I noted yesterday that the appeal by former Florida state representative Bob Allen had been denied. While Allen's pretty well known in some circles, few cases of conservative politicians soliciting sex in men's bathrooms had garnered as much interest as that of Idaho Senator Larry Craig (R). As you may recall, Craig entered a guilty plea after his infamous "wide stance" solicitation in a bathroom at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport and then said that he'd resign only to later not only fail to step down but to file an appeal seeking to retract his guilty plea.
A decision has just come down in the last couple of hours and, like Bob Allen, Larry Craig's appeal has also been denied. The full decision by the Minnesota Court of Appeals has been released, but the gist of it is that Craig's guilty plea will stand because he lacks any legal basis on which to retract it. Or, if you prefer your legalese undiluted:
To be valid, a guilty plea must be "accurate, voluntary and intelligent." State v. Ecker, 524 N.W.2d 712, 716 (Minn. 1994). For a plea to be accurate, it must be supported by a proper factual basis. Id. Appellant argues that the plea was not accurate because it lacked a full record of supporting facts.
Appellant did not appear in person when his plea was filed, but a guilty plea is not invalid merely because it is entered in writing. See Minn. R. Crim. P. 15.03, subd. 2...
But, because appellant did not appear, the written plea petition was the only account given to the district court of appellant's version of the offense. The relevant paragraph of the petition states:
"I am pleading guilty to the charge of Disorderly Conduct as alleged because on June 11, 2007, within the property or jurisdiction of the Metropolitan Airports Commission, Hennepin County, specifically in the restroom of the North Star Crossing in the Lindbergh Terminal, I did the following: Engaged in conduct which I knew or should have known tended to arouse alarm or resentment or [sic] others, which conduct was physical (versus verbal) in nature."
...Appellant argues that because the paragraph lacks a description of the alleged conduct it fails to provide an adequate factual basis.
Appellant's argument is unsupported by the record. A verbatim record was required to be made of the August 8, 2007 proceeding at which appellant's petition to plead guilty was filed and he was sentenced. See Minn. R. Crim. P. 27.03, subd. 6(A) (requiring verbatim record of sentencing proceedings). A defendant is responsible for providing a record adequate for appellate review, including a transcript if necessary. See State v. Anderson, 351 N.W.2d 1, 2 (Minn. 1984) (holding claim of trial error could not be reviewed without transcript). Appellant did not order a transcript of the August 8, 2007 proceeding...
And it goes on from there, as legalese does, to set out why Craig's appeal simply doesn't hold water.
Larry Craig is still guilty by his own admission. More importantly than the legal offense he committed, though, is his hypocrisy in the whole matter, one that he maintains to this day. Craig, like Bob Allen, could remedy this by simply coming out of the closet and explaining his errors while maintaining that gay men can legitimately hold conservative political views and ideas that don't extend to curtailing the rights of other gay men in order to bolster their standing amongst the homophobic segments of society. He could point out that he served as a Senator in ways that otherwise represented his constituency and that his homosexuality, like all homosexuality, is at most a coincidence that, absent social stigmatization, has zero bearing on the fitness of an individual to serve in office, vote, serve in the military, or otherwise enjoy the rights and fulfill the responsibilities incumbent upon all of us as members of American society, no matter whom we might prefer to twiddle our dangly bits now and again.
Will he continue in his hypocrisy, though? I'd bet on it.
A holiday seasoned press release appears in today's endless stream of EurekAlerts. You have to read it all the way to the end to get to the punchline, though. I'll summarize a bit to save time.
Researchers ran across a study about children of ages 7-13's belief in Santa Claus in 1896. That same study was repeated in 1979. The study was conducted again in 2000. The trend found was that more parents thought it a good idea to perpetuate the Santa Claus myth in 2000 than in the previous years. 54% did so in 1896, and that had risen to 80% in the 2000 sudy. Children were more likely to figure out on their own that Santa is fictional in more recent times than they used to be; only 25% of parents finally broke the news of Santa's non-existence to their children in 1896. That number had reached 40% by 1979.
So 75% of 7-13 year olds in 1896, and 60% of those in 1979, figured it out on their own or found out from another child who had somehow learned the truth. The conclusion: kids are pretty good at looking at a story, looking at the real world, and figuring out which one they should believe over the other when the facts don't add up.
The punchline?
...If children attribute the same supernatural powers to Santa as they do to God, why do they stop believing in Santa, but continue their belief in God?
Diane Williamson of the Worcester Telegram and Gazette has written a funny and insightful column today. In it, she reports a Daily Jesus right here in town. She gets why it showed up, too.
When I returned Lisa's call yesterday, she requested that a photographer come to her house to take pictures of the Jesus image that appeared on the grocery receipt that got scorched by the steamed carrots.
While I assure you I'm not making any of that up, I also confess that I was only half listening to Lisa because yesterday was Cyber Monday, a retail-driven "event" that encourages American workers to shop online for holiday bargains, when what they should be doing is listening politely to people who are absolutely convinced that religious figures show up unannounced beneath their microwave vegetables...
And then there's Lisa. A 46-year-old Worcester woman, Lisa (she said I could use her entire name but I won't, as I plan to make fun of her) told me yesterday that she was steaming carrots in the microwave to make a beef stew, and she set the hot plate of carrots on top of her grocery receipt. Suddenly, she said, "with no warning," the profile of Christ showed up on the supermarket receipt, where apparently some of our top religious icons are appearing when they're not popping up on blueberry muffins and oil slicks.
"I wasn't even thinking about anything religious when it happened," Lisa noted. "It was very unexpected." She added, "You have to have good depth perception to see it."
I'll bet. I asked Lisa if she was sure that the image was that of Jesus, and she said she was, except that "his eyes look a little angry." And she said she had no idea why he would choose to appear beneath the steamed carrots.
"Maybe it's meant for people who don't believe," Lisa said. "I'll bring it down to you right now if you want."
Er, no thanks. I suddenly had too much shopping to do. But I'm guessing we'll see more apparitions as Americans grow more desperate and long for a happier, simpler time...
Williamson is probably correct. Now that the economy is in the tank, people are losing their homes and their jobs and their life savings and we seem to be in for a period of wrenching change, Jesus and Mary and others will be dancing atop muffins and peering from the windows all over the world. It's inevitable; it comes with the trauma in a culture that clings to myths of being saved by supernatural devices.
I mentioned in a previous entry that Jesus seems to show up frequently in unhealthy foods. Maybe I'm looking at that the wrong way; many such foods are precisely comfort foods. Such a connection probably isn't just coincidence.
I was half asleep after the long drive home from Pennsylvania and fully asleep by 7:00 PM. Because of that, I woke up at 2:00 this morning and wound up watching CNN. As I watched the Prime News program anchored by Mike Galanos, I saw the following segment. The pay-off quote here comes at about the 1:35 mark:
Guest and forensic psychologist talks about how the trampling death of Jdimytai Damour at a Valley Stream, NY Wal-Mart on Black Friday was a typical case of herd mentality resulting from the loss of personal responsibility and the anonymity of a crowd situation, but then he notes at 1:38 that there is an "inescapable irony" that the tramplers were Christians. The psychic dissonance at work here was enough to stop me dead in my tracks. How can this event be both typical and ironic? Russell seems to be making the case that we should expect some special behavior from those who consider themselves (and are considered by others) to be members of a particular religion, as if a religious belief would immunize someone against typical human psychology.
I have my doubts about Russell's contention that the crowd that killed Damour, injured his co-workers, and couldn't be bothered to let the police try to rescue the hapless temporary worker, let alone stop their shopping frenzy long enough to lend their own aid, were typical. I'm not a psychologist nor even a particularly observant student of human behavior. He may or may not be correct in making that assertion. I can state from personal experience that I have been in a violent crowd situation, saw someone get knocked down and stopped to help that person get back on their feet and avoid injury. If that isn't typical behavior, in a crowd or otherwise, it's a sad statement about human nature. I didn't stop and think about doing it; I just did it because that's my own instinct. I'd hope that someone else would do the same for me if I needed it. I may not be typical, though. That small gesture might represent abnormal behavior. Perhaps there's something wrong with me.
The notion that one would expect Christians to behave differently, though, that a consciously-adopted belief should alter social behavior, is ludicrous. I don't find anything particularly ironic in Christians trampling someone, at least no more so than I'd find it ironic that Jews, Hindus or atheists would trample someone. Brian Russell seems to want it both ways; what's typical for everyone else is somehow atypical for Christians. Is there some evidence that he, as a psychologist, can present to back up this statement? He doesn't mention any in his discussion with Mike Galanos, and so the statement comes across as rather glib to my ears.
It hasn't been my experience with those who subscribe to the Christian belief set that they act much differently from anyone else. They may ascribe different motivations to their behavior and they may see a different significance to events than others, but aside from some very superficial and intentional things, I've never noticed much of a difference.
One thing that Russell says which I do find myself in agreement with is that the Black Friday homicide of Damour says something about our culture which is profoundly disturbing. That is, according to Russell, it demonstrates a fundamental devaluation of the well-being of others and a synchronous elevation of self-gratification as the highest good. Russell notes several other recent events that he connects with the Wal-Mart trampling, such as the recent online suicide of a Florida teenager during which nobody intervened and the hit-and-run victimization of an elderly man in Connecticut which saw the injured left lying in the street without anyone helping him. One could compile a huge list of such inhumanities, of course. It's easy to do in a country in which a large fraction of the populace can't afford health care.
We live all too much of our lives in customized bubbles now, I think. We have so much technology connecting us in superficial ways that we're losing our ability to connect in unmediated ways. We're suffering not from a lack of religion but from a lack of the real basis of morality. We're losing our empathy, our ability to understand without cogitation that others feel what we feel, are hurt by what hurts us, and have the same needs that we do. That the trampling took place at a Wal-mart is not insignificant; Wal-mart is perhaps the cheapest outlet in America for the purchase of the very devices that mediate our experience of the world, so the death of a human being in the clamor for inexpensive access to mediating, customizable, sensually titillating gadgets is precisely the message that we need to take away from this. These push-button self-gratifications have taken on a life of their own for much of our population, not in the way that another human being might be loved but in the way that our own hand, our own eyes, our own bodies have meaning to us. As we become more fused to the toys and technology that we place between ourselves and the fleshy, carbon-based world in which we should be living, we retreat further into this silicon cocoon. Empathy is abstracted, sympathy is viewed as some sort of deficiency, and "self-reliance" becomes a shorthand for "I'm getting what's mine, screw the rest of you."
Far from being resistant to this mindset, religious belief may make it easier. It allows the use of "God's will" to explain away the unthinkable, but more to the point it is a handy way of dividing people. It's one of the fissures among many that allow one group of people to see some other as less valuable, less good, less acceptable. Witness this statement by the very recently deceased George Docherty, the man largely responsible for cramming the "under God" bit into the US Pledge of Allegiance:
An atheistic American is a contradiction in terms," he said in his sermon. If you deny the Christian ethic, you fall short of the American ideal of life.
Given the willingness that exists amongst the religious to denigrate others in this manner, why on earth should we expect, as Brian Russell seems to do, that they wouldn't be prone to the kind of behavior that occurred at Wal-mart and claimed one life? I am seizing on Christians here because that is the religion mentioned in the segment from CNN linked above, but I don't consider them a special case in this regard. I certainly heard the same sort of talk from Jews when I was growing up in a Conservative to Orthodox Jewish family, for instance. I was once informed by a Hindu priest that I couldn't be allowed to enter a temple at certain times because I was a mleccha, a term which I later learned translates roughly into English as a "barbarian" as well as a class label considered to be even more untouchable than the classic Untouchables. Need the caste system even be brought up in this context?
Such divisiveness is an inherent part of all religions, and the division always implies the lesser value of some human lives as compared to others if it doesn't state it explicitly. That value is assigned largely on the basis of belief. By adopting Christianity, the belief goes, one is forgiven at the outset and can obtain an unlimited number of future dispensations. Christians don't believe this is true of non-Christians, of course, and an atheist... well, an atheist can't even be an American.
It is ironic, though, that a forensic psychologist, who is at least nominally a scientist, should make the kind of statement that Brian Russell made about Christians without the least bit of empirical evidence to back it up. Christians are plenty violent, plenty callous, and just as much afflicted by the empathically deadening effects of consumer culture as anyone else. It was, after all, a Christian contingent that brought us the so-called Culture War in this country. If Christians are capable of declaring war against non-Christians, why should it seem ironic that some of them are capable of killing someone, too? Don't wars usually involve that sort of thing?
Jdimytai Damour was just collateral damage, an inanimate object in the minds of those who killed him and injured those who tried to save his life. This isn't about Christian or non-Christian, believer or non-believer. This isn't about Valley Stream, New York and it isn't about Wal-mart. This is all about America. This is what we're becoming.
Shock and awe hasn't even gotten off the ground yet. Watch out for we Americans; we're capable of anything, and we don't even understand why.
Yesterday was Black Friday, the most important day of the year for retailers in the United States. Millions of Americans get the day after Thanksgiving of from work and most of them go shopping. The stores start opening at ridiculously early hours and shoppers begin lining up at midnight in some places.
This year, the economy being as bad as it is, Wal-Mart is doing a booming business. So booming, in fact, that the Damour family has a whole new reason to call yesterday "Black Friday." It's the day when Jdimytai Damour, a temporary worker charged with opening the doors at a Wal-Mart in Valley Stream, NY, was trampled to death by a horde of shoppers who thought that getting first dibs on that new George Foreman grill was more important than safety or civility.
A stampede of shoppers in a Valley Stream Wal-Mart on Friday morning left one worker dead and at least three patrons injured after an impatient crowd broke down the store doors and trampled the seasonal employee, Nassau police said.
Jdimytai Damour of Jamaica, Queens, was pushed to the ground by the 2,000-plus crowd just before 5 a.m. as management was preparing to open the store, which is located across from the main Green Acres Mall building. Hundreds stepped over, around and on the 34-year-old worker as they rushed into the store...
During the fracas, first-responders struggled to reach Damour to tend to him, witnesses said. Even the first police officers on the scene were jostled around, police said...
Amid the chaos in Valley Stream, shoppers were asked to leave by other store workers, said Cribbs. Others ignored the pleas that they stop shopping, move to the front of the store and exit, she said...
Frightened employees initially used the doors as makeshift shields to defend against the onslaught of shoppers, she said.
At that point, lots of people were on the ground, she said, not just Damour.
Authorities said Damour, who was pronounced dead at Franklin Hospital Medical Center in Valley Stream, was working at the store through an employment agency that contracts with the retail giant...
People have lost their minds. A person died, and died horribly, because too many people needed some new toy at a discount more than they needed to stop and think about the well-being of a fellow human. Even when people were on the ground, even when police were trying to help an injured, bleeding person lying on the ground and not moving, the shoppers kept on coming. Nothing was more significant to them than an Incredible Hulk DVD or a sweater or who knows what other insignificant junk that would have been available some other day, if for a few more dollars. There was no reason for this to happen; Damour's death is meaningless and horrible. He was treated worse than we treat animals.
What possesses people to do a thing like this? If you see a crowd of thousands waiting outside a store, go home. Just go shopping some other day... or don't bother. Order online. How could one of these rabid shoppers even give a gift purchased while someone was trampled at the store where they got the thing? "Enjoy your new nose hair trimmer, Uncle Steve! Jdimytai Damour died for it."
If anyone had any doubts about the meaning of Christmas, rejoice. Your query has been answered. It's the most menacing time of the year.
I find a recent story in The Wall Street Journal encouraging (hyphal tip to Greater Worcester Humanists for the lead). It talks about the growth and emergence of the secular movement in the USA and the rather humorous, panicky attempts by religious extremists to push back against it.
Nonbelievers Think the Time Is Right to Better Organize Their Nonreligion and Swell the Membership; 'Reason's Greetings'
...During the past three years, membership has grown in local and national associations of nonbelievers. Books attacking faith as a delusion shot up best-seller lists. For the first time, the faithless even raised enough funds to hire a congressional lobbyist.
Building on that momentum, nonbelievers have begun a very public campaign to win broad acceptance. On billboards and bus ads, radio commercials and the Internet, atheists are coming forward to declare, quite simply: We're here. And we're just like you...
Not so fast, religious leaders respond. They point out that the vast majority of Americans believe in God. A poll by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life earlier this year found 71% of American adults are absolutely certain God -- or some sort of universal spirit -- exists, and a further 17% said they were fairly certain. Only 5% said flatly that they don't believe.
Atheists "are talking to a very small slice of the population," said Mathew Staver, a leading Christian conservative and law-school dean. "In some ways, they're really just talking to themselves..."
Of course Staver would say that. Staver says a lot of things that don't make much sense. As far as his being a "law-school dean," that's technically true... if you consider Liberty University a school instead of a religious indoctrination center. That's a hard case to make in light of their doctrinal statement and the statement of belief that all faculty there is required to sign, though.
In this case, Staver is twisting facts to suit his argument when he says "only" 5%. Even if that figure were true, 5% is not an insubstantial number of people. To put it in context, the Pew Forum's most recent U.S. Religious Landscape Survey shows that only 1.7% of the population follows Judaism and 1.7% is Mormon. Unless Staver wishes to argue that Jews and Mormons have no impact on the rest of America, that they are "really just talking to themselves," then the same can't be said about nonbelievers. I wonder how these other groups feel about Staver suggesting that they should be ignored?
Secularist groups say their membership began to surge in 2005, when Congress sought to prevent Terri Schiavo's husband from removing her feeding tube. Many new members said they hoped nonbelievers could serve as a counterweight to religious influence in political affairs...
Bingo. As is noted later in this article, the rational community is by no means homogeneous and, by its very nature, is not particularly prone to organizational efforts for that reason. Still, the increasing stranglehold of those who believe that their religion should serve as the blueprint for law over political discourse in this country has served as a goad for nonbelievers to put aside differences and come together to push back against the American shariah movement. We can have rational arguments about those areas of disagreement later; they're just not as important in light of a much greater challenge. To do otherwise is tantamount to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Rather than renew old battles, such as the symbolic fight to remove "In God We Trust" from currency, members are mobilizing to repair what they view as breaches of the wall between church and state -- such as federal funding for faith-based charities and teaching of intelligent design in science class. They believe many others sympathize with their views -- but are too timid to commit.
I have to admit that as much as I usually dislike having "In God We Trust" on currency, there's a certain irony to the slogan that I can enjoy during the current economic meltdown.
The new ad campaigns and other public-relations efforts are designed to raise comfort levels about atheism by making the point that nonbelievers are "just as ethical and moral as anyone else," said Lori Lipman Brown, who lobbies Congress on behalf of the Secular Coalition for America.
As Doug Krueger, a philosophy professor in northwest Arkansas, put it: "Step one is for people to know we're not crazy, we're just regular people [who have] perfectly satisfactory lives without believing in God."
There's an irony, too, in the necessity for people who don't believe in an invisible, omnipotent being and its winged, praise-singing minions to demonstrate that they aren't crazy while belief in divine intervention and incorporeal evil spirits is the norm. Sarah Palin can talk about an immaterial divine hand "opening doors" for her to "plow through" and much of America nods its head in agreement that such things happen, but if we contend that no bearded man from a parallel dimension provides opportunities, that we humans are responsible for the state of our own and one another's lives, we're a bunch of misfits!
So the American Humanist Association is spending $42,000 to plaster buses in Washington, D.C., with ads asking: "Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness' sake." FreeThoughtAction and its local affiliates have put up billboards all over the country asking: "Don't believe in God? You are not alone." Eight billboards are going up this month in Denver...
Organizers of such efforts generally say they aren't trying to evangelize. Instead, they say their goal is to make the public more comfortable with the concept of atheism and give fellow nonbelievers a sense of community.
In seeking the spotlight, the movement risks a backlash. Some Christians find the billboards deeply offensive, especially at this time of year. In recent weeks, press releases from the religious right have accused atheists of "mocking" and "insulting" Christmas. In rural Chambersburg, Pa., one Christian group responded to an "Imagine No Religion" billboard with a giant sign of their own, asking: "Why Do Atheists Hate America?"
Ah, there's the humorous part. It hearkens back to the days of 2003, when 83% of Americans supported the invasion of Iraq and those of us who thought it a bad idea were confronted with that stupid question, "Why do you hate America?" If any empty-headed question is symbolic of blind faith, of going along with the crowd simply because it's the majority, that's the one. And just as we in that 17% minority spoke our minds then not because we hated America but because we hoped to steer it away from a direction we thought bad for it, those of us in the 5% that Staver insists is talking to itself are trying to change the course of America toward one that leads to greater reason, to policy based on empirical reality rather than wishful thinking, and to a better future in general. It has nothing to do with hating anything, whether it's a religion or a country, and everything to do with simply being rational. If we have to organize to do that, if we have to reach out to others who have no connection to other nonbelievers in their own localities, so be it.
Still, leading activists say nonbelievers tend to be just as wary of organized atheism as they are of organized religion -- making it tough to pull together a cohesive movement.
"A pastor can say to his flock, 'All rise,' and everyone rises. But try that in an atheist meeting," said Marvin Straus, co-founder of an atheist group in Boulder, Colo. "A third of the people will rise. A third will tell you to go to hell. And a third will start arguing....That's why it's hard to say where we're going as a movement."
No kidding! Independent thought doesn't necessarily lead to agreement; it often results in the opposite. Aside from the core idea behind secular thought — that theology shouldn't be the basis for policies that affect the lives of all Americans — there's plenty of disagreement and debate about the particulars and priorities beyond. That very debate, though, is what reason should encourage. It's how a society learns, changes and progresses. If you find ten nonbelievers in a room agreeing with one another about some aspect of social policy, you can bet that they've been in that room for at least a couple of hours and half of them will probably have exhausted their voices. The very fact that we can change our minds is a strength.
If the theocratically-inclined find this offensive, if they believe that their religions are under attack because we put up a billboard expressing dissent against it and offering some other way of thinking, too bad. It's going to keep happening and all indicators point to it becoming more widespread, not less. That's America for you, and that very freedom is one of the reasons that I, and other secularists, believe it's worth inciting the outrage of those who would take it away. It's a risk we're willing to take on behalf of our country.
With all of the joyful noise following the last Presidential election,it's sad to have to be reminded that there's still an old sickness in our cultural body that is yet to be cured. Still, it doesn't come as a surprise. Months before the election, the purveyors of hatred were already making their voices heard. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the threats have kept on coming and have gone beyond words to action in some cases. Now that America will have its first president whose skin isn't pinky-beige, whose hair looks a bit different than the Caucasian type, whose father was an African, the venom is ratcheting up.
...Snellville, Ga., where Denene Millner said a boy on the school bus told her 9-year-old daughter the day after the election: "I hope Obama gets assassinated." That night, someone trashed her sister-in-law's front lawn, mangled the Obama lawn signs, and left two pizza boxes filled with human feces outside the front door...
Four North Carolina State University students admitted writing anti-Obama comments in a tunnel designated for free speech expression, including one that said: "Let's shoot that nigger in the head..."
At Standish, Maine, a sign inside the Oak Hill General Store read: "Osama Obama Shotgun Pool." Customers could sign up to bet $1 on a date when Obama would be killed. "Stabbing, shooting, roadside bombs, they all count," the sign said. At the bottom of the marker board was written "Let's hope someone wins."
Racist graffiti was found in places including New York's Long Island, where two dozen cars were spray-painted
Kilgore, Texas, where the local high school and skate park were defaced; and the Los Angeles area, where swastikas, racial slurs and "Go Back To Africa" were spray painted on sidewalks, houses and cars.
Second- and third-grade students on a school bus in Rexburg, Idaho, chanted "assassinate Obama," a district official said.
University of Alabama professor Marsha L. Houston said a poster of the Obama family was ripped off her office door. A replacement poster was defaced with a death threat and a racial slur...
Black figures were hanged by nooses from trees on Mount Desert Island, Maine, the Bangor Daily News reported...
Crosses were burned in yards of Obama supporters in Hardwick, N.J., and Apolacan Township, Pa.
A black teenager in New York City said he was attacked with a bat on election night by four white men who shouted 'Obama.'
In Forest Hills, PA, a black man said he found a note with a racial slur on his car windshield, saying "now that you voted for Obama, just watch out for your house."
It would be naive to even ask why this is happening. We all know why. The pathology has been around long enough. One might as well ask what causes the common cold or why the sky is blue. There are people in this country who, having accomplished nothing with their own lives, identify their own value — and by extension the value of other human beings — by some easily distinguishable physical trait, some bit of superficial biological coincidence. It's all they've got, and they'll cling to it for all they're worth because it is all they're worth. Call that bit of inconsequential physicality into question and you call their value as a human being into question. You make an enemy who may well take it upon himself to extract vengeance.
That someone who looks different, who doesn't share some valued hue of the flesh with such people, has achieved the nation's highest political office drives such people into a rage. Some meaningful privilege that they'd hoped and believed was connected with their appearance has turned out not to be so connected. It is for this reason that I expect at least one assassination attempt to be made upon Obama. It's a pathetic expectation, I know, but it would be just as naive not to think such an event will come as it is to question the motivation for it in the first place.
Beginning today, Connecticut joins Massachusetts as the second state in the US to issue licenses for same-sex marriages. Not civil unions or domestic partnerships or some other separate-but-equal concept, but full-on marriages. The overwhelming reaction in the state appears to be that it's no big deal.
Connecticut begins issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples today, a historic milestone that gays and lesbians will celebrate and social conservatives will grieve.
Many others are likely to respond with a shrug.
"They could do what they want to do," said Karen Dowdell, a 61-year-old Hartford resident who was shopping at Corbins Corner in West Hartford Tuesday morning. "I could care less..."
...Citizens here have long displayed a distaste for the culture wars that have riven so much of the nation...
Same-sex marriage comes to Connecticut more than four years after it arrived in Massachusetts. Those first-in-the-nation gay weddings were met with a burst of hoopla. Reporters from as far as Japan came to cover the story...
Contrast that to Connecticut, where the gay rights coalition Love Makes a Family has received a smattering of calls from international media, "but nothing compared to what they received in Mass.," said Anne Stanback, the group's president...
Now, "at least in New England, it's becoming ... old hat," Stanback said. In fact, she added, for most people in Connecticut, same-sex marriage is "a big yawn..."
A big yawn? Well, yes, and that's exactly what it should be. Why should anyone care about what two consenting adults do in terms of their own relationship? It's nobody's business but their own. How many of us look through the marriage announcements in our local newspapers at all, let alone do so with any sense of either excitement or revulsion? If it weren't for the magical thinking of culture warriors who wish others to accept their strange, as-yet-unexplained notion that the effects of somebody else's marriage extend to the rest of the world, nobody would care about this. Even objections based in religion would, if they were statements of honest faith instead of bigotry given a cosmetic gloss of godliness, culminate with nothing more than a shrug and a "God will sort this out, so I'm not worried" sort of a statement.
See, that's the thing about equality. It's only exciting in the moments prior to and immediately after it is extended to some group that didn't previously have it. After that, it quickly becomes a pretty ho-hum situation. That's a good thing. That's what acceptance looks like. Sure, there may be a few radical racists who feel otherwise, but does anyone get revved up today over the fact that a vote cast by a black person in the USA is weighted equally with one cast by a Caucasian — a situation which was once made otherwise by nothing less than a Constitutional amendment? For the vast majority of people, this is just the way things are and we accept it, even though there were once movements as passionately for and against the arrangement we now take for granted and great celebration when it first changed.
So today, Connecticut will yawn a little and shrug a little and a few more people will enter into a situation that was previously prohibited to them. There will be the little, personal celebrations and a few more people will be happier than they were yesterday. The rest of the people will go on about their lives as if nothing had happened because it's not a big deal.
"No big deal" can be a wonderful phrase sometimes. This, I think, is one of them.
As much as the last US elections might have been about change, one thing hasn't changed at all. We are still a nation with only two viable political parties, Republicans and Democrats, and one of those two parties was essentially ground up into something that looks like red sausage. It's now eating itself and, at the same time, trying to figure out what it's going to do next. Personally, I didn't vote for anything or anyone Republican in the last election, nor in the one before that, nor even in the one before that one. The Republicans don't represent anything in which I believe, so I don't have any motivation to vote for them. In fact, they've long since turned themselves into the antithesis of anything for which I would personally stand. They've become the party of social cruelty and culture war. The last election pointed out to them, I think, that there are a lot of people like me out there.
In looking forward, one of the memes that keeps bubbling to the surface is "Palin 2012." Really? This is a good idea? Palin, after all, was brought into the campaign for two reasons. The first was in an attempt to attract support from supposedly disenfranchised Hillary Clinton backers, and all evidence points to her failing miserably in this mission. The second reason was to "energize" the base — the gaggle of socially arch-conservative, religiously motivated and anti-intellectual voters that would normally vote Republican no matter what but for whom McCain himself held little to no appeal. These aren't people who were going to vote for Obama on election day; the danger was that they wouldn't vote at all. Palin's run at vice president was a success on this count, but as we saw, success in this case doesn't look much like victory. Assuming no dramatic swing back to the far right — and the evidence seems to suggest a generational change is at work against such an event — Palin isn't likely to win a nomination in 2012, let alone a general election. This has less to do with her portrayal as a bit of Alaskan fluff by the media. What has become the Republican base is simply shrinking. People are fed up with the fostering of a divided society whose leaders are terrified by progress and insistent upon moral absolutes in all things, that demands absolute freedom for markets even as it erodes the liberty of individuals.
What, then, might be the future of this party? If it doesn't lie with Sarah Palin and her "you betcha, gosh darn golly Joe Sixpack drill baby drill and buy your own damned rape kit" ideologies, then who might carry the torch forward?
We're beginning to see some clues, particularly from the coasts — places in which Republicans haven't been doing very well at carrying national elections for the past couple of cycles and which are generally written off and derided by their base. The fact is, though, that these are also places with the weight of population in their favor, ignored at the peril of ever having influence in politics. The rigidly dogmatic social stances of the GOP as it has been — the GOP of the base — is likely going to have to change if they're going to play in such places as a national party. For instance, even though Proposition 8 passed in California and gay marriage got banned, the fact is that a margin of about 20 points in a 2000 attempt at banning it has shrunk to one of only 5 points this time around. The trend there is clearly, powerfully, away from unreasoning traditionalism and toward increasing tolerance of diversity.
We'll take our first clue from the Governator, California's own Arnold Schwarzenegger. In today's LA Times, Schwarzenegger had this to say about Proposition 8's passage:
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Sunday expressed hope that the California Supreme Court would overturn Proposition 8, the ballot initiative that outlawed same-sex marriage...
Schwarzenegger publicly opposed Proposition 8, which amends the state Constitution to declare that "only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California."
On Sunday, he urged backers of gay marriage to follow the lesson he learned as a bodybuilder trying to lift weights that were too heavy for him at first. "I learned that you should never ever give up. . . . They should never give up. They should be on it and on it until they get it done."
This is the same Ahnold who had Republicans so excited not long ago that there was talk of amending the US Constitution to allow for citizens not born in the United States to become President for the first time in our history. Has the confluence of these messages sunk in yet, one wonders, with whatever passes for GOP leadership? Touting Palin and similar far-right candidates might play well in particular congressional districts and maybe in population-poor places like Oklahoma and Wyoming, but on the national level it's a sure path to failure.
A second clue comes from the East Coast, particularly from New England. In the Boston Globe, Republican columnist James Peyser talks about "How New England's Republicans Can Hit Restart":
...The number of Massachusetts Republicans in the US Congress remains stuck at zero. The party's US Senate candidate polled less than a third of the votes, winning only one town in the entire state. Come January, there will be not a single New England Republican in the US House of Representatives...
The underlying problem for Republicans is the absence of a compelling conservative vision for the future that is aligned with New England's more tolerant and civic-minded political sensibilities...
Today's conservative agenda includes a censorious social policy that panders to the Christian right, a guns and butter fiscal policy that would make Lyndon Johnson blush, and a Wilsonian foreign policy that is increasingly untethered from the national interest...
A new Republican vision should focus squarely on the future, with a sense of hope for what lies ahead. Any conservatism worthy of the name honors tradition. But there is all the difference in the world between careful stewardship of our heritage and rigid traditionalism... Unfortunately, the loudest voices of conservatism on the national stage today are more likely to bemoan America's decline than to praise its potential. They are also increasingly known for their resistance to science, technology, and change. This rejection of hope and progress runs against the grain of the American spirit and is a formula for even more electoral defeats...
In short, the religious moral absolutists, the Luddites and Creationists, the culture warriors, the Palin/Limbaugh/Coulter far-right wing of the GOP needs to be jettisoned if there's going to be a nationally viable GOP at all. What makes America great, and what excites the electorate, isn't feverish clinging to 18th century absolutism, it's the looking forward to the future, the change, the advancement. It's optimism, not fear. It's opening up the culture to the next leap in its evolution, not huddling in our caves and hoping that the thunder god doesn't hurl lightning bolts down upon our miserable heads. The base is not enough anymore, and good riddance to its dominance.
I've never been one to be in favor of a political system that provides a realistic choice between only two parties. When push comes to shove, I would like very much to see a more parliamentarian system in which there are numerous parties spanning the political spectrum that must forge compromises and alliances in order for government to function. In my ideal world, America would have at least a dozen parties from which voters could choose and complete dominance by any one party would be a vanishingly rare event. Such a system, I think, would better insure that all voices were heard and create better representation for all of us, wherever we might fall across the spectrum. But that's an ideal world that seems incredibly unlikely to come into existence within the lifetime of anyone reading this. It would seem that, for the foreseeable future, we will continue to have only one more party than a one-party state. If Republicans want to preserve even that much diversity, though, it's incumbent upon them to start becoming less ideological and more representative.
The dinosaurs of the extreme right wing aren't going to be much of a part of this sort of outcome, unfortunately for them but much to the joy of those of us who are sick and tired of seeing the populace turned against itself. The purveyors of fear and ignorance are due for a return back to the fringe of political discourse which, in truth, is where they've always belonged. It is in our own best national interest as Americans that the GOP does this in the course of expanding its appeal and becoming a national party. It will help insure that we all do better, that our country does better, that we move forward into something like a hopeful future — even if we as individuals still disagree with some of the party's new platform enough not to vote for them.
Can the GOP run Palin in 2012? Absolutely. It's their prerogative to do so if they wish. Anyone can go to the dance and choose to be a wallflower if they so desire. If they want to move forward and so move the nation forward, though, they'd be well-advised to listen attentively to other voices within their own party. The message coming from the coasts, delivered by people like Schwarzenegger and Peyser, is loud and clear. If the national GOP doesn't want to hear it, if they prefer to stick their fingers in their ears and keep doing the same things that have resulted in the results of the 2006 and 2008 election cycles, then the electorate is also free to shake its collective head and hope that the GOP enjoys its exile in Oklahoma.
In case you haven't seen this video already, this redolent summation of the depths of ignorance and paranoia, watch it now. There will be a quiz.
As much as I find the video itself appalling insofar as what it reveals about just how much the stupid can burn, the recent passage of California's Proposition 8 and similar referenda in places like Florida, Arizona and Arkansas leave me asking the same question the benighted woman narrating it asked. What the hell is oozing out of our ground?
There is a meanness in these new laws, a cruelty that is most loudly voiced by the fact that California will not only put a halt to future same-sex marriages but there are those who are now attempting to void those which have already taken place. Surprise, surprise... they're based in Florida:
Mathew Staver, chairman of Liberty Counsel, a Florida-based conservative legal group, said last week that if Prop. 8 passes, Liberty Counsel would seek to invalidate all same-sex marriages already performed in California. Randy Thomasson, president of the Sacramento-based SaveCalifornia.com, said his group would support any lawsuit.
"One of the main reasons for passing Prop. 8 was to have real marriage be a role model for the next generation," he said. "Since these are a bunch of false marriages and false marriage licenses, they are bad examples for little children."
Anyone who still harbors doubt that much of Florida is a percolating, roiling bowl of fundamentalist mythological contagion need look no further than the anthropoid vector of pestilence that is Matthew Staver and his Orwellianly-monikered Liberty Council to put those doubts to rest. Staver, by the way, is a dean at ignorance-factory Liberty University.
That there is no hope that someone like Staver will ever attain to a degree of empathy reminiscent of the better parts of the human race is without question. There are poisonous things in this world and there will always be poisonous things in this world. The question is not whether fundamentally sociopathic, inherently divisive and morally bankrupt people like Staver and Falwell and Don Wildmon can ever be reformed. I would submit that they cannot. Such people will always remain self-made enemies of the culture upon which they have declared war. This is the point of their existence. They thrive on pain and seek the increase of human suffering as a sign of upcoming divine intervention that will usher in a time when the better part of humanity will be tortured for all eternity by their invisible and vindictive father-figure in the sky. They feed on the decay, the hate, the division and the ignorance produced by their activities as surely as any leech slithering from a festering fen seeks to cling to and suck from the femoral artery of some victim. They are beyond all reproach in the perfection of their destructiveness.
In short, they are what is "oozing out of our ground." Still, they and those like them could not alone have passed the barbarisms that are these new laws, including Proposition 8. They must have had complicity in their efforts to corrupt the notion of human rights and the role of government intervention in the lives of others. I do not think that everyone who voted for new laws like Proposition 8 is a leech like Staver, but I do think that many of these people have been deceived, and deception is possible only in the presence of ignorance. The notion that people who prefer sexual interaction with members of their own gender would be in favor of pederasty, bestiality or any number of other outrageous perversions is precisely a product of that ignorance.
These warriors against rational and inclusive culture exploit this ignorance in several ways, or perhaps it is more accurate to say that they exploit several varieties of ignorance. Let's face it — most Americans don't know many gay people, or at least aren't aware that they know any. To the bulk of the populace, gay people are an unknown. They're something that doesn't exist as a portion of their community as integral to its proper functioning as any heterosexual individual. They're something that one sees in the media, frequently as a caricature. They're an abstraction; gay people aren't human beings so much as a phantasm that is somebody else's "problem." By keeping them in the abstract, anything can be laid upon them. Gay people can be made out to be abnormal, villainous, scheming... in short, hobgoblins coming from some other reality, some other universe, with malicious intent, like some shadowy horde poised at the border and ready to sack the little villages in which far too many Americans fancy themselves to live. The American Family Association is particularly adept at exploiting this strain of ignorance, peddling videos like They're Coming to Your Town. The probability is that "they" are already in your town, have been there all along, and that your town — and any town — is all the better for it.
They exploit, too, an ignorance that puts forth the idea that the highest purpose of human existence is procreation. It's an assertion I see made time and time again — that homosexuality is a perversion because it doesn't result in reproduction, and that reproduction is the goal which gives purpose to all living things, thus making homosexuality itself a force that runs counter to life. What could be worse than that? What reasonable person could be opposed to the continuation of life itself!
The thing is, when one actually looks at life, that's not what we actually see, particularly as biological individualism gives way to social organization. In any number of truly social insects, for example, the vast bulk of the members of the society do not reproduce, yet they contribute essentially to the continuation of their society. When cognition enters the picture, sex often becomes less bound to reproduction and more a means of enforcing social bonds, too. Even among humans, we do not remember the important figures throughout our history because of the number of offspring they had. Indeed, most Americans would be hard-pressed to rattle off the names of the children of Thomas Jefferson, George Washington or John Adams. We don't remember how many children Einstein had. Would it make any difference to us how we view such people if they'd never reproduced at all? We humans are not bound to our biology in the way that animals are bound to theirs. We can think, we can create, and we can go far beyond the limitations of our bodies. To say that the greatest achievement to which any one of us may attain is mere reproduction is to reduce all of mankind to animals in a menagerie. It robs all of us, even those who promulgate this nonsense, of the basic dignity of what it is to be human. We are more than molecular machines who eat and shit and fuck, and if we are not then we may as well tear down all the churches and all the laboratories and all the museums and stop distracting ourselves from this allegedly greatest good that any of us can spew forth from our various orifices. I, for one, think that we can be more than mere gamete factories. I think more of humanity, and I have a crazy notion that even those who have fallen under the contrary viewpoint would as well if they stopped and considered the sum total of civilization instead of having fallen prey to those who have declared war upon the better angels of human nature.
The questions that Proposition 8 and these similar referenda raise for me, and perhaps now for you, too, is whether we Americans will choose to see ourselves as something debased. Are we the product of a history that has finally cut us loose from the muck of basic biology, that allows us to aspire, to achieve, to no longer be identified in terms of merely what we contribute to some gene pool... or are we the product of some long-ago fall from grace that leaves every individual stained with sin? Will we use our powers of imagination and abstraction to cast one another as enemies, as "outsider" and "insider," to divide ourselves into camps that deserve to dwell either in sunlight or shadow based upon some accident of biology or — perish the thought — even some personal choice that involves no lives apart from our own, or will we use these boons to go beyond these superficial differences to find out that we are all essentially the same, that we all want the same things, and that we are all deserving of the same rights to associate with whom we will, to love whom we will, and to find in each of us that which we have to offer to the rest of us and so to allow every other member of our society the right to do the same?
We know what the Stavers and Wildmons of this country have to say on the matter. They are believers in the essentially impurity or each of us, a blood libel that began in a garden at the confluence of rivers. I suppose we know equally well (especially if you've read through all of this!) what those of us who don't believe in any such "fall from grace" and "original sin" think about it. But there is a great mass of American flesh and blood and mind between these two extremes that live their lives without ever seeing the effect that their decisions about "sanctity" have upon those who now must bear the weight of the stigma that they attach to them. Would they reach the same conclusions if they knew these people? If they saw what a same-sex marriage actually looked like in the light of day? If they came to know, on a personal basis, that the hearts and minds of the people who have entered into them were no different from their own save for the gender of the object of affection?
It is easy enough to be cruel toward an abstraction. Despite our fallibility, though, I think that most of us could not be so callous when called to look into the eyes of fellow human beings. Doing this will be a first great stride in doing away with not only one of the final malingering divisions in American social philosophy, but also in ridding ourselves of a pernicious war that allows a few men to exploit the shortcoming of many. America can be better than this. Just as some little bit of knowledge about the principles of refraction would remove the paranoid fears of the silly woman who made the video that began this entry, so would a little knowledge about what a same-sex marriage really is would remove the paranoia that the possibility "they're coming to your town" portends something terrible.
I am privileged to live in a place, one of only two states in this country, that allows same-sex marriage. I'm thinking of a way in which I might be able to use that happy coincidence in such a way as to lend some aid to those who do not enjoy it. I'll write more about that soon. It is enough to say, at this moment, that I feel like I have to do more about this than I have done until this moment.
In my recently less-than-sporadic efforts to bring you the latest news, I'm sure I'll be the first to mention that Barack Obama won the election and will be the next president. I'm glad for this. The alternative was clearly a very poor one and, of course, we're all aware by now about the historic context of his victory. This is big stuff, a sea-change, a climax in a struggle that began long before my own ancestors ever arrived in America.
I have followed the election closely for these past couple of months, even though I haven't had time to write about it. I have been all too aware of the hatred and panic, as well, that certain elements of our society have expressed over the impending turn in US history as my email box was besieged by dire and dirty "warnings" from Don Wildmon's American Family Association and their nethermost organ, OneNewsNow. To hear them tell it, we are all about to be swept up in a vast wave of stoned, gay, incestuous prostitutes in leather chaps, bearing pitchforks and crucifixes on the soles of their Birkenstocks. Their weather report, now that Obama has been elected, calls for periods of void-swallowing darkness followed by a rain of brimstone with a 30% chance of pale horses storming through the streets of America. In truth, or at least we need all hope, that these are the final fervent prayers and feverish visions of small people with tiny and malign minds, the kind that are ultimately drowned in the eddying currents of human progress.
In all honesty, one of the things that I most look forward to now that the election has been conducted and the ballots tallied is the impending absence of the whiny, shrill, nasal sound of Sarah Palin. I look forward, too, to the absence of scientific research being held up by the losing side every time they wanted to bring up an example of "earmarks" or "pork." Whether they understood basic research or not, the fact that McCain and Palin cited research into population genetic structure or molecular biology or a new projector for a planetarium — a place of science education — did not exactly endear them to this researcher. Had they won, I had visions of funding for research not entirely unlike my own simply vanishing in a puff of ignorance. They will not have the chance to do this, it seems. I count myself and my colleagues fortunate in this regard.
Aside from the historical coincidence (albeit an important one) of his ancestry, we have instead gotten a president elect who, as far as I can discern, is one of the most intelligent and well-educated in our history, and certainly in my lifetime. There are those to whom such qualifications make him, ironically, a member of the elite which, they believe, is a bad thing. There are those who will still judge the fitness of their governmental leadership on the basis of how much they'd like to have a beer with them, and those people will not shut up and go away based simply on the fact that their strange criterion has been repudiated by the electorate. On the other hand, I think that I would enjoy a beer with Barack. I would be very interested in sitting in a conversation with him without any beverages whatsoever, for that matter. We're not too far apart in age, after all, and more to the point I could easily envision a long and deep discussion of political and general philosophy with him. I felt no such thing in regard to McCain, certainly never have for Dubya, and I fear that were beer present during a one-on-one conversation with Palin, I might have sprayed it through my nose soon after she began wagging her chin. That would be rude, and I prefer not to be impolite when at all possible. The likelihood of any of this happening is nil, of course. I'm just Joe the Bio Grad Student and Obama has a government to run... and I have tarsomeres to measure. Still, my sense is that Obama gets it. He understands that the basic research of ten and twenty years ago is the technology of the present, and that once the pipeline empties it takes a long time to fill back up. America has dodged a bullet in a manner of which few people will ever be aware. It was a bullet aimed at our brain and the majority of my fellow Americans were smart enough to duck. Good for us.
So here we are on the first Wednesday in November. In about 60 days, ShrubCo at last begins its well-deserved dissolution and, we can be sure, a new track will be charted. We live in interesting times. Obama will need to exercise what I can only describe as greatness at a time when greatness may at best suffice only to staunch our collective bleeding as a nation. Anything less than greatness, anything short of a full application of his capacity to reason, to plan, to anticipate, is likely to result in a single term. Considering the smoking craters left by ShrubCo across our societal landscape, if Obama doesn't have greatness in him, it follows that we will need to find someone who does in four years' time. I am hopeful for now; the possibilities are endless and in most ways we have nowhere to go but up. Still, I am also a pragmatist, even in my idealism. I will say the same thing now to myself (and those who have read this far) that I said eight years ago: Let's see what this guy can do.
Having said all this, I do think it is important that Obama begin reaching out to the other side after this long and often fear-mongering contest. One way in which he could do this, I think, is to offer John McCain an appointment in his cabinet. As much as I loathe some of the tactics, even what passed for a strategy, in the campaign now ended, McCain should be given the benefit of the doubt and it should be recalled that he was not some fiend before the Ring of Power that was his quest for the presidency turned his Smeagle into our Gollum. McCain's strength, it has been said, was in foreign policy. He might be well-employed as a Secretary of Defense. Even making the offer would help to heal the divisions that were pried wide open in these past months. This might have another, even more important, effect in the near future.
Obama is in a good position, I think, to have an impact on the upcoming reformulation of the Republican Party. I believe that one thing that the GOP will learn from this election is that the base is not enough and, indeed, the very constituencies that make up what they have come to consider their base are, in fact, a polarizing power that precludes their having the support of more reality-based Americans. In the end, after all, McCain had to distance himself from Ted Hagee every bit as much as he sought to distance himself from George Bush. Obama could drive that point home with a few key appointments, I think. Few things could be healthier for this country, even for this civilization, than the showing of the door to the Dominionists and Millennialists by the party over which they have exercised enough influence to pry perilously loose from the reality of American life. We saw the base (and base they were!) "energized" by Sarah Palin, and we saw the GOP lose big. Joe Scarborough and Pat Buchanan have recently said the same thing, so I don't think this idea is too radical. It's time to disentangle that which was supposed to be the party of fiscal conservatism from the business of attempts to legislate morality. Giving Americans a choice of a party in which these two things are no longer intricately wound together will be a boon for all of us, even if we are not ourselves fiscal conservatives.
Which brings me, sadly, to the thing arising from this election that most drags upon my spirit this morning. It appears that Proposition 8, which would ban same-sex marriage in California, is going to pass by a narrow margin. It is for this reason that I prefaced this long and much overdue entry with the point that Obama's win marks a climax in a long struggle but not the climax. Just as there will continue to be intolerance to people of African ancestry in places in America, even though one will be our next President, just so we should keep in mind that others will still be marginalized as well. Even though they lost the Presidential election of 2008, those small-minded busybodies determined to stick their noses in everyone else's crotches as a test for righteousness are still very much with us and they may very well win this victory, as short-lived as it is likely to turn out, on the West Coast of the United States. They are, and will continue to be, dedicated to a "culture war" in which our own culture makes war upon itself. They will continue to seek to do harm in the name of nothing more than personal belief and preference.
They will be with us, I am sorry to say, for many years to come.
It took nearly 400 years for people somewhat like the man we have just elected President to get the right to self-determination, the right to own property, the right to vote as a whole human being (and not just some fraction thereof), and to marry whomever they liked. It took generations to get to this point, and it took sacrifice and struggle and, yes, the deaths of some very good people brought about by some of the worst people who opposed them. This is the course, too, that gay equality advocates have faced. It was once a crime punishable by death to prefer sexual friction with a member of one's own gender. It is not so now. As long as there are people courageous enough to speak out, progress will continue and the tiny, malign minds will, in the end, be swept away by the current of human history once again.
Yeah, so what? You find "Zuerst die Fuesse" offensive, so here's a thought... don't look at it. Wow, what a concept! Imagine that. If you don't like it, don't look at it. Personally, I wouldn't want it in my house for purely aesthetic reasons. In fact, the artist meant it to be repulsive. The thing is, it's not in my house and it's not in the Pope's house, either. It's in an art museum.
You know what I find offensive, though?
I find a feudalistic patriarchy that tries to convince people that using condoms doesn't prevent the transmission of potentially lethal sexually-transmitted diseases terrifically offensive.
I find a man who wears designer clothing worth millions of dollars to visit overpopulated, under-resourced, impoverished countries while presuming to tell the people there how to live good lives offensive as well as ludicrous. It's even more risible that anyone listens to the hollow-eyed old celibate.
I find it offensive that this same pointy-hatted old fart doesn't speak out against bellicose buffoons like William Donohue when he calls for violence against the infidels. As far as I'm concerned, that's supporting it. Considering his voluntary service to the Hitler-Jugend and later as an anti-aircraft guard in the Third Reich's military, though, I can't say it entirely surprises me.
I find it offensive that we have to bow and scrape and condition our culture to avoid bruising the sensibilities of idiots who still believe in evil spirits. These backwards witch doctors also think that yoga and reading horoscopes lets demons take people over, for crying out loud. I would assume they find the notion of people being possessed offensive, too. Shall we then disallow the practice of yoga and the printing of horoscopes in order to avoid making Pope Palpatine soil himself? As much as I would like to see people stop believing in nonsense of all kinds, I wouldn't advocate preventing them from doing so by such means. They can believe whatever they want and I can point out how silly I find it. Apparently, that's not enough for Il Papa and his minions.
Because, after all, they're a bunch of douchebags who have managed to parasitize decent society for the last few centuries and make good on the PR front by tossing back a few crumbs. Except, of course, when they're shuffling their footmen to new posts to avoid having them stand deserved criminal charges for doing things that any thinking person finds truly and deeply offensive.
If Jesus and Jehovah have problems with Kippenberger's self-effacing sculpture, let them come and take it away. If they can't do it for themselves, then who cares what a bunch of their supplicants think? They're too dense to figure out that they've thrown their lots in with a losing team in the first place. Sometimes being offended is the best way to be shaken out of one's stupidity... and make sure that priests and popes and cardinals have to find useful employment, too.
Any deity that needs the protection of its followers is not worthy of worship.
A billion kudos to the board of Museion of Bolzano, Italy for their refusing to remove the work based on the objections of an old troll in a nightgown and his sycophants.
It really makes my day when I receive a "Dear Manmeat" letter from Don Wildmon, and the one I received yesterday afternoon was a particularly fun one. The American Family Association is in a lather because Hallmark has started selling greeting cards for same-sex marriages. Now, the friends of gay people can send the same sort of overpriced cardboard bits of sentiment that the friends of straight people can send. The horror!
Hallmark defends gay marriage cards - Urge your local Hallmark store to refuse to carry them
Take Action!
Urge your local Hallmark store owner to join others in refusing to carry Hallmark gay marriage cards in their stores.
You can find your local Hallmark store contact information here. [Note: I have changed the link to one directly to Hallmark; the one in the email tracks the clickthrough to give the AFA numbers it can claim as people objecting to Hallmark's policy even if the person clicking supports Hallmark's decision.]
Please be polite, but firm when you contact your local store.
August 25, 2008 Dear Manmeat,
Hallmark is reinforcing their decision to carry gay marriage cards with a message to supporters of traditional marriage – buzz off!
According to their website, corporate emails, and in response to phone calls, Hallmark is telling those who contact the company it will carry “cards that use specific language and images appropriate for same-sex wedding ceremonies.”
Same sex marriage is not recognized in 48 states, but Hallmark has chosen to become a corporate advocate in advancing homosexual marriage.
However, some local Hallmark store owners are refusing to carry them. Earlier this week, Jordan's Hallmark, which owns seven Hallmark Gold Crown stores in Idaho, announced its stores will not carry gay marriage cards in their stores.
Donald E. Wildmon, Founder and Chairman American Family Association
Ah, the dumbness, how shall I count the ways?
Let's start with the assertion that Hallmark shouldn't sell gay marriage cards because same-sex marriages aren't recognized in 48 states. How many states recognize bar mitzvahs with legislation that recognizes 13 year old boys as adults? And the survey says... zero. Precisely no states consider thirteen year olds as something other than minors, despite the fact that Jewish religious custom proclaims them to be adults. Hallmark had better stop selling greeting cards for that occasion. The same number of states also recognize officially your daughter's third birthday, your wedding anniversary, or the fact that your nephew got an A in math last year. In short, whether or not a given state has a law recognizing something is absolutely meaningless in this context. Hallmark is in the business of selling greeting cards, not of marking the passage of laws.
But let's pretend for a moment that Hallmark only sells greeting cards for occasions that are sanctioned by state laws. If this were the case, then Hallmark would sell same-sex marriage cards only in states where such unions were recognized, which is only a few. Not the two states which this latest "Dear Manmeat" letter asserts, however, but fourteen states in all which recognize gay marriage in some form or another, whether it is called "marriage" or "civil union" with the same rights as different-sex marriage or with some more limited number of rights. That's nearly a quarter of all the United States; a redundant statement to make, I know, but since the AFA's Grand Poobah appears incapable of distinguishing between two and fourteen, we shouldn't take for granted that he knows how many states there are.
But let's sink deeper into the AFA's fantasy world and pretend that there really are only two states — Massachusetts and California — that recognize gay marriage in some form. Should Hallmark not sell appropriate greeting cards for gay weddings in the other 48 states? Well, I don't know. Do people sometimes mail cards from one state to another? Hmmmm... anybody have statistics? This one's a real head-scratcher. I mean, it's not like someone living in New Mexico might have a gay friend in Massachusetts, right? Nobody from Florida could possibly know anyone in California! Surely, God has commanded that there shall be no mixing between states upon penalty of smiting.
Perhaps the most shocking news to Wildmon and Co. might be that (gasp) same-sex weddings take place even in states where gay marriages aren't recognized. Believe it or not, for a lot of people who get married, the main thing is commitment to one another, not the question of legal status. The fact that there are states heartless enough to deny the right of one human being to sit at the hospital bedside of a sick or dying loved one notwithstanding, people who happen to be of the same biological gender still have ceremonies to declare their mutual commitment in places that don't provide legal recognition of that commitment. Note that none of Hallmark's cards, for this or any other occasion, include phrases like "Congratulations on the government recognition of your relationship." Greeting cards mark personal occasions, not changes in legal status.
Case in point: a few years ago, two gay friends of mine and LL's had a wedding ceremony and reception in St. Petersburg, Florida. Florida doesn't recognize same-sex marriage, and their official civil union had actually taken place in Vermont. They did that in full knowledge of the fact that they would not have anything like the rights and privileges of other married couples when they returned to Florida... but they did it anyhow, as a statement to one another. As the majority of this couple's friends and family lived in America's nethermost realm, however, they also had a purely symbolic ceremony and reception when they got back home. Finding an appropriate greeting card for the occasion was a matter of some deliberation, and having had cards like those Hallmark now sells at that time would have been quite helpful. So, whether Florida had or had not recognized the legal status of this couple at the time, I would have bought such a card to go along with the very nice picnic set that LL and I gave them as a wedding present. You see, there's a difference between a committed relationship, a marriage and a wedding. I don't suppose that a bunch of dunces like the AFA, who apparently can't even count up to 14 successfully, would understand a concept as abstract as that.
So if Hallmark is really telling the AFA's deluded Paul Reveres, galloping clumsily through our cultural countryside and shouting their fool heads off that "The homos are coming! The homos are coming!", to "buzz off," then all I can do is mark the fact that they've made the right decision in this instance. I would have used a different four-letter word than "buzz," and it's quite possible that Hallmark did, too. The AFA's membership likes to pretend that they're too timid to use the more appropriate word "fuck" for "buzz," although any of us who have been on the receiving end of a fundienutter's vitriol knows what kind of language they really use when they think nobody's looking (and they can always pray for forgiveness, which they "know" they'll get... which is a big part of what makes them such immense pricks in the first place).
And about the graphics that accompanied today's daily dose of Donald Wildmon's "meanmeat" fantasy life; am I the only one confused by this? Is an image of two tuxedos too horrible to contemplate? Is that all it takes to shock the flock? Is the email implying with the second graphic that the 12 apostles were involved in gay marriages? I mean, I wouldn't be at all surprised if they were, and I wouldn't think less of them if it were the case that John had jammed his joystick up James. It's hard to think less of something than not at all. Nonetheless, I'm a bit surprised that Don Wildmon would be promulgating that sort of thing as historical fact. Then again, I was a bit surprised when I got an email from him asking me to make his dreams come true on a Saturday night in March, too.
In the end, like most of these moon-faced assassins of joy, Wildmon just needs reassurance that even with gay people getting married, he'll someday find the right man to fulfill his failingly-suppressed needs. He's got the same basic problem that all Christian literalists have. They've signed on to a cult that, on the one hand, is filled to the rafters with homoerotic imagery and on the other hand tells them to disregard the attraction they feel toward it, a conflict sloppily tied up with the promise that if they can just wait for it long enough that they'll get to sit back and watch the pain they've inflicted upon themselves all their lives acted out as sadistic fantasy by stern judges and bloodthirsty horsemen who will torture and behead those who actually enjoyed life. Without the sadism of the apocalyptic vision, which they demand we all believe is a truth rather than the product of asceticism driven to the point of hallucinatory madness, none of this pays off in the end. It is only through the infliction of suffering upon the other that they can derive meaning from the torture they inflict upon themselves.
Attacking greeting cards is no big deal when you're determined to spend eternity lending a hand at driving red-hot pokers into the eye sockets of real people, after all.
There are days when it's hard to write anything, when I feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of dumbness that flows from my monitor to my brain. It's depressing. Perhaps my vision of the past is seen through rose-colored glasses, but I don't remember things always being this bad in this country.
The idea that my country could be sliding into an era of superstition and primtivism, one in which the dominant force is belief in supernatural authority rather than reason, is a profoundly depressing one for me. America has always had its share of crackpots, as I imagine any nation does, but their ever-increasing influence on our culture is a frightening thing to behold as it erodes the shores of reason as steadily as an angry sea washes away a sandy beach. These are the people in our national government now. They're making the laws and steering the national dialog. Both of the persons likely to become the next president allow themselves to be called on the carpet for the first time together not by scientists, artists or thinkers, but by a preacher in a forum whose goal is to determine how religious they are.
Dude, where's my country?
I'm going to hole up in my lab today and do science. I may leave for lunch, but that's about it. I don't want to hear anymore for the next 24 hours about how religious Barack Obama is or whether or not John McCain has been "saved." I know, it's a quaint thing these days to actually conduct rational, empirical investigation into some question of how nature operates as opposed to simply whipping out the old ouija board or asking the village shaman or the earth mother or what have you, but I reserve the right to be old-fashioned today. I find much more joy in measuring the segments of a beetle's foot than I possibly can in listening to the various supernaturalists gabbling, particularly when that nattering becomes law or political speech.
A story in the Madison, WI Isthmus recounts the case of Madeline Neumann, a child unfortunate enough to have been born to a couple of very, very stupid and deluded parents who refused to get her medical treatment as she died a slow and excruciating death from an easily treated condition. They instead decided to go with witchcraft, seeking to invoke supernatural spooks and fairy tales to heal her. 40 out of 50 US states have laws that allow parents to do this because it protects the faith that they then proceed to inflict upon the innocent.
...In the days, perhaps weeks, before their daughter died of diabetic ketoacidosis — an illness authorities contend could have been readily treated — Dale and Leilani Neumann refused to seek medical care. They did so despite the girl's worsening condition and despite the urging of family members and friends. Instead, they insisted her body was a battleground in a spiritual war between Jesus Christ and the forces of Hell. Only by resisting worldly medicine, they believed, could she be saved...
Wisconsin law, like that of as many as 40 other states, carries an explicit exemption from prosecution for child abuse or neglect for parents who forgo medical treatment for their children on religious grounds and instead seek "treatment...through prayer..."
The Neumanns were readers of and occasional contributors to a website called Unleavened Bread Ministries (www.unleavenedbreadministries.org). The banner across its top proclaims, "Warning: These are America's Last Days."
Unleavened Bread Ministries is operated by David Eells, a self-appointed preacher in Pensacola, Fla. It's filled with predictions of impending apocalypse and assertions that people can be healed of illness through faith and prayer. One page features 63 separate testimonials to miraculous cures ranging from cancer and birth defects to hay fever and "uneven tire wear" on a car..."
Det. Sgt. Dennis Halkoski asked if the family ever thought about taking their daughter to the doctor. "No," Leilani replied. "We just thought it was a spiritual attack and we prayed for her." When her husband suggested getting medical care, "I said, the Lord's going to heal her, and we continued to pray."
A search of the Neumann home that evening showed the couple had sought emergency help — just not from a doctor. The day before the girl died, Dale Neumann had emailed David Eells' website seeking the preacher's direct number: "We need agreement in prayer over our youngest daughter, who is very weak and pale at the moment with hardly any strength," the message pleaded.
The reply, though not from Eells, was in the form of a prayer, which read in part: "We thank You Father for giving Dale and Leilani the faith to hold fast to the confession of their hope that it waver not, for it is Your will Father that Kara was already healed, I Peter 2:24. We add faith to Dale's and Leilani's and command Kara to be healed. We command that spirit of infirmity to loose Kara now, leave her body, leave her home, and go back from where it came and stay there...."
So these primitivists murmured to an ancient Near Eastern sky-god who — surprise, surprise — didn't show up, and their kid died. She died over the course of days, perhaps weeks. She died slowly, terribly and unnecessarily. It would have been kinder of the oh-so-pious Neumanns if they had simply put a pillow over her face and had done with it. They could have prayed for DA LAWD to obviate Madeline's need for oxygen as she struggled and thrashed beneath the weight of this self-created test of their faith. The outcome would have been exactly the same.
Laws in many states that effectively shift the responsibility for acts such as that perpetrated by homicidal child-abusers like the Neumanns to the deity that never materializes, however. It protects delusional belief over the very real well-being of very real people who go through very real suffering and die very real deaths.
...In 1998, Swan and University of California-San Diego pediatrician Seth Asser published an article in the medical journal Pediatrics based on their review of 172 deaths of children between 1975 and 1995 whose parents had withheld medical care on religious grounds. They concluded that 140 of those children — 80% — would have had a 90% chance of survival had they received conventional medical care; another 18 would have had a 50% survival rate.
"They died of very simple things," says Swan. "Lots of diabetes deaths. Lots of infectious diseases that are readily treated with antibiotics."
And in virtually every state, prosecutors were prevented from bringing neglect charges, because the parents had relied on spiritual healing. Swan traces those laws to a mid-1970s federal mandate, which she says was lobbied for by the Christian Science Church and Christian Scientists...
...only a handful of states have repealed or narrowed the exemptions. Wisconsin has not. State statute 948.03(6) still says a person is not guilty of failing to protect children from harm "solely because he or she provides a child with treatment by spiritual means through prayer alone for healing in accordance with the religious method for healing...in lieu of medical or surgical treatment."
This statute drew some attention in 2003, when a 4-year-old autistic child, Terrence Cottrell, was crushed to death in Milwaukee during an attempted exorcism by a self-taught preacher...
..."It is time for that law to be repealed," says Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the Madison-based Freedom From Religion Foundation. "The law is a green light for parents to think they don't have any responsibility to society [regarding how] they treat their children. The state should be stepping in here to do everything it can to discourage faith healing in place of medical care."
Any such attempt, however, will face opposition from the Christian Science Church, which is among the most established religious groups that promote the use of prayer to treat physical ailments.
"We deplore the abuse and neglect of children under any circumstances," says Farkas, the church's Wisconsin lobbyist. He says Christian Scientists "don't claim that all cases of religious objections to medical care should be free from legal limitations." And it would be "willing to work with legislators" on any efforts to redraft the law.
But the church would not want the law changed in a way that would expose its members to prosecution for practicing spiritual healing.
"The Christian Science Church has documented 125 years of healings that have occurred through prayer" since it was founded in 1879, says Farkas. "Spiritual healing through prayer definitely has a place in society..."
I think part of Farkas' statement must have been left out of the article. It should read in full, "We deplore the abuse and neglect of children under any circumstances in which it has not been given sanction by a bunch of bizarre mumbo-jumbo propounded by people like me."
The proper place for spiritual healing in society is right alongside shaking knucklebones over a dead cat to ward off the evil eye and burning incense and pubic hairs in a campfire to win love, because they are exactly the same thing. There is no difference between praying over someone to heal their sickness and any other sort of occult nonsense. None, zero, zip. Whether the people who engage in unacceptable, harmful behavior like the Neumanns believe that aid will come from an invisible superfriend or that by taking poison they'll be taken aboard flying saucers as was the case with Marshall Applewhite and Heaven's Gate, personal belief should not be an excuse to commit homicide. If it is, why shouldn't it be perfectly legal to drive through the streets of a large city shooting prostitutes if one's religious belief is that prostitution violates the will of Jehovah? Why shouldn't Fred Phelps be allowed to blow up gay bars? After all, he and his incestuous little tribe firmly believe that "God hates fags." Shall we as a society excuse murder in cases wherein the perpetrator deeply and sincerely believes in his mission from God?
Indeed, the state of Massachusetts, which repealed its own exemption law, is now considering reinstating a narrower form. Boston lawyer Stephen Lyons, who helped defend Christian Scientists convicted — and later acquitted — of homicide in the death of their child 13 years ago, says the new bill would let parents charged in such cases cite belief in spiritual healing as a defense.
Lyons equates families who act on their beliefs about spiritual healing with a long line of pioneers seeking religious liberty. He contends that cases like the one he handled and the one involving the Neumanns are often distorted in a swirl of publicity and prejudice.
"Ketoacidosis is something that kills children in hospitals every day," he says. "But we never second-guess the doctors because we assume that they do their best. But the parents of children who died of these illnesses never get the benefit of the same assumption. What gets lost is what they were seeing, what they were experiencing. No one seems to want to find out about the reasonableness of their conduct....
First off, HELL NO. This is the first I've heard of Massachusetts considering allowing even a few instances of death-by-Jesus to children and I doubt that it will pass. Lyons statement is a bunch of ridiculous gibberish. Who cares what the parents are experiencing? Do we make a special exemption under the law for this? "The one thing that gets lost here is that the crackhead who shot the clerk in the course of the robbery really believed that the clerk would rise from the dead in a few hours" isn't admissible, is it?
And what is this nonsense about nobody second-guessing doctors? Those silly physicians are paying exorbitant premiums for malpractice insurance for no reason, because nobody ever thinks for a moment that they could possibly have been negligent! I mean, when was the last time a physician was sued by the family of a child who died while under her care? That simply doesn't happen.
What is "getting lost" to Lyons' well-funded but apparently very small intellect is that he's full of crap. Doctors get sued all the time when something goes wrong under their charge; they are held accountable and investigated, a situation that becomes even more likely when a child dies from a relatively easily-treated condition like that which killed Madeline Neumann. In her case, she wasn't under the care of a physician or hospital, she was under the care of her parents. Just as would be a doctor who refused to provide treatment and thereby caused someone's death, Dan and Leilani Neumann should be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law for facilitating the death of their daughter. Who wouldn't agree with the idea of charging a doctor who eschewed medicine or surgery in favor of mumbling incantations by the bedside with at least negligent homicide? Doctors are second-guessed every day; the Neumanns did it themselves. Every faith healer does it, ever New Age shaman who swallows herbal concotions does it, every homeopath who foists off water on their "patients" does it, and every patient and family member who takes the time to learn about the treatment that they or a loved one are receiving does it. That one or more of these people might believe deeply that angels and aliens are a better hope for healing than is modern medicine is immaterial.
People like Dale and Leilani Neumann don't need a special exemption under the law. We already have a plea that can be entered by those who believe that supernatural entities are commanding them to undertake a criminal course of action to the extent that they disregard reality. IT's called not guilty by reason of insanity. If homicidal faith-healers, the Leilani Neumanns and Joe Farkases of this country, can't tell on their own that what they're doing is wrong, that's the correct plea for them. Then they can be given proper therapy until the voices in their heads commanding them to kill have ceased and they stop being a danger to others.
This blog is about whatever I'm pondering at the moment that I write in it. That may include anything at all. Mundane bits from my personal life, politics, science, fungi, genetics, media, dirty jokes, you name it. You're looking at the inside of my head when you're looking at this blog. Please don't litter and wipe your feet before entering. Thank you.
