Clips N' Chips

What Pokemon's Nurse Joy has to say about Healthcare Reform

2010-04-12T10:54:00.006-04:00

Click Image to Enlarge

Canadian Cartoonist Scott Ramsoomair's latest comic strip for his ongoing Pokemon themed strip called Super Effective, tackles not just the trials and tribulations of a young Pokemon Trainer but also the need for effective healthcare reform.

Check out more of Ramsoomair's strips at VGCats.Com

The Gregory Brothers, Auto-Tune the News

2010-04-11T14:32:00.004-04:00

I stumbled upon The Gregory Brothers on C-Span, yes C-Span, on Saturday and instantly feel in love with the band's parody of contemporary American politics and news, in song, using the Auto-Tune correction technique.

Two of the band members will be on this week's edition of C-Span's Q & A. It will be interesting to hear what they have to say about the state of things today.

Republican Welfare States

2010-04-10T17:12:00.000-04:00

No one would fault you if based on what you heard on conservative talk-radio and television as well as Republican talking-points you believed that Republicans from predominately Republican states were unfairly being overburdened by the federal government. Such an assumption would correspond to the overall narrative that conservative pundits and Republicans have been trying to make since, well, January 20th 2009. It turns out though that this is not the case, in facts it’s the very opposite.

Ezra Klein made mention of information that was pulled together by the folks over at The Fourth Branch for his blog at the Post, which showed that predominately Republican states as it turns out pay less in federal taxes than they take in, conversely predominately Democratic and liberal states pay out more than they take in, effectively sustaining predominately Republican states.

The irony of this is inescapable: red states that consume more than they contribute vote to pay less taxes, while blue states that contribute more than they get vote Democratic, and are more open to the idea of paying more in taxes.

Of course the data does not show whether or not individuals within those states feel as if they pay too much in taxes (but has there ever anyone who felt that they ever paid just enough or too little in taxes?), but it does indicate that there is a clear disconnect somewhere in our political discourse, either within predominately blue states that continue to pay for and sustain red states or within red states that do not pay enough, or maybe both.

The question I have for Republican elected officials is whether or not they feel their constituents should pay more to cover what they receive, or if they should continue with the socialist model basically has Democrats sustaining their livelihood?

Out of Proposition Exaggerations from the Right (Again)

2010-04-09T18:28:00.002-04:00

Speaking at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference this week former House Speaker Newt Gingrich called President Obama “[t]he most radical president in American history.” He called on Republicans to vote to stop what he called President’s Obama "secular, socialist machine." While this kind of rhetorical red meat is not at all surprising coming from Newt Gingrich, it has become the standard lines of attack by Republicans against the president and his (modest and moderate) agenda.

Ever since President Obama took office Republicans and radical conservatives are have been on a crusade to label the president any and every negative term they could possibly find, stopping just short of calling him the anti-Christ (they leave up to their supporters). The rhetoric coming from the right suggests that President Obama is not just an elected official who have a different opinion than Republicans, but rather than the duly elected president the enemy of America and its people. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), who went from a no-name congresswoman to star to the far-right after she appeared on Hardball with Chris Matthews and called for the press to do a “penetrating expose” of Democrats in Washington, has told supporters since President Obama took office that she is a “foreign correspondent on enemy lines”. And her partner in crime, Sarah Palin, has since during the 2008 campaign called President Obama everything from a socialist grandma serial killer to a terrorist sympathizer.

All of these accusations would be fine if they were true, or even partly true; or even held an iota of truth, as exaggeration is nothing new in politics, but they do not. Since coming to office President Obama has governed steadily from the center, leaning to the left ever so gently on some issues--much to the dismay of his liberal base--as well as lean to the right on other specific issues, such as domestic drilling for oil, the construction of more nuclear power plants, and an escalation of our forces in Afghanistan, etc etc.

In regards to the economy President Obama has been nothing else other than a moderate: one third of his stimulus bill was tax-cuts, the size of his stimulus was resoundingly criticized by liberal economist as being too small (which it was); and despite strong pressure from the liberal wing of his base the president did not nationalize any of the nation’s top banks.

On the big issue of 2009, healthcare reform, the president dropped the so-called Public Option, did not even entertain the idea of a single-payer system, and included many different kinds of tax-cuts and other Republican ideas to form a centrist health care package. The very framework of the president’s plan was the Republican governor of Massachusetts’s plan. The facts of the matter are that since taking office the president has consistently frustrated the liberal wing of his party as he continually concedes and embraces more center-right ideas in his policy decisions, none of which has won him any support or votes from Republicans in Washington. In fact surprisingly the fervor only seems to be growing exponentially on the right.

On matters of religion it should be noted that President Obama has consistently embraced and invoked his Christian faith. The only difference between President Obama and his predecessors when it comes to religion is that the president has on occasion acknowledged the fact that many Americans (15-18%) are non-believers.

Despite all of these concessions Republicans continue to label the president a socialist, which based on the president’s record so far will no doubt come as a surprise and somewhat of an insult to actual socialists, who would propose far greater government oversight and influence in the economy, healthcare, education and so forth than President Obama ever would conceivably choose to do. Republicans are clearly only playing politics and trying to gear up their base to get out and vote, and more specifically try to get their base forget the years under President Bush and Republican leadership, by trying to scaring their base into action.

This strategy for Republicans has generally paid off in the short-term as their ideological base is geared up now more than ever; however, in the long-term this strategy presents some obvious problems. Since the president’s policies will not in fact result in any kind of government takeover, or biblical Armageddon, as House Minority Leader Rep. Boehner suggested; and things will more likely than not remain the same or get better, such as lower prescription drug cost for seniors, closing the donut-hole in Medicare, and most immediately creating a tax environment where most Americans will pay no federal-taxes this year; Republicans will box themselves into a corner when Americans realize that things are in fact not as bad as they have been told.

The United States Should Not Tip-Toe its way to Repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

2010-04-09T17:03:00.003-04:00

The current forecast for the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is for Pentagon officials to conduct a yearlong study on the possible consequences of repealing the policy and establish a set of producers on how it will implement the change in policy. After the study Congress review the findings and then vote to repeal the policy. Since the review was announced by Defense Secretary Robert Gates during a Senate Armed Forces committee hearing, the armed forces have begun to host focus groups meetings with active duty personnel to get their take on the policy.

In the meantime however, the moratorium proposed by Senate Armed Services committee chairmen Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) was not adopted by the Pentagon, thus gay soldiers continue to be discharged under the policy--which the Defense Secretary and Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs-of-Staff say they oppose; and the Obama administration, which is against the policy, continues to defend the policy in federal court.

Along the way since the senate hearing there have been some surprises: Lt. Dan Choi, perhaps the most prominent face to the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy who was served his discharge papers in 2008 after coming out on the Rachel Maddow show, was called back into active duty by his superior officer; Lt. Robin R. Chaurasiya who came out to her superior officer was denied her discharged because it was determined that Lt. Chaurasiya wanted to leave the armed services, and Defense Secretary Gates has instituted new policies regarding the requirements for what is needed to dismiss a soldier under the policy while it stays in place. And least we not forget because of a 9th Circuit Federal Court of Appeals decision in the Witt v. United States Air Force case discharges under the policy will have to meet a higher level of scrutiny in districts under the 9th Circuit jurisdiction than discharges in other parts of the country.

These changes have fundamentally changed the nature of the debate on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell from being the absolute across the country to being the absolute in some places but the general rule in others, with exceptions scattered in-between.

Most political observers contend that the country has largely moved beyond the issue, and would rather focus on issues like the economy and jobs, and most believe that it will inevitable get passed by the Democrats. However, despite all evidence pointing to the fact that this will be an easy vote politically, some Democrats in Congress appear to be adverse to bringing the issue up to vote; and the president Obama seems reluctant to push them. As a result we have ended up in a situation where no one is really sure what to do, as there is clear indication that the policy will be repealed but we have to continue to stumble along and enforce the policy, which comes at the cost of needless discharging skilled military personnel when we do not have to.

The lethargic approach that has been adopted by Democrats is not winning them any favors with their base, as the base and gays and lesbians continue to become increasingly frustrated with the inaction on the part of those in Congress and their fierce advocate in the White House. This frustration is amplified by the fact that there is serious growing speculation that Democrats will loose control of the House of Representatives (at the very least), and all the work that has been put into repealing the policy will be for nothing, with the next foreseeable chance being after the 2012 general election.

This should not have to be the case in the United States in the year 2010. President Obama and the Democrats in Congress should take the initiative, repeal the policy and close this chapter of American nonsensical bigotry and be done with it. Trying to navigate the least politically costly approach is equally as silly as the policy itself, because at the end of the day a voter not likely to vote for a Democrat in November probably will not likely based their vote on how a Democrat votes on repeal.

Democrats should recognize that the American people appreciate above all else elected officials who do something and hold to their convictions, rather than elected officials that appear to be spineless and cowardly.

Oh McDonnell had a Crazy Idea to celebrate the Confederacy

2010-04-08T14:44:00.003-04:00

It seems like every other day now Virgina governor Robert "Bob" McDonnell is getting himself into trouble with somebody, rather than spurning economic growth and bringing jobs to his state, which is what he campaigned to do. His most recent endeavor to proclaim April Confederate History Month without any mention of slavery initially became a lightening rod in the press, just as former Democratic governors of Virginia predicted it would.

For whatever the reason McDonnell never supposed for a second that celebrating and honoring the confederacy--the quintessential "bad guys" in American history--might cause a bit of controversy in Virginia, a state with a twenty percent African-American population, whom conceivably probably would not have fared so well if Virgina's struggle for independence went according to plan. But I digress.

Actual, I do not digress, McDonnell clearly knew what he was doing as he silently uploaded the proclamation to the governor's website on a Friday, which is a trade secret in politics if you want to do something but have it become lost in shuffle as press coverage cools down over the weekend. And even though he later apologized for ignoring to mention slavery, as if it was just some trivial matter in the Civil War, is difficult to swallow as slavery was a central tenant to why the Union and the Confederacy went to war. While the governor was correct in that there were other factors at play, such as industrialization and northern intervention, invoking a proclamation to celebrate the sacrifice of Virginians during the war is a kin to celebrating World War II and ignoring what happened at Pearl Harbor: a pretty stupid thing to do.

The best (and most humorous) critique of McDonnell's blunder has to had come from former Virgina governor, and first African-American elected governor in the nation, Gov. Douglas Wilder, when he appeared on Hardball with Chris Matthews yesterday:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

As Rachel Maddow pointed out last night on her show, if McDonnell is suppose to represent the new moderate within the Republican Party the GOP is going to have a difficult time reaching out to other non-whites, when their supposed olive-branch is celebrating the people who fought to keep the right to own other people.

Oh, McDonnell, what will you do next I wonder.

Read McDonnell's full apology here @Maybe Its Just Me.

Homosexuality is the least of the Catholic Church's Problems

2010-04-05T21:12:00.002-04:00

Michael A. Jones over at Change.Org has a great piece up on the website addressing recent comments made by some vehement (Catholic) social-conservatives, such as Bill Donahue, president of the Catholic League, who are arguing that the recent scandals coming to light more Catholic priests who have sexually abused minors is a result of homosexual men in the priesthood.

As Jones points out these accusations are blatantly false, but more importantly it is critically that we note what Donahue and others are trying to do here. In proclaiming that the sexual abuse of minors within the priesthood is gay men's fault (see Donahue's "Irish have a drinking problem" analogy and explanation) Donahue is attempting to take the focus off the Church and its institutionalized, bureaucratic, and secretive problems and put the spotlight on the mythical gay pedophile figure.

If some of these priests who have done these horrible things to children are in fact gay that is a problem; however, that is not necessarily a "gay problem", as any sexologist (greatest profession in the world) will tell you that pedophilia or pederasty is not a sexual orientation. Ultimately though those individuals are not what most people are shocked and angry at the Vatican over, rather it is the systematic way in which the Vatican has tried to hide these incidents from the public and the police, which for any other organization would justify as a cover-up. I am no priest so I am unsure exactly what kind of screening process priests go through (though I am sure whatever the process is it will be reviewed and restructured after all of this), nevertheless though I do not blame the Vatican for not catching these individuals before hand, and I am sure many others do not either. How would you know before hand that someone would do such a thing? However, what people do blame the Church for is their attempt to make the problem simply go away and not through the proper civilian channels.

We live in an age where we generally believe no matter the status of an institution in our society, or whether or not we believe the institution to be anointed by God, that it is above the law of man.

If when these cases arose, and some of them date back decades, the Church took the proper steps and handed over these individuals to the authority much of the trouble the institution how finds itself in would not exist simply because the Church would then be doing the right thing. Rather the Church's decision to use its influence and stature within society to avoid the public relations disaster--which surprise it now finds itself mired in anyway--is what has infuriated people the most.

Trying to paint this situation as another example of homosexuals preying on children is not only factual the wrong thing to do, but it also missing the real problem entirely, and leave room for terribly events like this to repeat themselves over and over again.

The False Equivalence between the Tea Baggers and Lefties

2010-04-04T19:34:00.001-04:00

On the news lately there has been this disturbing trend among many pundits and hosts--Okay not on MSNBC for obvious reasons--to portray the rage coming out of the right, primarily out of the Tea Party movement, and the rage that came out of the left (specifically during the Bush years centered around the two wars) as somehow being the same in scope. This is so blatantly not the case that I am, not even jokingly, surprised that it has gone on for so long without some rationale voice in the crowd pointing out the erroneousness of it all.

This morning on CNN's Riliable Sources host Howard Kurtz was trying to make the connection between the action undertaking by fundamentalist Christian militant groups and the attempt by members of Code Pink to perform a citizen's arrest and detain Karl Rove at a book signing of his. Kurtz mentioned how over on the Fox News Network they played the incident involving Rove repeatedly, almost as if it was on loop, while that incident hardly got any coverage on MSNBC, which was unlike the Christian militant story which was covered insistently on MSNBC for days. Kurtz concluded that these two incidents were evidence of how the media is selective in what it is trying to portray to fit a prescribed narrative.

In a way Kurtz was correct, the decision each network made in determining which story to cover and obsess over is indicative of the narrative each network wants to portray of the other side; however, Kurtz immediate critique that rage is happening on both sides and use of these two incidents as examples could not be further from sensible. On one hand you have a militia group that had planned to assassinate police officers, and then blow up attendees at the funerals of those police officers, which they believed would somehow lead to the next revolution; and on the other hand you have middle-age women dressed in pink trying to annoy Karl Rove at a book signing. I had to take a second to actually process what Kurtz was attempting to argue because my brain initially short-circuited to his batch of nonsense (though at this point I should be use to Kurtz crazy antics).

When Anna Marie Cox who was a guest pundit politely pointed out the folly in Kurtz logic, Kurtz immediately responded to Cox's posing the rhetorical question about whether or not Karl Rove had a constitutional right to be there and say what he wanted and not be disturbed by Code Pink. It is worth while to point out that a) Code Pink was not attempting to arrest Karl Rove because of what he was saying at the book signing and b) the first amendment's right to free speech only applies to the government's limit in prohibiting the speech of private citizens, and in fact is not some kind of playground recess rules, and finally c) Howard Kurtz is a recognized and established journalist in Washington.

Kurtz's blunder is but one example, and in the scope of recent affairs a very minor one at that. The real stars of this new trend of saying "everybody's doing it" is conservative talking-heads, including many Republican elected officials who feel it became necessary to provide cover for the Tea Party movement and other right-wing groups after a string of events that clearly showed that things were moving beyond rhetoric into threats and acts of violence. These talking-heads have been quick to point out the left-wing groups in the past (and mistakenly left-wing individuals now) done some pretty horrible things, common examples often tossed out are the animal rights groups like the Animal Liberation Front, the Weathermen Underground, and other radical socialist or communists groups and individuals. More recently they have mentioned the incidents were effigies of former president George W. Bush were burned at protests.

All of those incidents are factual events that indicate that when we become a very polarized and divisive country that gives credence to individuals on the extremes of either side to do stupid and dangerous things. However, beyond that the comparison's abruptly end, specifically because of one central fact that Republican leaders and conservative pundits intentionally leave unmentioned is the intimacy these radical right-wing groups have with the establishment. Establishment liberals and Democrats have consistently denounced the actions of radical left-wing groups, or even mildly radical groups like MoveOn.Org (read "General Petreus or General Betray Us" ad). When Tea Party members throw bricks at the offices of elected officials Republicans provide cover. Republicans go so far as to not only provide cover but also stoke the flames of Tea Party protests, by attending and speaking at Tea Party events about the ills of government and how they must stop a "government takeover". Can anyone remember Speaker Pelosi, now or when she was minority leader, or any other Democratic congressman attending and speaking at an anti-war protests during the Bush administration? Who is the Democratic equivalent to Michele Bachmann?

It has been the Republicans and establishment conservative's intimacy with the radical right and Tea Party movement that has legitimized the movement rather than having the movement confined to the fringe where it rightfully belongs. Such a thing has never occurred on the left to any similar degree, because establishment liberals and liberal Democrats rightfully understand where the movement should keep its more extreme members for good reason.

Easter Post

2010-04-04T18:06:00.000-04:00

Happy Easter to those who celebrate. And to those that don't, Happy Sunday!

I am spending my Easter Sunday pretty low key, working on some side-projects, eating cereal, and maybe playing a couple hours of Xbox. I did the good thing Easter thing this morning and called a bunch of family members who I have not spoken to in a while and wished them a happy and pleasant Easter, and that pretty much was the end of my religious observation of the holiest day in the Christian calendar. (I was going to title this post Happy Zombie Jesus Day, but I felt that was a bit inappropriate.)

Sensing that this entry needs a little spice below is the link to a 30 second reenactment of The Rocky Horror Picture--with bunnies (so it's kinda Easter related.)

The Dilemma in Criminalizing HIV Transmission

2010-04-01T15:13:00.000-04:00

Poet, journalist, and blogger Brandon Lacy Campos recently wrote for on his blog, My Feet Only Walk Forward, a captious piece on the criminal justice system in many states practice of prosecuting individuals who transmit the HIV to others through consensual sex. Campos focused primarily on the Minnesota case involving a Mr. Daniel James Rick who is currently being tried on multiple counts of “third degree criminal sexual conduct and assault for knowingly transmitting a communicable disease,” according to KSTP TV.

Campos has strong reservations about the prosecution of HIV transmission; and many other people within the positive community share those concerns, such as Ragan Hofmann, editor-in-chief of POZ magazine, who wrote for The Daily Beast about the Canadian case about a Mr. Johnson Aziga, who was convicted on two counts of first-degree murder and aggravated assault for transmitting HIV to his sexual partners.

Campos and Hofmann are concerned that in criminalizing transmission of HIV through consensual unprotected sex, the criminal justice system is unfairly putting all of the burden and responsibility on the shoulders of the positive person, disregarding the fact that their sexual partner(s) consented to having unprotected and thus took on the assumed risks. Each also raises the point that many of the laws that were written criminalizing HIV transmission have the unintended consequence of further perpetuating the stigma around HIV/AIDS, which we know continues to have an impact on individuals deciding whether or not to get tested. Hofmann goes on to assert that many of these laws where in fact pasted in a rush during the heyday of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, so the stigma around HIV/AIDS is at the heart of the law(s) rather than the goal of maintaining public health.

Campos writes:

“[T]he precedent this will set if [Daniel James Rick] is convicted on the spreading HIV charge as opposed to a rape charge is going to create such an overwhelming fear in positive people and a justified one...what if you don't disclose your status, you are having protected sex, and the condom breaks? Are you then a felon? What if you honestly believe you are HIV-, have unprotected sex, and then you find out you are after having infected someone else? Even your partner? Are you a felon? What if you and the party are both engaged in the use of illicit drugs[?]”

Hofmann also touched on the notion that these laws instill fear in the positive community in her piece; however, in addition to that Hofmann argues that these laws have the unintended consequences of spreading HIV further. Hofmann writes:

“When HIV-positive people are criminalized, people in general become less likely to educate themselves about the disease, to discuss HIV with their partners, and to get tested for the virus. According to U.S. law, if you don’t know you have HIV, you are less culpable should you pass it along to a partner. This provides a disincentive for people to know their HIV status. And, if people are unaware of their HIV status, they are not seeking care for the disease. When people are aware that they have HIV and seek treatment, their viral load can be reduced, rendering them less infectious. Therefore, criminalization of HIV actually leads to the spread of HIV.”

These are no doubt serious and legitimate concerns that we have take into consideration when crafting legislation, because while we may have a desire to ensure public health we should not want to do so at the expense of another demographic and possibly create a political climate that makes living for positive people unnecessarily onerous. That being said I do have reservations about some of the central tenants of the arguments being put forth by Campos and Hofmann, especially as it relates to the impact those tenants should have in crafting legislation whether criminal or civil.

Hofmann’s argument that current law--and to the best of my knowledge and research on the issue there is no national U.S. law, i.e. ‘federal statute”, rather just individuals state laws--creates a disincentives to be tested is likely based on the fact that in many states the law regarding criminalizing HIV transmission is written in such a way that only finds individuals who are knowingly aware of their status during the time(s) of intercourse responsible. Strictly based on the letter of the law this does suggest that the longer you are unaware of your status the less likely you are to be found responsible, in the states where the law is written as such. However, the reason the various state laws are written this way is likely an acknowledgement by state legislatures that because of the nature of the virus individuals can live their lives without ever truly suspecting that they are positive, especially if they do not engage in high risk behavior. Nevertheless, the spirit of the law assumes that individuals would take on the responsibility of knowing their status if they have any reason to suspect that they may have contracted the virus previously.

This brings up the question of personal responsibility. Exactly what should be the responsibilities, whether legal or implied, of individuals to get tested, know their status, and take the appropriate steps to communicate information to their partners? In many states it is required for individuals to disclose their status, if they are positive, before engaging in a sexual activity that has a high risk of transmitting the virus. Many positive advocates like Campos and Hofmann argue that such laws have the unintended impact of segregating individuals who are positive, because many non-positive people distance themselves from individuals who are positive; and thus make it difficult, if not impossible, for positive individuals to have partners, even if said positive person might been taking their prescribed medication and thus have a low infection rate and be willing to engage in low-risk behavior to lower the chances of transmission even further.

Both Campos and Hofmann argue that if a non-positive person knowingly gives consent to having unprotected sex they are taking on the risks involved in doing that, and therefore a must also share in the responsibility of what happens. This however is problematic because condoms are not one hundred perfect in preventing transmission and tied to that in giving consenting the generally assumption is that the person is fully aware of all the variables at play in that given situation. Campos and Hofmann do not acknowledge a scenario where the non-positive partner might have said yes, after fully weighing all of the possible outcomes and desired to proceed with intercourse, whether protected or unprotected; or a scenario in which the non-positive partner might have said yes, and stipulated in only low-risk behaviors such as oral sex, mutual masturbation, etc. Campos and Hofmann seemingly only focus on the scenario in which the non-positive partner says no, which albeit might be what most often; however, they should at the very least entertain the other scenarios when constructing their argument.

Neither Campos nor Hofmann discredit the argument that it would be beneficial for all sexual partners to know their partners’ status; both just primarily focus on the impact these laws and social pressure may have on positive people, which again is an important facet to keep in mind, but should not supersede the overarching concern over the public health.

Make no mistake, the laws which many states have passed do in fact imposition positive people, and require them to do things which the state does not require non-positive people under threat of legal sanctions from fines to prison time to do. This reality becomes even further difficult to tolerate when we acknowledge the fact that for many people who are positive, their status is not something brought upon them out of their own by their own volition: for many they were innocently exposed to HIV as children, many others were lied to by their partner(s) when they took the proper and responsible step and asked about their partner’s status; many others were raped, or contracted the disease when they were still babies from their mothers. And even in cases where a person was not as responsible as we might all presume we all are we as a society should never adopt the mantra that they “deserved it”.

The question before the states is how to maintain the public health, which no doubt centers on lowering the rates of transmission, and should--but sadly is not also a priority--provide positive people with the resources and support that does not dehumanize them in any way; continue to work on prevention, and finally work to combat the stigma of HIV. Some states have been more successful than others.

Some states have adopted terribly draconian laws when it comes to the legal responsibilities of positive people. The website The Body, which offers resources for people living with HIV, has compiled a summation of the various states statues that deal with the transmission of HIV and other STI’s and some are quite concerning, based on how the law is applied and interpreted. Kansas statute’s for example reads:

Statute 21-3435: Exposing another to a life threatening communicable disease. (a) It is unlawful for an individual who knows oneself to be infected with a life threatening communicable disease knowingly:

(1) To engage in sexual intercourse or sodomy with another individual with the intent to expose that individual to that life threatening communicable disease;

(2) to sell or donate one's own blood, blood products, semen, tissue, organs or other body fluids with the intent to expose the recipient to a life threatening communicable disease;

(3) to share with another individual a hypodermic needle, syringe, or both, for the introduction of drugs or any other substance into, or for the withdrawal of blood or body fluids from, the other individual's body with the intent to expose another person to a life threatening communicable disease.

(b) As used in this section, the term "sexual intercourse" shall not include penetration by any object other than the male sex organ; the term "sodomy" shall not include the penetration of the anal opening by any object other than the male sex organ.

(c) Violation of this section is a severity level 7, person felony.

People have questioned with the progress of medication whether or not HIV should still be classified as “life threatening”, but nevertheless I think the point is of the statue is clear clear. Kansas’ statute seems incredibly extreme and goes well beyond any necessary means to lower transmission rates, and fails to take into consideration that people who are positive can have healthy sex lives with their partners. Kansas’ statue is one where it seems more likely than not that the stigma of HIV is the leading factor.

Mississippi has a similar statue as Kansas, but has the caveat that reads, “Prior knowledge and willing consent to the exposure is a defense to a charge brought under this statute.” However since this is merely a defense and not actual part of the statute, someone can still be convicted of the crime.

Many states have more laws that seeming go well beyond what might be conservatively deemed as necessary or appropriate, and those should be changed; however, there a few states that seemingly acknowledge all of the various variable at play, such as whether or not a person as the intent to transmit the disease and a specific time frame, those states I believe are sincerely trying to strike the appropriate balance between public health and individual liberty.

FYI this piece will be the bases for my next column at The New Gay, working title Typhoid Mary and Criminalization of HIV Transmission so check it out in when it gets published

Our Tax Dollars Hard At Work:Government Set to Monitor People on MMORPG's

2010-03-30T17:17:00.001-04:00

You are probably saying to yourself that the title of this entry must be a joke or something the folks at The Onion cooked up. The actual government would never really consider spending tax payer dollars to monitor people's playing habits on MMORPG's (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) such as Second Life and World of Warcraft, especially during a time when schools are cutting down the school week to just four days a week. In a just and rational world you must be thinking such an idea as monitoring people playing a video game would be immediately stricken down because of its blatant foolishness.

Well, you are wrong.

The initiative to monitor what you do on Second Life and the upcoming Dragonball Z MMORPG is being taken up by a relatively new government project called IARPA, or the Intelligence Advanced Research Project Activity, which was founded in 2008 and is modeled after the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, who were the creators of the Internet--so you can blame for ruining your innocence by making 2 Girls 1 Cup available to the masses.

According to McClatchy news:

One program, Reynard, for example, has signed contracts with five research teams, mostly from major universities, to develop systems to observe "avatars" — animated computer images — that take part in popular "virtual world" games such as Second Life and World of Warcraft...The idea is to study how these avatars — like those in the hit movie "Avatar" — behave and communicate with one another for insights into how real-life people in hostile cultures think and act...IARPA officials think that analyzing avatars' behavior in a "virtual world" can produce useful insights into the nationalities, genders, approximate ages, occupations, education levels, even the ideologies of their creators in the "real world." Players also use avatars to communicate with one another.

(Click here to read the rest)

IARPA rationalizes this expenditure--which will no doubt cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions--by pointing out that MMORPG's have in total about half a billion players around the world, and many of those players are Muslim men, who obviously must be terrorists--it is like 50/50 with those folks.

What seems to slip past the folks at IARPA is the simple fact that many players of MMORGP do not look so much like this…

As much as they look like this…

Shockingly, and somewhat of a validation of IARPA's Reynard program, there have been reports about Jihadist groups existing on Second Life and using it as a venue to try to grow their base. However, their actions in Second Life have been extremely limited to pissing off players; and despite the realistic appearance of the game the game itself does provide them with any concrete real world information to plan attacks.

Nevertheless, because I think it would be a fun idea, taking IARPA’s proposition at its word though I can imagine a conversation between a group of terrorist players of World of Warcraft going something like this:

Dragonite_Spellcaster0987: “Dude, where the fuck have you been!? The meeting was supposed to start an hour ago.”

Allahisthebomb: “I’m sorry, Dude. I couldn’t leave the cave when I was planning to, because the American infidels were bombing again. We get a crappy signal inside, so I had to leave the cave and steal the signal from the guys in the cave next to us.”

Dragonite_Spellcaster0987: “You’re such a fucking no0b. ROFLMAO”

Allahisthebomb: “Whatever man. Did Mohammed bring the plans?”

Jewhater0165: “Yeah, I brought them. Do you know what you have to do?”

Allahisthebomb: “Yea, I go to down to the Starbucks and click the switch and boom! Death to America!!!!”

Jewhater0165: “Exactly! And when you die you will get 72 virgins that look like Fei Long in heaven.”

Allisthebomb: “Awesome.”

Dragonite_Spellcaster0987: “I would so fuck the shit out of her.”

Jewhater0165: “Who? Fei Long?”

Dragonite_Spellcaster0987: “No, you’re mom. Who the fuck do you think!? Of course Fei Long! God, you’re such a fucking cockwaffle.”

Jewhater0165: “Shut it, Mohammed or else I will tell the Imam.”

Dragonite_Spellcaster0987: “Dude! I told you never to use my real name here.”

Allahisthebomb: “Fuck. Could the two of you stop bitching all the time. Look before I go and kill myself--”

Dragonite_Spellcaster0987: “Death to the infidel!!!!!”

Allahisthebomb: “Yeah yeah, death to infidels, but back to what I was saying, before I go kill myself I need to level up my character. He’s only on level 54, and I to unlock the Sword of Oppression, which makes bitches do whatever I tell them to or else I get to throw acid on their faces.”

Dragonite_Spellcaster0987: “You haven’t unlocked that yet. What the fuck are you waiting for?”

Allahisthebomb: “I haven’t had the time. Obama just sent another 30,000 troops into Afghanistan and there are like only 100 of us left in the entire country.”

Dragonite_Spellcaster0987: “That guy is such a cockwaffle.”

Jewhater0165: “Who is a cockwaffle now?”

Dragonite_Spellcaster0987: “Obama.”

Jewhater0165: “Yeah, totally, he’s such a fucking no0b.”

Dragonite_Spellcaster0987: “Look, you don’t have time to level up your character have to go now.”

Allahisthebomb: “Alright fine. I’ll go now. See ya’ll on the otherside.”

/Allahisthebomb has signed off

Jewhater0165: “That dude is such a fucking idiot.”

Dragonite_Spellcaster0987: “I know totally. Do you want to go level up in the Highlands of Jafar? I hear they have really strong dragons there.”

Jewhater0165: “Totally. Death to the infidels!”

Dragonite_Spellcaster0987: “Death to the infidels!”

When complaining about Government Spending, We look for Sacrificial Lambs, not the Real Culprits

2010-03-30T02:47:00.006-04:00

Monday afternoon after work I was pretending to be a old man again and was watching CNN’s The Situation Room while I cooked dinner (Pasta Alfredo with chicken and broccoli), and I caught the last few minutes of Jack Cafferty’s segment on the show called The Cafferty File, where Cafferty was reading off viewers comments on viewers thoughts on what to do about the national deficit.

For those unfamiliar with the segment, Caffterty comes onto the program in the first hour and asks viewers a random question and tells them to go online and submit their responses to his blog. He says that some of them will be read aloud on air when he reappears later on in the program—I call it “the second coming of Cafferty”—and then proceeds to disappear until that specified time. (This is in fact all I ever see Cafferty do on CNN, read blog comments, so I am wondering if he actually gets paid for this—which would be kind of silly—or if this is some kind of a prison-to-work program.)

The responses Cafferty read during this segment (full disclosure I have submitted my own comments once or twice (or four times) in the past) were fairly monolithic, people complaining about how the government is spending too much. Which is basically the same rhetoric that has been spouted by some since the republic was formed some two hundred plus years ago. Yet, one person’s response got me fairly irritated—enough so that I would write this entry—because it was completely misinformed about the actual facts.

This individual was making the (flawed) point that the government was spending too much, and targeted organizations and institutions such as the National Endowments of the Arts, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, or commonly referred to as PBS; and the Department of Education as examples of government waste of the tax payer’s money and institutions that the government should get rid off to fix the deficit.

Arguing that the government should get out of the business of funding institutions like the National Endowments for the Arts and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, as well as demolish the Department of Education, are all fine libertarian arguments to make. The problem with calling for their destruction on fiscal terms however is the simple fact that those institutions are not the source of our fiscal mess, and even if we were to break apart the Education Department or not allow the Census Department to pay for commercials that would not solve our economic problem.

You do not need to be an economist to recognize this, all you need is a pair of functioning eyes—and even if you do not have those I am sure the government funds a program that can get that information to you in braille.

Taking a look at the breakdown of where all of our tax money goes the real problem becomes evident, as well as why we hear calls for the end of PBS. Our 2009 federal budget for all intents and purposes can be broken up into six or seven basic (permanent) categories: 1.) national defense, 23%, 2.) Social Security, 20%, 3.) Medicare & Medicaid, 19%--bare in mind we are already at 62%--4.) other mandatory spending, i.e. unemployment checks, retirement, Veterans benefits, etc, 17%, 5.) interest on accrued debt, 5%; and 6.) every-f*cking-thing else you can imagine, i.e. the Department of Education, PBS, space operations funding, school improvement funding, etc etc etc, 12% of the federal budget.

How much has the federal government allocated to spend on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in Fiscal Year ’11? 0.47 Billion dollars, which in numerical form is $470,000,000.00. Understandably that seems like a lot to your average American, who makes around $50,000 a year. However, the use of the word “billions”, even if it is .47, is misleading in many ways because it is purely relative to what you are comparing it to. Yes, to your average worker it seems like a lot, especially if all it goes to is funding children shows, news shows the masses do not watch, and British comedy imports, such as Keeping Up Appearances (great show by the way). However, when you compare the money allocated to PBS in comparison to say the 738 Billion dollars, i.e. $738,000,000,000.00, we will spend on Social Security it becomes clear that PBS is not the problem.

The political problem with the facts, and why PBS and other non-essential programs often find themselves in the hot seat, is that it is easier to attack simpler things like PBS and the Census Department buying commercial time than it is to attack the real problem, which is our long term fiscal health and entitlement spending. The non-essentials are also not aided by the fact that people really like Social Security and Medicare, in fact many depend of them—including the same folks complaining about government spending. Consequently people commonly attack things that they feel we do not need—and as much as I love News Hour and Bill Moyers Journal, even I would contend that they are not essential--while they simultaneously demand we do nothing with the things that are actually causing the problems.

For many on the left national defense spending is where much of focus should be directed. Some have a valid point in doing so. During the Bush administration the Congress and president essentially paid for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan via supplemental spending bills month and after month. While Americans generally do not like to be frugal when it comes to protecting the “homeland”, hiding the real cost of the war was a clever strategy to convince Americans that funding a war was not really that expensive, because the total cost was spread out over a long period of time rather than an upfront bill where Americans could look and see how much was really being spent (much like how one individual Pringles potato-chip is not horribly bad for you, but becomes a problem when you consume an entire can in one sitting.)

The attitude for many on the right is that if we cut spending on defense we will open up ourselves to our enemies, and thus even if military spending is very high it is justified by the fact that it is keeps us safe. Such reasoning seems fine, until we look at how much waste is spent on national defense, because of our carte blanche attitude when it comes to defense spending. As we saw last year the debate over cutting the funding of a specific fighter jet, which according to the Pentagon had outlived its purpose, but was being defended by elected representatives because the makers of the fighter-jet and its parts were deliberate in spreading manufacturing plants across the country to provide themselves with cover, i.e. employees aka voters, in case any talk came about ending their contract were ever to come up.

Nevertheless, even though defense spending accounts for 23% of all of our spending, Americans overwhelmingly feel more comfortable just cutting institutions like the Corporation for Public Broadcasting because it just feels like the right thing to do.

The rhetoric coming from the author of the comment on Cafferty’s blog and much of the anti-government and government spending noise coming from the Tea Party movement is an incomplete thought, rather than an actual plan, because it rests on the assumption that the government in general is just spending too much on non-essential things and if we just stop doing that we would be back on the right path and is not fully thought out.

There is no doubt that the federal government could do a better job of trimming the fat off of many non-essential programs, and make them more lean and efficient, or simply get rid of them altogether; however, even if the government did that and continued to do that until the cows come home that still would not solve the long-term problem. This fact however does not make for a really good stump-speech. Americans want to see something done, and so they foolishly search for sacrificial lambs—and Republicans are all too happy to provide them one—with the belief that in sacrificing them in the name of fiscal restraint we will miraculously solve the problem somehow. It is essentially the economic version of the Wicker Man.

Additional Info:
If this stuff interests you in the least you should check out the New York Times interactive breakdown of the FY '11 budget. It is a really good visual source for those who are more visual learners. Click Here.

Ricky Martin (Finally) Comes Out of the Closet: “And the world issues a collective ‘meh’”

2010-03-30T00:41:00.002-04:00

Realizing that we have been down this road before, in fact multiple times, I checked my calendar to be sure that April Fool’s Day did not seek up on me abruptly; and while the national and state deficits continue to sore, and the Vatican goes to down the toilet (to the delight of some), and the national Republican Party spends hundreds of dollars for dinner and a show at a bondage club; and many other more interesting, and more pertinent stories exists, I will take a moment to acknowledge the history of what just happened:

Ricky Martin came out of the closet.

I know it’s not big news: as one commentator put it perfectly when the announcement hit the net, “the world issues a collective “meh” (NSFW). No really, Ricky Martin coming out of the closet publicly is about as newsworthy as when you drop the last kid off at the swimming poll after being constipated for a while: you’re just really happy to be done with the whole experience—and yes, you may look back to acknowledge the achievement.

The giveaway was of course when any celebrity or public official refuses to deny or confirm the suspension, and instead says something so opaque in an attempt to circumvent the question, though only succeeding fueling the rumors further. (At this point the entire process is down to a science.)

What I am really waiting to find out is whether or not People Magazine is going to dust off the old “I’m Gay” cover once again for Ricky. As asinine as it is, it is tradition, and I would feel somewhat sad if he did get the opportunity to join the pantheon of other “Duh” out celebrities—I’m talking to you, Lance Bass.

It will be interesting to see how Martin will be received within his Latin audience, as many people within predominantly Latin speaking countries are very religious; and what impact it will have, if any, with his North American audience, since his perception as a heterosexual woman’s sex god is all but shot now. Though you never know, he may defy convention and escape the void where so many gay actors and artists end up after they come out publicly about their sexuality, much like Ellen DeGeneres, Neil Patrick-Harris, and…well, those are all I can think of now, but I am sure there are others—I think.

Anyway, it is time to go back to the important stuff, but before I do that—as I am always looking for a semi-legitimate excuse to post this video—in honor of Ricky Martin telling us what we already always presumed, I present Tomboy’s “OK2BGAY” music video:

At the very least Ricky Martin now publicly finds himself in a community that is at little a bit more comfortable with his water-sports fetish. (There a few celebrities where the thought of them giving someone, or even yourself, a golden-shower doesn't immediately trigger a convulsion; and Ricky Martin is one of them.)

P.S.
The Wall Street Journal--yeah, I know, the Wall Street Journal—as an entry up on its blog addressing the possible economic fallout of Ricky Martin’s announcement, doing an ad hoc comparison between Martin and other similar artists who came out and how it affected their careers, neglecting to mention a few such as Lance Bass.

Frank Rich: “The Rage Is Not About Health Care”

2010-03-28T14:47:00.000-04:00

Frank Rich latest Op-Ed in the Saturday’s edition of the New York Times, looks at the anger and threats of violence we have witnessed permeating out of the Tea Party and other anti-Obama and Democrat crowds, is no doubt worth a read. In it Rich makes the point that much of the rhetoric, and in a few cases actual acts of violence, that we have seen is as the title of his op-ed suggests not in actuality about healthcare, but rather a larger more demographic and racial response among some Americans who feel as if their country (and by extension their identity) is being taken away from them by “foreign” forces, in this case an African-American president, female (liberal) Speaker of the House, and others.

Rich starts by pointing out that while the passage of healthcare reform no doubts marks a major legislative achievement for the center-left president, the actual tenants of the law is far from as extreme as the Social Security Act or Medicare, and as he argues is in fact modeled after a Republican governors’ (Mitt Roomey) healthcare bill for his state. Nevertheless, Rich argues the response this bill has generated goes well beyond what either Social Security or Medicare experienced during the times when they were put through the legislative process.

A more comparable legislative achievement that experienced similar reactions Rich argues was the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which was passed during the heights of the Civil Rights movement when the country was bitterly divided:

The apocalyptic predictions then [’64], like those about health care now, were all framed in constitutional pieties, of course. Barry Goldwater, running for president in ’64, drew on the counsel of two young legal allies, William Rehnquist and Robert Bork, to characterize the bill as a “threat to the very essence of our basic system” and a “usurpation” of states’ rights that “would force you to admit drunks, a known murderer or an insane person into your place of business.” Richard Russell, the segregationist Democratic senator from Georgia, said the bill “would destroy the free enterprise system.” David Lawrence, a widely syndicated conservative columnist, bemoaned the establishment of “a federal dictatorship.” Meanwhile, three civil rights workers were murdered in Philadelphia, Miss.

Healthcare reform Rich goes on to say is not the source, but rather a “handy excuse” to mask the real issue, which is essentially the changing face of the American character.

The images and rhetoric we see at Tea Party rallies is not based on some ideological disagreements, about the growth of government but something much more culturally xenophobic. The depictions of President Obama as a witch-doctor, Adolf Hitler, and the Joker all play off the common theme within the Tea Party movement that President Obama is not one of “us”, which fits nicely already with the widely held notion within the Tea Party movement that the president is in fact an illegal-alien.

Much of what we are seeing now validates what former President Jimmy Carter said last year, about how race was a major factor in the rhetoric we were seeing among the protestors; for which Carter was resoundingly criticized for saying, including by some within the administration. However, now it appears that Carter might have been putting it lightly. And Rich says as much:

If Obama’s first legislative priority had been immigration or financial reform or climate change, we would have seen the same trajectory. The conjunction of a black president and a female speaker of the House — topped off by a wise Latina on the Supreme Court and a powerful gay Congressional committee chairman — would sow fears of disenfranchisement among a dwindling and threatened minority in the country no matter what policies were in play. It’s not happenstance that Frank, Lewis and Cleaver — none of them major Democratic players in the health care push — received a major share of last weekend’s abuse. When you hear demonstrators chant the slogan “Take our country back!,” these are the people they want to take the country back from.

And while it certainly is true that some Americans are sincerely concerned about the growth of government and the effect new legislation has on our souring national deficit, if we were to do a comparison between the actual effects of the healthcare bill that was recently signed into law (the end of denying someone insurance based on pre-existing conditions, the ability to have your child stay on your insurance plan until 26, a federal mandate to purchase private insurance, the establishing of federal exchanges, etc) and the rhetoric among a significant portion of the Tea Party movement (“Give me my country back”, “Obamacare”, “Government takeover”, “End of liberty”, etc) we see that reaction to the actual legislation does not match up at all. It would not even be justified to call the reaction an over exaggeration as two are simply inconsistent.

For Republicans their courtship with the Tea Party movement is likely to burn them in the long-run, as the perception of the Tea Party movement, especially in light of recent events, will likely push away more Americans than attract them. Particularly among non-White Americans, who are the growing base of the American character, which are a group that Republicans have had difficulty with in the past already. If it becomes imbedded within the American psyche that the Republican Party is synonymous with a movement that is anti real America it will only hurt them politically down the long run, despite whatever short term gain there might be.

In short, loving America as an idea, but hating Americans is not a wining strategy.

In the Words of the Vice-President:Healthcare Reform is a "Big Fuckin Deal"

2010-03-24T01:51:00.001-04:00

I love Vice-President Joe Biden because he is unlike so many in Washington, being only capable saying what is on his mind, and lacking the proper neurological connections that buffer his speech.

On Tuesday we got another example of why this trait makes Vice-President Biden awesome.

The video below is from Tuesday when Vice-President Biden introduced his boss to speak about the recent health-care achievement, but before he gave President Obama the podium Biden pulled him aside--or at least he thought he did--and told him that what happened on health care was verbatim, "a big fucking deal."

You can see Obama's instant reaction as he probably knew right away that the Vice-President potty-mouth just made its way into the 24/7 White House news cycle. (Though at this point you have to assume Obama is used to. I would wager Biden's outbursts account for at least on third of Obama new gray hairs.)

Of course no one can deny that what happened on Sunday and signed into law on Tuesday was a big fucking deal, so in my book (and I'm a fairly consistent potty-mouthee) everyone should leave our crazy old uncle of a Vice-President a lone.

Fuck.

Before the Misinformation Sets In : Ten Things Brought To You By Healthcare Reform

2010-03-22T14:58:00.000-04:00

It is the first day after major comprehensive healthcare reformed passed, and it's a Monday; which means conservative pundits are ready to get back into the swing of misinformation and indoctrination after the scheduled weekend break (which many of us have off thanks to unions in the 20th century by the way). No doubt healthcare reform will be their primary target, in addition to the usual suspects like, Speaker Pelosi, President Obama, and some obscure administration official who no one has ever heard of before.

But before the effects of misinformation set in, it would be worth while to go over some of the immediate benefits of healthcare reform that kick in as soon as the president signs into law. Thankfully the folks over at the blog ushealthcrisis.org did just that:

If the Senate bill passes, here’s what happens immediately:
1. Adult children may remain as dependents on their parents’ policy until their 27th birthday
2. Children under age 19 may not be excluded for pre-existing conditions
3. No more lifetime or annual caps on coverage
4. Free preventative care for all
5. Adults with pre-existing conditions may buy into a national high-risk pool until the exchanges come online. While these will not be cheap, they’re still better than total exclusion and get some benefit from a wider pool of insureds.
6. Small businesses will be entitled to a tax credit for 2009 and 2010, which could be as much as 50% of what they pay for employees’ health insurance.
7. The “donut hole” closes for Medicare patients, making prescription medications more affordable for seniors.
8. Requirement that all insurers must post their balance sheets on the Internet and fully disclose administrative costs, executive compensation packages, and benefit payments.
9. Authorizes early funding of community health centers in all 50 states (Bernie Sanders’ amendment). Community health centers provide primary, dental and vision services to people in the community, based on a sliding scale for payment according to ability to pay.
10. AND no more rescissions. Effective immediately, you can't lose your insurance because you get sick.

Check out the Daily Beast's Cheat Sheet for more tips

Conservative David Frum: Health Won't Be Repealed Now or Ever

2010-03-22T13:53:00.002-04:00

Prominent liberals like New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, and many others will certainly continue to praise the recent moderate healthcare reform victory in the House of Representative; and these liberals will no doubt say that the Republican talking point to repeal the health care package is complete nonsense. However, they are liberals, that's what they are suppose to say. It should not be surprising therefore that conservatives who opposed the bill, because they were indoctrinated to think so, continue to believe that the GOP really intends to repeal the bill.

But again those are liberals.

Imagine the surprise then when conservative pundit and former speech writer for George W. Bush, David Frum, wrote for his blog, FrumForum, exactly the same thing:

No illusions please: This bill will not be repealed. Even if Republicans scored a 1994 style landslide in November, how many votes could we muster to re-open the “doughnut hole” and charge seniors more for prescription drugs? How many votes to re-allow insurers to rescind policies when they discover a pre-existing condition? How many votes to banish 25 year olds from their parents’ insurance coverage? And even if the votes were there – would President Obama sign such a repeal?

We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat.

Frum goes on to argue that Republicans have left themselves and their party be taken over by radical voices of the conservative movement:

I’ve been on a soapbox for months now about the harm that our overheated talk is doing to us. Yes it mobilizes supporters – but by mobilizing them with hysterical accusations and pseudo-information, overheated talk has made it impossible for representatives to represent and elected leaders to lead. The real leaders are on TV and radio, and they have very different imperatives from people in government. Talk radio thrives on confrontation and recrimination. When Rush Limbaugh said that he wanted President Obama to fail, he was intelligently explaining his own interests. What he omitted to say – but what is equally true – is that he also wants Republicans to fail. If Republicans succeed – if they govern successfully in office and negotiate attractive compromises out of office – Rush’s listeners get less angry. And if they are less angry, they listen to the radio less, and hear fewer ads for Sleepnumber beds.

Can I get an "Amen"?

Of course others on the right disagree with Frum's assertion, like former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, who wrote on his website Newt.Org:

Sunday was a pressured, bought, intimidated vote worthy of Hugo Chavez but unworthy of the United States of America.

Ultimately only time well tell; however, until then Republicans will be devoted to coming up with the next round of talking points about why Americans should repeal a law that prohibits discrimination based on a pre-existing condition; and the liberals will be watching.

Read others reactions to Healthcare on the Huffington Post

A Moment of History: Healthcare Reform Clears the House 219-210

2010-03-22T00:18:00.002-04:00

Speaker Pelosi, the hero of health-care reform in the House of Representative, guiding her caucus to pass the Senate bill by a vote of 219-212, and the reconciliation bill with the fixes that will be voted on in Senate after the president signs it on Tuesday.

There is a lot to get to (such as this, this, and this); however, for right now it is a lot to take in: the first female Speaker of House passed the most comprehensive health-care reform package in decades, and now sends it to the nation's first African-American president to sign into law. Needless to say I am not looking out my window for fear of witnessing pigs fly.

It was a crazy day at the capital. The 'debate' got pretty heated at several points, and was reminiscent of the debates in the British Parliament and not the conventional collegiate United States Congress, primarily over republicans trying to stall the vote. And the final vote was really close, too close, just four votes shy of it not passing at all; however, in the final moments it passed the necessary threshold--no doubt thanks to the deal reached between the White House and the Stupak group of Anti-Choice Democrats.

Tomorrow is going to be one hell of a show as all the focus now moves to the Senate, who has to pass the exact same bill passed by the House tonight, which will no doubt be a difficult.

Will Republicans criticize Gen. Petraeus’ judgment now that he supports DADT repeal?

2010-03-16T19:52:00.000-04:00

Credit: Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Republicans and pro-DADT conservatives are finding themselves consistently left behind in the wilderness on this issue, but neither group seems prepared to face the fact that Americans have grown out of the idea that gays serving openly is detrimental to military performance.

When the Senate Armed Services Committee held the hearing on the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy in early February, where Defense Secretary Gates and Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs-of-Staff Adm. Michael Mullen were brought in to testify on the issue, Republicans on the committee dismissed entirely what both Secretary Gates and Adm. Mullen said in favor of repealing the policy. Republicans argued that both Gates and Mullen were simply following orders from president, and not in actuality giving their independent professional opinion.

This talking-point by Republicans such as Sen. John McCain had one purposes only, which was to neutralize the pro-repeal statements of Gates and Mullen, if they were opposed to maintaining the policy, by making the argument that the men were under direct orders to speak in favor of repeal and thus render their entire testimony suspect. Since the hearing Republicans have paraded several other military officials--one in particular of very questionable background--who were either in favor of maintaining the policy or at least could provided Republicans with enough red meat to stall repeal even further.

However, today CENTCOM Commander General David Petraeus went before the same committee and echoed the sentiments of recommendations of the Defense Secretary and Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs to repeal the policy. Republicans, and pro-DADT conservatives, now have to hurry and come up with a strategy to spin Petraeus’ testimony. But can they even do that?

Credit: MoveOn.Org

Republicans have always gotten behind Petraeus’ recommendations, and many consider his strategy and handling of the surge the tactic that ‘won’ the Iraq War. When MoveOn.Org ran the infamous “General Petraeus or General Betray Us” ad (pictured left) when the surge was being proposed, Republicans rushed to criticize the organization and demanded Democrats do the same. As a result of the success of that strategy Petraeus is wildly considered the most well respected and admired military officers in Washington. Also as a matter largely of semantics but the potential to have some political impact, unlike Gates and Mullen who reside and work largely within the continental US, Petraeus is physically embedded in the theater of war with other soldiers.

Petraeus’ testimony leaves Republicans with little room to navigate. If they ignore his recommendations and continue advocating a position which the majority of Americans have shifted opinion on and consider it a non-issue, Republicans run the risk of appearing as if they do not to take into consideration the recommendations of our military officials in forming military policy. Questioning his judgment and recommendation does not bode well for Republicans either, as doing so could consequently create an environment in Washington where the GOP is seen as attacking such a well respected military officer.

I have learned never to say never to what Republicans can try to spin and succeed at doing. However, it seems beyond a doubt that maintaining the DADT policy at this point is going to be challenge even for the masters of political spin.

Republicans Are Opponents Today, but Champions Tomorrow

2010-03-16T16:25:00.003-04:00

Credit Tom Toles

The Tom Toles comic, which I found on Ezra Klein’s Washington Post blog, highlights a critical point about the Republican Party. If you have been watching the healthcare debate unfold, you probably are aware that the Republican Party has launched what in the days of old would be considered a crusade against healthcare reform. They have from day one opposed even the most moderate of measures to curb insurance company abuses as well as demonized the overall effort to reform the broken system.

GOP and conservative leaders and pundits have utilized every trick in the book to convince Americans that the moderate proposal being pushed now by the Democratic Party, a bill which does not do nearly enough as liberals want, is not just bad for the country economically (because of the deficit piled up under a Republican controlled Washington) but also because it is a “government takeover”, despite the fact that the current mandates all American buy into a private insurance option and not have the ability to buy into a government public option.

One of the dominant sticking talking-points made by the GOP, beyond “its socialism” and “it’s expensive”, has been the accusation that bill if it becomes law will take out money out of Medicare’s coffers, and presumably hurt seniors ability to get aid from their government insurance option. Setting aside the fact that the billions of dollars that are planned to be taken out of Medicare is money spent on waste and abuse practices--which Republicans have seemingly always been a champion of sniffing out--the GOP has been so effective in pushing this message that it has largely scared seniors, and soon to be senior, Americans into believing that this package of reforms is not right for them.

Republicans openly defending Medicare and entitlements is not only new it is somewhat troubling to our collective sense of reality. It has always been assumed--much like as we assume that the sun will rise in the east and set in the west--the Republican Party would be opposed to entitlements and committed to breaking them down in favor of non-government options such as privatization of Social Security.

The darling of the right and Republican Party, Ronald Reagan before he was president released a vinyl record about the dangers of socialized medicine around the time that the legislature was debating Medicare.

Reagan remained vocally opposed to entitlements programs even when it reached 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. However, during his presidency Reagan having realized that while Americans like to beat up on socialism Americans like entitlement program worked with Democrats to reform Social Security and ensure its continued existence.

Reagan never converted to the idea that entitlements were fundamentally good policy, he merely recognized the political pitfalls of his ideology (“government is the problem”) juxtaposed to Americans’ desire for the government to actually do something.

After Reagan's presidency Republicans continued to preach the tenants of Reaganism, and when they retook control of the Congress in 1994 (read the Republican Revolution) prominent leaders, such as Newt Gingrich, attempted and succeeded in putting in place many of the changes that corresponded to Reagan’s ideology of government should do.

Today the tables have changed, slightly. Americans still believe the Republican argument that government is attempting to do too much; however, at the same time Americans, in particular older Americans who side with Republicans, demand that entitlements that they benefit or soon will benefit from must stay in place: one famous line from the Tea Party “Get Your Government Hands Off My Medicare”. Republicans of course have not taken the opportunity to inform those liked minded Tea Party members at the various Tea Party events that Republicans leaders attend that Medicare is in fact a government program that government hands are in. Republicans have also not taken the opportunity to point out that it is programs like Medicare, and not a 15 billion dollar jobs bill, that are contributing most significantly to our deficit problem.

To make the situation worse, or funnier depending on your point of view, the current Republican solution being proposed by Rep. Paul (R-Wi) and being touted by other members of the Republican caucus, which would drastically decrease our budget, calls for the end of programs like Medicare and Social Security. So if you add it up Republicans have struck political gold here, as they have found a way to defend Medicare against cuts in an effort to defeat the president’s initiative while simultaneously supporting a proposal to destroy the Medicare system we have now altogether.

All of this highlights a critical characteristic about the current Republican Party, which is that the party at least now is principally concerned with scoring political points rather than actually solving the problem if it could be damaging to their goals of controlling the Congress. It is why despite being in control of Washington the party failed to do anything on healthcare and deficit, besides make both worse, and are now trying to appear to be the crusaders for the American way of life--which by the way is getting worse and worse by the day.

It is therefore not inconceivable to believe that in the future, much like how Reagan who saved Medicare, Republicans might one day come to the defense of “Obamacare” once it becomes politically favorable as many entitlements eventually become.

Texas Board of Ed: Proof Positive Conservatives Get Away with Everything

2010-03-14T00:04:00.000-05:00

Photo Credit Austin American-Stateman

In February the New York Times ran a story by Russell Shorto on the ongoing debate in Texas within the state’s Board of Education, over what changes should to be made to the state’s educational curriculum as the state prepared to order new textbooks and materials for the upcoming school year. Shorto’s piece focused heavily on one area in particular that socially-conservative Texans were trying to push: the religiosity of the Founding Fathers; but also touched on other areas, such as evolution and American history, that some conservatives were diligently focused on making revisions to.

While these debates happen all across the country (read Kansas’ Intelligent Design debate), Shorto focused on Texas specifically because as such a large populous state, the changes made to textbooks and curriculum have huge ramifications nationwide in terms of what is made available to other states, and has in the past serve as a base for many textbook publishers because of the sheer numbers required to be printed for Texas alone.

Well, the Board of Education recently released their changes to the curriculum and it has some people deeply troubled. James McKinley Jr. wrote for the New York Times the changes “will put a conservative stamp on history and economics textbooks, stressing the superiority of American capitalism, questioning the Founding Fathers’ commitment to a purely secular government and presenting Republican political philosophies in a more positive light.”

Some of the changes include:

Requiring students be taught the significance influence Judeo-Christian thought had on the Founding Fathers.

The United States being described as a “constitutional republic” rather than a “democratic” society. (Presumably because there is a fear that “democratic” will be confused with the “Democratic Party”)

Thomas Jefferson’s writings will be stripped from the curriculum as it pertains to materials that helped inspire the revolution, and replaced with the religious John Calvin.

Requiring students learn about the socially-conservative revivals, such as the Moral Majority, and Republican take over in 1993.

Minor changes to the importance of the separation of church and state.

Removing any notion that Hip-Hop is a significant cultural movement.

The social-conservatives on the board, who are led by a Dr. Don McLeroy, believe that they are simply attempting to strike a balance to what they perceive to be a “leftist” dominated education system, whether it is in elementary and secondary education or at the college/university level. (The argument that academia is bias towards liberals is as old as time itself, especially if you subscribe to the young Earth ‘theory’.)

Accepting McLeroy’s argument justifying the changes eventually leads to the conclusion that conservatives are openly engaged in something they have accused and demonized liberal academics for, which is attempting to rewrite effort in their favor. Yet, despite this blatant example of hypocrisy social-conservatives have largely greeted the changes well, as the review of the curriculum takes place once a decade social-conservatives have seemingly guaranteed themselves ten years to push an ideologically agenda (to which if the conspiracy is true, liberal professors will have to work extra hard to undo once those students reach college, unless they enroll in a college like Liberty University of course.)

In any event the entire episode highlights a startling fact within American politics, which is the reality that social-conservatives can much more easily get away with pushing their agenda than liberals can try to point where conservatives are wrong. It is impossible to imagine a scenario play out today in Texas, or any other state for that matter, where non-conservatives are given the same level of flexibility with the facts or rules. Not that any ideological group should have leeway with the education of our nation’s children, but rather a situation where one group is given the opportunity to have a similar a liberal interpretation of history. Or even the ability to include bits of American history which historically has largely been left unmentioned in elementary and secondary education, and often only available as an elective in college, such in-dept analysis of the Suffrage movement, the growth of the Union movement, the social-rebellion of the 1960s, the second-wave of feminism, and just to be extreme events such as the Stonewall Riots.

All of that aside, perhaps the most important lesson to take away from what happened in Texas is the clear power and influence our current education system gives individuals, liberal and conservative, with a specific agenda on the education of the nation’s children rather than experts in the respective fields, such as American history, biology, or sociology.

Thankfully advances in technology have allowed textbook publishers the ability to tailor textbooks to individual states, rather than principally always following Texas’s lead.

Is Johnny Weir too gay? Yes, but that shouldn’t matter

2010-03-12T17:59:00.000-05:00

The recent scandals and controversies surrounding Olympic athlete Johnny Weir have brought to the surface once again the issue of homosexuality in sports. While Weir himself has been reluctant to address his sexuality, probably for good reason, the commentary about him as well as the pure fascination with his persona and demeanor has put a spotlight on the homophobia and stereotyping that still exists, though largely dormant and underreported, within athletics and sports casting and reporting today.

In 1982 Tom Waddell formed the Gay Olympics in San Francisco in an effort to promote inclusion and sportsmanship within both gay and straight communities. Though Waddell did eventually have to drop the word “Olympics” from his organization, because the word “Olympics” is essentially trademarked, the event survives to this day, 28 years later, as the Gay Games. Along with the Outgames, another more recently created sporting event of the same nature, the Gay Games have brought together thousands of people from all across the United States and the world to celebrate and take part in sporting events under the banner of respect and inclusion.

From its inception many people from both the gay and straight communities have questioned the necessity for such an organization(s); and some have criticized its founding as an attempt to inject the topic of sexuality into sporting events, which many claim should be void of any kind of cultural points of contention. However, the stories generated about all things Johnny Weir have pointed out in fact that the missions of both events are more important now more than ever.

It was recently reported that Johnny Weir will not be asked to take part in the Stars on Ice tour, which regularly features Olympic athletes, because Weir was deemed “not family friendly” according to one source to the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, or GLAAD, organization. Not surprisingly such a decision has generated considerable push back in the gay and lesbian community, because of its implied reasoning that homosexuality, more specifically (and stereotypically) flamboyancy, is not family friendly. Via The Advocate’s coverage of the scoop, GLAAD’s response to the decision was highly:

“To say that Weir is “not family friendly” would be a clear jab at his perceived sexual orientation. Weir is extremely involved with his family. He is putting his younger brother through college, and supports the family financially because his father’s disability prohibits him from working. Weir’s dedication to his family can be clearly documented in the Sundance series, Be Good Johnny Weir, which follows him and his family and friends through his life and career as a championship skater.”

Of course Weir’s style and sensibility may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but the accusation that he is not family friendly is undeniably false though it might be commercially gospel. If anything Weir should be seen as a role model to children who do not fit into the preconceived molds, and wants to do things differently.

If the decision reached by Stars on Ice decision was but one incident it could dismissed as one instance of veiled homophobia, which while still a sad reality of the world we are in is not at all that surprising; however, it is the fact that such reactions to Weir’s career is representative of a consistent message and rhetoric that has been reported that raises an eyebrow.

Weir has been accused by many of making a mockery of the sport (as if that would be difficult), including by other athletes, and has been ridiculed by several members of the press. But perhaps the most damning thing about the coverage Weir receives because of his performance is the fact that despite his obvious talent Weir work is not often taken seriously by those in the press.

And that point that was highlighted in Bryan Safi’s recent segment of That’s Gay for Current TV:

Photo Credit Philip Meyers

The stories and gossip has not seemingly had much affect on Weir--if anything it has only serve to encourage him to be more outrageous; however, for many of those in the gay community the reaction has only served to reinforce the notion that mainstream society has yet to come to grips with the idea that term “gay athlete” is not in fact an oxymoron.

Weir of course is not the only one who is suffering because of sports’ condoned homophobia. 2008 Olympian and out gay athlete Matthew Mitcham (pictured right) of Australia has been open about how his sexuality has a severe impact on his ability to secure sponsorships, assumingly for the same reason as he is not “family friendly”.

All of this of course reinforces the importance of events such as the Gay Games that strive to create an atmosphere where preconceived notions about sexuality and sportsmanship have no place at the event. Hopefully that message can and will pass on.

The Fetish and Price of Bipartisanship

2010-03-11T00:41:00.002-05:00

The administration’s self imposed deadline of March 18th for the House of Representatives to pass the Senate’s version of the healthcare bill is closely approaching. The president has been on the road campaigning in the eleventh hour in an attempt to get the final the votes needed to pass the bill. Since the summit at Blaire House on healthcare the president has announced Republican ideas that he plans to include or enact through other means, such as the most recent executive order mandating federal departments audit themselves to sniff out fraud and so forth; however, despite extending the proverbial olive branch this Easter season, Republicans have made it clear that they will not vote for the health-care bill.

The president and Democrats in Congress have wasted countless hours and resources trying to get a handful, in reality probably only one or two, Republican votes out of some apparently only Democratic sincere desire for bipartisanship. Democrats, in the Senate in particular, have compromised their majority in order to try to sway Republicans, who in turn have also used the opportunity to prolong the process and stoke the flames of fear. To make matters worse Democrats have not apparently learned their lesson from the healthcare fiasco, as the bipartisan fetish is spreading to other areas of the Democratic agenda.

It was reported that Sen. Dodd of Connecticut, who is the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, who is working on passing a consumer protection bill and establish a consumer protection agency, that would oversee banking practices in an effort to find and prohibit abusive practices, is again setting aside the Democratic majority on the committee and reaching out to Republicans.

The result so far has been that the initial bill, which was proposed to give the new agency the ability to enforce its proposal, has been stripped and watered down by Republicans on the committee, such as Sen. Bob Corker, to the point that the agency’s effectiveness to actually do what it is designed to do has been several compromised.

Corker’s efforts to convince Dodd to strip the agency’s ability to directly regulate payday lenders, i.e. legal loan sharks who have been known to charge clients annual interests rates in the area of 300-400% and have a disastrous impact on communities of color, has caught the attention of journalists and the cable media, primarily because payday lenders are a large industry in Corker’s state, and one of his big campaign contributors. However, Corker’s effort to take advantage of Dodd’s foolishness did not stop there, the senator was reported to be being one of the Republicans that pushed Dodd to move the agency into an already established (and heavily lobbied) agency like the Federal Reserve. This means any and all decisions that the agency would propose would have to pass through main agency and likely have to endure heavy lobbying from special interests group that seek to water the bill down.

The question many progressives are asking themselves and proposing to Dodd is of course, is all of that compromise worth a vote that mathematically does not even matter? If Democrats have the votes to pass the bill without any Republican support, and thus Republican efforts to strip the bill of much of its effectiveness, succumbing to the carnal desire to be bipartisan is not only a foolish but dangerous.

Throughout the entire healthcare debate the administration and Democrats in Congress have repeated that liberals/progressives “should not let the perfect be the enemy of the good”, and yet when it comes to passing legislation those same voices have fail to see that is in effect what they have done when it comes to bipartisanship. Yes, in an ideal perfect world bipartisanship would be best case scenario, but in the real world Republicans have made it clear that they have no interest in working with Democrats and finding a compromise or siding with the American people over their financial backers.

We have reached a point where bipartisanship does not make legislation any better, but rather purely comes at the price of the American people’s well being and Democrats seem perfectly content with that.

The truly funny piece about all of this is the fact that during the eight years of Bush administration, and conceivable if Republicans ever take over the Congress again, the idea that it is necessary to be bipartisan vanishes until Democrats return to power:

Traditional Values Coalition: Gay Sex and Military Don't Mix

2010-03-08T01:55:00.001-05:00

Photo Credit andrealafferty.org

One of the most obvious and telling aspects of the social-conservative opposition to repealing the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy has been the fact that most of the arguments put forth by DADT supporters are completely farce, and clearly a front for something far less legitimate.

Proponents of maintaining the policy, or worse: going back to the pre-1993 compromise which banned gays from serving altogether, have thrown out all sorts of various reasons why the policy should remain the law of the land. Any and everything from gays will effect unit cohension, to the even more outlandish notion that because our current enemy are religious anti-gay fundamentalists if we allow gays to serve openly we would incur more attacks; and many more, none of which actual pass the smell test if ever given more than a second's thought.

Thankfully executive director of the Traditional Values Coalition Andrea Lafferty felt the effort to repeal the policy was making enough progress that it was time to cut to the chase and direct as to actual reason on why gays should really not be allowed to serve. In a letter to her own organization soliciting donations Lafferty decries that repealing the policy will expose our heterosexual soldiers to "sex-craze gay males", who conceivably would prey on our straight soldiers and really f*ck things up--in the literal sense. (Click here to read the entire letter)

Lafferty also of course took the opportunity to criticize the president for attempting to turn our soldiers, though only the straight ones, into lab rats in an effort to pay lip service to the gay base of the Democratic Party. This very common accusation is of course emphatically false, as the president has been continually criticized by his gay and liberal base for consistently ignoring gay-rights issues, and there are undoubtedly lesser controversial issues, such as simple domestic partnership benefits, that the president could pursue if all he intended to do was satisfy the left wing of his base.

Nevertheless the accusation that the current president, or any Democrat for that matter, is soft on national security and a sell out to special (liberal) interests is a common assertion made by voices on the conservative side to take the focus off and strip the issue of any merit and boil it down to politics and the ever looming threat of the gay-agenda.

In her effort to divert attention from the fact that the military is discharging perfectly able bodied soldiers, like Lt. Don Choi, Major Mike Almy, and many others, Lafferty attempts to paint a dark picture of a military if the policy were overturned. Playing to the Republican established philosophy that it is fear that drives the low-income bracket of their social-conservative base, Lafferty portrays an armed service were gays serve openly as one that cannot perform its basic function of defending the country, or "homeland" in conservative speak because "the military will have been taken over by gay militants."

Photo credit traditionalvalues.org

Lafferty argues that gay-rights advocates, and presumably by extension of that the gay and lesbian soldiers that are continually fighting their discharges, do not care for the military or share the same love of country as their heterosexual counterparts, who are apparently the only ones who "value our Constitution and the Bill of Rights" and "willing to die for us to defend our freedoms". According to Lafferty the desire gays have to repeal the policy is to "force their immoral behaviors on...the last bastions of sanity left in our culture." (To drive this point home, Lattery inserts a photo of a flamboyant gay man in army uniform with a rainbow scarf tied around his neck (pictured left) as an example of what might happen. It likely has ever dawned on Lafferty that gays come in all shapes and sizes.)

The letter does make one factual claim, which is that "the military is a traditional values institution"; and a mere peak at the military code of conducts exemplifies that point exuberantly. However, what Lafferty seemingly ignores is that unlike the armed forces in many of the countries that also prohibit gays from serving openly, the military within the United States is ultimately bound to civilian authority, and thus is only as "traditional" as the American people want it to be. Similar arguments about the traditional nature of the military have been made by supporters of prohibiting women from serving as well as those opposed to the desegregation of the armed services. In each instance the argument that traditional values must trump both the evidence and current feelings of the American people were proven to be not enough. The same will ultimately be said about the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy.

At the end of the day the argument being put forth by Lafferty and other conservatives opposed to repealing the policy--which now represent a minority of self-identified conservatives--is that gay sex and thus gay people are somehow unbecoming of military service, and the policy has worked in the sense that it has prevented the ever looming and destructive gay agenda. And while Americans still continue to have disputes over larger issues such as marriage-equality, the American people have become convinced, with evidence, that homosexuality is a not a trait unbecoming of military service but rather purely representational of our diverse society.

John McCain: Give me your scandals, retired and deceased?

2010-03-07T18:07:00.000-05:00

Photo Credit NBC

As the push to repeal the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy picks up steam, incumbent Republican legislators are in a frenzy to use the debate as a means to keep their social-conservative base on their side. For no other legislator is this more obvious than former Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, who has emerged as one of the leading Republican senators opposed to repealing the policy.

McCain’s spotlight on this issue is not entirely his fault (sort of), as the media has focused on John McCain since it was only a few years prior, when McCain was alright being labeled a moderate Republican, that John McCain said he would take the recommendations from top military officials on what to do with the policy (thus arguably being for the repeal of the policy, before he was against). However, now that McCain faces a tough primary challenge from the right and top military officials, such as Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs-of-Staffs Adm. Michael Mullen, are in support of President Obama’s objective to repeal the policy this year, Sen. McCain has calculated that it is more politically sound for him to oppose the president and top military officials than stand up to the ideological right of his party.

It is to be sure what McCain is doing is smart politics, but is also completely hypocritical on his part.

Ever since the debate on repealing the policy begun on Capitol Hill officially with the Senate Armed Services committee hearing, McCain and other Republicans have been touting a letter signed by a former military officers, who oppose gay and lesbian soldiers serving openly in the military, as evidence that those who serve currently under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell want to see the policy stay in effect. The letter and names was put together last year by Elaine Donnelly president of the Center for Military Readiness, an organization that opposes gays serving openly and women serving in various functions, such as women serving on submarines.

The letter has remained a powerful tool in the hands of Republicans legitimizing their opposition to repealing the policy, even though the majority of Americans, including the majority of conservatives, are in favor of repealing the policy and letting gays serve openly. And even more recent polling among currently enlisted men and women show an opening to repealing the policy.

The days of the letter’s usefulness as an obstruction might be limited, as new research into the signatories of the letter have brought its legitimacy as a trusted resource into question. The letter has always been criticized as something irrelevant to the current debate over the policy, as many of the signatories never served in the military under the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell 1993 compromise; but Servicemembers United, an organization devoted to ending the policy, has pointed out some alarming facts about those listed on the letter. For starters the average age of the officers is 74, which means some portion of those officers not only served when gays were prohibited from serving but also women and African-Americans were banned from serving as well.

Servicemembers United also mentioned, and was later confirmed by DC Agenda, that several of those officers on the list have since changed their views on the policy. Sevicemembers also pointed to several officers who never recalled providing the Center of Military Readiness with their opinions on the policy.

Yet perhaps the most troubling of all is the fact that it was pointed out that at least one of the officers on the list was deceased at the time when he supposedly signed the letter--another has since died--and several of the officers were involved in incidents that tarnished their careers in the military.

Proponents of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell will likely claim that the names of deceased, disgraced, and misused officers on the list are simply a few bad apples in an otherwise good batch of military officers that support the policy, and whose opinion should be taken into considerations; and that is no in no doubt true; however, what proponents of the policy refuse to acknowledge is that the overwhelming amount of evidence, as well as contemporary views on what is best for the military, should also be taken into account and not simply tossed aside because many officers who once served in a military drastically different from our own.

People Black People Could Have Done Without?

2010-03-05T18:16:00.003-05:00

After reading The Roots list of Black Folks We’d Like To Remove From Black History, John McWhorter complied for his blog on The New Republic his own list of individuals, black and non-black, whose impact and legacy McWhorter argues has had a negative impact on African-Americans lives.

McWhorter, who has never been a person to flinch at controversy, mentions some rather big-wigs in the African-American community (he starts off with Malcom X), as well as well-respected non-blacks, especially in the academic world, such as Jonathon Kozol (Savage Inequalities, Rachel and Her Children, Amazing Grace).

Some crucial points were brought up about many of the individuals on the list, and I found myself more often than not in agreement with McWhorter case on many of them—which is somewhat frightening.

If anything, even if we ultimately disagree with McWhorter list, the work should serve as a critical exercise in racial iconoclasm: reevaluating the work and legacy of our icons rather than simply accepting their elevated position within black history.

Below are a couple of particular highlights that caught my eye and some side commentary.
Click here to read McWhorter’s list.

On Malcom X:

I don’t wish Malcolm X had never existed, but I wish he hadn’t become famous…The Malcolm T-shirts and the sense of reading his autobiography as a smart black persons’ rite of passage are distractions from the actions, as opposed to the moods and gestures, that really help black people.

McWhorter’s criticism of Malcom X was in particular a hard one to swallow, and I am sure that McWhorter knew this, as Malcom X was the first on his life for a reason. While I agree that like many political and social idols, such as Mao Zedong and Che Guevara; we tend to gloss over their immoral acts, such instigating acts of violence, and focus on the non-violent rhetoric and actions that we like, we should not completely flip the script either. Rather what we should do is strive to do is adopt a more holistic understanding of that person’s impact, and Malcom X is a perfect example of this.

There was an incident in high school where we were discussing literature during the civil-rights movement, and my English teacher told us that she much preferred Martin Luther King over Malcom X, because she said Martin Luther King preached non-violence and civil-disobedience. At the time I did not much think about that, but as I entered college and had a greater opportunity to explore and research the civil-rights movement and its impact it became obvious that has a society we institutionalized the mentality that Martin Luther King was good and Malcom X was bad. As a result even if there were merits to Malcom X’s argument it was immediately dismissed, because of the way we have glorified, and rightly so, Dr. King while we simultaneously demonized Malcom X.

The same could be said about the black Panthers. While the Panthers certainly were militant, the way in which we as society have characterized them after the fact completely distorts the realities at the time. For example, it was California law at the time that citizens could walk publicly with fire arms, and at that time African-American communities were consistently brutalized and oppressed by the police department. What the Panthers advocated was that African-Americans protect themselves, since the institution designed to do not only failed to do so but were in many cases the oppressors themselves—which coincidentally is the same argument being bad by many people within national organizations like the National Rifle Association.

That of course does not excuse the Panthers or Malcom X injustices or nonsensical arguments about White people, but it does at the very least require us to keep all of what they did in prospective. So the point of contention with McWhorter is not that Malcom X should not become so famous, but rather we (African-Americans) should have done better to keep his legacy in context rather than reinterpreting history.

On Price Cobbs, author of Black Rage:

Cobb pioneered “encounter groups” designed to teach white people about their inner racism. How? By having blacks vent at them, the idea being that this was “therapeutic.”… People elsewhere started doing similar “ethnotherapy.” The idea got “into the air” that whites are always racist in ways they are not aware of, must be informed of this… The paradigm lives on today in diversity seminars, psychology and ed-school curricula, and the whole idea that there is a uniquely complex Race Thing that whites can never completely “get.”

Here I am in complete agreement with McWhorter, the idea that whites are always racists is particularly frustrating, and something I hear more often than I think I should. There are certainly instances of institutionalized and indoctrinated forms of racial bias, where whites benefits from White privilege among other things, but none of that comes close to implicating that every person within an ethnic group are racist. That line of reasoning just seems unequivocally ridiculous, but yet it continues to crop up continuously.

This belief has sunk in so far in the American psyche that some whites actually display feelings of remorse and guilt for being racist because they are white. It is frankly the worse case of connect the dots I have ever seen.

On William Ryan, author of Blaming the Victim:

The mere title of Ryan’s book, Blaming the Victim, imprinted a way of thinking about race which, like other catchy phrases such as “By Any Means Necessary” and “Black By Popular Demand,” is longer on heat than light…people who didn’t read the book, the title alone inculcated the idea that societal factors are the only justifiable ones to explore (except in parentheses) when it comes to black problems, and that to refer to anything else is (drum roll, please) “Blaming The Victim.”

McWhorter’s argument seems a bit farfetched here, he's basically frustrated not with the actual work but rather people's obsession with the title, but I can see the reasoning, and we all certainly know that people have an incredible tendency to put a tremendous amount of significance into a few prepackaged words that they treat like a trump card.

While there certainly are institutionalized systems and indoctrinated ideas that put African-Americans at an economic and social disadvantage not everything is the “Man’s” fault; and some African-Americans have been obsessed with making the case that it is. Certainly there are issues that have a detrimental effect on African-Americans where the responsibility rests squarely on the lap of African-Americans. As a gay person of color, for example, the African-American community’s response to HIV/AIDS has been particularly frustrating, and there is no White conspiracy to take the blame for that.

On Ron Karenga, the creator of Kawnzaa:
I am copying this in full as McWhorter has some particular choice words about Korenga and the Kawnzaa craze:

This one is a bee in just my bonnet. In 1966, Karenga created Kwanzaa—okay. But Kwanzaa, in line with the day’s fashion that Swahili was a “pan-African” language, is cast with Swahili terminology. This has been central to establishing and keeping alive the idea that black Americans get in touch with “their” heritage by learning Swahili. Hence black college dorms named things like Ujamaa, or an early '70s coloring book of mine on Christmas with each page translated into another nation’s language dutifully including Ethiopia with a Swahili translation—when the language of that country is Amharic, a relative of Arabic. Even the fashion of African-sounding names for black people starts with the Swahili fetish—the source of the prefix business, with the Sha’-s and De’-s and so on, is how words work in Swahili.

This is not what I would call a tragedy, but it’s slightly ridiculous, frankly. The ancestors of black Americans didn’t speak Swahili, spoken in various countries in East Africa—and Africa is home to a thousand languages. Black Americans speaking Swahili as a heritage language is like someone with red hair and freckles taking up Romanian because it’s “European.”

If black Americans have a heritage language in Africa it’s Mende of Sierra Leone—that’s the one that black Gullah speakers in South Carolina used to be able to recite some fragments of song in. Mende is even kind of easy as languages go. Clearly, though, Swahili is here to stay. Ideally, Karenga either would not have happened to create a holiday, it wouldn’t have caught on, or, if fate had to make him become famous, he would have cast the holiday in one of the many African languages black people’s ancestors actually spoke. Just saying.

All that needed to be said was.

And finally…

On Jonathan Kozol:

Kozol’s Savage Inequalities has taught legions of people that the reason poor (usually brown-skinned) students don’t do well in school is because ghetto schools don’t get as much funding as others. The notion sits easily in the memory and travels quickly to the same part of the brain that finds Malcolm X attractive.

However, it simply isn’t true. Does funding matter? Of course, some. But not enough to justify Kozol’s rock star status among those concerned with poverty and education. Take New Jersey in 1998. Since then, no funding discrepancy has been allowed between gritty urban schools and ones in cushy suburbs. And the result has been essentially nothing. The urban schools were hopelessly unable to comply, for example, with the No Child Left Behind requirements. Money didn't make the teachers and administrators any better at their jobs. Examples continue—of schools that didn’t change with big influxes of money, of poor schools where better teachers on modest salaries make for better learning, of simple reading programs teaching poor kids to read.

Kozol was a big name during my college years, with professors and educators treating his work as gospel, so it goes without saying that McWhorter’s criticism hits hard back home. However, the criticism that just throwing more money at urban and poor schools doesn’t solve the problem is a valid one.

Several states, including the state where I went to high school, contribute on average some 5,000 dollars plus per student in public school per year, which was the same as my tuition at a private High School, and yet the results could not be any different, just in terms of graduation rates, college enrollment, dropout rates, etc. So clearly while money is a considerable factor, creating a better system of education requires addressing other areas too.

What D.C. can teach Marriage-Equality Efforts Elsewhere

2010-03-03T03:07:00.001-05:00

Photo Credit The DC Agenda

A while back I had written a column for The New Gay on how the campaign for marriage-equality in Washington D.C. could potentially change the face and make of the gay rights movement. Now with marriage-equality passing its likely last hurdle, with Chief-Justice John Roberts denying the opponents of the bill that passed the city-council a stay, and marriages for same-sex couples are likely to begin fairly soon, I wonder what lessons gay-rights advocates will take away from this successful campaign.

No doubt the nation’s capital has some unique traits that are not necessarily comparable to the 50 states, such as the fact that marriage-equality advocates had only to convince the city-council and the fact that unlike any other state marriage-equality advocates did have to worry about the possibility of the federal government intervening.

Also one particular difference is the demographic makeup of the district, which is unique within the nation. Particularly the fact that the majority of the district’s residents are African-Americans, whom elsewhere had not been the strongest supporters of marriage-equality, and the fact that the district also boast a larger number of highly educated individuals, who are not so easily swayed by the conventional anti-gay arguments.

Historically marriage-equality advocates have been accused by many—myself included—of ignoring communities of color, and not just Black, when it comes to the lobbing support for marriage-equality: the prime example being in California with Proposition 8. However, advocates in D.C. specifically targeted and solicited support among communities of color, reaching out to religious clergy in traditional African-American congregations and drawing upon the words of prominent African-Americans like Martin Luther King who pushed for equal rights. Their efforts help serve as a counter weight to members of the community such as Marion Brown and others who attacked marriage-equality proponents’ efforts with religious doctrine.

Another surprising upset in favor of equality advocates was the fact that the Catholic Church’s effort to threaten to cut charitable services, such as adoption services, if the city-council went ahead and voted for marriage-equality was openly criticized by city-council members and was not able to deter the members from voting for equality. The church did inevitably end its adoption contract with the city; however, the city’s response was that another agency would fill its place.

The religious factor will be more difficult in the states, but marriage-equality advocates can at least now assure concerned voters that there are other agencies out there who can do what Catholic Charities do without resorting to bullying. And this is important as the issue of Catholic Charities closing its services in Massachusetts after the state passed marriage-equality there was one of the principle arguments made against marriage-equality efforts in other states.

And while the campaign in D.C. connected with African-Americans out of mere necessity the organizers and the fact that many of the organizers were themselves people of color showed that it can be done, if the right strategy is adopted.

Marriage-equality advocates across the country would do well not to look at D.C. as the exception to the rule, but rather a recipe for success.

The Tyranny of the Minority Continues

2010-03-03T02:02:00.001-05:00

Photo Susan Walsh / Associated Press

News broke Wednesday evening that Sen. Bunning (R-KY) would stop holding up the Senate from voting on a thirty day extension of unemployment benefits, after the Bunning stood on the floor of the Senate for the past several days objecting whenever a member of the chamber (including Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins) attempted to call for a vote on the measure.

After being resoundingly criticized on both sides of the aisle (and given the option to put forward one of his own amendments—which was inevitably voted down) Sen. Bunning found it in his hearts of hearts to allow the democratic process to move forward, and allow hundreds of thousands of Americans to collect their unemployment benefits.

The senator maintains that his first priority was the American people, and said that he only held up his objection because the Congress had not proposed any way of paying for the 10 billion dollar extension. In an attempt to defend his obstruction Sen. Bunning gave a speech on the Senate floor about why it is wrong to borrow more money from foreigner debtors to pay for spending. Which has many in the media have pointed out is particularly fascinating as Sen. Bunning, like many of his so-called “fiscal” Republicans voted against the Pay As You Go amendment that made its way (and failed) in the Senate.

Bunning statements about fiscal responsibility are undercut further by the fact that during the Bush era the retiring Senator voted for spending bill after spending bill without any apparent concern for barrowing.

Nevertheless, setting aside Bunning’s history of hypocrisy when it comes to fiscal restraint and responsibility, the senator makes a valid argument. It has become evident that no one in Washington is prepared to do what is necessary to deal with the country’s underlying fiscal problems. The tiny political fixes proposed by the administration would do little to actually solve the long-term financial problems, precisely because those problems deal specifically with entitlements like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and defense spending—which is where literally all the money goes.

However, while Bunning might score some points on merit of his public motive for holding the Senate from voting, the response has been that choosing to stop a vote from taking place on something that had strong bipartisan support on both sides as well as would immediately effect many Americans was simply the wrong venue to choose to take a stand, especially as it was a mere 10 billion dollars and real problem is in entitlements.

Politically though Sen. Bunning's obstruction further highlights how dysfunctional the United States Senate has become, as one senator is able to effectively bring the federal government to a halt simply by saying “I object”.

If Bunning’s stunt was just an exceptional act of politically stupidity it could likely be forgotten easily; however, it is not. Bunning's most recent act, and promise that more are to follow, is but one incident in a string of recent examples of how the Senate has gone out of hand. Least we not forget Sen. Shelby (R-AL) recent hold on 70+ Obama nominees to various department positions, because the senator was determined to get a large defense contract for his state; and before that Sen. Jim DeMint’s hold on Obama’s nominee to head the Transportation Security Administration just before the attempted Christmas Day bombing. And then of course there is health-care, which the Republicans have made it, their seeming one effort as a caucus to prevent from passing.

Many make the case that the Senate has these rules because it is meant to be the “cooling saucer” of the Congress, i.e. prevent simply populism and the tyranny of the majority from ignoring the concerns of the minority, which when taken to the extreme as we have seen make a functioning democracy somewhat difficult. While it is historically factual that the Framers intended the Senate to be a more civil and less partisan camber than the House of Representative, the Senate has changed drastically from the days of the farmers that have changed the dynamic and turned the Senate into merely the House of Representative for Narcissists.

Originally senators were not appointed by the state-wide elections, but rather by their state’s legislature. Which in turned resulted in the chamber being composed generally of elites who were far less partisan and ideologically and more stately. However, this practice was changed with the 17th Amendment, which passed the responsibility of senator appointments from legislature to direct popular votes. It could be said then (1912) that the farmers never intended the “cooling saucer” to be exposed to such a political atmosphere as their counterparts in the House of Representatives, yet nevertheless we persisted with that.

The Senate still remained largely composed of former governors and individuals of that caliber. However, towards the late end of the 20th century the Senate began to change, and become a more partisan place like the House. It has not reached the point that the Senate is largely being filled with former rowdy House members. A prime example of the depreciation of the status of the Senate is Sen. John McCain, who previously was seen as moderate and distinguished American, who has had to shift drastically to the right as he faces a primary challenge from a radio shock-jock, J.D. Hayworth.

We can further see how the Senate has deteriorated from being a “cooling saucer” to an “ice-box” with the rate in which we have seen senators on both sides abuse Senate privileges, such as the filibuster or use of “holds”, for political reasons. If we look back at the history of the Senate the filibuster was rarely used and only on very contentious issues. Today the threat of the filibuster has become so established that everyone in Washington runs on the assumption that the Senate functions on a 60-vote majority, commonly referred to as a “Super-Majority”.

It should be noted that the constitution stipulates specifically certain kinds of votes that require a two-third majority; however, all other votes can be satisfied by the constitution on a simple majority, i.e. either 51-50 or 50-50 plus the Vice-President casting the tie-breaking vote.

It has to be pointed out that it has been Republican primarily who have abused these Senate privileges to the point that the tyranny of the majority is seemingly no longer even a remote possibly, rather the tyranny of the minority has taken it place. As we have seen with Bunning, Shely, DeMint, and others the Senate has evolved into a place were one person can effectively hold the federal government hostage until the majority meets that senator’s demands or that senator cave in either to conscience or political pressure.

The framers never intended that.

Bill Moyers Journal: Ted Olsen, David Boises, and Prop 8

2010-03-01T17:52:00.001-05:00

(Click image to go to video)

Laywers David Boises and Ted Oslen were the featured guests on last Friday's episode of Bill Moyers Journal on PBS with host Bill Moyers. The two world-renowned lawyers who opposed each other in the Bush v. Gore case but are now working together on the Perry v. Schwarzenegger Proposition 8 case--which is set in the end soon--discussed their own personal attitudes towards marriage-equality, as well as addressed some of the common arguments made against marriage-equality efforts.

From the moment their joint-venture was made public it had generated a myriad of suspicion and disbelief, which still exists among some today, since until the Perry case it was inconceivable to assume the two lawyers who fought against each other in a trial that bitterly divided the nation could ever see the same on any particular issue and, even less believable, possibly work together.

There has been a lot of fascination particularly with Ted Olsen, who represented the Bush campaign in the Supreme Court case and who is arguably the conservative of the two. Many within the gay community initially believed that Olsen ultimate motive in the case was to sabotage the case from the inside; however, since the trial Olsen has largely received a great deal of praise and has become seen as an ally, albeit with some sense of caution.

Moyers, an unrepentant liberal, questioned both Boises and Olsen on the constitutionality of what they were attempting to do, effectively trying to overrule the majority of Californians in their decision to define the institution of marriage; in addition to questions about the role the state should play in dealing with an institution with so strong cultural and religious ties. Both of the lawyers acknowledged the significance of the institution, but point out that the arguments used to deny same-sex couples full marriage-equality rights are the same arguments that were made about miscegenation, women's suffrage, and civil-rights.

The full transcript can be read here

Gay-Friendly Dick Cheney and the Right’s Blissful Ignorance

2010-02-16T00:54:00.000-05:00

There are a lot of things that can be said about Dick Cheney, and most of them are generally negative if you are a liberal/progressive—and for good reason too, as the man is arguably a war criminal—however, one of his admirable traits is that unlike so many others in Washington, Cheney speaks his mind with little to no concern of what the possible political ramifications might be.

Usually we observe this quintessential Cheney-trait manifest itself when the former Vice-President goes on his media rounds to defend Bush-era policies, such as water-boarding and other arguably torture techniques, when even the most staunch Republican tries to avoid speaking about it directly. However, every now and again, with an ever growing frequency, we witness Cheney publicly state his rather liberal beliefs when it comes to gay-rights issues, no doubt a result of his openly gay daughter, Mary Cheney.

Cheney makes no attempt to hide his support, or at the very least indifference to gay-rights measures such as marriage-equality or the push to repeal the Military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, which Cheney spoke about on Sunday's ABC News This Week. This has largely not affected his credibility as a conservative bulldog, Cheney is still revered in conservative circles as being a strong supporter of conservative principles when it comes to foreign policy, ranging from the United States ability to interfere with other sovereign nations to the way United States presidents greet other world leaders.

The fact that Cheney has essentially gotten away with his liberal views on very contentious social issues is interesting when it is compared to current elected Republicans, such as Sen. John McCain, having to run to the right on these social issues in order to stay afloat within the Republican Party.

There are essentially two factors that make it easier for Cheney politically to speak out so openly and frankly about his views on these issues. The first is the fact that Cheney has never been a public figure deeply concerned with what other think of him and his views. He is extremely steadfast and unflinching in his beliefs. The other is that Cheney has made it very clear that he has little to no interest in running for elected office or having some role in government for the remainder of his life, which means of course that he is far removed from any political pressure from his base—the very opposite can be said of McCain.

For his fans and fellow ideologues, Cheney’s positions on these issues might constitute his own unique “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, where those on the right that admire Cheney simply choose not to ask or tell about his views. This is possible because Cheney has carved out a very narrow niche in the conservative/Republican sphere as just the “national security guy”; on social-issues conservatives would frequently look to others, which have largely resulted in Cheney’s views being left unexamined.

At this point it difficult to see how Republicans could start and turn on Cheney and disassociate themselves from him, as they have built him up to be the national security conservative juxtaposition to President Obama, who is also in favor of overturning the policy. Republicans are likely instead to simply ignore Cheney’s indifferent position on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and rather solely focus on his rhetoric and twist that into their argument that repealing the policy now could present a threat to national security.

If Cheney’s soft words in favor of repeal are ever to used against Republican talking-points it will likely have to be by Democrats using them to point that even the most conservative on the bunch has seen the light and gotten over whatever fear there once was around gays serve in the military.

Six Stories that Caught My Eye Today

2010-02-15T17:59:00.005-05:00

Here is a list of the stories that caught my eye this weekend and today that might have ended up in your inbox because I thought they were too awesome to keep to myself.

1. Our Politics May Be All in Our Head
Nicholas D. Kristof, The New York Times
Kristof takes a look at recent research which seems to suggest that the variables that make us liberal or conservative may be found deep within our brains. Kristof is rest assured by one of the researchers that the new research does not mean that individuals cannot change or see the error of their ways—I’m looking at you Sarah Palin. The research is only in its early stages Kristof writes, but if it is proven to be true it would give us a window into how our personalities shape our political ideologies. The research might hopefully foster a greater means of communicating and dialog between the two ideological camps, which at this point in our Red v. Blue divide would be much appreciated.

2. How Christian Were the Founders?
Russell Shorto, The New York Times
In the eyes of social conservatives the Founding Fathers are as close as mere humans can get to the status of demi-god without it being considered heresy. In his piece Shorto looks at the ongoing debate in our one the nation’s most important educational boards—located in Texas, in case you were wondering—and the campaign of the religious right to effectively re-write history and paint the Founding Fathers as extremely pious men.
The case being made by those on the right is that the Founding Fathers were by and large very pious men and fully intended the United States to be a “Christian” nation. They claim that there has been an attempt to secularize the nation and separate God from government. It is no surprise then that they consider the way the Establishment Clause has been interpreted to be a complete misnomer.

It is interesting in the article how those quoted on the religious right make no attempt to hide what they are doing. They blatantly speak openly, and somewhat proudly, about editing text books and rewriting the texts do it corresponds to their religious ideology. Which of course if any secular liberal or progressive attempted to do would be chased out of town on threat of being stoned or something?

Overall the article addresses critical and controversial issues such as censorship and selective editing and the possible outcome that might have on any given society. It has less to do with the actual piety of the Founding Fathers and more to do with the contemporary politics of the role of religion in our society and the people we allow to have some way over that.

3. The Golden-Ticket Holders
Ezra Klein, The Washington Post
Klein posts the list of who the White House has invited to the upcoming health-care summit. In terms of simple politics no one on the list is very big surprise, but in terms of actual health-care reform, as Klein points, some very important names in the health-care debate, such as Sen. Ron Wyden and Sen. Jay Rockefeller, are missing. The elected officials on the list are simply the leadership from both sides from both chambers, and the chairs and ranking members of the committee, which is important in some sense; but ultimately reinforces the comments made by many already that this event is simply going to be about politics and very little substantial action on passing the bills is really expected to come out of this.

It might make Republicans seem more like the obstructionist they are, since they would have to comfort their accusers face-to-face; however, if it turns into another Washington fiasco—and it probably will—the administration and Democrats risks once again appearing as if they cannot effectively govern.

In either case I have the popcorn ready.

4. Rachel Maddow Stuns Rep. Aaron Schock By Calling Out His Spending Hypocrisy
Sam Stein, The Huffington Post
God bless, Rachel Maddow. Ever since Maddow started her own show she really has stood out in the crowd of cable news pundits. Unlike many of her colleagues, Rachel has no apparent problem in calling out her guests or co-pundits on their gapping inconsistencies and hypocrisy, such as Republican Rep. Aaron Schock’s appearance in his district happily spending stimulus money despite having railed and voting against the stimulus bill when it was up for debate and passage. (Shock’s response is that the people of his district should not have to go without getting their share of the money even if he does not believe they should have received any, which is effectively like claiming to oppose taking money stolen from a bank but doing so anyway once the money was stolen because it is already stolen.)

It is obvious that Raddow does her research before stepping into the pit with Republicans or other guests, such members of the Ex-Gay ministries, which you can tell usually, puts her opponents on guard.

Legislators in Washington have gotten too comfortable, because they are rarely ever asked probing questions that they cannot answer with a simple talking-point. Raddow makes that cheap trick near impossible and we can all be a bit thankful because of that.

5. In Black Caucus, a Fund-Raising Powerhouse
Eric Lipton and Eric Lightblau, The New York Times
I will be honest this was a particularly disturbing article to read, especially in the wake of the recent ruling in the Citzens United v. Federal Elections Commission Supreme Court case. Apparently through questionable legislative maneuvering the Congressional Black Caucus, which is composed of only African-American elected officials and built on the goal of making the lives of African-Americans in the United States better, has becoming a fund-raising powerhouse, receiving donations from corporations. In particular corporations that have historically benefitted at the expense of African-Americans, such as cigarettes, alcohol, and gambling.

The justification provided by Elise L. Scott, the chief executive of the Congressional Black Caucus, is probably the most troubling. She said in an interview, “Black people gamble. Black people smoke. Black people drink... And so if these companies want to take some of the money they’ve earned off of our people and give it to us to support good causes, then we take it.”

Setting aside the obvious fact that these companies are using their contributions to garner votes on legislation that affects their bottom line—and Scott does not deny this—the Caucus has in many cases spent more on its own wants than it has in supporting causes, such as $700,000.00 for one event or $4,000,000.00 on the town house that the caucus owns.

While every elected officials enjoys claiming that they cannot be bought with donations by corporations or unions—it supposedly gives them a euphoric feeling comparable to 1/6th of an orgasm—the fact is it is well documented that special interest that contribute huge sums of money to politicians get their money’s worth when it comes time to vote on legislation.

This is especially troubling for the African-American community who has been hit especially hard by the Great Recession, likely the result of the fact that the African-American community was not doing that well before the recession hit in the first place.

6. Palin’s Cunning Sleight of Hand
Frank Rich, The New York Times
Everyone took their shot at Sarah Palin’s use of handwritten notes on her palms during the recent National Tea Party convention; however, it could very well be that Sarah Palin is the one who laughs last. At least that is what Frank Rich of the Times is alluding in his recent piece.

Rich points out that it has been Palin and the GOP that has been defining the debate in Washington, even after years of mishandling the economic and the wars. Republicans have been able to ride on the coat tails of the frustration in Washington, despite the obvious fact that they are the ones causing most of what frustrates people most about the state of our nation’s politics.

As Rich points out Republicans and Sarah Palin have been able to do so much wrong and still managed to come out looking like the good guys.

I disagree with many pundits who argue that the administration “should ignore Sarah Palin and focus on Mitch McConnell”, as it has become increasingly clear that the fuel that powers McConnell’s ability to be an effective obstructionist is Palin and the like. The administration needs to do a better job of addressing the arguments and claims made by Palin and the like, as well as point out their blatant hypocrisy, rather than ignoring the elephant the room.

Today was clearly a very Times-centric day.

If Gay Sex Looked Like This...Marriage Wouldn't Be A Problem

2010-02-15T02:07:00.002-05:00

When I was a Resident Assistant in college one of my residents and I were having an open discussion about sex and the topic of anal sex came up. My resident said that she would never have anal sex because, as she put it, "because poop comes out of there". I laughed and attempted to point out how the logistics of the anus and colon work and how with a little bit of planning you could avoid any embarrassment, but there was no persuading her. The phrase became a running joke between the two of us and the rest of the floor for the rest of the academic year.

While her blunt and succinct reason for avoiding anal sex was funny, it was also very telling of a larger societal aversion to not just feces but that entire region of the body, which contributes significantly to our negative attitudes towards anal sex.

The story of how we all came to hate poop is above my pay grade, but it is interesting to note how we transitioned from a period were when we were babies and defecated in our diapers the grown-ups would huddled around and tell us we were good boys or girls and changed our diapers; to a period were we faced embarrassment in the instance where we accidentally did not make it to the bathroom in time.

A large portion of our feelings towards poop is likely evolutionary: feces frankly smells bad and is filled with bacteria which outside of the colon is dangerous if it gets into your system, so possessing an evolutionary trait that compels you to avoid it has likely saved more lives that we can count. As a result we have developed an entire industry around finding ways to keep poop away from our daily lives, with advanced waste management systems dating back to the Ancient Roman public toilets.

Some societies have been more comfortable with poop than others. In some places people simply find a corner and relieve themselves; while in others like ours--despite being told that "everybody poops" since we were children--some people go to extreme lengths to avoid doing the dirty deed without others knowing.

A consequence our our general attitude to feces is that we have developed a stigma associated not just feces but our rectum as well. It is no surprise then that anal sex has remained one of the great sexual taboos, particularly in America, where anti-sodomy laws remained in effect until 2003, where they were all rendered unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in the Lawrence v. Texas case.

Many of the anti-sodomy laws were written in a way that they only applied to men, but others were blanket laws that presumably applied to everyone, though the implication was that only homosexual men and other degenerates, such as prostitutes, would engage in sodomy in the first place and thus to only people to be held to laws.

Of course we know despite our false preconception, heterosexuals have been engaging in anal sex along with their gay counterparts since the day the first couple figured out that the rectum was also an effective pleasure zone. However, as a society we have not yet been able to disassociate anal sex with gay men and see it a normal heterosexual and homosexual sexual act.

Enter New Hampshire State Representative Nancy Elliott, who recently in a executive meeting addressed the supposed danger of New Hampshire children eventually being exposed to gay sex in school as a result of the state having passed its marriage-equality law last year. Coming to conclusion that her fellow colleagues needed a visual image to drive home her point, Rep. Elliot proceeded give a detail (though slightly inaccurate) description of what anal sex entails. The representative said, "We're talking about taking the penis of a man and putting it in the rectum of another man and wriggling it around in excrement." (I'm not sure "wriggling" around is the way I would describe it or the fact that someone would have anal sex with feces knowingly in their rectum--that is just bad planning.)

Rep. Elliot's argument is that no sensible person should want to have anal sex, "And you have to think, would I want that to be done to me?", as a result it would be inappropriate for the state to force children to have to learn about the ins-and-outs of anal sex in a Sexual Education class. The representative claims that another to another school district in another state, was forced to distribute pictures of naked men about to engage in anal sex to students as evidence (though she never actually provides any specific information, which is reminiscent of the "friend of a friend" kind of argument); she claims that this would be what is to come in New Hampshire if nothing is done to stop it.

Here again we come across the "Spare the Children" argument that has historically been successful in passing anti-gay laws and preventing gay-rights bills from passing. Part of it rests of the assumption that still persists that homosexuality can somehow be 'spread' to people, usually impressionable children, who would otherwise be grow up to become heterosexual. However, we also see part of the puritanical sexual mores' view that posits that anal sex is wrong and children should not be exposed to it. Consequently because we view anal sex as wrong we almost naturally associate anything that has to do with it, i.e. "gay sex", as wrong as well.

Despite the enormous strides gay-rights activists have made over the years the ability to talk frankly about "gay sex", specifically anal sex, remains an almost insurmountable hurdle. There is a clear uneasiness around talking about it, and a complete failure to conceptualize that area of the body as source of pleasure. As a result no matter how assimilated gay life becomes in the larger society there remains a permanent barrier between the gay community and the larger society, which makes it conceivably impossible for the larger society to see gays completely as equals.

Happy Valentine's Day

2010-02-14T19:56:00.002-05:00

Happy Valentines Day to all the couples out there! And to all the single folks out there--myself included--better luck next year.

XOXO

Bryan Safi Ac**kalypse Now

2010-02-13T03:02:00.000-05:00

Current TV's Bryan Safi knocked another one out of the park this week in the latest episode of his ongoing series That's Gay. This time focusing on the talking-points being made by the few remaining defenders of the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy.

It has become clear that those who oppose repealing the policy have no interest in actually having an open dialog about the policy and its effects on our armed forces. The defenders of the policy have purely relied on hyperbole and stereotypes to scare the American people away from approaching the issue; and that strategy has worked pretty well for the defenders of the policy despite all evidence pointing the opposite of the proponents of the policy's claims.

However, now that significant action is being undertaken both within the armed services and in the Congress defenders of the policy are kicking their campaign into overdrive, hoping to come up with the right talking-point that sticks and change the overwhelming opinion of the American people. These talking-points run the gambit anywhere from the conventional notion that gays are sexual predators that would prey on our heterosexual soldiers, to the extreme argument being put forth by Missouri state Sen. Gary Nodler, who argues that because homosexuality is condemned in many Muslim countries gays serving in the military would offend Muslims and incur more terrorist attacks against America.

The good news is that these scare tactics have not been gaining much traction. The bad news is that this has only pushed defenders of the policy to go even further.

Oh well, Safi can always do another episode.

Five Stories that Caught My Eye Today

2010-02-12T02:25:00.001-05:00

My friends laugh at me when I tell them I usually start off my morning with reading Politico's Daily Digest while I brush my teeth on my iPhone, before I pick up a copy of The Wall Street Journal to read over breakfast before I head to work, which is when I read NBC's First Read. What can I say, I like to stay informed. Anyway here are five stories today (technically yesterday now) that caught my eye.

Nice Guys Finish Last: What Obama could learn from Bush about bipartisanship.
Noam Scheiber, The New Republic
Bipartisanship is all the rage in Washington these days, partly because Republicans have abused the filibuster (more on that later) and Democrats are seemingly genetically incapable of effectively running a government. Scheiber analyses and compares President Obama approach to working with the Congress with that of his predecessor, George Bush, who seemingly had no difficulty in passing any parts of his agenda despite so much of it never being properly paid for.

"Super-Minority Is 'The Will Of The Senate'"
Jason Linkins, The Huffington Post
Sen. Orinn Hatch, who you might remember as the senator who was for repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell before he was against it, recently said that the president trying to go around the filibuster to get stuff moving was going against "the will of the Senate", specifically the minority party. Linkins looks at the senator's statements and analyses its likely impact on our democracy, which is that we have effectively reached the point where the party out of power has a "super-minority" and could essentially have more influence in the Senate than the party in power. Which of course brings up...

Reid nixes filibuster reform effort
Paul Kane, The Washington Post
I have never really been a fan of Sen. Reid. I believe he has good intentions, but he lacks what it takes to rally his caucus. I know Reid's job is more difficult than that of the Speaker of the House and that it is difficult for anyone to tell a senator what to do; however, Reid has only assumed the proverbial position and allowed Republicans continue to have their way with the Senate with little to no consequence for their obstruction. He retreats at even the faintest threat of a filibuster by a Republican, or centrist Democrat; and as Kane points out has shown no interest in actually putting Republican to test or seriously pursuing ending the filibuster.

Left frets over fate of 'don't ask'
Jen DiMascio and Glenn Thursh, Politico
My belief that the administration was serious in its intention to repeal the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy was reaffirmed after the State of the Union and the Senate hearing on Don't Ask, Don't Tell. However, with more and more observers speculating that the Democrats may in fact loose the House (and some people even seriously considering the Senate as well) I am becoming increasingly worried that despite the administration work on repealing the policy its slow pace will not produce anything substantial until after the mid-term election, which would be too late if the House turns red--it may in fact already be too late. And apparently according to Politico I am not alone.

What John Mayer's White Supremacist Male Genetalia Means
Lisa V. Gillespie, Campus Progress
I'm not actually really surprised by what John Mayer said about his David Duke like penis. After all I think it is something we are all familiar hearing with the gay community all the time--well, maybe not the David Duke part, but the same message (see The Racial Cop-Out). Gillespie points out the questions Mayer should be asking himself, such as why his male-part does not want to come into contact with black women, rather than accept his penis' overt racism. Which is something I think we all should do more often.

T.A.C. #3: "The Sanctity of Merger"

2010-02-12T01:17:00.001-05:00

Political comics, the really good ones at least, have always had the ability to make a strong political point in a very small amount of space, and usually with some degree of satire provided to drive home the point--or at least point out what is wrong with the opposing view.

Matt Bors' recent strip, "The Sanctity of Merger", does this really well; as Bors mixes both the apparent absurdity of the recent Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission, where the court decided that corporations were legally considered persons entitled to certain inalienable rights, in this case arguably marriage, with the consistency of anti-gay social-conservatives to oppose gay and lesbians getting any kind of recognition whatsoever.

The Writing is on the Wall for Proponents of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

2010-02-10T22:22:00.001-05:00

The final nail to the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell coffin likely came late last week when the Military Times, a national magazine for enlisted men and women, updated its 2006 survey of enlisted personnel’s view on the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy. The 2006 survey conducted by the magazine showed that some 63% of active personnel were opposed to repealing the policy. The recent updated survey showed that only 51% were in favor of maintaining the policy, such as a sharp turn, in such sort period of time, reaffirms the arguments made by many that within the military itself the views are changing.

Of course the fact remains that the Times survey only reflects the subscribers of the magazine and not all enlisted servicemen. Nevertheless, the updated survey does have a significant impact on the proponents of the current policy central argument. In addition to those in favor scrapping the current policy and prohibiting gays from serving altogether, such as Elaine Donnelly of the Center for Military Readiness or Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council. Their argument is that those in the military do not want the policy repealed, and to do so would ultimately put our national security at risk.

For years proponents of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell have pointed to the 2006 Times survey as evidence that repealing the policy would have a detrimental effect on various aspects of the military, in particular the possibility of leading to a mass exodus of servicemen who are opposed to homosexual conduct—the numbers these proponents claim that far outnumber the amount of service members discharged under the policy. Despite scholars and experts pointing out that similar surveys that were conducted in other countries, most recently in Britain, where gays were also prohibited from serving openly suggesting the same thing, but ultimately showing that the amount of servicemen that left because the ban on gays service was lifted was miniscule; proponents of the policy in the United States maintained that the 2006 survey was a severe warning to anyone who attempted to touch the policy.

Republican lawmakers, such as Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), relied heavily on the 2006 poll during the recent Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy as evidence why the policy should not be changed. With far fewer now showing support whether or not the thoughts as views of those in the military, specifically subscribers of the Military Times, will play as critical a role as the socially-conservative anti-gay base of the conservative movement will when it comes time for lawmakers to vote on whether or not to repeal the policy.

Proponents of the policy have attacked anyone who attempted to change the policy—which only started once Democrats took over the Congress in 2007—as trying to push a “radical liberal” ideology on our armed services to appease the radical gay agenda. This strategy has been overwhelmingly successful in preventing any substantial progress of being made. Today however proponents of the policy are finding themselves with fewer supporters, as even Americans who might oppose other gay-rights measures, such as marriage-equality, are in favor of repealing the policy.

Outside of the military opposition to the policy has never been fiercer. In the days after the Senate hearing the myriads of columns and blogs written by proponents of the policy were resoundingly criticized and mocked by not just the usual suspects, such Jon Stewart of the Daily Show, but also from many former military officials, writers of non-liberal organizations like The Economist, and so forth. It has largely gotten to the point where proponents of the currently policy have resulted to desperately trying to find something that sticks. Such as Mackubin Thomas Owens' op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, where Owens tries to make the case of the threat openly gay servicemen and women pose to military cohesion by doing a comparison of our armed services today to that of the military of ancient city states in antiquity.

In the Letters to the Editor section of the Journal a few days later one reader, a McCkay Stangler of Kansas City, Missouri responded to Owens outdated attempt to portray gay servicemen as threatening perfectly, which I could not have said better myself:

"At the time when the right should be defending individual liberties against all government-sponsored encroachments, Mr. Owens resorts to the tired imagery of the “gay menace” as a rationalization for keeping a clearly discriminatory policy. He would do well to spend less time reading Prussian war theorists and more time observing interaction between men and women. I suspect he’ll find the same behavior he so fears will result from the law’s change."

Of course even as the arguments that defend the policy continues to spiral into the realm of preposterousness and the evidence that contradict the hyperbole continues to mount, some Americans will no doubt continue to buy into the fear and rhetoric sprouted by those that defend it and simply ignore the overwhelming facts. However, the majority of Americans now believe that the policy should be repealed and as Sen. McCain said during the hearing, the Congress has the final say as to what happens, therefore Sen. McCain and the rest of the Congress should fulfill their constitutional obligations as representatives of the people and do the people’s work. Both the facts and the leadership, i.e. the White House and the leaders of the military, are on the side of repealing the policy--which is a rare occurrence in the nation's capital.

It is time that opponents of the repealing the policy take a look at the writing on the wall and simply get over it.

What if Homosexuality was Still Illegal? / Bryan Fischer is an Idiot

2010-02-08T04:05:00.003-05:00

In 2003 the Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision ruled in Lawrence v. Texas that all of the remaining anti-sodomy laws—which at that point were 14 states, Puerto Rico and the United States military—were unconstitutional; and ever since radical social-conservatives, such as Pat Robertson, the late Rev. Jerry Farwell, and many others have been crying foul.

Setting them aside, the rest of the country managed to survive without tearing the union apart. And that may very well be due to the fact that even in the 14 states were anti-sodomy laws were not yet repealed by the legislature or overturned by the a state, the laws themselves were rarely still enforced by the authorities, and simply remained on the books as some sort of moral indignation of homosexuals.

Seven years later radical social-conservatives still continue the good fight to make the case why America would be better off if it was 1962 all over again, when all states in the union had anti-gay/anti-sodomy laws on the books.

During a recent segment of Hardball with Chris Matthews where Matthews’ guests were Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council and Aubrey Sarvis, executive director of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Fund, an organization fighting to repeal the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy; Sprigg made it clear that he believed the court came to the wrong decision in the Lawrence case and felt that “there would be a place for criminal sanctions against homosexual behavior.”

Sprigg’s comments might come across as shocking initially, but in taking in the totality of the messages put out there by radical social-conservatives as a whole, his comments fall in line with the rest of the rhetoric coming from his ideological camp. The case for overturning Lawrence appears to be as passionate a movement among social-conservatives as is their movement to repeal the Roe v. Wade decision.

Bryan Fischer (right), who formerly was the executive director of the Idaho Values Alliance, but currently serves as a columnist for Renew America and a radio talk show host, wrote in a recent column all of the issues re-criminalizing homosexuality would supposedly fix, which range from hate crimes legislation to repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

According to Fischer re-criminalizing homosexual behavior would solve:
Gays in the military, because, “We shouldn't make a place for habitual felons in the armed forces.”

Gay marriage, because, “We should never legalize unions between any two people when the union is forged specifically to engage in felony behavior.”

Gay indoctrination in the schools, because, “We don't want to raise a generation of schoolchildren to believe that felony behavior is perfectly appropriate.”

Special rights for homosexuals in the workplace, because, “No employer should be forced to hire admitted felons to work for him.”

And lastly (though Fischer says the list could actually be expanded—oh joy),

Hate crime laws, because, “We wouldn't throw a pastor in jail for saying that illegal behavior is not only illegal but also immoral.”

It is important to note that it has been well documented that the military in years of facing shortage of volunteers has lowered the bar of those who may enlist to the point that it has enlisted convicted felons, all the while continuing to discharge skilled gay and lesbian soldiers under the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy.

On hate crimes legislation, Fischer and other social-conservative pundits comments are particularly frustrating to hear, because it is a complete misinterpretation and misrepresentation of the facts, done in a way with clear intention of scaring others into believing that the state has or would make their thoughts crimes. Which is simple not the case—at all.

The fact is to be convicted of a hate crime the perpetrator must first actually commit a crime. Therefore the only conceivable way a priest would end being convicted of a hate crime would be if in addition to saying the usual “gays are sinful” that same priest beats a gay man or women unconscious and drowned them in the baptismal water. (Well, to be fair there are other ways, but the aforementioned is the first that came to mind.) And even then hate crimes legislation only adds time to the priest sentence, if he is convicted by a jury of his peers, and does not convict him of another crime entirely.

The proverbial anti-gay priest, whether in his capacity as a member of the clergy or not, or anyone for that matter is still entitled to exercise their First Amendment to speak their mind.

If hate crimes legislation truly meant what social-conservatives like Fischer claim it means organizations like the Ku Klux Klan or the Westboro Baptist Church would prohibited from picketing events as such actions would be illegal. And clearly that is not the case at all—though many wish it was.

Nevertheless, according the Fischer the main objective of re-criminalizing homosexuality is not to resolve the aforementioned issues—that is just an added benefit apparently—but rather to “keep such behavior [i.e. “gay sex”] from being normalized, sanctioned and endorsed by the rest of society, and as such render an enormous benefit to a healthy culture.”

In another one of Fischer’s columns, Why homosexual behavior should be against the law, he elaborates on why exactly he believes homosexual activity poses a threat to a healthy culture. According the Fischer, “our public policy toward homosexual conduct should be the same as our public policy toward intravenous drug abuse… Because of the health risks involved, curtailing homosexual behavior should be as much a public policy concern as curtailing intravenous drug abuse.”

Fischer is of course talking about AIDS: “the gay disease”; and cites the fact that the Food and Drug Administration, FDA, currently prohibits gays from donating blood as evidence to support his claim. A policy position which the FDA has been resoundingly criticized for by health-care professionals and various blood bank organizations, because it prohibits healthy Americans from donating blood when all donated blood is tested for AIDS and other STI’s regardless of who donates the blood.

Fischer then turns to the Center of Disease Control, CDC, AIDS statistics to drive his point home; because, the statistics show that over 60% of all AIDS diagnosed persons were men who had sex with men. This according to Fischer makes a clear-cut case that homosexual conduct represents a public health risk, a risk so dire in fact that it warrants legislative action.

It is clear that Fischer wishes to justify his homophobia by masking it as some sort of crusade to ensure public health, as curtailing the ever looming threat of another AIDS epidemic does not require the Congress of the United States or any state legislation to reinstate the anti-sodomy laws—which were never put in place enacted out of some sincere effort to keep society healthy. Simply providing both young and old Americans a better education on sexual health as well as better resources could solve the problem rather easily.

On the subject of AIDS specifically history itself proves to Fischer’s greatest nemesis. The AIDS epidemic of the 1980s was caused in part because good upstanding Christian people, like then President Ronald Regan, ignored the disease and wrote it off as a “gay disease”, choosing instead of addressing the outbreak quickly to let it wreck havoc on those marginalized by society until it eventually affected those at the top. And in the ‘80s when the disease was at arguably its worse, many states had and enforced their anti-sodomy laws, gay hate-crimes legislation was unheard of, gays were barred from serving in the military openly and in secret, many states passed laws prohibiting gays from serving as teachers; and both gays and straights would have laughed at the idea of gay-marriage.

As a result it is difficult, in fact impossible, to extract an iota of truth to any of Fischer's claims that re-criminalizing homosexuality/homosexual conduct eventually produces a more healthy society, in fact all evidence points to the very opposite.

Thanks to Shane for posting this.

Are We ‘Super Uncles’ to the Rescue?

2010-02-07T19:42:00.001-05:00

A new study to be released in the journal of Psychological Science conducted by Canadian researchers claims to have evidence to support the “kin selection hypothesis”, one of the many hypothesizes that have attempt to explain why homosexuality continues to exists in humans despite not having any obvious evolutionary benefit, i.e. reproduction. The theory which focuses only on gay men—which is problem number one for many—posits that gay men are “super uncles”: individuals who are more inclined to help and assist their nieces and nephews, and thus make their survival and eventual reproduction more likely than without those with said uncles.

The Montreal Gazette covered the story and wrote that according to the researchers in the study, “[t]he idea is that homosexuals are helping their close relatives reproduce more successfully and at a higher rate by being helpful: babysitting more, tutoring their nieces and nephews in art and music, and helping out financially with things like medical care and education.”

So far most of the research conducted in the West had not found any particular evidence to support the theory. This led Dr. Paul Vasey of the University of Lethbridge, and one of the Canadian researchers, to look elsewhere and see if the results would be same. Looking for a non-Western culture to survey, the researchers went to Samoa and surveyed women and men, and a distinct third gender of men called the fa’afafine, who are according the study are “men who prefer other men as sexual partners and are accepted within the culture as a distinct third gender category”

On Samoa the researchers were stunned to find evidence to support the kin selection hypothesis. The fa’afafine were as the hypothesis suggested more willing to support their nieces and nephews than they were to help strangers (more on that later). Armed with this new evidence Vasey and his colleagues are now looking into why the same phenomenon has not repeated itself here in the West.

According to the Gazette, “Vasey has a few theories about why researchers conducting similar studies in the U.S. and in England found no difference between the way gay men and straight men treat their nieces and nephews. In Samoa, communities are closer geographically and families are more tightly-knit, while North American families are more dispersed, he said. Homosexuality is expressed differently in Western culture—where it's also less accepted, he said.”

It will be interesting to read the complete study once it is published—which should be within the next couple of days (if not already)—as the question of what causes homosexuality and why it ‘persists’ in humans has plagued researchers since Darwin. However, from what is already revealed about the study the evidence is not at all that convincing, or for that matter all that surprising. For starters from what is known so far whether or not men who do not identity themselves as fa’afafine also occasionally or routinely engage in sex with other men is not mentioned. More importantly though is if the fa’afafine are considered an entire separate gender within Samoan society, neither male nor female, it seems somewhat strange for the researchers to automatically count them as men for the purpose of the study.

Third-gender people exist in various forms throughout the globe. Like the fa’afafine in Samoa, within India there is also a separate group of people known as the Hijra. However, within India there is also a booming gay population of men and women, who have not adopted the Hijra way of life. The Hijra follow separate rules and customs, such as dress and specific Hijra rituals; whilst gay and lesbian women within India lack such formalities. And in direct contrast to the fa’afafine, who are embraced by all of Samoan society, the Hijra live on the margins and are often kicked out of their families.

All of that aside though the underlying implication of the hypothesis is that gay uncles enjoy helping out their nieces and nephews financially and support their relatives. This frankly seems easy enough to accept without their having to be an ulterior biological purpose written within their gay uncle's genetic code. After all aren’t all uncles supposed to be like that, regardless if they are gay or straight? Until of course the straight ones get their own children.

Could the entire phenomenon of so-called ‘super uncles’ not simply be explained by some gay men being paternal males, who assist their sisters, siblings, mothers in raising children because they do not have any children of their own, I wonder. Of course if that was the case, it would send researchers back to drawing in terms of coming up with a specific explanation and purpose for why homosexuality exists within humans.

Thanks to Shane for posting this.

Sen. Orrin Hatch Flip-Flops on Repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

2010-02-05T16:52:00.000-05:00

Call it Ailes Syndrome or whatever, Republicans have a terrible tendency to forget that we live in the age of recording devices, where even the most minor statement can and has come back to haunt them politically with their base. The most recent victim is Utah senator Sen. Orrin Hatch, who on Wednesday in an interview with MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell said that he was open to repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, if the study to be conducted by the military proved conclusively (which it will) that the policy should be repealed. Telling Mitchell that he was simply “did not believe in prejudice of any kind”.

Not 24 hours after the interview The Advocate reports after realizing that reason was not the way to win elections—Republicans ones anyway—Sen. Orrin Hatch issued a statement saying that his words were misinterpret. The senator then declared that like many of his other colleagues in the Republican caucus—and probably within the Democratic caucus as well—that he was also opposed to repealing the law.

To borrow a line from the 2008 campaign, Senator Hatch “was for it, before he was against.”

Below is the senator’s recorded segment with Mitchell from Wednesday:

What the senator did is not at all surprising. As the Republican Party continues to spiral into irrelevancy, by instituting implied purity test on its members the party is forcing its elected officials like Sen. Hatch and Sen. McCain to shift to the right in order to remain electable in the party. The result is that reasoned arguments challenging nonsensical policies, like Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, are immediately rejected not based on the merits of the argument—which is that the policy has been a costly failure—but because to do so would anger the socially-conservative base.

This political reality presents a problem for both Democrats and Republicans. On the Democratic side it makes reaching across the aisle inconceivable. As the president pointed during his Question Time like session with Republicans last Friday, GOP leaders who were initially in favor a bill—and in fact some co-sponsored the bill—to establish a deficit commission immediately rejected it after the President announced he was in support of the bill. For Republicans, on the social-issues especially, where there always seems to be less room to negotiate to begin with, working with a party that cannot even be seen in the same room with you without risking being criticized by their base as a “Democratic-sympathizer”

In looking at the Senate right now, where there might be a handful—if that—of moderate Republicans (i.e. Snowe (R-ME), Collins (R-ME), Brown (R-MA), Gregg Judd (R-NH)) finding one or two that might be willing to cross-over, not just only of some misguided sense of bipartisanship but also because it is mathematically necessary, to vote with the Democrats is almost impossible.

In such an environment it makes the pathway of repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell hard to envision, despite the president’s strong words to the Congress to get moving on the issue.

‘Open’ Marriages: Are Gay Couples Really Redefining the Institution?

2010-01-31T15:26:00.008-05:00

A new study sponsored by San Francisco State University reported in Thursday’s issue of The New York Times, and to be released next month, reports that many gay couples in the Bay Area are in so-called “open marriages”, where spouses engage in extramarital (sexual) relationships with other people with their spouse being both fully aware and condoning the activities.

The study which is being heralded as offering a unique view into the lives of gay men in the Bay Area has shown that among many of those surveyed monogamy was not seen as a critical aspect to their marriage/relationship. According to the study, “Some gay men and lesbians argue that, as a result, they have stronger, longer-lasting and more honest relationships. And while that may sound counterintuitive, some experts say boundary-challenging gay relationships represent an evolution in marriage — one that might point the way for the survival of the institution.”

The Times and the Advocate wrote that even though this phenomenon is rather common and known throughout the gay community few in the gay community are publicly willing to talk about it, for fear of further public repudiation and affirmation of long held stereotypes. The Advocate pointing out that gay rights advocate Joy Behar recently got into some trouble on her show for suggesting that gay couples are more likely than heterosexual couples to be in a non-monogamous relationship. And the Times wrote that those interviewed were openly concerned about what effect publicly commenting on their open relationship might have on the ongoing debate over marriage-equality (see Perry v. Schwarzenegger).

Editor-in-Chief of EDGE Steve Weinstein wrote in his piece Surprise! Lots of Gay Marriages Are Open that the nervousness about broadcasting this tidbit of information is to be expected:

“Of course, some will insist that such a study undermines the argument for gay marriage. There used to be a phrase in Yiddish, "Don’t discuss in front of the non-Jews." This kind of community groupthink would maintain that the study reinforces the stereotype of two gay men as horn dogs, seeking out sex, sex and more sex wherever they can find it.”

Weinstein cites one of the comments left behind on the Times Bay Area blog that covered the story as evidence of community groupthink. The author wrote, “trivializes and belittles the 50% of gay relationships which [] are monogamous and devoted partnerships. Thanks for giving the bigots more ammunition and the Sunday-go-to-church gossips something to gasp at.”

Both Weinstein and the author of the comment are correct in their assertion that many in the gay community will view the study’s findings as easy fuel for social-conservative organizations to utilize as they attempt to portray gay and lesbian couples as undeserving of full equal rights when it comes to marriage, as well as arguing that if gays are giving full and equal rights that we will undermine the institution of marriage for heterosexuals.

On the end of the spectrum however are gay and lesbian voices who are not only not surprised by the study’s findings (I sincerely doubt many are), but see the study as evidence that gays, who have been engaging in open relationships seemingly forever and ultimately onto something. They, Weinstein and others, contend that marriage as an institution has been plagued by puritanical dogma that forces spouses to commit to one partner out of fear of being stigmatized by society and not necessarily because that is what they want.

The gay community immune to this puritanical judgment, simply because gay and lesbians were marginalized by the society and therefore not subject to society’s norms and mores, was able to develop their own standards within their own community. We can see this most evidently during late 20th century when mainstream America began getting its first glimpse into the gay community that had formed through various networks and social-gatherings over the years, such as Pride or the Folsom Street Fair or proverbial gay bar.

What became unmistakably clear right away was that the nature of a relationship was drastically different in the gay community than it was in the heterosexual world. With the notion of marriage nonexistent gay and lesbians never felt pressured to in effect ‘settle-down’. Many did, and lived together in a committed relationship for years (only to be married decades later). Many others instead lived an unbridled lifestyle. As a result in the gay community there was a libertarian attitude towards sex and relationships that allowed individuals more freedom to decide for themselves without fear of being marked negatively by their community.

This paradigm continued for many years essentially undisturbed, but eventually even the gay community proved susceptible to the tide of change. We see that process depicted in the series Queer As Folk clearly: Gale Harold’s character Brian Kinney represents the carpe diem sexually fuel gay man, who is not bound (or believes he is not bound) by traditional norms about relationships is juxtaposed to Hal Sparks’ and Robert Gant’s characters, Michael Novotny and Ben Brunkner, who choose to settle down and start a family. It is the friction between their two lifestyles, and others in the series, which plays an important role in the series.

Over the years the gay community has seen a drastic shift that projects the notion that you can ‘settle-down’ and still be gay, whether it is by incorporating gay families into traditional gay events, such as Pride. There has been some push back to this, but it has largely been silenced by the overwhelming voice of those who have chosen to settle-down and still wish to be included in gay-events.

Another fundamental deviation that has contributed to this shift is the fact that the demographic has changed significantly over the years. In the late 20th century when your average out gay person was a full-fledged adult who grew up in a society that rejected them, they found a community that welcomed them and embraced them in the gay-bar/club scene. Today however many gay people are coming out at a younger and younger age, and for many of them, instead of being rejected by the larger society they are growing up as part of it. And this applies for older Americans as well who are now coming to terms with their sexuality. The classic “I’m Gay” people’s cover at this point seems out of date. As a result now there is less of a disconnect between being gay and being part of mainstream society. This should undoubtedly be seen as a good thing for gay people.

The repercussions of these changes are that for gay people today who consciously consider themselves part of the mainstream, and believe they are entitled to same rights as everyone else, they are bound by society’s norms and mores—it is a give and take relationship. These are the 50%, and growing I think, of them gay men surveyed in the San Francisco State University study. Whether or not they should settle down and possibly start a family is a no-brainer for them. They do not see their sexuality as a something that disqualifies them from having that life, or as something that compels them to do different.

In contrast to what social-conservatives claim, which is that marriage-equality for gays and lesbians will change what marriage means to heterosexuals, marriage-equality for gays and lesbians may ultimately change what it means to be gay in America.

Dear John McCain, Gays Already Serve in the Military

2010-01-29T03:21:00.003-05:00

From a political standpoint I get it: Sen. McCain, who has been in the Congress for decades, is facing a tough primary challenge because the former Republican presidential candidate is not Republican enough back in his home state of Arizona. As a result the senator, which prior to the 2008 election was seen as a moderate Republican that thrived for bipartisanship more often than not, has been moving steadily to the right in an effort to survive in the Republican Party as it continues to strive to purify itself. The senator now wastes no time in criticizing the president and has become part of the Republican hoard that religiously opposes every of the president’s proposals.

As a result it was not at all surprising that John McCain, whom many trust as a military expert, wasted no time in issuing a statement denouncing President Obama’s remarks about his intention to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell this year. The senator’s statement read:

"In his State of the Union address, President Obama asked Congress to repeal the 'don't ask, don't tell' policy. I am immensely proud of, and thankful for, every American who wears the uniform of our country, especially at a time of war, and I believe it would be a mistake to repeal the policy.

He goes on to say:

"This successful policy has been in effect for over fifteen years, and it is well understood and predominantly supported by our military at all levels. We have the best trained, best equipped, and most professional force in the history of our country, and the men and women in uniform are performing heroically in two wars. At a time when our Armed Forces are fighting and sacrificing on the battlefield, now is not the time to abandon the policy."

The statement itself is a simple and effective talking-point to his Republican social-conservative base, but it seemingly rests on the incorrect notion that Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell prevents gays from serving in the military at all. Which, as Elaine Donnelly of the Center for Military Readiness will tell you, is not what the policy does—and that is her main issue with the policy.

McCain says that he is proud and thankful for “every American who wears the uniform”, which would assumingly include the 66,000 gay and lesbian Americans that currently serve in the armed forces, but yet wants to make sure that those same Americans be forced to lie about who they are. The senator goes on to praise our servicemen and servicewomen as being the most professional and best trained in the world, and stating that they are all “performing heroically,” which again would conceivably include the gay and lesbian soldiers that currently must serve in secret.

The senator claims that the policy has been successful and as result should be repealed, particularly because we are at war; however, the Sen. McCain never explains or goes into any detail as what exactly the policy as been successful at. That is left up to the reader to interpret. However, what we do is (1) the policy has not been successful in preventing gay Americans from enlisting and surviving in military. The continual discharges are a testament to that fact. (2) It is also widely known that some service members are open with their fellow soldiers about their sexuality and continue to serve until the information is brought up one to the higher ups. And more importantly (3) we know that there has never been any scientific research or findings that support any of the claims made by proponents of the DADT.

Factually we know the policy has been a costly failure that has discharged service members with critical skills needed in fields related to our current wars. If there was reason to end the policy it would be the fact we are in two wars and the need for volunteers surpasses any nonsensical preconceptions of gay and lesbian Americans.

Nevertheless, the implication in Sen. McCain’s statement, and much of the rhetoric coming from the right on this issue, is that Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell in some fashion protects those in the armed services from serving along with gay and lesbian soldiers, when in reality the extent of the policy is that it mandates gay and lesbian service members serve in secret and effectively lie about their sexuality. This reality obviously comes in direct contrast to Sen. McCain’s pride and thankfulness in the best trained, equipped, and professional military on Earth.

White House and Obama Differ on DADT Repeal Timeline

2010-01-29T01:31:00.001-05:00

Like many Americans I spent much of last night glued to my television watching President Obama deliver the annual State of the Union address to both houses of Congress and the American people. There much anticipation throughout the media about the nature of the speech. Many wondered how the president would address health-care reform, which is hanging on by the threads now; as well as what the president would say about jobs and the economy—which have risen to the top priority of the President’s agenda.

In addition to the above hot topics I, like many other gay and lesbian Americans, was interested in seeing whether or not the president would, as reports about the speech suggested the president would, mention the repeal of the controversial Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy.

The initial reaction to the speculation was to dismiss it as hogwash. To many it seemed strange that the president, who by most accounts glossed over gay-rights in 2009, would take the time to mention gay-rights legislation during such a high-profile speech like the State of the Union. Pundits, like MSNBC’s Pat Buchanan, argued about the possible political ramifications the president could face bringing up Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell at that time. Some on the right even went so far as to suggest that it would be inappropriate to do so.

In the gay community specifically the speculation was met with a wide array of responses, from some dismissing the possibility as being politically nonsensical (in particular because it seemed that President Obama was moving ever closer to the center) to some believing that the president would in fact mention it but it simply be a generic statement that he has consistently given at various speeches since taking office.

As it got closer to the speech pundits continued to discuss and argue about the possibility, but the general sense was the issue of repealing it was too partisan and ideological, and not well suited for a speech that was suppose to reset the president’s relationship with the American people, in particular Independent voters. And so the notion was largely tossed aside. And then the president began his speech, and most of it followed the general outline that most pundits had expected. The president primarily focused on jobs and the economy, briefly mentioned his commitment to health-care reform, and began speaking about the ballooning deficit and the nation’s wars.

Looking at the time and realizing that the speech would come to an end in a matter of minutes, I suspected that conventional politics had won the day and that the president would not mention repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. But then:

While many were quick, almost too quick, to point out that the president did not mention anything new, such as an executive order prohibiting the discharges until the policy is formerly repealed, aside from a rough timeline (more on that below); the fact that he did take a moment at the State of the Union speech before the American people and their representatives of both parties does say a lot about the president’s commitment to repealing the policy.

It is important to remember that the State of the Union address is a unique speech in our Republic that symbolically is elevated above all other speeches that a president gives throughout their tenure. It outlines the president’s agenda for the upcoming year, as well as provides them with a unique opportunity to address the American people as whole, regardless of political party affiliation or cable news channel preference. As a result it is much different than a speech in front of an audience of friendly faces, such as the Human Rights Campaign annual dinner or at an event at the White House.

For the president to include his intention to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell as part of legislative priorities (regardless of low on the list it is) is a major symbolic feat in and of itself. That being said, one thing the gay community has become frustrated and exhausted with is rhetoric as a substitute for action. It is here where the president’s words run into its first problem, which is the seriousness in which the president plans to see his objection come to fruition.

In the post-speech coverage as many pundits debated the contents of the president’s speech, Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post mentioned on Hardball with Chris Matthews that he had spoken with a source in the White House which said that a more realistic timeline is likely next year, 2011—which corresponds closer to the timeline hinted by the Pentagon in a brief released earlier this year. If this is true it could mean several things, the first and best case scenario is that the Congress would repeal the law in 2010, but the Pentagon would take some time to make whatever changes it deemed necessary (such as separate bathrooms?) before the discharges are formally stopped. Another possible scenario is that the Congress would begin to have hearings on repealing the law. (Rumor is that Secretary Gates and Chairmen of the Joint Chief-of-Staff would be questioned on repealing the policy when they go to Congress for the annual appropriations budget) And work on building up support among Democrats--as Republicans are likely to just vote no, as usual--to pass the Military Readiness Enhancement Act or some bill like it. This could take a while, as it is an election year and conservative Democrats in leaning red districts might want to stay clear of gays in the military, which might have actually passing the final bill run into 2011.

Then there is method suggested by openly-gay Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), which is to include repealing the policy as an amendment within the annual Defense Department appropriations budget. Frank’s method is the most straightforward and politically expedient, since Republicans are not likely to vote on a bill that funds the wars, but it risks having conservative Democrats, particularly in the Senate, strip the amendment from the appropriations bill in order to avoid controversy.

President Obama has not yet mentioned exactly what is his preferred method for Congress to repeal the law, but if we are to believe Valerie Jarrett that should be unveiled in “the coming weeks”. Rep. Frank suggests that anything Defense related is always done through the authorization bills, though whether that would extent to such a controversial issue remains to be seen.

Still, the fact that the White House and the president differ on a timeline suggests that politics at work in the Congress or at the Pentagon, or at both institutions, might prove to be insurmountable hurdles to the president’s intention to repeal the law this year. If Secretary Gates is unable to get a significant consensus of military officials on-board the administration runs the risk of appearing as trying to push an ideological philosophy rather being focused on national security—which has larger than DADT implications for Democrats in an election year. On the flip-side if the president is unable to convince conservative Democrats, such as the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Ike Skelton (D-MO), to vote for the bill he risks it blowing up in his face.

Politically therefore 2011 appears a more sensible time to work on the repeal. It would be after the mid-terms and the Democrats are still likely to have a majority in both chambers. However, the president has now made his intention clear and the gay community is bent on holding him to his deadline. Ultimately only time will tell if the president’s declaration will come back to haunt him from either his liberal base or his fellow Democrats in Congress.

One way the president could potentially give himself some cover if things turn out to be more difficult as the process unwinds would be to show what progress is being made. What has been frustrating the gay community is the perception from the White House that the administration only cares about gay-rights issues when the anger reaches a certain point and the president needs to do some damage control. If the administration could in some way develop a means of showing what has already been done it would much to assure gay and lesbian Americans that the administration is serious about repealing the policy.

T.A.C. Today's Awesome Comic: Polls

2010-01-23T03:55:00.001-05:00

I watch a lot of political oriented television. Between episodes of The Jersey Shore, Lost, and Ugly Betty, I usually am flipping between MSNBC, CNN; and occasionally Fox News if I am in the mood of a good laugh, though I can only watch it for a relatively short period of time before I swear the brain cells begin to deplete.

As a result one thing that I have noticed is that the media is obsessed with polling data. And they treat new polling data, each new polling data including those that conflict with each other, as next to gospel. This in and of itself would not be that serious of an issues, until you take a closer look at the specific poll and see how the got their results. Both in term of the questions that were asked and the amount of people questioned.

I remember one poll by my Alma Mater's polling center that apparently took a sampling of 834 people and used them as an indicator of who Americans were likely to vote for during the 2008 general election. That's right, 834 representatives of 300,000,000. I never linked relying on polling data, but I firmly gave up on the notion after that incident.

While I realize larger more established polling centers use greater samples, the practice itself is terribly flawed in actually capturing the true mood of the American people. Specifically because pollsters are attempting to quantify such a wide spectrum of people around a new generically defined labels or characteristics. Not to mention all of the everyday issues that pollsters run into when trying to get their sampling, such as people who use cells phones as their primary phone or choose simply not to answer the phones. When you add it up there are so many issues that ultimately make polling so unreliable that I simply do not bother.

On SCOTUS Decision: Rumors of Democracy’s Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

2010-01-23T03:29:00.003-05:00

There is no shortage of outrage and hyperbole coming from all sectors of the media over the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizen United v. Federal Elections Commission. Some politicians, many of whom have been accepting large sums of money from large corporations and voting in their favor for years, are now proposing a constitutional amendment to ban corporations and unions from becoming involved in campaigns. Claiming that the ruling puts our entire democracy is at risk of becoming corrupted by large corporations and special interest. My initial response to said politicians, “that ship has set sail a while ago.”

Make no mistake, there are some serious issues that were not touched upon by the justices in the majority, such as what the rules are for multinational corporations that maybe funded partly by foreign governments; however, these issues are rarely being brought up in the coverage of the case, but rather the long accepted fact that corporations are legally entitled to some of the rights of a natural person. This would be interesting if it were actually news. The fact is however corporations have long since been considered creatures of statute. This brings the larger and possibly more important point about the entire debate over campaign finance, which is that the American people are tragically ill-informed about what the rules are. (Tonight in fact Chris Matthews, a veteran Washington beltway journalism and the inner workings of United States Congress, from his time as serving on the staff of the Speaker of the House during the ‘80s; and host of MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews, was shocked to discover that individual Americans can contribute unlimited amounts of money to put up adds during an election in favor of their own candidate, and that it is only when it comes to contributing directly to a candidate that limits are imposed.)

Keeping this in mind the question that arises, for me at least, is whether much of the reaction to the decision that is driving the hysteria comes from the fact that Americans are once again engaging in national game of Telephone, where interpretations of the ruling is spread from one person to the next and inevitably changing drastically for the worse as it continues to disseminate through the press, blogosphere, and television media.

To set the record straight it is important to make clear what exactly has changed after the ruling. What the court did was remove restrictions from corporations from spending money on ads and other campaign spending after a certain point in the election. Under the new paradigm, and until Congress enacts a law that thwarts the impact of the ruling, corporations can—and undoubtedly will—spend money on ads on federal and local elections to convince the electorate to vote for the candidate that supports their interest. Corporations would still be required to disclose their information so that voters can know who is spending the money on the ad.

The concern that is coming from some in Congress and others is that under the new rules corporations will effectively drown out the average American influence in an election campaign, because they (the corporation) have seemingly unlimited amounts of money to spend on any given ad, whereas the average Americans is under a much tighter budget. Specifically many in Congress worry that corporations will compel elected officials to vote in the favor on bills under threat of having the corporation in question contribute indirectly with ads to the challenger in the election.

Rep. Leonard Boswell (D-IO) said it succinctly to Politico, "No American should have to turn on the TV and see AIG telling them how to vote."

However, is that really the case? This was the constitutional question that the court wrestled with: should AIG, an association of person, i.e. ‘a corporation’, not have the right to petition its fellow Americans to vote for its candidate just as our neighbor next door can? The conservative-wing of the court believed that it should. The liberal-wing of the court on the other hand disagreed, but seemingly on different grounds, Justice Stevens’ dissent rested heavily on the practical application of the ruling, where he saw removing the restrictions as provides non-natural persons undue influence in our political process.

Could it really however have that profound of an effect? The case centered on a political ad, Hilary: The Movie, produced by Citizens United which urged Americans not to vote for then candidate Clinton in the primary, because as they argued in the film Clinton would be unfit for the office. Citizens United claimed that the film was not a political ad, but even the conservative justices pointed out that it was inconceivable to consider the film anything but a political ad denouncing then Senator Clinton. And while it is unlikely that large corporations will attempt to convince Americans to vote by producing movies the expectation is that large corporations will flood media with political ads and effectively seek to convince Americans to vote against their own interests, by supporting candidates that have the interest of the corporation at heart.

What is strange is that no elected official or pundit appears to be arguing that corporations or natural persons should not have the right to petition voters to vote in their interest, but rather officials and pundits are arguing that the extent to which corporations can do just that is what makes it a problem. The fact that AIG can put one million dollars towards campaign ads against banking regulation easily, while your average American can only afford, maybe, a $50.00 donation every now and again gives AIG too much influence. On a moral/fair level that is a rather fair assessment; however, the decision the justices in the majority seemingly reached was that AIG and any other corporation—or union—should not be punished, by being denied to participate in the electoral process, for simply being successful. It is apparent that the justices did not believe that the government had a substantial reason for prohibiting that kind of activity.

Of course some will rightfully ask what exactly do appointed judges know about campaigning? The farmers of the constitution after all specifically stipulated that of all three branches the judicial branch should not concerned about political repercussions in deciding cases for fear of having that pressure affect their ability to interpret our laws. The federal judicial branch has been insolated from the stress of running a campaign and having to find ways to fund it. Their input and practical knowledge on how money affects a political campaign and by extension our nation’s politics in general is arguably akin to the practical knowledge a celibate priest has on sex and marriage. Id est, not much.

Nevertheless, arguments that the court’s decision will somehow unravel democracy as we know and turn the country into real life Idiocracy is rather hyperbolic and presumptuous. Big money and special interests has always been a central part of our democracy. While Americans typically associated special interests and campaign donations with all that is bad with Washington, the reality is each American has on any given occasional several special interests groups lobbying on their behalf.

What the country needs now is even greater transparency of where the money is coming from. Technology has advanced to the point that even your most modest American can easily track for campaign donations, and the system and continually be improved. More importantly the greatest defense against the tyranny of Big Business is that elected officials still must require a majority of individual natural born Americans votes to be elected.

If Americans allow themselves to be convinced simply by a thirty second commercial then that is how they exercising their right and they are the ones that ultimately have to live with the consequences of that decision. Corporations are in the business of making money, and if they can convince Americans to vote for their interest then that is democracy at work. Suggesting the alternative that Americans cannot be trusted to weigh the consequences of voting for whichever candidate or proposition, and must instead rely on the government to impose rules on certain persons or association of persons for the greater good is ultimately undemocratic and undermines democracy. What we must do is arm the electorate with the knowledge and tools to make that the decision.

T.A.C #1: Today's Awesome Comic

2010-01-22T02:37:00.002-05:00

Today I am introducing a new daily 'feature' here at Clips N' Chips called T.A.C., alternatively will be known as Today's Awesome Comic.

Since I collect a lot of political and other humorous comic strips all the time and just save them, I figured I could share there so that readers could get a chuckle too, and also get a taste of what I find funny.

Hope you all enjoy.

Has the Whole World Gone Mad: Cindy McCain, Ted Olsen, and Scott Brown

2010-01-22T02:23:00.000-05:00

Cindy McCain, wife of former Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, posses for an Adam Bouska’s NOH8 photo. Meanwhile, conservative lawyer Ted Olsen, most famous for his case against the Al Gore campaign in 2000 disputed presidential election, who has partnered with his old adversary David Boies, is a couple days into arguing before a federal court on behalf of gay couples in California, and effectively the entire nation. Last but not least, Republican Scot Brown won the senate seat in Massachusetts, taking over the late Senator Kennedy’s seat. With so much good going on in the world gay in relation to republicans/conservatives, once believed our mortal enemies, one has to ask, “has the whole world just gone completely bonkers!?”

Cindy McCain and NOH8
It was a friendly surprise to see Mrs. McCain NOH8 photo on The Advocate this week. Initially I wondered if it had been a doctored photo or if the senator’s wife was confused as to what exactly the NOH8 campaign was about. However, once it was confirmed that Mrs. McCain was in fact in support of marriage-equality, like her daughter Megan McCain but unlike her husband the senator, I tapped myself on the hand for once again prematurely assuming the views of Mrs. McCain.

While I am thankful that we can count her as an advocate, I have my reservations about embracing her with open arms all of a sudden, after all as wife of a presidential candidate; a possible First Lady of the United States, her silence during the election was disappointing. Her decision to effectively ‘come out’ as an advocate post the election, when it seems clear that her husband has no further interest in seeking higher office, while better later than never is rather politically convenient.

Though it can be said that her decision to come out now when her husband is in by all accounts a tough re-election campaign is in fact a powerful statement about her position on the issue.

Sen. McCain’s office, in a effort to do some quick damage control, did release a statement stating that while he respects the opinions of his wife and daughter he personally is opposed to marriage-equality.

It will be interesting to see if this revelation has an effect on First Lady O, who has remained silent on the issue of marriage-equality and gay rights. If it is revealed that First Lady O is also opposed to marriage-equality, like her husband, like Sen. John McCain; it could put further scrutiny under, at least symbolically, the gay community’s commitment to the Democratic Party.

Ted Olsen Goes to Court
When it was initially announced that conservative lawyer, possible Bush W. judicial appointment to the Supreme Court, Ted Olsen was going to argue on behalf of gay and lesbian families, rumors began to spread that it was in fact all an elaborate scheme to have the Supreme Court, which is dominated by conservative justices, decide on the issue once and for all and ban gay-marriages across the country.

However, since then Olsen has made the rounds throughout the media and made the conservative case for marriage-equality. And while some will never truly be convinced, Olsen has been embraced by many on this issue as an important ally in making the case for marriage-equality.

Since the Supreme Court has decided not to allow the trial to be televised many people—including myself—have been reading the daily updates and summaries of the previous day’s events.

Of course no one seriously considers this as the final step. Everyone has their eyes set on the Supreme Court, where, if Olsen and Boies are successful, the justices will strike down all of constitutional amendments and give gay and lesbians across the country the ability to attain a marriage-license.

Massachusetts Goes Red…Actually Purple
The stunning upset in Massachusetts was all the rage on the news for the past couple of days, as the virtual unknown then State-Senator Scott Brown defeated a Democrat. The biggest issue for Democrats was the effect Brown’s election would have on health-care. The biggest issue for gays is the effect Brown’s election will have on gay-rights legislation currently in the Congress, which has essentially stalled. Brown himself is actually a rather moderate Republican. As one person put it Brown is, “[t]o the right of Cheney, and to the left of 99% of Congressional Republicans.”

You can read more about Brown’s election on my column Beyond the Margins for The New Gay. See The Brown Effect.

The Corporation and Me

2010-01-22T01:14:00.001-05:00

Like many like minded liberals I was a little take aback when the Supreme Court released its opinion on the Citizen’s United v. Federal Elections Commission case. In a 5-to-4 decision, broken down by the traditional conservative versus liberal lines, the court effectively undid years of laws that sought to limit the amount of money corporations and unions can contribute to a political campaign.

Many liberals jumped on the story to attack the conservative judges for seemingly siding with corporations and big-money over the average American voter. Many elected officials, including the president, also took an opportunity to denounce the decision.

The argument coming from pretty much all sides is that the decision will unleash a flood of money into an already corrupt election system, which favors big business over the well-being of the average person. Which undoubtedly will be what will happen, and just in the knick of time for the ’10 mid-term elections.

I started reading the decision today. So far I have read through about half of Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion, and have not yet touched the dissent by Justice Stevens—which I hear is pretty damming of the whole concept of corporate personhood—or any of the concurring opinions. Because I could not resist I read Justice Scalia concurring opinion first. (I would suggest anyone who disagrees with the opinion of the court take a look at Scalia’s concurring [which can be read here].)

The outrage triggered by the court’s decision centers around the generally accepted notion that the American election system, and effectively American democracy, suffers from the influx of incredible sums of money from special interests groups that advocate on their own behalf often at the determent of the average American person. Advocating on your own behalf itself is not a problem, or even a bad thing, after all that is a fundamental trait of a democracy; however, what concerns many people—including myself—is the ability special interests group have far outweighs the average person and as result in practical terms effectively transfer the power to a smaller class of wealthy individuals, turning our republic into an oligarchy.

This is a valid concern. As we have seen over the past year, even with Democrats in power, the supposed party that stands up for the average person, the influence of special interests groups, such as banks and investments firms, has been alarming. To drive that very same point home, Senator Dick Durban declared on the floor of the Senate after his bill to reform bankruptcy laws that the “banks [] own the place”.

However, that reality seemingly has less to do with the constitutionality of corporations’ ability to contribute to elected officials re-election campaigns as it does our elected officials inability to, as American journalist Molly Ivins said, “[t]ake their money, drink their whiskey, screw their women, and vote against ‘em anyway.” And to some extent that is to be expected: if it takes millions of dollars and near billions in the case of the presidency, to be (re-)elected, large corporations’ ability to keep the reservoir from driving up makes them the ideal sought after target, and thus compels our elected officials who want to keep their job to be loyal.

If money is legally considered a form of free speech and a corporation is legally entitled to some of the rights of a natural person, such as the right to donate to a campaign, the court’s decision should not come as an extreme surprise; in fact once you accept the aforementioned facts the decision seems truly justified. Surprisingly, the laws that the decision now strikes down as unconstitutional, which Democrats like President Obama and Republicans like John McCain denounce, did not dispute the aforementioned facts, they in fact reinforced them and attempted to make them illegal simultaneously.

The laws made it illegal for corporations to attempt to influence a campaign after a certain point in a campaign season. It was enacted because it was believed a corporation’s ability to spend huge sums of money could influence the final outcome of an election through bombarding the electorate with ads in support of its candidate or position on an issue. The laws did not to remove a corporations’ legal right to contribute to campaigns or even remove a corporation’s status as a legal person with some rights of a natural person, but rather simply establish a point in which a type of ‘person’, i.e. the corporation, could no longer contribute. We could imagine how if the laws were imposed on natural persons its constitutionality would have been called into question much earlier. Imagine if the Congress had decided that the richest top 1% of Americans could not contribute or campaign for their candidate after a certain point in the election. However, because the laws applied to a creature of statute and were seemingly in effect for the greater good of the average American the issue of the laws’ constitutionality were glossed over. Not anymore.

It is the very notion of corporate personhood and the threat that possibly imposes on American democracy that is that the heart of the debate. To Americans who already consider corporations’ influence in American politics too big, the notion that said body should be entitled to the rights of a natural person might be too much to swallow. However, as Scalia articulates in his concurring opinion, the right to speech in association with others (i.e. a corporation) is a fundamental constitutional right, and a right all Americans should be in favor of.

What is particularly surprising is the outcry from the very perpetrators of the corruption of our system: the elected officials; many of whom denounced the court’s decision and claim it somehow endangers our government even though it is they who are the ones that take the money, side with the corporations, and undermine the average American. It appears that the officials that denounced the decision are effectively conceding that the system is fundamentally broken, in which many of their fellow elected officials—if not themselves—do the business of big business and special rather than the business of the American people.

There is no doubt that there is too much money in our politics, but the solution is not to bar a body of people from executing their constitutional rights with a constitutional amendment—which is currently being tossed around as an idea—rather the solution is to elect better individuals to serve as a representative of their districts and hold them accountable. It is not impossible, though it is very challenging, but no one ever said this experiment called a democracy was going to a walk in the park.

Occasional Humanity Does Something Awesome

2010-01-14T19:16:00.000-05:00

"All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated...As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come: so this bell calls us all: but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness....No man is an island, entire of itself...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."-John Donne, Meditation XVII

Pat Robertson's foolishness aside, occasionally humanity comes together and does something amazing for each other that makes you doubt the pessimism and believe that humanity can do good if we focus on it.

The global reaction to the crisis in Haiti has been stunning, not just in this country but across the world, leaders and civilians have contributed and sent resources to help the country (which historically has never been that well off) in one of the worst disasters in the hemisphere's history. Of course we can do more, and most certainly we will try in the coming days, weeks, and months; but the speed at which we have jumped to our moral responsibility indicates our capacity for good still exits.

Go Human Race!

This Week in ‘Negro, please’.

2010-01-10T17:14:00.000-05:00

The word “Negro” got a lot of action this week in the mainstream press. First, the story broke that the 2010 US Census form will have the word listed as one of the descriptors/identifiers of Americans of African descent to check off. Many African-Americans, particularly younger ones, felt that the term was outdated and inappropriate to use on the form. Some argued that seeing the word on the form might trigger such an emotional reaction from some that they may not choose to correctly fill out the form.

This elicited the response of, more rationally base, African-Americans and progressives to point out that even though the term “negro” has fallen out of favor within the popular African-American dialect (more on that later), the term itself is no more racist as the term “homosexual” or “homophile” is homophobic.

The entire episode was a frank reminder of how fragile, and in many ways immature, our discussion over race in America remains, and how quickly many are ready to jump at the ready of slander someone, or in this case an entire federal department, of being deaf, blind, and dumb to the racial sensitivity of others.

If the issue of the census was a frank reminder, the media’s coverage of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-NV) “Negro-Dialect” comment was an accredited college course in American Hypersensitivity and Nonsense.

The quote uttered by Sen. Reid, which now many Republicans are using to take the focus off of health-care reform and as a call for Sen. Reid’s resignation (one that I would not necessarily objection to—just not for this reason), was made during the presidential campaign and was about then candidate Obama. The senator said that he was impressed with Obama skills as an orator and felt that America was finally prepared to elect its first African-American president, particularly as the senator said because Obama was “light-skinned African-American” with apparently no “Negro-dialect”.

Certainly a bold statement by the senator from Nevada, but not one which many would disagree with; which makes the Republican response to blow the situation out of proposition and exclaim liberal hypocrisy all the more obvious. While now it seems like a silly question to as (though only if one ignores the hoard of racist images and rhetoric coming from the some of the nation’s Tea Party movement). Throughout the campaign, especially in the early stages of the Democratic primaries, many political pundits and African-Americans observers openly debated whether or not (White) Americans were ready to elect its first African-American president.

African-American observers openly testified to the fact that candidate Obama’s light-skinned appearances and welcoming demeanor helped his candidacy win over voters who other wise would not have voted for an African-American. They also openly talked about the fact that things were so bad in the country that necessity for change trumped conventionally politics. African-Americans also pointed out that Obama would have to walk a tight-rope on issues of race throughout the campaign. This prediction turned out to be absolutely correct (see Rev. Wright).

In many African-American circles the spectacle of Obama candidacy turned into a joke. I vividly remember some relatives and friends sitting around joking about how someone should lock Rev. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton away in a closet until the election was over or risk them ruining everything. David Allan Grer towards the end of the election openly joked about Obama’s ‘blackness’ and some White people’s persistence resistance by pointing out the very ‘blackness’ of the McCain/Palin ticket.

Chocolate News: Will Barack Obama Be the First Black President? - watch more funny videos

Rummaging through the catalog of videos in YouTube I stumbled across an even more poignant video from the old Richard Pryor sketch show about the first Black president, portrayed by none other than Pryor.

(It is interesting to note how much Pryor and the show’s writers were able to get correct, which only serves as an indicator of how good the critique of American was. In how the first Black president of the United States would have to appear, they hit the nail on the head, s/he would have to be calm, stoic, well-versed, etc. Another thing that the Pryor got right was the fact that Black news media would be for the first time incorporated into the White House briefing room. Which is exactly what the Obama administration did once it settled into the White House.)

The ultimate joke about the Pryor skit is of course the old adage of being able to “take the Black out of the ghetto, but being unable to take the ghetto out of the Black person”, which according to Sen. Reid was something Democrats did not have to worry about. And how right were they?

Will Obama Re-Engage His Youth Base?

2010-01-06T20:53:00.000-05:00

President Obama won 18-29 year olds voters by a 2:1 margin during the 2008 presidential elections against Sen. John McCain and Sarah Palin. Yet despite such a wide margin of support, President Obama has uniformly ignored this base that rallied, volunteered, and donated to his campaign in the debates over health-care reform, the economy, and both wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Part of this is a simple political calculation: young voters, despite campaigns such as Rock the Vote and others, are not consistent voters, and generally have a very low voter turnout come election day, as opposed to older voters—particularly 65 and older voters—who routinely come out to vote in presidential and mid-term elections in droves. However, Obama’s campaign and presidency was largely supposed to change that. The political Obama machine that got young people interested in politics and utilized new media like no presidential campaign before has essentially put this untapped political force out to pasture, with seemingly no intention to revive it, at least not until 2012 presumably.

Focusing on the health-care debate, Daniel Bajger wrote for the Orlando Sentinel about young and new voters disconnect and disenchantment with the Obama administration:

From its inception, the movement toward health-care reform has suffered from a dearth of leadership. The powerful Obama campaign machine that once gauged the pulse of the young, Internet-savvy generation has broken down, leaving in its wake the hordes of young voters who, in their first foray into politics, campaigned and voted for President Obama. Whether it stems from disenchantment or indifference, these youthful voices are notably absent in the health-care debate.

Nevertheless, the health-care battle has offered younger voters a glimpse into Obama's style of governance, and many don't like what they see. The president is a pragmatic politician who is willing to compromise some of his core beliefs to achieve a politically vital legislative victory. His campaign promise of change and the resounding "yes we can" credo that inspired the youth of America appears to have been mere theater. Obama's passion seemingly has vanished.

One can easily imagine the campaign version of Barack Obama making rousing speeches on health care to stadiums full of youthful and energized supporters. Those days, however, are long gone, and Obama now endeavors to rally our support by giving placid cable-television interviews and dull teleprompter recitations.

Because the president was not actually crafting the health-care legislation, he was forced to sit quietly to the side while the slow bureaucratic gears of the Senate churned into action. Through his silence, Obama has tacitly endorsed the constant barrage of pricey political concessions given to Olympia Snowe, R- Maine, Joe Lieberman, I- Connecticut, and a pack of Blue Dog Democrats.

In protest to these concessions (including the capitulation on a public option), many prominent members of the Democratic base have voiced their dissatisfaction with the current incarnation of the health-care bill. Obama, cognizant of the lack of support among his Democratic base, was on the defensive Wednesday, stating "this notion that somehow the health-care bill that is emerging should be grudgingly accepted by Democrats as half a loaf is simply incorrect."

Clearly, a fractured Democratic party will prove deleterious to Obama's re-election efforts and put the Democratic House majority in jeopardy for the upcoming midterm elections.

However, in the midst of such Democratic infighting, there is one large and motivated voting bloc that could help rally support among progressives on a unified version of health-care reform — young people. But with no leader or organizational structure providing guidance, young Obama voters who worked so vigorously on his campaign are left stranded on the sideline.

While staunch Obama advocates can point to an the Republican Party, who have adopted the role of solely being obstructionist and delaying any kind of meaningful reform, as a reason why President Obama has been unable to bring the change to Washington that he campaigned on; the reality is the president has more often than not chosen to stand on the sidelines and pass the buck to the Congress.

So far rather than being the steadfast reformer President Obama has instead demonstrated himself to be a staunch political pragmatist. The only problem politically for Obama is that pragmatism for all it is worth is not as inspiring to new or old voters.

For young and irregular voters, millennials in particular, who are not familiar with the conventional legislative process--which is plagued with back-door deals, political compromises, and campaign promises being ignored altogether--and have far greater idealistic expectations of government than regular voters, Obama’s first year in office might ultimately push these very crucial voters that came out for Obama in 2008 away from voting in 2012, but more immediately in 2010. It could also affect the enthusiasm among the Democratic base, which will likely need all the energy imaginable to combat the conservative populism that is all the rage now across some areas of the country.

President Obama has to prove to this very important voting block of his that government can work and to do that he has to become more engaged and demonstrate executive leadership rather than passive pragmatism.

Recovering

2010-01-06T16:45:00.000-05:00

I have to apologize for not updating the blog recently. At some point on Saturday I contracted a terrible stomach virus, and I have been essentially incapacitated until today.

Usually these things just pass right through, but this virus decided to stick around for bit and cause as much havoc as possible. Last night I loaded up on the meds and I am feeling much better. (Though I still suffer from the occasional cough and I still have chills.)

To this day I don't know what caused it. I have not eaten anything that I usually have do not. So that is really was strange.

Anyway, at least it is making its way out of my system.

“In the US there are big dicks, and there are ‘big Black Dicks’.”

2010-01-03T03:49:00.004-05:00

The above quote and title of this piece was taken from fellow blogger Garçon, who runs Ka-os |Theory, from an exchange we were having today over one his recent entries on his blog about the depiction of Black performers in gay pornography. See Racism? What Racism? It’s Just a Bit of Fun! (Right?)

We both agreed that in American gay pornography there is a clear distinction between how the performers are presented to viewers based on their ethnicity. Where Caucasian performers are simply presented as normal and African-American/Black performers in particular are associated with terms that portrays them as other than normal, and in some cases other than human.

The issue of how performers are depicted in pornography has always been a sensitive topic for me, primarily I believe that it has real world consequences that further perpetuates and reinforces stereotypical notions of African-American men within the gay community.

The conventional argument in defense of the status quo is that it is just a fantasy, like all pornography, and its impact is should not be exaggerated. And while, like I said on Ko-os Theory, pornography inherently objectifies its performers and is presented as a fantasy, the way in which, and degree to which, the brute caricature is recycled in gay pornography suggests to me that there is more at hand than just fantasy. More importantly however is the fact that we know depictions in pornography has an impact to our perception of people outside of the fantasy (see the ‘dumb’ blonde). And for gay people of color, especially youth, being part of a community that overwhelmingly views them as almost subhuman brutes is, understandably, not good.

I have written about the black brute here before (and I am currently working on another piece for the column); however, without going into to much detail, one area that I wanted to highlight that illustrates the point is the title and ways in which African-American performers are described in pornography, especially in comparison to their White counterparts.

The website mentioned in Garçon’s piece, BlacksOnBoys[dot]com [NSFW] (pictured left), immediately stands out as a prime example of what is being address here. The title of the website alone is loaded with many connotations that are historically common with the way in which African-American men have been depicted. Not just in gay pornography but across the board.

One thing that is obvious from the onset is the distinction the producers make between the two performers. While the White performer retains his person-hood, though cheapened to that of a “boy”, thus someone not in control, weak, emasculated; the Black performers is stripped of person-hood and simply referred to as “a Black”. In fact if you were to venture into the website (at your own risk [and obvious not fit for work]) the subtitle given is “Who’s the slave now, bitch.”

It becomes evident fairly quickly why addressing the Black performers as a person was not necessary, it is clear that the emphasis is not on him as a person but rather solely his penis. Take for example the description given to one of the recent episodes, Jess Taylor:

“Hello members! This weeks update is Jess Taylor, he's 20 years old and from Idaho. He's had the desire for black cock for years but in Idaho there's not really much of a selection of black guys. But here at BlacksOnBoys.com we have no shortage of black men who like to fuck white bois.”

Or that of the description given about Andres Costa’s second episode with the website:

“Well members, Andres is back again for some more of the good stuff. He tells us he strayed back to white guys for awhile and he came back to us to get his dose of what he's been missing...the big black cock! Well of course we hook him up with one of the biggest black cocks we have....Jovonnie.”

It is striking that one thing that we see consistently is the recognition of the White male performer as a person, by acknowledging them via their name, but for the Black performer his name is very often either omitted or in the case with Costa’s referred to simply by his penis not his person.

Immediately the quote that comes to mind is Jonathan Proctor’s famous last words from The Crucible:

“Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies! Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them that hang! How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name!”

One of the most human things that we do is naming each other (and our animal pets). It is the way in which we acknowledge the uniqueness of each other as something beyond than just a thing, more precisely, something more than a piece of meat. The fact that BlacksOnBoys strips their Black male performers of this very important human trait is indicative of their focus, or what they believe the focus of their viewers to be, which is that their name is not important, what really matters is their “‘big Black cocks’ stuffing tight White asses”.

On that point Blacks On Boys delivers in abundance. The website is littered with references that are meant to reinforce the notion of ‘big Black dicks’ dominating “White Boys”, such as “White and Tight”, “Hittin’ Dat White Ass”, “Black Thugs Breaking Down Sissy Whiteboys”.

One theme that seemingly is trying to be made on Blacks On Boys is the notion that the White male performer going to be wrecked after he has this encounter with the mythic Black penis, completely overwhelmed by its power, and forced to submit. Ultimately he will enjoy it, but the imagery that is being conjured is that akin to being attacked by an uncivilized beast. (Which coincidentally is the same premise given in Birth of A Nation, the fictional film about the rise of the Klu Klux Klan, in which the Klan formed to protect an innocent White female from an emancipated slave who could not control his insatiable hunger to prey on the fragile, i.e. “sissy”.)

Blacks On Boys is not alone or unique (see ItsGonnaHurt[dot]com [NSFW]) in its depiction of Black performers as subhuman brutes, who are not so much gay as they are simply wild lustful creatures. This is ultimately part of the larger problem of how gay people of color are depicted in gay pornography. If it was unique we could largely write it off as a niche within gay pornography; however, the fact that its depiction of gay men of color is indicative of how the majority of African-American men are portrayed in gay pornography implies that the perception is that this is the norm.

In looking at the titles and description of some of the porn titles that feature Black performers an alarming trend becomes clear. Below are examples:

I Got Fucked By A Big Black Dick 4
The attack of the big black dicks continue in the fourth installment of the hot series I Got Fucked By A Big Black Dick! Watch an all new set of the longest big black cocks drill their way into some tight white asses while our bottoms scream in pleasure!

White Men Get Jumped Cracka Ho Hoops
The boys in da hood are playing hoops, and the cracka Jerome is watching. They invite the white slut to join. If he can shoot two hoops he can play, but if he misses he has to give up his mouth and ass to all the gangsta's! Guess what? He misses! Watch these gangsta's have their way and gang bang this cracka ho every damn which way."

White Boy Gang Bang
Two rival street gangs are at war. They want to stop the violence. So, a hot young white boy is tossed onto the truce table. He’s quickly stripped and forced to service the all the huge black thug cocks. “White Boy Gang Bang” is a hurricane of huge hammering hard-ons, tight hungry holes, and red and blue bandannas.

Big Black Dicks Tight White Asses 6
Big, dark stallion spreads open that willing, tight, little, white fuck-hole! Experience the thrill as strong, black, thick Johnsons crack open the white asses that love them! Interracial, black stud on white boy action at its finest!

Dark Chocolate Cravings
Horny white boys are extremely anal when it cums to their deep, Dark Chocolate Cravings. Pete Ross takes some of the biggest, hard black cocks up his ass and enjoys every last inch! Don't miss one of the hottest interracial films that'll keep you cuming back for more.

My Dad Loves Black Cock 5
My dad went black and he ain't never coming back! Ever since my super horny father tried it with black guys, he is obsessed with black cock! The bigger the better. Help! My dad is addicted to those big, black rods!

Some of the other terms often used are “Monster Black Cock”, “Thugs”, “Thugzilla” (which is actually the name of Black male performer), “Blackzilla”, “Horse-Hung”, and much more. All of which further reinforces the notion of these performers as subhuman sex crazed brutes.

We generally do not see White performers depicted in similar ways. If the White performer has a big penis it is mentioned simply as a matter of fact, but for the Black performer, for which having a large penis is almost a prerequisite, his large penis takes on this mythic status.

Many will point out that while White performers, and their penises, may not be described like Black male performers; certain White performers still are stereotyped into character profiles, such as the proverbial Twink character, which is generally depicted as a skinny, almost exclusively White, fragile, very sexual, very obedient character. This is undoubtedly true. In fact very often the Twink character serves the role of the prey for the Black brute character (see “Poor Innocent White Guy”).

However, there is an important distinction that should not be ignored: pornography featuring Twinks is a niche within gay pornography. Outside of that niche White male performers are the accepted norm. (Basic observation: “White” is never a category within a gay pornography search engine, the closest it comes to it might be “Euro”, as opposed to the traditional ethnic “Black”, “Asian”, “Latino”, “Interracial” (which usually means “White and other”); and newer ones such as “Blatino” and “Thug”. Thus while a White performer has multitude of niche he can fit into, in addition to just your average porn film, Black performers (other performers of other ethnic groups) are most often confined to a very particular area of gay pornography.

What else is interesting about this phenomenon is the fact that it is not uniform across the world. If we were to go across the Atlantic to our closet cultural kin, the United Kingdom, we would see something very different. Take for example the online website BlakeMason[dot]com [NSFW], which features both White and Black performers regularly (though the majority of which are White). Unlike many Americans website that feature interracial content, Blake Mason does make reference to the performers’ ethnicity. It prides itself as not engaging in that habit but rather chooses simply to feature performers deemed attractive regardless of their ethnicity.

Of course visually it is obvious which scene is and is not an interracial one; however, whether or not a producer chooses to purposely point that out says a great deal. A scene changes from simply being two guys have sex to “interracial sex” or “two Black guys having sex”, or “two White guys having sex”; and in changing it takes on all of the cultural connotations associated with race, sex, and the intersection of thereof.

Back in the United States there is evidence of a change in direction. Many production companies--in particular ones online, such as Randy Blue or Corbin Fisher--are slowly creating a more diverse roster of performers; and not pitching that as something unique and special about what they offer, but rather simply the production company getting the best performers to acquire a larger portion of the market. On one hand it is purely a conscious effort to attract and expand their viewers by offering more than one monolithic image; however, on the other hand it is also the recognition that one can have a Randy Blue like model so is not White.

If this trend continues, and more non-White performers make their way into mainstream production companies, such as Jamey Ford of Randy Blue [NSFW], where does this leave the Black brute caricature in gay pornography from websites like BlacksOnBoys? It seems that there is a niche for the Black brute and as far as it goes as a niche that is fine. However, it seems its position as the default perception of who gay people of color are in pornography is seemingly destined to be retired, in place of a more homogeneous perception; which ultimately will only be good for gay people of color and the gay community as a whole.

An Early Start to 2010

2010-01-03T00:11:00.000-05:00

I returned home earlier than expected. I realized that since I had a pile of work left on my desk that it was best to get back early from Boston and settle back into the routine than come back later.

The holidays were fantastic for me, and I hope they were for everyone. Spending time with family always lifts my spirits just because they typically tend to make me forget the other bothersome stuff.

In any case it is time to get back to work. Time waits for no one after all.

I have accepted the responsibility of a column for The New Gay after being on the fence about taking on the responsibility for a while. The column will run every other week on Thursday last I heard. The title is "From the Margins" and should be up and running in the near future. The column will cover primarily topics about the gay community from a political standpoint, issues of race within the gay community (one of my favorite subjects), and if there is room left over the gay community in general terms. I really wanted to be sure to give themselves some flexibility, but at the same time a central theme.

In the meantime here I'm trying to implement a new updated version of the current blog theme Arthemia. It's a complicated script so I am not rushing it but rather taking it slowly. So if you stumble onto the blog randomly one night this week and see everything somewhere else do not fret.

On Break

2009-12-23T16:30:00.000-05:00

Today officially starts my holiday break. It's jammed pack with fun events like Christmas with the family and a trip to Boston to ring in the new year with some old college chums.

Needless to say, I won't be around on-line much over the next few days to update the blog. So I wanted to make it official and write that I will be on break until the 4th of January 2010. (I really cannot believe that it is almost '10 already.)

In the new year I've got some great ideas to put into this blog to spruce it up a bit (aside from backgrounds) and I've worked out a schedule for the updates to happen more frequently. I've also given it some thoughts as to bring someone else along to fill in the days when I'm busy with other things. In any event 2010 will be bananas.

In the meantime check out my latest piece for The New Gay, Gay Rights: Idealism or Practicality? And be sure to check back there regularly in the new year as I will be writing for them much more frequently.

Happy Holidays everybody. Be safe. Wash your hands.

Will He or Won’t He: Obama on Gay Rights in 2010

2009-12-20T22:31:00.000-05:00

Sizing up President Obama’s accomplishments and political maneuvering for the year, Newsweek magazine in its Political Predications for 2010 piece anticipates that in 2010 President Obama will table gay rights issues because of the political risk it poses to the rest of his legislative agenda, i.e. Cap-and-Trade, Immigration Reform, and most importantly jobs and the economy. The magazine wrote:

“Many activists believe that in his heart Obama supports their flagship issues: the ability to serve openly in the armed forces, to be protected from employment in the workplace, and the right to marry (even though he’s on record as favoring civil unions over marriage). But they’ve received almost nothing for their troubles. What the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered community has learned this year is that the president is ultimately a pragmatist. Although his very presence in the White House is the stuff of culture wars, Obama himself is reluctant to wade into one. Moreover, if socially divisive policies have the potential to compromise his legislative agenda, Obama has proven that he simply won’t pursue them. Expect this tension to become more acute as the 2010 elections loom—and for gay rights to be shunted aside again. The last thing this pragmatist president will do is hand election-year ammunition to an already energized conservative base that’s venomously opposed to gay marriage.”

It is hard to argue with the facts outlined above. As progressive leaders on the Hill and progressive activists have witnessed first hand throughout the health-care debate, President Obama seems ready and willing to compromise for the sake of passing legislation, rather than in LBJ-fashion twisting arms to get what he wants. He is, as the magazine describes him, a pragmatist, rather than a reformer.

Many in the gay community will not welcome Newsweek’s predication with much surprise, as many have been making similar predications throughout the year. Starting early on in his presidency when the administration defended the Defense of Marriage Act, and for some even earlier than that.

And yet, there are some that believe that President Obama will tackle the issues seriously and push for the Congress to pass the legislation for him to sign. (I remain somewhere in the middle, gradually slipping towards the more pessimistic end of the spectrum.)

While there is little doubt that President Obama considers himself an ally of the gay and lesbian community, and to a large extent he is—no previous president has tried incorporate gay and lesbian families or reach out to the gay and lesbian community as much as Obama--however, his behavior in regards to his implied role as legislative force is that of someone who is ultimately willing to concede for the sake of the “greater good”.

Throughout the health care debate one phrase that we continually heard from White House officials and the President was that we, his progressive-base, should not let “the perfect be the enemy of the good”. The phrase itself has in many come to encapsulate Obama’s approach to much of what he does as president.

Therefore it is not unlikely that we will see the same phrase or ideology used to defend the administration deciding to back away from the plan to include the amendment that would repeal the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy from the annual defense appropriation bill(s) for example. From a political standpoint it would make perfect sense to do so: if it becomes clear that Republicans are geared up to ignite the culture wars to garner more seats after the mid-term elections or conservative Democrats, or Democrats from conservative districts, who up for re-election express reservation about repealing the policy; backing away from a controversial policy is the first thing any political consultant would advise you to do. And so far that would seem indicative of Obama’s method of operation in regards to the legislature.

President Obama’s M.O. itself would not be such a serious issue if there was no uncertainty that the bills would make there way to his desk to sign; however, the fact that the health-care debate has put many Democrats on defense, and the Democratic leadership has implied that in anticipation of the mid-term elections they will attempt to stay clear of controversial legislative items, has caused many within the gay rights movement to believe that the national legislatives issues are in crisis. Now more than ever is the time for an involved president to get out there and coral the Congress. President Obama however does not seem comfortable in that role.

Many astute political observers have argued that Republicans stand a good chance of retaking control of the House of Representative in 2010, or at the very least having Republican numbers in the House and Senate go up considerably. The political instinct in each Democrat from non-Blue districts now is to rush to the center and avoid embracing progressive causes, which conventionally will be interpreted as issues that will possible hurt them even more come Election Day.

This is bad for gay-rights causes, and was one the prime reasons activists have been pressuring the administration (and to a lesser extent the Democratic leadership) to address the issues sooner rather later.

We’re now at later.

Many believe that even if President Obama wants to tackle Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and the Defense of Marriage Act after issues like health-care, the economy and jobs, Afghanistan and immigration are resolved, he might not have the legislative capacity or support on the Hill to do so after the mid-term elections. At which point the next foreseeable chance that the issues might stand a good chance of coming back to life might be in 2012, when President Obama hits the campaign trail and brings back out the support of his base.

The pressure over time sensitivity and delay from the non-hyperbolic gay-rights base has much less to do about finding out whether or not President Obama really is a gay-rights advocate and more to do with his ability to push the Congress in one direction or the other.

Only time will tell if the Newsweek and other organizations that have made similar predications are right. Right now all evidence leads to confirm their suspicion; however, if the fallout in the 2010 mid-term elections is less than expected or going into the election Democrats numbers go up the administration may choose to address some of the issues early.

Is there room in the Republican Party for LGBT politicians?

2009-12-20T19:54:00.000-05:00

In light of recent events, such as openly gay Massachusetts State Senator Richard Tisei being tapped to run as the state's Lieutenant Gov. on the Republican Charlie Baker ticket and news that GOProud, a gay Republican advocacy group, will cosponsor the upcoming Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC; Michael A. Jones, who writes for Change.org, poses the question, "Is there room in the Republican Party for LGBT politicians?"

At first glance the answer seems to be an unequivocal "No". After all, the national Republican Party has consistently associated itself with the social-conservative movement on social-issues. GOP leaders and lawmakers consistently make anti-gay comments, such as calling gay people immoral and destructive to society. And as part of the 2008 Republican Platform the party advocated amending the constitution of the United States to include an amending that defines marriage as between one man and one woman, the infamous Federal Marriage Amendment, or FMA:

Because our children’s future is best preserved within the traditional understanding of marriage, we call for a constitutional amendment that fully protects marriage as a union of a man and a woman, so that judges cannot make other arrangements equivalent to it. In the absence of a national amendment, we support the right of the people of the various states to affirm traditional marriage through state initiatives.

Republicans recognize the importance of having in the home a father and a mother who are married. The two-parent family still provides the best environment of stability, discipline, responsibility, and character. Children in homes without fathers are more likely to commit a crime, drop out of school, become violent, become teen parents, use illegal drugs, become mired in poverty, or have emotional or behavioral problems. We support the courageous efforts of single-parent families to provide a stable home for their children. Children are our nation’s most precious resource. We also salute and support the efforts of foster and adoptive families.

Republicans have been at the forefront of protecting traditional marriage laws, both in the states and in Congress. A Republican Congress enacted the Defense of Marriage Act, affirming the right of states not to recognize same-sex “marriages” licensed in other states. Unbelievably, the Democratic Party has now pledged to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, which would subject every state to the redefinition of marriage by a judge without ever allowing the people to vote on the matter. We also urge Congress to use its Article III, Section 2 power to prevent activist federal judges from imposing upon the rest of the nation the judicial activism in Massachusetts and California. We also encourage states to review their marriage and divorce laws in order to strengthen marriage.

As the family is our basic unit of society, we oppose initiatives to erode parental rights. - taken from Preserving Marriage, Values, 2008 Republican Platform see here.

However, despite all of the above, groups like GOProud and the Log Cabin Republicans continue to make the claim that there is room for gay and lesbian Americans in the Republican tent.

Other Republicans disagree. As Jones reported, when news broke that Tisei was tapped to become the state’s Lt. Governor if Baker won the election, social-conservatives went into a frenzy and launched a campaign to have Tisei dropped from the ticket. The upcoming conference that GOProud is cosponsoring is also being cosponsored by antigay organizations like Concerned Women of America, Focus on the Family, and the National Organization for Marriage; all of whom openly claim that homosexuality is either a disease, the result of bad parenting and abuse, or both, and destructive to American society.
If there is room in the Republican Party for gay and lesbian people the only space where the majority of the party feels it is acceptable is the proverbial closet.

Of course it is not impossible to be both gay and have conservative beliefs and values, the two are not mutually exclusive (see below); however, your average person cannot help but be confused as to how gay Republicans/conservatives can not only stand by but in many cases support a political party that does have their own interests at heart. It would be akin to National Organization of Women, NOW, supporting a party that advocated a campaign to repeal the 19th Amendment.

GOProud’s conservative agenda lists “opposing any anti-gay federal marriage amendment” as one of its legislative priorities; however, the organization has not taken a tough stance with the national Republican Party, but rather continues to support the conservative movement that has clearly demonstrated the inability to see different on the issue of gay people in the Republican Party or homosexuality in general.

Towlerload reports when news that GOProud was a listed sponsor to the upcoming CPAC conference Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth issued a release denouncing the conference for accepting GOProud’s offer to sponsor the event:

“It boils down to this: there is nothing “conservative” about — as Barber puts it — “one man violently cramming his penis into another man’s lower intestine and calling it ‘love.’” Or two women awkwardly mimicking natural procreative relations or raising a child together in an intentionally fatherless home. This does not mean that people practicing those and other immoral (and changeable) behaviors cannot think and act conservatively on other issues like lowering taxes, cutting government spending, ending abortion, etc. But let’s be honest: the “proud” in GOProud is not about pride in opposing the death tax, or defending the right to bear arms; it’s about proudly embracing sinful homosexual behavior – and that is hardly a conservative value.

I challenge every thinking conservative to explain why we should jettison our nation’s Judeo-Christian heritage (which clearly rejects homosexual acts as immoral) for some new, secularized brand of “conservatism” that fails to conserve natural, normal, and noble sex within God-ordained marriage. Where does the expansion of “conservatism” stop? Would CPAC welcome “Republicans for Abortion” as a c0-sponsor? How about “Conservatives For Higher Taxes”? We doubt it. So let’s stop the double-standard on one issue — homosexuality — that happens to be politically incorrect in this decadent age.”

As of Sunday, December 20th 2009 GOProud continues to be listed as an official sponsor to the conference (see right for the full list of sponsors); however, with threats like those from Barbera coming from other conservative organizations whether GOProud is eventually cut is still up in the air. Many eyes and ears will be on the CPAC committee decision on whether or not to continue having GOProud as a co-sponsor, and exactly what their rationalization will be. Similarly many people—myself included—will be interested to see what GOProud’s response will be.

The entire episode highlights the apparent paradox in presuming that the contemporary national Republican Party and conservative movement can function as a “big tent”, and encompass many different people around conservative themes and values. It is an all or nothing party, where social-conservativism reigns supreme.

The only silver-lining it seems to be is at the state and local level where gay Republicans like MA State Senator Tisei are not (always) greeted as a walking oxymoron. If one day the national Republican Party decides to reform itself and distance itself from the social-conservative movement and embrace others, who may not adhere to social-conservatives values but rather share similar values about limited government and personal responsibility then just maybe the Republican Party can withstand the test of time, and not become the Grand Obsolete Party.

The Gay Disease, According to Conservatives

2009-12-20T16:12:00.004-05:00

Recently, in Almaeda, California a proposal to include an anti-gay bullying curriculum into the elementary school system was defeated after school officials came under pressure from parents, whom The Advocate reports were, "opposed to their children learning about gay and lesbian issues in school." School officials eventually reached a compromise to create a generic anti-bullying curriculum, after parents cited concerns about religious liberty, i.e. the right to teach their children that homosexual is sinful.

Another incident in Washington, D.C. [which just recently saw its marriage-equality bill pass the city council and was signed by the city's mayor, and is now waiting to see if the Congress (which has final say over the district) will intervene] involved a parent filing a complaint because her first-grade daughter informed her parents that her teach announced that she was getting married to another woman. The same parent also was concerned about the same teacher giving her students the ability ask questions about her engagement and decision to read a book about two gay guinea pigs that got engaged called "Uncle Bobby's Wedding".

The mother, Margaret C. Hemenway, wrote about her complaint to the Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays, PFOX, "Most parents would not consider a Q&A session with first-graders about homosexual marriage as an 'age-appropriate' discussion. After our daughter’s revelation, we lodged a complaint with Chancellor Rhee's office, requesting an investigation, and asking what department in the DC Government we can appeal to for restoration of our child's sense of innocence?" Mrs. Hemenway went on to argue that, "Homosexuality is condemned as a sin by every major religion in the world today- should my first-grader also be exposed to other sexual sins in first grade, adultery and pornography? Just because we have gay acquaintances or friends who commit adultery doesn't mean that we celebrate it or talk about it in front of young children."

The incident in Almaeda and D.C. only serves as further evidence that to many social-conservatives homosexuality is (still) directly correlated to the amount of information that person knows about homosexuals, among other things, ranging from supposedly pornography to having a distant father. Yet it is the fundamental belief that homosexuality is somehow caused by simply knowing something about gay and lesbian issues that is the foundation of many social-conservative anti-gay campaigns, specifically those targeting a particular curriculum in our education system. These campaigns, much like their reasoning, hinge on the idea that the more ignorant a person, especially a young student, is to homosexuality the more likely they are to "stay" heterosexual the rest of their lives or abstain from socially taboo activities like committing adultery and watching pornography.

Social-conservatives frequently state that if pro-gay measures, such as marriage-equality, are enacted in a state, homosexuality would inevitably be forced onto children in the state's public schools, as schools would be mandated to teach children that gay and lesbians couples could get married. Implication is that would be a bad thing. Organizations like the National Organization for Marriage, or NOM, and PFOX commonly make the case that if a state were to enact any such measure in doing so the government would strip away a parent's right to teach their children that homosexual is sinful. As a result, they and Mrs. Hemenway claim, children will grow up to think that homosexuality is Okay. Which of course leads to more homosexuals.

Politically the argument is structured in such a way that the opposition to marriage-equality, or any other pro-gay measure, becomes two-fold. It no longer becomes just about stopping gay and lesbian people from having the same legal rights as heterosexuals, because gay and lesbian people are sinful in some way, but the effort to defeat the measure(s) takes on the objective of "protecting children", supposedly from homosexuality. The assumption is that children at all ages cannot fully comprehend what homosexuality is and therefore exposing them to it early on, i.e. ever, puts them at risk.

The only problem with the argument is that it is without a doubt completely fallacious. Yet, despite years of research into the supposed causes of homosexuality no reputable organization on the matter, from the American Psychological Association, American Pediatric Association, to the American Psychiatric Association; has never found any validation in the argument being made by anti-gay social-conservatives who effectively argue that one can "catch" the gay, simply being taught that it is Okay.

This mentality persists in the minds of those who adhere to the belief that homosexuality cannot be normal and must spread from one susceptible person to another. Therefore to guard themselves and their children they must envelop themselves in a bubble of ignorance. To step outside of the bubbles puts someone at risk of catching of the gay. This ideology conveniently also solves the quagmire of why people become gay in the first place without shedding light on the argument's scientific and research based shortcomings: gay people are simply the result of heterosexuals who had too much exposure to the things that cause homosexuality.

As a result, the failure of anti-gay social-conservatives to come to grips with the reality that gay men and women are in fact part of the fabric of America has only perpetuated the belief about many that gay men and women are to feared and avoided. However, the ultimate loss from this ideology is the fact that gay and lesbian young people, either those who are already "out" or those still struggling with their identity, and their friends, go on without getting the information that they need at a crucial time in their lives.

Maggie Gallagher sets her sights on the Nation's Capital

2009-12-15T22:51:00.000-05:00

When news broke that the D.C. city council voted for the second time in favor of making marriage-equality a reality in the nation's capital--which now sends the bill to the mayor's desk to sign; Maggie Gallagher, president of the National Organization for Marriage, NOM, an anti-marriage equality organization, wasted no time in having her organization release a press memo stating its intention to overturn the same-sex marriage bill.

NATIONAL ORGANIZATION FOR MARRIAGE VOWS TO DC COUNCIL:
We Will Overturn Your Same-Sex Marriage Bill

"We have one message for David Catania and the rest of these politicians today: this fight is not over.
We will go to Congress, we will go to the courts, we will fight for the people’s right to vote and we will win!"
- Brian Brown, Executive Director, NOM -

(WASHINGTON) - The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) released the following statement today in response to the D.C. Council’s passage of a same-sex marriage bill:

"The people of D.C. have a right, guaranteed by the charter, which is D.C.'s constitution, to vote to protect marriage. Politicians on the city council are acting as if they have the right through legislation to deprive citizens of D.C. of their core civil right to vote, but we will not let them get away with it," said Brian Brown, Executive Director of NOM. "We have one message for David Catania and the rest of these politicians today: this fight is not over. We will go to Congress, we will go to the courts, we will fight for the people’s right to vote and we will win!"

NOM has led successful campaigns to protect marriage in states across the country, including victories in California in 2008 and most recently in Maine in November, 2009, as well as legislative battles to block gay marriage in New York (where gay marriage failed in the Senate by a lopsided vote of 38 no to 24 yes).

None of this is surprising. The strategy of coming to a state, or in this case the district, to stoke up fear and paranoia about the horrors of marriage-equality is consistent with NOM's method of operating from its other campaigns in previous battleground states like California, Maine, etc.

So far Gallagher has been successful in her attempts; however, Washington, D.C. poses unique challenges that might prove insurmountable to NOM's typical scare tactics. We would only have to look so far as the city council itself. While in other states where the legislature has voted on the issue there have always been a fair share of religious zealots (see New York Sen. Ruben Diaz (D) speech in the New York Senate) that are willing to make the outrageous claims that suggest homosexuals are just short of being allies of Satan himself; D.C. typically has been more tolerating and accepting of others. Even the two council members who voted against the measure, councilman Marion Barry and councilwoman Yvette Alexander counted themselves as supporters of gay and lesbian residents of the district, to a certain extent obviously.

In such an environment NOM's divisive rhetoric is unlikely to get the same traction it has received in other states. The Archdiocese of Washington, D.C. learned that the hard way. After trying to bully the council into tabling the issue, because the archdiocese threatened to shut down services for the poor if the measure was passed, the archdiocese was met with a flurry of complaints and criticism from members on the council, some of whom were Catholic.

Couple with a sizable portion of gay and lesbian Americans that call the district their home, as well as being composed largely of well educated residents; and a thriving metropolis of young Americans, who are consistently surveyed as being in favor of marriage equality than older Americans; NOM has its work cut out for them.

Of course by now, with defeats in the most unlikely of places (see New York, Maine, and California), no one in the marriage-equality camp is going to call it a done deal until NOM is thoroughly defeated in the polling booth, if the issue comes up to a popular vote. However, what can be said is that NOM will have its work cut out for them. Washington, D.C. is home of many progressive and gay and lesbian causes and organization, and NOM will largely be stepping into unfamiliar territory.

One demographic which is likely to be a target of NOM's propaganda attempts is the district's African-American community, which is the district's largely demographic. We are likely to hear arguments that marriage-equality will have a disproportionate negative impact on the lives of African-American families in the DC, which has been an argument that reemerges every time the marriage-equality issue comes up in an area heavily populated by African-Americans.

There is of course no scientific evidence to backup the bogus claim that marriage-equality hurts (heterosexual) African-American families; however, that has never stopped the argument from gaining traction before. However, the argument might face some opposition from the sizable portion of openly gay people of color who live in the District.

With marriage-equality's track record so far it would be foolish to make the guess that it is a sure thing, stranger things have happened (see Iowa); however, one thing that is clear is that the battle in nation's capital when NOM arrives in full-force to scare residents into voting to overturning the bill will likely be a determining campaign in the fight for marriage-equality in this country.

On-Lookers Doubt the Inevitability of Marriage-Equality

2009-12-15T15:44:00.000-05:00

Recently Politico's Ben Smith wrote for the publication "Is gay marriage 'inevitable'?", in which Smith argued that the long held assumption that marriage-equality was an eventual inevitability across the country was being called into question after a string of major defeats, most recently in the state of Maine and the New York Senate.

Smith writes:

"The same-sex marriage movement appears likely to end a banner year with a string of stinging defeats that opponents say have undermined a core proposition of the movement - that the acceptance of gay marriage is, sooner or later, inevitable.

After a year that saw laws allowing same-sex marriage expand from a lonely toehold in Massachusetts to five other states and, likely, the District of Columbia, the defeats have served at the least as a reality check to proponents of gay marriage.

A Maine referendum that was seen as the best chance for popular approval of same-sex marriage instead was soundly defeated. The state senate in liberal New York voted down a marriage bill by a margin - 38 to 24 - that stunned advocates and the state’s governor, who had predicted victory. And a same-sex marriage measure limped to the floor of the New Jersey state senate Thursday after squeaking out of committee over the opposition of prominent Democrats."

However, while it cannot be disputed that the defeats in Maine, New York and the stall in New Jersey are setbacks, even Smith contends that the answer to whether or not marriage-equality is inevitable largely depends on who is answering the question. Citing recent polling on the issue, Smith points out that various demographics, primarily age, are the leading contributors to where someone will place themselves in regards to marriage-equality alleged inevitability.

Younger Americans, 18-29, are in favor of extending the same marriage-rights to same-sex couples, while Americans 65 and older where strongly against the idea. Smith cites a recent Columbia University study [pdf] that placed the percentage of young Americans in favor of extending legal benefits to same-sex couples above fifty percent.

Republican consultant Bill Pascone who was quoted in the article suspects that the attitudes of younger Americans might change when they become older and have family (much like how attitudes towards of abortion-rights seem to diminish the older someone gets). However, such an argument rests on the notion that same-sex married couples are somehow anti-family. And argument that opponents of marriage-equality often raise to rally supporters and seek converts, but one that seems immune on younger Americans, who have largely grown up with gay Americans being part of their community--and not in the way reminiscent of the homosexual from the infamous Boys Beware PSA.

Smith agrees and writes that many Republican strategist see the writing on the wall despite publicly stating otherwise, because the Republican Party has become intertwined largely with the Radical Christian Right.

The suspicion that marriage-equality may in fact not be inevitable largely stems from the fact that those most likely to turn out to vote tend to be socially-conservative older Americans. However, progress is consistently being made across the country. The fact alone that we have gone from the days prior to the Texas v. Lawrence ruling in 2004 to having six states grant same-sex couples in a matter of five years is nothing short of amazing.

The fact is no civil right has ever come easy to those that seek it out, but rather is fraught with defeats and push-back from backers of the status-quo. Our history as a country is filled with stories of Americans seeking their rights in the face of seemingly insurmountable opposition, whether the group in question is the revolutionaries, abolitionists, suffragettes, farmers, civil-rights activities, and so forth.

It is only after many years later that most Americans come to realize the error of their ways. Marriage-equality is likely to follow a similar pattern. Already in states where marriage-equality has seemingly been able to take root (see Massachusetts and Iowa) we seen residents attitudes within that state change considerably. The hyperbole of the social-conservative rhetoric seemingly dies-downs and dissipates in the wake of rational observation that same-sex families in fact do not destroy heterosexual-families as is so often claimed.

Much akin to how Republicans today portray themselves as the self appointed guardians of Medicare (despite a history dating back before Ronald Reagan's infamous Republican propaganda), it is not unreasonable to assume one day the GOP will come to accept marriage-equality for gay and lesbian Americans as a matter of fact of American democracy. (Hopefully I will be alive at that point to witness it--though I am not holding my breath.)

In the meantime it is unlikely that Republicans will drastically change their tune, as their current anti-marriage-equality/anti-gay rhetoric helps maintain their support among older Americans; however, eventually the switch will happen as it will become politically suicidal to be opposed to marriage-equality for gay and lesbian Americans. It will one day be like a current elected official advocating today that women have their reproductive-rights taken away.

Oh wait...that might be the wrong comparison to make.

New Piece in the Works: Gay Rights: Is it time to stop being idealistic and start being practical?

2009-12-06T18:11:00.001-05:00

Sometimes the bolt of inspiration hits you and you have the creative focus to write. That happened to me today. I just finished my latest piece for The New Gay, TNG, which I have not written for in a long time--and that has gotten to me considerably. The title I gave the piece was Gay Rights: Is it time to stop being idealistic and start being practical? The editors at TNG can do with it what the will. I just typically like my titles to be straightforward, because they help me focus on what I am writing about.

Clocked out at about 1,200 words. Which is not bad, since I wrote it in an hour or two. I am proof reading it now and I will send it off to the editors later tonight. Hopefully it gets published, will keep you informed.

The inspiration for the piece came from an article on Edge, Gay Marriage: What Next? and Queerty's, Gay Inc. Declares Defeat on ENDA. Face It: Their Strategy Is Not Working. Both of which I did not end up using in the piece directly, but were a really insightful pieces worth checking out.

Below is an excerpt.
Excerpt:

"It would not be a stretch to make the case that the gay-rights movement has corralled around big-ticket political issues like marriage-equality, the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act; while other important issues, such as employment discrimination, hate crimes legislation, and housing discrimination have received less attention as a whole. Partly because unlike fights to repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell, employment discrimination does not seem to conjure up the same level of political enthusiasm among many within the movement. However, many people have been making the argument that rather than focusing on the big-ticket items that the gay-rights movement should focus on the smaller, less controversial, items that would improve the lives of all gay, lesbian, and trans people immediately as a stepping stone. And now, in wake of several large defeats, many others are listening to these few voices and rethinking things.

The mentality and belief has been that if the gay-rights movements manages take care of the big-ticket items, like repealing the Defense of Marriage Act, the effect would trickle down and have a direct impact on other issues like employment discrimination. But now many are hinting at the idea that rather than a top-down approach the gay-rights movement adopt a bottom-up strategy, whereas the smaller issues have the effect of building a larger consensus with the American people.

The response to such a strategy in the past has been met with declarations of "justice delayed is justice denied" and so on. (Even myself have from time to time given into temptation and uttered the phrase in response to the aforementioned strategy.) However, with so many defeats starring us in the face, shifting strategy to more practical things, i.e. jobs, housing, benefits; can be a good way of providing some results as well as expanding the base of support."

Son of Baldwin: Hypocrites Always Want to Play Innocent XVIII

2009-12-06T16:07:00.000-05:00

With so much news this past week dedicated to the anti-gay legislation being proposed in the Uganda parliament, which would put gay people in jail for the rest of their life and/or execute gay people if they were HIV+, the "literary, socio-political, sexual, pop culture blog", Son of Baldwin, posted a great piece about the West's relationship to the the ideologies that lead proposals such as the one being in Uganda.

Excerpt:

"Here in the West, we tend to take a rather superior posture when it comes to homosexuality. Our media outlets love to report when some third-world nation conceives archaic means to oppress, torture and murder homosexuals.

Take the largely Catholic nation of Uganda, for example. The Ugandan government has put forth a bill that would make it illegal to be homosexual -- not to just engage in homosexual acts, but to simply be homosexual...There's no doubt that this is cruel, barbaric and a sign of profound ignorance. And if you happen to live in a Western nation, it's easy to feel a false sense of superiority in these matters. But what the West fails to realize, and fails to take accountability for, is the fact that these narrow and puritanical notions of sexuality and family are wholly Western and Christian ideas...But that doesn't stop us from pointing the finger, dodging the blame and refusing to admit our complicity. We don't dare acknowledge that homophobia is the one of the few places where we agree with the people we consider "savages" and "enemies," and that the only difference between our homophobia and African (and Middle Eastern) homophobia is degree."

(Read the complete post here.)

Expanding off what Baldwin wrote above it is interesting to note that it was not until 2004 that the United States Supreme Court struck down anti-sodomy laws across the country in Lawrence vs. Texas. The fact that within the past decade homosexuality was still a crime in many states is profound as a testament of how far we have come in just a few years and how recent our perception of gay people as criminals is within our collective perception of our fellow Americans.

Coming Soon to a Computer Screen Near You: Levi Johnson: The Porno

2009-12-06T00:00:00.000-05:00

If imitation truly is the best form of flattery, Levi Johnson should be proud that his rise to frame on the coat-tails of his baby-mama's mama, Ex-Gov. Sarah Palin, has inspired Jet Set productions to develop a porno based on his stint in the media's spotlight. Titled Getting Levi's Johnson the film, which has already been shot, is set to be out early next year says Gawker.

Gawker was able to get a some insights into the plot of the film--which should not be that deep, after all it is a porn--from Chris Steele, who works for Jet Set studio: "It is a parody and the story follows our character Levi from his Fleshbot award, to his Peanut commercial, to his Vanity Flair photo shoot, flashes back to his days as a hockey player in Alaska and finally to his spread in Play Dude."

The running gag behind the film appears to be the fact that despite strong speculation that Johnson would pose full-frontal for his shoot for Playgirl, at the last minute Johnson declined to go all the way and show his 'Johnson'. I suppose we can expect that the director took historical liberties when it came to that historical fact.

Fleshbot, who earlier this year gave Johnson the Mainstream-to-Porn Crossover Award, has been keeping track on the performers slated to appear in the film (NSFW). So far it has been confirmed that Brent Corrigan, no stranger to controversy, and Diesel Washington appear in the film. A new comer to the industry, Casey, will play Levi. And one would guess that Washington will be playing the bodyguard that appeared in the pistachio commercial.

Levi-mania has died down considerably in the mainstream for a while--with most of the attention being soaked up by Sarah Palin's book, Balloon Boy, and, oh yeah, the economy and Afghanistan--throughout the gay world Levi-mania still continues to have some potency, even if most of it is simply mocking the Playgirl photo spread. Which Fleshbot describes as, "the worst photo spread since the pics of Abu Graib."

For whatever reason the expectations of the Playgirl spread, especially for a full-front shot, was very high, even though on any given day there is no shortage of penes (plural of penis) on the Internet. The spread was not received well by most, many described it as "lack-luster" and "boring" and criticized Levi for being out of shape. (That is gay men for you. What can you do.) You have to scratch your head and wonder what they else they were expecting: Johnson is no professional model and was offered a ton of money solely for his cute face and celebrity/political lightening-rod baby's mama's mama. Expecting a man with the Charles Atlas Seal of Approval, such as Rocky from Rocky Horror, should have been seen as a far-fetched from get-go.

While now it is likely that Johnson's popularity and position on the national (and gay) stage will go the way of the 2008 Iranian presidential election, all winners of American Idol, save Kelly Clarkson, and that guy from the Oxi-Clean infomercials; Levi Johnson will walk away a winner (unlike all of the aforementioned): he's been on the cover of magazines, been paid thousands of dollars to have someone take naked pictures of himself, received royalty payments for being on a commercial, and has a porno made in effigy to his penis. Can a heterosexual man truly ask for anything more?

S.C. First Lady blames Gays for Philandering Husband

2009-12-05T22:20:00.003-05:00

When news broke that South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford was having an extra-marital affair with a woman from Argentina sympathy poured in from across the country for his wife, First Lady Jenny Sanford, who had to endure her personal affairs discussed openly in public, on television, in the newspaper and so forth.

First Lady Sanford was different than many of the wives that find themselves in similar positions, in that she distanced herself from Gov. Sanford quickly after the scandal broke. Up until then conventional wisdom suggested that the wife in question would "stand by" her husband, like so many of her predecessors did, i.e. Secretary Clinton when she was First Lady, First LadyMcGreevey of New Jersey when her 'came out', and First Lady Spitzer of New York when her husband was discovered having an affair with a call girl. However, Mrs. Sanford was not having any of that. She moved out of the governors' mansion and dammed Gov. Sanford to hell. (Not even kidding about that last part.)

The technically still First Lady released a statement articulating why she is believes her marriage fell apart. According to Mrs. Sanford what happened in her marriage can be linked to the "declining moral values in America."

She writes:

“Of course I’m not saying that Mark is gay, but he may as well be. The moral decay in this country has claimed another victim and this time it was my family. Our marriage was perfect until these laws started passing around the country. Clearly the slow dissolution of the sanctity of marriage in America seeped into Mark’s psyche until he no longer felt compelled to abide by our vows.”

DiSCust, a South Carolina based news-blog, reports that Rush Limbaugh picked up the story on his radio show and provided the following insightful piece of commentary:

“America, I’ve been warning you for years that gay marriage would destroy the American family and look… there they are, a husband, wife, and four children — destroyed. When is this going to stop America? When will the liberals be satisfied? When all the marriages break up? This wasn’t Mark Sanford’s fault, this was Ted Kennedy’s fault. Sanford didn’t cheapen the value of marriage, he was victimized by the cheapening of marriage.”

It was likely lost on Mrs. Sanford and Limbaugh that men have unfortunately been cheating on their wives much earlier than when "these laws" were passed. In fact if you go back far enough that form of cheating was sanctioned by the state. Of course during those time all men wore make-up and dressed seemingly in drag, so the possibility exists that Mrs. Sanford might be onto something. Though just barely.

Taking what Mrs. Sanford said seriously for a moment, it is stunning that some heterosexuals would stoop so low as to blame gay and lesbian people in committed relationships, that only seek the equal treatment of their relationship under the law, for their own personal problems. Especially after you take into consideration that heterosexuals, with their high rate of divorces and disregard for the supposed sanctity of marriage--most recently made evident by sports legend Tiger Woods--and so forth, have been giving the institution a bad name for, well, forever.

If anything the fight for marriage-equality should symbolize the significance of marriage.

However, the tactic of "blame the Queers" is not new, so we probably should not be too surprised that Mrs. Sanford gave into the temptation to deflect responsibility of her husband's infidelity to someone other than her good Christian husband. After all people and governments have blamed gays for nearly all social ailments from communism to stealing good men from heterosexual women. From such a perspective infidelity is just a hop away from "duh".

Thanks to Sam for posting this story on his blog, Lazy Circles.

The Christian Right targets gay video game scene (Because real life apparently was not enough for them)

2009-12-04T02:05:00.000-05:00

Over thirty states have amended their constitution to explicitly define marriage has between one man and one woman. In every state where either the legislature or the state Supreme Court had ruled in favor of same-sex couples, the political wing of the Christian right has led campaigns to undo the law or ruling with scare-tactics and hyperbole. And, sadly, have an almost perfect record in getting what they want.

They have launched campaigns attacking television shows and advertisements with gay content (forcing many advertisers to rely on secret messages and signs to convey that they are an "ally"), as well as campaigns attempting to strip any mention of gay people in our public education system. With great success across the board. However, not satisfied with their victories in the real-world they aim to continue their homophobic campaign in the next.

Heaven? Hell?

Nope, neither, but instead the digital one.
When news broke that in the recently released role playing game, Dragon Age: Origins, for the Playstation 3, Xbox 360, and PC, players were allowed to unlock a scene where two male characters had sex, the Christian Right flipped. Conservative website, WorldNetDaily, wrote about the incident for their readers, and titled the piece, humorously, "Players have dirty 'gay' sex in hit game".

The scene (which can be viewed here) is a series of clips showing the characters engaging in sex in different positions for a few mere seconds. While it is clear what the characters are doing, the scenes themselves do not go into very much detail and only show the characters from their torso and above.

Despite being so outraged and disgusted by the scene, WorldNetDaily writer, Chelsea Schilling, who wrote the article for the website, went into the most minute details.

To be fair Schilling also listed other problems she and likely other social-conservatives would have with the game, such as the fact that in the game characters are possessed by demons. However, the bulk of her attention is focused on the sex scene. (And is that not typical of social-conservatives!? Children possessed by demons running about and they choose to focus on to consenting adults enjoying a little fire-side chit chat.)

Edge, which wrote about the Schilling article (see Video Game’s Gay Sex Scene Has Christian Right Hot and Bothered), pointed out that gay players have been frustrated that the video gaming industry has consistently ignored its gay audience, by not including gay characters or gay story lines. Edge also noted that when homosexuality is brought up in video games that it is typically not in a positive light.

WorldNetDaily's outrage over the scene is not at all surprising. The Christian Right have been criticizing the video gaming industry for years over many of the things that are featured in some of the more prominent games, such as violence, sex, drug-use, rap-music, etc. Thanks to BioWare, the maker of Dragon Age, homosexuality now gets added to the list of some of the Christian Rights most hated things about video games.

The controversy over the scene in the game is likely to die down quickly, as players have to go through a series of questions to trigger the scene, and most would quickly pick up on what is going on before it is too late. Though for the oblivious teenager who is not careful about what s/he is doing they might end up learning more about how gay men do it than they might have wanted. (Which ultimately may not be a bad thing as the Christian Right has done a great job of making sure that king of information is not discussed in the classroom.)

By the way, technically since one of the characters in the scene is a an elf it is not even homosexual sex but rather bestiality. Gross.

The Silver Lining of Wednesday's NY Marriage-Equality Vote

2009-12-03T18:48:00.001-05:00

When all was said and done the final vote was 38 to 24 on Wednesday in the New York Senate, where opponents of marriage-equality successfully defeated a measure that would bring marriage-equality to the state. Opponents and supporters of marriage-equality were likely equally shocked. This was New York after all.

However, to some extent the breakdown should not have come as that big of a surprise. As many observers have pointed out on this issue and others, New York is a large state, and tends to be more conservative than most people in both camps seems convinced of, especially after you acknowledge that New York extends beyond New York City--unfortunately in this case--much like how California encompasses more than San Francisco, Los Angeles, and so forth.

While opponents of marriage-equality are no doubt celebrating their victory, supporters of marriage-equality have no reason to feel as if all is lost. A victory today for homophobia is by no means a guarantee of a victory tomorrow, because the world is changing. Which was clearly visible as NY senators from across the state went to the floor and gave their impassioned reasons why a they would vote "yes" to the motion, while those Senators that voted against the motion either sat down quietly or hid behind Bibles and dogma to mask their homophobia when they did speak up.

When New York Times conservative columnist Ross Douthat said opposing marriage-equality was a losing battle he was correct. And that was evident in yesterday's vote. While marriage-equality came out short this time, the speeches in favor of the motion made by senators from across the state, representing the state's socio-economic diversity, will undoubtedly make many in their senators districts rethink their opposition to equality to marry for all New Yorkers.

Sen. Ruth Hassell-Thompson's heartfelt speech about her brother that was gay, who left the United States to move to France where he could find peace in his life, was among one of the most movies speeches on the floor.

Another senators, such as Sen. Pedro Espada, Jr., Sen. Craig Johnson, Sen. Velmanette Montgomery, Sen. Jose M. Serrano, Sen. Eric Adams, and others all articulated unequivocally their support for marriage-equality and stated irrefutable reasons why those yet undecided, or those initially opposed, should vote yes on the bill.

Sen. Thomas Duane, an openly gay senator, gave provided the closing where he thanked his fellow senators, spoke eloquently about his life and that of his partners, and asked his undecided colleagues to vote--if for no other reason than to pass marriage-equality before New Jersey.

Still ignorance won out this time. Marriage-Equality advocates descended onto to Time Square to voice their opposition to the injustice that took place in Albany, and vowed that the fight was not over.

Yet, despite all of the recent defeats the silver lining in all of this is that history is on side. Historically, civil rights efforts, from abolition to suffrage, have always been difficult and marred with defeats along the way; however, eventually with time the generation tasked with dealing with the issue comes to their senses. There is a certain air of inevitability to this issue, particularly as we look to the younger American, eventual voters, who see this as a non-issue: a simple matter of fairness, void of any personal or religious conflict.

The gay community how shifts focus to New Jersey, where it's state legislation is set to vote on the issue rather soon. Organizations like the National Organization for Marriage have already declared New Jersey the next battleground state as well. And so the fight continues.

D.C.: Step 1 of 2 Cleared on Marriage-Equality Bill

2009-12-01T23:40:00.000-05:00

Tuesday, the city council of Washington D.C. voted overwhelmingly in favor of the Respect for Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Equality Amendment Act of 2009, which would allow same-sex couples to obtain marriage-licenses in the district. The vote was 11-2, with former mayor Marion Brown and Yvette Alexander voting against the bill.

The council will vote on the bill once again, and if it passes that hurdle it goes to the mayor's desk. At that point the United States Congress, which has final say over any and everything that happens in the District will have time to weigh in. Speaker Nancy Pelosi has previously indicated that the House of Representatives will not intervene in the issue and leave it up to the city's administration.

If everything stays on the current trajectory marriage-equality will be a reality gay and lesbian men and women in the district soon, possibly by the end of the year.

The fact that the bill cleared the first stage by such large margins is a good sign for marriage-equality advocates; however, at the other end of the spectrum it is a wake-up call for the Archdiocese of the D.C. that it cannot bully and threaten the city council to get what it wants.

It will interesting to see what happens between now and the next vote. It is very likely that Marion Brown will team up with religious leaders in the district to try and pressure other council members to vote "no" the next time it comes around. However, seeing the sheer amount of votes they would have to sway it might just be best to save the energy for more important things.

Still, marriage-equality advocates are not likely to pop open a bottle of champaign just yet. No. We will all likely wait until we know for sure that it is a done deal before we let that happen again.

By the way...
Fellow blogger, Wonder Man, aka V, posted the below video of the council voting on the measure on his blog, Maybe It's Just me: