in order to “convert” other lgbt folks.

Finally, there is already so much hatred of lgbt folks in the African American, and specifically African American Christian community, which is a tragedy in itself. I am pleased that there is a movement to work to change this, and that there are communities like my church, First Congregational Church of Oakland and our sister church in San Francisco, City of Refuge that are not only open and affirming but also addressing the needs of the black gay community. Thank God for this good news!