That's yodeling, boys, not squealing!

["Joan Opyr" <auntiestablishment@hotmail.com>]

Let's not put Descartes before de horse, Dougs.  I haven't gone anywhere, 
squealing or otherwise.  (Perhaps you've watched
"Deliverance" once too often?)  I included links to Credenda Agenda in my 
post so that people on this list could read your work and evaluate it for 
themselves.  Is that, in fact, the problem?  If they're like me, they won't 
stop with those links, but browse in mounting horror for hours.

Please note: I don't object to your holding your views, peculiar as I find 
them.  But your right to have them, to express them, and to do your best to 
make them apply to the rest of us does not extend to a right to do so 
without criticism.  Free speech is free for me, and free for you.

Far from being a modernist, I am a fully trained medievalist with a 
specialty in Anglo-Saxon poetry and the Norse sagas.  I freely admit to 
being judgmental; I've spent many years painstakingly honing my critical 
thinking abilities, and I've got the graduate loan payments to prove it.

As for what I believe, I believe that women are fully equal to men, that 
blacks are equal to whites who are equal to Asians who are equal to Latinos, 
Native Americans, and the aborigines of Papua New Guinea.  (And I don't mean 
"separate but equal" in that Plessy vs. Ferguson way I found so much in 
evidence on your website.)  Furthermore, I am a Democrat, a democrat, and a 
Jew.  I'm a feminist.  I believe that there is power in a union.  I support 
gay rights, I'm pro-choice, and I kiss my picture of Emma Goldman every 
night before I go to sleep.

I also believe that no one gave you or anyone else sole right to the bible 
and its interpretation.  This is the problem with self-ordination: I have 
just as much right to ordain myself a conduit for the voice of God as you 
have to ordain you.  Your authority rests on precisely the same foundation 
as mine.  Or Fred Phelps'.  (Talk about strange bedfellows.)

But that's just me--I don't speak for a church, a worldview, or a 
philosophy.  I don't need to.  Disagreeing with you does not make me your 
opposition, a prophet of "modernity," or a three-legged stool.  I am an 
individual with all the rights and freedoms accorded to me by the 
constitution.  (And for that I say, "God bless that wretched slave-owning 
Thomas Jefferson.")

So, you evangelize the Palouse your way, and I'll evangelize it mine.  
(Although I never made any claims to pluralism or multiculturalism, this is 
as good a definition as any.)  In the meantime, if you prefer, you can call 
me Auntie Patriarchal.

Yours sincerely,
Auntie Establishment (but not Auntie Enlightenment)



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