At Random, 9/28/06

The Press, Victimized

Fox defends itself:

Fox News chief Roger Ailes said that former President Bill Clinton's angry response to interviewer Chris Wallace's question about going after Osama bin Laden represents "an assault on all journalists."

Ailes said Clinton had a "wild overreaction" in the interview, broadcast on "Fox News Sunday." Hundreds of thousands of people subsequently watched clips over the Internet, with Fox foes rallying behind Clinton.

Considering that it's Roger Ailes saying this, please pass the salt. Does it sound just the least little bit self-serving?

And note that Rudolph Giuliani comes to Clinton's defense, although, being a Republican candidate for president, he has to defend Bush as well. However, TBogg brings a little bit of detail to Bush doing "everything he could" to kill bin Laden.

Here's an asinine post by Glenn Reynolds, and TBogg's synopsis.


It's the Economy. . . .

Speaking of Fox News, this is choice. Nonpartisan, of course. But, as Atrios points out, it's just getting back to where it was before the tax cuts. Not allowing for inflation.


The Christianists:

I'm not linking to their sickness. If you want to know what's going on at the "Values" conference in Washington, check out Andrew Sullivan or Pam's House Blend. The degree of viciousness is amazing.


Torture:

This post, by my namesake at DailyKos, is tremendous. Snaps the whole thing into focus.

The anti-torture choice was abandoned long ago. The "moderate" Republicans could have chosen to block any authorization for torturing U.S. prisoners right from the bat; they refused.

This legislation is political salve; it is not required law. The Constitution and existing law, presuming for the faintest half-shadow of a moment that the administration could be expected to follow it, speak clearly and decisively on the issues of habeus corpus, and trial, and on torture. This legislation is simply a show trial against the Constitution, done for the expediency of displaying Republican toughness, where toughness is defined as having no moral, ethical, or legal boundary that cannot be moved, if a poll number sticks up against it.

It all sort of makes you sick, doesn't it.


Antidote:

I went to Lincoln Park Zoo the other day. It turned out to be a beautiful September day, sunny and mild, not too many people at the Zoo. Some observations:

I sat watching the rhino pacing in his larger but still not quite big enough enclosure and noticed something odd: several families with ery small children came by and stopped to watch as well. All of the Latino parents picked their kids up so they could see the rhino. The single Black family, the same. None of the white parents did. No conclusion, just an observation, statistically insignifant (there were only six or seven families observed).

Watched the lions for a while. The male walked over and flopped down on the ground near the moat. They are definitely cats.

Bought some popcorn -- an indulgence -- and fed the birds with some of it. Mostly a brawling mob of sparrows, actually yelling at each other, with a couple of starlings, which always make me think of dinosaurs because of the awkward way they walk. But then, direct descendants, don'tcha know.

I didn't go into any of the houses -- it was an outdoors day. I did stop off at the conservatory to see the orchids. Some Stanhopeas in bloom, which is one I've always wanted to try -- someday -- and a decent Cochleanthes, but the color could have been stronger. That's a group I love, the Zygopetalum family.

God's Country

This, from the ACLU:

The Public Expression of Religion Act, or PERA (S. 3696 / H.R. 2679), would bar the recovery of attorneys' fees to people who win lawsuits asserting their fundamental constitutional and civil rights in cases brought under the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

Since these cases are characteristically filed against the government, it means that while the government can call upon huge amounts of your money to defend them, the plaintiffs -- that is, the people whose rights are allegedly being violated -- can go whistle.


This, from a reader at Andrew Sullivan:

I went to the Family Research Council/Focus on the Family/American Family Association "Values Voters" summit this weekend at the Omni.

It is much, much worse than we know.

The first woman I spoke to (from Erie, PA) railed on about how Chuck Hagel is a flaming liberal and John McCain should be tried for treason. I thought that maybe I'd run into an isolated crazy. Oh no - it only got worse from there. The level of contempt for anyone who diverges from the Holy Word of W is beyond description. I was sort of 'undercover' so I could just let people talk to me, not leading the conversation, not baiting, and it horrified me to hear how many were perfectly comfortable with any form of torture in the name of patriotism if the Commander In Chief gave it the ok.

Granted that anyone who actually spends the time and money to attend something like this is out there somewhere anyway, it's not so far off base. I have relatives who think like this. Truly. (Which just demonstrates that being a wingnut is a choice.)


Another from Andrew Sullivan:

As a Presbyterian pastor, I continue to be stunned by the unthinking support of many evangelicals for a policy that permits torture. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry when the so-called "Traditional Values Coalition" decided that torture was among the traditional values that they feel compelled to support.

I've already made my comments about these pricks and their "values."


Sullivan, again:

Do I understand Jerry [Falwell] correctly? Is he saying he supports the misnamed Patriot Act, a law that all but eviscerates the Fourth Amendment and does serious injury to several others, a law that was first proposed by Bill Clinton and Al Gore? Is he saying he supports domestic surveillance, which many fear does more to create an American police state than fight terrorists? Does he mean he supports warrantless searches and seizures and warrantless eavesdropping?

I had always believed that Christian conservatives were among our country's most ardent defenders of liberty and constitutional government. All that I knew and understood from my schooling at Thomas Road Baptist Church and the Thomas Road Bible Institute, plus all of my involvement and effort in Jerry's Moral Majority, convinced me that if we Christian conservatives believed anything, we believed in freedom and constitutional government. Am I now to understand that we are supposed to support a Big Brother philosophy to government and must willingly surrender constitutionally protected liberties?

From Digby:

But we aren't going to see the moral scolds standing up on this, I'm afraid. At least I'll be very shocked if they do. They believe, as do so many Republicans and members of the press that morals are attached to somebody elses crotch. They apparently don't see that institutional torture isn't just something that a few bad apples learn from popular culture.

Concerning Digy's last sentence here, the "moral scolds" are the ones who have contributed the most to this -- look, boys and girls, they elected Bush, they've pressured McCain to back down on torture, they want government focused on your crotch to the exclusion of everything else. It only highlights their complete lack of morality and their complete lack of Christianity. Frankly, I can't think of any religion that condones mistreating those who can't defend themselves, which leads me to propose that there is no sincere religious philosophy involved here.

The Moral Majority and its descendants have brought us to this: a nascent police state, a totalitarian regime that advocates torture, a theocratic nightmare. When did I start pointing out that the Christianists are not un-American, they are anti-America? Like, when I started blogging?

Echo

As of this morning, we (meaning I) have 4242 hits at Hunter at Random in the last nine months. By DailyKos standards, that's nothing, but for a blog I didn't think anyone was going to read, it's not bad.

I'm also still fascinated by the map.

One, Two -- And A Warning

St. John the Turncoat

It seems Andrew Sullivan is willing to consider, at least, being as cynical as I am about McCain's behavior on the torture bill.

McCain, in other words, is a shrewd politician and he knows when to fight a battle he can win and when to punt on a fight he will lose. If he becomes president, he could, with the discretion given the president in this bill, rescind the torture that Bush has authorized. Maybe, he could repeal the bill, with a Democratic Congress or even a Republican Congress that returned to its decent conservative principles. At the same time, it's clear he has also acquiesced to giving complete legal impunity to the civilian architects of the torture policy within the Bush administration. Maybe that's the real deal here - I'll give you legal protection for past war-crimes if you give me the nomination in 2008. But surely McCain knows better than to trust the likes of Rove. He may have sold his soul ... for a promise from a professional liar. The tragedy of 9/11 keeps deepening, dragging with it men of conscience and principle into the pit of opportunism and Caesarism.

If McCain actually winds up as the front runner for Republicans in 2008, look for a sharp turn to the right during the campaign. Payback time is going to be fun, though, if he's elected, although I'm not as confident as Sullivan that he will immediately turn back the torture brigade. Things like that tend to stay in place in the absense of a strong backlash. You have the Christianists going googoo eyed over mistreating helpless people (why does that not surprise me?), and they still have some political muscle, even though BushCo. has been duping them for six years.

Sullivan has been hot on the torture issue, but nowhere near as forceful -- nor as lucid -- as Digby. Just go to Daily Dish and scroll down.


Deletions

I'm considering taking a couple of sites off my links because they show no evidence of thought and may be brain dead (although I am not about to diagnose on the basis of a home-made video). I may just put them in a new category, something like "Alternate Realities."

I'm thinking about it.


Off to the Wilderness

Not really (I wish!). I have to get myself organized so I can start writing a series of coordinated reviews around the idea of slipstream fiction (coming up on the next GMR). It's the first time I've ever deliberately tried to do a metareview.

We'll see.

If I figure out what slipstream is, I may post about it here.

October Surprise

Rove promised one. I'm not making any guesses, but. . . .

From The Nation:

As reports circulate of a sharp debate within the White House over possible US military action against Iran and its nuclear enrichment facilities, The Nation has learned that the Bush Administration and the Pentagon have moved up the deployment of a major "strike group" of ships, including the nuclear aircraft carrier Eisenhower as well as a cruiser, destroyer, frigate, submarine escort and supply ship, to head for the Persian Gulf, just off Iran's western coast. This information follows a report in the current issue of Time magazine, both online and in print, that a group of ships capable of mining harbors has received orders to be ready to sail for the Persian Gulf by October 1.

I'm just sayin'.

Elitist Discourse (Reprise)

I must be in tune with something. After my comments on Nyhan's elitist little piece yesterday, I ran across these two posts by Atrios ("Unity" and "Consensus" -- scroll down a bit).

It's the same set of people who imagine that partisanship somehow creates disagreement rather than the other way around. It's true that there's some degree of tribalism in political identification, but mostly partisanship exists because people choose the party which best represents their political views. Partisanship is the political expression of disagreement, not the creator of it.

What "why can't we all agree" really means is "why can't everybody just agree with me."

Democracy is messy. Hurray!

Told you so.

More on Torture

Digby has been all over the torture bill. Start here and just keep scrolling down:

In case anyone's not convinced, how about this "Report on Guantanamo Detainees: A Profile of 517 Detainees through Analysis of Department of Defense Data:"

There are now about 490 prisoners at Gitmo, and "55 percent of the detainees are not determined to have committed any hostile acts against the United States or coalition allies.

"Only 8 percent of the detainees were characterized as Al Qaeda fighters. Of the remaining detainees, 40 percent have no definitive connection with Al Qaeda at all and 18 percent have no definitive affiliation with either Al Qaeda or the Taliban.

"Only 5 percent of the detainees were captured by United States forces. [A total of] 86 percent of the detainees were arrested by either Pakistan or the Northern Alliance and turned over to United States custody. This 86 percent of the detainees captured by Pakistan or the Northern Alliance were turned over to the United States at a time at which the United States offered large bounties for capture of suspected enemies."

These are some of the people Bush wants to torture.

Digby's summation on the "compromise":

This is it folks. There will be no judicial oversight of torture which means there is no way to enforce the law. The world will just have to trust George W. Bush to follow those laws based upon his superior morals and decency.

Note especially this one by tristero.

And Digby on the Democrats:

The Democrats showed they are ciphers who don't have the stones to even say a word when the most important moral issue confronting the government is being debated.

One very important thing to note, and to write your Senators about: both Bush's bill and the "compromise" bill take away habeas corpus and the right to judicial review for detainees. So, anyone that Bush decides is an "enemy combatant" could just sit in Gitmo for life, based on absolutely nothing.

Yes, I bolded that whole thing. That's how important I think it is.

And after seeing this story, I wonder how much of the "rebellion" was staged. Like, all of it?

Elitist Discourse

A piece by Brendan Nyhan, lamenting the increasingly partisan/ideological slant of the blogsphere and its effect on opinion journalism.

At a deeper level, these developments may offer a preview of the future of opinion journalism. Ex-reporters and political insiders currently dominate the nation's op-ed pages, but mainstream news organizations like the Washington Post are hiring a new generation of ideological bloggers who are likely to take their place. And conservative magazines, while less heterodox than their liberal counterparts, also face competition from ultra-partisan blogs like Power Line, Time's 2004 blog of the year (sample quote: "It must be very strange to be President Bush. A man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius, he can't get anyone to notice.")

Ironically enough, the liberal writers who decry the excesses of capitalism have failed to recognize what it is doing to their business. In a marketplace where publications compete on partisanship and ideological consistency, our democracy loses.

Take a look at that last sentence and think about the mindset that decrees that when publications compete on partisanship and ideological consistency -- that is, on the presentation of clearly differing viewpoints (which I think is accurate, considering the splinters that the traditional ideological camps have broken into) -- then democracy loses.

This is democracy, SFB, at its most energetic and most alive. Last I remember, someone -- probably Jefferson, who was eminently quotable -- referred to that as the "free marketplace of ideas." (It was probably really someone like Frankfurter, but I'm not worried enough about it to look it up.) And people like Nyhan hate it.

Not that I want to accuse Nyhan of elitism, but -- well, OK -- he's an elitist, which are generally the first to rail against that brawling example of total democracy known as the Internet.

I ran across this via Retardo Montalban at Sadly, No!, who missed the real issue completely:

This is the real workings of democracy. It's not civilized, it's not well-behaved, and it's completely unfiltered -- we get to decide what we look at. The only limit on what you find on the Internet is what your porn blocker is set for, and you get to set the porn blocker.

Strangely enough, the aristocratic centrists don't like it any more than the knuckle-dragging rightists or the latte-sipping leftists do.

Why am I not surprised?

No One From Antarctica -- Yet

Sorry, but I'm just fascinated by the ClustrMap. I keep trying to find some pattern in the new visits from around the world, and of course I can't. But it's fascinating -- looks like we've added Greece, India, somewhere in the Caucasus, Hawai'i, either Haiti or the Dominican Republic (? -- I never remember which is on which side of Hispaniola), Latvia or Estonia, the Ukraine, Costa Rica (or maybe Nicaragua -- I'm trying to remember my Central American geography, and the map isn't really high resolution) -- lots of new places.

The most visits seem to be coming from Chicago (natch) and the San Francisco Bay area, the DC/Philly/Big Apple corridor, as well as what looks like western North Carolina/eastern Tennessee, Kansas (!), and London. Hmm -- a couple of hits from Norway. Nice -- I have a thing about Norwegians.

Hey! Leave a comment, even just to say hello and tell me where you're from.

Sellout

Marty Lederman at Balkinization has been on top of the "compromise" torture bill. This is a summary post as well as a further discussion of details (lots of links -- pay attention to them).

The serious problem with the bill, as I've discussed, is that it would define "cruel treatment" for purposes of the War Crimes Act in a confusing and inadequate manner that could readily be construed not to cover some or many of the CIA techniques. More to the point, numerous Bush officials' statements over the past 48 hours indicate that the Administration has already construed the definition in exactly that way, and that, in its view, this means not only that the CIA techniques would not be "war crimes," but also that they would not be "cruel treatment" under Common Article 3 by virtue of that statutory definition.

This conclusion demonstrates the terrible mischief of this "compromise," but it's substantively wrong. I don't know whether and to what extent McCain, et al., intended the definition of "cruel treatment" in the proposed War Crimes Act amendment to cover the CIA techniques. If McCain and other Senators do think such techniques are covered by that language, it would behoove them to say so publicly, and to explain how the proposed WCA should be construed to cover such techniques, so as to counter the Administration's manifest contrary reading. Here's what I wrote yesterday:

If Senators McCain, et al., are truly serious about bringing a halt to interrogation techniques that would place us in violation of the Geneva Conventions, then at the very least they must do this one thing: Amend the definition of "serious physical pain or suffering" to make certain that it does, in fact, encompass the physical suffering that is attendant to the cruel treatment prohibited by Common Article 3, including that caused by the CIA's "alternative" techniques.

If the Senators do not do so, it seems clear from what we've already seen that the Bush Administration lawyers will instruct the CIA that such techniques are not "cruel treatment" (even though under anyone's ordinary understanding of that term, they would be).

Jack Balkin provides a link to the text of the compromise, with this comment:

Here is the latest version of the Military Commission Bill, including all of the compromises agreed to by the Administration and Senators McCain, Graham, and Warner. The worst parts begin on p. 81, eliminating the writ of habeas corpus, denying anyone the right to invoke rights guaranteed by Geneva in judicial actions, prohibiting the use of any foreign sources in construing the meaning of the Geneva Conventions, proclaiming that the President is the authoritative source of the meaning of Geneva with respect to the War Crimes statute, amending the War Crimes statute with language that allows the President to continue to engage in torture-lite (after all, he is now the authoritative source of its meaning), and finally, making all these amendments retroactive to November 26th, 1997 (i.e., well before September 11th, 2001. I wonder what led to this particular change?)

Balkin makes the most important point:

The reason why the President and his Administration are daring to offer this bill now is that they believe that we Americans will not punish them politically for doing it. Quite the contrary: they believe that we Americans will think them strong and courageous and forceful for doing so.

They think that we Americans will actually reward them at the polls for legalizing torture.

That is one of the most chilling things about this entire episode. Have we become so complacent as a country, so easily lied to, that our leaders now think that they can legalize torture before our very eyes and that we will actually thank them for doing so?

I thought to check out the Volokh Conspiracy to see what a more conservative group of legal bloggers might think. Strangely enough, not a word.

OK -- just in case anyone was wondering, this is making me sick.

(A footnote:

From Pam Spaulding, this struck me. We're in the process of becoming a rogue state, and this is what the Christianists think is the most important issue facing us. Quoting Marilyn Musgrave:

As we face the issues that we are facing today I don't think there's anything more important out there than the marriage issue. And I've been a pro life activist most of my adult life. I care very deeply about the sanctity of life. But this issue that's in front of us today is critically important.

Remember -- these are among those who support torture.

These people are really disgusting.)

At Random, 9/22/06

About Muslim Violence:

From today's headlines:

Christian mobs torched cars, looted Muslim-owned shops and burned a prison, freeing hundreds of inmates, in violence touched off by Friday's executions of three Roman Catholics convicted of instigating attacks on Muslims.

In light of the number of comments I've heard lately about how Muslims are basically violence-prone and Christians just don't do things like that, this story seemed worth noting. C'mon, people --it's a human failing, and the sooner you recognize that, the better off we'll all be.

And here's a comment I'd like to hear from closer to home:

Vice President Jusuf Kalla appealed for calm, saying the deaths of the three men had nothing to do with religion.

"It's a matter of law," he told reporters in the capital Jakarta. "If the people resent the law, we are doomed."

Perhaps I've become cynical, but a good portion of the remaining story, dealing with pressure that may have been applied to the judges and evidence that others were more culpable in the original violence, seems to have a lot of "perhapses" and "might haves." Not that I would ever accuse AP of stretching a point. Not me.

Gay Terrorism:

A note to the producers of "The Path to 9/11" -- if you're going to slam American Airlines, at least slam them for the right things.

Science and Faith:

From Andrew Sullivan. I think both Sullivan and Benedict miss the point. Science doesn't claim to explain everything. It never has. The "war" of science against religion is a war invented by religion and maintained by it. Sure, there are scientists who are outspoken atheists. There are scientists who are people of faith. I have to confess I'm not terribly surprised to see Sullivan defending Benedict's straw man, any more than I'm surprised to see Benedict espousing such an argument to begin with.

Christian Virtues: Torture:

Reader PietB sent this snippet from a recent Molly Ivins column (I've been having trouble getting through -- must be a really popular column):

I was interested to find that the Rev. Louis Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition is so in favor of torture he told McCain that the senator either supports the torture bill or he can forget about the evangelical Christian vote. I'd like to see an evangelical vote on that one. I don't know how Sheldon defines traditional values, but deliberately inflicting terrible physical pain or stress on someone who is completely helpless strikes me as ... well, torture. And, um, wrong. And I've smoked dope! Boy, everything those conservatives tell us about the terrible moral values of us liberals must be true after all.

Marty Lederman weighs in at Balkinization with this commentary. Note particularly this statement that Ivins mentions from the Traditional Values Coalition:

"Our rules for interrogation need to catch-up with this awful new form of war that is being fought against all of us and the free world. The post -World War II standards do not apply to this new war.

"We must redefine how our lawful society treats those who have nothing but contempt for the law and rely on terrorizing the innocent to accomplish their objectives. The lines must be redrawn and then we must pursue these criminals as quickly and as aggressively as the law permits.

"And since this debate is, at its very core, about preserving the traditional value of prosecuting injustice and protecting the innocent, TVC will score this vote in both the House and the Senate. We encourage all of our supporters and affiliated churches to contact their elected representatives and let them know we support President Bush's efforts to update our methods of interrogating terrorist detainees in order to provide greater protection for our troops and the innocent."

Once you translate the code words, Sheldon is simply saying that evangelical Christians should support torture, even in those cases where there is no evidence that the vicitm has done anything wrong. Sorry -- this is a traditional value I want to have nothing to do with. The man wouldn't know a moral act if it bit him.

Someone noted, and I forget who, that liberals don't need to speak in code because liberals aren't generally proposing something that most people find morally repellent.

It's interesting that Sheldon thinks we have to update our thinking to allow torture of innocent people, but we don't have to update our thinking to recognize sincere love between two people of the same sex. But then, maybe that fits.

McCain Sells Out -- Again:

About that "compromise" on the torture bill: I am so fed up with the Democrats. They sat there, riding on McCain's coattails, and of course they got shafted. Lord love a duck -- I can't believe they didn't see this coming. It's an election year, for crying out loud, what do they think the mechanics are going to be? And not one of them has the balls to stand up on his hind legs and rip Bush and McCain a new one.

Read what Digby has to say, here, here, and here.

What it boils down to is that the Republicans are too corrupt to govern and the Democrats are too stupid.

Confession:

I've been working a lot lately, so I treated myself to a shopping expedition -- some new (used) books (Delany, Card, Pynchon), and new (used) CDs (Nickelback, Eagles, R.E.M., and Turandot, my usual strange mix), and then went to my favorite Indian restaurant and ate too much. Sure beats reading the papers. (Or paying retail.)

Of course, what I really need is a new pair of jeans.

A heads up -- I'm working on a set of interlinked reviews for GMR, all about slipstream. Look for it in October. I'll also be doing an overview of the fiction of Charles de Lint for our special de Lint issue on November 5.

Next time -- which will be when I can stand to look at the papers again, unless I think of something else to comment on.

Christians and Torture

Andrew Sullivan echoes my question. He follows up in his next post, starting with the documentary Jesus Camp. I am reminded of the "Our Leader" billboards in the South during the last election. It's a scary phenomenon.

The torture issue should be a no brainer for any Christian, or any person of any faith whatsoever. That we're even having this debate is grotesque. That the administration is at the point of parsing the nuances of torture just makes it even more grotesque.

As far as the torture bill goes, the Democracts have, once again, given up the lead to the Republicans. Everyone seems to be noting the division in Republican ranks on this issue, but I haven't noticed anyone remarking that the Democrats are largely invisible. Here is the chance to call it like it is and to take the moral high ground and the Democrats, once again, are standing on the sidelines.

I may just sit out the next election. There's no one to vote for.

A Moral Question

Has anyone seen any sign of any of the following having spoken out on the president's push to legalize torture?

James Dobson
Donald Wildmon
Ralph Reed
Tony Perkins
Jerry Falwell
Pat Robertson
Phyllis Schlafly
Peter LaBarbera
Lou Sheldon

It would seem to me to be a moral issue worthy of their attention.

Gay

The word "gay" is turning into one of those words that has all sorts of meanings. Not so surprising, given the imprecision with which we use language. Don't misunderstand -- I don't think we always need to be so precise, and even if we are, half the time people still don't understand what we're saying.

This is sparked by my contention, in the Brokeback Mountain review that I mentioned a few days ago, that it was not a "gay" film. Thinking about it this many months later, I still hold to that position.

Pre-Stonewall, the accepted designation for man who love men, if one was being polite, was "homosexual." There were a lot of things that went into that term, first and foremost being that it was considered a pathology. "Homosexual," to most people these days who are at all au courant, denotes a behavior. There are those, of course, who cling to that designation, mostly the gay bashers on the far right -- Wildmon, Perkins, Sheldon, Dobson, the usual suspects. They will not use the term "gay" because "gay" is a person. They don't want gay men to be seen as people. (They're not quite so vociferous about lesbians, but that's not so hard to understand. For a nice, hard-line patriarch, it doesn't really matter what women do.) It's that simple: if they start referring to gays as "gay," then they take on an identity, they become part of a culture, real people, and that doesn't fit the agenda. The agenda is there, of course, but if they allow that gay men, in particular, are individuals, all too human, who are doing the best they can with the hand they've been dealt, how can they transform them into sick, sinful, perverted predators?

"Gay" is an identity. It is a culture, a social context, a framework within which people can build lives. It may very well be a temporary thing, a culture that was necessary for a reviled and disenfranchised group to participate in as they established their legitimacy. Frank Browning, in A Queer Geography, notes that younger men are impatient with the designation and the separateness that it implies, and perhaps there really is, in some quarters, a post-gay identity developing. I'm not sure whether I approve. Assimilation just makes finding a boyfriend that much harder.

My reason for that is not just that I'm an aging gay man who came of age as that culture was being forged, but also that I believe that one of the most important things we have to offer the world is our difference. We may very well be more creative than most straights, more inventive, more adventurous -- we are certainly more colorful. I treasure those aspects of Pride celebrations that the religious nuts and our own political organizations decry: the drag queens, the leatherfolk, loud music, nearly naked dancers. Otherwise, why bother? I don't need to spend three or four hours in the sun watching a gaggle of politicans waving at me.

So, Jack and Ennis were not "gay." There was no such identity at that point. We're much too apt to project our contemporary attitudes back to inappropriate places -- a correspondent remarked that Alexander was gay. I think if you could go back in time and explain to him what that meant, he'd think you'd lost your mind. In his context, that identity had no meaning.

It does have meaning now. Like all such meanings, this one is elusive of definition, because the context has become so much broader than its origin -- I know straight men who are very gay, and gay men who are not gay at all.

So, what is my conclusion? I don't know that I have one. I'm not even sure I need one.

Maybe you have one.

9/11

I started a post about 9/11, Five Years After, and got nowhere. Thinking about the disaster, and what's happened since, there was just too much disappointment, too much anger, too much rage at the way a bunch of cheap politicians took one of the worst days of this country's history and used it for their own tiny little purposes. Fortunately, there are people like Keith Olberman around:

Half a lifetime ago, I worked in this now-empty space. And for 40 days after the attacks, I worked here again, trying to make sense of what happened, and was yet to happen, as a reporter.

All the time, I knew that the very air I breathed contained the remains of thousands of people, including four of my friends, two in the planes and -- as I discovered from those "missing posters" seared still into my soul -- two more in the Towers.

And I knew too, that this was the pyre for hundreds of New York policemen and firemen, of whom my family can claim half a dozen or more, as our ancestors.

I belabor this to emphasize that, for me this was, and is, and always shall be, personal.

And anyone who claims that I and others like me are "soft,"or have "forgotten" the lessons of what happened here is at best a grasping, opportunistic, dilettante and at worst, an idiot whether he is a commentator, or a Vice President, or a President.

However, of all the things those of us who were here five years ago could have forecast -- of all the nightmares that unfolded before our eyes, and the others that unfolded only in our minds -- none of us could have predicted this.

Five years later this space is still empty.

Five years later there is no memorial to the dead.

Five years later there is no building rising to show with proud defiance that we would not have our America wrung from us, by cowards and criminals.

Five years later this country's wound is still open.

Five years later this country's mass grave is still unmarked.

Five years later this is still just a background for a photo-op.

It is beyond shameful.



At the dedication of the Gettysburg Memorial -- barely four months after the last soldier staggered from another Pennsylvania field -- Mr. Lincoln said, "we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract."

Lincoln used those words to immortalize their sacrifice.

Today our leaders could use those same words to rationalize their reprehensible inaction. "We cannot dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground." So we won't.

Instead they bicker and buck pass. They thwart private efforts, and jostle to claim credit for initiatives that go nowhere. They spend the money on irrelevant wars, and elaborate self-congratulations, and buying off columnists to write how good a job they're doing instead of doing any job at all.

Five years later, Mr. Bush, we are still fighting the terrorists on these streets. And look carefully, sir, on these 16 empty acres. The terrorists are clearly, still winning.

And, in a crime against every victim here and every patriotic sentiment you mouthed but did not enact, you have done nothing about it.

And there is something worse still than this vast gaping hole in this city, and in the fabric of our nation. There is its symbolism of the promise unfulfilled, the urgent oath, reduced to lazy execution.

The only positive on 9/11 and the days and weeks that so slowly and painfully followed it was the unanimous humanity, here, and throughout the country. The government, the President in particular, was given every possible measure of support.

Those who did not belong to his party -- tabled that.

Those who doubted the mechanics of his election -- ignored that.

Those who wondered of his qualifications -- forgot that.

History teaches us that nearly unanimous support of a government cannot be taken away from that government by its critics. It can only be squandered by those who use it not to heal a nation's wounds, but to take political advantage.

Terrorists did not come and steal our newly-regained sense of being American first, and political, fiftieth. Nor did the Democrats. Nor did the media. Nor did the people.

The President -- and those around him -- did that.

They promised bi-partisanship, and then showed that to them, "bi-partisanship" meant that their party would rule and the rest would have to follow, or be branded, with ever-escalating hysteria, as morally or intellectually confused, as appeasers, as those who, in the Vice President's words yesterday, "validate the strategy of the terrorists."

They promised protection, and then showed that to them "protection" meant going to war against a despot whose hand they had once shaken, a despot who we now learn from our own Senate Intelligence Committee, hated al-Qaida as much as we did.

The polite phrase for how so many of us were duped into supporting a war, on the false premise that it had 'something to do' with 9/11 is "lying by implication."

The impolite phrase is "impeachable offense."

Not once in now five years has this President ever offered to assume responsibility for the failures that led to this empty space, and to this, the current, curdled, version of our beloved country.

Still, there is a last snapping flame from a final candle of respect and fairness: even his most virulent critics have never suggested he alone bears the full brunt of the blame for 9/11.

Half the time, in fact, this President has been so gently treated, that he has seemed not even to be the man most responsible for anything in his own administration.

Yet what is happening this very night?

A mini-series, created, influenced -- possibly financed by -- the most radical and cold of domestic political Machiavellis, continues to be televised into our homes.

The documented truths of the last fifteen years are replaced by bald-faced lies; the talking points of the current regime parroted; the whole sorry story blurred, by spin, to make the party out of office seem vacillating and impotent, and the party in office, seem like the only option.

How dare you, Mr. President, after taking cynical advantage of the unanimity and love, and transmuting it into fraudulent war and needless death, after monstrously transforming it into fear and suspicion and turning that fear into the campaign slogan of three elections? How dare you -- or those around you -- ever "spin" 9/11?

Just as the terrorists have succeeded -- are still succeeding -- as long as there is no memorial and no construction here at Ground Zero.

So, too, have they succeeded, and are still succeeding as long as this government uses 9/11 as a wedge to pit Americans against Americans.

This is an odd point to cite a television program, especially one from March of 1960. But as Disney's continuing sell-out of the truth (and this country) suggests, even television programs can be powerful things.

And long ago, a series called "The Twilight Zone" broadcast a riveting episode entitled "The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street."

In brief: a meteor sparks rumors of an invasion by extra-terrestrials disguised as humans. The electricity goes out. A neighbor pleads for calm. Suddenly his car -- and only his car -- starts. Someone suggests he must be the alien. Then another man's lights go on. As charges and suspicion and panic overtake the street, guns are inevitably produced. An "alien" is shot -- but he turns out to be just another neighbor, returning from going for help. The camera pulls back to a near-by hill, where two extra-terrestrials are seen manipulating a small device that can jam electricity. The veteran tells his novice that there's no need to actually attack, that you just turn off a few of the human machines and then, "they pick the most dangerous enemy they can find, and it's themselves."

And then, in perhaps his finest piece of writing, Rod Serling sums it up with words of remarkable prescience, given where we find ourselves tonight: "The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices, to be found only in the minds of men.

"For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own -- for the children, and the children yet unborn."

When those who dissent are told time and time again -- as we will be, if not tonight by the President, then tomorrow by his portable public chorus -- that he is preserving our freedom, but that if we use any of it, we are somehow un-American...When we are scolded, that if we merely question, we have "forgotten the lessons of 9/11"... look into this empty space behind me and the bi-partisanship upon which this administration also did not build, and tell me:

Who has left this hole in the ground?

We have not forgotten, Mr. President.

You have.

May this country forgive you.


Thanks to Spencer Windes at LeftCoast Breakdown for posting the whole thing.

Boys In Love

Wonderful column from Jennifer Vanasco in the current Chicago Free Press:

Most teenage boys, it seems, aren’t players. Most boys have sensitive hearts.

They are in love with and attached to the people they are dating. They are romantic. They think about what it would mean to give their own lives for the one they love. They are, it turns out, as emotionally driven in love as girls are.

I knew that.

Brokeback Revisited

I happened to reread one of my Brokeback Mountain reviews this morning. I'd been thinking that I had perhaps been a bit too passionate about the film, perhaps even shrill.

No. I wasn't.

Incendiary Poo

I love that phrase. It comes from one of Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden books -- Dresden is being pursued by a giant winged monkey hurling incendiary poo.

I just use it to mean the latest "terra" speech from the presnit.

Sullivan Does It Again

I really want to like Andrew Sullivan, even though I've never met him and never expect to. We agree on many basic issues, and then he comes up with something like this:

I have no idea why the Clinton administration should get a pass in dithering while a mortal threat gathered in the 1990s. I hope ABC stands firm.

The one who's getting a free pass in The Path to 9/11 is George Bush, who is, granted, apparently some sort of Sullivanesque wet dream. Sullivan apparently still sees Clinton as the Antichrist, in tandem with the more extreme elements of his party. So instead of questioning ABC's motives in airing this fiction rather than producing a factual account, he picks a self-serving quote by a Republican member of the 9/11 Commission as his "Quote of the Day."

It's fairly obvious at this point, even if you don't remember the 90s, that Clinton was repeatedly stymied in his efforts to combat terrorism, and specifically Osama bin Laden, by a Republican Congress that felt embarrassing the president was much more important than national security.

I've accused Sullivan of fuzzy thinking in the past, and this only underscores it. I really wish he would use a little more rigor from time to time, but I'm starting to think that he is essentially shallow. I hate that not only because he could be so much more effective, but it plays to stereotype.

Apparently, though, if Clinton isn't in the mix, Sullivan is able to see clearly what a lying scumbag Bush is.

How bizarre.

Update: As an antidote to Sullivan's shallow and highly partisan comments, see Kevin Hayden's very carefully researched commentary on the reality of the path to 9/11.

The Right Question

I was going just to edit my post from yesterday on the marriage amendment, but decided that there is an important issue here that needs to be highlighted.

Too many judges, particularly those who call themselves "strict constructionists" (which means they only get activist if it will suit the right wing), have insisted that there is no constitutional right to homosexual behavior, including same-sex marriage. Under that doctrine, there is no constitutional right to any sort of behavior. They're asking the wrong question. And they're not even coming up with the right answer.

The whole point of the Bill of Rights is not that it "grants rights" to the people (which, given the idea that "all men are endowed with certain inalienable rights" from the get-go, is certainly a ridiculous proposition to begin with), but that it limits what restrictions the government may impose on the behavior of the people and under what circumstances. The Ninth Amendment does, in fact, quite plainly state that "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." There it is, in the plain language so beloved of the strict constructionists. (Note to Justice Scalia: Duh!)

So the correct approach to the question of same-sex marriage is not whether the US Constitution (or any state constitution) specifically grants such a right, but whether any government has the authority to deny it. Considering that the Supreme Court has found that marriage to the partner of one's choice is a fundamental right (and considering the Court's attitude toward government instrusion into personal decisions in general, going all the way back to Griswold, as well as the Court's insistence on a rational basis for legislating against a specific group), it seems that opponents of SSM are on shaky ground. (Of course, this also makes the recent New York and Washington decisions even more ludicrous.)

Which puts Judge Wilkinson's reservations on gayhood (did I just make up a word?) even further in limbo. And leaves the "strict constructionists" looking like the political hacks they are.

Name-Calling

I ran across the same tired old thing this morning about how those who support same-sex marriage routinely label their opponents as "bigots" and "homophobes." Some do. A lot don't. This is, however, a staple comment by those who are trying to insure a "reasoned discourse" and an "open debate."

But it occurred to me that I never hear them objecting to anti-marriage proponents calling gays "sick," "diseased," a "threat," and "immoral."

Now why do you suppose that is?

A fairly interesting OpEd by J. Harvie Wilkinson III (who happens to be a judge in the 4th Circuit) in WaPo, arguing against the anti-marriage amendment in terms of not using the Constitution to enshrine public policy, which to me seems like a very good idea: that's not what the Constitution is about. (If I were feeling really snarky this morning, I'd comment that those pushing the amendment don't really know what the Constitution is about, but I'm not feeling really snarky.)

There are a couple of missteps, however, that I want to point out.

The Massachusetts Supreme Court concocted a state constitutional right to marry persons of the same sex. The court went on to say that opposing views lacked so much as a rational basis. In other words, centuries of common-law tradition, legislative sanction and human experience with marriage as a bond between one man and one woman were deemed by that court unworthy to the point of irrationality.

No, not really. The Massachusetts court merely asked the right question: does the state have the right to deny marriage to same-sex couples? From that viewpoint, the opposing arguments do not have a rational basis. It's really the same thinking that the US Supreme Court used in Romer and Lawrence. There's also the fact that the "legislative sanction" is a fairly recent phenomenon. Like since the 1970s, if I recall correctly. Marriage law before that rests on assumptions of heterosexuality, but doesn't make it an explicit requirement. It's only with the rise of the Moral Majority and its unholy descendants that you get "defense of marriage laws."

As for the "rational basis" comment, consider this:

Marriage between male and female is more than a matter of biological complementarity -- the union of the two has been thought through the ages to be more mystical and profound than the separate identities of each alone.

How rational is that?

He goes on:

Without strong family structures, there will be no stable and healthy social order, and alternative marriage structures might weaken the sanction of law and custom necessary for human families to flourish and children to grow. These are no small risks, and present trends are not often more sound than the cumulative wisdom of the centuries.

But how, then, does anyone justify denying the chance for a strong family structure to same-sex couples? Same-sex marriage is not an "alternative marriage structure" at all. It is exactly the same marriage structure enjoyed as a fundamental right by heterosexual couples.

While I'm sympathetic with his idea that marriage law does not belong in the Constitution, I can't really support his reasoning. I can, however, agree wholeheartedly with his conclusion:

Is it too much to ask that judges and legislatures acknowledge the difficulty of this debate by leaving it to normal democratic processes? In fact, the more passionate an issue, the less justification there often is for constitutionalizing it. Constitutions tempt those who are way too sure they are right. Certainty is, to be sure, a constant feature of our politics -- some certainties endure; others are fated to be supplanted by the certainties of a succeeding age.

That is probably the best argument against the amendment.

The Map, Again

I'm fascinated by my ClustrMap. It's really fun to check in periodically and see how this blog is spreading. Latest additions: mainland China (looks like Beijing), the Philippines, Malaysia, South America (finally! Looks like Rio), and someplace in the middle of the Mediterranean -- Malta? -- and a couple more Canadians. I seem to be making headway in central Europe (quite a few hits from Germany now) and even one from Yugoslavia (or what's left of it).

I'm sort of bemused by some of the places it shows for visitors from the US. I had expected the coasts, pretty much, but not the numbers, and even the upper Midwest, which is, after all, home. But Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, (? Could be Mississippi -- the resolution isn't so great, even on the large map) and Tennessee, the central Plains, Georgia, all sort of surprised me. Don't know why -- the Internet is everywhere, and anonymous. In spite of all the scare pop-ups, not that many people really care where you're surfing to.

Welcome, all. Please stop for a minute and leave a comment. I'd love to know more about you and how you found me.

Making

I realize I don't spend a lot of time talking about making. I'm a person who makes things -- that's what I do -- whether they come out in words or images or some other way. I guess it's just that if I'm making, I don't have to talk.

That's the only explanation I can think of.

Naked Men

I've been rolling this around in the back of my head for a couple of weeks, and I decided it's not something that should stay there.



I was participating in the comments at the SSM debate hosted by Right Off the Shore and got an email from one of the guys at the pro-marriage side asking me to remove the photo from my profile, since it would turn off conservatives who would not then read the arguments. There's enough holes in that to strain cheese, if you'll pardon the Wisconsin reference, but it's their fight and I didn't want to jeopardize their chances, so I took down the photo. It was this one. Nothing showing -- not like my dick was spotlighted or anything -- and I thought it fairly safe for any adult reader, which is, after all, my audience. I finally emailed him back and said that anyone who was turned off by that image wasn't going to pay attention to any arguments anyway, but it was his fight.


I sort of dropped out of the discussion after that -- I'm long past the point where I have to apologize to anyone for being gay, and the totalitarians of the left leave the same taste in my mouth that the totalitarians of the right do, and if you think you have to fight for freedom by censoring those on your side, what is it, exactly, you're fighting for?.


But back to the images, since it's just another facet of the so-called "culture war" (I hope you've noticed that the Christianists want to govern the content of art and literature, as well as everything else). I make pictures of landscapes, close-up abstract natural forms, oddball city views that I like, and naked men. All pretty much part of the standard modernist repertoire. I don't see the naked men as necessarily sexual, although in some images that is the point. I am, however, bemused by the kind of mind that sees any nudity at all as sexual. (Sorry, but one of my most important themes is innocence -- I'd like to do something on the order of Bruce Weber's Bear Pond one of these days -- because to me, that is one of the most enduring and appealing characteristics of men. Somehow, if you dig under the exterior, you will find innocence. Some people just can't see it. 'Nuff said?)



There are other things in those images -- grief and loss, for starters. I've lost a lot of men I loved in the past thirty years.



I also sometimes do classic (or nearly classic -- I have my own ideas on balanced composition) figure studies, as abstract as anyone else has ever done.













So, in case any "conservatives" who get turned off by art are looking, this is what it's about -- these are pictures of men mostly without clothes, not, to my mind, particularly titillating. I will admit that there are images that are much more frank at Hunter's Eye because not every image is meant to say the same thing, but each, to me, has something to say about men, because men are a lot of things, and they don't all have to do with sex.

About the Rabids

I haven't been paying enough attention to "ex-gay" organizations here. I don't have much to say about them that hasn't been said elsewhere -- they are dangerous, unscrupulous, and prey on the vulnerable -- but in light of the spin they are giving the recent APA conference in New Orleans, it worth noting a couple of things.

Wayne Besen, long-time activist and founder of Truth Wins Out, has this nice dissection of statements actually made at the conference and the distortions being promulgated by NARTH and Exodus International. Also, check out this comment by Jim Burroway at Box Turtle Bulletin about the vulnerability of these organizations on "informed consent." They are, in Besen's analysis, setting themselves up for malpractice suits.

I think that would be nice. I remain convinced that the way to pull some teeth out of these yahoos is to sue them for major damages. Millions. Tens of millions. More.

On a more general note, I should clarify my attitude toward the Christianist right. I don't necessarily think that anyone who disagrees with me on certain issues, particularly gay issues, is a bigot or a liar, but, based on the evidence, I am persuaded that the ringleaders of the movement -- Donald Wildmon, Peter LaBarbera, Lou Sheldon, James Dobson, Ralph Reed, that whole crew -- are deliberately distorting information to gain political power. (Although I have the sense that LaBarbera is such a freak because he is fighting his own proclivities. I could be wrong -- it's almost too perfect a textbook example.) Hence, I feel no compunction about calling them liars, because I can demonstrate that they are. I will grant that their followers are often sincere in their beliefs, if somewhat confused, and too easily led. Those mentioned, along with their fellow-travelers, are really spearheading the Christian Dominionist goal of turning the USA into a fundamentalist Christian theocracy, although they won't admit it publicly. All you have to do, however, is read some of their stuff (which, granted, I do seldom -- it really does upset my stomach) to see their methods and spot their subtext. (A case in point: Peter LaBarbera's website for his new organization has a "resources" pages on which he lists "pro-homosexual" resources and "pro-truth" resources. I think the perversion of the language in this case if fairly obvious: everyone who thinks that gays should be treated like real people is a liar, while those who are distorting evidence, making up facts, etc., are "pro-Truth." Please.)

So, I can understand that some people, because of their religious beliefs, upbringing, or their social context, have trouble accepting gay men and lesbians as normal. However, if they refuse to recognize the limits of their right to practice their beliefs, and also refuse to look at the evidence when it is clearly presented, then I have no sympathy: they deserve whatever name they wind up with. It won't be a nice one.

And, as a final note in this last context, I do seem to have been blocked from commenting at GayPatriot, although I haven't actually made an inquiry. Anyone who reads this blog, or has experience of my comments in others, knows that I can be a little sharp when faced with idiots, but I'm never really vicious. In fact, in the case of GayPatriot, I've only ever really pointed out that they are not investigating questions fully (granted, I may have said things which could be interpreted as nasty, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder), which apparently they don't want to hear. Let's hear it for the free exchange of ideas, by which the guys at GayPatriot set such store. As long as you agree with them. (I'm thinking of starting a new heading in my links column: Alternate Realities. Maybe GayPatriot will be the first entry.)

Safer

Y'know, six years ago, this would have been the most outrageous story ever printed in an American newspaper. This story is from NYT, a reprise of this one from the San Francisco Chronicle:

"We haven't heard about this happening -- U.S. citizens being refused the right to return from abroad without any charges or any basis," said Mass, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union.

McGregor Scott, the U.S. attorney for California's eastern district, confirmed Friday that the men were on the no-fly list and were being kept out of the country until they agreed to talk to federal authorities.

"They've been given the opportunity to meet with the FBI over there and answer a few questions, and they've declined to do that," Scott said.

Mass said Jaber Ismail had answered questions during an FBI interrogation at the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad soon after he was forced back to Pakistan. She said the teenager had run afoul of the FBI when he declined to be interviewed again without a lawyer and refused to take a lie-detector test.

So basically, the kid and his father -- American citizens -- are being told they can't come home until they give up their rights.

Of course, in the past six years we've had the Patriot Act, the unitary executive, Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, Plamegate, energy policy written by the oil industry, environmental policy written by the owners and operators of coal-burning powerplants, foreign policy written by Israel, displayed incompetence at every level and on every occasion, not to mention extra-constitutional, everyday run-of-the-mill corruption at record-breaking levels.

I know of people (and I regret to say that I actually know some specifically) who will automatically assume that the father and son in question in this article must be a threat to national security because otherwise, why would the government do that? Notwithstanding the fact that the president has repeatedly stated that he doesn't need a reason to do anything -- he's the president, and that's enough. These people are, of course, completely oblivious to the real meaning of this story: we live in a police state. It's not a possibility, it's not threatened, it's not something in our future.

We live in it. Right now.

Take that to bed with you tonight.

(Update: For some reason, when you click the link to the SF Chronicle article from here, you get a blank page, but when you click from Glenn Greenwald's post, you get the article. Same link. Honest. Go figure.)

Left Side, Right Side, Far Side

By way of explanation, aside from Blogger Beta snarls, I've been pretty busy with music reviews lately. One thing I've noticed, though, a product of my habit of emailing myself links from interesting news stories to blog about later: if you let a headline sit for a couple of days, it goes beyond old news. You begin to see how much of the stuff we're getting worked up over every day is pretty trivial.

Case in point: the deletion of evolutionary biology from the list of acceptable majors for low-income student grants, ascribed to a "clerical error" (I know -- sounds fake from the get-go, but. . . .). The left-wing blogosphere is all over this, conspiracy theories flying as they charge into battle. The damning evidence? Two days after the elision is discovered, it still hasn't been restored! Lord. Love. A. Duck. This is the government we're talking about -- these people can't do anything in less than six months. Give it a while. If it's not back on the list in a reasonable length of time, then we should be asking some hard questions. I'm starting to think rightwing paranoid conspiracy juju is taking over the entire country. (I have all sorts of links to the outrage/gnashing of teeth/wild-eyed hysteria somewhere. Not here. If I find them, I'll update.)

One tidbit I did want to share: It looks as though Gay Patriot has me blocked from commenting -- not that they can't deal with open and intelligent discussion, but my comment on this post on the Democrats' culture of corruption hit a "spam filter." The post itself strikes me as either an attempt at Rovian discourse or a complete departure from the real world (not that there's a lot of difference). The comment was (and this won't make any sense until you read the post):

Hmm, let's see. . . .

Jefferson under investigation, Democrats, at Pelosi's insistence, strip him of committee assignments.

DeLay indicted, Republicans try to change the ethics rules so he can remain Speaker.

Nice try.

We'll see if it gets posted at all.

That said, I was going to do a post about reading, but I don't feel like it. What I am going to do today is to focus a bit on my own fiction -- I have some stories that really do need to be worked on, and I have finally figured out where The Fantasy Novel From Hell needs to point itself at this stage.

Go, Blogger!

OK -- I've now been forcibly converted to Blogger Beta. As a result, I can no longer post comments on anyone else's blog. Aside from automatically logging me on from my Google account, which I don't want to do, the system now refuses to recognize my username and/or password when I try to comment at places, like, for example, CabanaBoyScoot.

What an effin' mess!

This Is Important

From Paul Hackett at Daily Kos.

In Ohio and across the country, leaders of a political movement opposed to basic principles of American democracy seek to create a "Christian nation." While claiming up and down they do not want a theocracy, their acts, associations and the words used among themselves prove otherwise. They have spent the past thirty years developing an elaborate grassroots infrastructure while the rest of us moderate Ohioans and Americans have functioned in a "business as usual" manner.. . .

Back in 1989, when founding the Christian Coalition Pat Robertson said:

The mission of the Christian Coalition is simple. It is to mobilize Christians -- one precinct at a time, one community at a time -- until once again we are the head and not the tail, and at the top rather than the bottom of our political system.

I've been saying it for a while.

People just don't seem to get it that the anti-gay and anti-choice initiatives are just the opening wedge. (And, in the larger context, "anti-choice" is just what this movement is about, across the board.)

(Thanks to Digby.)

I Love My New Map

I'm worldwide -- US (coast to coast), Canada, UK, Germany, looks like maybe Poland and Sweden, possibly one of the United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong, Australia, South Africa, Spain, Portugal, maybe Mallorca? (Who do I know in Mallorca? I don't know anybody in Mallorca.)

Hey, y'all -- take a second to say hello when you stop by.

(What. A. Rush.)

Masculinity

This is a response to Scoot's post, Was Everyone Just a Bit Gayer Then?", at CabanaBoyScoot -- go read it first.

This post is somewhat tangential to Scoot's, but I think it's not, really. This whole discussion is really tied up with the American conception of masculinity. It's more than a little ironic, to start, that in traditional American families (which still make up the majority in terms of attitudes), women taught boys to be men because successful fathers, by that standard, were never around -- they were off at work, supporting the family. Tied to this is the phenomenon characteristic of American society of "real male dominance." An offshoot of the European model of "mythical male dominance," in which men were the titular authorities but women had strong and definite influence, in America men really were the authority, largely, I think, as a result of our history as a frontier nation.

Consequently, we wind up with the singular American idea of "masculinity": a real man is emotionally self-contained, competent, authoritative, undemonstrative, and thoroughly heterosexual -- for this last, until the past couple of generations, there was no real alternative for masculine men.

Scoot notes in his update the context of locker rooms, group showers, and sex-segregated swimming and gym classes (which I remember well). There is one thing that he doesn't mention, which is, I think, the telling detail: you didn't look at other men's bodies. Ever. Yes, there was a certain comfort level there, men and boys being nude in a group (as well as a lot of surreptitious glances) but I think the key factor in the changing attitude, as witnessed by the facilities in modern gyms, has much more to do with concepts of personal privacy than any rise in the degree of discomfort due to the increased visibility (and acceptance) of gay men. Cruising is still a no-no (at least in "straight" gyms), and even noticing each other is a social faux pas of a fairly high order, but it's one well established in tradition. If you looked, back then, you were a "homo," and while most of us didn't have a clear idea of what that meant, even in high school, we knew enough to know you didn't want to be one.

I think one only has to spend some time at a nude beach to see that the comfort level is still there for many people, but the same behavioral requirements apply. It is, of course, a different story at gay beaches. (Although for anyone raised traditionally, allowing one's self to look at other men, particularly eye contact and particularly if they are nude, is still a problem.)

There is also the traditional proscription against public nudity, which, in the fluid way that these things are interpreted on a day-to-day basis, came to mean nudity outside of same-sex environments. America, like any other nation, goes through periods of openness and repression -- a gay pride parade in the 1980s, for example, was a lot worse, from the conservative Christian point of view, than a gay pride parade now, and this is a group that one might expect to be much more relaxed about things like nudity.

As regards Deux's putative reaction about the feminization of education, I'm not so sure: masculinity in this country, particularly, is a mess, going back to that traditional standard of the remote, uninflected male. My own feeling is that it's built on false premises which are finally showing cracks in the foundation. (See the bit above about "real male dominance.") "Maculinity" was the kind of edifice that could stand as long as it was unquestioned. As soon as anyone says "wait a minute," the whole thing starts to come down, and we have no internal models to take its place.

It's become a defensive sort of structure. Call it an incomplete social transition: pre-Stonewall, just to pick a not-so-arbitrary cutoff point, traditional masculinity allowed for friendships between men, which, while not overtly as rich as those that feminists now demand, contained a great deal of subtext on mutual emotional involvement and support. (Traditional men, after all, were not overt creatures.) Younger men could get away with more overt behavior and demonstrations of affection because they were, after all, young -- beta males, at best, and so less was expected of them in terms of adopting the authority of the mature male. Now, of course, expressions of affection are open to gross misinterpretation and there is the fact that, while many people are, publicly at least, willing to accept gays, there is still a great deal of fear among men of being thought gay because there is still a perception that gay men are not "real men," no matter our adoption of the traditional stereotype. (Another irony: I've discovered that the less I concern myself with my own masculinity, the more masculine I am perceived to be.)

Another factor: men and intimacy. It's still a problem for most men, and "social nudity" places a strain on our ability to deal with it because of the gay thing. Men are perfectly capable of being intimate without a sexual overtone, but -- and here I will certainly grant a putative point to a putative response by Deux -- the feminist interpretation of intimacy has taken over, so that if you're not intimate in the way that feminism demands, you're not intimate. (Yes, in certain areas men and women do inhabit different universes and simply cannot comprehend each other. Let it rest.)

Scoot asks: "Have contemporary straight men become so obsessed with the thought that they might be perceived as gay by the mere glance at another man that society has changed this abruptly and this puritanically?" No. First off, society hasn't changed that much. The emphasis is slightly different, but the elements are pretty much the same. As I noted above, ideas of personal privacy coupled with an incomplete transition to the acceptance of gay men is tied in with the insistence that intimacy between men must contain a sexual component (two thoughts on this: on the one hand, it's a capitulation to the idea that nudity is by definition sexual -- thanks tons, Sigmund, for the death of innocence -- and secondly, so what? We're grown-ups here, we can deal with it -- except, of course, that we're not, yet.). Our culture is increasingly sexualized (another incomplete transition, since we still can't deal with it all that comfortably), and the lack of foundation for a new definition of masculinity in the context of another period of increasing repression (which seems to be a losing battle, at this point -- in earlier periods, the forces of virtue didn't have to deal with mass advertising techniques), I think are all contributing factors to what Scoot perceives as obsession.

We're an obsessive society. Just look around you. I don't think, however, that we've forgotten how to be men. We're just casting around for a new definition.

Blogger!

Blogger has really screwed up. Not only are they introducing a Blogger Beta (shudder), but you can now also sign in with a Google account. I have a Google account, which I don't want to use here. I also have a Blogger account. But the damned sign-in keeps automatically signing me in on a Google account, no matter which account I try to sign in on. Now, if I want to post here, I have to go through the sign up for Beta, at which point it tells me that they can't sign me up for Beta yet.

Then I can sign in.

Idiots.

The New Republican Strategy

Run two candidates: Lieberman and Schlesinger in Connecticut, and Santorum and Romanelli in Pennsylvania.

How many do you think they'll run in Ohio?

Gayer Now?

Scootmaroo has a real interesting post up today. Go read it. Expect a post from me in response. (I'm working on it, but it's kind of a ramble right now -- too much to say.)

Hmmm

Looking at my new toy -- the ClusterMap at the bottom of the sidebar. I had a visitor from China! That's exciting. (Welcome, and I hope you'll come back.)

I seem to be a big hit in Chicago and San Francisco. Also a visitor from UK. (So where are my Australian hits, hmmm?) Germany -- I think I know who that is. (Hey, Firle!)

And Kansas. Wow. (Hmm -- I think I know who that might be, as well.)

This is fun. I'm glad I installed this thing.

At Random, 8/13/06

The Rule of Law:

There's a great and shattering irony in Justice Kennedy's words. I'm actually prepared to believe his sincerity. (I wonder if I would be if it had been Antonin Scalia? But then, I can't imagine Scalia giving such a speech.)

This is, if anything, even more ironic:

American Bar Association President Michael Greco discussed some of the same themes as he introduced Kennedy.

"Any threat to liberties and human rights in one country is a threat to the citizens of all nations," Greco said. "The most fundamental responsibility of members of the legal profession is to ensure that the law is used as an instrument to advance the basic principles of justice, fairness and equality."

Sorry, but reading this, I couldn't help thinking of lawyers like Alberto Gonzales, John Yoo, and John Ashcroft. They sort of make ambulance chasers look like saints.


Marriage:

Interesting debate going on, hosted by Right Off the Shore. This post has the links. Here is the second question in the debate.

Update: the second question and responses are here.


Sore Loserman:

In spite of what you may have heard from Rove and Company, Joe Lieberman is not a center-left candidate. He is a center-right spoiler and is now endangering, according to some sources, the Democrats' prospects of gaining control of the House.

Joe, I wouldn't vote for you for dogcatcher.


On Andersen et al:

My final comment is simply that in both the Washington and New York same-sex marriage decisions, the arguments are seriously flawed -- as bad as Bowers, which the Supreme Court not only overturned, but repudiated in fairly strong language, and, contrary to what seems to be the thrust of most commentaries, I don't see them as influential. I think they will be cited by courts who are inclined to agree with them anyway, but I think it's the dissents that are going to be law in short order.

The danger in both these decisions, as I've mentioned previously, is that they reveal an increasing unwillingness on the part of the courts to do their job. I can't ascribe this entirely to right-wing attacks on our independent judiciary, which is a concept that is anathema to the Christianists. However, I think that the corollary that shares part of the blame is that Reagan and Bush between them have packed the federal courts with conservative judges who are too prone to bow to the executive and legislative branches. In these cases, both decisions display undue deference to legislatures (although the Washington decision does quite remarkably all but demand the legislature change the law), and both are unwilling to consider the constitutional issues on quite flimsy reasoning. It's as though they did a lot of reasearch and intellectual backflilps to avoid doing their jobs.


Tradition:

Some thoughts by Jim Johnson of Straight Not Narrow on tradition. Worth reading and pondering. Sraight Not Narrow is a Christian site that is overtly critical of fundamentalists who use their religion as a club. They take on Focus on the Family, the American Family Association, and other "Christian" hate groups. Visit them.

With Leaders Like This. . . .

The latest group of gay activists to lose their minds:

We seek access to a flexible set of economic benefits and options regardless of sexual orientation, race, gender/gender identity, class, or citizenship status.

We reflect and honor the diverse ways in which people find and practice love, form relationships, create communities and networks of caring and support, establish households, bring families into being, and build innovative structures to support and sustain community.

This document reads like science fiction from the Golden Age: idealistic, hopeful, and completely out of touch.

Wayne Besen, who provided the link, thinks this is a sell-out. I just find it irrelevant.

If the country is having this much trouble dealing with same-sex marriage as a one-on-one committed and legally recognized relationship, what the hell do these people think the reacion is going to be to something that sounds like nothing so much as a gay hippie commune?

This is reflective of something that has caused no end of impatience on my part with the gay movement -- we are overly inclusive. Yes, liberal politics depend on coalition building, but tailoring our movement to fit the needs of others is not the answer.

Talk to me again fifty years after same-sex marriage is legal in this country.

Morons.

Andersen, et al.

I've read Johnson's concurrence in Andersen again, and managed to get a copy of the opinions in Herndandez vs Robles, the New York State case that is, indeed, even a worse example of judicial reasoning than Andersen. Rather than giving a blow-by-blow of either, since both contain dissents that are right on target, I may just make some summary comments -- after I've had a chance to think about them some more (and after I get through a couple more reviews and a letters column -- I'm on deadline).

In the Matter of Andersen, Part I

I did sit down and read the opinions, and Dale Carpenter's comments, over again, in full. and I wasn't so far off my original assessment: the plurality opinion, with concurrences, is so far off base as to be obviously grasping at any means, no matter how transparent, to avoid upsetting the status quo. (Or, given the justices' obvious discomfort with the decision, perhaps it's more a matter of avoiding the reaction of the rabids, should the court find as the Washington constitution actually requirs.) One can see, by the beginning of the third paragraph, that Justice Madsen's basis for this decision is beyond weak. "[W]e have engaged in an exhaustive constitutional inquiry and have deferred to the legislative branch as required by our tri-partite form of government." This is a recurring theme and to me (as well as to the dissenting justices in this case) marks nothing so much as an abdication of the court's responsibility for judicial review. (In fact, Justice Chambers wrote a separate dissent addressing just this issue.)

The plurality goes on to note that its decision "accords with the substantial weight of authority from courts considering similar constitutional claims," although the opinion is notably lacking in citations to support this contention. (I, a layman, am aware of decisions in Hawai'i [ Baehr v Lewin, in which the court found that Hawai's marriage law violated the constitutional rights of plaintiffs], Alaska [Brause et al. v. Bureau of Vital Statistics, in which the court granted summary judgment for the plaintiffs and required the state to present compelling arguments for denying a marriage license; mooted by a constitutional amendment], and Vermont [Baker et al v State of Vermont (PDF), in which the court found Vermont's marriage laws unconstitutional but instructed the legislature to develop a remedy], as well as Goodridge in Massachusetts, that arrived at the opposite conclusion. I seem to remember a couple of cases that found against same-sex marriage, but I haven't managed to locate any citations.) These cases are cited later in the opinion, in relation to the suspect class question, but the grounds on which they are referenced seem to undercut the courts determination that gays and lesbians do not constitute a suspect class (although the opinion rightly notes that the question is controversial and that evidence supporting such a designation was not presented).

The plurality also seems to think that, because in both Alaska and Hawai'i constitutional emendments were rushed through on a wave of hysteria, those courts' findings are somehow not particularly valid.

The court's analysis is the least rigorous possible, which in itself raises questions as to the court's willingness to actually evaluate the issues in this case. My disagreements are what might be expected: the question is very narrowly constructed, and in my opinion (as well as that of the dissenting justices) is the wrong question. It's the Scalia stand-by (stated even more strongly by Justice Johnson in his concurrence): the question is not whether the constitution guarantees the right to same-sex marriage, but whether the constitution guarantees the right to marry the person of one's choice and whether and to what degree the constitution allows state intrusion into that decision. This is something that justices Fairhurst and Bridge address quite cogently and solidly in their dissenting opinions.

My bottom line is simply that the plurality opinion by Justice Madsen and concurrence by Justice Johnson are marred by circular reasoning, too narrow an interpretation of the question, overly deferential attitude toward the legislature, and in some instances outright misstatements of fact (Johnson pooh-poohs the idea that the Washington state DOMA was motivated by animus, althoough Justice Chambers is able to cite extensively from public testimony and the legislative record of the debate to demonstrate that that was, indeed, the case.)

In terms of the discomfort level of the court with this decision, that is fairly obvious, not only by the tone of the plurality opinion, but by the fact that Chief Justice Alexander submitted a separate, one-page concurrence specifically to note that nothing precludes the legislature from redefining marriage.

Justice Johnson's concurrence deserves separate commentary, because it is so bad that one can hardly believe it was drafted by a member of Washington's high court rather than the Washington office of Focus on the Family. More on that one later.

I had intended to do a more detailed deconstruction, but it's really not necessary -- the dissents have done it for me, and quite brilliantly. I'll treat them, as well.

Upcoming

I'm sitting here with a pile of print-outs -- the various opinions from Andersen vs. King County. At first glance, the plurality and concurrences are as hopeless as I had thought -- narrow, asking the wrong questions, riddled with circular arguments and misrepresentations of fact. Look for more detailed commentary as I have time. I may also go back to the New York decision, which as I recall is even worse.

Update

Just a little news from the "me" front. I've been madly trying to pound out reviews with not much success -- the heat, and too many complicated things to review, and a heavy work schedule. Note the upcoming review of Ellen Kushner's Privilege of the Sword, which will be up at GMR on August 13. For August 27, I am already slated for a twofer review of Philip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly and Richard Linklater's film adaptation. There will also be an omni of George Alec Effinger's Marid Audran series.

For music, there will be some nice contemporary avant-garde (Philip Glass, Olivier Greif, John Luther Adams) some Turkish classical music, more Central Javanese gamelan, an opera by Haydn, some other things spanning my usual range of geography and centuries.

I've just started working on a review of a scandalously bad "New Age" book that has all the faults I despise in "philosophical" writing. That will be at Rambles, at some point.

I am also trying to figure out a way to consolidate the Brokeback posts, so I can clean up my sidebar and put them all together. Maybe I'll do a final comment, as well. (If anyone knows any tricks for doing that, I'd love ot hear about it. Right now I'm thinking of setting up a site on Earthlink and linking to it from here.)

Have to do some writing. Next time.

PS -- congrats to Scootmaroo at Cabana Boy Scoot for his entry into the big time.

At Random, 8/2/06

This Really Pisses Me Off:

I got this story in an email at work.

Knight says the local Meade newspaper is trying to put him out of business and was frustrated when it ran an article about the flag and did not even bother to contact him regarding why he put it up. In fact, most people we spoke to in Meade said they didn’t even know what the flag meant until the article ran. But once word got around, the reaction was harsh.. . . .

Knight says his son gave him the flag after a trip to Dorothy's house, a museum about the Wizard of Oz. The flag reminded the boy of "somewhere over the rainbow."

Knight's son is twelve years old, and just liked the flag. These are "values" Americans. One seriously wonders what American values they hold.

I also got a follow-up email: Knight is getting a lot of support, tons of e-mails and letters, and people making a point of stopping by if they're in the area.

I think it would be appropriate to write a letter to the local paper (the Meade County News, which doesn't appear to have a website) and also to the Knights to show your support: innkeeper@lakewayhotel.com


Of Note

A very nice dissection of right-wing rhetoric, by paulsavage at Epinions.


Evolution on the Rollercoaster

I seem to remember predicting this some while back: the anti-evolutionists have have lost the Kansas school board. Again.

On Tuesday, three members of the majority faced GOP primary foes who support evolution. A fourth Republican conservative is retiring, and her seat was up for grabs.

The fifth seat was held by Janet Waugh, a Kansas City Democrat who opposed the new standards. Facing a more conservative Democrat who favored the anti-evolution language, she won with 65 percent of the vote and will be unopposed in the fall.

With the unofficial count virtually complete, two of the three conservative Republican incumbents — John Bacon and Ken Willard — held onto their spots on the ballot.

However, the third conservative, Connie Morris, lost to Sally Cauble, a moderate Republican who supports evolution. Meanwhile, the Republican nod for the board's open seat went to another moderate, Jana Shaver. That combination would swing the balance of power toward those who oppose the board's current educational standards.


Gibson and Coulter

From Andrew Sullivan:

Both Coulter and Gibson have made a fortune catering to bigotry. But one is sincere; and one is completely cynical. In some ways, perhaps, an argument could be made that Gibson is preferable.

I noted in my brief digression on bigotry a couple of days ago that in my opinion, if you think your emotional biases are justified solely because you believe in them, then you are more of a bigot -- you're not amenable to reason or even self-interest. Frankly, Coulter turns my stomach; Gibson has turned a gift into a travesty. It's a hard call, but I'd say on that basis, Gibson is the worse bigot -- there's no evidence that Coulter is really a bigot at all, just a cynical manipulator. The same could be said of George W. Bush -- supposedly he's very supportive of gays personally, but he has no compunctions about joining the bashing when there's political support at stake.

Sullivan finished by asking why Coulter is still on TV. That should be obvious -- she sells.


Besen on Andersen

A small item I neglected to comment on, from Wayne Besen:

But Justice Madsen wrote that the plaintiffs were not entitled to such review because they had not demonstrated that homosexuality is an immutable characteristic like race or gender."

Besen ascribes it to swallowing ex-gay propaganda, and frankly, the whole opinion reflects that attitude: I keep running across statements in the opinion that come straight out of Exodus Ministries, Focus on the Family, Family Research Institute (an official hate group) and the like. This is just one more example of the intellectual poverty of this decision. I don't really care that GayPatriot and Dale Carpenter think it's solid -- quite aside from the Christianist talking points, the opinion is a prime example of John Yoo justice. It simply confirms my opinion that GayPatriot and Carpenter are missing something somewhere -- like a moral foundation.

How Kids Thrive

Vis-a-vis the Andersen decision, via Pam's House Blend, from a story on CNN:

A woman who molested at least one of her five children and prompted four of them to have sex with each other has been sentenced to 40 years in prison.

Robin Kraft, 26, had pleaded guilty in June to two charges of rape and four counts of child endangering. Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge David Davis on Friday imposed the maximum sentence, saying Kraft should not be released from prison while she can bear children.

...Prosecutors said Kraft and her husband, Paul Kraft, 32, sexually abused their four sons and one daughter, ages 1 to 6, in 2004.

In March, Paul Kraft received five life sentences on five rape charges and 96 additional years on 12 charges of pandering sexually oriented material involving a minor. He is ineligible for parole.

I would love to see what similar evidence the Washington court has on children of gay couples. Oh, wait . . . evidence isn't relevant in this case.