Call for Special Rights
In a story by Sara Faiwell ("How coming out opens doors") from The Daily Herald [Chicago, IL], this chilling anectdote:
It wasn't until last year that being an openly gay high school student really set in for Andrew Kennedy.
"I was in the locker room and I heard a group of kids plotting out my death," said Kennedy, a senior at Warren Township High School in Gurnee. "They said that they were going to grab me after school and take me behind the field house and then beat me to death with a bag of bricks."
Kennedy said he just shrugged it off after no one followed through on the threat.
Later on, another personal story:
Wauconda High School senior Matthew Hutchinson said he has been the victim of several hate crimes at his school and his Island Lake home after coming out to friends last year.
"People have egged our house and threatened to burn it down," said Hutchinson, who said one group of students still follows him around and tries to intimidate him.
Some observations:
More than 82 percent of gay students said faculty or staff never or only sometimes intervened when they were present while remarks about sexuality were made…
[…]
Jenne Dehmlow, a teacher at Wheaton Warrenville South High School who sponsors the Gay-Straight Alliance organization there, said some staff members are just uncomfortable dealing with homosexuality.
After doing an anonymous survey of staff members at her school, Dehmlow said, she found about a quarter of them didn't see gay slurs to be as offensive as racial slurs.
Pause for a moment and reflect silently on these stories.
Think about all the homophobic energy that goes into lip-service about "hating the sin but loving the sinner", and how "just because I don't support special rights for gays, it doesn't make me a homophobe", or how "I'm not promoting violence against gays, I just don't believe in tolerance". Do you really believe these forked-tongue platitudes? Can you truly believe that these attitudes are honest, objective, and don't promote intolerance and violence?
At this point, I'm more than happy to suggest that these gay youth even deserve special rights in the face of such antipathy and its physical manifestation in violence against them.
Is there hope?
A Gay-Straight Alliance group at Libertyville High School had its first meeting in December, and 35 students and seven faculty members showed up.
"I actually cried when I saw how many students were here and how many of them were straight students in support of their gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender peers," said teacher Dyan Flood, an adviser to the group.
Oh, Canada
This article from The New York Times, Church Fights Gay Marriage Bill, about the full-court press the "Catholic" Church is putting on the Canadian Parliament in an effort to turn back or deflect progress in marriage equality, must be fascinating because it keeps presenting these outrageous statements that just beg for comment.
For instance:
" A coalition of Catholic organizations and anti-abortion groups in Quebec…." were initiating a postcard-sending action to members of Parliament.
Whatever do "anti-abortion groups" have to do with preserving the "sanctity" of "traditional" marriage, I wonder? After all, it seems to me, encouraging homosexuality and gay marriage would be a very good strategy for cutting down on abortions (particularly considering all those closeted men who feel the pressure of societal peers to produce children to proved that they're NOT GAY!)
Or this one:
The Knights of Columbus alone has printed 800,000 postcards for distribution nationwide in a campaign that argues that the redefinition of marriage to include gay and lesbian couples would promote pedophilia, pornography and unsafe sex.
I'm more concerned about really important issues:
- Guys wanting to use computerized gift registeries designed with straights in mind;
- Guys who mistakenly think white is slimming and insist on wearing it in their weddings; and
- Are there really enough honeymoon suites in Niagra Falls to handle the sudden increase in honeymooners?
Important stuff like that.
Then there are the medieval style doomsayers:
Cardinal Marc Ouellet, the archbishop of Quebec and primate of Canada's Catholic Church, warned that the marriage bill "threatens to unleash nothing less than cultural upheaval whose negative consequences are still impossible to predict."
(don't you just love the slight embarrassement that goes with calling him the "primate"? Sort of causes that same frisson that comes from using "gay" in the old-fashioned, good meaning, doesn't it?) and
…the Toronto archbishop, Cardinal Aloysius Ambrozic, wrote Prime Minister Paul Martin a letter urging him to reverse course. "Can we say with certainty what the social outcome of a redefinition of marriage would be?" the cardinal wrote. "In all humility none of us can do so."
I love this fearmongering when, in fact, marriage would continue to evolve despite any "redefinition" as it has done for thousands of years. Indeed, society will continue to change regardless of any "redefinition" and, in all humility, I claim that none of us can predict what will be the outcome of society's continued evolution.
Exactly How Many?
From The Los Angeles Times story U.S. to Overhaul Training of Iraqi Forces, reporting on the confirmation hearings of Condi Rice as Secretary of State, comes this extraordinary statement:
The Pentagon wants to train about 135,000 police officers, 62,000 national guardsmen, 24,000 army troops and others for a security force totaling 271,041.
What is extraordinary is this number: 271,041. Not, mind you, "271,042" or "271,043" or even "about 270,00", but exactly "271,041". [N.B. This statement originated with The Pentagon, and not with the LA Times.]
This is a beautiful example of gratuitous quantification and misguided precision. In this context, specifying "…and forty-one" is simply absurd: there is no reason to think that the number could possibly be known to that precision, and suggesting otherwise is misleading , inaccurate, and wrong, as well as being an obvious display of innumeracy that should never appear in Congressional testimony or come out of the Pentagon.
All this would be true, even if the first part of the statement didn't say
The Pentagon wants to train about 135,000 ….
thus limiting, by saying "about", the expected precision of the numbers right up front.
In: All, It's Only Rocket Science, Quartos, Splenetics
Mere Heroes
In The Seekers, Daniel J. Boorstin quotes this bit from Voltaire's Age of Louis XIV:
Of those who have commanded battalions and squadrons, only the names remain. The human race has nothing to show for a hundred battles that have been waged. But the great men I speak to you about have prepared pure and lasting pleasures for men yet to be born. A canal lock uniting two seas, a painting by Poussin, a beautiful tragedy, a newly discovered truth–these are things a thousand times more precious than all the annals of the court or all the accounts of military campaigns. You know that, with me, great men come first and heroes last.
I call great men all those who have excelled in creating what is useful or agreeable. The plunderers of the provinces are merely heroes.
I think this is a useful point to reflect on during this time when we have an administration bent on making its historic reputation through provoking wars, and religious fanatics who seek power in order that they might restrict liberty and creativity of expression.
In: All, Common-Place Book, The Art of Conversation
Ukraine & Murry High School
Here we are with yet another silly riddle:
What do Ukraine, Ohio, and Murry [Utah] High School have in common?
The answer, as revealed in the story Murray school's 'cutest couple' title awarded to lesbian pair (by Jessica Ravitz, in The Salt Lake Tribune), is: voting irregularities.
You see, after seniors had voted for "cutest couple" there was a mixup and two different couples were both told that they had won. Confusion ensued. A recount was called for, but ballots had accidentally been destroyed. (Clearly, the voting-irregularities zeitgeist was at work again.)
Finally, a re-vote was called for and held to resolve the issue, and the approximately 500 seniors at Murry High selected Kortni Coats and Taunica Crump (who had been dating since last summer) as the undisputed "cutest couple". (Full disclosure: I finally decided I had to mention this story here just because of the euphoneous sound of "Coats & Crump".)
Predictably, not everyone at Murry High was pleased with the result. One senior was quoted referring to Coats' & Crump's "lesbian disorder", while another was oddly concerned about what would happen should her children ever see the result in the relevant section of her yearbook (she herself "grew up knowing [homosexuality] was wrong.") Good heavens! How could she ever explain? Perhaps — one can only hope — her children, by the time they show any interest in Mom's yearbook, will be living in more enlightened times, even in Utah.
Progress is No Disgrace
I am reading Daniel J. Boorstin's The Seekers. I was fascinated by his chapter on the rise of Christianity (and "The Church" as corporation) in the mid fourth century. Particularly interesting was his observation that St. Augustine's The City of God was written as a Christian apology for the sack of Rome (i.e., that he worried that Christians — N.B. not homosexuals — would be blamed for "The Fall of Rome").
A turning point came in the late fourth century, in a public debate over whether to reinstall the [pagan] Altar of Victory in the Roman Senate Hall.
Speaking in favor of the new religion of followers of Jesus was Saint Ambrose, who said
Nullus pudor est ad meliora transire
(It is no disgrace to pass on to better things.)
Modern-day Christian zealots in the US, those who hope to insist on an adherence to their orthodoxy and tradition, would do well to remember the time when they were the upstart organization: young, vibrant, filled with new ideas and not yet ossified into a corrupt, multi-national corporation.
Currently they put an inexplicable amount of effort into advancing the propaganda (which has no historical validity) that marriage is a tradition unchanged from a time before history and therefore should stay that way. Perhaps they can take comfort, while witnessing continuing human progress that welcomes broader freedom and wider equality, from the knowledge that their own earliest propaganda put forward their religion as a new idea embodying welcome progress in the face of unsatisfactory tradition, arguing that there is no disgrace in progress.
In: All, Splenetics, The Art of Conversation
The Maple-Syrup Lifestyle
Using words from the article in Digital Spy:
Secretary Margaret Spellings criticised PBS for spending public money on an episode of the kids show Postcards From Buster which looked at farm life and how maple syrup is made. It just so happened that one particular farm was run by two women who happened to be partners.
Spellings wrote to PBS: "Many parents would not want their young children exposed to the lifestyles portrayed in the episode. […]"
[As a nod to more of today's headlines: While it's apprently wrong by this administration's inexplicable "standards" to spend "public money" letting two women show children how maple syrup is made, it's more than acceptable to spend lots of "public money" hiring ultra-conservative commentators to spread propaganda about the current administration's worst programs.]
Is it just me, or are these "christian" wackoes getting out of hand and, possibly, dangerous?
I'd like to pause and make this reminder about legal things in the US:
The US Supreme Court struck down all sodomy laws in June of 2003 as unconstitutional.
It has never been illegal to be gay.
For the past 19 months, it's been legal to do gay.
I know this is a thorn in the sides of those up-tight, ever-so-pious control freaks who know how we should behave, but there it is. Whatever it was these two maple-syrup lesbians might do off camera, it's not illegal, not to mention that, since the farm was in Vermont, they might even have been legal Domestic Partners. Imagine!
Just a few years ago it was the legal & preferred way to keep the homos in line — and jolly good sport at that! — to point out that "sodomy laws are never enforced" days before a raid on a gay bar. Now? It's unconstitutional.
At this point I'm more than a little tired of the antics of these self-righteous animation-phobes who keep confusing "the law" as they believe it's written in their quaint book of creation myths, with the actual law that we use to run our country.
Besides, I think that it's really not my problem if these people lead such pathetic, sex-obsessed lives that they can't see two women standing next to each other without getting all hot and bothered imagining what they're doing with those hot, hot lesbian tongues off camera. Pass that maple syrup, sweetie!
Think of the Youth
Frank and Kenneth were in bed, at the end of a long day. Frank had already turned out his light and closed his eyes, pretending that it would be difficult to fall asleep, when in fact he would start snoring in under five minutes.)
Ken was just closing his book, thinking a bit about the pages he had just read. Unexpectedly, they dealt with the early history of philosophy and western culture.
"Riddle me this," Ken said. "What do SpongeBob SquarePants and Socrates have in common?"
Frank didn't move; he didn't even open his eyes. "They were both accused of corrupting youth."
"You figured that out way too easily."
"What? Where icons of Western Civilization are concerned, the rarified atmosphere of the pantheon restricts the options."
"Don't you think it's time that the electorate consider a constitutional amendment that will protect the sacred institution of cartoons, keeping them exclusively reserved for asexual, anthropormorphized objects and animals as the traditions of millenia demand?"
"Without doubt," Frank answered. "Say goodnight, Gracie."
Kenneth reached out and turned off his bedside lamp. "Good night, Gracie."
Current Affairs with Frank & Kenneth
It was morning again chez Frank & Kenneth, but a little greyer than usual because snow was in the forecast. Nevertheless, both were up and sitting in the breakfast nook, enjoying soft-cooked eggs on toast and coffee. As usual, Ken was reading interesting tidbits from the newspaper to Frank.
"I wonder whether the President has someone think up these lead-balloon phrases for him, or whether they're his own creations," Ken said.
"Such as?" asked Frank, a bit distractedly.
"Well, I'm sure you remember the debate-time phrase 'catastrophic success' to describe the debacle in Iraq that was deemed totally unexpected by the administration."
"Of course. It appears that most people decided it was catastrophic as an oxymoron, and simply moronic after all."
"Well, he's now trying out the idea that last fall's election was the 'accountability moment' for his elective war in Iraq, so we don't need to criticize him on that one anymore."
"As though there could be a statute of limitations on stupid ideas and bad decisions." Frank slurped up the last of his egg. "I suspect the ghost of Richard Nixon could offer some advice to him about 'accountability moments'. No doubt Condi Rice would have breathed easier if only she had announced a few 'accountability moments' during her confirmation hearings. Isn't it amazing that anyone clever enough to be elected to the Senate could mistake her ineptitude for apptitude?"
"You will admit that the two words do sound alike." Ken turned the page. "Oh, and speaking of accountability, it seems that the Spokane Archdiocese is declaring bankruptcy to avoid paying settlements to abuse victims. It seems that some people in Spokane are upset by this move, since they feel a need for someone to take responsibility so they can have closure."
"If it's accountability they want, I suggest that they get Donald Rumsfeld to take full responsiblity. He's good at that, and it never seems to cause him any particular problem either. Perhaps taking responsibility should be elevated to the cabinet level, and he could be named the first Secretary of Accountability."
"Speaking of the big 'A', those wacky Christians are upset again, this time because the President doesn't prioritize the constitutional amendment prohibiting gay marriage ahead of his war in Iraq."
"Oh, I have a clever solution to that dilemma. Withdraw the troops from Iraq, then divvy up the money saved from the war among all the homosexuals in America in return for a pledge not to get married this year. Sort of like subsidies to farmers not to grow certain crops. Despite the depth of my love for you, I might be able to forgo marriage to you for $250,000 a year."
"Love you too, dear, but it will be a moot point soon if they can't keep that SpongeBob repressed and in his pineapple safely away from recruitable minors. Who would have guessed he was that way?"
"I always thought his SquarePants were just a little on the twee side, myself."
In: All, Frank & Kenneth, Splenetics
Pray Together, Get Divorced
A fascinating story from The Financial Times [London] (US – South finds families that pray together may not stay together) begins with these interesting revelations:
When Massachusetts became the first and so far only US state to legalise gay marriage last year, the loudest protests came from the south. Bible Belt states such as Georgia and Alabama portrayed themselves as the defenders of traditional family values against Godless liberals in the north-east.
However, surveys of marriage and divorce across the 50 states paint a very different picture of US society. They show that the most stable families are concentrated in the easy-going north-east, while the God-fearing south has the most broken homes.
Southern states account for eight of the 10 highest divorce rates, while nine of the 10 lowest are in the north-east, according to the US Census Bureau.
Massachusetts, home of John Kerry, the unsuccessful presidential candidate, has the lowest rate at 2.4 divorces per 1,000 people, against 4.1 in President George W. Bush's Texas.
Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee – states in which it is common to see the Ten Commandments displayed outside rural homes – have an average rate of 5.6, above the national average of 4.
The statistics are an embarrassment to a region that has always trumpeted the slogan: "Families that pray together stay together."
Embarrassment seems like a good thing in this case for those who believe that a Medieval form of government is the best for modern times. Now that that absurd Dobson crusader has tipped over the edge and uncovered his own gay cartoon character (honestly: what sense does it make to ask stupid-ass questions like "Do you think SpongeBob is really gay?", when cartoon characters are not real! ), continuing embarrassment looks more likely.
Perhaps it's time to take down those dusty old ten-commandment displays and work up some new ones like "Love thy gay children as thyself".
Not SpongeBob SquarePants, too!
Demonstrating that those wacky Christian fundamentalists don't learn their lessons, witness the latest comic silliness and breathless concern over the rumor that SpongeBob SquarePants may be gay. Oh my.
From a Reuters story about the brouhaha, I particularly liked this turn of phrase as they point out that this isn't the first time, either:
Tinky Winky, the purse-toting purple Teletubbie, was in 1999 declared a homosexual role model by Rev. Jerry Falwell.
Oh joy! Oh delight! Just think of the rewards that would flow one's way, having been declared a "homosexual role model" by the "Reverend" Falwell.
And, in a related development, this supportive statement from Lorri J. Jean (CEO of the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center):
We call on all organizations, especially those that purport to be pro-family, to end their attacks on youth, real or animated. We also invite SpongeBob to join the Center's recently formed gay-straight alliance of cartoon characters that includes Bugs Bunny, Tinky Winky, Waylon Smithers, and Batman and Robin.
An American Goodbye
My mother died a year ago. Fortunately, my recently discovered cousin April Hearn, to whom we'd quickly become well attached, and her daughter Eileen Swain, were able to join us in Kansas City for the funeral. After April returned home, she wrote the following piece for the parish magazine of her church in Hastings, St. John The Evangelist. I've enjoyed reading her observations, and I wanted to make a copy of the piece someplace before I lose the paper copy I have. I put it here as a memorial.
[April writes:] I recently attended the funeral of a much-loved aunt in Kansas City, USA. My daughter and I flew across the Atlantic thinking a funeral is a funeral wherever you go. How wrong can you be!
On arrival, we were told that the visitation would be on Sunday afternoon, and the funeral on Monday morning. Visitation? We looked at each other blankly. On enquiring about the visitation we were told that the custom over there is to go to the funeral home before the funeral to pay your respects to the deceased, and offer condolences to the family.
With some trepidation we made ourselves ready on the Sunday and set off for the funeral home. What a surprising and not-too-unpleasant experience that was. We were ushered into a huge room, with armchairs and side tables, just like a very large lounge really. At one end of this room was an open coffin wihth my aunt, looking serene and quite beautiful, laid to rest. Around the room, photographs of Aunt Cleta, taken at various times during her life, were on display.
Through the afternoon friends and family called in, paid ther respects, nattered to the family, and stayed as long as they wanted, or needed to. On Monday we drove, in our own cars, to the church for the funeral. Again, the coffin was open, and this time it was in the entrance hall, so that friends and family and church family were able to say their goodbyes. We all met in the coffee lounge before processing into church behind the coffin.
The service was not at all formal, as ours is. The Minister spoke lovingly of my aunt, outlined her life, read a piece that my uncle had composed and played a piece of personal music. There were two lovely solos, including the Lord's Prayer, sung. No hymns were sung, no sermon given, there was a time of reflection and people were invited to tell of their own reminiscences of my aunt. We left the church to travel to the cemetery in convoy.
Another surprise. The hearse, the limousine for immediate family and all the other cars in the cortege are escorted by an official funeral escort car, with flashing lights, which stops all other traffic at road junctions and ensures that no one gets left behind at traffic lights. After the short graveside service, we were all given one of the flowers from the main spray and we then headed back to the church for a wonderful meal, prepared by church family members, as a celebration of my Aunt Cleta's life.
My daughter, a vicar's wife, and I were absolutely amazed at the love, the respect and the dignity shown to my uncle, the family and the whole occasion. It was a sad, but also a very lovely experience, and I'm so glad I was able to share in it.
The White House as Barometer
A few nights ago I read an essay by Daniel J. Boorstin called "The Roles of the White House" (from the collection Cleopatra's Nose). His idea was interesting: he looked at the White House as a visible metaphor for the American government. Me marveled at how humble, how much like an American house it looked, how being placed in the midst of a lovely park represents the freedom and openness of our government, how ordinary people mill about and wait in line to go inside the house where our head of state actually lives, representing how average citizens have unprecedented access to their lawmakers.
Clearly this essay was written in a different time, one that was more open, more optimistic, more positive, one that believed in the basic utility of the government to do good things. The copyright date on the collection was 1994.
What a difference it makes for 10 years to pass and for a minimum of the electorate to elect a scoundrel as President!
Oh yes, the White House can still be read as an excellent metaphor for our government and its relationship with The People, but it would hardly be recognized by Boorstin, and certainly not as something good, positive, open, and optimistic. People don't enjoy the grounds of the White House any more, where restrictions in the name of security increase every year; besides, picnics under the watchful eyes of young guys with automatic weapons aren't all that relaxing, which probably comments metaphorically on the openness and freedom of our government. It's gets harder and harder to arrange for a tour of the building, which might have something to say about the People's access to their government. But it doesn't really matter, since the current occupant of the White House spends less time there than any of his predecessors, which must say something about his relationship to the People.
Circumcised & Conservative
There are some men who were circumcised as infants, and who are very, very angry about it. They can never forgive their parents for making what they see as an unwise and unwelcome decision without their input. Although having a foreskin is something that was never part of their personal awareness, or which is part of their own memory, they miss it as though their most treasured possession has been wrenched from their grasp.
There's a similarity with many political reactionaries here: they long for the Good Ol' Days and all the things that have since been "taken away from them", particularly those things that were never part of their own, personal experience, and which, therefore, were never actually taken away from them. The loss of things that were never theirs to being with are the losses they seem to feel most keenly.
Recently we watched (on DVD) the movie "Silver City". There is a scene in which the reactionary business bigwig (who's footing the bill for his candidate's run for governor) is sharing thoughts and strategy with his dim-witted and reactionary candidate. They are riding horses, walking slowly through grasslands at the foot of breathtakingly beautiful mountains.
The Senator sweeps his arm around and complains about how "all this land was taken away from us by pencil-pushers in Washington". As he talks, he turns the generalized "us" into "me", taking it very personally that he can't build housing developments or strip mine on Federal lands as should be his right as a free American. "It just ain't right!" he claims about this land that was taken from him (or "us"). This was land that was never his in the first place, but he feels its loss keenly.
One can see this attitude all around, and in the most curious places: people (to be fair, always men) from The Confederate States who still aren't over "their" loss in the Civil War and simply can't accept the oppression of The Yankees, althought the war ended a century before they were born; white supremacists who fondly remember the day they never knew when the 'inferior races' knew their place; and my personal favorite, homophobic men who shed a tear now and again over the loss of the word "gay", despite the fact that "gay" has referred to "homosexual" since long before they were born, not to mention that they really have no idea how to use the word in a complete sentence anyway.
Again, I guess I'm faced with all questions and no answers for a phenomenon I don't really understand: reactionary conservatives' unlimited capacity to work themselves up into a frenzy over the loss of something that they never had and never knew in the first place. Righteous indignation can be so confounding. I suppose I wouldn't think it important, either, if only Republican politicians weren't so likely to exploit it.
The Oxford Comma
Halfway through Lynne Truss' delightful Eats Shoots & Leaves, I was distressed to discover that she abhors the "Oxford", or "serial", comma. Simply put, it's the comma separating the last item in a list from the rest of a list — or, rather, should be the last comma, unless one objects to its use for reasons beyond my comprehension.
Here's an example of its use:
He liked hamburgers and onions, sausages and mustard and hot dogs and cheese.
He liked hamburgers and onions, sausages and mustard, and hot dogs and cheese.
The addition of an Oxford comma (OC) in the second version is the difference between the two statements.
Yes, I'm pushing my way out of the grammar closet, this time as a strong proponent of the Oxford comma.
Ms. Truss makes the usual [wrong-headed!] arguments that the OC is not usually necessary, that it sort of clutters up things, and that it can always be put in when needed to remove ambiguity. To me, that's a pretty weak argument.
I prefer these reasons for the OC: 1) that it never obscures meaning; 2) that it always makes it easier to scan and detect the elements of the list; 3) that it makes sense rhythmically and as a pause reflected in spoken english; 4) that it irritates the writer to sit and decide each time whether it's absolutely necessary; and 5) the reader will be happy to see its consistent use in each instance of a list.
Agreed: this is a typically gross over reaction to something that's not nearly so important in the greater scheme of things as, say, impeaching a president who lies about reasons for waging wars. However, it is something in my life that I can control and about which I can feel I've finally come to a conclusion with nearly absolute certainty of its correctness, which is occasionally a fine thing. (Particularly when it's about something that doesn't matter in the greater scheme of things, since moral certainty about anything truly important is generally quite a nuisance.)
In: All, Hermeneutics, Splenetics
The ACT-UP Effect
Lynne Truss, in Eats Shoots & Leaves, takes a philosophically curious position in regard to "The Greengrocer's Apostrophe". Said apostrophe is a mechanism for creating plurals from fruit & vegetable names that are "foreign words ending with vowels" (banana, tomato, mango, and the like), that would otherwise lead to awkward eye/mouth coordination problems (how to pronounce "bananas" without it's sounding like a body part?); such plurals frequently, therefore (she claims), appear on signs as "banana's, mango's, tomato's", etc.
Here's the funny bit. Although Ms Truss is a self-proclaimed "stickler" (i.e., "conservative") about punctuation, she agrees that some punctuation mark that would distinguish these plurals would be a most welcome device, but that the "current rules of punctuation" prohibit it. In other words, she objects strenuously to the infraction of punctuation rules that the greengrocer's apostrophe represents, and simply could not condone or approve of such an infraction, but were it to become a "rule" at some future date (through continued infraction by someone else), she would then welcome it with delight and relief.
This psycho-emotional duality has many interesting instances; one example is, I think, relevant and illuminating towards the matter of equality for gay people and politics and society.
For lack of a better term, I think of the phenomenon as "The ACT-UP Effect". Those who were present and of a certain age in about the mid-eighties will remember the AIDS activism (some would say "extremist" or even "terrorist", I suppose, but they tend to be rhetorical extremists and verbal terrorists themselves) group begun by Larry Kramer called "AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power", or ACT-UP. The group used highly visible and confrontational tactics (one of the more famous: putting a giant condom over Jesse Helms' house) to get out their message that the federal government was moving too slowly on researching and approving treatments for AIDS.
They were correct about the government's foot-dragging and their direct action paid off in creating long-term change in government-led health research and regulation, for the better. Nevertheless, at the time, many many "gay leaders" (and even ordinary gay people!) wrung their hands in disapproval over ACT-UP's tactics, which they thought inappropriate, counterproductive, too provocative, and not to be condoned at all.
However! However: the same hand wringers later welcomed — and benefited from! — the changes that ACT-UP's actions had brought about.
Oh dear, what a moral quandry! How does one go about thanking someone for accomplishing something you desperately wanted, but in a way you didn't want them to do it?
I don't know, and I'm not going to worry about it either. I've decided that even if I may not condone the extremists, I'm not going to condemn them either. This I do in recognition of what we might call "social inertia", and there's a lesson here for those who [mistakenly] think that the "backlash" to recent successes in achieving marriage equality means "we" must tone down our demands, that we can accomplish change smoothly and without negative reaction if only "we" move slowly and gently enough.
Physical analogies abound for this observation: if you want to move something massive (i.e., with lots of inertia), like middle-of-the-road public opinion, it takes a lot of force to create perceptible motion. (Imagine a seesaw with a 600-pound gorilla on the other side; if you want to lift the gorilla, it helps if you sit at the extreme end of a long board on your side.) Trying to get all that inertia moving with tiny changes slowly made with incremental steps gets nowhere: it's just too hard to get it moving.
For better or worse–or both!–it seems that the only way to move massive public opinion is to tug at it as forcefully as we can pull from an extreme position, and by "extreme" I mean a good distance away from current opinion.
Significant, meaningful change always causes social backlash; creating backlash is, apparently, an important ritual for maintaining card-carrying Reactionary status.
Instead of worrying about reducing backlash, the hand-wringing "gay leaders" need to reflect on this bit of reality: how quickly social conservatives, when faced with the imminent reality of marriage between two men or two women, adopted "civil unions" ("Anything but 'marriage', please!") as the conservative position.
Memorable Signs
I am reading Eats Shoots & Leaves, which inspires several notions that I wanted to note. This one is simply to mention a couple of memorable signs that I have seen.
The first was a roadsign that I saw several years ago here in suburban Washington DC on "The Parkway" heading into town. Several lanes merged together, and the giant sign overhead read:
Use All Lanes
One had the impression that the cars rushing by all around were driven by people who took the sign too literally.
The other I saw when I was in graduate school (c. 1981), living in Durham, NC. A women's shop was having a sale. This sign was handwritten and set atop a rack of dresses:
Names To Famous Too Mention
I think its impact increases when read aloud.
Great Book Titles
Recently I was at my favorite bookstore (that would be Daedalus Books, their warehouse store in Columbia, MD), and saw what I thought was a remarkable title for a book:
Masters of Equitation on Canter, compiled by Martin Dizzle
The title itself is masterly, suggesting volumes with the fewest possible perfectly chosen words, at the same time as, at least on first reading, it sounds like a bunch of jibberish. Then there's the author's name, one of the sort of English names that most typically causes Americans to giggle. Further, that little twist of the knife: he's not the author, but the compiler. It's all too beautiful, poetic, mysterious, ironic, and amusing. So much in so little space! (There was a companion volume: Masters of Equitation on Trot, but it doesn't have quite the same poise to my ear.)
This title, remarkable as it is, does not replace the previous (and still current) number-one title on my personal list of remarkable book titles. Rather, it joins forces with that book title that I have for several years thought one of the finest:
The Aesthetics of the Japanese Lunchbox, by Kenji Ekuan
As unbelievable as it may seem, that is precisely what the book is about: exploring the history of the Japanese Lunchbox and examining it as a reflection of Japanese society. As it should be, the book itself is beautifully made and fascinating.
HRC "Retreat"
This excerpt is from a story (by John M. Broder) in The New York Times (at the beginning of December) called Groups Debate Slower Strategy on Gay Rights.
The leadership of the Human Rights Campaign, at a meeting last weekend in Las Vegas, concluded that the group must bow to political reality and moderate its message and its goals.
Later, in the same article:
Mr. Foreman [executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force] said that whenever the gay rights movement made progress, it generated a "pushback" in the form of hostile legislation, hate speech and even violence.
All this guilt-trip crap makes me want to throw up my hands and shout "Where is Larry Kramer when you need him!"
When I first read this, I wanted to point out that taking any sort of "responsibility" for the disastrous presidential election was both foolish and self-aggrandizing — do they really think they have that sort of influence? The penchant of the current American electorate for reckless action knows no bounds, and the HRC has about as much chance of influencing it as a pairie dog would have with stopping a charging herd of buffalo.
Of course, since that early month of despair, cooler heads have looked at the election polls and discovered that "gay marriage" was not the single issue that won the election for the alledged victors that it was promoted to be (by those who really, really wanted it to be).
However, I don't think we should so quickly look past the institutional character flaw that led the HRC so quickly to embrace the idea that 1) gay people had lost the election; and 2) the HRC and all gay people who are intersted in equality need to tone down their act. Is this sort of pessimistic, lily-livered "political reality" the attitude that should be at the core of the "largest national gay and lesbian political" organization? Pshaw!
I'll write elsewhere, and probably again and again and at great length, about how that is guaranteed to get us nowhere.
Not really expecting anyone to notice, I will, nevertheless, issue right here my call for the creation of a real National Gay & Lesbian Organization.
But Are They Wrinkles?
I decided to wear a new shirt today, of the "sport shirt" variety with a button-down collar, so it came packaged with plastic and pins and tissue paper in a pristine plastic bag. Needless to say, it is a modern, no-iron shirt. However, "no iron" is apparently passe, therefore it is a "wrinkle-free" shirt. Of course, this shift in nomenclature brings problems of its own. Witness this note packed with the shirt:
The temporary creases in this wrinkle-free shirt are a result of folding and packing.
There follows instructions for laundering the shirt which, upon removing it from the dryer, will return it to "wrinkle-free" condition. Thank goodness they're only "temporary creases"–I feared that my brand-new wrinkle-frree shirt had wrinkles!
It does leave me wondering, though, how to distinguish between those folding effects that produce "temporary creases" and those folding effects that produce the much feared and universaly dreaded "wrinkles".