Greta Christina has been writing professionally since 1989, on topics including atheism, sexuality and sex-positivity, LGBT issues, politics, culture, and whatever crosses her mind. She is author of
The Way of the Heathen: Practicing Atheism in Everyday Life, of
Comforting Thoughts About Death That Have Nothing to Do with God, of
Coming Out Atheist: How to Do It, How to Help Each Other, and Why, of
Why Are You Atheists So Angry? 99 Things That Piss Off the Godless, and of
Bending: Dirty Kinky Stories About Pain, Power, Religion, Unicorns, & More, and is editor of
Paying For It: A Guide by Sex Workers for Their Clients. She has been a public speaker for many years, and many of her talks can be seen on YouTube. Her writing has appeared in multiple magazines and newspapers, including Ms., Penthouse, Chicago Sun-Times, On Our Backs, and Skeptical Inquirer, and numerous anthologies, including
Everything You Know About God Is Wrong and three volumes of
Best American Erotica. (Any views she expresses in this blog are solely hers, and do not necessarily represent this organizations.) She lives in San Francisco with her wife, Ingrid. You can email her at gretachristina (at) gmail (dot) com, or follow her on
Facebook.
*sigh*
We all have to die, sooner or later. But, this soon? I would have liked to see him do and say some more good…
Hitch lived…that is all. Don’t dispair, don’t mourn. I suspect his attitude would have been against it. Remember him for what he stood for, and stand tall. All who question folly deserve that…
Sic transit gloria mundi.
I understand. It hurts.
Why should Hitch have tried to suppress mourning? It’s not as if he is in a better place. He is gone.
But we can remember him, be glad he lived, and raise a glass in his honour.
It’s because Hitch wasn’t a fashionable cat, right?
Thanks for making an observance, Greta. But Hitch was never one for sentimentality, so back to blogging/writing tomorrow. It is what he would have wanted.
Thanks Greta!! As always, well said and eloquent and so on the mark. I didn’t always agree with him, he sometimes got it wrong (in my opinion), but he got it and said it. Two distinct voices moved me to declare myself an atheist, Christopher Hitchens and yours. He will be deeply missed. Tears here as well.
I meant my last post to be for the article you posted on Hitch, but I expect it isn’t too far off the mark here either.
Just read a syndicated column by Ross Douthat “Defender of Atheism,” predictably attempting to sidle up to the memory of Hitchens, state that religious people actually appreciated his “rebellious nature” (you all know where this is heading…) and ending with the obligatory mention of the hopelessness of atheism, but wait, that Hitchens secretly believed otherwise, and then… “My hope–for Hitchens, and for all of us, the living and the dead–is that now he finally knows why.”
Unfortunately, there’s going to be a lot of that, before people finally settle on the fact that Hitchens just hated religion, period.