How to Get Better at Stuff

I'm a musician who has the privilege of playing with musicians who are better at what they do than I am at what I do. They make me better by just trying to keep up with them. Jeff's been playing mandolin since his mom had to carry the case for him. Sherry's not a drummer, she's a percussionist who excels at all styles. Monica is breathtaking in her skill at the piano - so much so that a laugh of delight often escapes me in the middle of a tune when she surprises me with a riff. Rachel's only 19 but is getting to where she can harmonize to anything with anybody (I take a LITTLE credit for that 'cause she's my kid!). She can do that because she's been playing with real players since she was 14 or so, and because they allowed her to participate.

Call this my little "do good stuff" minute: if you excel at anything, you're a potential mentor - share your skill. If you desire to excel, don't be shy - ask to interact with the folks who do it really well. I know from experience that, at least with Dana & Friends, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts and I'm better for it.

We'll be playing tonight from 7 to 9 at Windcrest United Methodist Church's Soul Cafe, corner of Walzem and Midcrown, in San Antonio. Free food, free admission, and fun tunes - and a glimpse of somebody getting better because the "real players" let me sit in.

Basic Biology and The Social Construct

Okay, here we go with a big one: The push by a loud but tiny minority of homosexual activists for homosexual marriage is completely illegitimate. Although I’m a sold-out, born-again Christian, I’m going to make a completely secular argument against homosexual marriage, based on biology and the social construct. If the following sounds mean, blame the facts or tell me where I’m going wrong, please.

I think anyone would agree that at its biological root, the basic reason for sex is as a mechanism for procreation. Sexual intercourse perpetuates the species, unless you’re talking about asexual reproduction (the decided minority in animals). There is, to my knowledge (and I’m happy to hear differently), not a single instance in which homosexual conduct resulted in a naturally conceived child. There’s no natural homosexual reproduction. Yes, some fish change gender under certain circumstances, but I know of no instance in which two male or two female of any creature have naturally conceived a baby critter. Petri dishes and implanted eggs don’t count – that’s science interfering in nature.

Assuming the above is true, then all the specious arguments about, “my aunt and uncle can’t have kids ‘cause she’s infertile – does that mean they shouldn’t be allowed to be married?” fall away: NO two men, and NO two women, can EVER naturally make a baby by sexual intercourse. Even if your aunt and uncle can’t have kids, A man and A woman can. So, the straw man attempt to equate homosexual marriage with marriage between two people of opposite sexes where one is infertile, falls flat.

So, if society protects marriage as essential to perpetuate society and raise the next generation with the values that will continue the cycle of reproduction, and homosexual marriage cannot under any circumstances naturally result in children, then it does not deserve the protection of law. It just doesn’t. Does that mean that homosexual people are evil or don’t have the same rights as anybody else? Of course not. I can’t keep this from sounding flippant, though I don’t intend for it to: any homosexual has the right to marry any unmarried person of the opposite sex who will have him or her. That’s the same right that heterosexuals have. No difference at all. Protecting homosexual marriage would result in special rights, not equal rights. To equate the push for special rights for homosexuals with the civil rights struggle for equal rights for blacks is an affront to the memory of Dr. King, et al: skin color and ethnicity are completely beyond the control of the person and cannot be altered or not done: my friend Brian can’t just not be black today, and nobody would want him to. There is significant evidence that people can go from homosexual to heterosexual permanently. Regardless, a person who believes himself to be homosexual CAN refrain from homosexual conduct. Even if he chooses to engage in homosexual conduct, that and its consequences are his problem and not the responsibility of society to protect.

On a related topic, the procedure commonly known as “sex change” is, in my opinion, nothing more than mutilation of the patient: a male who is artificially altered to appear biologically female is nothing more or less than a mutilated male. Ditto for females. If it makes you feel better to have your anatomy altered, well…okay; but don’t try to force me to acknowledge as true something which is patently false. A “reassigned” “former” male marrying another male is homosexual marriage, nothing else. Ya can’t change the chromosomes.