Inclusive? Are you sure?

I've been chatting online with a Unitatian minister in the UK for a while now.  He is doing something very un-Unitarian in that he is very actively promoting the church.  I think this is a very good thing.

Unitarians tend to be very open on the subject of creed.  I know Christians, Jews, Atheist, Agnostics, Buddhists & Pagans who are members of various Unintarian-Universalist churches.  Now, he has made a point of saying that Heathens were welcome.  Since some of the heathens I know are Asatru, I'm wondering how welcome they would actually be.  You see, unlike most Pagan and Wiccan traditions, Asatru tend to have very old fashioned beliefs about gender roles. women should be in charge of hearth, home and family, and men should do the providing and protecting.  This is not going to sit well with the usual politically liberal narrative that most Unitarians follow.

In addition, this minister seems to be very intelligent and has deep technical knowledge from his previous career, but he lacks a lot of cultural awareness.  I was amazed to discover that he had no idea who Terry Pratchett is.  For someone who is working in a church in England that is dedicated to social change, not having read Terry Pratchett's social commentaries that are disguised as fantasy is a major failing.

I wish him well and hope I can actually help with the success of the church, but I think he needs to get out more.

All genders are equal,

but some are more equal than others.  I suppose George Orwell isn't popular in schools these days, he told cautionary tales that are all to appropriate today.

I have seen a sharp increase in the "women are being oppressed" theme in the last few weeks.  Even though most of the arguments have been thoroughly debunked, they keep repeating them over and over.  The strategy of telling the same lie over and over has been proven to work in other venues, so why try something new?

I'm tired of it.  I'm tired of being told that I'm a horrible, evil, oppressing white male.  I often wish I didn't have as strong morals and ethics as I do, it's the sociopaths who are succeeding and prospering in today's society.

Liberal narrative?

I've recently started reading a number of blogs again.  One of them is written by a very talented and well known writer who is typically a flaming liberal.  Yeah, he has a Ph.D. as well, why do you ask?

In a recent blog post he attacked the conservatives and Republicans (again) picking on a number of issues.  One of them was education.  He made a big deal about the fact that teen pregnancy in red states was much higher than in blue states.  I will certainly agree that there has been a failure in education.  However, like many liberals, he fails to consider the long term implications of his beliefs.  For all his yammering about evolution, he fails to take into consideration what is happening right now.  Liberals are a dying breed, the conservatives are just plain out-breeding them.  The liberal ideology is a losing strategy in the reproductive lottery.

I'm not happy about it either, but I'm not going to delude myself into thinking the moral high ground is going to be successful in the long term.  Reality is what it is.

On a related note, I have objected to the small-minded attacks that some liberals have been making about Dick Cheney's heart transplant.  As much as I dislike the man and think American politics would be much better off without him involved, as a human being he still deserves a minimal level of compassion.  Dehumanizing those you disagree with has led to atrocities throughout history, I really don't want to see that happen again.

I didn't follow the script

As I have been known to do, I pointed out something that didn't follow the Liberal narrative and I'm being painted as a bad person because of it.  The short summary is that I referred to the Wall Street Journal article of last year that observed that not only are women graduating from college in greater numbers than men, they are also making more money at least until their mid-30s.  This disagrees with the liberal worldview that women are always victims.

I'm really tired of the whole "victim" thing.  We, as a society, have been telling members of too many groups that they are victims for far too long.  Instead we need to start telling them that they can succeed, not that they will fail because they are always being oppressed.  People will live down to expectations, so we need to raise them.

Yeah, I have a history of asking uncomfortable questions and pointing out awkward facts.  This has led to quite a few liberals despising me.  Mind you, I've also been known to point out the same sort of things to conservatives, but the liberals seem to take a much greater dislike to me.

I'm feeling like a bit of an outcast right now.  I have realized that I can more easily reach many of my life's goals by going and joining a fundamentalist Christian megachurch than I can by being a member of a liberal church that claims to support people with open minds.  It's a paradox that I'm still pondering.