This morning during my usual blog rounds, I stopped by Shannon’s at Rocks In My Dryer. She had shared about the Southwest thing where a young woman was asked to get off a plane because of her clothes. I read much of the comments I came across — on both sides of the debate (ie. Southwest has no right to say what’s inappropriate dress to yay Southwest for standing up for morals). Some of the things I read were misleading to say the least. It was obvious that many of the commentators hadn’t watched the Today Show video or read the article.

• The title of the article is “Thrown off plane for outfit deemed too skimpy.”  This is misleading because she in fact was not thrown off the plane. She was allowed to fly on that flight.
• The article also states the following: “It doesn’t take much to get thrown off an airplane these days, as Kyla Ebbert found out when a Southwest Airlines employee told her she was too bare for the air. Two months later, she’s still trying to figure out what was wrong with her outfit.” TWO MONTHS LATER? What!?!? With all the hoopla surrounding this, I would have thought it had just happened this past week. So what’s the motive behind reporting this news now? What is she after? An apology? I doubt it.
• If you watch the video, she says she is wearing the exact same outfit she did that day. When she stands, the outfit looks fine although the skirt is a little shorter than I would personally feel comfortable wearing in public. When she sits back down on the couch though, you can clearly see her white underwear. Now thank goodness she was wearing underwear — at least on the Today Show — but I never once heard anyone ask her if she was wearing underwear that day. If she was not wearing underwear and her private parts were showing, I would expect Southwest to have kicked her off the plane and not let her back on at all.

Those are my thoughts on it. Now I know why I don’t watch the news or read papers. There are just some stupid, stupid things done as well as stupid things written.

This was the Subject for an email I received yesterday after posting about unconditional love. After reading the two stories that were linked in this email, my mind goes back and forth with “they should have done this” or “they shouldn’t have done that.” The church offered to host a memorial service for this man who’d passed away (his brother is an employee of the church). When they got more information from the family on the type of memorial service they wanted, it was obvious that they wanted a service that celebrated his homosexuality. The church informed the family they could not allow such a service to take place there and they paid for a different place for the family to hold the service.

This is just what I’m gathering from the two articles (which I’ll link to below so you can read them yourself). I’m sure that more than this happened — as it does when you have imperfect people involved (ok, all people are imperfect so that’s redundant!). I believe the church did right in upholding their beliefs for what should and should not be presented in their building. I think they showed unconditional love to the family as well as the man when he was in the hospital sick. I think the family had every right to make the choice to remember him the way they wanted to, but I just can’t help but wonder — why would the family want to hold the memorial service in the church in the first place? True, the church offered their services, but considering the family wanted to remember him in the way they wanted to — why would they accept it being held in a church? Did they think the church wouldn’t have objected to explicit pictures?

I guess this is controversial in today’s society. I’m still of the mindset that this is my house. I own it. If I don’t want a gay person in my house, it’s my choice (not saying that is my choice — but just trying to make a point). The church owns the building. They have a choice about what to let into the building and what not to — that’s their choice. They chose to let the people in, but not images that promote a choice they don’t believe in supporting. If I was a Playboy model, I would not expect a church to display images of my work there no matter what (yes, I’m totally getting sidetracked now). I guess I don’t see what the big uproar is about.

Here are the two articles if you’re interested in reading more:

Dallas News: Church won’t hold funeral for gay man — Kin scramble to find new site after Arlington clerics renege on offer

Statement by High Point Church in Dallas

As I finish writing this up, I realized the way the news wrote this article making the church out to look bad. Maybe I’ll just continue to keep my head in the sand when it’s concerning journalism, news, tv and such.

This past Tuesday I spilled Coke on the corner of my laptop. My laptop has been my life for almost a year now — holding everything personal and business related. My heart sank and tears filled my eyes as I watched the screen slowly fade to black.

I ran to the nearest computer store and bought an adapter to link the laptop hard drive to my desktop computer. I successfully backed up my laptop documents, but my mind was reeling at the thought of having to install all these programs on the desktop. Then another fear hit — what about my passwords? All those many times that I saved the passwords in my browser sure that my computer was utterly invinicible, were they all gone? Ugh. What a pain.

I share this pain with you today to say BACKUP your documents, and as bad as this sounds, make sure you could gain access to whatever you need to if your house were to burn to the ground. I know that sounds extreme, but especially if you run a business from home — make sure your data is stored off-site somewhere!! And at least write down your passwords or really remember the important ones so you can get to that data off-site!

For now, I’m rebuilding my life — one CD at a time.

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