 George W. Bush- Traitor.
A little preamble your consideration: Prescott Bush, former Senator from Connecticut and the father of former President George H. W. Bush and the grandfather of current President George W. Bush, was a director of Dresser Industries, which became part of Halliburton in 1998. George Herbert Walker Bush worked for Dresser Industries from 1948-1951, After two terms as a member of the House of Representatives (Texas), two unsuccessful runs for the Senate, George H. W. Bush served as CIA Director 1976–1977, Vice President of The United States 1981-1989, and President 1989-1993. Under his stewardship, America engaged in what has become known as the Gulf War. After the Gulf war, the Pentagon, led by the Defense Secretary Dick Chaney (1989-1993), paid a then subsidiary of Halliburton eight and a half million dollars plus to study the use of private military forces with American forces in combat zones. 1995-2000 Dick Chaney became CEO of Halliburton. 2000- Bush/Chaney (some say Chaney/Bush) begins its reign. Chaney divests himself of his Halliburton interests (but I will bet not his interest in Halliburton). 2003- Halliburton awarded Iraqi contract. For further research, see below. http://money.cnn.com/2003/03/25/news/companies/war_contracts/index.htm http://www.infowars.com/articles/iraq/halliburton_contract.htm ********************************************************** John Locke considered it a principle that the people have the right to punish their legislators and/or their executive whenever convinced either is operating in opposition to the public good. I would add that it is a duty. George W. Bush should be impeached for High Crimes and Misdemeanors. “High" in the legal parlance of the 18th century means "against the State". A high crime is one which seeks the overthrow of the country, which gives aid or comfort to its enemies, or which injures the country to the profit of an individual or group.” This, however, even given the efforts of Dennis Kucinich, is unlikely. It is a situation of too little, too late. Given that scenario, The United States Government should immediately after the 2008 Inauguration Ceremonies move to prosecute George W. Bush for deliberate malfeasance and calculated fraud that borders on the premeditated betrayal of American law and justice. Under the George W. Bush/Dick Chaney regime, America has been led into a war that has no real purpose other than enrichment of Bush crony corporate soul mates. Under the George W. Bush/Dick Chaney regime, persons have been incarcerated by personal fiat, without warrant, benefit of counsel or timely justice in a court of law, military or civil. Further, George W. Bush conspired with Alberto Gonzales, John Yoo and Vice President Richard Chaney to seek the authority to round up American citizens as enemy combatants, prospectively stripping them of their civil rights. A memo, as reported in Jane Meyers 'The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals, advised the President and Vice-President that they had inherent power to overturn any law restraining surveillance and searches within the United States. Acting on the principles stated within this memo, George W. Bush succeeded in this conspiracy to abrogate the Fourth Amendment by issuing an order for wiretaps without warrant and/or probable cause and by calling on Congress for an exoneration of legal liability on the part of any corporation/individual, which facilitated those wiretaps. To their everlasting shame, Congress recently granted the exoneration while pretending to future oversight. Furthermore, George W. Bush has criminally ignored sound scientific evidence and continues to waste present and future natural resources by maliciously conspiring with national and international private interests to strip environmental protections, now existing, of any jurisdiction, to satisfy a short-term goal of corporate profits. He has calculatingly mortgaged present and future social programs, wasting America’s future, by indebting the nation for decades to come to fund his phony war. He has compounded that debt by cutting taxes for his Corporate, true constituency while working to cut Federal programs and entitlements designed to aid the middle and poor classes. His war, which he began with possibly deliberately planted false intelligence, has been mismanaged from the beginning. There have been shortages of military hardware, body armor. Recent investigations have uncovered shoddy work by private contractors on U.S. military bases in Iraq. Deaths and injuries from fires and shocks are widespread and largely unacknowledged by the Pentagon according to the Army’s own documents. All the while, the Bush/Chaney regime has given only token attention to the capture and punishment of the real perpetrators of September 11. Bush has appointed executives in top government posts who disagree with the missions outlined by their organizations. The Environmental Protection Agency has not protected the environment; his Justice Department has sponsored injustice; his Labor Department has failed to protect Labor. He and Vice-President Dick Chaney have denied the right of Congressional oversight, failed to respond to Congressional subpoenas and have treated the Executive Privilege with a Divine Right attitude. In this one person’s opinion, George W. Bush is a 21st Century Benedict Arnold. He has sold out the interests of America to benefit the interests of already obscenely wealthy corporations. He has deliberately disregarded the Constitution by claiming extra-legal powers, and has used those powers to cover-up mismanagement and malfeasance. His Vice-president was inherently responsible for the “outing” of a CIA agent because the agent’s husband criticized, publicly, particular administration policies and performance. The list of crimes against the People, by this administration is almost endless. It is no argument to say that Bush did not personally, overtly, perform each crime. They were performed under his authority. Where possible, he has shielded the perpetrators via “Executive Privilege.” If he is found guilty, he, at the least, should be stripped of all public emoluments, privileges and pensions. He should also be sued for repayment of a salary not earned. Once his trail is out of the way, we should then concentrate on those who aided and abetted him. We need to do this for the survival, for the future, of the American Ideal. If we do nothing, we have betrayed America. George W. Bush is one of the more dangerous to our Constitutional rights person this country has ever endured. History, if allowed to be written, will bear irrevocable truth to that statement. In the meantime, I am comfortable with being on the political fringe in this matter. Major sources for this piece have been Wikipedia, The New York Times, and The Los Angeles Times.
 CURSES, IT’S THE BLOG!
Did’ja ever start something that kinda took on a demanding life of its own? I did; it’s my blog. In January 2004, I decided that I needed some discipline as a writer. I made a New Year’s resolution that I would write an entry consisting of, at least, 400 words, once a week. I had no other plan than 400 words. Right from the beginning, I ran into a problem. What the hell did I have to say that was worth 400 words? Every week? I am an opinionated soul, but how could I stretch an opinion, that could be stated in a sentence, into paragraphs that anyone would want to read? There were days when my weekly entries were a day late and I wondered at, and commiserated with, newspaper columnists who had to fill an empty page every day with at least three times the amount of words I used weekly. In the beginning, I cross-posted between my online journals and my blog. I don’t do that, as often, anymore. Many of the people who read the blogs are the same people who read my journal postings. I did not want the blog material to be exercises in redundancy. My blogs need to be separate pieces, if more for my sake, than for others’. The more I wrote, the more astounded I was at my own ignorance, even about the meaning of words. Words I thought perfectly descriptive were too strong, or too weak, to accurately define my meaning. Every third adjective and adverb I blessed Peter Roget for the invention of the thesaurus. Some writers can write pages at a time before they need to stop and consider what they have written and survey the next bridge of idea to cross and how to cross it. Not me. I write phrases, sentences, sometimes paragraphs, at a time before I have to stop and consider the next. I doesn’t help that I’m pathological about misspellings and need to stop in the middle of a thought to correct them. Misspellings are not the only immediate editing I do. I re-read each paragraph, gauging its sound, its cadence, on the ear. I have always done this, even when writing letters by hand. It is the rare letter that gets through without three rewrites. My original copies always have an embarrassment of crossed out words and lines (I fell in love the first time I happened upon a word processor). What annoys me is that with all the efforts I make to present the “perfect” product, two days after I publicly present it, I find errors that escaped my vigilance. My ignorance is not limited to misuse of words and grammar. Whatever kind of writer I am, I do at least minimal research. How often I find I’ve misconceived a concept, or failed a fact and have to revise my thinking, I cannot begin to count. Research, however, is a slippery slope; the more one does, the more there is to do. You have to learn to say, “Enough for now,” and finish the product for which you were doing the research. The satisfaction, the joy, you feel completing the project is like, I imagine, the same joy a mountain climber feels reaching the peak. It doesn’t last long, however. There is always another mountain; there is always next week’s blog.
Thoughts on America’s Birthday. Two hundred and thirty years ago, America took its first step in its great experiment; it declared itself a sovereign nation and pledged itself to the idea that all men are created equal. It fought a war against its mother country to secure its sovereignty. Smart money would have bet on the British. They had the more professional army and they had more money. What they didn’t have was the zeal and determination [possessed by people yearning for self-government. However, in the national consensus of the time, the phrase all men did not mean all men. The multiple Indian tribes who inhabited the land before the pilgrims landed were not included; neither were black people who had been ripped from their home continent to serve as slaves. National women’s suffrage did not exist until 1920, although in various cities and states, some women were allowed the vote in local elections. That number, however, was small, and in some places, the right was later rescinded. Who is eligible to vote in the United States was, and is, determined by both Federal and state law. Only citizens can vote. Natural citizens are those born on U.S. soil and naturalized citizens, i.e., those granted citizenship by the Federal Government are also allowed in the poll. Each sovereign state, however, determines which of its citizens may vote. State laws vary and according to a Supreme Court ruling, there is no federal constitutional right of the individual to vote for electors for President of the United States unless their state legislature chooses to use statewide elections as a means to implement its power to appoint said electors. Constitutional amendments had to be enacted to allow women and blacks to vote. Until the Civil Rights Act of 1965, many Southern states used various specialized requirements to keep blacks from voting. The Constitution had to be changed to make these requirements illegal. Even into the 21st Century, we are still struggling to understand the full meaning of the phrase all men. Something that Americans either ignore, or romanticize, is the fact that our country was founded, it’s borders defined, by violence. This is a truth not confined to America. Every country, every civilization has been built upon the subjection/elimination of the original inhabitants. Some even have dared to claim their occupations of territory as the will of one god or another. All excuse their encroachments as progress or as acts of kindness for the inhabitants of the occupied territory. What is different about America is the great, ongoing experiment. We have sometimes stumbled badly, even denying our own citizens equality, but the light still shines in the words enshrined in our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution. We may yet be a beacon to the world.
 On Coming Out
In June 28, 1970, I marched in the first Los Angeles Gay Pride Parade; this was a year after the Stonewall revolution (some say riots). I was 28 years old. I have marched in a few other Pride parades since then, but none of the later ones quite felt as personally momentous, as liberating of spirit as did that first march. I was announcing myself to the world at large, declaring my pride in myself and rejecting the prevailing view that my sexuality was something of which I ought to feel ashamed. I was COMING OUT. However, coming out is not a one time event. It is a process that is on going for the whole one’s life. Over the years, I had to come out, first, to myself, and then to trusted others. For me, as I think is true for most gay and lesbian people, my family was the last hurdle. Sometimes, these coming outs were affirmed by those to whom we chose to reveal ourselves; often, they were less so. I lost friends and family, aroused enmity towards me that had not before been present. Sometimes I questioned whether coming out harmed me more than helped me. Every now and then, and still, my courage fails me, especially where I feel physically threatened. Coming out is never easy, no matter how many times you have done it, before. Most gay and lesbians have the “coming out” story. Sometimes they’re funny and sometimes they’re scary. The individual details are different, but a common characteristic is an aha-ness, a flashbulb in a dark corner, quality. The emotional kaleidoscope shifts into a pattern we recognize more intuitively than intellectually, and we are face to face with our blossoming self. It is not that we haven’t always been aware of something different in ourselves. I think a majority of gays and lesbians are aware of not being, as it were, with the program around us. When gays and lesbians say, “I always knew I was gay,” what they mean is that they were aware of some core difference in themselves for which they had no words to describe, and/or, no immediate example to which to point. This lack of self-definition is a frightening thing and encourages a perception of the need for secrecy. The secrecy immediately separates us even more from our family and peers. When we find a term to describe our difference, more often than not, the fear of being found out increases. Our need for secrecy becomes almost pathological. Gradually, most of us began, little by little, to honor this part of ourselves. It wasn’t easy. For people of my generation, there weren’t any positive examples; there were no encouraging sources of information. We were lonely pioneers in uncharted territory. Still, we survived. We developed heightened senses that helped us find companions and friends and lovers. We began to demand our place in the sun, out of the shadows. Coming out became a public, political movement. Stonewall became our Rubicon. We cannot, we must not, ever go back. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction (Newton’s Law). As we have asserted our right to be, opposition has grown against us. It has always been there, but it was more individual an individual reaction rather than the focused group activity it has become. In some ways, it is almost more dangerous to be individually out than before. To quote Benjamin Franklin, surely more than before, “we must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.” Our greatest enemies are not the biblical literalists, formidable as they may be. Neither are they the Mark Foleys and Larry Craigs whose self-deceptions and hypocrisies are sad. Our biggest enemies are those of us who sit on the sidelines, too afraid to do anything. Come out, come out, wherever you are. We owe it to ourselves, and to those who come, and will come, after. We owe it to our honor and our freedom. Less than our best effort is unacceptable.
Bits and Pieces The apple doesn’t fall far from the Bush dept: “George Walker, GW's great-grandfather, set up the takeover of the Hamburg-America Line, a cover for I.G. Farben's Nazi espionage unit in the United States. In Germany, I.G. Farben was most famous for putting the gas in gas chambers; it was the producer of Zyklon B and other gasses used on victims of the Holocaust. The Bush family was not unaware of the nature of their investment partners. They hired Allen Dulles, the future head of the CIA, to hide the funds they were making from Nazi investments and the funds they were sending to Nazi Germany, rather than divest. It was only in 1942, when the government seized Union Banking Company assets under the Trading With The Enemy Act, that George Walker and Prescott Bush stopped pumping money into Hitler's regime.” Unfortunately, I don’t have a link for the above. California Dreaming Dept .: This past Tuesday, June 17, the first same-sex marriage licenses were issued in the state of California. Not everybody was happy. The gloom and doom religionists of every sect and type are marshalling their forces. I expect the issue of same-sex marriage will jump from a subsidiary issue to a major issue in the coming presidential campaign, especially among the theologically fossilized. Given all the sexual “sins” listed in the Bible, it is interesting that the only one that gets the Neanderthal “God is always pissed off” crowd’s panties in a bunch is same-sex liaisons, especially male-male liaisons. It says more about them than it does about God. Odd Bit- Zheleznovodsk, a city in Russia, has unveiled an 800 lb. bronze monument honoring the enema. It’s a syringe bulb held by three angels. Holy S…! Quick Review : Swingtown is a new CBS Thursday night offering dealing with the “swinger” phenomenon in the 70’s. It’s not a show I’m finding easy to warm up to. The characters seem cartoon like. They are pretty cartoons, however. And did we really dress that way in the 70’s? Video Blogs: Why does anyone think that I want to watch 10 minutes of them hemming, hawing, and never coming to the point? Nobody is that pretty. Now, if they actually had something prepared, and could deliver it crisply and rationally, I might watch. Of course, I never liked home movies, either. If I’d going to reveal myself, I’d rather do it through the written word. I can edit that. Final Comment: Speaking of editing, one thing that I regret is that I write my blogs so close to the deadline; I don’t get to edit them as much as I would like. Two days after posting, I find things errors that the grammar portion of the spell and grammar don’t always catch. I also find errors of construction. This is exactly why pro writers have editors. Editors are as responsible for good writing as are writers.
 | Pluto | Jun 15, '08 6:17 PM
for everyone |
I see Pluto is now a Plutoid. God, under George Bush, everything is being downsized.
 Cross Burning
On a day in June 2006, Brandon Waters found a 6 to 8 foot cross burning in the driveway of the house he shared with his mother. This was not the first time Mr. Waters had encountered harassment. Brandon Waters is gay. It was reported that the initial investigation by the Meigs County Sheriff’s office produced no people of interest, regarding the harassment. Surprise, surprise. In an interview with Chattanooga News Channel 9, the neighbor across the street from Mr. Waters said he didn’t know what happened but “I’d probably give em 50 more [fucking] dollars to do it again. I’m supposing this neighbor missed the Sunday services in which the gospel reading, “Love thy neighbor as thy self”, was featured. I am also wondering if this neighbor and/or his brother, who lived with the neighbor and his wife, were ever considered as the most obvious possible person of interest. In square mileage, the area in which this happened is 61 plus miles. The population density is. Again in square mileage, a half a person. If my math is correct, this would add up to about 488 people, but then math has never been my strongest suit. I wonder if the Sheriff’s Department ever found a person of interest. I admit that sometimes it feels useless to try to work for equality for the LGBT community. So many of the angry and ignorant are lined against us. I want to back out, climb back in my closet and pretend it doesn’t matter what happens to my brothers and sisters as long as I am safe. The only thing that stops me from quitting doing even the small things I do is the realization that unless all my brethren are safe, neither am I. So, tired as I am of fighting the same, seemingly fruitless, battles, I have to continue to fight with all the strength I can muster. I can’t stop at protecting just my tribe, though. Even if the majority of my strength and time is spent battling against those injustices that affect me and my comrades, I still need to support the struggles against all injustice- against women, against uncommon spiritual beliefs- against racism- against sexism- against ageism, against the differently-abled. The ultimate triumph would be for all the unjustly served to come together under one banner; numbers count. Too often, however, we work at cross-purposes and dissipate, squander our power. Too often, we believe in me first. After all, isn’t the operative American ideal “I got mine, so screw you.” Unfortunately, so many who labored to find justice for themselves and finding it treat others as unjustly as they were treated. Witness the black churches betrayal of justice for gay and lesbian equality under the law. They have forgotten Martin Luther King’s assertion that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Thomas Aquinas held that any law that uplifts the human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. An unjust law is a code that a majority inflicts on a minority that is not binding on itself. Consequently, any offense against a minority that is not remedied, not brought to justice, is an act of injustice. Again I wonder if Brandon Waters ever found justice.
 This piece was written last week, before Hillary suspended her campaign and endorsed Obama.
I Want to Hear… However the duel between Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama ends, history will be made in America. For the first time in the American experience, a black man, or a woman, will be the Democratic Party’s contender for the Presidency of the United States. While I can applaud the historicity of the moment, it seems to me that the happenstance of race and gender are getting more attention than actual issues in the media. We can only hope that this will not be true of the contest during the national election. What I want to hear is a discussion of the direction the United States should take in the next four to eight years. I want to hear debate about the serious questions of American military involvement in the world. I want to hear dialog on what constitutes national interest to the degree that we are willing to send our young men and women to possible death. I also want to hear why the American military has become, to all intents and purposes, a private army, controlled by corporations like Haliburton, with private interests in Arab Oil production, and who serve as the major supply source of goods and services to the army in Iraq. They aren’t doing it for nothing. I want to hear exactly what it means that America is becoming a Service Economy. What does that mean in terms of jobs for the general populace? IBM treats its manufacture of goods (computers, etc.) as less important than providing business solutions. What does that mean? Diversity of providers of goods and services is a natural price control. Where there is a single provider of a necessity, the consumer is ill served. Competitive producers provide a brake against profiteering. How advantageous to the consumer and the worker, is it when corporations buy each other out? Doesn’t that create a monopoly of production and an anti-free labor environment? I want to hear how the transfer of manufacturing and labor outside the United States for the lowest common denominator of labor cost, with the finished product brought back into it for consumption with little or no change of consumer price, benefit’s the average citizen. “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” Benjamin Franklin More and more, free citizens are finding their privacy invaded for reasons of security. Most of these reasons, as evidenced by the Bush Administration, are constructs of prepared myth. They are an excuse to tap phones, read e-mails, and investigate what you’re getting from the library, without due process. Furthermore, More and more information about private citizens is being digitalized and thus vulnerable to any computer hack with nefarious intent. What does the next Administration vow to do about undoing what has already been done? What safeguards against unwarranted intrusion are they going foster and defend? Add to the small list I’ve posted, here, the questions of Health Care, Social Security and Education. We also need to examine the place of Religion in public life. There is a line increasingly being crossed by fanatics in the politics of this country to which we need to pay attention. One personal concern that I doubt any incoming Administration, Republican or Democrat will want to address in any meaningful way is Transgender, Gay and Lesbian rights. The most we can hope for, at least from the national government, is maintenance of the status quo. I’m willing to be surprised, but I doubt I will be. During the next administration, Gay and Transgender people will need to rattle that status quo, turn the heat up on local governments, as well as the Federal. We need more cohesiveness between the various gay organizations and more courage on the part of the individual gay and transgender person. We need to form a national movement with the same power and the same determination for Justice as The Civil Rights movement of the Sixties. Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. The Book of Amos
May 31, Rhonda's Dead My youngest sister, Rhonda died, exactly when, why and how is not yet known. We only learned of it because my sister, Renee, who was worried because she hadn’t spoken to her in a week, decided to go by her place and check up on her, today. When Renee arrived at my sisters, she found papers by the door, no one answered her knock, and the keys she had to the house didn’t fit) obviously, Ronnie had changed the locks. Renee then called my brother Duane, but neither he, nor Cindy, his wife were at home. Finally, she called me. I advised her to call the police to have them enter with her. She agreed, but thought she would ask a few more neighbors if they had noticed anything. One had. A fire ambulance. No one knew where she had been taken. Renee called my brother again, and he has started calling hospitals. Rhonda had been having a spate of bad times, lately. She was downsized from the company (Washington Mutual) for which she had worked for almost twenty years, was grossly overweight and diabetic. She was just released from the hospital for some problems with her leg (she has still to tell us what that problem is), refuses to communicate with her family about her needs or problems (in that she’s not different from the rest of us) and doesn’t follow doctor’s orders. She has Renee always frantic with worry. Perhaps an hour ago, Renee was on the phone, weeping. “Rhonda’s dead,” she said. She is waiting for a call from the coroner. I don’t know how I feel; I suppose I am still in a state of shock. I loved my sister, but as it is with all my family, it’s in a detached kind of way. She’s four years younger, which in childhood terms was a good difference in age and interests. As children, we didn’t even have much contact within the house, because when in the house, I was kept separate and confined to my room. Later, when I was older, I lived in California and rarely had a letter or a phone call, and didn’t call or write her much, either. As I think about it now, one thing I am regretful for is that she died alone, but we all do, don’t we. Even in a crowded room, the journey is ours, alone.
| On Death | May 29, '08 6:13 PM
for everyone |
On Death “Death, I think, is actually nothing but the separation of two things from each other; the soul and the body.” Socrates (Plato)>Steven. I do not ever remember being afraid of death. There was a time in my early twenties when I faced the possibility of my own immanent death and experienced 45 minutes (thereabouts) of shock that my life was about to end before it had really begun; I will admit to a few tears, but I remember those tears as born of anger and regret, not fear. There were, too, occasions when I had sought my death and failed in the attempt, but they were past and not part of the discussion, here (at least for the moment). The state of being “dead” always fascinated me. As a young child, I would use my Saturday mornings to visit all the funeral parlors in the neighborhood just to see dead bodies lying in their coffins. It was a wonder to me that however skillful the mortician, the dead seemed mere replicas of the living person, no more living than figures sculpted in wax. This was especially true if I had known the person in their life. I would kneel at the side of the coffin and stare in rapt wonder, aware that what had made, had defined, the corpse, once alive, was gone. What was it that had left? What indefinable “me-ness” had gone, and to where? There is an analogy comparing sleep to death, but I did not think that accurate. I had seen people sleeping, and even in their sleep, there was a light, an aura, if you will, around that sleeping person, however soundly they slept, that still hovered in and around, that still proclaimed them alive. I think upon death, still, though I am long past the hobby of going to funeral homes to gaze upon it. My experience with Buddhism has caused me to understand that death and life are opposite sides of the same coin. My experience with Buddhism has caused me to understand that the moment we are conceived we begin to grow, decay and die all in the same moment. My experience with Buddhism has made me aware that this cycle is true of all material things. Even the Universe, itself, is being born, is growing, decaying and dying even as I write. What Buddhism, or any other construct of myth and/or supposition, does not satisfactorily answer, for me at least, is the question of the reason why this is true. At least 100,000 years ago, Neanderthal Man buried his dead with ceremony and provided them with food and tools (What Happened in History, by Gordon Childe-pub. 1942-Penguin Books). The myth, and I use the word not in a dismissive way, of life after death, a search for the reason of life/death, had already begun. Parenthetically, this awareness of life and death raises the theological question; did Neanderthal Men possess immortal souls? However, that, too, is beyond the scope of this moment. With a hiccup and a hiss,
He entered in to the abyss
If to terror, if to bliss,
I can answer only this:
He entered in to the abyss
With a hiccup and a hiss. I have stated elsewhere that I believe in a First Cause. My experience in the world supposes that the law of cause and effect is an essential, unchanging law. It may be, in some particular way, the only eternal law, but I do not know this. If it is, maybe death is the meaning of life and life the meaning of death, but this is too esoteric an idea for my limited learning to explore fully. I suspect that death is the last great adventure of life. I nurture a wish that, in my last moment, I will step over the threshold of death awake and aware. One, however, should be careful for what one wishes. Death may have an ironic humor.
 Rummaging in the Closet
In 2006, a survey in New York City found that over one in nine men, who identify as straight, have sex with other men. Seventy percent of these men report being married. WebMD Medical News, Sept. 18, 2006. Ask any gay man; I’m sure he’ll have a tale of his liaison with a married man. I’ve had four continuing relationships, myself. Father Tommaso Stenico (60). suspended from his high profile post after a camera placed in his Vatican office showed him making advances to a young man, threatened the Roman hierarchy with a list of homosexual priests and bishops in the Catholic Church’s governing body. He had "a detailed dossier". Agence France Presse, Saturday, October 20, 2007 What the Roman Catholic Church pushes under the covers is that a number of priests, bishops, cardinals and popes have been homosexual. Unfortunately, they were, usually, the most vehement persecutors of their brothers. A recent declaration by the Pope states that seminaries will be allow homosexuals to enter the priesthood as only (if at all) if they have been celibate for three years, don’t keep in touch with the gay community through the Internet or movies. Neither will “aspiring priests take part in gay solidarity events, i.e., parades or seminars that treat homosexuality in positive ways.” The Church thinks they have a shortage of priests, now? In the meantime, scores of priests and bishops break their celibacy vows by secret conjugal relationships with women. John Patrick Cardinal Cody, Archbishop of Chicago from 1965 to 1982 reputedly supported a mistress, posing as a cousin, with Church funds. This, and other alleged questionable financial activities, generated an investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s office. At the time of his death, these allegations were before a Grand Jury. Consequently, the issue died with him, the jury refusing to return any charges. African church bishops and priests of the Roman Catholic Church live, some openly, with their “wives.” The Church has yet to move against this flaunting of disobedience to a sacred vow. By the way, substitute Southern Baptist, Mormons, or the conservative denomination of your choice for Roman Catholic and you find the same closet duplicity. According to an article by Judy L. Thomas of Knight Ridder Newspapers and published in The Arizona Republic (March 2000), “It appears priests are dying of AIDS at a rate at least four times that of the general U.S. population.” http://www.libchrist.com/other/homosexual/catholicpriestsAIDS.html I find myself wondering what the numbers are, today. While one wishes to respect the privacy of the individual priest, one also wishes to know what kind of support these priests are receiving from a Church they have served. It appears to me that while their physical beings are probably being looked to, their emotional beings are equally being closeted and denied. Life in a closet is life and soul denying. The safety and comfort one thinks on finds there, separates you from really being who you are.
 One Victory Is Not The War.
May 14, 2008 may go down as a very important day in Civil Rights history. It was on this day that the Chief Justice of The California Supreme Court, Ronald M. George, writing for the majority, said, “In view of the substance and significance of the fundamental constitutional right to form a family relationship the California Constitution properly must be interpreted to guarantee this basic civil right to all Californians, whether gay or heterosexual, and to same-sex couples as well as to opposite-sex couples.” This ruling struck down two California state laws restricting marriage to heterosexual couples. One hopes the maxim, “As California goes, so goes the nation,” proves prophetic. The 4 to 3 decision is doubly interesting in that the majority of the Justices were appointed by Republican conservative governors. This validates my hope that Law, not personal or popular prejudice, is the cornerstone of American civil liberties. However, the struggle is not over. California same-sex marriages will not be recognized by other states. The ruling, also did not forbid the California Legislature to use another term than “marriage” to represent state-sanctioned unions. That term must, however, be used to signify both opposite and same-sex couples. Judge Marvin Baxter, while agreeing with many of the majority’s arguments, said, in dissent, that any changes to marriage laws should be decided by voters. The court, with this ruling, in his view, had overstepped its authority. The problem with his view is that it endorses the idea that popular ignorance and bigotry trump the rights of some citizens in good standing. It endorses the idea, that a person’s sexual orientation, unlike their race or gender, does constitute a legitimate reason to deny or withhold legal rights. The American rightwing religionists will not surrender easily. This will fuel their militant push to put amendments to State and the National Constitutions outlawing same-sex marriages. Conservative groups in California, both religious and social, have already requested that the California stay the decision until after the election. We should expect at least one Amicus Curiae Brief against gay marriage on the order of the one filed by The Family Research Council in Maryland’s Court of Appeals. As someone has termed it, it is an appeal based on junk science and fraudulent and/or outdated research, with an emphasis, in this opinion, on the fraudulent. (See http://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/Articles/000,017.htm) The rightwing, as a group (religionists not excluded), will always choose a lie over the truth if the lie furthers their interest. We must not think that the battle is only a legal struggle. Myth busting education and diversity training will be valuable tools to further all civil rights, but there will always be haters fostered by poverty and social disengagement. During the recent West Virginia primary, a 62-year-old man interviewed via some media or other, admitted, hesitantly, that he would not vote for Barak Obama because he was black. Forty years of painful, often polarizing struggle against the injustice done to black men, women and children, and still we have someone making a choice on the color of skin. Lesbians, Gay men and Transsexuals, whatever the legal progress, can expect the same obduracy for a long time. Nederland, long-standing progressive Mecca that it is, has been experiencing a rise in hate crime, including attacks on homosexuals. My gay, lesbian, transgender brothers and sisters and I are going to need courage and commitment, for the long siege ahead. May we find encouragement in each other, and in the efforts of allies, the world over.
This article was sent to me by a friend of mine. It was written four years ago but has proven more and more that this is something we should take seriously. This is an article by Chris Hedges that no major publication would print. THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT AND THE RISE OF AMERICAN FASCISM By -- CHRIS HEDGES 15 Nov 2004 Dr. James Luther Adams, my ethics professor at Harvard Divinity School, told us that when we were his age, he was then close to 80, we would all be fighting the "Christian fascists." The warning, given to me 25 years ago, came at the moment Pat Robertson and other radio and televangelists began speaking about a new political religion that would direct its efforts at taking control of all institutions, including mainstream denominations and the government. Its stated goal was to use the United States to create a global, Christian empire. It was hard, at the time, to take such fantastic rhetoric seriously, especially given the buffoonish quality of those who expounded it. But Adams warned us against the blindness caused by intellectual snobbery. The Nazis, he said, were not going to return with swastikas and brown shirts. Their ideological inheritors had found a mask for fascism in the pages of the Bible. He was not a man to use the word fascist lightly. He was in Germany in 1935 and 1936 and worked with the underground anti-Nazi church, known as The Confessing Church, led by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Adams was eventually detained and interrogated by the Gestapo, who suggested he might want to consider returning to the United States . It was a suggestion he followed. He left on a night train with framed portraits of Adolph Hitler placed over the contents inside his suitcase to hide the rolls of home movie film he took of the so-called German Christian Church, which was pro-Nazi, and the few individuals who defied them, including the theologians Karl Barth and Albert Schweitzer. The ruse worked when the border police lifted the top of the suitcases, saw the portraits of the Fuhrer and closed them up again. I watched hours of the grainy black and white films as he narrated in his apartment in Cambridge. He saw in the Christian Right, long before we did, disturbing similarities with the German Christian Church and the Nazi Party, similarities that he said would, in the event of prolonged social instability or a national crisis, see American fascists, under the guise of religion, rise to dismantle the open society. He despaired of liberals, who he said, as in Nazi Germany, mouthed silly platitudes about dialogue and inclusiveness that made them ineffectual and impotent. Liberals, he said, did not understand the power and allure of evil nor the cold reality of how the world worked. The current hand wringing by Democrats in the wake of the election, with many asking how they can reach out to a movement whose leaders brand them "demonic" and "satanic," would not have surprised Adams. Like Bonhoeffer, he did not believe that those who would fight effectively in coming times of turmoil, a fight that for him was an integral part of the Biblical message, would come from the church or the liberal, secular elite. His critique of the prominent research universities, along with the media, was no less withering. These institutions, self-absorbed, compromised by their close relationship with government and corporations, given enough of the pie to be complacent, were unwilling to deal with the fundamental moral questions and inequities of the age. They had no stomach for a battle that might cost them their prestige and comfort. He told me that if the Nazis took over America "60 percent of the Harvard faculty would begin their lectures with the Nazi salute." This too was not an abstraction. He had watched academics at the University of Heidelberg, including the philosopher Martin Heidegger, raise their arms stiffly to students before class. Two decades later, even in the face of the growing reach of the Christian Right, his prediction seems apocalyptic. And yet the powerbrokers in the Christian Right have moved from the fringes of society to the floor of the House of Representatives and the Senate. Christian fundamentalists now hold a majority of seats in 36 percent of all Republican Party state committees, or 18 of 50 states, along with large minorities in 81 percent of the rest of the states. Forty-five Senators and 186 members of the House of Representatives earned between an 80 to100 percent approval ratings from the three most influential Christian Right advocacy groups - The Christian Coalition, Eagle Forum, and Family Resource Council. Tom Coburn, the new senator from Oklahoma, has included in his campaign to end abortion: a call to impose the death penalty on doctors that carry out abortions once the ban goes into place. Another new senator, John Thune, believes in Creationism. Jim DeMint, the new senator elected from South Carolina, wants to ban single mothers from teaching in schools. The Election Day exit polls found that 22 percent of voters identified themselves as evangelical Christians and Bush won 77 percent of their vote. The polls found that a plurality of voters said that the most important issue in the campaign had been "moral values." President Bush must further these important objectives, including the march to turn education and social welfare over to the churches with his faith-based initiative, as well as chip away at the wall between church and state with his judicial appointments, if he does not want to face a revolt within his core constituency. Jim Dobson, the head of Focus on the Family, who held weekly telephone conversations with Karl Rove during the campaign, has put the President on notice. He told ABC's "This Week" that "this president has two years, or more broadly the Republican Party has two years, to implement these policies, or certainly four, or I believe they'll pay a price in the next election." Bush may turn out to be a transition figure, our version of Otto von Bismarck. Bismarck used "values" to energize his base at the end of the 19th century and launched "Kulturkampt," the word from which we get "culture wars," against Catholics and Jews. Bismarck 's attacks split the country, made the discrediting of whole segments of the society an acceptable part of the civil discourse and paved the way for the more virulent racism of the Nazis. This, I suspect, will be George Bush's contribution to our democracy. DOMINIONISTS AND RECONSTRUCTIONISTS The Reconstructionist movement, founded in 1973 by Rousas Rushdooney, is the intellectual foundation for the most politically active element within the Christian Right. Rushdooney's 1,600 page three-volume work, Institutes of Biblical Law, argued that American society should be governed according to the Biblical precepts in the Ten Commandments. He wrote that the elect, like Adam and Noah, were given dominion over the earth by God and must subdue the earth, along with all non-believers, so the Messiah could return. This was a radically new interpretation for many in the evangelical movement. The Messiah, it was traditionally taught, would return in an event called "the Rapture" where there would be wars and chaos. The non-believers would be tormented and killed and the elect would be lifted to heaven. The Rapture was not something that could be manipulated or influenced, although believers often interpreted catastrophes and wars as portents of the imminent Second Coming. Rushdooney promoted an ideology that advocated violence to create the Christian state. His ideology was the mirror image of Liberation Theology, which came into vogue at about the same time. While the Liberation Theologians crammed the Bible into the box of Marxism, Rushdooney crammed it into the equally distorting box of classical fascism. This clash was first played out in Latin America when I was there as a reporter two decades ago. In El Salvador leftist priests endorsed and even traveled with the rebel movements in Nicaragua and El Salvador, while Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, along with conservative Latin American clerics, backed the Contras fighting against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and the murderous military regimes in El Salvador, Guatemala, Chile and Argentina. The Institutes of Biblical Law called for a Christian society that was harsh, unforgiving and violent. Offenses such as adultery, witchcraft, blasphemy and homosexuality, merited the death penalty. The world was to be subdued and ruled by a Christian United States. Rushdooney dismissed the number of 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust as an inflated figure and his theories on race echoed Nazi Eugenics. "The white man has behind him centuries of Christian culture and the discipline and selective breeding this faith requires...," he wrote. "The Negro is a product of a radically different past, and his heredity has been governed by radically different considerations." "The background of Negro culture is African and magic, and the purposes of the magic are control and power over God, man, nature, and society. Voodoo, or magic, was the religion and life of American Negroes. Voodoo songs underlie jazz, and old voodoo, with its power goal, has been merely replaced with revolutionary voodoo, a modernized power drive." (see The Religious Right , a publication of the ADL, pg. 124.) Rushdooney was deeply antagonistic to the federal government. He believed the federal government should concern itself with little more than national defense. Education and social welfare should be handed over to the churches. Biblical law must replace the secular legal code. This ideology remains at the heart of the movement. It is being enacted through school vouchers, with federal dollars now going into Christian schools, and the assault against the federal agencies that deal with poverty and human services. The Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives is currently channeling millions in federal funds to groups such Pat Robertson's Operation Blessing , and National Right to Life, as well as to fundamentalist religious charity organizations and programs promoting sexual abstinence. Rushdooney laid the groundwork for a new way of thinking about political involvement. The Christian state would come about not only through signs and wonders, as those who believed in the rapture believed, but also through the establishment of the Christian nation. But he remained, even within the Christian Right, a deeply controversial figure. Dr. Tony Evans, the minister of a Dallas church and the founder of Promise Keepers, articulated Rushdooney's extremism in a more palatable form. He called on believers, often during emotional gatherings at football stadiums, to commit to Christ and exercise power within the society as agents of Christ. He also called for a Christian state. But he did not advocate the return of slavery, as Rushdooney did, nor list a string of offenses such as adultery punishable by death, nor did he espouse the Nazi-like race theories. It was through Evans, who was a spiritual mentor to George Bush that Dominionism came to dominate the politically active wing of the Christian Right. The religious utterances from political leaders such as George Bush, Tom Delay, Pat Robertson and Zell Miller are only understandable in light of Rushdooney and Dominionism. These leaders believe that God has selected them to battle the forces of evil, embodied in "secular humanism," to create a Christian nation. Pat Robertson frequently tells believers "our aim is to gain dominion over society." Delay has told supporters, such as at a gathering two years ago at the First Baptist Church in Pearland, Texas , "He [God] is using me, all the time, everywhere, to stand up for biblical worldview in everything I do and everywhere I am. He is training me, He is working with me." Delay went on to tell followers "If we stay inside the church, the culture won't change." Pat Robertson, who changed the name of his university to Regent University, says he is training his students to rule when the Christian regents take power, part of the reign leading to the return of Christ. Robertson resigned as the head of the Christian Coalition when Bush took office, a sign many took to signal the ascendancy of the first regent. This battle is not rhetorical but one that followers are told will ultimately involve violence. And the enemy is clearly defined and marked for destruction. "Secular Humanists," the popular Christian Right theologian Francis Schaeffer wrote in one of numerous diatribes, "are the greatest threat to Christianity the world has ever known." One of the most enlightening books that exposes the ultimate goals of the movement is America's Providential History, the standard textbook used in many Christian schools and a staple of the Christian home schooling movement. It sites Genesis 26, which calls for mankind to "have dominnion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, over the cattle and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth" as evidence that the Bible calls for "Bible believing Christians" to take dominion of America. "When God brings Noah through the flood to a new earth, He reestablished the Dominion Mandate but now delegates to man the responsibility for governing other men." (page 19). The authors write that God has called the United States to become "the first truly Christian nation" (page 184) and "make disciples of all nations." The book denounces income tax as "idolatry," property tax as "theft" and calls for an abolish of inheritance taxes in the chapter entitled Christian Economics. The loss of such tax revenues will bring about the withering away of the federal government and the empowerment of the authoritarian church, although this is not explict in the text. Rushdooney's son-in-law, Gary North, a popular writer and founder of the Institute for Christian Economics, laid out the aims of the Christian Right. "So let's be blunt about it: We must use the doctrine of religious liberty to gain independence for Christian schools until we train up a generation of people who know that there is no religious neutrality, no neutral law, no neutral education, and no neutral civil government. Then they will get busy in constructing a Bible-based social, political and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God." (Christianity and Civilization, Spring, 1982) Dominionists have to operate, for now, in the contaminated environment of the secular, liberal state. They have learned, therefore, to speak in code. The code they use is the key to understanding the dichotomy of the movement, one that has a public and a private face. In this they are no different from the vanguard, as described by Lenin, or the Islamic terrorists who shave off their beards, adopt western dress and watch pay-for-view pornographic movies in their hotel rooms the night before hijacking a plane for a suicide attack. Joan Bokaer, the Director of Theocracy Watch, a project of the Center for Religion, Ethics and Social Policy at Cornell University , who runs the encyclopedic web site theocracywatch.org, was on a speaking tour a few years ago in Iowa. She obtained a copy of a memo Pat Robertson handed out to followers at the Iowa Republican County Caucus. It was titled, "How to Participate in a Political Party" and read: "Rule the world for God." "Give the impression that you are there to work for the party, not push an ideology. "Hide your strength. "Don't flaunt your Christianity. "Christians need to take leadership positions. Party officers control political parties and so it is very important that mature Christians have a majority of leadership whenever possible, God willing." President Bush sends frequent coded messages to the faithful. In his address to the nation on the night of September 11, for example, he lifted a line directly from the Gospel of John when he said "And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness will not overcome it." He often uses the sentence "when every child is welcomed in life and protected in law," words taken directly from a pro-life manifesto entitled "A Statement of Pro-Life Principle and Concern." He quotes from hymns, prayers, tracts and Biblical passages without attribution. These phrases reassure the elect. They are lost on the uninitiated. CHRIST THE AVENGER The Christian Right finds its ideological justification in a narrow segment of the Gospel, in particular the letters of the Apostle Paul, especially the story of Paul's conversion on the road to Damascus in the Book of Acts. It draws heavily from the book of Revelations and the Gospel of John. These books share an apocalyptic theology. The Book of Revelations is the only time in the Gospels where Jesus sanctions violence, offering up a vision of Christ as the head of a great and murderous army of heavenly avengers. Martin Luther found the God portrayed in Revelations so hateful and cruel he put the book in the appendix of his German translation of the Bible. These books rarely speak about Christ's message of love, forgiveness and compassion. They focus on the doom and destruction that will befall unbelievers and the urgent need for personal salvation. The world is divided between good and evil, between those who act as agents of God and those who act as agents of Satan. The Jesus of the other three Gospels, the Jesus who turned the other cheek and embraced his enemies, an idea that was radical and startling in the ancient Roman world, is purged in the narrative selected by the Christian Right. The cult of masculinity pervades the ideology. Feminism and homosexuality are social forces, believers are told, that have rendered the American male physically and spiritually impotent. Jesus is portrayed as a man of action, casting out demons, battling the Anti-Christ, attacking hypocrites and castigating the corrupt. This cult of masculinity brings with it the glorification of strength, violence and vengeance. It turns Christ into a Rambo-like figure; indeed depictions of Jesus within the movement often show a powerfully built man wielding a huge sword. This image of Christ as warrior is appealing to many within the movement. The loss of manufacturing jobs, lack of affordable health care, negligible opportunities for education and poor job security has left many millions of Americans locked out. This ideology is attractive because it offers them the hope of power and revenge. It sanctifies their rage. It stokes the paranoia about the outside world maintained through bizarre conspiracy theories, many on display in Pat Robertson's book The New World Order. The book is a xenophobic rant that includes vicious attacks against the United Nations and numerous other international organizations. The abandonment of the working class has been crucial to the success of the movement. Only by reintegrating the working class into society through job creation, access to good education and health care can the Christian Right be effectively blunted. Revolutionary movements are built on the backs of an angry, disenfranchised laboring class. This one is no exception. The depictions of violence that will befall non-believers are detailed, gruesome and brutal. It speaks to the rage many believers harbor and the thirst for revenge. This, in large part, accounts for the huge sales of the apocalyptic series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. In their novel, Glorious Appearing, based on LaHaye's interpretation of Biblical Prophecies about the Second Coming, Christ eviscerates the flesh of millions of non-believers with the mere sound of his voice. There are long descriptions of horror, of how "the very words of the Lord had superheated their blood, causing it to burst through their veins and skin." Eyes disintegrate. Tongues melt. Flesh dissolves. The novel, part of The Left Behind series, are the best selling adult novels in the country. They preach holy war. "Any teaching of peace prior to [Christ's] return is heresy." said televangelist James Robison. Natural disasters, terrorist attacks, instability in Israel and even the fighting of Iraq are seen as signposts. The war in Iraq was predicted according to believers in the 9th chapter of the Book of Revelations where four angels "which are bound in the great river Euphrates will be released to slay the third part of men." The march towards global war, even nuclear war, is not to be feared but welcomed as the harbinger of the Second Coming. And leading the avenging armies is an angry, violent Messiah who dooms millions of non-believers to a horrible and painful death. THE CORRUPTION OF SCIENCE AND LAW The movement seeks the imprint of law and science. It must discredit the rational disciplines that are the pillars of the Enlightenment to abolish the liberal polity of the Enlightenment. This corruption of science and law is vital in promoting the doctrine. Creationism, or "intelligent design," like Eugenics for the Nazis, must be introduced into the mainstream as a valid scientific discipline to destroy the discipline of science itself. This is why the Christian Right is working to bring test cases to ensure that school textbooks include "intelligent design" and condemn gay marriage. The drive by the Christian Right to include crackpot theories in scientific or legal debate is part of the campaign to destroy dispassionate and honest intellectual inquiry. Facts become interchangeable with opinions. An understanding of reality is not to be based on the elaborate gathering of facts and evidence. The ideology alone is true. Facts that get in the way of the ideology can be altered. Lies, in this worldview, become true. Hannah Arendt called this effort "nihilistic relativism" although a better phrase might be collective insanity. The Christian Right has fought successfully to have Creationist books sold in national park bookstores in the Grand Canyon, taught as a theory in public schools in states like Alabama and Arkansas. "Intelligent design" is promoted in Christian textbooks. All animal species, or at least their progenitors, students read, fit on Noah's ark. The Grand Canyon was created a few thousand years ago by the flood that lifted up Noah's ark, not one billion years ago, as geologists have determined. The earth is only a few thousand years old in line with the literal reading of Genesis. This is not some quaint, homespun view of the world. It is an insidious attempt to undermine rational scientific research and intellectual inquiry. Tom Delay, following the Columbine shootings, gave voice to this assault when he said that the killings had taken place "because our school systems teach children that they are nothing but glorified apes who have evolutionized out of some primordial mud." (speech Delay gave in the House on June 16, 1999 ) "What convinces masses are not facts," Hannah Arendt wrote in Origins of Totalitarianism, "and not even invented facts, but only the consistency of the system which they are presumably part. Repetition, somewhat overrated in importance because of the common belief in the "masses" inferior capacity to grasp and remember, is important because it convinces them of consistency in time." (p.351) There are more than 6 million elementary and secondary school students attending private schools and 11.5 percent of these students attend schools run by the Christian Right. These "Christian" schools saw an increase of 46 percent in enrollment in the last decade. The 245,000 additional students accounted for 75 percent of the total rise in private school enrollment. THE LAUNCHING OF THE WAR Adams told us to watch closely what the Christian Right did to homosexuals. He has seen how the Nazis had used "values" to launch state repression of opponents. Hitler, days after he took power in 1933, imposed a ban on all homosexual and lesbian organizations. He ordered raids on places where homosexuals gathered culminating with the ransacking of the Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin . Thousands of volumes from the institute's library were tossed into a bonfire. Adams said that homosexuals would also be the first "deviants" singled out by the Christian Right. We would be the next. The ban on same sex marriages, passed by eleven states in the election, was part of this march towards our door. A 1996 federal law already defines marriage as between a man and a woman. All of the states with ballot measures, with the exception of Oregon, had outlawed same sex marriages, as do 27 other states. The bans, however, had to be passed, believers were told, to thwart "activist judges" who wanted to overturn them. The Christian family, even the nation, was under threat. The bans served to widen the splits tearing apart the country. The attacks on homosexuals handed to the foot soldiers of the Christian Right an easy target. It gave them a taste of victory. It made them feel empowered. But it is ominous for gays and for us. All debates with the Christian Right are useless. We cannot reach this movement. It does not want a dialogue. It cares nothing for rational thought and discussion. It is not mollified because John Kerry prays or Jimmy Carter teaches Sunday School. These naive attempts to reach out to a movement bent on our destruction, to prove to them that we too have "values," would be humorous if the stakes were not so deadly. They hate us. They hate the liberal, enlightened world formed by the Constitution. Our opinions do not count. This movement will not stop until we are ruled by Biblical Law, an authoritarian church intrudes in every aspect of our life, women stay at home and rear children, gays agree to be cured, abortion is considered murder, the press and the schools promote "positive" Christian values, the federal government is gutted, war becomes our primary form of communication with the rest of the world and recalcitrant non-believers see their flesh eviscerated at the sound of the Messiah's voice. The spark that could set it ablaze may be lying in the hands of an Islamic terrorist cell, in the hands of the ideological twins of the Christian Right. Another catastrophic terrorist attack could be our Reichstag fire, the excuse used to begin the accelerated dismantling of our open society. The ideology of the Christian Right is not one of love and compassion, the central theme of Christ's message, but of violence and hatred. It has a strong appeal to many in our society, but it is also aided by our complacency. Let us not stand at the open city gates waiting passively and meekly for the barbarians. They are coming. They are slouching rudely towards Bethlehem. Let us, if nothing else, begin to call them by their name. Chris Hedges, a reporter for The New York Times, is the author of War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning . He holds a Master of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School . His next book , Losing Moses on the Freeway: America 's Broken Covenant With The Ten Commandments is published by The Free Press. Note from Joan Bokaer - Chris refers to a memo I received in Iowa from Pat Robertson's organization. The year was 1986 -- two years before his presidential bid, and three years before the Christian Coalition was formed.
 If I Were President.
1. Immediately after taking the oath, I would begin seeking ways to remove our troops from Iraq, without lessening our commitment to ending terrorism. This will not be an easy task, but it is a task that needs doing. I would seek the advice and consent of the Congress in both these endeavors. 2. I would immediately rescind all Executive Orders involving the illegal use of domestic surveillance. I would encourage Congress to pass a bill requiring Congress to review every Executive Order involving any curtailment of the public’s right privacy and freedom of speech, within one hundred and twenty days from the order’s issue. This review may be handled by a specially appointed committees in each house and must involve and equal number of members from each of the major parties. A majority of votes will be required to endorse the Executive Order. A tie vote will mean that the Order is invalid. The Congress must review any Executive Order involving long-standing placement of military forces into any foreign soil. Only the Congress, under the Constitution, has the right to declare war. So-called “Police Actions” will be regarded as subject to the same restrictions. A select Congressional committee will have the right to subpoena each and every source of intelligence in open and secret, (where necessary) sessions so as they may be guided by a fuller knowledge. 3. We need to re-examine the concept of Free Trade. From where I sit they seem to have fostered the removal of jobs from America, crippled fair bargaining between the worker and employer and enriched the few at the expense of the many. A return to the concept of Fair Trade seems the best possible alternative. 4. Corporations own no loyalty to Governments, only to making money. International Corporations are doubly troublesome. New ways must be found to control monopoly and monitor political contributions. 5. I would strongly encourage the passage of the Matthew Shepard bill. I would also create a National Diversity Education Panel. How this panel would work will have to be devised, but it is certainly in the American interest to find ways to discourage any violations of the Constitutional right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I do realize that these goals, as stated, are simplistic and short on specifics. I am an expert on nothing. There are those, however, in the private specter, who have the specific expertise I lack. My emphasis would always be to seek the best person for the position and not fill positions based on political ties. Neither would I seek to surround myself with “yes” people. The primary job of a leader is to listen, first. Only then can that leader make balanced decisions. These, of course, are not the only problems that beset America. However, from my vantage point at this moment, they seem to be the most pressing. If I were President, I would begin with these. I hear the sigh of relief coming from some saying, “Thank God, you’re not!”
Ending the Violence On October 7, 1998, Matthew Shepard, a twenty-one year old college student was enticed into a car and then taken out into an isolated rural area and was brutally tortured, robbed, tied to a fence and left to die. He was found eighteen hours later. Five days later, he died of his injuries, never having regained consciousness. Russell Arthur Henderson and Aaron James McKinney, his attackers, had targeted him because he was gay. On February 12, 2008, 14-year-old Brandon David McInerney brought a gun to school and shot Lawrence King, his 15-year-old classmate twice in the head in front of twenty fellow eighth graders. Lawrence’s organs were harvested on February 14. Lawrence, openly cross gender gay, was frequently harassed and bullied by his classmates because of his sexuality and gender expression. Local authorities are moving to have McInerney tried as an adult, with the added charge of having committed a hate crime. California, the state in which the King murder occurred, is one of a five states which legally protects students from bullying and harassment based on perceived, or actual, sexual orientation and gender expression. It has been ten years between these two incidents, but these incidents are not rare. All that separates them from the glut of similar incidents that happen every day to gay and gender crossing expression boys and girls, men and women, is their notoriety, the fact that someone died. After the Matthew Shepard murder, his mother has been spearheading a campaign to have crimes committed against gay and gender expression people, and people with disabilities acknowledged as hate crimes in the same way that crimes committed based on race, ethnicity, or religion are. She is still trying 10 years and five Congressional sessions later. Even if it should pass, this session, the President, George W. Bush, with the support of the majority of his party, has declared he will veto it. It seems a curious irony that the Party that pretends towards “Family Values”, is the same party that works against adding the Shepherd bill to the current bill legislation in, not only the Federal government, but in every local venue as well. Because it would admit that Gays, Lesbians, Transgender persons and the disabled are special groups in need of extra protection against violence committed against them specifically for their being, this same group opposes any anti-bullying/harassment efforts in schools and/or children’s groups. Bullies exist in every society, in every sect of society. The common wisdom is that, among children (males, especially), learning to deal with them is a necessary rite of passage. Adult intervention, except in the most serious cases, should be minimal. “Fight back”, “Fight your own battles” (translation, meet force with force) was the advice my parents and my teachers gave me. I am sure that same advice has been given, countless times, to other children by the responsible adult in charge. While it has never been voiced overtly, bullies are considered natural leaders and are covertly admired. Bullies get things done. Remember how proud we all were when George W. Bush, dressed in flight ready fatigues, landed on the USS Lincoln to declare victory in Iraq. The only caveat attached to a bully, by most, is that they bully someone else. That has to change. Anti-bullying efforts in the public space, anti-hate crime legislation will not be the whole answer, but they will be a beginning. Tyrants of conformity must be challenged wherever they arise. At the same time, we must be careful to protect the rights of those who disagree with us, however unpalatable their ideas. They, short of incitement, must be allowed to express those beliefs. Actions are punishable, ideas should not be. Ideas must be confronted by ideas. One thing that schools might do to lessen the effects of bullying, is to sponsor support groups for gay, lesbian and transgender students with the same care and enthusiasm with which they sponsor a math club. Another is to hold classes in diversity training. No age is too young to begin to expose children to the fact of diversity. Maybe we can raise a generation in which the Matthew Shepherds and Lawrence Kings can grow and flourish into the adults they were meant to be.
 I’ll Never Forget Whatis Name I wish I could blame it on “senior moments” and maybe, sometimes, it is, but the truth is I’ve never been good with names. I can be speaking of someone I’ve known my whole life, describe them to police artist perfection, and yet, not remember their names. I remember Maryann as Rosemary, John P. as Hector. Worse, I don’t remember their names at all, even when they are near nose touching in front of me. Conversely, I could remember, as a kid, every actor’s, name, down to the bit players, in every film I ever saw. I can still remember a number of those “bit players“ names, for example, Charles Lane, Mary Treen, Mary Wickes, H.B. Warner, to name just a few. I could tell you the name of every Oscar winner to 1956. I could tell you the name of the picture for which the won it, and nine times out of ten, their character’s name. What I couldn’t tell you was the name of the person who sat next to me in class, Johnny S. being the exception, but then, I was in love with Johnny. Here, at Balmoral, I hardly know the names of most of the nurses and/or CNAs. Of course, the high turnover is no help. I could never remember street names, either. It was enough that I knew how to get to where I wanted to go. I didn’t want to bother with the inconsequential. In California, I lived for years not knowing what intersections I lived between. They were small streets; they didn’t matter. The address was the important detail. As a youngster, I got into trouble, often, because of what was considered my inattention to detail. What no one seemed to understand was that my sense of what was an important detail wasn’t the same as their idea. When interested, I could be more precise than was often necessary. I have told the story of a classmate at a re-union who answered my wondering that I was being so well received when I didn’t think anybody really liked me with, “Hell, we all liked you. It was just that you were on channel 7 when the rest of us were on channel 5!” I’m still trying to work out whether that was a compliment or an insult. I think I must have been born on channel 7. The mundane, day-to-day, just doesn’t hold any interest for me. So, if I’ve forgotten your name, it isn’t that I don’t care, it’s just my different drummer is making too much noise for me to hear it.
 Pope Benedict XVI, present Supreme Pontiff of The Roman Catholic church came to town, this week. I don’t remember being able to speak out of both sides of the mouth as a gift of the Holy Spirit, but if it is, this Pope is mightily blessed. At the White House, with the press corps present, he told the American people, through his audience with George Bush, our own theologian of great renown, that America was to be praised as a nation where strong religious belief can coexist with secular society. Later, among his own bishops, he warned of the “subtle influence of secularism.” He avowed, “Any tendency to treat religion as a private matter must be resisted.” Pat Robertson, Osama bin Laden, make room on the club couch for Benny. Perhaps the Pope has forgotten that Secularism in government arose because of the abuses of religious temporal power in Western Europe when the Church not only had the ears and temporal/spiritual throats of most of their kings, but claimed vast areas of land as its own personal temporal kingdom. In this earthly kingdom, they permitted no dissent, theologically or otherwise. “Heretics” were roundly dispatched, and to even question the Church’s temporal politics was considered, by the Church, as a close cousin to heresy. In the argument of Faith vs. Reason, Religion always places Faith as paramount. Witness the Galileo controversy in 17th century, or before him, the fate of Giordano Bruno. Faith said the earth was the center of the Universe and observation and experiment be damned. In our own day we have the Creationist, Intelligent Design proponents, as current example of Faith over Reason. Regarding Galileo, the currant Pope, in 1990, then merely Cardinal Ratzinger, quoted philosopher Paul Feverbend, “The Church at the time of Galileo kept much more closely to reason than did Galileo himself, and she took into consideration the ethical and social consequences of Galileo's teaching too. Her verdict against Galileo was rational and just and the revision of this verdict can be justified only on the grounds of what is politically opportune.” The Cardinal did not openly agree (or disagree) with Mr. Feverbend, but he did say that it would be foolish to construct an apology to Galileo. In other words, it doesn’t matter that he, Galileo, was right, only that he questioned the then doctrine of Faith. I’m not picking on the Pope, or Catholicism. When the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock, among the first things they did was forbid any other belief system in their midst. Religion, as opposed to Spirituality, is about control. Every religion, every sect of a religion, believes it has the patent on truth and all others are errors and must not be tolerated. Only they, based on whatever documents/legends of questionable authorship, have a direct connection to God. Adherents to a particular religion will lie, cheat and murder for their good cause. The Christian religion, (which is the religion with which I am most familiar) countenanced inhumane movements such as enslavement and found Bible verses to support it, claiming it as approved by their Deity. The problem is (among others), is that The Southern Baptist Deity is different from the Episcopalian who is different fro the Jehovah Witness Deity, and we won’t even mention the Mormons. Plus, in a pluralistic society such as we have, there are other myths than the Christian one. There are even those who have no Deity. Shall we just tell then to “convert or get the hell out.” Go home, Benny and mind your own business. By the way, the Papacy apologized for the treatment of both Galileo and Bruno. It only took them 400 years to do it. Victims of clergy abuse, I wouldn’t hold my breath for any meaningful change in the near future.
Propeller and Porn: One Man’s Rant. I received a couple of messages (from the same person) in my http://gay.propeller.com/ mailbox, recently, asking me to please stop sinking their entries. Their entries were links to porn sites. Now, I have nothing against porn, especially gay porn. I have enjoyed many an hour, over many a year, watching hot men making it. Porn is always an enjoyable exercise in fantasy, my personal Harry Potter/Oz tales, so to speak. I also know how to find porn when I want it. Porn, and how to find it, is not, however, the reason for which I subscribe to Propeller. I subscribe to Propeller because it is a handy and efficient way to keep up with news pertaining to my particular interest, i.e., all things that affect my gay place in the world. I am not a patient man. I don’t want to spend my limited time scrolling past porn sites looking for news. I particularly don’t like accessing a site that advertises itself as news, with a catchy social comment, only to find that the comment is misdirection. I don’t think I would mind, so much, if the porn site ads/spam were limited to an occasional annoyance, but excessively often, they take up whole Propeller pages. As a committed gay man, a “Huge Collection of Erotic and Nude Photography! Naked women, nude girls, nude woman, beautiful nude women, nude female models, sexy nude babes” has an extremely limited, if any, appeal to me. Not being a borderline, or other, pedophile, I have no erotic interest in “twinks,” either. I did, once, but that was when I was a twink, so many turns of the earth ago. Even then, though, I had a passion for older men. I have written to the Propeller site moderators, and they have assured me they are aware of the problem and are diligent about keeping spam to a minimum, but for every inappropriate site they lop off, like a digital hydra, three more take its place. I’m not sure it’s a battle they can win by themselves; they need a little help. I’m delighted to offer my services, especially on days when I wake P.Oed. Let me be fair. There isn’t only porn spam on the Propeller site, and I have wielded my sink axe on a variety of that spam, as well. Porn links are, by far, however, the largest offenders. Quite often, the same link is presented in an uninterrupted series of postings. One solution could be for Propeller to offer a channel for Porn in the same way they offer channels for other special interests. Then again, that may be too bald a solution. The idea behind advertising is not to get the already consumer, but the maybe one. So, to (s)he who asked me to stop sinking their entries, I am sorry, nothing personal, but your offerings annoy me. As long as they get in the way of how I want to use the site, I am going to sink them. That’s why the button is there.
 She Who Was My Mother
Audrey Honzik Weaver was born on April 6, 1919 (d. 1984). She was born in Antigo (Neva) Wisconsin and was the first daughter, second child, of Frederick Honzik and Mabel Nowatny Honzik. Frederick died in 1932, killed by a falling tree limb. Mabel died in 1956. Audrey was thirteen years old when her father died. His death left a hole in her life from which Audrey never recovered. Fred and Mabel were farmers coming from a long line of farmers. After Fred’s death, Mabel kept and ran the farm until at least 1948. I visited, once as a small child, but my only memory of the visit was in being carried by Aunt Irma through the barn. I remember the smell of the barn, which I did not appreciate. I still don’t apprecia |
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