Not crazy about blue-bloods

King Charles III of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, move over. You're not the only monarch taking it in the ear for being a royal these days. Swedish writers Lisa Ambjorn and Camilla Holter and writer-producer Lars Beckung of the hit show Young Royals on Netflix have clearly got more than one bone to pick with the Swedish monarchy.

It's easy to miss, since the main focus is on Young Royals as a gay love story, with the bit about an heir to the Swedish throne who falls in love with a non-royal being little more than a device to drive the plot.

A google search shows that the first season made it to the top 10 in 12 countries briefly and was streamed for more than 9.8 million hours worldwide. In the first week after its release, the first season was ranked the 8th most streamed non-English language series on Netflix worldwide. In case you're not in that number, here's a quick plot summary from the show's Wikipedia page:

Young Royals is a Swedish teen drama romance streaming television series on Netflix. Set at the fictional elite boarding school Hillerska, the plot primarily follows the fictional Prince Wilhelm of Sweden (Edvin Ryding), his romance with fellow male student Simon Eriksson (Omar Rudberg), and the drama which results.

A soap opera, from all appearances.  Television for teens. Just another of hundreds of coming-out stories for the LGBT community, maybe.

But you can't miss the fact that while this is for all progressive thinkers these days, including probably the vast majority of people under twenty-five, a feel-good romance, it's also very much a study of rapid, possibly too rapid, social change. It's a gay love story, a very sweet one, and let's ring the bells for that. But it's also an unmistakable clash between not so much homophobia as the power of social norms, status quo and tradition on the one hand and individual freedom on the other. Even if you agree on the importance of aggiornamento, to use Pope John XXIII's term for "updating" the values of society in Roman Catholic terms, you have to recognize that drama and serious conflict are inevitable. The argument here over change between conservatives and progressives is less about the what, far more about the how fast.

The attack on the monarchy, the thorn in Crown Prince Wilhelm's side, is a relatively gentle one. Wilhelm loves his mother, the Queen, and she is loving and accepting of her son's need to explore his sexuality (this is Sweden, after all). But she is also a staunch defender of the notion that Sweden must provide not just an heir, but a blood heir, to keep the institution of the monarchy going. Sweden, she says in effect, is the monarchy. For Wille not to produce an heir is to betray his country. One imagines her saying to herself, "We all get over our first loves! Let's get our priorities straight."

Given the attitudes of modern Swedes, it's not too much to expect they might toss around the possibility of a gay king. Even call it, like the idea of a female president in the U.S., an idea whose time is way overdue. But Mama is clearly nowhere near ready to take her progressive parenting ideas to this future possibility. Even if Wille were to produce an heir with a high-born surrogate, would the country be able to wrap its head around the notion? Not bloody likely. What are the chances of finding another royal willing to surrogate?  Even less likely. You see how quickly this notion spins off into the ridiculous.

So we are not yet in the year 2066, or whenever such a notion might actually be entertained seriously. We're in 2021 (when Young Royals comes out), and both Mama (the good cop), and the royal advisor (bad cop) are determined that Wille has to put duty over any personal relationship and ditch this non-royal lover of his.

Note the implications. Sweden may be a modern progressive democracy. But the story centers on royal "blood" and on the arrogant snobs at this elitist private school. Even the scholarship students, Simon and his sister, Sara, are sucked into the belief that they are second-class, for a time and to a degree. Wille finds a confidant in another gay student, Nils, but even Nils advises Wille to "stick to his own kind" and juggles the question of having to come out one day as the first CEO of a major company. It's a world of winners and losers, or "top-drawer" people and nobodies.

Another aspect of this drama viewed as a sociological study is the fact that these 16-year-olds are highly sexual beings. There is open depiction of masturbation on several occasions, as well as full-on penetrative sex and everybody talks as if such goings-on were all around and commonplace. Ironic, since the show has an "adult audience" rating. Or maybe the word should be "cutting-edge." The casting of Wilhelm as a Swedish blue-blood and Simon as an Hispanic immigrant (Omar is Venezuelan-born in real life) was brilliant. They're both way older than 16, but Wilhelm's teenage acne went a long way to making these characters believable.

The real bad guy in the story is August, a second-cousin to Wilhelm.  Nasty, manipulative, self-serving in the extreme. Unafraid to do anybody in almost for the fun of it. And what does he get for being a thoroughly rotten character? The Queen actually taps him to be the replacement in line for the throne in the event that Wilhelm wusses out. So much for looking out for Sweden's best interests.

I watched Young Royals when it first came out a couple years ago and on a whim just watched the whole two seasons again, on a binge. I'm glad I did. I loved the love story. Loved hating August and the whole concept of an upper-class boarding school. Got to feel terribly superior about my working-class roots. Love being an amateur sociologist.

I have to admit that I'm not against the idea of having an updated, de-fanged monarch as head of state, given the evidence that the American decision to put head of state and head of government into the same person has turned out to be a terrible mistake. But this depiction of the Swedish royal household, if even partially accurate in tone, suggests to me we need to think more the way the Germans have done in selecting a respected elder to the office of president to do the head-of-state job. It's not just that I think strangling young love is a crime against humanity. I also think there's something really wrong about calling yourself a democracy and then putting your fate in the hands of so-called blue bloods and requiring everybody to speak of them in terms of "highness" and "majesty."

Thanks Lisa, Lars and Camilla, for prompting me to give more thought to the question than when Elizabeth II died and Charles-who-barks-when-the-pens-don't-work took over.  You can move me into the anti-monarchist column now.

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In case you thought parenting a dog was a bed of roses

My sister and brother-in-law, like my spousal unit and me, are powerful dog lovers.. And, like Taku and me, they are still grieving the loss of their long-term companion. They lost Scally not long before we lost Miki.  Ever since we got back in regular communication, now that we're too old to sweat the small stuff of our difference over politics and religion, we talk a whole lot about our dogs. Karen and Joe just inherited a pug named Suzanne.

I am still getting used to the idea that we lost Miki and have only Bounce to fill our lives with love and affection. Bounce does that, in spades.

But not without a price to pay.

This morning, my sister asked how Bounce was doing.  I wrote two responses, which I am sharing with you here, the first one short, the second one with way way too much information.

Please hit your delete key now if you have an aversion to any discussion of scatological topics. 

Answer #1 - She's fine. We've got some medication for her loose stool that we started giving her today. I'll keep you posted.

Answer #2: - I think if Bounce could talk, she'd say, "What are you guys going on all about? I'm just fine. I'm just like you: when I'm hungry, I eat; when I'm thirsty, I drink. When I'm sleepy, I nap.  And when I have to pee or poo I scratch on the door until somebody lets me out and I do what I need to do."

And she's right. She's just like us, except for that last part. We don't scratch on the door. We have a separate room for peeing and pooing. Like you, we never use the carpet. And like you, despite all the rumors that we overindulge our canine daughters, feed them expensive food, let them sleep in our beds with us, and walk them twice a day, we can actually distinguish between man and woman and beast.

That amounts to no mean distinction these days. Since last Saturday, Bounce has needed to poo several times a day, including at 3 o'clock in the morning. Whether we have missed the signal or whether she's just getting old and can't be bothered anymore, we have not only been getting up every night for the past several nights at 3 a.m. but cleaning messy poo off the bathroom rugs, and the bedroom and stair landing carpets. Thank the saints for disinfectant. And pat us on the back for having invested in a carpet cleaner for just this purpose some years ago.

We have had intense conversations with her about this behavior. We are modern progressive parents. Wouldn't dream of following the old ways our ancestors used of rubbing her nose in it. We never raise our voices, never scold, never punish, always assume her behavior is the result of bodily necessity and never of malicious intention. When we reason with her she always listens carefully with a look in her eye that says she's paying attention and trying to follow. And then she continues on with the same behavior.

We have a vet that has been with her (and her sister before she died on May 15) from the beginning. I called him yesterday and related our tale of sleep interruption woe for the past five nights. He told me to bring him a stool sample this morning for analysis and sent us home with some anti-diarrheal medication, which we started her on this morning.

I suggested to Taku that it's time we had her sleep in a doggie bed surrounded by pee pads and fence her in for the night. Taku doesn't like that idea, thinking it would be torture if she had to empty her tanks in the middle of the night and besides, it would only reinforce the notion that it is OK to perform this task inside the house. He would rather go on waking up until the diarrhea stops. A close look at our wall-to-wall will tell you that over the years we have cleaned up several dozen bits of pee and poo and vomit. The remaining stains are the price of having the love of a dog. One which Taku wishes he could still pay for Miki, when he's a bit into his cups after dinner (he's still young, barely fifty, and still plays a lot of woulda-coulda-shoulda.)

Will keep you posted.

Thanks for asking.

Love and hugs,

Your brother on the Left Coast

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Confessions of a former church-basher

Over the past couple of years my once favorite pastime, bashing organized religion, no longer displays the vigor I used to put into it.  Most likely that's because it's lost its urgency for me. For one thing, purveyors of organized religion are diminishing in clout of their own accord. A Guardian article from six months ago reported that while there were 3000 new Protestant churches starting up in 2019, (the latest available figures on the topic), in that same year 4500 churches were closed.

For another, since white evangelicals tied their reputation to the Trump train, they are suffering the much deserved ignominy that much of America sees as just desserts. They no longer need me or anybody else to bash them. In fact, my sympathies have effectively taken a 180-degree turn. I now am feeling great sympathy for mainstream Christians, as I did for all the decent Germans of the Hitler period and as I do for Russians during this time of the bitterly ugly invasion of Ukraine. All these folks deserve better than to be tied to nasty people who claim the right to speak for them.

My loathing - I won't mince words, that's what it once was - for organized religion, Christianity in particular - was due to the fact that I grew up a self-loathing homosexual. And I acquired that self-loathing from the teaching and preaching of otherwise decent church folk. I was not bothered by the fact that everybody in the pews was white, or by the fact that women in many denominations could not serve clerical roles. I was neither black nor female. And like the "good Germans" who didn't go along with Hitler and the "good Russians" who have no opinion on the war in Ukraine and insist it's because they are "not political," I found no reason to have an opinion on issues I felt no responsibility for. But coming out as gay was a long laborious process for me, and as my awareness increased over the years of just how central the church was to generating and maintaining homophobia, so too did my loathing of the institution.

What has changed, and to a remarkable and once unthinkable degree, is the slow but certain acceptance of gay people. Not as sinners, or people who are "inherently disordered" to use the phrase slapped on us by the official Roman Catholic Church, but as equals, no better and no worse than other saints or sinners among us.  At the same time, just as the average Catholic in the pews rejects the church's teaching on birth control, abortion and the need for women to be denied leadership roles in the church, 70% believe homosexuality should be accepted by society.  That's an even higher percentage than the 66% figure for mainline Protestants. And, while we're at it, compare that with 36% for both Mormons and Evangelicals.

We're by no means home free. Just as the Supremes overturned Roe v. Wade, they're now kissing up to the homophobic Republican white Evangelicals in whittling away at gay rights.  I see us as mid-way through the battle. True, we have the Supremes to worry about, but at the same time the progressives in the country are still going strong. Sixteen years ago I was on the phones trying to keep California from passing Prop 8. A losing fight. We lost the right for same-sex couples to marry. Then, two years later, we got it back and my now husband and I took advantage of the thaw to marry in 2013. The anti-gay amendment to the state constitution is still on the books, but repeal is on the ballot for November.

My claim that organized religion is the primary source of homophobia in American society is supported by the fact that many churches have been split down the middle over whether one can be both gay and Christian.  Remember how the Southern Baptist Convention got its start? How it pulled away from the Baptist Church over the right to own slaves, a stance they only apologized for in 1995. Remember that? Well, look what's happening these days in many mainstream Protestant churches: The Methodists, for example, second to the Baptists in number among Protestant Christians, lost 1831 of its member churches, mostly in the south (the same places as "conservative" religionists split over slavery back in the day). Not as bad as the 5800 "disaffiliations" they expected, but notable.

You'll forgive me if every time I hear the word "conservative" the little voice in my head whispers, "racist, sexist, homophobic." Conservatives are essential to a balanced society, I know. Lefties can go off half-cocked sometimes. But my heart is with those who eliminated child labor laws and slavery, who gave women the right to vote, and were at the heart of every other extension of human rights to include more and more people and offer them a way to engage more fully in the great American democracy project. People who believe in the possibility of a better world. Progressives.

Not to be outdone by the Baptists and the Methodists is the Reformed Church of America (RCA), the erstwhile Dutch Reformed Church. It too has split in two over the RCA's acceptance of gays in their ranks. The splinter-group, shuffled the letters in their acronym and now call themselves the ARC, the Alliance of Reformed Churches. They continue to oppose same-sex marriage and the ordination of LGBT clergy.

The Lutheran Church, which once claimed my Christian loyalty, is split between conservatives and progressives like all the other denominations. According to a Missouri Synod site: "The position of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, repeatedly affirmed, is that homophile behavior is intrinsically sinful, expressly condemned as immoral by the Scriptures." Contrast that with 

In 1991, the Church wide Assembly passed a resolution stating that, "Gay and lesbian people, as individuals created by God, are welcome to participate fully in the life of the congregations of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America."

the position espoused by Lutherans at the other end of the spectrum. 

As for the Roman Catholics, I'm with the Catholics in the pews, 70% of whom are gay-friendly, and not with the official hierarchical church who are not. As for the so-called "progressives" among the conservatives, this statement had me rolling in the aisles recently. A celibate catholic may

have a Catholic funeral and be buried in a Catholic cemetery unless the bishop or pastor determines that doing so would cause public scandal.

Gee, thanks, guys. You get a gold star for trying.

But no cigar.

Christians are all over the map, in other words, when it comes to homosexuality. Christianity in America is a work-in-progress, and for that reason I have decided to cast my lot with the seekers, those listening for "the still small voice of God" and not with those who can't tell the difference between a bible and a hammer.  Both claim to speak for the church. Neither does entirely, and its a buyer-beware kind of situation. The fact that I don't share their faith is irrelevant. I am a fellow-seeker and I find every discovery of common ground with my fellow human creatures a cause for celebration.

For those of you who are still reading and might be interested in more chat along these lines, I highly recommend a discussion between two gay Christians with opposing views on how to be both gay and Christian which I came across recently. The two speakers are Brandan Robertson, a pastor in the Sunnyside Reformed Church in Queens. At the time of this discussion he pastored a progressive Disciples of Christ Church in San Diego.  David Bennett is an Australian Anglican theologian and doctoral student at Oxford.  It's on the podcast, Premier Unbelievable, moderated by the Christian apologist Justin Brierley, who (I mention only as a side note, and in passing) has spent the last ten years taking on atheists.

Two gay Christians, both outspokenly and (apparently) happily gay, one fully at home with progressive institutional Christianity, and one who follows the same line that the Roman Catholic clerical set advocate, that happiness lies in living a celibate life, as do most nuns and priests who see themselves as fully dedicated full-time worshipers of Jesus Christ, with no need of such things as sexual companionship. 

Neither of these guys shares my view that religion is a no more than a form of poetry, as opposed to science, and like other poetry can be written creatively in aesthetically sympathetic ways or clumsily, in ways that lead to the crushing of the soul.  And if they were running for president, I probably would not vote for them.

But I'd be delighted to have a beer with one or both of them at the same time.

Pick-me-ups

I have a bunch of stuff I turn to when times get dark. Music, especially classical piano artists like Alexander Malofeev, Vyacheslav Gryaznov, the Jussen Brothers and many many others, heads the list. Naps always work wonders. So do friends who answer their phones when I call out of the blue.

But when I get in that space where I hear myself thinking things like, "I wish I loved people as much as I love dogs," or "maybe the Christians are right and we are all born in sin and in need of redemption," I turn to my reservoir of good books and movies. Not the usual feel-good sort like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington - although that's a really good one - but my own private repertoire, ones that speak to me usually on more than one level.

I won't go down the list. I just want to mention one that I actually paid to get on Amazon Prime last week when I discovered that my DVD player is no longer working and I couldn't play my personal copy the other day, The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen).

In the early 1960s I worked for the Army Security Agency listening in on East German party officials doing business in the German Democratic Republic. I was in my early twenties, unmistakably wet behind the ears and susceptible to both harsh and kind words. The U.S. Army was providing the harshness, the cadre in East Germany I was listening to provided the other extreme. Most of the people I listened to knew each other and chatted about birthdays and their children and things other than broken water mains in the city of Leipzig. I came to understand how it could be that people might be tempted to cross the wall from west to east as well as the other way around.

But I never lost sight of the fact that by far the greater number of people fleeing their homeland went from East to West Germany. The wall had gone up between the first time I visited Berlin and now. I understood the logic of East German administrators - they were providing free health care and education for all its citizens and couldn't continue if people ran away just as they were able to begin paying back. They had to find a way to keep people in line.

It's hardly a secret that they went way too far. They formed a vicious police state and turned the entire country into collaborators, neighbor against neighbor, children against their parents. Nobody felt safe from prying eyes and a hyper vigilant police force.

Virtually all of my friends and family who lived in Berlin had friends and family in the East, and I came to share their dream of reunification. When it took place in 1989 I cried like a baby alone in my living room in Tokyo, having left Germany behind and moved on. My colleagues all wondered aloud about whether the Germans were going to become dangerous again. I felt particularly isolated. My sentiments were with the Germans now challenged on how they were going to put two hostile societies back together. And I didn't feel comfortable sharing my view that I had more than a bit of sympathy for the socialist project, and concern that the new narrative was going to make them into bad guys.

That is exactly what happened. Most Germans, Americans, other Europeans today now combine the two great evils that Germany suffered under: naziism and communism. With good reason. Both were nasty regimes, although I see a very important distinction. The Nazis were arguably pure evil; the socialists were idealistic dreamers who got corrupted, just as democracy and religion is readily corrupted by less-than-perfect human beings who work their way into leadership positions for self-serving ends.

Which brings me to The Lives of Others. Released in 2006, almost two decades ago now, it holds up as a perfect illustration of what my grandmother termed "good Germans" and "bad Germans." If you're not familiar with the plot line, it concerns a state security (Stasi) agent who spies on a writer and his actress girlfriend and comes to question his convictions that socialism as practiced by the GDR is what he always believed it was. I won't go into detail. For that you should see the film for yourselves. What the producers of this film have done is move beyond the goal of using entertainment to teach history and to drive home the fact that the GDR was an ugly authoritarian state to stress the point that we all contribute to the society we live in. The spy had a conscience. It served him well.

And if you need a pick-me-up when you believe the world is overly populated by shady characters, get hold of this movie and renew your faith in the human race.

It always works for me.

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