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To those who are boycotting Mel Gibson's movie "The Passion of the Christ", can you tell me your reasons?

I'm just a little baffled. To me, it seems that everyone seems to be overly-concerned about stepping on the toes of sensitive Jews. It's almost a "oh god, we wouldn't want to be thought of as anti-Semitic..." Personally, I think if people get offended about a movie that portrays some Jews (which remember, Virgin Mary and Jesus were both Jews too) persecuting someone; then what aren't these same people offended when a movie portrays Germans in WW2, Vietnamese people in the Vietnam War, or cowboys in a western movie?

Was Steven Spielberg admonished for making Schindler's List, a movie that shows Germans persecuting others? So why is Mel Gibson hung out to dry for making a movie potraying the last hours of Jesus Christ?

If you're opposed to the violent scenes, I understand. There are certainly a lot of violent movies out there. Apocalypse Now and Saving Private Ryan were both violent war movies that were hailed as ground-breaking. But I am starting to get very peeved when some rabbi tells the newspaper that he's afraid Jews all around the world will now be a target of hate crimes BECAUSE of the movie. Puh-leeee-ase. Get over it already. Did cowboys start crying because someone made some western movie in which cowboys took over the land from the Indians?? Was there a Chinese community uproar when we were portrayed as the evil-doers in Lethal Weapon 4?

But that's just my two cents.

lesson from the penguins

New York Times had an amusing story the other day about a cute pair of penguins in the Central Park Zoo. These penguins, Roy and Silo, have been together for six years. They are affectionate, caring, utterly devoted to each other -- and the happy parents of a healthy chick named Tango. The only anomalous part of this story is the fact that Roy and Silo are both males.

The article goes on to discuss homosexuality as common in the animal kingdom, and it isn't just about sex -- across a variety of species, animals engage in courtship behavior with members of the same sex, form long-term bonds, and rear young. In the case of Roy and Silo, the two appeared so desperate to have a child, going so far as to put a rock in their nest and incubate it as if it were an egg, that zookeepers gave them a fertile egg to care for. They incubated it until Tango hatched, and raised their adopted daughter until she was old enough to care for herself.

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