Murderers' Row at the NYTimes

Kristof —along with Maureen (The Cobra) Dowd and Frank Rich—form the Murderers' Row (for me) of the NYTImes. Like Ruth, Gehrig, and Lazzeri of the 1927 New York Yankees, this trio of editorialists takes no prisoners and bangs out homers—dingers—taters with monotonous regularity. In this piece, Kristof takes on the issue of homosexual marriage—one of W's favorite scarifying issues—and does a magnificent job of deconstructing Scripture (OT & NT) on this nonsense. W's pious defense of the sanctity of marriage is as phony as Ma & Pa Cheney's pious outrage at the outing of Mary Cheney (professional lesbian) by Kerry. Kristof's (out-of-the-park) first sentence is worth the price of admission. If this is (fair & balanced) heresy, so be it.

[x The New York Times]
God and Sex
By Nicholas D. Kristof

So when God made homosexuals who fall deeply, achingly in love with each other, did he goof?

That seems implicit in the measures opposing gay marriage on the ballots of 11 states. All may pass; Oregon is the only state where the outcome seems uncertain.

Over the last couple of months, I've been researching the question of how the Bible regards homosexuality. Social liberals tend to be uncomfortable with religious arguments, but that is the ground on which political battles are often decided in America - as when a Texas governor, Miriam "Ma" Ferguson, barred the teaching of foreign languages about 80 years ago, saying, "If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it's good enough for us."

I think it's presumptuous of conservatives to assume that God is on their side. But since Americans are twice as likely to believe in the Devil as in evolution, I also think it's stupid of liberals to forfeit the religious field.

Some scholars, like Daniel Helminiak, author of "What the Bible Really Says About Homosexuality," argue that the Bible is not anti-gay. I don't really buy that.

It's true that the story of Sodom is treated by both modern scholars and by ancient Ezekiel as about hospitality, rather than homosexuality. In Sodom, Lot puts up two male strangers for the night. When a lustful mob demands they be handed over, Lot offers his two virgin daughters instead. After some further unpleasantness, God destroys Sodom. As Mark Jordan notes in "The Invention of Sodomy in Christian Theology," it was only in the 11th century that theologians began to condemn homosexuality as sodomy.

In fact, the most obvious lesson from Sodom is that when you're attacked by an angry mob, the holy thing to do is to offer up your virgin daughters.

Still, the traditionalists seem to me basically correct that the Old Testament does condemn at least male anal sex (scholars disagree about whether the Hebrew phrasing encompasses other sexual contact). While homosexuality never made the Top 10 lists of commandments, a plain reading of the Book of Leviticus is that male anal sex is every bit as bad as other practices that the text condemns, like wearing a polyester-and-cotton shirt (Leviticus 19:19).

As for the New Testament, Jesus never said a word about gays, while he explicitly advised a wealthy man to give away all his assets and arguably warned against bank accounts ("do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth").

Likewise, Jesus praises those who make themselves eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven, but conservative Christians rarely lead the way with self-castration.

Theologians point out that that the Bible is big enough to encompass gay relationships and tolerance - as well as episodic condemnations of gays. For example, 1 Samuel can be read as describing gay affairs between David and Jonathan.

In the New Testament, Matthew and Luke describe how Jesus cured the beloved servant of a centurion - and some scholars argue that the wording suggests that the pair were lovers, yet Jesus didn't blanch.

The religious right cites one part of the New Testament that clearly does condemn male homosexuality - not in Jesus' words, but in Paul's. The right has a tougher time explaining why lesbians shouldn't marry because the Bible has no unequivocal condemnation of lesbian sex.

A passage in Romans 1 objects to women engaging in "unnatural" sex, and this probably does mean lesbian sex, according to Bernadette Brooten, the author of a fascinating study of early Christian attitudes toward lesbians. But it's also possible that Paul was referring to sex during menstruation or to women who are aggressive during sex.

In any case, do we really want to make Paul our lawgiver? Will we enforce Paul's instruction that women veil themselves and keep their hair long? (Note to President Bush: If you want to obey Paul, why don't you start by veiling Laura and keeping her hair long, and only then move on to barring gay marriages.)

Given these ambiguities, is there any solution? One would be to emphasize the sentiment in Genesis that "it is not good for the human to be alone," and allow gay lovers to marry.

Or there's another solution. Paul disapproves of marriage except for the sex-obsessed, saying that it is best "to remain unmarried as I am." So if we're going to cherry-pick biblical phrases and ignore the central message of love, then perhaps we should just ban marriage altogether?

Nicholas D. Kristof, a columnist for The Times since November 2001, writes op-ed columns that appear each Wednesday and Saturday. Previously, he was associate managing editor of The Times, responsible for Sunday editions.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

The Devil's Lexicon

Safe computing is akin to safe sex. Don't open e-mail messages from unknown senders. I installed a spam-killer (Qurb) that quarantines every e-mail message from a sender not in my Outlook address book. I can approve or block any quarantined message; approved messages are moved to the In Box and blocked messages are returned to the sender. Sometimes it's tedious, but better safe than sorry. I installed a router and my computer showed up as invisible on a number of tests on Web site that check IP addresses. Finally, I run spyware and virus checks at least once a week. If this is (fair & balanced) paranoia, so be it.

[x Lockergnome]
What's the difference between a "Trojan Horse," a "Worm," and a "Virus?"
by Leo A. Notenboom

Seems like there’s no shortage of confusing terminology in the computer biz. With the advent of computer viruses over recent years, we’ve spawned even more terminology that often seems only to make things less clear.

And then recently it looks like we can’t even spell! I mean, really… “phishing?” What’s that all about?

The good news is that it’s not really that difficult. Let’s run down the terms.

Virus: we've all heard this one too often lately. In a sense, "virus" is the root definition of the things we'll talk about here.

A virus in the human body is an organism that replicates (makes copies of) itself and overwhelms the body's own defenses, making it sick. Human-borne viruses can spread in several ways from person to person. Depending on the type of virus, catching it could be as simple as breathing the same air as an infected person. It might require direct contact, or it might require an even more direct transfer of, say, blood.

The term "virus," when applied to computers, sounds very similar. A computer virus...

...is a program - really, that's all any of this is. A virus is just a computer program. It's written by some individual or individuals, presumably with the intent of spreading and causing grief.

...makes the infected computer "sick" - in the computer sense, "sick" can mean poor performance, crashes, lost files and data, or more.

...replicates itself - just like you can copy a file from one disk to another and now have copies on both disks, a computer virus is, in part, defined by its ability to make copies of itself. Typically the copies aren't on the infected computer, but rather on other computers, which leads us to the last characteristic...

...infects other computers - exactly how depends on the virus, of course, but another key defining point for a computer virus is that it can spread on its own.

Worm: technically, a worm is a virus that does no direct damage to the computer it's infected. In reality, worms can cause a great deal of trouble merely by getting passed from one computer to many others, and can clog up a network very quickly.

Unfortunately, there isn't necessarily agreement on that definition. At least one other resource I've seen states that a) A Worm does cause damage to the infected system, and b) Worms and viruses differ from how they are transmitted: a worm is a stand-alone program, while a virus propagates by attaching itself to another program.

Trojan Horse: a program that claims to be one thing, but is, in fact, another. A trojan horse is not a virus, per se, but may carry them. For example, many people consider Kazaa, the music sharing software, a trojan horse because it carries with it a bunch of spyware. There are trojans that claim to be patches for a problem, often arriving in e-mail, that are in fact spyware and virus installers.

Phishing: I think of phishing as a kind of e-mail trojan horse. It's e-mail that looks like it comes from some official site such as your bank, PayPal, or eBay, but in fact it comes from someone pretending to be them. They'll ask you to go visit a site, or provide some information, looking very official and proper, except that the site is not what you think and the information you give them allows them to steal your credit card or identity.

The bottom line, of course, is that we all need to keep aware of these issues and act accordingly. We shouldn't have to, of course; hackers shouldn't exist and operating systems and other software should simply protect us. But the pragmatic reality of the situation is that we do need to keep our guard up.

What does that mean? How should you protect yourself? It boils down to common sense, a firewall, and running up-to-date anti-virus, anti-spyware tools regularly.

Copyright © 2004 Lockgnome