Cookies for queer rights!

So there's a voting thing happening next week. Tuesday, in fact. Primary day in Maine. It is also the day when the Maine Christian Civic League plans to be out in force encouraging people to sign a petition to repeal discrimination laws protecting people based on their sexual orientation and to eliminate funding for school Civil Rights Teams, which have been wonderfully effective in reducing bullying and creating safe schools. It would also ban gay marriage in Maine. Which is already against the law, but what the hey, it's the CCL, so why should facts and laws get in the way?

So some friends of mine are working with the great folks over at Equality Maine to staff the polling places with a sort of "Truth Squad" of volunteers. To my dismay, the volunteers will not be causing any kind of a ruckus or stink. They are merely going to let people know what exactly they are being asked to sign and ask them to please decline. They are not going to confront the CCL folks, not going to badger them, not shout at them, call them names or in any way be unpleasant.

Obviously not a job suited to my personality.

I was asked to volunteer for a shift, but after considering it with the local organizer, we agreed that I would not be the best person to represent EQME as a volunteer. So we figured out a way I can help out, but that will not require me to be nice or polite to anyone I don't feel inclined to be nice or polite to. I'm going to bake cookies for the volunteers.

K, the local organizer, asked if I would make little boxes of cookies for the volunteers and I readily agreed. Great! She said. I need 20. Oh shit.

That's a lot of cookies. Even if the boxes are small, that's a LOT of cookies.

Well, it's getting to be about that time of the year anyway, so I fired up the home cookie factory and got crankin'. At the end of the first day, I had two full batches of ginger cookies ready to be made into ohmigods, a full double batch of sugar cookies a quadruple-batch of chocolate-peanut butter no-bakes, and two triple batches of coconut macaroons. I am nearly up to my ass in cookies.

Today I cleaned the living room with my friend D, and took a vacation from cookies. Tomorrow, though, I plan to make some chocolate chip cookies, some Russian Tea Cakes, and possibly some peanut butter cookies. It depends. Peanut butter cookies and I have issues. It has to do with power and control and burned edges.

As you can see from the picture, I have a variety of tools for the job, but very little counter space. In my home kitchen, I use a plank laid across my double sink as a work-space. There is very little room. So, in order to make a little extra, I lay the board you see across the top of the open drawer to create a little more work area and to provide easy access to the things I am going to need. It ain't perfect, but it works pretty slick.

I just made a batch of macaroons for a friend of mine who is in town for the weekend. This will put me up the list of most-favored-friend status and may even garner some bribery points for favors later on. I'm hopin' anyway. My triple batch of macaroons makes 12 large cookies about the size of a half a tennis ball, plus about 50 about the size of half a golf ball. After quality control, the true yield is usually something less than that, but it's about right.

Christianity versus "Christians"

Lots has been said of late by people in Maine and around the nation about the recent announcement by Mike Heath that his group, the Christian Civic League of Maine (CCLM) would start anther petition drive to reverse any and all progress for queer folks in Maine in the past 25 years. It's a nasty petition. It calls for a ban on any kind of same-sex marriage, ever, it would remove protection from discrimination based on sexual orientation from the Maine Civil Rights Law, and a host of other nastiness.

I am getting tired of this fight. Heath and his minions should not take heart at this - they will not win. I will fight, no matter how tired I get, but it merits saying that this argument is really getting old.

I would like for the alleged "Christians" of the CCLM to start behaving like the Christ they claim as their Saviour.

I would like to see them volunteer at soup kitchens, feeding the hungry.
I would like to see them volunteer at hospitals, bringing comfort to the afflicted.
I would like to see them volunteer at battered women's shelters, and at homeless shelters, bringing comfort to those who are less fortunate.
I would like to see them adopting the babies they insist must carry to term, despite being crack-addicted, despite being horribly disfigured and painfully ill, despite being the products of violent rape, or incest, or poor choices by 15-year-old girls.
I would like to see them caring for their neighbors.
I would like to see them stepping in to stop one person from judging another.

I don't consider myself a Christian. I was raised in the Catholic Church. In fact, back then I thought the Irish Catholic Church was different than the Roman Catholic Church. How the pope worked in, I was not sure, in my childhood understanding of things, but I somehow got the message that the Irish branch of things was somehow more rigid than the Italian brand. Go figure.

In any case, I am not a Christian. I do not believe in the virgin birth of Jesus. I do not believe in the death and resurrection, and I don't hold a lot of faith in the concepts of heaven, hell, or the fundraising construct that is purgatory.

That said, I feed the hungry. I donate what I can to help the poor. I offer my energies and my skills where I am able and where they might help. I invite people into my home to share special times when they might otherwise be lonely.

That's the kind of stuff that I understand Christianity to be about. Be kind to others. Even if you don't agree with them. Even if you don't like them. They still deserve to be treated like human beings. They still deserve to be treated with dignity and respect.

That's what Jesus taught: "Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers, you do unto me."

What do you suppose Jesus would say about the actions and efforts of the CCLM? Are not the glbt community within "the least of my brothers" that Jesus spoke of? Did not Jesus befriend the downtrodden, the outcasts, the prostitutes and lepers? He did not judge them, instead he treated them with kindness and compassion. Trying to institutionalize second (or third) class status for glbt people is not treating us with kindness - it is judging and cruel. It is decidedly not Christ-like.