Andrew Sullivan, in discussing efforts by Christianists (by which I think he means right-wing Christians) to secure a right to express intolerance of gays, states:

[o]bjecting to hate crime laws solely when it comes to protecting gays… is bigoted on its face. Even if you argue – preposterously – that homosexual orientation is a choice, religious affiliations are also included in hate crime laws, and nothing is more of a choice, in legal terms, than faith.

Agreed. While it’s pretty clear that being gay is not a choice (we gay people are the ones who’d know, aren’t we? why don’t they trust us on this?), the issue is irrelevant when it comes to civil rights protection.

However, there are those who still don’t get it. So why not make it easier for everyone by avoiding the issue? We should just make homosexuality a religion. I don’t mean something like the MCC – I mean a brand new religion from scratch. The Church of the Holy Rod or something. Of course, that name is very phallus-oriented, so we’d need something more gender-neutral. But it’s doable.

I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in days. I keep waking up around 4:00 in the morning and lying awake for an hour or so. Right now I need a nap.

I took yesterday off from work because I had some errands to do and because, well, now I can. One of those errands was to buy a recently-published book called The Renaissance Soul: Life Design for People with Too Many Passions to Pick Just One. It’s interesting so far, and I answered “yes” to most of the questions in this quiz.

One of the first things I did yesterday was go to the gym, taking advantage of the mid-morning emptiness. It wasn’t empty, but it wasn’t as crowded as it is at peak times. I realized that when I’m unemployed in a few weks, at least I’ll be able to go to the gym when it’s not so crowded.

Later, around noon, before going out to do my errands, I got nervous. I knew my errands wouldn’t take very long, and I wondered what I’d do with the rest of the day. Then I realized that once I’m unemployed, I’ll have a whole series of days like this.

Last week my therapist told me, based on her past experience, that many of her clients in my situation look forward to the idea of having empty days, but that in practice, they get tired of it pretty fast. She suggested I try to line up a new job before my current one ends. That made me feel guilty, because I was sort of looking forward to some empty days, and I felt like I was being judged as lazy. Not that there’s anything wrong with a little laziness. But the fact is, I’m often itching for something to do when I have too much unstructured time.

On the other hand, as one of my readers wrote to me:

Since when is an employer the only one able to provide structure to our lives? You never impressed me, through your writings, as a person still trying to develop self-discipline. Use the whole summer to impose your own structure, with your own (already well thought-out) ambitions as a condition, not some employer’s.

You have your whole life to work for others’ goals; An opportunity like this is fairly infrequent and you’ve been around enough to recognise that. You can do a lot in a whole summer, with just a little motivation and a healthy loss of fear (i.e., courage).

We’ll see.

I have a whole lot of self-assessment ahead of me.