Tolerant In Name, Not In Action

It was with the deepest sadness that I awoke this morning and discovered that once again, via a ballot measure, Americans voted to deny equal rights to their fellow citizens. I cannot express the emotions that have churned inside of me all day, the feeling of shame that once again, we lived up to our worst instincts.

Surely, I thought, surely the citizens of Maine would let the wisdom of their elected representatives and governor stand, and show leadership on this issue. Surely the tide would finally turn.

But I, and so many others, were terribly wrong. So today, I feel sick.

What is it about Americans that when we are faced with moral issues at home, we consistently fail the test for years after the rest of the world has gotten with the fucking program? Yes, I swore right there, because that’s how upset I am. In so many ways, we are the greatest nation on earth, but we are so far behind the rest of the world when it comes to moral issues. Europe ended slavery before us, they’ve decriminalized or legalized marijuana before us, legalized gay marriage before us. Not to say that all of Europe is a hotbed of civil liberties, but we really miss the boat sometimes. Whenever fear is invoked by someone, we curl up into a ball and start taking rights away from people. It has never failed, since our inception as a nation, we blow it over and over again.

Every time one of these votes comes on a ballot, we get “fear the queers” blasted all over our televisions and radios and newspapers. “They’re gonna make your kids gay in the schools!” “They’re gonna sue your church to force them to marry them!” “They’re going to ruin your heterosexual marriage!” The same propaganda over and over again, and here’s the thing: it’s all a lie. Much like McCarthyism was a lie, or the Red Scare of the 1920’s, or the idea that ending slavery would destroy the South. Well, that last one is kinda true, but only because they decided to attack the government over their right to treat blacks worse than their hunting dogs.

Oh, and of course, we can spend a trillion dollars to give people halfway across the world “freedom”, all while killing thousands of them, but we can’t allow gay people to marry and share the same civil rights as the rest of the nation. This, of course, would cost zero dollars and not kill anyone, but the thought of gay people having rights is apparently as scary to most of America as the idea of black people being allowed to marry white people fifty years ago. It’s some godawful thing that’ll cause the world to end, except it really won’t.

My generation is solidly behind allowing gay marriage. We have the power to change the nation, but last night showed what happens when we don’t vote. We get regressive white men running Virginia and New Jersey, and bigotry won again somewhere. Yes, the change is coming, but it’s moving slower because too many people my age don’t storm the damn barricades and bring change where it’s needed most: the ballot box.

I guess I’ll conclude this ramble by saying it’s time for this to end. I’m tired of waking up after elections and feeling sick. I’m tired of my friends being denied equal rights. I’m tired of this nation being less than because people would rather be afraid than do the right thing. It is long since time to stop denying equal rights to people, all people, gay, straight, black, brown, white, male, female, whoever.

I Have No Witty Headline

Crossposted at The American Princess

It’s kind of hard to come up with a good headline for a story that bothers me so badly. I am probably what one would call a “dissident” or “lapsed” Catholic, in that I don’t go to Mass or financially participate in the Church any longer, yet I do pray and observe the holidays and Lent. I have argued that I didn’t leave the Church so much as the Church left me. Yes, I have become more liberal in the past ten years, yet the details and poor handling of the abuse scandal (which affected me VERY deeply and is another topic for another time) is what pushed me out of active participation (I was a lector). The lurch rightward in the past few years deepened the schism, as last year I made efforts to return to the Church, only to feel pushed back out by further developments.

The story that has so upset me is this. The gay marriage battle is raging in Maine, where a proposition, similar to California’s, is up for a vote on November 3, to reverse the decision of that state’s supreme court in recognizing gay marriage. The anti-gay marriage side has received over half a million dollars from the local diocese in Portland to wage its media campaign. Repeat that number again, and square it with the current circumstances going on nationwide and surely up in Maine as well. We’re in a terrible recession. People are going broke, losing their homes, going without food, etc. From an institutional perspective, parishes and schools are closing down, changing the fabric of many a neighborhood (I’ve seen this at the parish in which I grew up, served as an altar boy, was confirmed, etc.)

Despite this, the local bishop saw the anti-gay marriage crusade as deserving of a half-million dollars of diocese funds. Do you think the person in the pews at Sunday mass thought this is where their money would go to? People are urged to give at mass to help the sick, the needy, the suffering, and to keep their parish open, but the bishop took that money and used it for what? Who was clothed, fed or housed with that money? What parish was kept open by that money?

I understand that the Catholic Church has a long-standing antipathy to homosexuality, let alone an opposition to gay marriage. It’s part of the doctrine, and while it is something I find personally abhorrent, those are the rules. Furthermore, the great thing about America and our freedom of religion is that anyone is free to object to gay marriage, the bishop of Portland included, and can do so on religious grounds. If the bishop had launched a campaign to go on news programs and tour churches statewide to push for what he believed in, I couldn’t object to that. I do not agree with him, but he’d be spreading the word in a manner that I’d have no objection to.

What he did, though, was hand $529, 666 over to the group fighting against gay marriage in Maine. The church didn’t even use the money itself. Is it the church’s money to use as it wishes? That’s a yes and no question, because just like taxpayer dollars, when church dollars are spent, they are spending the parishoners money, hard-earned money that is difficult to come by these days. I wonder what they think of this. After reading a story like that, would you be as generous in your weekly donation at Mass? There’s a good likelihood that many of them would not. It’s hard to give your money to your church when it asks for it and is deceptive about what it is for. And if the campaign to stop gay marriage is unsuccessful, the bishop will have squandered money that could’ve been used for far more productive ends.

As I have written before, and used as my main point in a debate I had with a Focus on the Family member in Los Angeles three years ago, the sanctioning of gay marriage is a civil function, defined by state authorities, and in no way impinging upon the prerogatives of religious institutions. Those states that have legalized gay marriage have not seen a collapse in the institution of marriage, they have not seen heterosexual marriage decline, they have not seen a loss of morality. Quite frankly, sometimes religion is ahead on the human rights issue, and sometimes it is behind on it. This is one of those times it is behind, because not only is the Church preventing the equality of civil rights for an entire group of people, but they are also working to prevent it at the expense of many other people who need their help, and I cannot help but find that morally repugnant. It is one thing to fight against something, it is quite another to take money collected from people under the guise of helping those in need and using it to prevent equality of civil rights.

Shaming Congress

While I’ve been rather busy this week with work, I indeed noticed that there were a couple of rude Congressmen this week during President Obama’s speech to a joint session on Wednesday.

The focus has mainly been on Rep. Joe Wilson (Jerkface-S.C.) for his shouting at the President during the speech, “You lie!” Wilson’s history, including his membership in the Sons of Confederate Veterans and voting to keep the Confederate flag over the state capital in South Carolina while a state senator certainly make one wonder whether his disrespect to the President was motivated by a well-hidden racism, but given the state of the Republican party these days, being a disrespectful jackass isn’t necessarily limited to racists.

Lost in the shuffle, though, was two other things: Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) was seen messaging on his Blackberry, and Rep. Bob Shimkus (R-IL) walked out halfway through the speech to protest the President’s policy. Cantor’s sin, in this connected age, is minor, but Shimkus was nearly as bad as Wilson in his staged walkout. It is rather concerning that the first minority president our nation has had is also the first to be disrespected not by media salvos or actions of ordinary citizens, but by elected representatives in the presence of the President, unprecedented in our history.

As much as the right loves to argue how those of us on the left were disrespectful to Bush, not one Democrat in Congress shouted at him during an address to Congress or walked out during an address. Richard Nixon was treated with utmost respect by Democrats in Congress even as he was being impeached by that body. Republicans did not treat Clinton disrespectfully during his State of the Union addresses in the midst of his impeachment trial, despite the way they treated him in the press, they did NOT discredit the institution the way Wilson and Shimkus have.

Wilson should publicly apologize in the well of the House. He should not have had to have been forced by his leadership to apologize, rather, he should’ve realized on his own that he was wrong. His failure to, indeed, his rejoicing in his disrespect of the President, is disgusting. And after Wilson is done, Shimkus should apologize as well. We hold our elected representatives to higher standards, and when they deliberately act in defiance of those standards, then they need to apologize or be penalized for their defiance, regardless of status or party.

How Do They Live With Themselves?

Watching Countdown right now, listening to the discussion of the CIA inspector general’s report, knowing all I already do, I am still sickened by it all. I am sickened by the continued defense offered by Dick Cheney, I am sickened that prisoners died, I am sickened that there is even a debate.

Worst of all, though, I’m sickened by the people who did this, and that is the true topic of this post.

As an intelligent, educated human being, I know that there are bad people out there, psychopaths who get their biggest joy from inflicting pain upon others. I know that we cannot rid the world of evil. But what I suppose astounds me most about this situation is that these were not terrorists, random psychopathic individuals inflicting this pain upon random human beings. Instead, these were soldiers, CIA officers, contractors, people doing a job.

A job. They were hired to fight for our nation, to gather intelligence, to do many things. Torture was not part of the deal, yet when told to do it, they did it. They faced captured men and women, many of whom were innocent in the end, and were chained, shackled, handcuffed. Men and women who could not fight back. There is a basic humanity that is supposed to stop us from taking advantage of this situation, that is supposed to keep us from becoming animals, and yet it was shockingly absent here.

These representatives of our nation beat, starved, drowned, raped, in short, tortured human beings. They did this in the false hope that some useful information would come from this, despite the warnings of professionals that torture never yields reliable information. They did this despite the fact that it was, no matter the legal gymnastics of Jay Bybee and John Yoo, illegal. They did this despite the fact most of these people were innocent. They did this, most of all, despite the fact that these are thinking, rational human beings. They knew what they were doing. They had doctors involved in these interrogations. They planned their torture.

How? How did these people sleep at night? How could they stand above these people they tortured and not be filled with the overwhelming urge to vomit? How could they face a mirror, let alone these people they tortured, because they were in the same room day in and day out for months? My mind screams aloud, unable to comprehend, to digest how humans can perpetrate these atrocities upon others, especially rational ones? What rationale explains this? What safety is worth this?

As much as the right wants to shout about how we’re prosecuting those who kept us safe, the fact is that such things never keep us safe, much the same way that the Holocaust and attacking Europe never kept Germany safe, much the same way that the Soviet Union’s swallowing of its Western neighbor nations never made them safe. Torture is the hallmark of barbarism, and America is not a barbaric nation, nor have we ever been, but because for seven years, the representatives of our nation, the leaders of our nation, decided it was rational to act like barbarians, and has now sullied our hard-won reputation around the world as a defender of freedom.

So, yes, investigation and prosecution is necessary, if only to get an answer to the one question that no one in their right mind has the answer to, and that is how do they live with themselves?

Quitting Was A Mistake

Even as a liberal, I can be objective, and Sarah Palin’s resignation as governor of Alaska was a huge strategic and tactical error. Here’s why:

1. She’s losing her platform. As a governor, she’s guaranteed airtime, without it, not so much. There’s some Nixon comparisons floating around, but back in the 1960’s, we were not the same media-oriented society we are today. The majority of platforms will not pay the same attention to her as they did before after a few months.

2. While the media will eventually tire of the story, in the meantime there’s going to be furious digging into why she resigned, and that’s potentially bad for her, depending on what else is going on in her personal life. Considering the media completely missed the Sanford/Ensign stories until AFTER they confessed, you know that there will be a frenzy, and even if there’s little to go on, it will get big play.

3. Her speech was a disaster, much like Nixon’s 1962 concession in the California governor’s race. Nixon recovered from that for a few reasons. Vietnam and the civil rights movement took the headlines, there wasn’t a cable news system to play that video over and over again, he got a much better P.R. team, and finally, Nixon had his experience to use. He was a naval officer in World War II, a congressman, Senator, and vice-president, and by 1968, that resume and his positions made a major difference. Palin doesn’t have that background, and yes, while Obama demonstrated it wasn’t necessary, because her image is so negative on a national level, a fuller resume gives her a better weapon to rebut her critics with. She could’ve stayed in office and moved on to the 2010 Senate run or run for Don Young’s house seat, something to give her a national profile and where she could sit on committees and build that resume. She’s young enough that she could’ve sat out 2012 and waited for 2016, let the memories die down (remember, Nixon sat out 1964, even though he lost a razor-thin election in 1960), and come back with a stronger resume.

4. She’s played this card too often. She’s resigned positions before, and she cited similar reasons before, and it only works so many times. If she thinks this is going to help her for 2012 against, say, Romney, well, she’s taking a HUGE gamble, especially since he can win the resume battle and he didn’t garner a truly negative image during the last campaign. “Robotic” was the worst card played against him, so he’s got an advantage already, not to mention his own money to play with again.

5. As for the complaints about her children being targets, I don’t think anyone condones attacks on children. By the same measure, they shouldn’t be used as stage props, highlighted at the convention as a sign of solidarity with the pro-life movement (Look, my teenage daughter’s keeping her child and is engaged to the father! Let’s put them in a special spot and put a spotlight and cameras on them!). If Palin wanted to shove her kids in the spotlight and feature them on Fox News specials and everything, whereas the President has refused media requests for filming his daughters or speaking to them, then unfortunately sometimes people will say and do some nasty things. Kids should honestly be shielded from the process, especially since her family’s had its share of issues that should be handled privately.

So, yes, I don’t think Palin should’ve quit, and I think she may have made it all worse on herself. I’m sure the next week or two will give us some answers.

It’s Hard To Voice The Level Of Disgust…

crossposted at The American Princess

that I’m sure we all feel watching what’s going on in Iran.

The British intelligentsia have provided a report that shows that it’s not so much the vote was rigged as it was completely predetermined, that it is impossible to count 40 million votes in 2 hours, that the Interior Ministry did all the “vote counting” instead of the local municipalities (as had been the case in all prior elections), that the percentages never changed, and that there was a real rush to certify Ahmadinejad as the winner.

Further, the horrific violence, demonstrated in the shooting of student Neda Agha Soltan (captured for the world to see on a cell phone camera), is just that (never mind that these animals are charging families $3000 for a “bullet fee” that killed their loved ones). The mindless thuggishness of the Iranian regime is radicalizing their own people. Khameini, in his desperate attempt to hold power in the face of a burgeoning new revolution, is reverting to the very tactics that the Shah used in his waning days of power, where many of the Islamic revolutionaries were arrested, tortured, etc. The government is arresting senior aides to the reformists Afsanjani and Khatami (two former presidents), and Moussavi’s campaign manager.

Adding to this maskirovka (a Russian word for charade), staged confessions were aired on Iranian TV (with the faces of the “confessed” blurred out), saying that Voice of America made them protest, not the sham election. Yeah, well, I’ve got beachfront property in Idaho to sell them if that’s true. Seriously? That’s the best they’ve got? Propaganda tends to fail when the unvarnished truth is available elsewhere (read: Internet). Staged confessions when people are seeing protestors being shot for peacefully, silently, marching in the streets aren’t going to pass muster.

I appreciate the President speaking up today and condemning the violence in far more forceful terms, since it’s become obvious that keeping a low profile isn’t going to stop the Tehran thugs from lying their asses off about our supposed “incitement” of the demonstrators. Obviously, he has to be careful about what he says, but when even the UN Secretary General spoke out in harsh terms about the regime’s election fraud and unprovoked violence, and the response from Tehran was, “These stances are an evident contradiction of the UN secretary general’s duties, international law and are an apparent meddling in Iran’s internal affairs. Ban Ki-moon has damaged his credibility in the eyes of independent countries by ignorantly following some domineering powers which have a long record of uncalled-for interference in other countries’ internal affairs and colonisation.”

“Meddling in [insert nation name here]’s affairs” is code for “Let us beat the living hell out of people, surpress dissent, and steal elections while you shut it.” The world will do those brave souls in Iran a favor and tell the Tehran thugs to “shove it.” We cannot keep quiet, not as Americans, not as a free world, and allow the best chance we’ve had to bring Iran back into the free world slip away. Our leaders must be careful, think through what action they will take, but we must not yield in our support for the end of violence and the simple demand that the will of the people of Iran be heard over that of a regime of tyranny that perverts God’s name as an excuse to oppress their people.

I guess I was able to voice that disgust, wasn’t I?

Upping The Ante

crossposted at The American Princess

They don’t get it.

Calling Moussavi a “criminal”, arresting the former president’s daughter, holding Newsweek reporters without charges, and trying to blame the deaths on “terrorists” when the only terrorists are the Basij militia, well, it’s a nice little propaganda move, but I don’t see it carrying any resonance.

The Internet allows people to cut through the “reality” as provided by state-run media, which is the tool of dictatorships. It’s one more way that people can see the truth, and the truth is that Iran’s militias are killing protestors and inciting violence, not Moussavi, and the more they incite, the more that they will create backlash against themselves.

The next few days will say a lot. Either people start hiding out, or there’s going to be an explosion in the streets that nobody is going to be able to control. Khameini and his bunch may think they’re God’s chosen ones, but I don’t think God looks kindly upon repression, false arrests, lies, and violence to protect power. I do believe that was supposedly the point of the 1979 revolution. The revolutionaries have now become like the Shah in their desire to keep power. It is up to the new ones to show them the futility of such a choice, and perhaps Iran will have true democracy very soon.

You Can’t Put Out This Fire, Ayatollah

crossposted at The American Princess

It’s late Saturday night, and (shockingly!) I’m home for once, and I’ve been itching to say this all day, but it looks like Iran’s government is about to come crashing down.

Yesterday, Ayatollah Khameini decided to outright threaten the protesting Iranians by promising bloodshed in the streets. There was bloodshed in Tehran today, but the protestors aren’t backing down, and good for them. Moussavi himself has said he is ready for martyrdom if it is necessary, and boy, over there, that’s the ultimate sign of commitment. Through Twitter, through word-of-mouth, through silent marching against the Basij, much as Reverend King led African-Americans through Birmingham against the violent police led by Bull Connor, they are winning over the nation and the world.

I don’t think the Supreme Leader gets it. Skippy gets it insofar as he’s backed down on the rhetoric, because he participated in the revolution of 1979 at street level, but too many of these clerics at the top are so far removed from reality and are so used to getting their way that they just don’t realize what’s going on. A groundswell of support this large, that refuses to back down in the face of guns, batons, beatings, arrests, that will march in silence with fists clenched, claiming God as their right to do so, it’s incredibly powerful in the Muslim world and especially so in Iran.

This has morphed from just being about the stolen election into the idea that the very system of government in Iran has lost its way and needs to go. Khamenei is shooting a gun loaded with blanks and the protestors know it. When there is no fear, dictatorship crumbles. It is only when fear is in place that dictators can maintain their power, but if there are enough people who don’t listen, who don’t fear repercussions, and are willing to die for their beliefs, then the whole thing starts crumbling down.

I must say, I’m excited. I was born in the year in which Iran released our hostages, and almost 30 years later, we’re on the verge of a new, freer, Iran, thanks to a brave group of people led by our generation. Forgive me for taking this liberty, but to use two terms from two different languages, “Insh’Allah, vive la revolucion en Iran!” As long as brave people are willing to fight, then there is hope for the future.

With Apologies To Michael Buffer…

crossposted at The American Princess

Let’s get ready to…oh, it’s already started.

I think it is abundantly clear that Iran just had themselves a little show election last weekend, and the president of the Members Only fan club gets to stay president of Iran too. Clearly, the idea of even a little reform scared the mullahs over there into rigging this thing. I guess I can’t blame them, I mean, you let that whole reform thing build a little, and soon enough there’d be another revolution. In the linked video, it’s clear that Iran is starting to boil over, that thirty years of inequality, injustice, beatings, maltreatment of women, religious police, et al., has built up and the people are saying, “Enough!” Further proof of that is in today’s Times article, which shows that Twitter may actually be fighting for democracy. Who knew?

This may be good for us and for the world. First of all, there is a chance that they will force real change in Iran. News reports have constantly pointed out that these are the largest demonstrations in Iran since the 1979 revolution, and the demonstrators out for Moussavi have been ten times larger than those for Ahmadinejad. Despite the shutdown of text messaging, the banning of foreign reporters from the streets, the shootings and arrests of protestors and moderate politicians, the people have not backed down. That takes real courage, and we should be proud of them. Furthermore, unlike President Bush in 1989, who kept his reaction to the crushing of Tianamen Square protests muted, we should, carefully of course, support these people in any way we can.

Obviously, there is a careful balance we have to strike here. Sadly, the demonstrators may lose in the end. Ahmadinejad controls the Revolutionary Guards a lot more than the clerics like to admit, not to mention the intelligence services and the militias. As a former Guards officer, they are far more loyal to one of their own than they are the clerics. Furthermore, Ayatollah Khameini is rather weak, by and large, as he’s always had to make alliances to keep his position, because he was promoted after Ayatollah Khomeini’s (one letter makes ALL the difference) death in 1989 from well down the list of senior clerics. In fact, an op-ed in today’s Times claims Iran is more military dicatorship these days than clerical state.

Despite this, however, if arrests and shootings and Internet shutdowns do not stop this tide of protest, then Iran has a problem. Once the myth of the all-powerful state is shattered, it can’t be regained. China teetered on that edge in 1989, and were lucky that other world events kept their repressive actions from being a bigger matter. Iran does not have that luxury, and furthermore does not have the military might of China, to use the same repressive measures to the same effect. Ask the shah how well HIS repression worked in 1979 in similar circumstances.

Secondly, regardless of how it turns out, Iran may feel compelled to reach an agreement on the nuclear weapons issue. If matters drag out, we would do well to turn up the heat on Iran with sanctions. Their economy is already a mess, and that was one of Ahmadinejad’s promises in 2005, fixing the economy. Under his rule, it has become worse, and if we hit that pressure point right as an international community, that might be the final straw for the Iranian people to toss out this clerical/militaristic dictatorship and establish a more democratic government.

In short, we don’t need to attack Iran and neither does Israel. Their people, with a little proper support aimed properly, could acheive what we want them to.

Jamie Foxx Is Amazing

Holy hell, this was too funny…