I Don't See the Connection

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I don't get it. Why is it that when some people criticize homosexuals and claim that they hate the sin, not the sinner, they almost invariably draw a connection between homosexuality and pedophilia? Why don't they choose the somewhat more common sexual sin of adultery?

Do I really need to explain why pedophilia is a grotesque sin? The violation of trust that's supposed to exist between adult and child, the extreme disparity of power and control and the corruption of innocence all make pedophelia such a perversion of a beautiful bond of love that, by its nature pedophelia can be considered nothing but a profound offense against God and humanity.

But homosexual relationships are between two adults who truly love and respect one another, and have the power of consent. They have the same power and control over themselves as a man and a woman engaging in adultery. Adulterers may be lustfully misusing God's sacrament love, but they are not participating in an act which, by its very nature, constitutes rape.

I would further debate whether or not a loving homosexual relationship can be considered as sinful as adultery (I don't believe it to be so), but I would have to say that the comparisons between homosexuality and adultery are far stronger than the comparisons between homosexuality and pedophelia, and they're far less charged.

And I especially don't get it when critics are surprised that, after essentially saying, "I don't hate homosexuals, but I think two men in a loving relationship are as bad as a monster raping a child," people take offence. Surely they realize that it's hard to take someone seriously when they look into the lives of two consenting adults and see monsters when, in reality, those "monsters" are no more or less flawed than your average human beings.


Breaking a Blog in Two

I've spent the better part of an evening breaking this blog in half. A couple of weeks ago I started getting 500 Internal Server Errors every time I published a new post, and I wasn't alone: other 1and1 Movable Type bloggers were encountering the same problems. Posts would be posted, and the website rebuilt, but we'd still get the error and while it wasn't fatal, it was annoying.

1and1 technical support acknowledged that they were cutting off cgi scripts if they ran longer than six seconds and that was killing my blog. My own blog, which celebrated its 750th post recently, was the first of my set to be affected. I tried streamlining the blog in order to cut down on my rebuilding times, but all to no avail. Then I discovered that my older posts posted fine -- it was only those posts 700 and over that were affected. Switching to a higher-end hosting deal doesn't help (I'm already on a pretty premium plan; I'd have to buy my own root server in order to get access to more resources), so I eventually decided to break my blog in half.

My archives up to December 31, 2003 are now stored in a separate blog, and the posts from January 1, 2004 onward are in their own, much smaller blog. There are now no problems with posting, and people shouldn't be experiencing problems with commenting. With a bit of finessing with the master archive list and the category pages, the two blogs combine seamlessly; the only sign of the split is when you run a search, and when you try to jump from December 31, 2003's post to January 1, 2004 (and I'm working on that bit).

Overall, I am pleased with 1and1's hosting service, but you should be aware that large blogs do run into limitations, and extra work is needed to keep everything running smoothly.

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