TGIF?

As you can see in my ‘About me’ section, I work in mortgage. And I am not sure if you’ve seen the news, but times are getting a lil tough.

As such, many of my co-workers have more free-time on their hands during the course of the day. And, as is commonly the case, that means forwards.

I was recently forwarded a joke from a pretty darn good blog.

(Read the joke or this rant may make little sense.)

For the lazy who didn’t click the link: It’s a gay joke, basically a newly damned person is lamenting being sent to Hell and Satan is trying to improve his spirits. Satan notes that all of the stuff that was ‘bad’ in life was A-OK in Hell. With the punch line adding that Fridays are gonna be kinda tough.

While I laughed at the joke, it raised an interesting question for me.

Why is this joke equating being gay to being a sin?

When I raised this question to the person who forwarded it, they were surprised.

“How did you come to be so OK with the issue?”

Being a straight fella myself, I had the usual gay-phobia in my younger years. It gets to be a catch-22. You know little-to-nothing of gay men, yet you are unwilling to interact with them, so your phobia feeds on itself.

I prided myself on being very culturally sensitive and diverse, yet failed to include gay/lesbian people in my life. After much thought, I decided my stance was hypocritical and worked on changing my ways.

Then I started working in mortgage.

Not sure if this rings true for every mortgage company, but many of the places I have worked with have been pretty gay-friendly.

Any gay issues I may have had were tossed-out the window as I realized these guys were just that, guys…Who just so happened to like other guys.

(Luckily for me, gay men find me as attractive as straight women do, so there were no awkward situations/advances.)

Which brings me back to the joke.

Is being gay a sin?

Folks will say that the Bible clearly says being Gay is a sin.

While that may be true, I am not a fan of literal interpretations of the Bible.

If the Bible were meant to be interpreted literally, there would be no need for Pastors to sermonize. Church service would simply be a 1-hour weekly reading session.

The Bible is not the ‘Word of God.’ It is man’s (and woman’s) take on God’s word. It is full of stories and parables that are meant to fuel thought and nurture contemplation.

Eye for an eye, is a euphemism, not a rule.

So is being gay a sin?

I just don’t know. And since I don’t know, I cannot damn a person for being gay.

There are two big issues that arise when thinking about the issue.

Is being gay a nature or nurture thing?

I lean pretty heavily towards folks being born gay. It’s a natural thing. I have met too many folks who had terrible times growing-up or simply living, while trying to ‘fit the mold’ with regards to ‘normal’ sexuality for me to think it’s a lifestyle choice.

If someone is simply being who they were born as, how can they be damned?

Then there is the question of big sins versus little sins.

Is one sin worse than the next?

Is murdering someone worse than lying? Is adultery worse than stealing? Is being gay worse than being a drunk?

To be honest, I do think of some sins as being worse than others…If you are a murderer, I am gonna think far less of you than most folks, who I know have told a lie at some point.

Am I right? Probably not.

A sin is a sin. So why make gay men out to be the devil, when everyone else has a laundry list of sins to account for themselves?

Is being gay a sin?

I don’t think it is.

But the bigger point is that it simply doesn’t matter. Because we are all sinners.

Like Jesus said, “Let those who are without sin cast the first stone.”

So until someone can come to God with a clean slate this whole finger-pointing exercise is moot. More time should be spent tending to your own house before broadcasting the short-comings of your neighbor.

Wow, all that from a joke. I really need to lighten up.

Putting the cards on the table...

Well folks, here they are.

Homer’s Odyssey 2008 Election Endorsements.

Prop 1- Yes.
For far too long the status quo in Washington state politics has been to sit on our hands. Dating back to the early 1900’s the sentiment of “this plan isn’t good enough” has retarded any real evolution towards a comprehensive mass transit solution for the region.

So here we are in 2008 with a plan on the table, why wait longer, allow the need to worsen and costs to increase?

This may not be the perfect plan, but it is a start and something to build from. The roads are still crowded and more busses alone are not the solution.

What is needed is forward thinking and proactive planning. I am not a fan of sales tax in general, but a .5% increase in the sales tax is tolerable.

The time has come to bite the bullet and make it happen.

Prop 1000- Yes.
This initiative is similar to Oregon’s right-to-die law.

While I am no advocate of suicide, I am a staunch advocate of personal liberty and dignity.

This law requires 2 of 3 doctors to approve of the action. Which is enough of a ‘safe guard’ for me.

I hope no one ever has to make use of the law, but that’s wishful thinking. Recent personal experiences have only strengthened my support for this type of law.

No one thinks twice of putting an animal out of its misery when terminally ill or its quality of life is severely limited.

Shouldn’t we extend the same compassion to a fellow human?

I-985- No.
Tim Eyman. Enough said.

Eyman wants to reduce the hours of HOV lane restriction to 3 hours in the morning and 3 hours at night.

Not sure where he’s driving, but rush hour lasts far longer than that. And it’s obvious that adding another lane to traffic does little to solve the traffic mess.

Just another ill-conceived Eyman brain child.

Governor- Christine Gregoire-D
I voted for Dino Rossi last election. I don’t say this often, but I was wrong.

I questioned Gregoire’s character in that first election. But after 4 years, we are not worse off, in some very trying times.

Gregoire has also increased support for social programs which I find very important.

Budgets are hard to manage, especially as tax revenues dwindle, so I don’t knock her there.

But back to character, I simply don’t trust Dino Rossi. His “Don’t let King County steal the Election” billboards which are plastered all over the state speak volumes about his character…or should I say lack there of. We don’t need a divider in Olympia, especially a divider who wants to lower the minimum wage.

President- Barack Obama-D
No shocker here. He’s unproven, yes. And yes, he speaks in broad terms. But when he speaks, he says what I want to hear from my president.

He represents a change from the status quo. Now I am willing to say, change is not always a good thing…But I am willing to take a chance.

He understands that there is a world outside of our borders and our reputation is severely tarnished. And he appears open to the idea of working with other countries to restore America’s previous luster.

He also understands the plight of the working poor. Sure we need jobs, but taxing those who can afford it just makes sense.

His ideas on modernizing our economy and educating ourselves to make the American workforce an actual commodity on the world market again, just makes sense.

I will admit Obama has lost some luster during this campaign, but he remains the far superior choice.

Time keeps on slippin...

I recently came to a realization.

While on my morning stroll from my parking spot to the bus stop, it dawned on me.

Time isn’t my enemy.

I have always been one to be punctual. Maybe it had something to do with my Dad being a military man, but I’ve always doted-on being on-time.

It’s a respect thing for me. If I agree to meet you at a certain time, I better damn well be there. As you are taking time-out of your day for me. Being late just infuriates me...even if it doesn’t bother the person I am meeting.

More precisely, I should say it infuriated me. In an attempt to relax and simply life, I have decided to take a little pressure off of myself.

During my walk, I asked myself this question: What is going to happen if I miss this bus and take the next one?

And the only answer I came-up with was: Nothing.

I’ve never looked at time as an ally. It was always an obstacle, something to be dealt with or worked around. It was always something there never seemed to be enough of and was a great source of stress for me.

Ironically, in my life-long attempt for punctual perfection, I was actually robbing myself of time. Stress isn’t healthy. In fact, it could cause conditions that would shorten my life.

When looking at it from that perspective, what is 5, 10 or even 15 minutes in the grand scheme of things?

In the past, I’d run to catch the bus while getting a lil flustered in the process.

Which brought back bad memories of 5th Period Spanish class from high school…See 5th period was the class after gym class and being a rather portly fella, I was that “sweaty guy” in class who no one wanted to sit next to. The same phenomena rang true recently on the bus.

So it would seem appropriate that this whole time realization came about as I was deciding if I needed to run for the bus or not.

I’ve decided against running. I just leave myself time in the morning to miss the bus if I want. And it’s actually pretty nice to just stroll at my own pace and enjoy being outside.

So, do I still fret about time? Oh yeah. I watch the clock like a hawk at work. But that’s more a commentary on my occupation than my pre-occupation with punctuality.

I am just more willing to put myself ahead of time. To decide if what I am doing at the moment is worth stopping because I am supposed to be somewhere. (A lot of the time, it’s really not.)

I actually think punctuality is becoming antiquated, with cell phones, email and text messaging re-scheduling can be done in a matter of seconds.

I remember the days before pagers and cell phones and making plans called for punctuality as neither party could easily communicate otherwise. That no longer applies.

Does all this mean I am throwing my devotion to punctuality out of the window?

Heck no. I am just not going to let it give me gray hair.

Gotta go, time to catch my bus.

Dude, time to bail.

Well here it is, JR. chimes-in on the “bail-out.”

This is a more elaborate version of a comment I left on a fellow mortgage monkey and part-time blogger’s site.

I teeter back and forth on this topic. On one side, I can easily go Tyler Durden from Fight Club and say “Burn it all to the ground.” But from the other side, I say we need to fix this issue to save/stabilize the world economy and I honestly believe that.

However, I am really, really against the Gov’t. taking everything over.

But that being said, we see what happens when the free market regulates itself. Take that Republicans.

The blame starts at the top, with the Gov’t. As the Fed lowered interest rates to perpetuate lending and keep money flowing to “grow” the economy, it was actually creating artificially high real estate values. Instead of looking ahead at the potential consequences of “a house for everyone” policies, they just kept forcing money back into the primary mortgage market and pleaded with banks to come-up with more exotic ways to qualify and approve borrowers.

Which brings us to the banks. Yes, the poor, poor banks (sarcasm) who were forced to oblige the Gov’t. and craft “innovative” and “dynamic” niche loan programs that allowed anyone with a credit score and a pulse to qualify for a home loan. Not to mention drafting programs/guidelines that dismissed normal safeguards to loan qualifying by no longer verifying common sense things like: Income, Assets or even Employment.

Then there is what I truly believe is the biggest issue with the industry, the uneducated and still far too unregulated loan originators. Having been an LO myself, I have seen how little training goes into the job and how little oversight there is once taking loan applications. There was far too much money to be made by placing borrowers into short-term high-paying loan programs with too little oversight as to whether closing the transaction was actually in the borrower’s best interest.

This old system of paying more for placing borrowers into higher rate programs needs to stop. As it is rewarding everyone for placing borrowers into loans that are not beneficial to them. This applies to the wholesale (LO to bank) and Secondary (bank to bigger bank/Wall St) mortgage markets.

Then there are the borrowers themselves. People threw common sense to the wind as they were offered astronomical sums of money with little documentation and no money down. Who wouldn’t take that deal? The only issue was that people no longer bought what they could afford, they bought what they wanted. Which sounds like a good deal, until you can’t pay your bills and get foreclosed upon.

I don’t feel bad for homeowners.

Sure some people probably got duped, but not as many as are being claimed…I’ll put it like this, when I went car shopping I didn’t go to a Bentley dealer. I rolled to a used car lot, because that was in my price range…people should have applied the same reasoning to buying a home, but obviously, they didn’t.

So who fixes it? I think everyone should. As no one is without blame.

I didn’t like the first incarnation of the bail-out as it didn’t do anything for the average homeowner, who is stuck with devaluing property and payments they can’t afford. While the Lenders and Wall Street investors who made ridiculous sums of money securitizing and selling bad loans get off scott-free.

Gov’t. is a stop-gap, not a solution. Simply wiping the slate clean is a terrible idea as there are no consequences to learn from. There were huge amounts of money made from this debacle (See former WAMU CEO Kerry Killinger’s $16.5 million severance package) and these companies should be held responsible for their careless actions.

The real solution is better gov’t. regulation, not a takeover, which should ensure smarter lending practices by the (few remaining) banks.