Tag Archives: rightwing

Oppressed oppressors: make America great like it was before The Homosexuals…

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Face the Nation did a segment this weekend where they interviewed some Trump supporters and it was… special: Trump supporter tells CBS: He will make America great again like it was before ‘the homosexuals’. We’ll come back to the bit that made it into the headline. I’m just continually confused by people like these (and a whole bunch of my rightwing relatives), who keep insisting that Trump is the Christian candidate. Insisting that Trump is going to lead the country to a place of morality (with the corollary claim that the country is deeply immoral now).

So they want to elect a serial philandering racist tax cheat who scams retirees out of their Social Security checks with a fake university, breaks contracts and refuses to pay his bills without a hint of remorse, and brags about walking into dressing rooms filled with naked fifteen-year-olds.

I just don’t quite understand how anyone can make a statement with a straight face, as the woman in the Face the Nation video does, about a time “before abortions and the homosexuals.”

Humans have been performing abortions since ancient times. There’s a section of the old testament (that gets mistranslated rather hilariously), which instructs husbands who believe their pregnant wives have been unfaithful to take the women to the temple so that the rabbis can abort the baby, for instance. Abortion was happening in the U.S. at an alarming rate in the 1950s and 1960s when it was illegal, for instance: 200,000 to 1.2 million per year, resulting in as many as 5,000 American women dying annually as a direct result of unsafe abortions.

And queer people have been around for as long as there have been people. And humans are not the only species on the planet with queer members.

What she and people like her really mean, of course, is not a time before queer people existed, but a time when queer people weren’t treated as human. When we could be fired, thrown in jail, and so on just because of who we loved. When there were arcane laws that made it illegal for a bartender to knowingly serve alcohol to more than one homosexual (yes, the laws actually said it was okay to have one fag in your bar at a time, but no more!).

But it wasn’t just that queers were beaten to death with impunity and subject to jail time and fines for who they loved. In many states and towns it was literally illegal for women to wear pants in public or for men to wear a dress (one of those laws in a town in New Jersey wasn’t overturned until 2014, by the way!). And the laws were usually pretty vague. It was a crime to appear “in public a clothing not belonging to his or her sex.” Which makes me wonder about the sort of suit jacket thing the woman in that video is wearing, no?

Remember it was also illegal in most states for a woman to refuse sex to her husband until such laws began to be repealed in the 1970s. Note: even if a couple were in the midst of a divorce, legally separated, and the husband broke into the home the wife was staying in and forced himself on her, she couldn’t charge him with rape. Heck, under current law some states there has to be proof of physical violence of an aggravated level before it can be called rape.

And it was a time when it was illegal in many places for people of different races to marry.

And these things are all related. There are reasons that abortion rulings were referenced in early court cases about sodomy laws. Ultimately, laws about abortion, homosexuality, marriage, and even how people dress are all about making sure that some people’s bodies (women, racial minorities, religious minorities, sexual minorities) are under the control of other people (white Anglo Saxon Protestant men). In that time before The Homosexuals, America was not a place where woman could dress as they wished, where woman could kiss or refuse to kiss who they wished, or where anyone outside of very narrow definitions or situations could love or get intimate with another consenting adult.

It wasn’t a better time for anyone who wasn’t a straight, cisgender, white guy… or a person considered under their protection (control).

Oppressed Oppressors: Not all Christians…

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Protestors and counter protestors at a gay pride parade. © Patrick Carlson (https://www.flickr.com/photos/48018335@N06/)
Protestors and counter protestors at a gay pride parade. © Patrick Carlson (https://www.flickr.com/photos/48018335@N06/)
Just last week I was building up a head of steam over a topic, trying to write a blog post about it, and then I saw Dara’s post on the same topic, and it helped me focus on the important part to write my own post, and linking to hers. And it’s happened again: what next, New York Times – a story about how the old Nazis feel “cut off” in Germany? The title alone is very close to the one sentence I comment I had on the New York Times article in question when I included it in Friday Links. And she nails it.

The New York Times article tries to sell us a sob story about those evangelical Christians who have run afoul of anti-discrimination laws or otherwise been called out for their bigoted behavior. The NYT wants the reader to feel sorry for these people who just want the right to discriminate against gay people, and who wish that it was still illegal for gay people to be openly gay, and so forth. America has changed so quickly, they lament! Why, oh why does no one understand their pain?

On Dara’s blog a NALT1 Christian chimed in being all offended at being compared to Nazis. He claimed that he didn’t know any Christians who were pushing an anti-gay agenda, or certainly that there aren’t any now. Maybe decades ago, sure, but not now.

First, the self-identified Christians quoted in the NYT article are actively pushing an anti-gay agenda right now. That’s how they got into the situation they are in.

Second, more than one of those folks claiming to be Christian who are quoted in the article, explicitly and implicitly say more than once that people who aren’t anti-gay aren’t Christian. And they are hardly the first to do so.

Third, every business that has run afoul of anti-discrimination laws by denying service or otherwise discriminating against queer people have been defended by lawyers from the Liberty Counsel, an explicitly Christian non-profit organization that includes multiple references to their Christian affiliation in every public statement. In fact, every single anti-gay initiative, referendum, or law that has been pushed in the last three decades, has been championed by Christian organizations such as the Liberty Council, the Family Research Council, the National Organization for Marriage, the Catholic League, Abiding Truth Ministries, the American Family Association, Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission, the Concerned Women for America, Coral Ridge Ministries, the Traditional Values Coalition, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera2. And every politician who has defended anti-trans/anti-gay/anti-lesbian laws and policies has made references to their sincerely held Christian beliefs as the reason why they are pushing the anti-queer policies.

It is simply not plausible that anyone paying any attention whatsoever to the controversies over marriage equality, trans bathroom bills, anti-bullying campaigns in schools, so-called conversion therapy, and so forth to not have noticed all the scripture quoting, Bible thumping, and God invoking that has been done to justify the anti-queer actions. So, I call BS on the guy trying to claim that he has no knowledge of any reason us queers would feel targeted by Christians.

Fourth, every queer person I know over the age of 30 has had at least one bad experience being bullied, harassed, bashed, or otherwise mistreated by someone doing it in the name of Christ. Each and every one of us. That’s a whole lot of coincidences, if you’re going to insist that’s all it is.

So, yes, I am well aware that not all Christians are like that, but some are. And it isn’t just a few. It isn’t queer people like me giving Christianity a bad name, it’s self-proclaimed Christians like Mike Huckabee, Scott Lively, Gov. Pat McCrory, Judge Roy Moore, Rev. Franklin Graham, Glenn Beck, Ted Cruz, Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, Joel Osteen, Congressman Rick W. Allen, and so on. And it’s the tens of thousands of self-proclaimed Christian voters who support anti-gay politicians like Roy Moore, Pat McRory, and Rick Allen. It’s the millions of self-proclaimed Christian voters who selected delegates to the Republican National Convention which this year passed literally the most viciously anti-queer political party platform ever in the history of the U.S.

If you don’t like being called a bigot3, stop acting like one. And stop scolding people who accurately point out bigoted actions when we see them. And stop defending bigots when they claim that they’re the victims because sometimes they get pushback when they say and do bigoted things. And stop writing whiny articles about the terrible predicament of bigots who aren’t allowed to practice their bigotry with utter impunity any longer.

Footnotes:

1. NALT = Not All Like That. People who decide to scold queer people any time we talk about being mistreated, discriminated against, or bashed by other folks claiming to be Christian. Usually they try to imply that we’re giving Christians a bad name, and we shouldn’t do that. They don’t take too kindly to it when we point out that we’re not the one’s ruining Christianity’s reputation, it’s their co-religionists. Nor do they ever seem brave enough to take the advice that if they want the world to stop equating bigotry with Christianity, then they should be scolding the bigoted Christians.

2. If you want to know more about these groups, the Southern Poverty Law Center has nice historical write-ups about these and other hate groups.

3. And stop trying to claim that being called a bigot is the equivalent of passing laws to criminalize our relationships, to allow us to be fired for who we love, et cetera.

I don’t need to watch the debate, I know which candidate thinks I have a right to exist, and which doesn’t

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“Gay people are born into, and belong to, every society in the world. They are all ages, all races, all faiths. They are doctors and teachers, farmers and bankers, soldiers and athletes. And whether we know it or whether we acknowledge it, they are our family, our friends, and our neighbors. Being gay is not a Western invention. It is a human reality.” —Hillary Clinton
“Gay people are born into, and belong to, every society in the world. They are all ages, all races, all faiths. They are doctors and teachers, farmers and bankers, soldiers and athletes. And whether we know it or whether we acknowledge it, they are our family, our friends, and our neighbors. Being gay is not a Western invention. It is a human reality.” —Hillary Clinton
I’ve had a few people ping me to ask if I’m going to watch the first official debate between Hillary Clinton and Trump. Short answer: no. Trump has vowed to appoint to the federal bench only judges approved by the Heritage Foundation. The Heritage Foundation doesn’t just oppose gay marriage, they oppose gay rights of all levels, and still regularly call for overturned the Supreme Court decision that blocked anti-sodomy laws. They don’t just want to end my marriage, they want it to be literally illegal for someone to be queer. And if you happen to be straight or otherwise don’t consider yourself queer: they also think it should be illegal for straight unmarried people to have sex. They aren’t just anti-abortion, they think that it should be illegal for straight people, married or not, to buy birth control.

Whether you believe that a seat is going to open up on the Supreme Court in the next four years (and statistically it is extremely likely it will), there are hundreds of open appointments at lower levels of the federal judiciary that haven’t been filled because the Republicans in the Senate resist confirming anyone Obama nominates for just about anything. If Trump is elected, judges who think that being gay should be illegal (and a whole lot worse) will be appointed. The damage that alone will do to everyone’s civil rights is frightening to contemplate.

I wrote before that Hillary wasn’t my first choice this time. But you know what, she was my second choice, both this time and in 2008. Because (among other things) I remember back in the 1990s when she and her husband made Republican heads explode simply by saying that gay people deserve any legal rights at all. I hear a lot of people still giving her grief for not coming around on marriage equality until 2013, completely unaware of how far ahead of the rest of the Democratic party both she and her husband had been on the matter of gay rights for more than two decades before that. And really, if we insist on punishing politicians who were slow to come around on some of our issues, what incentive do any of them have to change their minds when we advocate for our needs?

And don’t start spouting stuff off about the third party candidates. Johnson, the Libertarian, doesn’t believe in anti-discrimination laws. Like most libertarians, he says discrimination is wrong, but he supports policies that let it happen. Johnson also wants to repeal the minimum wage. He wants to not just rollback the Affordable Health Care Act, but also eliminate Medicare. I could go on, but particularly if you were a Bernie Sanders supporter, it is criminally stupid for you to support Johnson, since literally every single one of his specific policy proposals are the exact opposite of Bernie’s. Every one.

I’ve written before about the many reasons not to support Stein. The quick answer is, she doesn’t have consistent policies, half of her policies are anti-science, and she doesn’t have the experience or political resources to put any of her polices in place if she did get elected. The truth is she’s not a serious candidate, she’s a troll.

Mathematically, voting for Johnson or Stein is exactly the same as voting for Trump. It isn’t a protest, it’s putting a bullet in the head of a lot of your fellow citizen. Also, voting for third parties in our system betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of coalitions and the electoral system.

But you don’t just have to take my word for it:

i will not be watching the debate tonight:

Virtually every election I’ve ever witnessed has been some kind of referendum on whether I’m a legal person – ever done ground work, going door to door, arguing with people why they shouldn’t vote to make you illegal? I have, and it sucks – and in that way, this election is no different.

The hate is just a lot more broadly aimed this time.

So I’m not watching the debate tonight. It’s bad enough being reminded every two to four years that about half the country is just fine voting to lock me up. This whole thing is yet another referendum on my existence, so why the fuck would I subject myself to that?

Bernie Sanders: ‘This is not the time for a protest vote’

This is time to elect Hillary Clinton and then work after the election to mobilize millions of people to make sure she can be the most progressive president she can be.

Hillary Clinton Was Liberal. Hillary Clinton Is Liberal.

According to an analysis of roll call votes by Voteview, Clinton’s record was more liberal than 70 percent of Democrats in her final term in the Senate. She was more liberal than 85 percent of all members. Her 2008 rival in the Democratic presidential primary, Barack Obama, was nearby with a record more liberal than 82 percent of all members — he was not more liberal than Clinton.

Misleading definitions of middle-ground, or the return of the false equivalency

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Two men, one in a gay pride t-shirt, the other with a cross on his tie. Guy with cross hits the other guy on the head with a stick. Gay guys asks him to stop. The other guy says, "Why, that's anti-gay bigotry!"
An oldie but a goodie from D.C. Simpson’s retired ‘I Drew This’ strip. Context note: a pink triangle use to be a more common gay pride emblem than a rainbow. © 2005 D.C. Simpson. (Click to embiggen)
Lately a lot of people on the conservative end of the spectrum have been calling for more compromise. For instance: “If you can’t be friends with someone just because you don’t agree on everything, something’s wrong.” And then there was, “Religious people no longer feel safe in social spaces. Maybe we could meet halfway?” But my favorite was, “LGBT people and Christians seem locked in their different and opposing camps. Where can we reach a meeting point of common ground?”

Let’s start with the first one: why should disagreements keep us from being friends? It depends entirely on the disagreement. My husband and I have been together for 18 years, and we love each other very much. We are also both very geeky nerds who are both fairly well informed on a variety of topics ranging from astrophysics to the old Donald Duck comic books. You can bet there are things we disagree about, and sometimes our discussions get very spirited. In 2008 you should have heard us debating whether to support Obama or Clinton in our upcoming caucus meeting, for instance.

If you think that I don’t deserve equal rights before the law, if you vote for measures to take my civil rights away, if you vote for candidates who have prayed openly that gays deserve death (almost the entire Republican Congressional Caucus just months ago), if you insist in the face of overwhelming medical evidence that being non-heterosexual is a matter of choice or mental illness, you aren’t my friend. And it isn’t even a matter of me not wanting to be your friend: you aren’t being a friend to any queer people by doing those things.

There are some medical studies that ultra-conservatives frequently misquote that draw a causal link between the discrimination and pervasive prejudice against queer people and negative health outcomes. We’ve known since George H.W. Bush’s surgeon general released the first of many other studies that there is a causal link between societal prejudice against queer people and teen suicide (about 1500 queer and non-gendering conforming children and teen-agers commit suicide every year because they are bullied, told that being queer is a sin, et cetera). Discrimination kills.

It’s not just the actual gay bashers who harm us, it’s the anti-gay attitudes and misinformation. Also, nice conservatives who claim that they don’t hate anyone, but also say that queer people don’t deserve legal rights, that our identities are sins, et cetera, create an atmosphere that encourages and excuses the violence.

So, no, when what we disagree about is our right to exist and live our lives as we wish, we can’t be friends. No one should feel obligated to cozy up to people who are actually hurting you. You can be civil to one another, but we’re not going to be friends.

I confess that I find it very hard to keep a straight face when religious conservatives claim that society is no longer a safe place merely because they’re no longer allowed to discriminate against other people, or to spout off their bigotry without someone disagreeing with them. For literally centuries society hasn’t been a safe place for queer people, or for people who don’t subscribe to the dominant religion, or for people who are the wrong ethnicity, et cetera. People were bashed, and lynched, and denied a place to live, denied health care, and so forth—often with the blessings of laws passed by conservative religious people. And you don’t feel safe because people disagree with you?

If people are actually threatening you, that’s bad. I am very sorry, and when I hear that kind of talk I do speak up. But the simple fact is that no one on my side is proposing laws to take away your rights. No one on my side is calling for laws to criminalize your sexuality. And some of the people who are currently asking for compromise and middle ground are the same people (literally in two very specific cases that I could name) who were actively trying to prevent hate crime laws being enacted, or trying to prevent civil union laws being enacting (a decade ago), or voting for candidates who literally were calling for gay men to be put into so-called quarantine camps (in the ’90s).

They are the same people who this year are trying to enact the anti-trans bathroom bills.

Me saying that you’re being a bigot when you call my sexual orientation a sin is not the equivalent of you supporting laws making it illegal for some people to go into public restrooms. Nor is it the equivalent of making it a crime for my husband and I to have sex even in the privacy of our own home. So the middle ground isn’t where you get to actually discriminate against me, and I have to listen respectfully when you express opinions that those laws and their rationales are right.

If you want to end the war between queer people and religious people, here’s what you do: stop attacking queer people, stop rationalizing discrimination, and stop defending the people who attack us. Because we aren’t actively attacking you. What you are perceiving as attack is a little thing called self-defense. We’re just trying to ward off the constant and pervasive and insidious grind of anti-gay rhetoric disguised as pro-family or traditional values.

If you don’t want to be called a bigot, stop being one. There are millions of religious people—people in your religion, whichever it is—who don’t believe that queers are evil demonic beings.

I am friends with religious people. I am friends with conservative people. We don’t agree on everything. We can get into very spirited debates about some of the things we disagree about. But they don’t tell me that I don’t have the right to live my life as an openly queer man. They don’t tell me that it should be illegal for me to live my life as an openly queer man. They don’t tell me that it should be legal for me to be fired, or denied housing, or denied services, or denied medical care, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. They aren’t sending queer children off to conversion therapy to be tortured. They aren’t demanding that books and movies should have warning labels merely for including any queer characters at all. They aren’t telling me that children should be protected from even knowing of the existence of queer people. They don’t tell me that “I don’t hate gay people—it isn’t your fault that you’re mentally diseased.”

To be friends, there has to be mutual respect. If you think that god is going to destroy this country for treating me equally under the law, you don’t respect me, and you’re not my friend. And yes, there is something wrong with that situation, but it isn’t me.

Re-posting this link from a recent Friday Links post, because it’s very relevant: On Peace Between Christians and GBLT People.

The myth of live and let live

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We’ve all heard it before when certain topics come up:

“I don’t see color. I see people.”

“I don’t care how you pray. All religions lead to god.”

“I don’t like labels like ‘gay’ or ‘straight.’ We’re all human.”

“When I look at you I don’t see a man or a woman. I see a friend.”

“It doesn’t matter who you vote for. The important thing is to participate.”

They are usually intended as a statement of support for marginalized people. It’s a way to say, “I’m not intolerant!” It sounds so warm, fuzzy, and affirming, right? Obviously if we don’t perceive a person as different, we must perceive them as equal? Right?

Well, not really. I suspect that most everyone reading this felt at least a little bit uncomfortable reading one of those statements. Or at the very least wanted to quibble with one. Which one rubs you the wrong way and why it does will be different from person to person, but the truth is that each of the statements is just as problematic. Even the ones you agree with.

First, let’s talk about labels. The person who ordered blood tests and prescribed medicine for me when I was sick is a doctor. The person who gives me assignments at work is my boss. The man I stood beside and said “I do” about when the officiant asked is my husband. The woman who gave birth to me is my mom. The man who adopted and raised my mother and her sister was my grandpa. We don’t have trouble with labels 99% of the time. Labels are how we communicate and make sense of just about everything in the world.

We only notice labels when those labels are perceived to promote or impede an agenda that we have a vested interest in. We only want to ignore labels when acknowledging them makes us uncomfortable. If, for instance, we benefit from a particular societal preference, acknowledging that difference implies that maybe our success isn’t solely due to our individual merits.

Ignoring labels is an act of denial or dismissal. Race, gender, religion, socio-economic status, sexual orientation are essential ingredients in our identity, whether we acknowledge it or not. Because we are confronted with and shaped by societal expectations from the day we are born. Just look at how outraged a lot of people got a few years ago when one couple tried to raise their baby genderless and refused to tell strangers the child’s sex. Or the many, many studies that have shown are very differently people interact with a baby depending on what gender they’ve been told the child is.

“To overcome racism, one must first take race into account.”
—Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun

The truth is that society discriminates against people based on race, gender, sexual identity, socio-economic status, religion, and many other factors that the people who are most likely to claim they don’t care about labels would agree shouldn’t make one unequal in the eyes of the law. We can’t make society more equitable if we don’t acknowledge both the inequalities and the things which trigger the unequal treatment.

So trying to ignore these labels—specifically either saying or implying that ignoring them is a better idea than using them—is a way to try to silence members of marginalized groups. It’s telling them that their lived experience of being discriminated against is less important than your comfort. And quite often it is often a way to say that you’re perfectly okay with the inequality as long as it doesn’t affect you.

Second, claiming that you don’t care. The more often someone repeats a statement that they don’t care about something, the harder it is to believe them. If they really didn’t care, they wouldn’t say anything. This has been demonstrated most clearly recently by people who get defensive about video games, claiming that the games aren’t sexist; besides, if you don’t like them, don’t play them. Then the same people threw a hissy fit and called for boycotts when someone cast four women to play the leads in the new Ghostbusters movie. If sexism and representation didn’t matter to them, they wouldn’t have gotten upset.

Now, I’ve had people claim that the only reason they say anything is because we keep talking about it (whichever category it is). This has happened to me personally most often in relationship to sexual orientation. The cliché that I have heard millions of time is, “why do you have to keep shoving your sexually in my face?” Most ironically it came from the co-worker who had plastered an entire wall of his office with pictures of himself, his wife, and their five children—and he was objecting to a single picture of my late first husband (in an ugly Christmas sweater, no less) that I had discretely tucked in a frame on my desk where most of the time no one but me could see it.

Humans are social animals. We often are defined by our relationships to other people. People mention spouses, children, parents, friends, niece and nephews, and so forth all the time, without thinking about it. Studies have shown that if people we work with are reluctant to share these sorts of real life details, that they are perceived as stand-offish and not team players. It affects the likelihood that they will get raises, get promotions, and even the likelihood that they will be the person chosen to be let go if there are layoffs. So queer people are caught in no-win situation. If they are honest and open about who they are, they get accused of shoving their sexuality on people. If they evade the topics, they’re not team players.

If labels really don’t matter, then you shouldn’t mind hearing about them.

Third, claiming that you don’t want to take sides, you just want to live and let live. Why does this have to be a conflict, you may ask? Or “being intolerant of bigotry isn’t very tolerant,” you may say. This is a false equivalency. It is logically identical to saying that the person who reports a theft to the authorities is making a victim of the thief.

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”
—Bishop Desmond Tutu

When inequalities exist, live and let live just perpetuates injustice. You aren’t being tolerant or neutral or impartial, you are actively supporting the side of the bigot. You are aiding in the oppression. You aren’t helping the oppressed, you are doing quite the opposite.

“Life's most persistent and urgent question is, What are you doing for others?” —Marin Luther King, Jr.
“Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, What are you doing for others?” —Marin Luther King, Jr.
Stop telling me what you don’t care about or don’t see. Show me what you’re doing to make the world a better place.

Wishing on 9/13…

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Cover of the Sept 21, 2001 edition of the Village Voice.
Cover of the Sept 25, 2001 edition of the Village Voice. (click to embiggen)
Jim Wright, an author who is also a navy veteran, posted some comments about the 15th anniversary of 9/11 on Facebook on Sunday which upset a lot of people. They called him a traitor and other nasty names, and reported him to Facebook for violating community standards (which the post didn’t). Subsequently Facebook (as they always do) gave in to the loud voices of rightwing people who claim to love Freedom and Liberty, but only for people who agree with them. These folks also often yell a lot about how much they love Jesus, and then they call people like me faggots, lead prayers saying we deserve death, and call for people who have committed no crimes to be executed. So they neither understand what freedom means, nor do they understand any of the teachings of Jesus.

Mr. Wright’s post was blunt, and not at all a feel-good statement. But it also contained a lot of truth:

“You’re expecting some kind of obligatory 9-11 post, aren’t you?

Here it is, but you’re not gonna like it.

15 years ago today 19 shitheads attacked America.

They killed 3000 of us.

And then … America got its revenge for 9-11.

Yes we did. Many times over. We killed them. We killed them all. We killed their families. We killed their wives and their kids and all their neighbors. We killed whole nations that weren’t even involved just to make goddamned sure. We bombed their cities into rubble. We burned down their countries.

They killed 3000 of us, we killed 300,000 of them or more.

8000 of us came home in body bags, but we got our revenge. Yes we did.

We’re still here. They aren’t.

We win. USA! USA! USA!

Right?

You goddamned right. We. Win.

Except…

Every year on this day we bathe in the blood of that day yet again. We watch the towers fall over and over. It’s been 15 goddamned years, but we just can’t get enough. We’ve just got to watch it again and again.

It’s funny how we never show those videos of the bombs falling on Baghdad today. Or the dead in the streets of Afghanistan. We got our revenge, but we never talk about that today. No, we just sit and watch the towers fall yet again.

Somewhere out there on the bottom of the sea are the rotting remains of the evil son of bitch who masterminded the attack. It took a decade, but we hunted him down and put a bullet in his brain. Sure. We got him. Right? That’s what we wanted. that’s what our leaders promised us, 15 years ago today.

And today those howling the loudest for revenge shrug and say, well, yeah, that. That doesn’t matter, because, um, yeah, the guy in the White House, um, see, well, he’s not an American, he’s the enemy see? He’s not doing enough. So, whatever. What about that over there? And that? And…

Yeah.

15 years ago our leaders, left and right, stood on the steps of the Capitol and gave us their solemn promise to work together, to stand as one, for all Americans.

How’d that promise work out?

How much are their words worth? Today, 15 years later?

It’s 15 years later and we’re STILL afraid. We’re still terrorized. Still wallowing in conspiracy theories and peering suspiciously out of our bunkers at our neighbors. Sure we won. Sure we did. We became a nation that tortures our enemies — and our own citizens for that matter. We’re a nation of warrantless wiretaps and rendition and we’ve gotten used to being strip searched in our own airports. And how is the world a better place for it all?

And now we’re talking about more war, more blood.

But, yeah, we won. Sure. You bet.

Frankly, I have had enough of 9-11. Fuck 9-11. I’m not going to watch the shows. I’m not going to any of the memorials. I’m not going to the 9-11 sales at Wal-Mart. I don’t want to hear about 9-11. I for damned sure am not interested in watching politicians of either party try to out 9-11 each other. I’m tired of this national 9-11 PTSD. I did my bit for revenge, I went to war, I’ll remember the dead in my own time in my own way.

I’m not going to shed a damned tear today.

We got our revenge. Many times over, for whatever good it did us.

I’m going to go to a picnic and enjoy my day. Enjoy this victory we’ve won.

I suggest you do the same.”

—Jim Wright, Stonekettle Station

I almost never write about 9/11. On the first anniversary, I made a post on my old blog called “Living for 9/12.” And I reposted it on this blog around the eleventh anniversary. I didn’t express the same sentiment as Wright either of those times, but I’m getting to a similar emotional space.

It’s not that I think we should forget the deaths that happened that day. But could we try using that grief to accomplish some good in the world? I mean, my goodness, it took us 14 years to pass a bill to help the fireman and paramedics and police who responded that day, survived, but have suffered longer term health issues. And yes, we killed the mastermind of that plot, but along the way we’ve bombed countries that weren’t involved, and have used the original tragedy to justify all sorts of violations of our own civil liberties, assassinating at least one of our own citizens without due process, not to mention developing a disturbing habit of killing civilians with drones!

Every year about 11,000 U.S. citizens are murdered with firearms, sometimes in mass shootings like Orlando or Sandy Hook, most in incidents that barely make it to the local news. That’s nearly four 9/11s every single year. Maybe we should actually do something to prevent some of those? Or at least let the National Institutes of Health research into whether we could do anything to reduce that number?

Why are we unable to work up any determination over any of the tens of thousands of deaths that have happened since that day?

I need to stop ranting. There was one other 9/11 post I saw on the day that I think is worth looking at. It isn’t like Wright’s at all, but it also doesn’t wrap itself in the flag to push an agenda. Tricia Romano is currently the Editor in Chief of a Seattle weekly newspaper, the Stranger. But in 2001 she worked in New York City, writing for another weekly newspaper, the Village Voice: I Was In New York City During 9/11. I’ll Never Forget.

Three months later, Pulse shooting still a gut punch

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“Can you put your finger on the common denominator?” © Matt Wuerker, Politico cartoonist http://www.universaluclick.com/editorial/mattwuerker
“Can you put your finger on the common denominator?” © Matt Wuerker, Politico cartoonist http://www.universaluclick.com/editorial/mattwuerker

Three months ago, an angry homophobe walked into an Orlando, Florida gay night club and murdered 49 people, wounding 53 more. It was a Saturday night during Queer Pride month, and it was specifically Latinx Night at that club. The homophobe had spent time in the days before the massacre staking out the location. He had created a fake profile on a gay hook up app before that for the express purpose (based on the recovered chats) of finding out what the busiest gay nightclubs were in his community1. It was a planned hate crime.

The homophobe decided to buy an assault rifle to kill as many queers as he could after seeing two men kissing in public. The shooter’s own father was shocked at how angry his son had become when he saw that.

Three months later, reading about this still feels like a punch in my gut. I’m an out queer man who grew up in redneck communities during the 60s and 70s. I have always had the moment of fear any time I am out in public with my husband any time we show any affection. I have a specific incident where I know my husband was threatened with violence after we exchanged a quick kiss when I dropped him off at a bus stop years ago. It’s a dread calculation I find myself making whenever we are out with friends: is it all right if I call him “honey,” or will we get harassed? Can I safely say, “I love you,” or will we get threatened?

Thanks to this shooting, there’s now a new layer of fear and anxiety on that. Not just that I and my husband might be in danger, but that our actions might set off another bigot who will go murder a bunch of queer people.

Some people will ask, “It’s been three months; are you still upset about this?” And yes, people will actually ask. I know this because the day after the massacre happened people who I used to think were my friends were angry at me for being upset about the shooting.

Other people have much more immediate reasons not to forget: Last hospitalized survivor of Pulse nightclub shooting discharged. And now that he’s finally able to leave the hospital, Pulse nightclub shooting survivor plans return to New Orleans for recovery. Even though he’s out of the hospital, he’s got more recovery to do. As many of the other survivors are still going through physical therapy and otherwise trying to recover health and mobility that was taken from them.

There’s other kinds of fall-out still happening: State slaps $150,000 fine on security firm that employed Orlando Pulse shooter. The company isn’t being fined for anything directly related to the massacre. No, while authorities (and journalists) were investigating, the psychological evaluation he had undergone to get his security job was publicized. And people tried to contact the doctor whose name was on the evaluation. The problem was, she had stopped practicing more than a decade ago, had moved out of state, and hadn’t performed any evaluations for the employer since. At least 1500 employees were incorrectly listed has having been examined by the retired doctor during those ten years.

The state agency that investigated believes that all of those people were evaluated and passed, just that the wrong doctor was listed on their records. Over a thousand times. Over the course of ten years. Isn’t that reassuring?

I mean, a single psych eval doesn’t guarantee anything, particularly one done years before. And if I’m going to be disturbed about problems in the case, it would be the shooter’s history of domestic violence. One might ask how people get jobs where they are given badges and weapons and put in charge of security at places like courthouses when they have a history of domestic violence. I’m reminded of a chilling op-ed piece I read years ago that pointed out if having been arrested for domestic violence (or admitting in divorce proceedings to abuse) disqualified people from being cops, prison guards, and the like, we’d have a very hard time staffing departments, prisons, and so forth3.

“A FELONY DOMESTIC VIOLENCE CONVICTION IS THE SINGLE GREATEST PREDICTOR OF FUTURE VIOLENT CRIME AMONG MEN.”
—according to the Washington State Institute for Public Policy’s analysis of The Offender Accountability Act

Let’s not forget that all the societal forces and institutions that encouraged the shooter to hate queer people, and that afterward blames the victims for bring this thing on themselves just by being who they are, are still active in this country. Some of them are even running for high political office. Others are merely preaching in churches around the country. Though some are finding themselves less welcome with their co-religionists: Baptist Union distances itself from anti-gay pastor.

The pastor in question, Steven Anderson, is one of many who said (from his pulpit) the Pulse massacre victims deserved to be murdered. He’s not the pastor who said that who has since been arrested for molesting a young boy. But since this guy also often goes off on homophobic rants, it wouldn’t surprise me if he gets caught doing something similar. But right now he’s just trying to go to South Africa and preach. He might not get to spread his hate there, however: SOUTH AFRICA CONSIDERS BANNING U.S. ANTI-GAY PREACHER.

Not that banning one pastor from one country is going to make much of a dent in the hate: Fox News Commentator Tells Conservative Christians They Must Support Anti-Gay Hate Groups.

But enough about the hateful people. What can we do to help love to win? Well, the first thing is not to forget the previous victims of hate:

Victims killed in Pulse in Orlando three months ago.
Victims killed in Pulse in Orlando three months ago. (Click to embiggen) (Facebook/AP/Reuters/Rex)

Footnotes:

1. The political cartoon I link to above refers to the Orlando shooter as a “gay homophobe” which was widely reported, but later debunked by the FBI2. The shooter installed a gay hookup app on his phone and set up his account around the same time that he bought the weapon that he later used in the massacre. And as I mentioned, his conversations never turned into meetings. He would ask gays what the busiest club was, and if they didn’t know, stop talking to him. If they mentioned any clubs, he would ask questions about the nightclubs, and then deflect any attempts by the person he was talking to to actually meet. A few people who spoke to the press in the aftermath of the shootings, claiming to have been flirted with by him or have even had sex with the shooter. But the FBI determined that none of them had actually met the shooter.

2. I still run into people who believe that the shooter was a self-loathing gay man, and that this fact means it wasn’t actually a hate crime. First, he wasn’t gay. Second, lots of hate crimes against queer people have been committed by self-loathing or in-denial queer people. Doesn’t make it any less of a hate crime.

3. I wish I could find that specific article, but I haven’t been able to track it down. There are numerous other sources of that data, however: Research suggests that family violence is two to four times higher in the law-enforcement community than in the general population. So where’s the public outrage? for instance. Or: 40% of police officer families experience domestic violence.

Weekend Update 9/10/2016: Paused pipeline, cease fire, and a tortured metaphor

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Muppet News Flash!
Muppet News Flash!
Time for some updates on some of the stories included in yesterday’s Friday Links! So, just moments after a federal judge denied the request of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe for an stay against construction on the Dakota Access oil pipeline, the U.S. Department of Justice and Deparment of the Army, and the U.S. Department of the Interior announced that they were halting the project pending further review: Joint Statement from the Department of Justice, the Department of the Army and the Department of the Interior Regarding Standing Rock Sioux Tribe v. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. This is a big deal, and came as very welcome news to the growing crowd of protestors who have been camped out near the Standing Rock reservation: Federal government halts work on part of pipeline project.

It’s a temporary pause, and the feds have asked the construction company to voluntarily stop. But the agencies in question have the ability to make it mandatory if necessary. Also, it’s worth noting the judge was only ruling on whether an immediate injunction was warranted. His ruling doesn’t stop the lawsuit the tribe filed against the construction companies. They may well prevail in court, yet. That’s assuming the meeting that the government agencies are convening with the tribes and other interested parties doesn’t result in another resolution to the dispute.

Meanwhile, the U.S. and Russia have brokered a cease fire in Syria: Syria Rivals Sign Up To US-Russian Peace Plan. Previous truces in this conflict haven’t held, so I don’t know how much hope people are holding out that this will lead to a resolution. But I think we have to keep trying. And we can at least hope that during the ceasefire aid is able to get to those who need it.

Meanwhile, things have turned predictably deplorable at the so-called Value Voters Summit: Gary Bauer At Hate Summit: Christians Are Like The Flight 93 Passengers Trying To Stop A Hijacking. I get it, tomorrow is the anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and the anti-gay, racist, misogynist, sectarian jerks have to maintain their delusion that they are under attack. They are probably sincere in their claims that any time they aren’t allowed to oppress (preferably with the full force of the law) people who believe differently than they do that they’re the ones being victimized.

“Like being a woman—like being a racial, religious, or ethnic minority—being LGBT does not make you less human. And that is why gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights.”
“Like being a woman—like being a racial, religious, or ethnic minority—being LGBT does not make you less human. And that is why gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights.”
But the steady march of America toward liberty and justice for all is not a hijacking. It’s what the country has claimed to be the goal since our founding! It’s particularly irritating when the person making this tortured metaphor is also someone doing it in the name of the religion that teaches: “Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen.”

Weekend Update 9/2/2016: cute otters and delicious tacos

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John Oliver and the Cookie Monster presenting news on "Last Week Tonight."
John Oliver and the Cookie Monster presenting news on “Last Week Tonight.”
The first time I did one of these weekend updates, it was because after I posted that week’s Friday Links (just before going to bed Thursday night), there had been a rather big development in one of the stories. Specifically, I’d posted at least one link about yet another planned anti-gay march being sponsored by NOM and some of the related hate groups. And that was the second year that the small number of people who showed up was significantly smaller than any previous year. The shocking development, for me, was that all of the the rightwing so-called news sites reported on the march truthfully, admitting that almost no one showed up and that support for the anti-gay cause was going away.

I didn’t intend this to become a weekly thing, but some how, at least a few times every month, something happens after I post Friday Links something turns up in my twitter timeline or on the news that I either really wish I had included, or that substantially improves upon something I did include. So, yesterday I linked to the story of Rialto, an orphaned sea otter pup found nearly dead on a beach several weeks ago, who has been nursed back to health at the Seattle Aquarium.

And how can you resist a baby otter?

Rialto learns to swim!

(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)

Rescued sea otter pup, Rialto plays with a cone

(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)

I’m also sorry I didn’t include any links about Taco Truck Nation, because it is a perfect example of just how weird the otherworldly perspective held by supporters of the orange-skinner white supremacist buffoon are compared to the rest of us: Trump supporter’s ‘taco trucks’ remark draws mockery. Because people with a non-racist, non-fearful, non-xenophobic viewpoint just associate taco trucks with delicious food.

There are some potential economic implications of a program that somehow mandates a taco truck on every corner (which isn’t what they meant to say, but…), and the Washington Post looked into that: The national economic implications of a taco truck on every corner. The Federalist had a slightly different take: 7 Reasons America Needs A Taco Truck On Every Corner.

All I can say is, if a vote for Hilary is a vote for more taco trucks, I think she’s going to win in a landslide!

Weekend Update 8/27/2016: Homophobic pastor is a child molester… surprise?

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Top 5 Reasons Churches End Up in Court. Surprise, Sexual abuse of minors is the number one reason five years running! Source: ChurchLawAndTax.com (click to embiggen)
Top 5 Reasons Churches End Up in Court. Surprise, Sexual abuse of minors is the number one reason five years running! Source: ChurchLawAndTax.com (click to embiggen)
It’s happened yet again. Homophobic pastor has been saying reprehensible/non-Christian things about queers, and now he’s been arrested: GEORGIA: Pastor Who Said Pulse Victims “Got What They Deserved” Arrested For Child Molestation. Maybe this is what all the whacky anti-gay preachers and other so-called leaders of the religious right mean when they say that people who speak out against queers are being arrested? They’re just leaving out the part where the arrest isn’t for their anti-gay beliefs?

For several years Dan Savage ran a recurring column at the Stranger called Youth Pastor Watch, where he would publish stories of youth pastors convicted of sexual molesting (usually) underage church members of either gender. And I’ve linked to and commented on the phenomenon of both anti-gay religious leaders and anti-gay political figures who have later been caught up in sex scandals, again, usually involving underage victims. Savage has also frequently said, “If children were sexually molested at Dennys’ restaurants as often as they are assaulted at churches, it would be illegal in all 50 states to take your children to Dennys’.” It isn’t that all religious people are child molesters, but most child molesters find communities willing to turn a blind eye toward their suspicious behavior among organized religion.

A perfect example is the story of former New Jersey Assemblies of God paster Gregorio Martinez: American Preacher Molested a Teen Boy, Then Fled 2,000 Miles. Martinez was convicted of sexually molesting a 13-year-old member of his congregation, and between the reading of the jury’s verdict and the sentencing hearing, he fled the country. For many months no one knew where he was.

A couple of reporters working for the news site NJ.com got a tip, and when they presented it to their editor, he authorized a trip to Honduras to try to catch the guy. Note! It wasn’t U.S. law enforcement who went looking for him, it was a pair or reporters! By the time the reporters located the church where Martinez had been working, he had fled again. But here’s the truly astounding part: the reporters learned that 1) Martinez was given a job at another church based solely on the recommendation of one other pastor—no other vetting was attempted, but even worse, 2) with several church members googled the pastor and learned he had been convicted of molesting children in the U.S., the response of church leaders was to claim it wasn’t their responsibility to report a criminal wanted by a foreign country!

Unfortunately, after he fled, it was discovered that Martinez had molested a 15-year-old boy there in Honduras. Martinez was eventually captured, but only because the reporters from New Jersey filed a lot of stories that got a lot of attention online about their attempts to find him, which shamed the law enforcement people into taking action.

I’ve also posted before links to stories about how many times various churches have lobbied for laws that shield child molesters from prosecution:

As I said of anti-gay politicians and vocally anti-gay religious leaders many times: “I really don’t understand why anyone, particularly in the media, doesn’t immediately assume that a legislator or prosecutor or governor or preacher who pushes for anti-gay bills has a scandalous sexual secret. I mean, when someone can create an entire web site devoted to chronicling the prominent anti-gay folks who are later caught in a gay sex scandal: GayHomophobe.com, it’s time to stop turning a blind eye to the issue!”

It has happened so many times, that I’m getting a little impatient at both law enforcement and the media. Seriously, if the media just moved a few resources into looking into the backgrounds of the most vehemently anti-gay religious leaders, all the evidence indicates that they would find dozens of scandals. Scandals generate ratings, right? I’m at the point of saying that not looking into these guys should be considered a breach of journalistic ethics. I’m sorry, the evidence is fairly clear: the more they preach against queers in the name of Jesus, the more likely they are to be sexual predators.

Emphasis on predator. Real people, often children, are victims as institutions such as these churches and the Republican party enable these molesters. And as I said when I posted one of these weekend updates on a related topic, the sexual dysfunction and community denial and cover-ups are not a bug, they are a feature of the rightwing ideology.

And speaking of nice, loving Christian politicians: ‘I lost. The ni**er won’: Alabama GOP mayor gets racist on Facebook after losing to black candidate. Okay, so not every single Republican is racist, but most racists seem to be Republican.

Speaking of people claiming to be religious, I love this article from the Washington Post: Where in the Bible does it say you can’t be transgender? Nowhere. I’ve done the article one better in past posts and pointed out that the Bible seems to be pro-genderfluidity (or maybe agender?):

“There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
—Galation 3:28

But then, I actually read the Bible all the way through more than once—unlike most of the people on the anti-gay right.