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9月30日 Palin ComparisonI have never been comfortable with any particular political ideology, and find no home with any party. Maybe this is has its roots in my being wary about joining groups, but I’d like to think it is the wisdom of age that makes me realise that opinions and stands evolve with age and experience, and that what might have been true for me twenty, or even ten years ago, may not be true to me now. A back-story to the next paragraph; I forget what the conversation was about and I think it was when I was 13 or 14, but I remember exactly where my mother and I were standing in the kitchen. I was standing in the doorway to the dining room, and she was in front of the stove, stirring some pot on the right front burner. And Mum said to me, ‘You’re a liberal thinker.’ ‘What does that mean?’ ‘You’re a free thinker.’ And that’s what I always thought a Liberal was, someone who was not beholden to any ideology; someone who investigated all sides of an issue before coming up with an informed opinion. Therefore I am flummoxed that ‘Liberal’ has become a dirty word in American politics, and a sign of a wet in British politics. From what I have been able to garner from my meagre political sleuthing, a liberal is actually what a Conservative should be. Thoughtful, inquisitive, tempered by reason, prudent and deliberative. Actually, what anyone entrusted with governance should be. So I find myself picking and choosing what I like from across the political spectrum. Social liberal, fiscal conservative. Don’t spend more than you have, though some debt keeps the economy afloat. There’s no reason wealthy countries can’t afford universal health care and high standards of education (the train wreck of the Britain’s NHS notwithstanding). Having independent watchdogs on finance, law, and business, and generally teaching people to fish rather than giving them fish. But also making sure that those folk who cannot rightfully hold the fishing pole are taken care of. I’m sure that makes for a political muddle which is why I should probably never be allowed near public office. But I have always believed that public service is a noble endeavour, and particularly when I worked for the U.S. government. When I became a lowly civil servant, I was made to take the same oath that any U.S. President takes on Inauguration Day: I, [name], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God. I always let the God bit slip, because it was my word, not God’s, and if I couldn’t adhere to the oath, God would be no use. Anyway, I was rendering unto Mammon. God wasn’t innit. Perhaps all this is naïve of me. But at my cousin’s home in New Hampshire four years ago, I saw this and it made me think of the America my father had come to and served in the US Navy for in 1944, and why he was so disappointed in America before he died. I and my mother were far more sceptical, but my father believed in America. I posted what is below in another forum this afternoon. I’ve always thought politics was highly entertaining. I never thought it would become farce. Bearing in mind that, what has struck in the past few weeks as America lurches from crisis to chaos is that Senator McCain has evinced the same contempt for the American electorate as the Bush/Cheney/Rove cabal has shown in the past eight years. · Pretending to suspend his campaign · Picking Palin as a sop to the Hillary voters · Parading the Palin family in the public eye, then crying "foul!" when the press goes after them · Gunning for televising Barstool Palin's shotgun wedding before the election · Grandstanding in DC while the economy tanks and saying, well, nothing, because none of his seven houses face foreclosure · Gunning for drilling when he knows damn well the pumps won't see a drop for at least 10 years · Touting Palin's foreign policy creds because Alaska's next door (maybe she can fix this Wall St. mess, she lives next to an ATM?) How can he believe people swallow this stuff? I don't want a maverick in the White House, thank you, it's time that job was given to a grown-up. And I don't want someone "just like us" an old man's heartbeat away from the job. I want someone whose bar is higher, A LOT higher, and McCain’s standards are so patently low. Sarah Palin has the intellect of a doorknob, and that's exactly how McCain is using her; as a doorknob to the Oval Office. A doorknob with lipstick, sheesh, can these people be serious? My vote's in. 4月9日 The Silent Clowns of SW1Dan Kieran’s article in this week’s Sunday Times struck a nerve. In an effort to examine how far Blair’s Britain had come from the ancient rights of democracy that had their birth in English soil, he had arranged to meet a man called Neil Goodwin dressed as Charlie Chaplin in Parliament Square. The location is significant, because of the Serious and Organised Crime and Police Act of 2005. Section 132 outlines an exclusion zone of one kilometre outside the Houses of Parliament where no spontaneous demonstration is allowed.
( Goodwin, a seasoned protester, and in full costume as Charlie Chaplin, asked Kieran to accompany him to Downing Street, adding that his girlfriend would leave him if he got arrested again. In front of Number 10, the crowds had their photos taken with him, and when a policeman came to arrest him, he brandished a sign saying, "Not Aloud". Throughout his caution and subsequent by the police, the crowds were at various times in stitches of laughter, guffaws, or disbelief that protest was not allowed outside the home of the Prime Minister, or once they learned of the law, within a 1000 metres of Parliament.
Kieran is suitably indignant and promises to organise a cricket match in Parliament Square to emphasise that this law is not cricket. I’ll take the statement further in that, if there was any doubt that Tony Blair is not in thrall to the Bush Regency, then the 2005 law is it. In Bush's America, dissent has become the hallmark of disloyalty. In Blair's London it has become a crime.
That Tony Blair sets an exclusion zone of protest around Parliament does violence to a thousand years of democratic evolution. Kieran points out that just up the river form Westminster lies an island with no marker, no monument, no plaque that marks is as the birthplace of arguably all western democratic thought. Next to the memorial to Kennedy at Runnymede is the place where an ancient document was signed that is the basis for the Parliamentary Democracy, the Declaration of Human Rights, the U.S. Constitution, Voltaire’s quotation on free speech, the French Revolution and virtually all of modern democratic government. Nearly a thousand years of human political history was all born Yet just down river, Blair’s government decrees that free speech, the right of assembly and the right of protest are criminal acts around the Mother of Parliaments? Is anyone paying attention? If security is an issue, then yes, I would gladly see Guy Fawkes do his duty for a set of buildings that aren’t that old anyway and resemble Miss Haversham’s wedding cake in the last stages of decay. The buildings aren’t the point. How can we credibly look Mugabe’s Zimbabwe in the face and pontificate about basic freedoms? How do we dare dictate terms of unlawful seizure to Iran when a man impersonating a silent clown is arrested in Downing Street? It used to be true, if Cecil Rhodes is to be believed, that to be born an Englishman is like winning first prize in the lottery of life. I was born a child of the Empire and learned from my grandmother and my mother that, right and wrong, England was the bearer of many gifts to the world. I still hold this to be true. But for all the good Tony Blair has done in his time, to isolate SW1A from free speech, does Runnymede 800 years’ worth of damage. To paraphrase Robert Bolt, "This isn’t America; this is England!" 9月12日 Still Voices ReduxOver the past week or so, I have been deliberately avoiding reading any stories in the British or American press concerning 9/11. Partly because I’m sick of all the jingoistic mawkishness that goes with such coverage. But more so that I think that, after five years, the grief of those who lost a loved one that day should be left a private thing, away from the Oprah-esque window that seems to have become the entitlement of the news whores and their pimps. I wasn’t there. I lost no one, though I was brushed by the events of that day. No amount of news coverage is going to connect me to the eternal grief that others live with, a grief they do not have sole ownership of because of the nature of the theft. Having said that, because I believe grief is a very private thing that is shared only because you want to, the address given by President Bush yesterday seemed to me the words of a liar and a thief. To use the grief of the families present, the grief of a city and that of a nation, to re-conflate a heinous day in history with his gratuitous war, one where he had already admitted had no connection with 9/11, is an obscenity. Iraq is an element of the warraturrah, but only because the tail wagged the dog. Goddam Insane was already a has-been, long before 9/11. The spectacular incompetence of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld have turned Iraq into a venue for terror that cannot now be ignored, because the US made it that way. The US broke it, now they own it. All because Chimpy McFlightsuit needed to prove himself to Poppy. His choice of L’Etranger by Camus as summer reading I thought was a tacky move by Rove to up his intelli-creds. Perhaps Death of a Salesman would have been more apt. Biff as Pres. But Biff was an honorable man. George W. Bush is a liar and a thief. All of us civil servants take the exact same oath of office he did at his Inaugural. It sickens me that this odious little man perverts that oath. Why the United States was willing to impeach a president who lied about a blow job, but gratuitously and sheepishly follows a president who lied about war, serves to the rest of us to believe in the wonder of America, and ignore her lapses into ridiculousness. The danger of that lies in the present administration, where the lunatics have taken over the turnip truck, and the first to fall off has been elected as "it". Forgive the invective, it was merely meant as prelude. I post below a piece I wrote spontaneously on this day five years ago. Long before the blog explosion and at a time when dissent was seen as unpatriotic by those who forgot that America was born of dissent. They still don’t remember that. I dissented on September 12th, 2001. I do so again today. Still Voices 12th September, 2001 In three extremely long hours, I think I came to know terror. I knew she had been evacuated ('They're evacuating us, I'll call you') and there were several reports of car bombs at the State Department. Then silence. She finally turned up at a suburban Maryland Metro station and her father and I went down to get her. Cool as a cucumber. Of course she knew where she was all along. When I first heard, I was in Annapolis and raced back to Baltimore, breaking all speed limits; I just followed the state trooper in front of me. Walking in the back door and seeing Rosie's face like an open wound. Nobody had called, nobody knew anything. She had been watching on the telly. Alex was home from school. 'I have to tell Miles about the planes crashing into the building! It was so cool!' Then, and only a five-year-old can do this, 'Is Mummy dead?' The prospect of having to answer that question, too real at the time, chills me still. I can't think of the 5,000 dead. It's too big. One of Stalin's statistics. You can't think in that capacity of people who will never go home, of dinner planned last night and abandoned, of children who will never be hugged again, because their photos that used to be on a desk at work lie amidst tons of rubble. I worry about the backlash. Not that they'll hunt down the brains behind this; one cannot slake the human need for vengeance with reason. But the knee-jerk reactions that follow. America has such a difficult time understanding the world and is genuinely stupefied at the way the world sees her. It in no way mitigates the appalling nature of this catastrophe that it was to be expected. Not deserved, but not unexpected. My cousin in Colorado knew immediately it was 'the fuckin A-rabs'. I said it was dangerous to jump to conclusions, that she may be right, but we don't know yet. Oh come on! she said, you know it was them. I said I didn't know anything beyond the gross headache I had which I was going to replace with a hangover. Then the BBC (and everybody else) shows Palestinians dancing in the streets. And I gave up trying to understand anybody. Being overfed with stereotypes gives me heartburn. I've lived with Islam, and I've lived in the Arab world. And most people there are a bunch of ordinary joes, trying to make a living, do their best by their families, and in many cases, trying to know God. I said to the cousin in Colorado that bin Loaded and his merry bunch do not represent Islam, any more than the Palestinians dancing in the street represent peace and enlightenment. That very few believe that the man dying on that plane as it hit the south tower is going to get him to heaven with 17 virgins. They are the lunatic fringe, the Jerry Falwells of their ilk. The problem is they come from a culture, not a religion, that advocates an eye for an eye, in much the same way that our death penalty operates. Islam decries suicide as a sin. Go straight to hell, do not collect 17 virgins. What they do not understand is that their grievances are not against Americans. In most cases the people that died yesterday are a bunch of ordinary joes, trying to make a living, do their best by their families, and in many cases, trying to know God. Their grievances are against a government they perceive as selfish, introverted, manipulative, greedy and oppressive of any body politic or cultural that gets in the way of their ham-fisted efforts to turn a buck. We see them as radical anarchists hell bent on destroying freedom and democracy for their own nefarious, godless purposes. The truth lies nowhere near the middle. Which is why this is a wake-up call. When you don't listen to people, they become frustrated and eventually lash out in any way they can simply to get you to acknowledge their presence. I'm not talking about bin Laden, who is an aberration made all the more dangerous by the certainty of his beliefs. I'm talking about ordinary people who are threatened by a culture they don't understand. I'm talking about governments who bank on this fear and ignorance to keep them in power because they have no other legitimacy. I'm talking about a body politic that has for decades put its own interests first, rather than those of the common weal; that has the resources to do it and has become arrogant and complacent in its power and thus cannot understand why anyone would not want what it wants and is befuddled by attempts at resistance. I remember wondering why, when we lived in Cairo, we had to live in a building surrounded by a high wall with broken glass at the top, with 24-hour security guards, and car inspections at the gate. Where did this kraal mentality come from? What went wrong in the discourse? What have we done to so piss off the world that we're meant to engage that we have to live with such trappings of fear? Precisely because we're not engaging it. We've supported Israel all these years, not because it's right (it is, still, only we've forgotten why) but because the politicos fear losing a powerful voting block. They listen to the votes and not to the issue. You cannot forward the dialogue of peace by walking away simply because it is saying something you don't want to hear. We are not responsible for what happened yesterday, but we do have a responsibility to listen to those voices of dissent before they resort to a more violent vernacular. Because when we don't, the cost is paid by a bunch of ordinary joes, trying to make a living, do their best by their families, and in many cases, trying to know God. They know God now.
3月18日 Contention of the DayContention of the Day I posted the quotation from March 15th on a message board I contribute to as an example the need for church/state separation. An ulterior motive was to spark debate on that specific subject, and so I stressed the caveat that the context of civil partnerships, was just that, a context. I try to avoid the topic of homosexuality in this forum, not because it is not welcome, but because it begins a feeding frenzy amongst the fanatics. This makes me want to put my head in the oven. Anyway, the thread on the board can be found here. My counter posting is below. Bold text and italics are mine.Some interesting points there. Why place your hand on the bible at all if it is not a valid testament to truth? And those Jewish and Muslim members of Congress? By swearing on the Torah or the Koran, are they too swearing an oath on a valid testament of truth? And if scripture is "the defining standard of right and wrong" are then their oaths invalid? (The Senator) does have an obligation to make sure the amendments to the Constitution maintain a reflection of its influence as the standard for defining right and wrong as long as the majority of the people it governs recognizes it as the same.The senator didn’t say that. The senator made no mention of his constituents at all. The senator stated that "…my Bible says that marriage shall occur only between a man and a woman. What do you have to say about that?" And that was Professor Ruskin’s point to him: the senator doesn’t represent the Bible, he represents the people of his constituency. He didn’t even say The Bible, he said My Bible. If that is the authority on which he bases his political mandate, then he is in violation of his oath of office. Frankly, I don’t think he represents the Bible or his constituents, but whatever it is that will get him elected. (Suicide is) not only is it condemned in the Bible, but it is also condemned as an acceptable course of action by the courts. Suicide is condemned in the courts, because it is condemned in the Bible, not on its own merits. This concept is patently ridiculous. Will the courts apply the death penalty to suicides? In any case, if the rights endowed by the Creator are seen as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, how can the legislature then deny the antithesis of these rights to an individual for himself? I’ll not get into the subject of assisted suicide because that is not the issue here. The Constitution is an instrument that guarantees and enshrines the rights of the people. When it becomes an instrument to specifically deny rights to a segment of the population, even if at the behest of the majority, then I do think it violates the Framers’ intent. The Constitution is a unique document precisely because it was framed to avoid the tyranny of the majority. As Madison wrote in The Federalist Papers, as observed by de Toqueville, "it is of paramount importance to protect the weak against the strong, and prevent the oppression of fractious majorities. Madison argues that the real danger is the tyranny of the legislature, which is so exposed to the whims of the majority." At present, the majority of voting Americans still think that marriage is defined as a union of a man and a woman. Like the senator, you weren’t listening. The subject was civil partnerships. Marriage as defined by several liturgies is a holy, and thus not secular estate. Governments therefore have no business meddling with them. Conversely, civil partnerships are just that, a civil matter, and religion has no business meddling in them. That most people cannot make that distinction muddies the water of this debate. Marriage under holy sanction carries the rights and responsibilities it does only because they are granted such under law. They are, in effect, civil partnerships blessed by the church. Civil partnerships have already long existed and it would be interesting to see the numbers of heterosexual civil partnerships not under holy sanction as opposed to those that are. Same sex couples are not after any "special rights" in this regard, but only that their life-long commitments to one another be accorded the same rights under law as anyone else’s. Holy sanction of these unions is not the government’s purview. Anyhow, how withholding rights from Americans is meant to stave off a threat to "traditional" marriage that already has a divorce rate approaching 60%, none of its proponents has been able to credibly address.
3月15日 Quotation of the DayI love this. From Wayne Besen's site.
In Annapolis, (Capital of) Maryland, at a hearing on the proposed Constitutional Amendment to prohibit gay marriage, Jamie Raskin, professor of law at AU, was requested to testify and he did so. At the conclusion of his testimony, a right-wing senator rose to say, "Mr. Raskin, my Bible says that marriage shall occur only between a man and a woman. What do you have to say about that?" Raskin: "Senator, when you took your oath of office, you placed your hand on the Bible and swore to uphold the Constitution. You did not place your hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible." 1月31日 Pass the Danish
Driving home from work this afternoon and listening to the BBC story of the Danish Cartoon Debacle, I heard reports of the boycott of Arla Foods, a Danish-Swedish dairy conglomerate, as their sales in the Middle East ground to a complete halt. I didn’t cheer, as this would inevitable mean people being thrown out of their jobs, but I did spare a silent huzzah. We in the West rant and rave, sometimes is an insufferably sanctimonious fashion, about the lack of democracy in the Middle East but here was a loud-and-clear example of democracy at work. People didn’t like what they heard and voted on it with their wallets. The West should be cheering.
In the West we have freedom of speech, and it is rightly one of the most zealously guarded freedoms. At times it is abused, that is true, and it often shines as a beacon to the silliness of people who think they can say what they like and any consequences arising from that is a in infringement of freedom of speech. What most of the pundits and political blow-hards in this scenario overlook, is that with every freedom comes an attendant responsibility and one of those responsibilities is to face the consequences of what you say, and how you act out your freedoms.
The Danish Government understood this. Arla’s executive director called on the Danish government to take action and, ‘enter a positive dialogue with the many millions of Muslims who feel they have been insulted by Denmark.’ Denmark didn’t insult millions of Muslims, a newspaper did. In refusing to chastise or even comment on the publication of the offending cartoons, the Danish government shored up freedom of the press because governments have no more business bailing out the press than they have in trying to curtail it. Freedom of the Press is just that: free to say what it will and be responsible for the consequences.
What this situation demonstrates is the healthy the separation of Church and State that exists in our society because we tolerate parody of religion, the present idiotic Race and Religious Hatred Bill before Parliament. The Fourth Estate is just as useful a tool in keeping the Church honest as it is Government. We can roll our eyes at the attempts to transform Christmas into a generic soulless ‘Holiday’, we can stare gob-smacked at Santa Claus crucified in a Japanese department store Christmas display, and then we can shake our heads and move on, but we can only do that as a function of the way our society has evolved and the social mechanisms that are in place that evolved with it and guided it. That’s what we can do.
What we forget in the hubris of living in the best big idea is that to other societies this is not the best big idea. The portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad in satire is a VERY BIG DEAL to the people for whom it is a very big deal. It is insulting to Muslims. That the Danish papers had the right to publish the cartoons is not the issue here. What is at issue is that they have to face the consequences of their right to do so. These consequences have played themselves out in a fairly peaceful fashion. So far. Flags have been burned and businesses boycotted. But we allow that here, don’t we?
And what has our response been? To attack the intolerance of those objecting voices. The disingenuousness of this is breath-taking. Societies living under totalitarian regimes, where there is no freedom of the press, where people have few choices, where they don’t get to hear the various sides of the debate to add an informed voice to the discourse, where the freedom to turn a dinar to give your family a good life is restricted to the oligarchy, be it political or economic. Democracy and the attendant freedoms and tolerance we take for granted has always been predicated on a thriving middle class. Its absence in the Middle East is not news. In such conditions societies will fall back on their faith, however doctrinaire it may be. And we accuse them of intolerance? By what yardstick can they possibly stand to face such an accusation? In any case, the old chestnut ‘Don’t complain about me because you’re worse!’ in use by both sides, is an argument best left to the playground.
Andrew Sullivan in his blog wrote: Here are some of the cartoons depicting Mohammed that have caused so many Islamists to go nuts. I see nothing wrong with them. Yes, they're blasphemous to strict Muslims. So what? Free countries do not ban blasphemy. Compared to the real blasphemy of extremist Muslims murdering innocent civilians, these cartoons are pitifully tame.
No, Mr. Sullivan, you don’t see anything wrong with them, you’re not a Muslim. Do you think Christ depicted as a redneck wouldn’t get hackles up in America’s Bible Belt? They’re blasphemous to Islam, you don’t get to decide which part. And yes, you’re right, free countries do not ban blasphemy. Just which countries do you think are objecting to this? Democratic, secular Iceland? And to compare these cartoons to ‘extremist Muslims murdering innocent civilians’ is apples and oranges. Extremists are extremists, no matter that they invoke their faith in their actions. The Koran is explicit in condemning the slaughter of innocents. You may as well call Fred Phelps a Christian, it makes as much sense. Call him and other extremists what they are: sickopaths.
It is equally as disingenuous of those who voice their disgruntlement to these publications to do so now when the offending articles were published in October. It is also dishonest of their governments to raise their fists in humbug when those very governments suppress the voices of their own people. What is beyond dispute is the right of a group to object to something that they find offensive in a peaceful fashion. The boycott of Arla’s products is neither undemocratic nor illegal and is an age-old instrument of free speech.
Why aren’t we cheering? 11月28日 The Schlub Strikes Back
I was inspired by a doctor for this, and think it’s time for a bit of silliness. Or at least, some calculated bitchery, which I always love. The doctor based his list on his profession and so I do on mine. I work for the US government, and this list is for anyone with something to say about the idiocy of government. I am also English, so any contributions from refugees from Tony Blair’s particular brand of idiocy are welcome. Anyone willing to add to this list will be published, as long as it’s witty, funny, tongue in cheek, and takes absolutely nothing seriously. Here goes, as it comes, no order necessary.
DHS – Duct tape makes your Home Secure TSA – Tough Shit Arsehole Congressional Delegations to the EU – Christmas shopping Patriot Act – What’s on your bedside table? We know. US Govt. Contracting Regulations – by Halliburton and Bechtel US Foreign Aid – The Bank of Halliburton and Bechtel Compassionate Conservatism – I got mine, go get yours (see TSA) The Democratic Party – Slept through Brigadoon Pat Robertson - An argument against Intelligent Design Social Security Reform – Hillary’s revenge Faith Based Initiatives – We won’t supply money for condoms and trust women to say no No Child Left Behind – The Bell Curve WMD – War Mitigates Democracy Executive Privilege – What I say it is The Geneva Convention – What we say it is France – By command of Georgetown dinner parties, suppliers of wine and victuals Dick Cheney – the Joe McCarthy of our age, but he shouldn’t try to smile, he’s not very good at it, and should remain in an undisclosed location George W. Bush – trying to outdo Dad, except that Dad couldn’t do much of anything, and in any case I’m with Moses; bushes are for burning.
11月10日 AmmanListening to the BBC all day and surfing the various news sites, the bombings in Amman resonate with the same voice as the July bombings in London and New York in 2001. I hear voices going about their business, the music of a wedding party, hotel workers rushing along to their jobs, families dependent on them. I envision Amman, a city many colleagues have loved over the years, stained with the blood of its own children in a battle it had sought so long to avoid. I keep coming back to the wedding. I’ve attended Arab weddings, where the music is loud, the joy is raucous, the food abundant, the gossip vicious but happy, the bride and groom hoisted on to chairs and paraded around the room, the hour terribly late, the dancing till dawn. Not unlike when my brother-in-law was married under a chuppah in San Francisco last year. At its height, you can’t hear the gossip from the mother-in-law’s cousin over the din, and so you probably wouldn’t have registered her abbreviated cry of surprise as her body was ripped to the bone with shrapnel and her flesh stuck to the fresh painted wall behind you. This is the horror of these episodes, found in the mundane and boring suddenly altered into gore. Jordan has for decades walked a tight rope, with the late King Hussein siding himself with the West and yet brokering a fragile peace with Iraq and Israel. His son, King Abdullah, immediately realised the gravity of Jordan’s position, and maintained the tightrope position as one of the last hopes of a balance in the Middle East. When Bush, Sharon, Saddam, and Ahmadinejad sought polemics in Middle East politics, sought to upset this balance, the Jordanians stood their ground for balance, while risking this in their relations with Israel and the west. Amman did not deserve this. Some comments: Stuart Nutt, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Fahed Farouki, Amman, Jordan
FS , manchester UK
Chadi , Lebanon
Abdullah , Amman - JordanI have friends who worked under Najib Halaby, the father of H. M. Queen Noor, when he was director of the Federal Aviation Administration. A good friend had the high regard of the late King Hussein; another now works for H. M. Queen Rania. To a woman, they attest to the difficult position the Jordanians are in, their love of their land, their love of God, and the peace they seek. Amman will not brook this, and stands with London, Madrid and New York. My thoughts keep coming back to the wedding. Of listening to the groom on the BBC in my car this morning, talking of how he lost his father, and his new father-in-law. Of future wedding anniversaries that will always be tainted with horror and mourning. Of their children to be born who, along with Islamic and Jewish custom, cannot be named for the living, but will carry their grandparents’ names. Of a man and a woman holding on to each other joined by God, love and grief.
8月27日 Impressionism and ThreadsWhen I came out and came clean to myself about being gay, it was never meant to make a statement, stand up and be proud, beat my chest, or anything so nobly declarative. I simply knew that if I didn't do it I was going to die. You die a little every morning when you look at yourself in the shaving mirror and you're looking at a liar. You die a little every time you smile falsely when people coo over what a perfect couple you are. You die constantly when you live a lie with someone who put their trust and faith in you.
So, I never wanted to make a statement any bolder than to shave an honest face in the mirror. That and to look after my family as best I could in this, and keep the immense pain this can cause to a minimum. I never mean to be anymore than I am, which many close to me would argue is difficult enough. The politics of being gay, the culture, the scene never had much of an impact on me because I never identified myself as gay, just as a man, this one, and this one happens to be gay.
I like reading obituaries; that doesn't make me a necrophiliac.
It's not that I ignored the whole debate surrounding human rights, same-sex marriage, the vilification of a section of society, "don’t ask, don’t tell", or the other nonsense put forward because of an obscure reference in Leviticus (that anyone would hijack their own faith as a way of oppressing others is particularly odious, and is sadly not confined to Christianity, more of which on another posting). In 1994, I worked on the United Nations Conference on Population and Development, and it opened my eyes to the way in which politics, religion, and economic manipulation are used as tools of blackmail to keep women under a yoke, without so much as a say over their own bodies. It was not a leap to follow those threads back into the societal weave and begin to see patterns, parallel threads, lights and colours that, as I was losing the vice-grip of denial of my own nature, I could no longer ignore.
These were the Clinton years, and the raging debate that climaxed in the lunacy that is "don’t ask don’t tell". What stood out in all the noise was a comment by Colin Powell. I worked in Powell’s State Department and heard him speak in person many times; he is a fine man, and a brave one. In his answer to the question that, if the U.S. Army could be desegregated in 1946, why was it now suppressing a minority in its ranks that wished to serve, namely homosexuals? He replied there was no comparison in suppression of a people because of their skin colour, and homosexuals.
Well yes, general there is, and you made it with that statement. But you missed the point entirely. Those people hounded out of the forces wanted to serve out of loyalty to their country. You wanted them out because of the assumption their presence would be bad for morale. Balancing patriotism against prejudice, how did prejudice win in the heart of a black man?
Follow that thread a bit further into "don’t ask don’t tell". Having queers in the ranks is a problem once one asks, one tells. If the soldier, or sailor or airman is just as effective in their duties if they’ve been outed or not, then who exactly has the problem? That is why this story on the BBC in this morning’s news was so heartening. If Her Majesty’s Forces can use a Pride event for recruiting purposes, what the hell is wrong with the U.S. Military?When I came out at work, I did it selectively, to colleagues I trusted as friends, or to those for whom I knew it was a non-issue. Doing so in the U.S. Government can be dangerous as, even though there are anti-discriminatory policies in place, once they know, they can, and do, get you for something else. And there’s the lynchpin. Once they know. I’ve liked and admired Derek (not his name) for many years. He’s highly intelligent, witty, interested in so much, and great fun to be with. He’s also an evangelical Christian. I was warned off saying anything to him, but someone else "let it slip". Ever since, Derek has been decidedly cool towards me. Not because he’s changed, and certainly not because I have. He merely tripped over the rhinoceros that mysteriously appeared on his carpet. He knew. A little knowledge…. Maybe Derek will thaw, I don’t know, and I can’t and won’t try to change an entire army. I’m not in the business of taking just one aspect of who I am and politicising it. But I’ll continue to be as I always have been with Derek - his friend. That’s all I have. I’ll offer what sloped-shoulder support I can to a mate in California trying to hold on to the child he and his partner want to adopt. And when my own children succumb to the waves of images and stereotypes that tell them being gay is a pejorative, their mother and I will pull them out of the water, towel them off, and gently prepare them for the day when they discover their father is not the pejorative, the epithet, the stereotype. Reworking the fabric, one thread at a time. 7月26日 How Smart Are You?Heard on the BBC World Service this morning:
'A jury in the American state of Virginia will deliberate today on whether an inmate on death row is intelligent enough to be executed.'
I almost choked on my toothbrush. But wait, there's more. In today's Times of London:
...a Supreme Court ruling three years ago...declared it unconstitutional to execute the mentally retarded. But the intellectual stimulation he has received since his conviction is believed to have raised his IQ.
That's a bit like putting a death row inmate on a suicide watch. You smarten them up enough up enough so you can fry 'em.
So here's my question: Are you intelligent enough to be executed? Answers on a postcard to 'Under Brian's Rock'. 7月19日 This Really Makes Me BurnRead this first. Cut and paste if you have to. Get a free New York Times log on if you have to. Take your time. It's worth it.
It's not the delusional whackos at Love In Action (LIA) and their methodology that has me steamed in this affair. I don't use the term delusional whackos dismissively either. It's fundamental to the way they and the parents have approached this child's well-being. And it has nothing to do with the child being gay either, we could argue the whole nature/nurture aspect of sexuality (can you cure being straight?), but that's done in the article and in several more specialised publications than The New York Times.
LIA and the parents have missed the whole point, and that is Zach. Coming out can be an excruciating experience at any age for any variety of reasons. I say this with authority. Read Zach's blog; he speaks with his authority too. To come out in a straight laced prudish/prurient society in a conservative social era compounds the difficulty. To do so in a fundamentalist Christian family is an act of bravery. I'm not suggesting that Zach be shanghaied as a symbol of the gay rights movement and will be sore disappointed if he is, that would be obscene. Instead he has been shanghaied by his parents' and the LIA's religious beliefs. Both parties have focused on Zach's homosexuality as something to be cured, fixed, cut out. They seem to have bypassed Zach entirely. How does he feel about it? Is he having any trouble with his sexual leanings? What are they? How does he coincide being gay with his faith? Why did he feel so fearful that he could tell his friends before his parents? What love and support can we as parents give our son to deal with this? There is none. Because they're not dealing with Zach, they're dealing with 'this' by sending him off for Maoist re-education. Zach and all his worries, feelings and considerations are not the issue here. It's the gayness that needs to be fixed. Notice LIA accords gays and lesbians respect as citizens and God's children but the camp disallows camp behaviour and promotes manly pursuits. It can be a duck, but it musn't quack like a duck, walk like a duck, or swim like a duck or, God forbid, fuck like a duck. Any parent wants what's best for their child and will take all steps necessary when they believe their child is in danger or ill. And I'll concede that all we have to go on is the article. But there is no indication anywhere that Zach is being addressed, just the condition he has that needs to be corrected. We've thankfully gone past the era when homosexuality was seen as a mental disorder. I'm happy to concede there are religious prohibitions against it. I can even look fondly upon the quirkiness of the Catholic stand that gays are God's children too, and the product of His creation, though they must abstain from sex (perfect! let them be priests!). But that these parents and the LIA take the stand that there is something 'wrong' with Zach that needs 'fixing' at a time when just being 15 is difficult enough let alone being 15 and gay, speaks to me of hating the sin trumping loving the sinner. It's not the delusional whackos at Love In Action (LIA) and their methodology that has me steamed in this affair. I don't use the term delusional whackos dismissively either. It's fundamental to the way they and the parents have approached this child's well-being. And it has nothing to do with the child being gay either, we could argue the whole nature/nurture aspect of sexuality (can you cure being straight?), but that's done in the article and in several more specialised publications than The New York Times.
LIA and the parents have missed the whole point, and that is Zach. Coming out can be an excruciating experience at any age for any variety of reasons. I say this with authority. Read Zach's blog; he speaks with his authority too. To come out in a straight laced prudish/prurient society in a conservative social era compounds the difficulty. To do so in a fundamentalist Christian family is an act of bravery. I'm not suggesting that Zach be shanghaied as a symbol of the gay rights movement and will be sore disappointed if he is, that would be obscene. Instead he has been shanghaied by his parents' and the LIA's religious beliefs. Both parties have focused on Zach's homosexuality as something to be cured, fixed, cut out. They seem to have bypassed Zach entirely. How does he feel about it? Is he having any trouble with his sexual leanings? What are they? How does he coincide being gay with his faith? Why did he feel so fearful that he could tell his friends before his parents? What love and support can we as parents give our son to deal with this? There is none. Because they're not dealing with Zach, they're dealing with 'this' by sending him off for Maoist re-education. Zach and all his worries, feelings and considerations are not the issue here. It's the gayness that needs to be fixed. Notice LIA accords gays and lesbians respect as citizens and God's children but the camp disallows camp behaviour and promotes manly pursuits. It can be a duck, but it musn't quack like a duck, walk like a duck, or swim like a duck or, God forbid, fuck like a duck. Any parent wants what's best for their child and will take all steps necessary when they believe their child is in danger or ill. And I'll concede that all we have to go on is the article. But there is no indication anywhere that Zach is being addressed, just the condition he has that needs to be corrected. We've thankfully gone past the era when homosexuality was seen as a mental disorder. I'm happy to concede there are religious prohibitions against it. I can even look fondly upon the quirkiness of the Catholic stand that gays are God's children too, and the product of His creation, though they must abstain from sex (perfect! let them be priests!). But that these parents and the LIA take the stand that there is something 'wrong' with Zach that needs 'fixing' at a time when just being 15 is difficult enough let alone being 15 and gay, speaks to me of hating the sin trumping loving the sinner. |
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