I Just Want To Be Close To You

Luke Ford says:

I have a hard time sleeping with someone. I feel like it is against the Torah. I feel like I am not living up to my highest ideals. I feel like my dad might walk in any minute and say, “Son, what are you doing?”

So I normally like to kick my ladies to the bottom of the bed and have them sleep at my feet. Then in the morning, when I’m awake, I bring them up for a quick cuddle before I shower and say my prayers.

But there was this one woman who wouldn’t be kicked away so easily.

She was taking Ambien. And she was a very snuggly cuddly girl.

And we’d snuggle and cuddle until I got sleepy — our sex lives had ended weeks before (love of chess extended our relationship by about six months) — and then I push her towards the bottom of the bed.

She didn’t get the hint.

So I grabbed her little feet and dragged her to her rightful place and gave her a comforter and a pillow and told her to rejoice in her lot.

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Seventh-Gay Adventists

Luke Ford says:

That’s a great title for a movie.

I was raised a Seventh-Day Adventist. There were no out homosexuals in the religious communities I grew up in (Avondale College and Pacific Union College). We would’ve dragged them behind a pack of kangaroos until they were cured of their disease.

I remember in sixth, seventh and eighth grade at Pacific Union College Elementary School, “fag” was the dirtiest word you could hurl at someone. I used a lot.

Guess that wasn’t very Christlike of me.

Here’s more info on this movie:

This film explores the complex intersection of religion, identity, and sexuality through the stories of gay Adventists who are often faced with a gut-wrenching decision. They must choose between the church they were raised to believe is God’s true remnant church and their innate desire for an intimate, loving relationship. Or is there a way to reconcile their faith and their identity?

Why Make This Film?

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What Must I Do To Be Saved?

Luke Ford says:

I’m reading a terrific book addressing this question — Freedom to Change by Frank Pierce Jones, a professor of Classics at Brown University and a teacher of Alexander Technique.

From page two: “For the Alexander Technique doesn’t teach you something new to do. It teaches you how to bring more practical intelligence into what you are already doing: how to eliminate stereotyped responses; how to deal with habit and change. It leaves you free to choose your own goal but gives you a better use of yourself while you work towards it.”

“Alexander and his brother, A.R. Alexander (1874-1947), developed a way of using their hands to convey information directly through the kinaesthetic sense. They gave their pupils an immediate “aha” experience of performing a habitual act — walking, talking, breathing, handling objects, and the like — in a non-habitual way. The technique changed the underlying feeling tone of a movement, producing a kinaesthetic effect of lightness that was pleasurable and rewarding and served as the distinguishing hallmark of non-habitual responses.”

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What's Important To You

Luke Ford says:

I often get people emailing in about blog posts and videos I’ve made. They want changes. They have corrections. They think I’ve been unfair. They offer feedback.

What they don’t have, most of the time, is a link to the blog post or video in question.

They don’t realize that the blog post they’ve been worrying about is not on my mind. They act as though what absorbs them absorbs me too.

It doesn’t.

That’s why rules of social engagement are important. When I deal with smart cultured people, they usually include links to what they’re talking about because they’ve been educated that what is important to you is often peripheral to others.

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Finding An Orthodox Wife

Luke Ford says:

LA is weird. Almost all Orthodox high school graduates who are serious about their religion leave town (because there are no full-time learning opportunities in Los Angeles for the unmarried Modern Orthodox).

There are far more male singles in Southern California than female singles (while New York has the opposite ratio). Orthodox guys in LA often fly to New York for shiduchim (finding a spouse).

If you’re not learning at least an hour a day with texts in their original language, you’re a pretend Orthodox Jew. Los Angeles is filled with these. If you’re an Orthodox guy and you’re not married by the time you’re 30, you’re probably using porn, chasing strippers, ordering hookers, bedding down shiksas and complaining you can’t find a religious girl while you daven in Orthodox shuls.

West Coast religion is considerably more watered-down than its Mid-West and East-Coast relatives. It’s more a uniform that you put on and take off when convenient.

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Global Warming

Luke Ford says:

On hour one of his radio show today, Dennis Prager read a snide letter reproving Dennis for talking about “global warming” instead of “climate change.”

Dennis: The mental gymnastic that those of you who continue to believe that carbon dioxide emission from humans will wreak havoc on the planet because of over-heating.

I’m corrected all the time now: “Don’t use the term “global warming.” That was made up by the press. We never use global warming. We use climate change.”

They used “global warming” at the beginning but now the globe isn’t warming, it’s freezing. Remember how they predicted the most horrific hurricanes? We had one of the mildest hurricane seasons ever, but it doesn’t matter. Whenever they are caught in their phony predictions, they move on to new environmentalist religious rhetoric. Truth doesn’t matter.

I want to clarify the chicanery of calling it “climate change” instead of “global warming.”

Let’s say it was climate change. So what? The only thing people care about is global warming.

Give me one good reason for not using the term global warming. Why object? If the world isn’t warming, then there’s no danger, right?

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Finding An Orthodox Wife

Luke Ford says:

A young man converting to Judaism tells me: “The problem I have is that most orthodox women (90% +???) won’t recognize a ger (a convert to Judaism) unless he has an RCA-approved conversion.”

I don’t think that’s true. Unless you want to be chareidi, you’ll be fine in Orthodox life with an LA Beit Din or non-RCA approved conversion to Judaism.

If you do want to be chareidi, getting that initial Orthodox conversion to Judaism, even if it is not approved by the RCA, will make your life 100% easier.

Any Orthodox non-charedi girl who tells you that your LA Beit Din conversion is not good enough is just feeding you a line to get rid of you.

I remember at LimmudLA a man asking about his wife’s conversion status with Rabbi Michael Melchior. The wife had done a non-RCA approved Orthodox conversion to Judaism. Should he worry? Rabbi Melchior told him not to worry.

People worry too much.

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