Maggie Gets one Wrong
I will admit, I don't know who this Maggie Gallagher* is who wrote this silly commentary called "Bush Gets One Right", but she's clearly a little red toady and, unfortunately, she got it wrong.
Perhaps if I were red myself and she blue, I would jump up and down and point and shout "she's wrong! she's wrong!", but I'm not like that.
She believes, with the president, that the thin but sturdy dike (NB, not "dyke") holding back the flood waters of gay marriage is the evidence, which surely must be mounting even as I type, that children do "better" (whatever that might be construed to mean in their little red minds) if they have the "traditional" one-man + one-woman parental infrastructure.
Well, that's rubbish and they know it, as they are finding out but continue to deny. But that's not really my point at this point anyway. Instead, I found myself laughing aloud and slapping my thighs at this assertion of Maggie's as she finishes driving the nail in the gay-marriage coffin with her lofty tones:
All over the world, for most of human history, marriage has been about connecting men and women in the only kind of sexual union that can both create the next generation and connect those babies to their own mother and father.
This is about the only fun we blue-minded types get to have with dark-red fundamentalists: sitting back and giving them time to play out enough rope to hang themselves with. Doesn't Maggie realize, yet, that if she keeps insisting that it's the force of a "tradition" — universally recognized! — that calls for marriage to be only man + woman = kids and is keeping marriage "pure", it's going to be difficult to move away from that silliness with any sensibility left when even she has to abandon her denials in the face of the overwhelmingly obvious?
There are simply too many examples of "marriage" throughout history that have not been "traditional" by any stretch of the imagination, or for the purpose of producing children (including all those entertaining non-"traditional" stories in the fundamentalists' own book of myths) for anyone credibly to continue to believe what Maggie claims to believe — not to mention the current president.
*Note added 22 February 2005:
Now I do, thanks today to a note in a piece by Terry M. Neal, washingtonpost.com Staff Writer: "Maggie Gallagher, the syndicated columnist who had a $21,500 contract with the Department of Health and Human Services to promote a pro-marriage initiative…." Is it remarkable that my first impressions were so accurate?
The Prophetic Red Heifer
It seems that for the last two days, ever since I read that fascinating speech by Bill Moyers (mentioned a few posts below this one), in which he talked about faith-based politics and the influence of end-time prophesies, I've been following threads and reading with wide-eyed fascination and horror at this multi-car pileup on this major highway in the reality-based world that I live in. And it keeps getting worse.
The latest is this nearly three-year-old article by Rod Dreher in The National Review: "Red-Heifer Days".
Now, the entire story is too interesting, too bizarre, and too complex for me to feel I could summarize it here with any clarity; I suggest you read the story. The premise is this:
You don't have to believe that a rust-colored calf could bring about the end of the world — or that 72 black-eyed virgins await the pious Islamic suicide bomber in paradise — but there are many people who do, and are prepared to act on that belief.
I hope that's suitably provocative!
The story involves this rare, red heifer (born in Texas through the good offices of some fundamentalist Christian cattle ranchers), whose ashes are necessary for the ritual purification necessary before any Jews may set foot on Temple Mount (Jerusalem), to rebuild The Temple that will be necessary for Jesus to return at the climax of the battle of Armageddon…. And on it goes. At any rate, many might see this as a triggering threshold for even bigger apocalyptic events.
As Mr. Dreher points out, it makes little difference that one doesn't believe this stuff if there are millions who, regardless of the absurdity, do believe it.
In: All, Splenetics, The Art of Conversation
Unintended Meaning
Sometimes, when my mind wanders (as it is prone to do) while people are talking to me, I occasionally mis-hear them: words that leave their mouths in one shape can enter my brain with an entirely different shape, leading to curious misconstructions of meaning. At other times, I drift along and only hear excerpts of their spoken thread, and start filling in the blank spots with more creative license than I should. Sometimes I don't look closely enough at written words and see other (usually far more interesting) words in their place.
This is not always — or even frequently — a bad thing, since it can be the source of stimulating ideas that might not otherwise pop into my head through more pedestrian listening or reading. Perhaps it's a warning that my right brain is trying to seize control over my left brain, which is usually in charge.
This comes to mind simply as a digression from one example that passed by this morning, as I was reading headlines and excerpts from my collection of RSS feeds. This one, from The Seattle Post-Intelligencer caught my eye:
'Trust me' is too risky (2/13/2005) P-I Editorial: Probably the last person to assess a substance abuser's condition is the abuser.
Oh ho! I thouht, another incisive commentary about the current president and his untrustworthiness! But, no, it turned out to be about drunk drivers.
I liked my version better, really, and it's easy to see how I made this mistake. "Trust Me" must be one of the top-five phrases in the administration's handbook of reassuring public-policy statements. It comes in so many versatile forms, too, with an abundance of meaningful winks and nudges and references to "national security" and the "war on terror". (I'm also not a big fan of metaphorical "wars" on abstract and invisible targets, like the "war on drugs", but my discomfort increases dramatically when the administration takes a metaphoric "war" literally.) Thus, whenever I see "trust me", I naturally assume it's another lie from the administration.
And then there was that bit about "substance abuser". Momentarily I figured that the "substance" in this case must refer to "power", since abuse of power is surely one of the top-five most readily identifiable characteristics of the current administration.
Oops.
In: All, Hermeneutics, Notes to Richard, Splenetics
Bill Moyers on End-Time Politics
Excerpts from an amazing speech given by Bill Moyers on December 1, 2004, at the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School upon receiving its fourth annual Global Environment Citizen Award. I recommend downloading and reading the entire text.
One of the biggest changes in politics in my lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the oval office and in Congress. For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington. Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven true; ideologues hold stoutly to a world view despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind. And there is the danger: voters and politicians alike, oblivious to the facts.
Remember James Watt, President Reagan's first Secretary of the Interior? My favorite online environmental journal, the ever engaging Grist, reminded us recently of how James Watt told the U.S. Congress that protecting natural resources was unimportant in light of the imminent return of Jesus Christ. In public testimony he said, 'after the last tree is felled, Christ will come back.'
Beltway elites snickered. The press corps didn't know what he was talking about. But James Watt was serious. So were his compatriots out across the country. They are the people who believe the Bible is literally true – one-third of the American electorate, if a recent Gallup poll is accurate. In this past election several million good and decent citizens went to the polls believing in the rapture index. That's right – the rapture index. Google it and you will find that the best-selling books in America today are the twelve volumes of the left-behind series written by the Christian fundamentalist and religious right warrior, Timothy LaHaye. These true believers subscribe to a fantastical theology concocted in the 19th century by a couple of immigrant preachers who took disparate passages from the Bible and wove them into a narrative that has captivated the imagination of millions of Americans.
Its outline is rather simple, if bizarre (the British writer George Monbiot recently did a brilliant dissection of it and I am indebted to him for adding to my own understanding): once Israel has occupied the rest of its 'biblical lands,' legions of the anti-Christ will attack it, triggering a final showdown in the valley of Armageddon. As the Jews who have not been converted are burned, the messiah will return for the rapture. True believers will be lifted out of their clothes and transported to heaven, where, seated next to the right hand of God, they will watch their political and religious opponents suffer plagues of boils, sores, locusts, and frogs during the several years of tribulation that follow.
I'm not making this up. Like Monbiot, I've read the literature. I've reported on these people, following some of them from Texas to the West Bank. They are sincere, serious, and polite as they tell you they feel called to help bring the rapture on as fulfillment of biblical prophecy. That's why they have declared solidarity with Israel and the Jewish settlements and backed up their support with money and volunteers. It's why the invasion of Iraq for them was a warm-up act, predicted in the Book of Revelation where four angels 'which are bound in the great river Euphrates will be released to slay the third part of man.' A war with Islam in the Middle East is not something to be feared but welcomed – an essential conflagration on the road to redemption. The last time I Googled it, the rapture index stood at 144-just one point below the critical threshold when the whole thing will blow, the son of God will return, the righteous will enter heaven, and sinners will be condemned to eternal hellfire. […]
A 2002 TIME/CNN poll found that 59 percent of Americans believe that the prophecies found in the Book of Revelation are going to come true. Nearly one-quarter think the Bible predicted the 9/11 attacks. Drive across the country with your radio tuned to the more than 1,600 Christian radio stations or in the motel turn some of the 250 Christian TV stations and you can hear some of this end-time gospel. And you will come to understand why people under the spell of such potent prophecies cannot be expected, as Grist puts it, "to worry about the environment. Why care about the earth when the droughts, floods, famine and pestilence brought by ecological collapse are signs of the apocalypse foretold in the Bible? Why care about global climate change when you and yours will be rescued in the rapture? And why care about converting from oil to solar when the same God who performed the miracle of the loaves and fishes can whip up a few billion barrels of light crude with a word?" […]
You might also like to read the story "Christian-right views are swaying politicians and threatening the environment" by Glenn Scherer at The Grist, and the commentary about the rapture index by Jon Carroll from the San Francisco Chronicle.
In: All, Common-Place Book
Reporting Disparities
This entire story about James Guckert, aka Jeff Gannon, "reporter" for Talon [so-called] News, is certainly odd, not least because of his sudden retreat underground after speculation about ties he might have had to the White House. Was he, too, being paid to channel propaganda to an unsuspecting public?
But, there's an interesting divergence in the way the story is being reported; not in the basic facts, but in the end-of-the-column details. Apparently, bloggers uncovered Guckert's / Gannon's ownership of several "gay military sex sites". Now, here's where the differences show up. The mainstream press, as in this example from The Houston Chronicle:
By using an alias, Guckert concealed that as Jeff Gannon he was associated with a number of Web sites that had names with sexual connotations, including Militaryescorts.com and Hotmilitarystud.com.
leaves it at that: mentioning only that he was "associated" with these sites, implying that perhaps he has gone undergound out of–what?–embarrassment from his "association"? Perhaps he's really just a closeted homo, they imply, who ran some porn sites.
On the other hand, the gay press reports it differently, as in this example from 365gay.com:
A man accredited by the White House as a journalist has gone underground after being exposed as a fake, a possible a shill for the president, and perhaps a spy for the Pentagon trying to out gays in the military. […]
But, troubling questions remain unanswered. What has become of any membership list to his gay military sex sites? Were those sites created only to out servicemembers under "don't ask, don't tell"? Were any names turned over to the Pentagon?
This is quite a different viewpoint, suggesting that the "reporter" was in the pay of someone to try to entrap gay military men with the websites so that their names could be turned over and they could be discharged under the ridiculous don't-ask-don't-tell policy.
Of course, the reactionary Quixotes are out in force to protect Guckert's / Gannon's honor [i.e., doing their best to create cover-up smoke-screens] by wringing their hands and complaining about how he was "hounded" out of his journalistic work by a nasty bunch of liberal bloggers.
Oh dear oh dear! Given the breathtaking speed of his disappearance from public sight at the first hint that there might be a deeper story here, I'm starting to believe that the "hounders" have not done nearly enough "hounding" in this instance.
Unusual Search Strings
Every now and then I notice that people visit a page on one of my websites somewhere as the result of using a search string that strikes me as unexpected (although there are usually good reasons).
For instance, today, someone arrived via
pornography sex cartoons and comics stories
I'm #16 on this one with MicroSoft, which is pretty exciting! Sure enough, I did have an entry in my blog that happened to use those words, although I'm not sure what I would write if I set out with using those words as a goal. I was a bit disappointed to find that I'm not yet even in Google's top 100 for that search string.
My favorite one so far though, and one totally unexpected, is this:
gay fart stories
This one rates me #1 with Google, of which I'm rather proud, but only #4 with MSN. Tsk.
There is a good explanation for the "gay fart stories". It all has to do with a story I published (under my fiction-writing name Jay Neal) in the Best Gay Erotica series, concerning the situational ethics uncovered by a guy when he discovers that he can stop time by farting. Ask Google for "gay fart stories" and you can see how it comes up.
So, that wasn't particularly surprising. I was, however, caught slightly off guard at the frequency with which people arrive at Jay Neal's site via Google by asking for "gay fart stories". Such delightful diversity!
Social Security Murkiness
As I read and listen to people talk about the current administration's steamrolling push to privatize — rather, "personalize" social security, the continuing surprise (similar to the surprise that so much truth about the president can be exposed and people will still vote for him) for me is that so many people seem so accepting of all the manipulative propaganda. How can this be, I wonder.
I imagine that there is at least this contributing factor that leads to misinterpretation of privatizing proposals: the public has always misunderstood how social security worked.
Since the beginning of the program, many, many people have mistakenly thought of social security as a savings account: one puts money into one's account, then draws it out after retirement. For whatever reasons, it seems that our government never tried too hard to clarify this misconception.
Well, there you go: if it's just an individual's "savings account for retirement", why shouldn't that individual be allowed to put the money where it will earn a higher rate of return? Doesn't the individual know better than the big ol' government?
With this misconception in mind, there is no credible reason why moving one's "savings account for retirement" to a different bank, in effect, should have any detrimental effect on the program. If they are just "savings accounts" why not move them to better banks?
The point, of course, is that they are not in any sense "savings accounts". One does not "put money in" in order to take it out later; one puts money in to distribute it to current retirees. There is no "savings account". And so it is that allowing people to "put their own money" into "personal accounts" will divert a huge amount of money away from current benefits payouts, resulting in the equally huge price tag for "personalizing".
This certainly is a black mark against privatizing, but there are many reasons why I don't like it. Mostly I object because the lure of the stock market has the same smell as the lure of the casino: if some win big (earnings well ahead of general economic growth), it's because many, many people lose small. Played for captial gains, it's a pyramid scheme. The only people guaranteed not to lose are the ones who take a commission on each transaction: these are the ones offering up the large amounts of money for propaganda to "educate" the public about the benefits of "personalizing".
Love Crimes
Also at 365gay.com, a story about attempts in Pennsylvania to soften their hate-crimes laws:
(Harrisburg, Pennsylvania) A bill has been introduced in the Pennsylvania legislature to remove several classifications including gays, lesbians, and the transgendered from the state’s hate crimes law.
The legislation would also remove protections for people who are victims of crimes due to their actual or perceived ancestry, mental or physical disability, and gender.
The bill was sought by two conservative groups who said that the law discourages free speech….
Now, I expect that I'm as much a first-amendment lover as the next left-wing nutcase, but I do have some trouble with people who only see the value of the constituion in giving them freedom to attack others, either with nasty name-calling or by shooting them with handguns, and get upset if they're asked not to go out of their way with the violence of their "free speech" (things like beating up faggots are usually prosecuted under hate-crimes laws).
Wasn't it enough for the wacky reactionaries to invent the idea of "Political Correctness" just so they could try to disarm their targets pre-emtively (as in, "Oh, I know it's tediously PC of me to put it this way, but these tiresome fudge-packers really don't deserve special rights")? Evidently not. Perhaps the tumescence-producing thrill of being anti-PC has passed.
But there are good reasons for this move in Pennsylvania:
"There's no such thing as a 'love' crime," said Nancy Staible , director of the Zelienople-based Concerned Women group. "We'd like to take it all out." But because a wholesale demolition of the law is not likely, "we'll do it by bits and pieces" starting with the gay provisions Staible said.
There you go: all crimes are hate crimes! Obviously, hate-crime legislation gives "special rights" to certain victims, and we'd really all rather be equal, so there.
I do, however, just love this idea of "love crimes" — isn't it a positively fabulous phrase! I can already hear the theme song for the television show. Why not plan a few "love crimes" of your own for Valentine's day?
She's wrong of course: until very recently, sex between two people of the same gender was widely illegal, a "love crime" if ever there was one.
But now, witness this final triumphant "argument" (it helps to know that the Pennsylvania hate-crimes legislation is known as "The Ethnic Intimidation Act"):
"These are not ethnic groups in the first place," Staible said.
You tell 'em, Nancy!
Were Dinosaurs Gay?
The question comes about in my mind after reading about concerns at the zoo in Bremen, Germany over their three gay penguin-couples. (I'm reading the story at 365gay.com.) It seems that the zoo is going to separate the couples (who fooled zoo-keepers for a year apparently by acting all traditionally husband-and-wifey), and then introduce imported females (foreign penguin-tarts obtained from penguin-slave traders?) to the queer ones in turn until they "take". As reported:
Even [zoo director] Kueck is skeptical it will work in her penguins. But, she said that the attempt has the support of the European Endangered Species Program because the penguins, which are native to South America, are an endangered species.
Living proof that gay-penguin marriage will lead to the extinction of the species!
It is now my firm belief that dinosaurs, notably flamboyant in size and fashion accessories (just consider that stegosaurus), must have evolved into predominantly homosexual individuals who over indulged in living a gay-dinosaur lifestyle, which quickly led to their sudden extinction.
In: All, Splenetics, The Art of Conversation
Acceptance, Tolerance, or Indifference
In his opinion piece, "Fan behavior not a laughing matter anymore", in the Lexington [KY] Herald-Leader, John Clay relates an incident wherein sports fans at the University of Kentucky, in a confrontation with "Florida" (no doubt "University of …" or "… State", but the rules for shorthand versions of names in the context of sports events has always eluded me), chanted "Walsh is gay!" as a taunt towards one of the Florida players.
Mr. Clay is informative and entertaining with his analysis about why, in his words,
"Walsh is gay!" is not funny.
Then, having been sensible and to the point for more than half his piece, he makes the embarrassing and offensive mistake of adding:
By the way, Matt Walsh has dated Playboy centerfold Lauren Anderson. Maybe the students are simply jealous.
The whole point is that whether Walsh is gay or not is not an issue. I'm sure Mr. Clay means well, and I thank him for coming out [as it were] on the right side, but I'd like him to pause for a moment and think a little further about the meaning behind his words, and see whether it really strengthens his case to defend Walsh's presumed sexual orientation by denying the alternative suggested by the over-enthusiastic fans.
I invite all my straight friends to try this test: If you should happen sometime to be "accused" of being gay, or if a friend of yours is "accused" of being gay, try as hard as you can not to respond by denying it and then claiming that it doesn't matter; instead, make no defense but do not accept that there is anything demeaning about the "accusation".
Indifference is a big step on the road from mere tolerance to acceptance, and it will make you a better person.
Basic Freedoms
In an opinion piece in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer (Sexual orientation must be the right that religious affiliation is), columnist Thomas Shapely has put down in his paper an important truth about the "gay rights" struggle, something pretty obvious that nevertheless eludes great numbers of people.
These days, a lot of anti-gay types like to "argue" that gay rights are fundamentally different from, say, black rights because being black is an "immutable" attribute and being gay, in their estimation, is not. [One doesn't quite understand how it is that they know this, but there you go.]
This, of course, cleverly misses the whole point:
Denying basic rights and liberties to gay people is wrong, regardless of whether sexual orientation is "mutable" or "immutable".
NB: I am not "arguing" this point–there is no "debate" to be had about civil rights equality for gay people, although some people steadfastly refuse to feel shame in "debating" my equality.
Here is some reporting from Mr. Shapely's piece that represents the "debate":
Testimony at a crowded [Washington state] House committee hearing last week showed that doing the right thing may not be popular. House Bill 1515 drew fervent opposition from, among others, the Christian Coalition and the Rev. Ken Hutcherson, the charismatic African American pastor of Antioch Bible Church in Redmond.
Hutcherson said he was "really appalled" that the law might put on the same plane the discrimination suffered by those with a minority sexual orientation and that suffered by African Americans.
Rabbi James Mirel, whose people have suffered their share of discrimination, didn't share Hutcherson's concept of a civil rights caste system. Supporting the bill, Mirel noted the week had marked the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz. "Discrimination is never benign," he said.
Later, Mr. Shapely gets to his point:
What if sexual desire is a matter of choice?
If so, Rep. Toby Nixon, R-Kirkland, asked the definitive question. Because it's the evangelicals' mission to change people's religious faith, Nixon asked Higley [lobbyist for Washington Evangelicals for Responsible Government], is religious faith "immutable, or can it be 'self-identified'?" Hint: Isn't religion itself a choice, and isn't religious choice protected?
We ban discrimination on the basis of choices in ideology, creed and religious faith. If it's wrong to discriminate on the basis of which ideology one chooses to follow or which god one chooses to worship, it's wrong to discriminate on the basis of whom one chooses to love.
Whether sexual orientation (heterosexual or homosexual) is something we're born with or whether it's a choice, is absolutely irrelevant to any consideration of equal rights for gay people.
Nostalgia Yet Unshattered
When I was much younger, and my age was in the single digits, my mother's parents owned and ran a farm in rural Missouri (the nearest big city was St. Joseph, home of "Cherry Mash" candy bars, and I vividly remember seeing the huge, illuminated image of the candy bar on top of the building as we drove by on the highway). To a boy that age — at least to me — the farm was filled with mysteries and unusual discoveries.
One that I remembered, or believed that I remembered, concerned these unusual trees way out at the distant edge of the pasture, some distance from the pond. I don't remember the trees very well, but I remember their fruits: lemony-green, grapefruit-sized things covered with bumps and channels and looking very much like one imagined the brain to look (if it were green, of course). We knew these things by the name "hedge apples". Some of them ended up in the basement of my parents' house, apprently because of their supposed insect-repelling properties.
No one I talk to seems to have heard of hedge apples. For some time now I've wondered whether these things really existed or whether I somehow imagined them or conflated some other memories to produce the hedge-apple memory, but I've neglected to take simple steps to look into it. Then, as time passed, the memory grew into something that seemed delicate and vulnerable, and I hesitated to find out the answer, just in case I had made the whole thing up: I wasn't sure that I wanted to know the real-world truth.
Curiosity won and my memory of "hedge apples" is intact, unshattered. Phew.
It seems that the green things are indeed commonly known as "hedge apples" (and, among other things and not surprisingly, as "monkey brains"), and their alleged insect-repelling capabilities an enduring myth about them. They are the fruits of the [female] hedge apple tree, also known as the "Osage-Orange Tree", or Maclura pomifera, a tree native to eastern Texas and southern Oklahoma.
The trees themselves were strictly utilitarian, since they are universally described as unattractive. Their wood is very hard and burns very hot. They are also very tolerant of bad soil, drought, and high winds. Thus, they were sometimes planted in my part of the world as wind breaks. Apparently, they are also thorny and dense when trimmed as a hedge (hence "hedge apples"?), and thus frequently used as living fences to keep cattle inside their boundaries. Which led to this most curious observation:
The widespread planting of Osage-orange stopped with the introduction of barbed wire.
It comes from a short article "Hedge Apples", by Don Janssen, Extension Educator (apparently of the University of Nebraska, Lincoln), which in a very short space tells you most everything you might want to know about Hedge-Apple Trees.
I am a bit relieved to confirm that I hadn't imagined the entire thing. Sometimes my childhood memories, which create a vague pattern in mosaic with many pieces missing, turn out to have little to do with an actual, experienced reality. This is one that did.
———
[Note added 9 September 2009:] For reasons that escape me, the article above by Don Janssen has been updated, shortened, and moved (I have changed the URL above to be current), and somewhere in that process the fascinating observation about the passing of the popularity of the Osage orange with the introduction of barbed-wire fencing has vanished. For more on that I suggest reading the "comment" below, actually a reference to another blog posting of mine in which I quote another author on the matter of the Hedgeapple tree and barbed wire.
In: All, The Art of Conversation
Election Reform: My Simple Proposal
For many of the most recent federal elections — and this is long before I became so cynical as I am — I've been excessively irritated by the election bean-counters: those people who tote up how much each candidate has spent and simply presume that the prize will go to the one who spent the most. Apparently, in this scenario, we're expected to vote with dollars in some sort of game-show version of the electoral process.
I'd much rather vote with my vote, thank you, and I'm still naive enough, and enough of a democracy idealist, to believe that it's possible to vote for someone whom I think will do a better job running the government rather than a better job raising campaign money. (Being basically a thrifty mid-westerner, I'm inclined to see money spent on campaigns as a big waste anyway.) I am also dismayed when I see people working for the better candidate lose their hope when they realize that their candidate can't raise as much as the opponent.
And we know what this mindset has led to: an escalation in campaign spending that becomes more ridiculous and more corrupting with every election.
What to do to break the campaign funds race? Who will blink first?
It's up to the electorate to take the first step — candidates surely never will: the first ones to do so would be foolhardy.
Here, then, is my simple proposal:
For every office, in every election, vote for the candidate who spent the least money on the election.
I believe that, if implemented by a large segment of the electorate, this simple device would quickly lead to major, self-imposed and far-reaching election reform.
Militant Kindergarten Agenda
Sometimes the silliness just is too much and one wouldn't be able to breathe because one couldn't stop laughing if only it were actually funny.
It seems that the [Montana Congressional] House Education Committee was having hearings on the idea of extending kindergarten to full-day sessions. Apparently things got a wee bit out of hand when various members of the public who wished to testify insisted on making anti-abortion and anti-gay statements instead of talking about day-long kindergarten.
This is how events were related by The Montana Standard in Kindergarten debate sparks gay-rights fight:
Rep. Dan Villa, D-Anaconda, ignited the fight when he asked everyone to limit their testimony to the topic at hand — full-day kindergarten — after two members of the Montana Family Coalition spoke against "alternative lifestyles" and the teaching of evolution in public schools.
[…]
After a brief debate among the lawmakers over what the scope of the hearing should be, retired Helena physician William Wise was ruled out of order when he began his testimony with a reference to abortion. Wise sat down, but popped up again before the hearing closed.
The reason Mr. Wise was so upset — and, it turns out, his justification for how his anti-abortion and anti-gay remarks could have anything at all to do with day-long kindergarten:
After Wise left the hearing, he said he wanted to tell the committee not to support full-day kindergarten, or any other proposal that has the backing of the National Education Association. Wise said he's opposed to the NEA's acceptance of gays, lesbians, bisexuals and the transgendered.
There you go: now that's what I call a good reason!
Tight Trousers
In an Op-Ed today in the NYTimes, Frank Rich said the following while discussing the import of right-wing attacks on cartoon surrogates in promoting the militant homosexual agenda:
This, too, has its antecedent in the McCarthy era. In his novel "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay," Michael Chabon was extrapolating from actual history when one of his heroes, a gay comic book artist, is hauled before Congress to testify about pairing up "strapping young fellows in tight trousers" as superheroes. A Senate committee of the time did investigate the comics. Its guiding force was the psychiatrist Fredric Wertham's fear-mongering 1954 tome "Seduction of the Innocent," which posited that Batman and Robin could corrupt children by inducing a "wish dream of two homosexuals living together." The decency cops of that day, exemplified by closeted gay right-wingers like J. Edgar Hoover and Roy Cohn, escalated a culture war into one with human costs by conflating homosexuality with the criminality of treason.
Since I'd wondered why no one seemed to be exercised at the apparent long-term relationship between Bruce Wayne and his "ward" and their joint penchant for dressing up in "tight trousers" and engaging in what can only be described as out-of-the-mainstream S&M activities, it's a bit of a relief to know that it was indeed noticed and investigated in the McCarthy Era.
These are truly serious issues that Spellings and Dobson are toying with, and we should neither overlook their over-reaching self-righteousness nor their dangerous hysterical fear-mongering just because the apparent targets of their attacks happen to be charming animated creatures.
I should probably blame my father for letting me watch Batman & Robin on television when I was young, since now I'm grown up and indulging in my "wish dream of two homosexuals living together", although to be honest (and probably more forthcoming than most people might like), Isaac and I have never dressed up in "tight trousers" to fulfill any sexual fantasies. Could it be because neither of us were ever really "strapping young fellows"?
No Debate
Jim Muir, a reporter for The Southern Illinoisan wrote, in "Buster Reveals A Larger Argument":
Here's a challenge for you. If you disagree about Buster the Rabbit, why not, instead of calling me names, explain why lesbian parents should be on a children's cartoon? Convince me I'm wrong and show me the error of my ways.
I don't really like to respond to such testosterone-pumped challenges, and I generally refuse to join the "debate" about gay equality since there can be no sensible "debate" on the issue, any more than there could be sensible "debate" about the civil rights of black people (yes, I'm making the insidious comparison); all such "debate" is just disguised posturing and dissembling by people who are uncomfortable and embarrassed at discovering that they've been wrong and who don't want to be told to do the right thing, damn it!
This puts me in mind of fanatical supporters of the president's elective war in Iraq. Apprently the reason why we must send our young men to be murdered in Iraq is because we must defend freedom and liberate Iraq from the insurgents, from people who would "tear down Iraq". Never mind that it was our invasion that "tore down" a reasonably peaceful country and brought on the insurgency ("don't make me punch you!"), we now have to defend our manly honor in a fight that we provoked in the first place.
When it comes down to it, after years of heated discussion and "debate", there are no "arguments against homosexuality"; it's as silly as debating arguments for and against breathing. The "debate" and its unlikely urgency are both the products of the fevered imaginations of its "opponents"; it leaves the rest of us, now forced to be on the other "side", breathless with wonder at why the "issue" could be so vitally important to the opposing faction. The only unnatural thing about homosexuality is the unusual amount of attention it draws from those who would point at it and yell "unnatural!" Is it natural that these people should take such an interest in something that has so little effect on them? In fact, normal people are typically unconcerned about what it is that two guys do together when they're naked in the bedroom — come to think of it, normal people don't even think about it.
And before one heads down that road erroneously marked "They Shove it in Our Faces" keep in mind that the Stonewall riots and all subsequent gay-rights movements have been simply efforts to reclaim a normal lifestyle, a reaction to relentless persecution of homosexuals by fanatical conservatives whose lives were not complete unless they were vilifying faggots. And, in this post-Freudian age, we can easily set aside self-serving complaints by homophobes that surely they can dislike homosexuality without fearing it: their emotional reaction is out of all proportion to any sort of considered, rational response.
Those of us who know, know that homosexuality is as much a natural part of us as breathing. If it weren't for the hysterical homophobes manufacturing their specious "arguments" against homosexuality, there would be no "debate". If it weren't for their inexplicable ranting, there would be no "homosexual controversy": it is entirely manufactured by opponents for no good reason.
And this is why right-thinking people feel caught up short when strident homophobes yell out "give me one good reason why lesbian parents should be on a children's cartoon" — there is no answer, good or otherwise, because the question is ridiculous misdirection. The real question is "give me one good reason why lesbian parents should not be on a children's cartoon."
Swedish Neutrality
I just wrote, and quoted, as some length from the article Without a Doubt, by Ron Suskind, so I decided to put this somewhat longer excerpt about the president (who clearly does not live a reality-based lifestyle) in this separate post.
In the Oval Office in December 2002, the president met with a few ranking senators and members of the House, both Republicans and Democrats. In those days, there were high hopes that the United States-sponsored "road map" for the Israelis and Palestinians would be a pathway to peace, and the discussion that wintry day was, in part, about countries providing peacekeeping forces in the region. The problem, everyone agreed, was that a number of European countries, like France and Germany, had armies that were not trusted by either the Israelis or Palestinians. One congressman – the Hungarian-born Tom Lantos, a Democrat from California and the only Holocaust survivor in Congress – mentioned that the Scandinavian countries were viewed more positively. Lantos went on to describe for the president how the Swedish Army might be an ideal candidate to anchor a small peacekeeping force on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Sweden has a well-trained force of about 25,000. The president looked at him appraisingly, several people in the room recall.
"I don't know why you're talking about Sweden," Bush said. "They're the neutral one. They don't have an army."
Lantos paused, a little shocked, and offered a gentlemanly reply: "Mr. President, you may have thought that I said Switzerland. They're the ones that are historically neutral, without an army." Then Lantos mentioned, in a gracious aside, that the Swiss do have a tough national guard to protect the country in the event of invasion.
Bush held to his view. "No, no, it's Sweden that has no army."
The room went silent, until someone changed the subject.
A few weeks later, members of Congress and their spouses gathered with administration officials and other dignitaries for the White House Christmas party. The president saw Lantos and grabbed him by the shoulder. "You were right," he said, with bonhomie. "Sweden does have an army."
I have the uncomfortable feeling that, although this story exposes for me all too clearly the current president's extreme distance from any sort of reality-based lifestyle, I feel certain that the reactionary media would take it as a clear demonstration that he's the kind of guy who listens to people and takes their criticism and learns from it. What a guy!
In: All, Common-Place Book, Splenetics
The Reality-Based Lifestyle
It has taken awhile, but I finally tripped over a reference to the text of an article I'd been wanting to read: Without A Doubt, by Ron Suskind (which appeared originally in The New York Times on Saturday 17 October 2004 and is available here through truthout.org). Why was it on my to-read list? Because of this paragraph:
The [White House] aide said that guys like me [Suskind] were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
I am surprised and yet delighted to find myself suddenly placed in "the reality-based community". Perhaps it's just a stodginess that comes from being a physicist and believing in some sort of objective reality that can be subjected to judicious study, from which we learn wisdom. This anonymous aide is correct to a point when it comes to changing certain social institutions and affecting the course of human history. However, as he and the current administration will likely discover to their suprise, that point is not so far away as they would like to believe.
I am fully content to be old fashioned and reality-based. I also hope that a few more of my compatriots will return to the reality-based community soon. I don't know what it will take for them to see the many benefits of living a reality-based lifestyle, I just hope it won't be overwhelmingly catastrophic.
If you have the time, I recommend reading the entire article, lengthy as it is. But just in case you don't get to it right away, here are a few more eye-opening excerpts that I made note of:
"Just in the past few months," Bartlett [domestic-policy advisor to Reagan] said, "I think a light has gone off for people who've spent time up close to Bush: that this instinct he's always talking about is this sort of weird, Messianic idea of what he thinks God has told him to do." […]
"This is why he dispenses with people who confront him with inconvenient facts," Bartlett went on to say. "He truly believes he's on a mission from God. Absolute faith like that overwhelms a need for analysis. The whole thing about faith is to believe things for which there is no empirical evidence." Bartlett paused, then said, "But you can't run the world on faith." […]
The president would say that he relied on his "gut" or his "instinct" to guide the ship of state, and then he "prayed over it." The old pro Bartlett, a deliberative, fact-based wonk, is finally hearing a tune that has been hummed quietly by evangelicals (so as not to trouble the secular) for years as they gazed upon President George W. Bush. This evangelical group – the core of the energetic "base" that may well usher Bush to victory – believes that their leader is a messenger from God. […]
As [Christine Todd] Whitman told me on the day in May 2003 that she announced her resignation as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency: "In meetings, I'd ask if there were any facts to support our case. And for that, I was accused of disloyalty!" […]
The faith-based presidency is a with-us-or-against-us model that has been enormously effective at, among other things, keeping the workings and temperament of the Bush White House a kind of state secret. […]
This is one key feature of the faith-based presidency: open dialogue, based on facts, is not seen as something of inherent value. It may, in fact, create doubt, which undercuts faith. […]
To Be Yellow & Full of Holes
My attention was finally attracted to this story (Muddling SpongeBob: Gay or straight?) in The National Business Review [New Zealand] about the whole SpongeBob thing for reasons that we'll get to in a moment.
But first, a second-hand excerpt from an interview that The Syracuse Post-Standard had with Tom Kenny, the voice of SpongeBob:
Let me ask you, who would you rather go bowling with, SpongeBob and his friends or the Rev. James Dobson? Who would you rather go out with and have a few beers? Probably the only common ground I have with the Rev. James Dobson is that I haven't seen the video, and I'll bet he hasn't either. All he knows (Kenny dropped into an angry backwoods voice) is that it's a little yellow guy full of holes who's saying it's OK for men to be with men.
Words to live by, I'd say.
But the real reason why my attention was attracted to this article finally is that it was given as the source for the revelation that Dobson's group employs a "homosexuality detection expert". Here's the relevant paragraph:
A "homosexuality detection expert" at the similarly conservative Family Research Council told the NY Times that words like "tolerance" and "diversity" are part of a "coded language that is regularly used by the homosexual community."
Fascinating! I'd like to point out that I am currently looking for gainful employment, and when it comes to "homosexualtiy detection" I think I can claim to be an expert — I certainly have practised long enough to be pretty good at it, if I do say so myself.
While we're at it, I'm also pretty good at wacky-right-wing-Christian-extremist-bullshit detection, too, if anyone wants to pay me to do that (although, to be honest, it's not really all that hard.)
Liberals & The Truth
People used to point out that physicists (of which I am one) were not suited to certain occupations because they tended to believe people too readily: since physicists are accustomed to interacting with nature, who is generally thought to be incapable of lying, they are ill prepared to deal with people who actually do lie.
There is a similar problem with liberals and their response to the verbal prestidigitation of the current reactionary administration. They seem to believe that the arguments that the White House makes in support of some proposal are to the point and that if said arguments are refuted, then surely the administration will rethink its position. I've seen this response over and over again.
We saw it in the election: we on the progressive side thought that if we just exposed enough of the administration's lies and shady doings, then certainly people would just wake up and elect someone more honest and trustworthy. We were shocked at the outcome.
We saw it with the Iraq war: we on the progressive side thought that if we just exposed enough of the fallacies, misstatements, and outright lies in the Administration's reasons for invading Iraq, that certainly the Administration would just stand down. Of course, no such thing happened. The Administration wanted to invade and tear down Iraq so that they could rebuild it: after all, without reconstruction there can be no reconstruction dollars for those contracted to do the reconstruction. The Administration wanted the war — the "reasons" were pretext, and pretty flimsy at that.
And now liberals are being made the gullible patsies again, this time with Social Security so-called privatization. The Administration is fixated on privitizing Social Security, which will have the salutary effect of putting a lot more capital into hands that already have more than they can hold. The White House is busy offering "reasons" why privatizing is "necessary" when it's nothing of the kind, but liberals are acting as thought these "reasons" are real and something to be argued against, thinking that when the "reasons" are exposed as incorrect, surely everyone will do the sane thing and not support the privitization.
How naive can you get! The "debate" offers "reasons" as a tactical smokescreen, hoping to keep everyone busy until the privitization is a fait accompli and the "accountability moment" has passed. Wake up, people!
Oh my gosh! Who would have thought that Republicans could lie ?