I’m a little amazed that so many readers came back so quickly after the end of my hiatus, if yesterday’s comments are any indication. It’s nice to see you guys again. What isn’t nice, however, is the following headline:
(AP) The Netherlands’ highest court rejected a gay Iranian asylum seeker’s last-ditch bid to avoid deportation to Britain, where he fears authorities will send him back to Tehran and possible execution.
In a ruling published on its Web site Tuesday, the Council of State said Britain is responsible for Mehdi Kazemi’s case, because it was there that the 19-year-old first applied for asylum.
Gay rights campaigner Rene van Soeren said Kazemi’s Dutch lawyer was considering an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. The lawyer, Borg Palm, did not immediately return calls seeking comment. Boris van der Ham, a lawmaker who has taken up Kazemi’s cause, has tabled questions in Parliament asking the junior minister for immigration, Nebahat Albayrak, to lobby British authorities on Kazemi’s behalf. Albayrak should either urge Britain not to send Kazemi back to Iran or offer him asylum in the Netherlands, Van der Ham said in a telephone interview.
“There should be some political leadership,” he said. “I hope in Britain they will do it and otherwise we should take the boy.”
Kazemi is not expected to be deported before Albayrak has answered Van der Ham’s questions.
[...]The Netherlands relaxes its tough asylum laws for Iranian gays - virtually guaranteeing asylum to any who apply here - because of persecution they face at home. Britain, on the other hand, rejected Kazemi’s original asylum request.
Kazemi, 19, says he traveled to London to study English in 2005 and applied for asylum in Britain after learning that his lover in Iran had been executed for sodomy.
After British authorities rejected Kazemi’s application, he fled to mainland Europe and applied for asylum in the Netherlands.
However, because Kazemi had already applied for asylum and been rejected in Britain, the Dutch government is refusing to consider his case and insists he must be sent back to Britain. It cites the European Union’s 2003 Dublin Regulation, which declares that the member state where an asylum seeker first enters the EU is responsible for processing that person’s claim.
Tuesday’s court ruling upheld the Dutch position.
Palm said last week that Kazemi was in such despair he was on suicide watch in a center for rejected asylum seekers in the port city of Rotterdam.
Can the bureaucracy; this is someone’s life on the line. I feel like I’m watching a teenager say “Dad, can I go to the movies?” “Didn’t your mother already tell you no?” Or at least, that seems to be just how lightly courts are treating this case. I don’t care if Britain already rejected Kazemi’s asylum plea; they’re notorious for that, because the Home Office “doesn’t believe there’s a serious problem of persecution in Iran” (paraphrasing another article I read earlier today, can’t for the life of me find it now).
Right. They must be reading the same book as Iran’s president, who is still convinced that they don’t even have gays in Iran.
So because Britain’s Home Office has a stick lodged up their arses and don’t appear to be enjoying it (not enough lube, maybe?), the Netherlands - normally so tolerant, offering shelter to almost anyone who applies for asylum - won’t even bother with Kazemi’s case.
I hate politics.
How can people so blandly dismiss a person’s life on the basis of technicalities? How can so many people say “sorry, my hands are tied because of this document here, so sorry about that death thing”? I don’t even understand how lawmakers could sleep at night if they ever stopped to consider the number of lives needlessly ended by snarls of red tape and ridiculous policies.
The only hope right now, unless someone pulls some major strings, lies in one vague statement by Britain’s Border and Immigration Agency: “We examine with great care each individual case before removal and we will not remove anyone who we believe is at risk on their return.”
We’ll see where that gets Kazemi. Hopefully farther than it got Hassan Parhizkar.
You’ll have to excuse me if I have a little trouble managing “righteous outrage” this morning. I just turned in my resignation letter, ending my three-year prison term at Crappy Old Job, and I’m so euphoric I could float through the roof. If anything deserves righteous outrage, though, it’s this:
Man, I’m glad I don’t live in Oklahoma.
“The homosexual agenda is destroying this nation, okay? It’s just a fact.”
I would really love to find the laws of reality as written by right-wing nutjobs, because they continuously pull “facts” out of their red-spanked little arses that continuously conflict with reality as we know it. If they keep this up, they’re going to cause the implosion of the universe when their reality collides with standard reality and causes a temporospatial claudication to just swallow the whole shebang.
We are not destroying the nation. Not by a long shot. If there are any financial analysts out there, I’d love it if you could draw up a table of figures showing the increased contributions to the economy made by homosexuals who, even when living together, pay full taxes for two individuals (since we don’t get tax cuts for marriage or children, hm, maybe that’s why they protest so much), contributing larger amounts than your standard White Picket Fence family. Not only that, but because we aren’t spending the leavings from our nonexistent tax cuts on our children, we’re free to engage in more spending to support the economy through purchase of nicer vehicles, nicer homes, and other expenses that directly support market growth. All we ask in exchange is to be treated like equals. That’s not an agenda. That’s the animal need to live within a safe environment.
Do you know why we have more suicides? Because living in society with the kind of fear and prejudice that we deal with is depressing. Some people who live in constant isolation and fear end up with serious complexes that negatively affect their physical, mental, and emotional health. As dramatic as it sounds, we live in a traumatic environment of constant assault and emotional abuse.
The entire thing is absolutely ridiculous. She accuses us of “infiltrating” government and organizations, trying to “indoctrinate” people - how is that any different from the Christian right’s efforts to remove evolution from school curriculae, and take key positions in which they can influence legislature in the direction that they want? It’s only infiltration and indoctrination when it’s coming from people that you don’t like - people that you consider a “cancer”. People that you think are more dangerous than terrorists, more dangerous than Jihadists - who are, by the way, religious fundamentalists. Religious fundamentalists who speak of their god’s desires and their god’s hatreds in a way quite similar to this.
We are not a cancer, and you cannot excise us from the body of the nation, for in the aftermath this nation would bleed to death of its own self-inflicted wounds. We are as much a part of America as anyone else, and we are just as necessary.
It’s been a while since newsmongers have knocked on the Matos-McGreevey doorstep, but it looks like Dinah’s at it again; she’s now demanding that the gay partner of former husband (and former New Jersey governor) disclose his assets as well, as part of their divorce settlement. I suppose now she expects a man who’s wholly unrelated to her to help her “live a lifestyle closer to that of New Jersey’s first lady”. (…I still can’t believe the pretentious snit said that.) Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, indeed. It seems she’s determined to drag down everyone she can in connection to this, and make sure that both men pay for one man’s mistake.
The last time I caught them in the news, I actually ended up in a rather long phone conversation with my mother about this; I was still outraged that Matos-McGreevey was more interested in attaining revenge through a smear campaign while using the judicial system to take McGreevey for all he was worth than she was in safeguarding the health and well-being of their daughter, Josephine. What McGreevey did was hurtful, yes, and if he knew he was gay he never should have married her. There’s no question that he was in the wrong there, but it was an unfortunate situation for both of them (and I can’t blame McGreevey for the fact that social stigma made him feel as if he couldn’t be openly gay while running for office) and in the end she could have handled the situation with more class, kept their private business private , and done her best to look after their daughter rather than vindicate herself.
My mother surprised me after that spiel by saying that in that situation, she would do the exact same thing.
She then went on a scornful tirade about men in general before starting on gay men in specific; I’m not going to detail it, as my mother is of the erroneous camp who think “feminist” equates with “ball-crusher” and the only thing more offensive to her than a chauvinistic straight man is a gay man who dares not to validate her through attraction to her overwhelming aura of femininity. Suffice to say apparently McGreevey threatened Matos-McGreevey’s womanhood, and that is a crime deserving of any punishment that woman, the state, and the gods may mete out.
Am I just not getting this? I don’t think I’m particularly more civilized than either Matos-McGreevey or my mother; in fact, I’m a rude, caustic, shameless, utterly Bohemian savage, and yet I’m still better-behaved in such situations than they seem to be.
If I had a long-term partner or husband who suddenly announced that he was straight and was leaving me for a woman, I’d be upset, yes. I’d be angry. I’d likely throw things at his head. But I’d do it all in private, and if there was a divorce, I’d just want to make sure that our individual assets were properly separated before letting him go on his merry way while I focused not on destroying his life, but on putting mine back together and making sure it continued smoothly in his absence. No man should ever be so crucial to your life that his departure shatters it to the point where you have to gouge him mercilessly to try to fill in the gaps.
Had we adopted a child (me? As a father? I’d scar the poor thing for life) and the judge granted me custody, you can be damned sure I’d make sure that my former partner had at least partial custody; he signed the adoption papers, too, and would have just as much of a right to see our child. Yes, I would want child support - but only equal to half the amount required to look after the child, and not the amount required to look after me. That would mean half the child’s food, clothing, medical expenses, crucial necessities, college tuition - and only a quarter the monthly rent/mortgage/whatever. Half the living space would be for me, and therefore my responsibility. Half would be for the child, and split between the two parents.
To me that’s just a sensible approach. Relationships combust all the time, whether there’s a wedding ring involved or not. One partner’s confessed sexuality is just another of a long list of reasons that cause explosive separations: infidelity, drug abuse, spousal abuse, alcoholism, the list goes on. Whatever damage was done in that time, whether emotional or physical…money won’t heal it; revenge will only leave the wounds to fester without closing. All of the ugliness that goes into that does more harm to the bitter party than to their target, and when it’s over, will leave them distinctly unsatisfied.
I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: have a little class, Dinah. Choose to be the better person and behave that way, rather than loudly proclaiming why your ex-husband is worse.
This morning I read an article in the Windy City Times that starts off asking: why not a gay president? Rather than explore the issue further, though, it only uses the question to segue into a “been there, done that” discussion of the many theories that President Lincoln was gay, as well as mentioning possibilities of a few other prominent political figures who buried their sexuality under the Oval Office’s horridly-patterned rug.
What’s past is past, though, and I’d like to ask: why not an openly gay president, right here, right now?
It may surprise you to find out that I’m not exactly in favor of a gay president. I might be in twenty years, depending on the political and social climate of the United States, but at this point in time it would be a complete and total disaster. Assuming the man or woman even managed to make it through the election, the very fact of their sexuality would divide the country more thoroughly than the nastiness that followed the Bush/Gore fiasco in Florida. Angry anti-gay proponents would erupt into a violent uproar - and that violent uproar might even translate into real violence towards local gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgenders. The scrutiny that we already receive for trying to live as equals would redouble, along with the hostility involved. Even if he (or she) never focused on gay rights, there would be constant accusations from conservatives of “pushing the gay agenda”.
And, unfortunately, they might be right. Depending on if they were fair and balanced or not, a gay president might just ignore other, more pressing issues to try to force gay rights issues through Congress. We need a good bootheel shoving some things in there, but there are problems in this country more pressing than whether or not we get our tax breaks for being married. Drugs, gang violence, political corruption, that pesky little war over across the sea… I would honestly worry that those issues would be ignored in favor of granting sweeping protections to the GBLTQ community. If I had to choose being able to marry and ending the war in Iraq…which do you think I’d pick?
The problem is that a gay president wouldn’t be able to please anyone, no matter what he/she did. (Not that that’s much different from a straight president, but still…) Focus on gay rights, and the conservative half of the country will accuse him/her of ignoring crucial issues to push an “immoral” homosexual agenda. Ignore gay rights for the sake of diplomacy, and the GBLTQ community and our supporters will accuse him/her of being a traitor or worse. Try to find a fair and even balance between both, and everyone will call the improbable gay president a floundering buffoon who can’t focus on a single issue.
The truth is that we as a nation aren’t ready for a gay president, although at some point in the near future we need one. We are and always will be a nation divided; that’s part of the foundation of this country, that people of such diverse beliefs can coexist under a single unified government. But our government is losing its ability to act in coalition with itself, our politics foster prejudice, and our policies are self-destructive. Right now anything that further fosters the divisions between the various factions of our populace would be disastrous.
The very fact that it would never happen in this day and age is proof enough that we aren’t ready. For a gay candidate to win, he or she would have to be so stunningly perfect in every way that people would adore him or her, sexuality notwithstanding. I’d like to see that happen, but it won’t. We aren’t a people who will let a politician’s personal life rest while considering their politics.
The day that an openly gay candidate actually has a chance at winning is the day that we know we’ve progressed.
Stop looking at me like that. No, seriously - this is so, so not my fault. Even I’m not this tasteless and crass. No, in order to find that, you need to turn to the higher levels of government. Only they are refined enough to produce this level of crassness.
Well, them or their kids.
Think I’m joking? Think again. The son of Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas actually designed this game for a class project at the Rhode Island School of Design.
The scary part?
My version is tamer.
His version has bags of cocaine, guns, a guy in a wheelchair…gods. ~facepalms~ Just read the bloody article. You’ll get the idea. If you want to see even more of the glaring, hilariously awful, I-know-I-should-be-offended-but-I’m-laughing-too-incredulously wrongness, check out the site for the product.
And while you’re clicking links, check out this radio podcast of a talk show host’s call with Shirley Phelps-Roper. That’s right, Fred Phelps’ nutty daughter. The best part is when they call her out on her illegitimate son (after she’s been hurling insults and accusations at everyone else) and all she can say is “So? What about it?” I’ve never heard that much deep-fried crazy in that little time before; that woman is riding around with a bucket of Colonel’s Extra Crispy perched on her shoulders. I don’t think she was even responding to what they were saying; I’d wonder if she was even speaking English, but those were English words coming out of her mouth. Not in any comprehensible or sensible order, but…still English words.
It’s kind of like a three-year-old who makes up their own sentences from the words they know. “Daka bear baba-booie truck” means “I want ice cream.” Phelps-Roper isn’t quite so easy to translate.
Oh, by the way, the Akismet problem is fixed. I’m not going to say what the problem was, at the risk of sounding like I’m b*tching about my employer (because I am), but apparently whatever rectal-cranial inversion problem there was has been fixed. Yay. ~mutters~ “Patching”, my tarty little brown ass. Anyway, your comments should be showing up automatically now without me having to fish them out.
While skimming the news this morning, I ran across a post on the Blade Blog alerting to a speech Mike Huckabee intended to give on his stance on various civil rights issues, including gay rights. The post itself didn’t really hold my interest; a comment by a “jeri” to the post, however, did.
jeri . on 1/25/08 5:52 AM:
the use of the term “gay marriage” is representative of a “slave mentality; it fails to recognize gay individuals as valid citizens. civil unions for gays is equivalent to a “gay marriage”. support for this concept actually demeans the GLBT population. think in the term EQUALITY. GLBT citizens are in every way equal - they pay taxes, they serve in the military, they raise families, they contribute to society. we deserve real equality, not only symbolic equality – and by definition would include marriage equality. if you don’t think in terms that demand full equality, you are supporting the proposition that you somehow do not deserve it. personally, I don’t want to validate the arguments of those want to “keep us down.”
Jeri actually elucidates a few thoughts I’ve lingered on, albeit not very clearly and using some unnecessary extremist language; saying that calling it “gay marriage” is a slave mentality is like me saying that because I’m whatever fraction African-American that Louisiana requires to grandfather me into being legally black, I’m going to renounce my slave name and run around calling myself Panther Abimbola. It’s just a little too extreme; there are times when the struggle for gay rights can be compared to the struggle for African-American rights, but this isn’t the right way to do it.
I admit that I’m less inclined to think about gay marriage as a critical issue, even though I applaud when another state legalizes it or another legislator takes a stand in the battle for that particular right - and I have been tempted to snag a willing partner and slag off to tie the knot just out of sheer spite, even if spitting in the faces of the conservative right is rather akin to spitting in the wind when saddling myself with an infuriating ball and chain (or two balls and a…nevermind). I don’t think about it often because I’m not the marrying type, and like any selfish human being I’m less interested in something that doesn’t have a personal impact on me. I can barely even cohabitate with another human being without inviting wholesale slaughter; the idea of allowing a piece of paper to lock me in stone-set oath for the rest of my life just makes my skin crawl. I will happily spend the rest of my life with a man, love and remain faithful to him - but I don’t want to feel trapped into it by the letter of the law, captured by my own honor that forces me to adhere to a vow.
The problem with marriage in my eyes, however, is that it’s part of the letter of the law in the first place. I know you’re sick of listening to me beat my favorite dead horse about the separation of church and state, but it’s the particular lack of separation that lets me agree in a rather offhand fashion with jeri - even if I approach the issue from a different perspective and hopefully explain myself a bit more clearly. Marriage is a religious institution, and it’s on religious grounds that our most vocal opponents protest our right to marry, claiming that it’s a sin in the eyes of their God, their faith, and their dead puppy Jake.
Because marriage is a religious institution, it should have no status in the eyes of the federal government beyond the same acknowledgments and occasional exemptions granted to other religious acts and institutions; that would be true equality. Remove the legal power of anything strictly defined as marriage, and one removes much of the obstacle to gay marriage. Most of us aren’t asking for recognition by any faith - or if we are, that’s another battle to be fought on a different field. Most of us are asking for recognition by the state and its governing powers.
So make marriage no longer an issue of the state, for both heterosexual and homosexual couples. Institute civil unions for all, as the primary method of conjoining one’s home, resources, and taxable value. Make the strictly-defined act of “marriage” wholly religious, a choice undertaken by those who wish to follow that path, but not one that determines whether or not they’re granted legal status as unified partners. This country was founded by people fighting for freedom of religion. Freedom of religion includes freedom not to be governed by religion, and yet in many aspects of the law, we are. We are governed by shifting faith-based ideals of what a legal union should be, thus removing the very freedom that our forefathers fought for and demeaning not only the gay population, but the American population as a whole.
Jeri says that we shouldn’t call it “gay marriage”, not if we want to be equal. I say that we shouldn’t call it “marriage” at all. This isn’t a case of “separate but equal”, further invalidating the point made about a slave mentality. This is a case of separating what makes us inequal, so that religion will not prevent a unified public governed under a fair and binding law.
A LiveJournal friend that I read rather often, Vivian, is fond of saying “Keep your God off my body.”
Kids? I got nothin’ today. I’m burnt out, drained, and out of whatever juice it is that fuels my random bouts of eloquence. I blame the fact that I just started a fourth new writing job (good, more good than I’m at liberty to discuss here) but for now am still working my old non-writing fill-in-the-gaps-in-the-bills job at the same time until the first check for New Writing Job clears (bad, very bad, my stress levels are through the roof), and the only thing maintaining my sanity (and staving off my infamous temper) is remembering that I’m doing all of this so I can move out of this Texan hellhole and back to Chicago, and remembering that hey, once the dust settles, I’ll finally have achieved my goal of being a full-time writer (if…not quite in the way I’d originally planned).
Gods, that’s a lot of parentheses. Why do people pay me to write, again?
In the interests of actually posting something topical rather than whining about “oh my god, earning a paycheck is so hard”, though, I did want to run through a few news articles that touch on things that have recently developed regarding issues discussed here in the past. So without further ado (and ’cause I have sh*t to do and need to get going):
CDC Disputes Study of Staph Infection Among Gays: Remember that CWA article quoting rates of MRSA infection among gays and using it as evidence that we’re all going to hell because we’re nothing more but unclean, disease-ridden sinners who spread the plague via our unnatural ways? The CDC has pretty much said “slow your roll, biatch” and is taking a closer look at those statistics and how they might have been skewed to point to those results and make MRSA out to be the next big AIDS-style “gay cancer” scare.
Gay Canadian Health Minister Offended Over Donor Ban: In another instance of official parties getting involved in the news and taking a stand against possibly skewed preconceptions and prejudices against the gay community, the Canadian Health Minister is prepared to actively fight the ban on sexually active gay men as donors of healthy, viable organs. Damn straight…er…well, not so straight, but you get the idea. It’s about time someone in politics showed some common sense, rather than persisting in cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face, as the old saying goes. It would be nice if that “someone in politics” would crop up here in America to brandish a flaming cluebat of common sense, but I don’t see that happening any time soon.
Anti-Gay Westboro Baptist Church to Picket Heath Ledger Funeral: Here’s one that’ll really piss you off. Del mentioned in the previous post about Heath Ledger’s death that the WBC (that’s right, Freddy Phelps is back again) is already making plans to picket Ledger’s funeral, accusing him of being hellbound because he promoted acceptance of gays as a “fag enabler” through starring in BrokeBack Mountain. Here’s the worst part:
That…that’s real classy, right there. Just in case you weren’t feeling the Love of GodTM (oh yeah, I’m feelin’ it, like a North Carolina glory hole), it now comes in pamphlet format, just to make sure the grief of Ledger’s family isn’t trivialized enough by these filth-spouting, batsh*t crazy nutjobs. You’re going to hell, kiddies. I’ll be there, too. Bring your own munchies, but the martinis are on me.
Man Probed On Water Polo Photos On Gay Sites: Lastly, here’s something new to help dispel the palpable air of gay martyrdom that’s starting to float around here like some choking miasma of smugness. As if the “probing” pun in a gay headline wasn’t bad enough, UC Irvine dispatcher Scott Cornelius is under investigation to find out if he took pictures of teenaged - teenaged, people - water polo players and posted them on gay websites.
…
Thanks, Scotty. As if we didn’t have enough flak to deal with with people considering all of us to be dirty, perverted pedophiles. Yeah, okay, now and then a piece of jailbait is nice to look at as long as he at least looks over eighteen, but fer Chrissakes, you don’t take pictures of these kids and post them online as potential wank material! Good gods, didn’t your Momma ever teach you better? Hell, if she didn’t smack you upside the head enough, I’d be happy to volunteer to compensate.
Idiots. Frigging idiots. The worst part is that of course someone will sound the alert, wave the torch, and raise the flag, and eventually Cornelius will come to be considered yet another example of the gay community who proves that we’re filthy pedophiles who want to make hot, sweet love to their children (typing that made me gag). If Cornelius hadn’t done anything gay-oriented, he’d just be considered another sick individual, with his sexual orientation not even a consideration.
The worst part?
There were people out there looking for photos like that.
I just hope they didn’t know that the boys were underage. I need to retain at least some faith in humanity and in the gay community, because right now I’ve barely got the thinnest thread left.
That’s it, I’m out. Ciao bella, and see you tomorrow with something of more substance.
(Washington) A GOP former member of Congress who attempted to pass anti-gay legislation is accused of working for an alleged terrorist fundraising ring that sent more than $130,000 to an al-Qaida supporter who has threatened U.S.
Mark Deli Siljander was charged Wednesday with money laundering, conspiracy and obstructing justice for allegedly lying about being hired to lobby senators on behalf of an Islamic charity that authorities said was secretly sending funds to terrorists.
Siljander was a Michigan Republican when he was in the House from 1981-1987. In 1987 he was appointed by President Reagan to serve as a U.S. delegate to the United Nations for one year.
As a member of Congress Siljander attempted to get legislation passed that would ban gay-themed books removed from public libraries. He also attempted to block a half-million dollar federal grant to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence claiming the group was run by “pro-abortion, pro-lesbian, anti-Reagan radical feminists.”
The 42-count indictment, unsealed in U.S. District Court in Kansas City, Mo., accuses the Islamic American Relief Agency of paying Siljander $50,000 for the lobbying - money that turned out to be stolen from the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Let’s see: kissing a member of the same sex, wanting to be able to legally marry, demanding equal rights and discrimination protection in the workplace, asking to be acknowledged as worthwhile members of society, as normal as the Cleavers…that’s all wrong, and according to some (right here in Texas, too) should be punishable by hanging.
But lying, theft, money-laundering, funding people who have a fun little hobby of blowing things up in this grand ol’ nation of ours…hey, that’s okay, right? Right? Guys? Crickets?
No, there’s no imbalance there at all.
The largest issue here is that of the charity, and Siljander is only incidentally involved - but I can’t help a touch of smugness that someone so staunchly against the rights of others is now being called up to defend himself against these charges. It’s called karma, biotch.
What? I can’t always be literate in my insults.
The traditional meaning of “crying wolf” involves raising a false alarm just for the sake of attention. In politics, however, crying wolf often involves raising a false alarm for the sake of diverting attention - and he who cries loudest often has the most to hide. This incident could likely raise questions about the secrets and loyalties of every anti-gay Republican who preaches his or her message from on high, decrying the GBLTQ community with such hatred that you would think together we comprised the avatar of the AntiChrist. It’s almost easier to believe that they aren’t all so close-minded and hateful and ignorant; they’re more clever than they seem, and while they might be as homophobic as your next Jihad-lovin’ Mr. Death to America, they’re only publicly shouting it to cover their grander, more sweeping and catastrophic activities.
It’s almost easier for me to believe, sure. But then I stop and realize that Republican political terrorist conspiracy theories make me sound like Dennis Kucinich waiting to be beamed up, sometimes the simplest answer is the right one, and yes, they really are just that backwards and idiotic.
Welcome to the sad state of America, folks, where people like this can gain a seat in Congress through the power of the popular vote.
One thing they’re right about: the terrorists are on our own shores.
They’re not foreigners. They’re our own people.
They’re not only people who want to expose America to jihadists. They’re people who want to regiment our lives on a daily basis, destroy our freedoms, take away our basic civil rights, and spread fear for the sake of making us pliant and submissive to increasingly invasive privacy laws that would make every personal detail and everything we owned property of the United States government.
We live in a world in which our government, by refusing to trust its people, proves itself unworthy of our trust.
Are we not meant to be the backbone of said government?
I’m out. Don’t forget that this Sunday, January 20th, is the second DR Live Webcast. I’ll be on the air and in the embedded chat room from 5:00-5:30p CST; if you miss it, an MP3 recording of the broadcast will be posted as soon as I can churn it out, as well as as much of the chat transcript as I can catch. If you have any questions you want me to answer on-air or any issues you want me to discuss on the broadcast, e-mail me at adrien-luc.sanders@451press.net or use the contact form. There’ll be another prize giveaway during the show, so make sure you have your AIM open and ready if you’re listening. I’ll be available on IM during the broadcast, but I do want to reiterate one thing that I already said on the first broadcast:
Unless I am on air and live at the time that you’re listening, do not IM me. I’ve said it before and yet I still can’t log that screen name on for even five minutes without getting bombarded with IMs from various people and having to sign off or go invisible to finish a conversation with the person I logged on to contact in the first place. It’s not that I don’t like you guys; I do. You’re all my special little snowflakes. It’s mainly that I’m horribly busy and don’t have time to keep up with the volume of IMs that I get, and I’m not much of a conversationalist (read that as horribly awkward with people). So please, if you could keep any conversations to posts here on DR or e-mail, I’d really appreciate it. Thanks a lot.
If you can’t make it Sunday, have a good weekend and I’ll see you Monday with a new No Style. Ciao.
To start off the morning, Kaine won the 1,500 comments contest and is now the proud owner of a horribly pink 1GB Sandisk Sansa MP3 player with FM tuner and voice recording capabilities. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but Kaine, I’ll be e-mailing you (I owe you one anyway, and got a little sidetracked) regarding where you want the MP3 player sent. Poor Lessa; missed it by just one.
This weekend, we’ll be having a comment party. Yes, a comment party, as weird as that bloody well sounds. The basic idea is this: at midnight CST on Friday, I’ll put up a post solely for the sake of commenting, explaining the full rules of the party…ish…thing. The purpose is to hit 100 comments to that post alone (comments to other posts won’t count) over the course of the weekend. You can’t just spam the hell out of the post, but like I said, the post itself will explain the rules. Whoever gets the 100th post will get a t-shirt in the Cafepress style of their choice with either the pink/blue or red/blue design posted in yesterday’s comic. There may be a runner-up prize for #101. I’d say if we really wanted to, we could hit 100 posts in one day; hell, if Hikaru and I start bickering, we can manage 50 of those ourselves in just a few hours.
Moving on to the usual mini-discussions of news that occur when Adri just isn’t in the mood for a high-blood-pressure sermon:
Arthritic, sporty, gay? Your finger ratio may tell you: Although it’s pretty common knowledge that apparently the lengths of your fingers in relation to each other can determine whether or not you’re good at math, researchers have also found a correlation between various other traits and the lengths of particular fingers. Long ring fingers indicate a likelihood for osteoarthritis; “male” finger ratios hint at lesbianism. I keep surveying my hands looking for “female” finger ratios to see if that’s supposed to be an indicator of my status as a fabulous king (one queen comment and I skin you) of gay snark. Funny how this one finger in the middle keeps popping up a bit higher than the others…
Gay bar’s straight bouncer wins discrimination suit: A straight woman who worked as a bouncer in a UK gay bar often dealt with harassing comments about her sexuality - a reversal of the usual harassment of homosexuals. She also claims she was fired for it and that her employer often called her a “breeder”; while the court determined that her firing had nothing to do with her sexuality, she was still awarded a settlement for facing discrimination in the workplace - and right well she should be. I still don’t know where we get this idea that because some heterosexuals are nasty to us, that gives us the right to behave in an equally bigoted, discriminatory fashion towards them. Two wrongs don’t make a right, more cliched BS, blah blah, the point is that no one’s sexuality gives anyone the right to behave like a complete douche towards them. It’s not all right to place the shoe on the other foot and “show them how it feels”. It just makes you as bad as the people that you mock and loathe.
Wasn’t asked, told anyway: In a refreshing change, a gay servicemember (who, if you follow the link, is not only brave but quite attractive) came out on public television and wasn’t in any way rebuked or confronted about it by his unit or his commanding officers - and he’s discovered that he’s not alone. Hundreds of gay servicemembers serve active duty with their sexuality fully known by their units. Their fellow servicemembers just don’t care. Out in the field, one’s sexuality doesn’t matter. What matters is capability, and whether or not the people in your unit can put their skills to use saving your life and the lives of the soldiers and civilians around you. Too many highly skilled individuals with knowledge and experience that could be valuable in avoiding bloodshed have been barred from service for the most idiotic reasons - the top reason being that the Pentagon somehow thinks that open homosexuality in the military will foster dissent in the ranks.
For decades, the Iowa caucus has been a significant indicator of which potential candidates would be nominated to run on each party platform in the U.S. presidential race. While the caucus doesn’t forecast the outcome 100% of the time, the results have been consistent enough for the event to draw a great deal of media attention as well as interest from concerned voters.
With presidential candidates campaigning from state to state and 2008 now here and just waiting for the countdown to the presidential elections, we can thank George W. Bush for rousing the political awareness of an entire nation of people who, regardless of party lines, tend to share the same sentiment: we can’t let this happen again. Everyone has their key issues that make particular candidates more appealing; some vote based on stances on gay rights, others on women’s rights and abortion, others on welfare, healthcare, childcare, education, taxation, military spending…the list goes on. Most look for a candidate with a balance of values that most closely reflect their own personal beliefs on multiple issues, and will choose the candidate who’s the closest fit without being a polar opposite on any one key issue. It’s often a “lesser of two evils” situation.
That’s where I find myself today: seeking the lesser of not two, but multiple evils. Although many potential candidates have drawn massive unconditional support from members of their respective parties, I find myself rather reserved. Although I’d love to vote Independent or some other third party, the unfortunate truth is that if you don’t vote for one of the Big Two, your vote will do little to determine the future of this country’s leadership. If I want to choose a candidate that I can be fairly sure is a supporter of gay rights so I can ignore that and move on to focus on their stances on other key issues, I’m pretty much stuck with the Democratic party.
I’m not happy with that.
Nor am I happy with the Republican party. In this case, struggling to choose the lesser of two evils leaves me wholly undecided, because I can’t think of a single Republican or Democratic candidate that I honestly think could do the job. They’re either starry-eyed boyscouts, confused flip-floppers, short-sighted idealists, militant bigots, religious zealots, shady sleazes, outright liars, or just plain batsh*t crazy - or any combination. Not one of them inspires confidence as a leader; not one of them leads me to believe that he or she would have the slightest idea of where to begin unraveling the tangle that the last eight years have made of this nation and its affairs while maintaining the outward appearance of strength required in dealing with our foreign allies and enemies.
One thing I can say about G.W.: he’s one crazy mother f***er, and most would think twice about screwing with him because he’s just nuts enough to push that big red button. His “don’t mess with Texas” attitude has pretty much blanketed the U.S., and outside influences are rightfully wary of provoking him. Hell, I’m wary of provoking him. I’m a little amazed that we made it this far through his terms without him declaring a religious war on home soil.
The problem is that a new candidate will have to fill the void left by his aggression with diplomacy, strength, and confidence. With the current global climate, the United States cannot afford a leader who gives the illusion of being weak, ready to capitulate and incapable of dealing with crisis or hostility. Neither can we afford another diplomatic disaster like W, both in domestic and foreign issues. Politically, we’re wounded and limping. We need not only a nurturer, but a protector.
Unless someone pulls one hell of a hat trick and surprises everyone, I doubt we’ll find that in the current list of Big Two potentials.
But I refuse to skip the vote, so I’ll be stuck picking someone. I’ll weigh my options, their histories, and their campaigns when the finals come around and the choices have narrowed down, and who knows - I may even end up voting Republican, if I can swallow my gorge. Voting Democrat won’t be much easier. I normally don’t let my sexuality sway my vote, but in this case I may have to lean on that in forcing myself to choose a candidate.
It’s rather sad that at this point, it hardly matters. No matter which way we vote, we’re screwed.
With apologies to international readers for the U.S.-centric nature of this post: who do you think would do the best job as the United States’ next president? Even if you aren’t old enough to vote, or hell, even if you’re from another country but still have an interest in U.S. affairs…if you could vote for the president of the United States right now, who would you vote for, and why?
Since today is the first day of the new year, you’d think I’d have resolved not to sleep past noon. Ah, well. One less resolution to break. Since I’m not even technically supposed to be working today (day off and all, natch) and I’m not feeling particularly talkative, you won’t be getting a rant/dissertation/sudden and prolonged case of diarrhea of the mouth today. Here’s a few points of interest in the news, instead:
This isn’t quite that bad, but it does raise the question: if Huckabee indeed believes that we’re born gay, does that mean that in his eyes we’re born into sin and there’s no hope for salvation? Or are we born into sin but can be saved as long as we don’t engage in any homosexual activity, thus denying who we are and accepting a hateful belief that to love others according to our nature is wrong?
See that? That crap is one of the many reasons I’m an atheist. We ask the easy questions.
“Do you believe in God?”
“Nope.”
“Okay, that wipes out 99% of the ‘Life Guidelines’ questionnaire. Let’s just cover the key basics, then. Are you a viable, self-supporting member of society who contributes to the economy?”
“Yep.”
“Do you hate anyone just because an invisible man in the sky tells you to?”
“Uh…no.”
“Are your actions in any way causing harm to yourself or others?”
“Nope.”
“Are you engaging in mass destruction of property or any other criminal activity possibly involving napalm?”
“Not the last time I checked.”
“Okay, you’re good to go, then.”
“Nifty.”
See? Problem solved. (Of course, you could also argue that atheists are lazy and take the easy way out, while people of faith follow a more difficult path, which brings up the subject of why despite my sarcasm I actually respect many people of faith for choosing the more difficult road, but…that’s not a topic for this column. Moving on…)
New Year, New Unions for Gay Couples: When the ball dropped at the start of the new year today, it didn’t just signify the beginning of a new year; it signified the beginning of new rights for gay partners who wish to engage in legalized unions. New Hampshire’s legislature on gay partnerships went into effect at midnight, and dozens of couples lined up to tie the knot. While the cynic in me says half of them were just doing it for the novelty and will be divorced by 2009 (hell, I was tempted to grab R and drag him up there just to make a statement, but I think within a month I’d have been on my knees begging him to sign the divorce papers)…the rest of me hopes that those couples find the happiness they deserve.
Remind me to never visit Spain: The Pope is at it again, this time with a Dec. 31st broadcast that apparently went over quite swimmingly in Madrid. In it he said the family was “based on the unbreakable union of man and woman and represents the privileged environment where human life is welcomed and protected from the beginning to its natural end.”
Privileged environment.
Jay-sus, I feel like it’s the segregation days all over again. Or at least my college years in Alabama. Elitist b*****d.
The sad thing is, repeating something over and over again doesn’t show faith in one’s convictions. It demonstrates an inability to adapt, an inability to discuss one’s stance from a logical standpoint with valid reasoning to back it, and an inability to accept that the world might not actually operate according to one’s hidebound beliefs. It’s another example of not wanting to own up to the fact that one’s prejudices are wholly one’s own responsibility, rather than hiding behind dogma as a shield.
That’s it from me. Just that little bit and I’m burnt, spent, and done - longer than I intended, but still not quite one of my usual sermons on a single topic. I need some verbal Viagra or something, as long as it doesn’t make me go deaf.
Screw it, I’m goin’ back to bed. See you tomorrow, hopefully before noon.
Today is a day to discuss world news, and the death of a woman who accomplished many things in her life and will now influence even more in her death.
If you’ve kept even one ear open to the news, you know that yesterday former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated, killed by a bullet to the neck before a suicide bomber detonated near her vehicle, killing at least twenty other people at the election rally she’d attended. Bhutto was the first democratically elected female PM of Pakistan, and a voice of opposition against other Pakistani political leaders.
Her death has sparked worldwide concern over the fate of elections, Pakistani democracy, and even the overall stability of a nuclear-armed country - and has thrown Pakistan into chaos. Over a dozen have died in protests and riots; buildings and vehicles have been bombed, burned, and ransacked. Police have been called out in force to suppress violence. Supporters are already pointing fingers and handing out political propaganda accusing her rivals, including Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. The grief and anger of a nation are felt on every street, in every home. Across the globe, people hold their breaths and wait for the tide of chaos to ebb, to see what will remain washed up on shore.
Bhutto’s life was one of turmoil and unrest as she sailed through unstable and even dangerous political seas. She represented change and progress - but even more, she represented choice. In her absence and with her strongest rival boycotting the elections after her death, there will be little choice for the Pakistani people and the upcoming elections will border on a farce.
Here in the United States we watch, we listen to the statements of our president, and many of us find it difficult to comprehend that the death of one woman could possibly change the political tenor of an entire country. We thank whatever deity we believe in that such things rarely happen here. We cross ourselves and pray that Pakistan’s unrest will not spread to touch our shores, and whisper over nuclear capability in what-if situations that change little but that make us feel as if we’re “on top of things” by discussing them. Little in our world has changed. Little in our world would change, if we found ourselves in the same situation.
If Hillary Clinton was assassinated before the 2008 presidential election and the nation suspected rival Mike Huckabee, we wouldn’t riot in the streets. We wouldn’t protest. Very few of us would take action at all. We would press our fat, soft fingers to our mouths and make distressed noises. We would stand on our soapboxes and preach angrily, and yet rally to do nothing. We would talk about it over business lunches and coffee breaks. We would point fingers from the comfort of our sofas and wait for the television to tell us who did it, to give us our neatly-packaged daily dose of current events. We would obey any edict that our governing bodies laid out, and accept their promises that they would handle everything even if we didn’t quite believe it. In a nation of millions only a small few would gather to raise their voices, to speak their hearts and minds - and they would quickly be silenced and sent to their homes by police officers, riot armor at the ready.
Why? Because we are complacent, compliant, and even a little afraid. We are afraid to lose the comforts of our lives, and know that the death of but one politician cannot strip the nation of said comforts - but the acts of one in response to that death can strip that individual of his or her possessions, freedom, possibly even their life. We weep in the name of patriotism, but these are no longer the days of JFK. We feel little for our leaders. They are neither beloved nor trusted. Most people don’t even know exactly what it is they do, or care. This is not the nation of our fathers.
And this is not Pakistan, where the silencing of a single voice can change the political face of an entire country - where the death of one woman can shape the lives of a nation.
You can view this in whatever light you want, positive or negative. You can say that we’ve grown apathetic, or you can say that we are stable. You can say we’re blind followers, or you can say that we have faith in the process, and that our nation is so large and so secure that not even the death of a major political figure could shake it beyond dominating news headlines and initiating changes in federal security policy that the people would have little say in. We are safe from riots, and from mass violence. We are safe from everything, because we are everything and while headlines are interesting, we’re more worried about making it to work on what little gas is left in the tank. We play the short game, the nine to five, the game of life and all its minutiae. We are the trees, and we rarely take notice of our existence as part of a greater arboreal entity that is comprised by us and yet at the same time encompasses us.
We are people of small lives and small concerns - but our nation is a large and slow-moving beast, ponderous and difficult to sway in its path, often little caring for what other creatures it tramples underfoot.
And I think that, even if we could see clearly that our path wound its way towards a long and unforgiving cliff, very few of us would try to change the beast’s direction.
During Sunday’s live webcast, I addressed a reader question asking what I think of the Iraq war; I pointed out that Americans don’t understand enough about Iraqi culture to even try to govern it. After reading the news this morning…I can’t help but conclude that we don’t even understand enough about Iraqi culture to comprehend the slightest effect that we have on their society. Unfortunately, I think most of us don’t really care, either. Many Americans are of the opinion that Iraq will be fine once it’s become a homogenized little mini-America, just another annexed territory with a bit of a transAtlantic leap between.
Hopefully for the Iraqi people…that will never happen.
BAGHDAD — In a city and country where outsiders are viewed with deep suspicion and attracting attention can imperil one’s life, Mohammed could never blend in, even if he wanted to.
Mohammed, 37, has been openly gay for much of his adult life. For him, this has meant growing his hair long and taking estrogen. In the past, he said, that held little danger. As is true throughout the Middle East, men have always been publicly affectionate here.
But, at least until recently, Mohammed and many of his gay friends went one step further, slipping into lovers’ houses late at night. And, until the American invasion, they said, Iraqi society had quietly accepted them.
But being openly gay is not an option in the new Iraq, where the rise of religious extremism has left Mohammed and his gay friends feeling especially vilified.
In January, a United Nations report described the increased persecution, torture and extrajudicial killing of Iraqi lesbians and gay men. In 2005, Iraq’s most revered Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, issued a fatwa, or religious decree, calling for gay men and lesbians to be killed in the “worst, most severe way.”
He lifted it a year later, but neither that nor the recent ebb in violence has made Mohammed or his friends feel safe. They yearn to leave Iraq, but do not have the money or visas. They agreed to be interviewed on the condition that their last names not be used.
They described an underground existence, eked out behind drawn curtains in a dingy safe house in southwestern Baghdad. Five people share the apartment — four gay men and one woman, who says she is bisexual. They have moved six times in the last three years, just ahead, they say, of neighborhood raids by Shiite and Sunni death squads. Even seemingly benign neighborhood gossip can scare them enough to move.
“We seem suspicious because we look like a cell of terrorists,” said Mohammed, nervously fingering the lapel of his shirt. “But we can’t tell people what we really are. A cell, yes, but of gays.”
His hand drifted to his newly shorn hair. He had lopped it off days earlier. There had been reports of extremists stopping long-haired men, shearing their hair and forcing them to eat it.
It is impossible to say how many gay men and women face persecution in Iraq. According to an Iraqi gay rights group, run by a former disc jockey in Baghdad named Ali Hili who now lives in London, 400 people have been killed in Iraq since 2003 for being gay.
Set against the many thousands of civilians and soldiers killed in the war, the number is small. But for Mr. Hili, and Mohammed and his friends, it is a painful barometer of just how far Iraq has shifted from its secular past. [Read more for a description of gay life in Iraq before the occupation.]
Truth told I, like anyone, often don’t fully appreciate the impact of something until it touches on something deeply personal to me. This, more than anything, more even than the body counts and the horrific news reports of bombings and siege, has made me realize the profound and lasting effect that the American invasion has had on Iraqi culture. It’s sobering, it’s painful, and it’s probably entirely selfish that it took that for me to view the occupation through such personal eyes and really take a moment to feel something for the Iraqi people beyond logical assessments of why Americans shouldn’t be occupying Iraq. I can’t help that. That’s human. Willful blindness, self-absorbed preoccupation.
That’s the way many of us are, to some extent. Iraq is “over there”; it’s a political issue, not a matter of real people with real lives that have been forever altered by something beyond their control. We feel strongly about the politics, about the people who agree and disagree with us, but we don’t extend our compassion and our understanding of the Iraqis as people unless we’ve been there or unless we find something that strikes a chord in us and makes it so very deeply personal.
Mohammed’s story and the stories of other gays in Iraq have made this personal for me. I’ve felt for a long time that America should pull out of Iraq, but that feeling has only intensified as this forces me to look beyond not just the issues of how the American occupation has changed gay life there, but how it’s changed other aspects as well. Their entire society has changed; we’ve destroyed parts of their culture that can never be retrieved, affected political balances, increased religious, social, and political intolerance, and in some cases created the very atmosphere of fear and terror that we claim to be fighting a protracted and useless war against. Life is naturally made up of disastrous changes, and one either adapts and survives, or fails - but the changes we’ve wrought in Iraq aren’t natural. They aren’t beneficial. And the Iraqi people won’t recover from them for a very, very long time.
It’s like engaging in battle over fertile fields. Your battle, won or lost, may be all that matters to you at the time…but in the process the fruits of those fields are destroyed, trampled carelessly underfoot while you’re too busy looking on to your opponent. Eventually the battle will end; the land will clear, and the bodies will be removed, enshrouded, and buried. But the great trenches of war will remain; the land ravaged and stomped by a thousand feet, razed by fire, poisoned by the substances of war. It’s only when the fight has moved on that the land may start to recover, and the people of that land can move in to nurture it slowly back to health - even though its shape and character have changed entirely, and it may never be what it once was, may never grow as it once did.
The Iraqi people are both that field, its fruit, and its tenders.
Sorry I’m a little late in updating today. I stayed up too late last night, indulging in one of my secret guilty pleasures with one of my best friends: curling up on the couch and watching chick flicks until we cried and laughed all at once. Sometimes you just need a night of Smirnoff Ice, cigarettes (hush, Sihaya, I only had one; you know I don’t smoke anymore), and laughing over the fact that you can both still remember the lyrics to Brandy’s “Sittin’ Up in My Room” perfectly and you can’t help getting up to dance when you hear “so I creep, yeah, just keep it on the down low”.
The funny part about that is that while I can get away with that without shame, just by being the type of guy who just does what he does without caring whether it’s considered masculine or feminine…he’s this big, butch bruiser who always has to be the manly-man. He’d be utterly humiliated if I mentioned him by name here, or if anyone knew that he actually watched a chick flick…and enjoyed it. Ha. He was crying thirty minutes into Waiting to Exhale; it took me at least an hour to start the waterworks. (I think the line that got me was “Someone felt that way about me, once…but he stopped.”) Still…as a result of our escapades, I went to bed rather late and overslept today. And here I am now, looking for something to talk about for today’s post before I head off to the post office to finally mail off a certain insufferable a**hole’s package.
Well, for starters, don’t forget that this Sunday, December 16th, at 5p Central Standard Time (if you don’t know when that is in your time zone, check here) marks the first (experimental) Darkside Rainbow Live Webcast, in which I will try my damnedest to keep from tripping over my tongue for an hour of live interactive talk radio…even if I still don’t know what the hell I’m going to say and my stage fright is mounting more and more the closer we get to the date. I’ve worked out how to get the bloody thing to work in IE (sort of), so there shouldn’t be too many people barred from listening. If you miss it or if the live broadcast player doesn’t work from your OS or browser, I’ll be posting the chat transcript and an MP3 of the audio later, using the Flash player currently in use for the streaming radio.
Next, we’re already close to the halfway point on the 1,500 Comments Contest. We’d jumped off again at 1,000, with 500 comments to hit the goal. We’re currently at 1,205, in a surprisingly short period of time. If you’ve no idea what I’m talking about, check out the second half of this post with the rules and the prize (a 1GB MP3 player).
Moving on to more serious news: I’m a few days late on this one, but that doesn’t mean it’s not still a valid point for discussion. Every time I start to think that we as a society have begun to make forward-thinking cultural progress, someone proves me wrong. It’s only a little more disturbing when that “someone” is a prominent political figure and presidential hopeful.
Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee refused to retract a statement he made in 1992 calling for the isolation of AIDS patients.
Surging in the polls, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee campaigns Saturday in Asheville, North Carolina.
Responding to an Associated Press questionnaire, Huckabee said steps should be taken to “isolate the carriers of this plague” during his failed run for a U.S. Senate seat from Arkansas 15 years ago.
He said he probably would not make the same statement today because of what is known about how HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, is transmitted.
“I had simply made the point — and I still believe this today — that in the late ’80s and early ’90s, when we didn’t know as much as we do now about AIDS, we were acting more out of political correctness than we were about the normal public health protocols that we would have acted,” Huckabee told Fox News on Sunday.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention concluded in 1985 that AIDS was not transmitted by casual contact. But Huckabee said at the time, “there were other concerns being voiced by public health officials.”
He disputed the characterization that he was calling for individuals infected with HIV to be quarantined.
“Now, would I say things a little differently in 2007? Probably so,” Huckabee told Fox News. “But I’m not going to recant or retract from the statement that I did make because, again, the point was not saying we ought to lock people up who have HIV/AIDS.”
Huckabee did not explain how individuals with HIV would have been isolated.
During his Senate run, Huckabee also told the AP in the questionnaire that he found homosexuality to be “an aberrant, unnatural and sinful lifestyle.”
As always, I’ve got to play the Devil’s advocate first. It makes me feel better about turning around and calling someone an absolute arse.
To be fair, Huckabee refused to retract his words not because he’s still just as uneducated about HIV/AIDS, but because he’s trying to point out that at the time he made that statement, he was speaking with the more limited knowledge that he had available and making a statement based on what he thought was his best judgment and in the interests of public safety. (Although really, Huckabee was still pretty far behind, considering he made that statement in 1992 when the transmission methods for AIDS were known by 1985, but I’m trying to be a little lenient here.) I’m not saying that I think his judgment was right, but I do think the media are putting a more sensationalist spin on his intentions by making it sound as if he’s still actively advocating sequestering HIV/AIDS sufferers. He admits that with the information available about HIV/AIDS today, his judgment would likely follow a different slant. That should be enough; a retraction really isn’t necessary, though a more clearly stated, honest admission of his ignorance would be nice.
But the media are using his statement about HIV/AIDS to cast an even uglier light on his already-reprehensible stance towards gays, because there’s an instinctive association between the two subjects. If he was talking today about isolating people with some new, viciously fatal disease whose methods of transmission were unknown but that wasn’t in any way related to a divisive political and personal issue, people would say that he was acting in the interests of public health and safety by making sure that the disease couldn’t become an epidemic while we endeavored to understand more about how it’s communicated.
Ech. That almost makes me sound like I support the arse’s foot-in-mouth syndrome; really, I just can’t stand media sensationalism even when it’s turned on those I oppose. But without further ado and fairness aside…
I refuse to listen to rhetoric about sin from a man who had a role in pardoning a convicted rapist. Follow your own damned dogma; aren’t those who scream about the sin of homosexuality also the ones who advocate “let he who hath no sin cast the first stone”? I’m really getting sick of religious ideals being used to sway people’s political choices; how many times have I ranted about separation of church and state? How many times have I snarled about people trying to force their personal ideals on others through manipulation of the law? How many times have I said that one’s sexuality should be one’s own business and not a matter that concerns either church or state?
You know, I’m starting to wonder if there’s some kind of fear underlying people’s religious endorsement of their viciously antipathetic reactions to homosexuality. No, I don’t mean the cliched argument of “you’re afraid of homosexuality because you’re denying your own homosexuality”, although at times that has been the case.
I mean fear of admitting one’s own subjectivity, and owning one’s own biases and flaws without looking for excuses to make them acceptable. I’ve yet to find anyone who could explain a logical reason for their vituperative condemnation beyond that it’s “sinful”, “unnatural”, and “against God”. I just want one person to say “God’s got nothing to do with it; homosexuality just personally grosses me out”. I’d think it was a bit immature, but it would be refreshingly honest, and founded in someone’s personal feelings (kind of like me saying bananas gross me out, frigging fruit of the devil) rather than using a smokescreen of faith to make themselves feel justified in acting on a base dislike with no rhyme or reason.
Hiding behind faith ensures that people aren’t exposed for enacting such gross hatreds towards other human beings based on irrational gut feelings alone, and possibly judged by others for it. I wouldn’t be surprised if people were truly afraid of admitting such, when really it would do everyone a lot of good if homophobes could approach it from the simple perspective of likes vs. dislikes rather than looking for a torch to wave as an excuse to force their opinions and their dislike on others. It would sure as hell make a lot more sense.
After all, I don’t try to make everyone stop eating bananas, do I?
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