I'm Gay for Gay Marriage

So surpise, surprise -- the godless-heathen is for gay marriage. Shocker, right?

Actually, what I'm surprised at is that Ashton Kutcher is, too.

Well, maybe not surprised that he's for it, considering that he's one of those leftist-marxist, Hollywood types (you know, tofu, Prius, cavorts with "coloreds"). But I think I was shocked at how much he and I agree on the subject of man-on-man nuptials. Watch Ashton go positively heathenistic in his assesment on why Prop 8 is even a discussion (Fast forward to about 1:30 into the video).



See, right? Until this point the only thing I thought Ashton Kutcher and I had in common was lusting after his wife when we were children. Truth be told, I find Demi a bit too bony these days. She has that I-don't-eat-meat-and-have-no-subcutaneous-fat-anymore (Sadly, one of my other "80's ladies" Lisa Bonet is going the same way).

But according to the poll, I'm not the only here who thinks gay folks should be able to legally tie the knot. If you look at the poll on the right 100% of you (which equals roughly 2 of 2 voters) agree with gay marriage.

Right now, a lot of states offer "civil unions" which, to a brother like me, sniffs of "separate but equal." And Mr. Moore is right, this is only an issue because most of us have been raised Christians and men poking men or ladies licking ladies is not kosher. Even for those of us who are "cool" with it, many don't think they should be married in the same way "we" are. Many black folks also consider calling gay folks struggle to marry as a Civil Rights struggle to be blasphemy. I don't agree, which makes me a heathen in two worlds.

However, my wife has a great solution to this whole mess. And considering that she is/was a Christian, I think you should listen up.

She says the term "marriage" should apply to everyone -- gay, straight or Republican -- but for those who want to announce their opposition to gay rights can call their union a "Religious Marriage." So instead of amending the fucking constitution, let's just the bozos call their shit something different. Brilliant, right? That's only half of why I married her. The other half is not fit for this blog.

Self Portrait

Everyone . . . my calling card.

One of my friends (Badasschick) sent me a link to this website called The New Humanist, a UK magazine thats been around since 1885. It's a mag for "free thinkers" of which, apparently, I am one.

I mean, how could I deny it when the image above so clearly captures all of my various idiosyncrises and tics?

Logic? Check.

Reason? Check.

Sarcasm? Well, duuhh!

Large ears and glasses? Only on Tuesdays.

Honestly, I don't know that I like the idea of throwing myself in with such a dorky looking gang, but considering the alternatives, I guess I don't really have a choice.

Easy as ABC

I'm a whore.

Actually whores get paid and also get a lot of cardiovascular excercise "on the stroll" so that's probably not a good description.

I also don't get paid to do this, so that makes me something decidedly less than a whore.

What's the point, you ask?

My hotmail account had been down for weeks (probably because I opted NOT to take a stupid tour of the "exciting new mailbox features" ) and when I finally got in there, I saw an email from this guy at ABC. "ABC" is not me giving some made up company name -- I'm talking ABC, American Broadcasting Corporation; home of "Lost," "Pushing Daises" and roughly 40 other shows I have never watched.

Nevertheless, this guy didn't know that but he seemingly knew that Reports from the Third Kingdom would be the FIRST place to come to get some much needed viral campaigning. He knew I would be the perfect person to publicize (read: say something nice) about "Life on Mars" starring my former wife Lisa Bonet. He knew I was an attention-whore who dreams of nothing more than seeing my blog's name in some ABC promo saying something like:

"It's goddamned good TV!" says B.Cause at thirdkingdom.blogspot.com

OR

"I'd leave my wife if this show would marry me" whines B.Cause at thirdkingdom.blogspot.com.

And he would have been right if my hotmail was working!

So, here's a little post-coital hug for "Life on Mars" which premiered some weeks ago:

"Lisa Bonet is sizzlingly sexy."
"Just when I was ready to throw my tv out the window, this show saved my Thursdays."
"Makes me wish the 70's never went away."
"I have found a new purpose in life and it exists between 9 and 10 ET on ABC Thursdays."

Now if that's not quoteworthy, well dammit, I don't know what is!

By the way, I'm TOTALLY going to send this blog to the ABC guy.

Yes, I'm that desperate.

And now back to your regularly scheduled heathenism.

The Big Question

"Daddy, am I a Christian?"

This is what my 7 year-old daughter asks me today as I pick her and her 3 year-old sister up from a slumber party this morning.

Now, I've dodged a lot of existential bullets from her ("How did God make trees?," "Is Great Pop-Pop in heaven?"), but this was undodgable.

Lucky for me, I've become a bit more bold with my heathen pronouncements as of late. Around Halloween, her good friend JD, whose house she was at last night, developed a fear of devils ("not the red ones," my daughter assured me, "just the blue ones"). So when she asked me if I was afraid of devils, I told her I was not.

"Why not?" All big eyes and wonder.

"Because devils don't exist." I didn't even flinch as I wiped out the king meanie of Christianity, and, by default, it's main recruiting tool.

"But JD says . . ."

"Honey, JD is six. Who do you believe, him or me?"

The fact that she didn't answer right away concerned me.

Which brings me back to this morning.

"Daddy, am I a Christian?"

I'm no Bill Cosby, but even I realized this would require a little something called tact, or as I like to call it, "verbal tap dancing."

"Well, honey that depends on what you believe. Christians believe that Jesus is the savior of mankind. Do you believe that?"

"What's a savior?"

From there it was Christianity 101 taught by yours truly, which if there are any Hollywood execs reading, should be a TV show.

"Did Jesus die?" "Did God die?" "Did God go to heaven when he died?"

I give Christians credit because I have a hard enough time teaching her how to tell time on an analog clock, I can't imagine teaching the holy trinity. Not to mention, if you can explain the physics involved with Noah's Ark without laughing, you're either a great liar or a very dedicated believer.

However, what struck me most is that I really, really, don't want my daughters to be indoctrinated with a belief system they have little to no chance of ever understanding in a rational way. I'm not saying they can't be christians, just not yet. Like sex, drinking and cell phone use, they should at least be teenagers before they go down that path.

As it is with most bloggers, eventually the conversation came back to our favorite subject -- me.

"Daddy, are you a Christian?" She asked.

"No, I'm not" I said.

It felt good, honestly. Maybe because I knew my daughter would not judge me for my lack of faith or wonder if I had any morals or a spiked tail in my pants. She just accepted that her father was not a Christian, which didn't make him a bad person.

I hope she's as understanding when she discovers that while I'm no Christian, that I am indeed, Santa Claus.

My Religious Experience

It happened.

It finally fucking happened.

On Oct. 28 I had a religious experience.

I'll be honest, Jesus was nowhere around, not unless he was parading as the woman in the Redskins jacket behind me. But shape changing is something I believe only God does (at least he does in the movies and TV shows like "Saving Grace" and "Joan of Arcadia") -- truth is, any person who claims to be God would a get a polite nod from me as I backed away to a safe, distance.

No, my religious experience was based around another swarthy man who mostly goes by one name -- Obama.

And before you ask, Obama did NOT appear at the foot of my bed in the middle of the night nor did he carry me across a beach leaving only his footprints in the sand.

In fact, Obama did not appear before me at all.

That did not stop me from standing outside.

In the cold.

And rain.

For an hour.

And a half . . .

just to cast my absentee ballot for Barack Hussein (yeah I wrote it) Obama.

Now, I don't pretend to know what it was like to march during the Civil Rights Movement or follow Moses through the desert for 40 years, but goddammit if standing in that shit weather felt like a huge, biblical sacrifice.

And for what? Would Obama really win (remember this was Oct. 28 so I didn't know I would be part of history)? At the time, it was still entirely feasible that Sarah Palin would be the American Vice Pre . . . even now I can't finish typing that sentence, but you get the idea.

That's when I realized that voting is an act of faith. It's casting hope into a void for someone you've never met or will ever see with your own eyes. It's a well wish for someone else to triumph and make YOUR life better.

Standing in that line felt a little like prayer or how I think prayer is supposed to feel.

And yeah, it was kind of nice being huddled there with strangers who couldn't help but smile through the misery. We smiled because we all put our hearts and frozen fingers on a future we could only wish for.

I guess what grandma said is true: Voting works.

Blogging at a Funeral

I'm an asshole.

My friends and family would never say it, but I can't help believe that anyone who sees a funeral as a potential to write a "witty post" could have a very solid moral center. Not to mention I laugh at biblical puzzles.

So yeah, I'm an ass. But since you're already here, I'll have a go at it.

I made my yearly trek to church this past year. Sadly, it was to say our final goodbyes to my wife's grandfather, who had suffering through the dignity-stealing Alzheimer's disease. It was sad to see him go, but worse to see him suffer.

The funeral took place at my wife's family church -- though her mother has recently defected to a new church; a snazzy place with widescreen TV's and video kiosks (You can read all about my first/only visit right here). The church is over 100 years old and filled with very nice, well-meaning old people who say things like "have a blessed day" and throw salt over the shoulder to blind the devil (apparently a little Morton's is all you need to beat back Satan -- who knew?). Needless to say, I fit right in.

OK, a heathen I may be. But death visits us all and I've attended plenty of funerals. Still, I'm never sure what to say and when. I counted four times when the pastor (or passuh -- as he was readily reffered to) told every one to get up, but the section of pews I was in remained seated. So I was the asshole looking like slow kid in a game of duck-duck-goose.

Oh yeah, and what's the proper response to "God Bless You?" When I sneeze and someone says it, I say thank you -- you know, thanking them for acknowledging my brief discomfort. But the "God Bless You's" I was getting from the parade of sad strangers was more like a greeting (and even came with handshakes) and all my heathen ass could think to say was "Hey, how are you?" Like I bumped into them at Target. Awful.

Anyway, what really got my goat (I know you were waiting for me to get to this right?) was how this sad occassion, where family and friends are grieving and crying, was constantly barraged with warnings about hell.

Naturally, the deceased is heaven-bound -- no one wants to go to a funeral where the pastor says "Joe was great man, father and husband. Sadly, he was never baptised and is surely now fornicating with dead mules in hell." Truth be told, my wife's grandfather was pretty pious and died singing "Amazing Grace," so even by my standards, he's heavenbound. But what about the rest of us? Well as the passuh said "I know you didn't come here for this but heaven and hell are real. You have to ask yourself, if you don't go to sleep in Jesus, where will you wake up?"

(First off, sleeping IN Jesus sounds as icky as sleeping WITH Jesus. Better phrasing next time. )

And then, as the funeral is ending, he calls for anyone who wants to accept Jesus to come up to the pulpit because, you know, there isn't anything else happening -- might as well shore up some more business.

However, what struck me most about the funeral and all the speeches was this constant talk of death and the fear of it. As I gather, Christians are free from death because they will be resurrected in heaven where all the Starbucks are open 24-hours and your sides don't jiggle when you hit a bump on the road. It's called everlasting life and you only get it when you believe in the The Father, The Son and the Holy Ghost. It's like Comcast's Triple Bundle Package except without HD channels or multi-room DVRS.

I understand that no one wants to die. It's like being forced to take a nap while there's strippers downstairs shooting mojito mix out of their nipples and throwing free cash at you. Life is fun and death, from where I stand, looks to really suck. But I don't know that it's anything to be afraid of. Not when everything alive has to do it. Now, I wouldn't want to be the first motherfucker to ever die because I'm sure that was pretty scary. But I'm sure no one wanted to be the first person to get on an airplane, but now we all do it.

But Christians are afraid. They're afraid because, as my wife points out, the idea of hell is real. All of their life choices could leave them with permanent sunburn (don't forget mule fornication) so those last moments are really frightening. Thankfully, I don't have that baggage. And I don't want my children to either.

I'm already going to have to take Santa away one day, no need to replace him with Satan.

Bible Toys Suck Part 2

So I wasn't really sure how my parents would take the blog, seeing as they are often cited in them as being fairly bad parents -- at least by Black standards -- since they didn't bother to indoctrinate me with any religion.

Yeah, turns out they love the blog -- they share it with their friends, laugh out loud. All the things I want YOU to do. They don't leave comments, so I suppose they're not perfect but, hey neither are any of you (starting to get the hint there thirdsies?).

Anyway, we were at the beach during our yearly summer excursion when I birthed the masterpiece "Bible Toys Suck." You know it and love it.

I shared it with my parents who laughed. A lot.

Shortly after reading it, they ran out to get some puzzles for my children.

They returned with two bible puzzles -- The Ten Commandments and Parting of the Red Seas -- at which we all laughed heartily which got me to wonder, if there is a hell, is laughing at bible puzzles something that gets you there faster. I don't suppose God ever thought about such an occurrence as cheap pharmacy toys hadn't been around back when God was born/invented. But surely in his/her/it's supposed infinite wisdom, I imagine there has to be a punishment meted out for mocking the sanctity of a $2, 12-piece puzzle featuring a biblical miracle.

Jesus -- I hope I'm wrong (in this case).