James Erich's Blog, page 7

“Freedom of Religion” and Same-Sex Marriage

Recently, as the result of the Chick-fil-A controversy, I’ve found myself involved in arguments I’d rather avoid.  But one particularly angry person tossed some arguments at me that I feel need to be addressed — not because he’ll ever read this blog, but because people who might read this blog will no doubt come up against these arguments in the future.  (They’re very popular.)

Now, I’m tolerant of differing points of view, but illogical arguments drive me crazy.  Illogical is illogical, regardless of the motivation behind it.

So let me address a few points.

First of all, we need to make something clear:  there is a big difference between being a “Christian country” and being a Christian-dominated country.  In the last poll I came across, something like 70% of the people in the USA identify as Christian, so clearly this is a country dominated by Christians.  Likewise, most of our Founding Fathers were Christian (though not all).  But that doesn’t make the United States a “Christian country.”  Some of the original colonies had very strict laws about attending church services and regulating “Christian behavior” on a number of levels.  But other colonies did not, and when the entire country was finally mashed together, those laws fell by the wayside (at least on a National level).

The US Constitution does not dictate that people must be Christian and in fact about 30% of the citizens in the country are not.  If we look at the Ten Commandments, as laid out in the Bible (both versions), the first, second, and third commandments are completely absent from our Constitution.  It isn’t illegal to worship other gods.  It isn’t illegal to worship idols.  And it isn’t illegal to completely forget the Sabbath.  If the country had been designed as a “Christian country,” then these would hardly have been left out.

Therefore, the United States of America is merely a Christian dominated country and not a “Christian country.”

When people haul out the Christian Bible as their reason for opposing same-sex marriage, they need to be reminded of this.  Their argument declares that God Himself defined “marriage” as being between one man and one woman.  (I won’t even go into why I think this is false, even within the context of the Bible.)  Therefore, we should accede to His divine will and forbid same-sex couples from marrying.

Closely tied to this is the belief that marriage has always been a religious institution and not a civil one.

If the only valid marriage in the USA is one sanctioned by the Christian God, then how is it possible that two people who don’t believe in that definition of God — say, Wiccans, or Scientologists, or atheists — are allowed to marry?  If marriage in this country is a religious institution, then why do we allow atheists to marry?  Why do we allow people to be married by a Justice of the Peace, rather than a pastor or priest?

The answer is simple:  marriage has never been a religious institution in this country.  It is a civil institution which all American citizens have a right to.  You have the right to marry, whether you are Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, Wiccan, atheist, or what-have-you.  Your religion does not determine your eligibility to marry in this country, because it isn’t relevant to civil marriage law.

It is true that clergy were granted dispensation to conduct marriages in the USA, probably dating all the way back to its founding.  But perhaps you’ve noticed that even a Christian couple needs to apply to the government (via the Town Hall where they live) in order to get permission for the church to marry them.  This is because marriage is a legal institution that determines legal relationships, for purposes such as inheritance, property ownership, insurance, Social Security benefits, etc.  Your pastor, or Rabbi or High Priestess is simply performing the ceremony as a proxy for the state.  He or she may also being doing it on behalf of your god or goddess, but the government isn’t concerned with that.  The government is merely concerned with your legal marital status for the purposes mentioned above (and taxes).

So when it comes right down to it, if somebody wants to insist that his religion disapproves of homosexuality (to put it mildly), then yes he certainly is within his rights to believe that and to say it.  But when somebody tries to tell me that laws should be passed which will force everybody in this country, including the 30% who aren’t following his religion, to obey the dictates of his Bible or his God…well, that’s another matter entirely.

If a Christian couple (male and female) went to a Jewish synagogue and demanded that the Rabbi marry them, the Rabbi would have  every right to say, “No.  You have to be Jewish, before I can marry you.”  But that’s entirely different from that Rabbi insisting that everybody in the entire country be Jewish, before they’d be allowed to get married.

Likewise, Christians should not be insisting that the law force everyone in the country to adhere to Christian mores, regardless of the fact that they are clearly in the majority.  What about those religions that have no issue with same-sex marriage?  They do exist.  My husband and I were married by a pagan priestess.  Other same-sex couples have been married by Unitarian churches or simply by Justices of the Peace.  (And now, of course, there are Christian churches performing same-sex marriages in some parts of the country.)

In other words, if a minority religion believes in same-sex marriage, Freedom of Religion is not served by making it illegal for any church or JP to perform same-sex marriages.  This is why the Constitution does forbid any one religion from dictating the law to rest of the country.  Being in the majority does not invalidate this.

"The Graveyard Book" by Neil Gaiman

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


A wonderful reimaging of Kiplings "The Jungle Book," relocating the setting to an ancient English cemetery. After Bod's parents are killed, he is taken in by the denizens of the graveyard and given the "freedom of the graveyard" -- which means that he can go anywhere, while he is inside the cemetery, even to the extent of passing through the walls of the crypts or fading into the shadows when humans are nearby.

As he grows older, Bod learns about the others in the graveyard, has close encounters with ghouls and eventually comes into contact with humans. One girl, in particular, befriends him. But he also learns that the man who killed his parents is still hunting for Bod and Bod ultimately has to rely upon the skills he learned in the cemetery to save himself and his friend.

The book was highly entertaining, with wonderful characters and Neil Gaiman infuses the story with an eerie sense of the macabre -- but nothing that young people would find disturbing. I read ghost stories like this when I was seven or eight years old and I loved them.

If I have one complaint, it's that Bod is eventually turned out of the cemetery to go live with his "kind." This is the way "The Jungle Book" ends, so this book rightly ends the same way, but it bugged me in Kipling and it bugs me in this. It's not like children never go back to visit their parents, after all, even when grown. I think it would be delightful to picture Bod returning to the cemetery for the holidays!



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How to Insult Your Friends Like a Viking!

One of the criticisms I’ve received about Seidman is that the dialog between Kol and Thorbrand felt a little too “modern.”  This is a perfectly valid criticism, if it brings the reader out of the story.  But it was a deliberate artistic choice on my part, so I’d like to explain my reasoning.

I’ve read a bunch of books on Vikings, in which everyone speaks like Conan the Barbarian or a character from The Lord of the Rings — rather stilted and formal, and using the exclamation “Fool!” quite a bit.  Now, I’m a big fan of Conan and LOTR, but I don’t think people ever really talked that way.  Like the fact that all films about Vikings are scored with heavy kettle drums, low brass that didn’t even exist before the Renaissance and chorsuses of men shouting, “Huh!”, this is simply a modern shorthand for historical dialog.

I suspect the thing that seems the most jarring to some readers are the insults Kol and Thorbrand toss around.  In several places, they use the word, “dummy” or “stupid” and these can break the illusion of the book being a historical novel.  Perhaps words like “dullard” or “fool” or “simpleton” would be more in keeping with the tone of a historical.  (And in fact the adult characters in Seidman do tend to talk a bit more like that.)

But in reality, Kol would not say “dullard” or “fool” or “dummy” in any context.  He doesn’t speak English.  He would say fífl, which translates to…wait for it…”dullard” or “simpleton” or “dummy”.  Maybe “idiot.”  But to Kol and Thorbrand, the way they speak to one another would be perfectly natural and easy to their ears.  Teenagers, no matter what the time period, don’t speak formally to one another.  (Well, unless they’re raised in high society, perhaps.)  So why translate it formally?  Why not just make it colloquial and informal, as it would sound to them?  That was my reasoning for making Kol and Thorbrand talk the way they do in the novel.

But at this point you may be wondering, just how did the Norse insult each other?  This is important to know, if you ever find yourself sucked back through a time portal.  So, leaving out some inappropriately vulgar ones, here are a few common insults in Old Icelandic:

dunga (DOON-gah) — a useless fellow

eldhúsfífl (EHLD-hoos-feef-uhl) — “hearthfire idiot”, an idiot who sits by the fire all day, a good-for-nothing

fífl (FEEF-uhl) — fool, idiot

gløggvingr (GLOHG-ving-uhr) — stingy person

hraumi (HROWM-ee) — braggart

níðingr (NEETH-ing-uhr) — villain, vile person

slápr (SLAHP-uhr) — a good-for-nothing, lazy person

vámr (VAHM-uhr) — loathsome person

vargdropi (VAHRG-drohp-ee) — son of an outlaw (Note that vagr (“outlaw”) also means “wolf”.  The Norse weren’t fond of wolves.)

veslingr (VEHS-ling-uhr) — puny wretch

It was also popular to call people after various animals, such as dogs or sows, or to say that they were the sons or daughters of these animals.

But beware!  If you start throwing these insults around in Viking Age Scandinavia, you’d better hope the button on your time portal wristband isn’t broken!

(My gratitude to the members of the Old Norse Yahoo! group norse_course for their posts on this subject.)

What Was It Like to be a Gay Viking?

I’ve been posting a lot about being gay in a Christian world lately, because it is after all what most young people in this country have to deal with as they’re coming to terms with their sexuality.  But as I’ve stated in previous posts, I am no longer Christian.  Furthermore, religion in general isn’t the main thrust of this blog or of my YA novels.  No doubt relgion will come up again, but for now I thought I’d cover a topic that readers of Seidman might find interesting:

What Was It Like to be Gay in Viking Age Iceland and Scandinavia?

WARNING:  Though I’ve attempted to keep this discussion from becoming too graphic, it does contain some referrences to sexual practices.  It really couldn’t be avoided.  Anyone old enough to read Seidman (recommended 14+) should be old enough to read this post.

I’ve had people try to tell me that there were no gay people in the Viking Age.  This is flatly ridiculous.  First of all, there have always been people with same-sex attractions, throughout history, all over the world.  Always.  Anyone who thinks homosexuality suddenly appeared out of nothing in the past century simply hasn’t bothered to crack a book on the subject.

Secondly, we know that people experienced same-sex attraction in Viking Age cultures, because they had words to describe it and laws to regulate it.  You don’t make something illegal, if it doesn’t exist to begin with.

So how did the Norse actually feel about homosexuality?  Well, the answer is a bit complex.  In general, they didn’t approve of it, which isn’t much of a surprise.  But like many cultures, they mistakenly equated homosexuality with a lack of masculinity, as if being attracted to men (if you’re a man) somehow makes you behave in a “womanly” manner, and likewise being attracted women (if you’re a woman) somehow makes you “mannish.”  (Obviously, this attitude is still with us in modern western culture.)

But this is where it got a little weird.

The key to understanding the Norse attitude towards same-sex attraction lies in their concept of “manliness.”  We don’t have much evidence one way or another that the Norse gave much thought to same-sex attraction or sexual contact between two people of the same gender.  But we do know that they were obsessed with manliness.

Men had to behave in a masculine fashion (and conversely, women had to behave in a feminine fashion).  Men who acted effeminitely really upset people and in some cases were put to death.  A similar fate awaited women who wore men’s clothing!  And for a man to be accused of being effeminite was a horrible insult — so horrible that the accuser could be challenged to a duel to the death, if he couldn’t prove his accusation.

Two of the words commonly used to describe “effeminite” men in the Sagas are ergi (a noun) and argr (the adjectival form of ergi).  The definition of these words is uncertain, because they are used in so many contexts.  In general, it appeared to refer to a man allowing himself to be used sexually by another man.  (In other words, a man who took the passive role in anal intercourse.)  We might translate ergi as “effeminacy” and argr as “effeminate.”

But there were other usages that suggested somewhat different meanings.  For instance, when used to describe a woman, it meant that she was lecherous or immodest — in other words, too masculine.  It was also said that old age made a man argr and the god, Oðinn, was said to become argr after practicing seiðr.  However, I seriously doubt that this meant old men suddenly turned gay or Oðinn became effeminite after performing trance magic.

What does make sense is that being old might make a man frail and performing trance magic might make a man feel temporarily weak.  As with the case of women who were called ergi or argr, the main implication appears to have been that a person was violating gender taboos.  The terms were also sometimes applied to men who were incapable of fathering children — another “failure” to be masculine — and argr was also synonymous with cowardice.

So the next question might be, did this association of ergi and argr with masculinity provide a loophole of sorts?  Did it mean that a man might have sex with other men, as long as he was still verifiably masculine?

It might have.

We know that Norsemen often violated male prisoners or slaves, and there did not appear to be a stigma associated with doing this.  (Yet it was still one more reason that being on the “bottom” had such a horrible stigma attached to it — because it was allowing another man to treat you like a slave or a defeated prisoner.)  We also know that there were male prostitutes who served men, and they seemed to have been regarded with contempt.  Yet men did avail themselves of their services.  And in Snorri Sturlusson’s Edda, a man named Sinfjotli boasts that he impregnated another man (as an insult to the second man), which is hardly something he would have boasted about, if being a “top” had any great stigma attached to it.

So it may be that there were certain contexts in which sex between people of the same gender was considered acceptable or at least ignored.  Keep in mind that the only references we have to homosexuality concern accusations of anal intercourse.  We have no record at all of how the Norse felt about mutual masturbation or oral sex.

One last point to keep in mind:  all of the information we have about Norse attitudes toward homosexuality comes from Christians who wrote about the Viking Age centuries after the events they were describing, and by this point homosexuality was widely condemned by the Christian Church.  It’s difficult to know how much the writers’ personal religious beliefs may have colored their accounts of their ancestors.

Resources:

Probably the best source of information on this subject is Preben M. Sørenson’s The Unmanly Man:  Concepts of Sexual Defamation in Early Northern Society, but that can be hard to come by and it’s somewhat dry reading.  A more accessible discussion of the subject can be found on the Viking Answer Lady site:

The Viking Answer Lady doesn’t appear to be updating her site anymore, which is sad, because she really knows her stuff.  But as long as the site is still up, it’s a fantastic reference for a lot of aspects of Norse culture.

The Folly of Ex-Gay Therapy

When I was a teenager, I was Christian.  I was very Christian.  I read the Bible frequently, if not exactly on a daily basis, attended the Assembly of God church with my father and stepmother and occasionally attended a Baptist church, because they allowed me to practice piano there after school.  I had a constant dialog going on in my head with Jesus and I felt close to Him.

I wasn’t perfect, of course.  My need to please my friends kept the “Jesus-talk” to a minimum, when I was around them (evangelists seem to believe that you aren’t truly worshiping the Lord, if you aren’t talking about Him constantly) and eventually turned a 16-year-old who couldn’t say anything more severe than “hell” or “damn” into a 17-year-old with an absolutely foul mouth.

And then there was sex.  At seventeen, I was still a virgin.  Worse, I had no interest in girls, at all.  I certainly masturbated — a lot — but when I did, all I could think about was seeing certain male friends naked or touching them.  I tried to force myself to think about girls, but it just didn’t get me aroused.

However, I was a good Christian.  I loved Jesus.  I hadn’t killed anybody or done anything particularly sinful, at this point.  (I still haven’t killed anybody, in case you’re wondering.)  I hadn’t actually been raised to believe that masturbation was a big deal — thank God.  It was inconceivable to me that I could be truly “evil” or “sinful” at the core of my being.

There had to be some mistake.

Perhaps I was a late bloomer.  Or perhaps this was some sort of test that God had come up with for me.  But then, why me?  The very thought that God was testing me, struck me as ego-centric and therefore sinful, as if I were thinking that I was somehow favored by God and deserving of His special attention.  But I could think of no other reason for God to put me through this anguish.

And anguish it was.  I was so lonely that I often cried myself to sleep, longing for someone to hold and be held by.  Other teenagers were lonely, of course — perhaps even most — but they could hold onto the fantasy of a happy life someday with somebody they loved.  I saw nothing but a future of loneliness and self-loathing, stretching ahead of me for decades, until I finally died, never having been loved.

Now, the standard response to all of this is that God doesn’t make mistakes, of course, and regardless of whether it was a “test” or simply something I happened to be burdened with, faith in God would help me overcome it.  After all, people are able to overcome alcoholism, drug addiction, sexual addiction, infidelity and a host of other “problems” through prayer and devotion to God.  Certainly, God would help me overcome homosexuality!

So I prayed.  And I prayed.  And I prayed.  During this time I kept journals, documenting my struggle, analyzing sexual dreams and struggling to find hope in them — some sign that the prayer was working.  There were times when I thought I saw it, when I convinced myself that it must be “working.”

But it didn’t really work.  What it did was increase my despair, because the longing for another boy to love was constant.  It never lessened, no matter how much I prayed.  I knew that, if I got into a relationship with a girl, it would feel terrible.  Deep down in the pit of my stomach, the thought of being in a straight relationship nauseated me — as much as the thought of being forced into a gay relationship probably nauseates a straight person.

We know, at the core of our being, when something feels…wrong.

And the absurdity of it all was that the people who said heterosexuality was what was right for me…they were all heterosexual.

They.

Didn’t.

Know.

They were all people who would be unhappy if they were forced into a gay relationship.  Of course.  So they could state with “authority” that gay relationships lead to misery and despair, because that’s what was true for them.  But the thing is, they didn’t know that it would lead to misery and despair for me.  They couldn’t possibly know that, because they had no idea what being gay was like.

One of the greatest things that ever happened to me was when I gave up the fight against my own nature — when I stopped listening to people who had never experienced what I was feeling, yet had the unbelievable arrogance to claim that they knew more about what I needed than I did.

“But wait!” you might be thinking, “What about those people who were gay, but did find a happier life after praying to Jesus and rejecting homosexuality?”

Well, it would be hypocritical of me to insist that they’re wrong.  If they say they’re straight now, then I can’t say they’re not.  On the other hand, it has certainly not worked for a lot of people.  Several people who have had so-called “reparative therapy” have later stated that they did not feel that it worked for them.  Worse, many have attempted suicide, as a result.

One of the earliest “success stories” of reparative therapy involved subjecting a young boy to beatings and a cruel system of rewards and punishments to discourage his “effeminite behavior” (which was equated with homosexuality).  As an adult, he behaved in a “manly” enough fashion for supporters of the study to claim that it was successful and use it to back their claims that homosexuality could be cured.

Unfortunately, that was far from the case.  The young man in question did, in fact, turn out to be gay and he had sex with men off and on over the years.  But the guilt he felt over it eventually led him to take his own life, and his family now feels immense guilt about the cruelty they subjected him to at the recommendation of his therapist.

Recently, Alan Chambers, the president of Exodus International, the largest organization in the “ex-gay” movement, recently admitted that he still feels same-sex attraction, despite his marriage to a woman, and said that the organization would no longer support reparative therapy:

“As the president of Exodus International and, even more than that, as a Christian leader who is out in front of people all the time, it is my responsibility to lead honestly and transparently and to share with people that, just because you become a Christian,…your struggles don’t always go away.  You don’t get to a place where you’re never going to be tempted again.”

The American Psychological Association released a position statement in 2000 that basically stated that 1) there has been no actual proof that reparative therapy works, apart from isolated anecdotes, and 2) the theories behind it are highly questionable.

I cannot say with certainty that it is impossible for a gay man or woman to become heterosexual through prayer and devotion, anymore than I can say that it is impossible for prayer to heal someone of an illness.  I cannot say with certainty that miracles cannot occur.

But miracles, by their nature, are extremely rare.

New Book Contract!

The map for my new fantasy novel “Dreams of Fire and Gods: Awakening.”

I’ve just signed a contract with Harmony Ink Press for my YA fantasy novel Dreams of Fire and Gods: Awakening!

I’ve been working on creating this fantasy world for about a year and a half now.  The map on the left is unfinished and still pretty crude — for one thing, there are no towns or locations marked — but it’s the general layout of the kingdom.  In the first novel, my heroes, Sael and Koreh, travel from southwest to northeast across a good part of it.

Here’s the description of the novel I put in my cover letter:

A thousand years ago, the kingdom was nearly destroyed, as two factions of gods — the Stronni and the Taaweh — warred for the land and the frightened humans who lived there.  Then suddenly the Taaweh vanished and the Stronni declared victory.

Now, as the likelihood of a war between the Emperor and his regent, Vek Worlen, approaches, the Vek’s son, Sael, finds himself allied with Koreh, a homeless vagabond, as he flees the capital city and makes his way across a hostile wilderness to his father’s keep. 

But Koreh has dreams — dreams of the ancient Taaweh — and he knows that the looming war between the Emperor and the Vek will be nothing, compared to the war that is about to begin.  Because the Taaweh are returning and the war between the gods may destroy the kingdom and all who dwell there.

I’ve been working on part two, but it hasn’t been going very fast, because so many other things have been distracting me lately.  But I’ve just promised I’ll have a final draft in two months, so now I have to buckle down and get it done.  Failing to meet my editor’s deadline would be a very bad thing.

I’m told we have a tentative date for the release of part one by the end of this year!

"Swords and Deviltry" by Fritz Leiber

Swords and Deviltry by Fritz Leiber

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Even though I'd been familiar with the name Fritz Leiber and knew something of his contribution to the fanstasy genre, I'd never actually read anything written by him. This audio version, brilliantly narrated by Jonathan Davis, is a wonderful introduction to the Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories. Leiber's prose is beautiful, if occasionally a bit too purple, and the stories in this first volume are delightful to read or listen to.

The stories suffer from a bit of the sexism so rampant in sword & sorcery stories, but it was noticeably less obnoxious than that found in, say, a typical Conan story. Ivrian is sweet, though rather simpering, but I found myself really liking Vlana. She was crafty and manipulative, true, but no moreso than any thief character in a fantasy novel and she seemed to be a good woman, despite her (fully warranted) thirst for revenge against the thieve's guild. Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser showed their loves far more respect than many fantasy heroes have.

If you keep in mind that you're reading one of the seminal works of sword & sorcery (Leiber actually coined the term), which means it will all seem familiar and cliched to a modern reader, this is highly entertaining and rewarding book.



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YAM Magazine Interviewed Me!

Camiele at YAM Magazine interviewed me this weekend for the 2012 LGBT Blogathon! Click on the image on the left to read it!

The Research That Went Into “Seidman”

There’s very little point in challenging reader comments on your novel.  It can easily blow up into an argument and lead to not only that reader but other readers getting a bad taste in their mouth whenever they think of you.  Even if you win, you lose.

But a reader recently commented that they thought the mythological parts of Seidman were dubious and I feel I should address this, at least here on my blog.

I’ve been researching Norse mythology and Viking Age culture for over twenty-five years.  In college, I read books about the myths and began delving into it seriously a few years later.  When I ran out of books from resellers in the USA that treated the subject of ancient Norse religion in depth (as opposed to retellings of the myths or New Age books on rune magic), I found myself ordering from academic presses in Scandinavia and Iceland, as well as the UK.

I’m only able to read English fluently, but that still gave me access to books by Neil Price, Jesse Byock, Jón Hnefill Aðalsteinsson, Preben Meulengracht Sørensen, and Jennie Blain. I’m not claiming that reading these authors makes me or anyone else an expert, but their work is exceptional and I highly recommend their books — especially Byock’s books on life in Viking Age Iceland and Price’s hefty tome The Viking Way: Religion and War in Late Iron Age Scandinavia. 

I have also, of course, read many books that I would not recommend, which would include quite a large body of work from the 1800s, a time period which was notorious for pompous scholars who loved to inject quotes from Latin and French into their work (disdaining to translate them, because all smart people naturally know these languages), while neglecting to back up any of their outlandish claims with citations from reliable sources.  Much of the distortions of Norse mythology that have found their way into modern texts, such as the preposterous assertion that Freyja and Gullveig are one and the same goddess, have come from these books.

Throw into this mix the fact that my husband and I did at least put some effort into learning Old Icelandic and translating several chapters from some Icelandic sagas (mostly Hrafnkell’s Saga) into English.  I am now in the habit of looking up any passage I don’t fully understand in one of the sagas or Eddas in the original Old Icelandic (well, they’ve usually been normalized for spelling) in order to verify that the English translation I’m reading is truly accurate.  (Often, it proves impossible to tell exactly what the original author meant.)  The two stanzas from the Voluspa that appear in Seidman during Kol’s initiation were translated by my husband from the Old Icelandic, since I was concerned about copyright violation from any of the translations we had available.  (Of course, it comes out nearly the same as the Bellows translation.)

This does not mean I’m any kind of an expert and it doesn’t mean that anybody should take Seidman to be some kind of authoritative document on the practice of Norse religion.  However, I spent years piecing together a plausible reconstruction of Norse religious practice.  I didn’t just read a couple books and wing it.

One area in which my interpretation of Norse mythology differs from that of many others interested in this study is in the way I view the dísir and the alfar.  From everything I’ve read, I’ve come to the conclusion that they are connected to ancestral spirits — the dísir being female spirits and the alfar being male spirits.  Many might find this odd, since the idea is rarely presented in books about the Norse gods, but there are many references that support this notion, as these two Wikipedia articles can attest:

Dísir

Alfar

If those articles leave you with the impression that it’s all a confused muddle, then you’ve stumbled upon one of the Great Truths of Norse religion.  (And no, I don’t get all of my information from Wikipedia, but it often presents us with a good summation of a topic.)  The texts are not consistent; they are not universal.  The alfar were not viewed the same in Iceland as they were in Norway or Denmark, and those perceptions changed over time.

Since Alfheim was awarded to Freyr when he was a baby, I believe that he ruled over the alfar.  Freyja is frequently called Vanadis (“Lady of the Vanir” or “Dís of the Vanir”) and is often associated with the valkyries (valkyrjar), who were in turn associated with the dísir, and she is the goddess who taught Oðinn seiðr, which is associated with the spirits of the dead.  For these reasons and others, I believe her to be the ruler of the dísir.  The reasoning can be convoluted, but there is reasoning behind it.

So the entire point of this is not to demonstrate that I’m a pompous intellectual, but merely to say:  Yes, Seidman was thoroughly researched.  It’s not perfect.  But I’m quite proud of it, both as a novel and as an exploration of what it might have been like to live in that time and place and to worship as the ancient Icelanders might have done.

Why Blocking Marriage Equality Isn’t About “Religious Freedom”

A recent article in the Kennebec Journal has same-sex marriage opponents up in arms, because the Secretary of State phrased the question simply and plainly:

“Do you want to allow same-sex couples to marry?”

They had wanted the more convoluted question that had appeared on petitions earlier in the year, which phrased the issue in terms of “religious freedom” and clergy being forced to perform same-sex marriages.

The problem is, this is blatant misdirection.  In none of the states that currently allow same-sex marriage is any clergy being forced to perform a marriage ceremony that violates their beliefs or the beliefs of their church.  And this isn’t going to happen, even if same-sex marriage becomes legal throughout the country.

Currently, no Catholic priest is forced to perform a marriage ceremony between two people who have previously married and divorced.  Not a one.  This is because it would violate his faith and the tenets of the Catholic church.  Similarly, a Jewish Rabbi isn’t forced to marry people who aren’t Jewish.  Religious freedom is already enshrined in our system of law and sames-sex marriage poses no threat to it.

On the other hand, any religious group that demands same-sex marriage be illegal in a particular state is a very real threat to religious freedom.  No group or groups of religious people, even if they are in the majority, should have the right to impose their belief system onto people who don’t follow their faith.  There are other religious groups in Maine (and all over the country) — Wiccan, Unitarian, Episcopal, and others — who do consider same-sex marriage to be in concordance with their religious beliefs.

Yet their religious freedom is curtailed by the Christian groups who continue to oppose making it legal, on the basis that allowing it would somehow “violate” their religious freedom.  And in fact, it would not.

It’s a blatant lie.

This post is part of the YAM LGBT 2012 Blogathon.